Mobilizers See Millions of Future Missionaries in Overseas Filipino Workers

While Filipino Christians are reaching the diaspora, cross-cultural evangelism efforts face challenges.

Illustration by Christianity Today / Source Images: Unsplash / Getty

When Delyn Garcia moved from the Philippines to Israel in 2018 to work as a caregiver, her goal was to earn enough money for her family back home to build a house.

Yet life as an Overseas Filipino Worker (OFW) was extremely difficult. The first year, she had to pay back the agency 1 million pesos ($17,700), meaning that some months she could send only 10,000 pesos ($180) home to her family. Day and night, she cared for her employer’s mother, an ailing 91-year-old, cooking, cleaning, giving baths, and taking her on walks. She had only one day off per month. Homesick, Garcia desperately missed her husband and their two young children.

A fellow OFW knew of Garcia’s struggles and began sending her links to sermons by a Filipino pastor. One clip spoke deeply to Garcia: How can this guy know everything I’m going through? she wondered. She started attending her friend’s church group during the pandemic and accepted Christ a few months later.

Today, her purpose in life has changed. She’s shared the gospel with her family, OFW friends, and acquaintances. Since the Hamas attack on October 7, she’s led a weekly Zoom prayer meeting—connected to Rebuild City Church in Makati, Philippines—with about 28 OFWs in Israel and other parts of the Middle East. During a visit home in June, she watched as nine of her family members responded to an altar call and accepted Christ.

Her Christian witness has also made an impression on her Jewish employer. “He was amazed because he said, ‘You know, Lyn, I see people like you—they go to parties, they go with boyfriend, but you stay. And when I talk to you, you are always listening to [worship] songs.’” She added, “I am trying to share with them the gospel.”

Garcia is one of the millions of OFWs who have left the Philippines to find better-paying jobs in the Middle East or East Asia. Today, Filipinos working as domestic helpers, factory workers, engineers, nurses, and teachers are enmeshed in the fabric of society in countries like Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, and Hong Kong.

For the past several decades, Filipino Christian leaders have looked at this migratory pattern as an opportunity for the gospel to reach the unreached. If churches and ministries in the fifth-most-Christian country in the world could train and equip OFWs to become tentmaker (or bivocational) missionaries, how far would that go in fulfilling the Great Commission?

It’s a vision that has captivated both Roman Catholics (see sidebar) and Protestants, who make up 76 and 6 percent of the population, respectively, according to the World Christian Database. (An additional 18 percent are considered Independents, which includes unorthodox groups like Iglesia Ni Cristo.)

Yet the enormity of the challenges facing OFW tentmakers has meant the Protestant movement is still finding its bearings. Family separation, proselytizing restrictions, overwork, insufficient training, burnout, and abusive employers all make cross-cultural tentmaking missions difficult to actualize. While stories do emerge of Filipino housemaids bringing nonbelievers to Christ, currently many of the successful missionary activities by OFWs are to their Filipino kababayan (compatriots), like in Garcia’s case.

Lessons from the Philippines’ experience with OFW missions apply to countries around the globe, as Christians are currently the largest migrant group in the world. According to a recent Pew Research Center analysis of UN data and 270 censuses and surveys, Christians made up 47 percent of all people living outside their birth countries in 2020. The report also found that Filipinos migrating to the United States is the fourth-most-common route for Christian migrants.

This growth in Christian migration is changing how the church defines terms like missions and missionary and what missions looks like.

“There is a great deal of goodwill for this network of overseas workers,” said Filipina theologian Melba Maggay. “They are not coming as imperialists. … Unlike Western missionary movements, we’re coming as servants, both literally as well as metaphorically.”

From the Philippines to the whole world

OFWs, which the Philippine government defines as citizens working in countries where they are not citizens, reached 2.16 million in 2023. Meanwhile, there are more than 10 million people in the Filipino diaspora, which includes all ethnic Filipinos outside the Philippines regardless of their citizenship. The remittances of the diaspora made up 8.5 percent of the country’s GDP in 2023.

Throughout the 20th century, Filipinos have left their country to find better fortunes elsewhere, most notably in the United States. In 1974, then president Ferdinand Marcos Sr. codified Filipino migration in the Labor Code of the Philippines by creating the Overseas Employment Development Board to “promote the overseas employment of Filipino workers” to companies abroad. OFWs were required to send back money to the Philippines.

At the time, most OFWs headed to the Middle East, where an oil boom led companies to recruit Filipino construction workers and engineers. Filipina women started working in the Middle East and Asia as nannies, caretakers, or nurses for the elderly. The Philippines also produces more mariners than any other country in the world—400,000—making up a quarter of the world’s seafarers.

The financial benefit of working overseas is stark: In Hong Kong, domestic workers can make at least $600 a month, far more than the average of $213 a month back in the Philippines.

The scale of those emigrating abroad sparked an idea for David Lim, president of the missionary training school Asian School of Development and Cross-cultural Studies: Filipinos could become the largest mission movement in the world because “we have the largest migrant population that has been going from the international airport ever since 1975,” he said.

Lim got involved in tentmaker ministry in 1994, as he started the Philippine branch of China Ministries International and recruited mission-minded Filipinos to work as English teachers and professors in China. Once in the country, the missionaries would build relationships, share the gospel, and start small groups in their homes. By 2013, Lim had recruited 120 Filipino English teachers.

“Anyone who goes overseas should consider themselves disciple makers to disciple the nations to which they belong,” Lim said. He urged a mentality that any lay Christian could devote 10 percent of their time to do mission work wherever they are.

Shifting toward tentmaker missions

While the idea of tentmaker missions had been introduced in the Philippines in the 1970s and ’80s, the Filipino church leaders held the first national consultation for “Tentmaker Missions” in 1994, Lim wrote. From there, the Philippine Missions Association (PMA) created a Tentmakers Task Force—later renamed the Philippine Mission Mobilization Movement (PM3)—which sought to mobilize 200,000 Filipino tentmakers by 2010, based on their estimates of the Protestant share of overseas Filipinos. That goal was increased to 1 million OFWs making disciples by 2020.

One way to train OFWs was a five-day course called Kairos, a condensed version of the Perspectives course by the US Center for World Missions (now Frontier Ventures). Living Springs International, a ministry started by Max Chismon, a New Zealand missionary to Butuan City, Philippines, developed Kairos in the early 1990s. It was initially offered to church leaders but later spread to lay Christians as well. The organization, now called Simply Mobilizing International, doesn’t know the exact number of Filipino graduates of Kairos but estimates it’s more than 2,000.

Lim stressed a “zero-budget” mission in contrast with the typical Western mission that requires significant financial investment to support the missionary family and operate a church. Instead, he suggested that tentmakers could support themselves, start churches in homes, and train their disciples to start their own churches.

The vision of mobilizing OFWs also took hold among the Filipino diaspora in the ’90s. Sadiri Joy Tira, then pastor of First Filipino Alliance Church in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, was on a trip to Jordan with leaders of Campus Crusade for Christ, Canada (now Power to Change) when they began to discuss the need to mobilize and disciple Filipinos living in the 10/40 Window.

As he traveled around the Middle East and Asia, he began to see how God was using Filipinos to spread his kingdom. Tira started connecting with like-minded churches and ministries, and together his church and three other partners—Christian and Missionary Alliance in Canada (now The Alliance Canada), Campus Crusade, and the Klemke Foundation—created the Filipino International Network (FIN), which sought to “motivate and mobilize Filipinos globally to partner for worldwide mission.”

Together these groups convened prayer meetings, discipleship training seminars, conferences to support families, and gatherings for Filipino leaders. They also distributed the Jesus film in cities around the world.

Tira said that he met Muslims in the Middle East who came to Christ after their Filipino caretakers’ prayers miraculously healed them; Filipina women in Japan who converted their Japanese husbands and their families through their witness; and Filipino factory workers in Taiwan who shared the gospel with Thai and Vietnamese workers they were housed with. In Bahrain, he met OFWs who shared the gospel with their Sri Lankan coworkers, leading to the creation of a Sri Lankan congregation.

In the last few decades, more denominations, mission organizations, and megachurches have joined the movement, spreading the vision of Filipinos bringing the gospel with them to the countries they move to and work in.

Filipino megachurches such as Jesus Is Lord, Victory, Christ’s Commission Fellowship, and Greenhills Christian Fellowship have planted OFW churches in countries all over the world to minister to Filipinos there and equip them to evangelize to the people around them. OFW churches have also made a difference back in the Philippines. For instance, the megachurch Day By Day Jesus Ministries started from a small group of OFWs in Saudi Arabia, led by pastor Ed Lapiz. After returning to the Philippines, Lapiz grew the church to 6,000 people and became well known through his radio program.

Tira, who for 12 years served as Lausanne’s catalyst for diasporas, stresses that it wasn’t the work of one person or even a group of people who started this movement.

“It was the Holy Spirit moving, because what was happening in Saudi Arabia [and] Japan, nobody orchestrated it,” he said. “It just happened.”

Abuses against OFWs

When asked how many OFW tentmakers currently exist—given that it is now four years past the PM3’s 2020 deadline—Lim said that he doesn’t know, as the PMA lacked the funding and manpower to count them. Personally, he said he stopped counting after 5,000. “It’s a faith venture,” he said. “What counts is what we’ll see in heaven.”

Lalano (“Nono”) Badoy, the PMA’s current national director, noted that initially after the creation of PM3, some leaders were too public about their desire to train OFWs, endangering mission groups working with Muslims. In some instances, the eagerness to evangelize has led to imprisonment. In 1998, Saudi Arabian authorities arrested 30 OFWs for sharing their faith and distributing Christian material.

Since then, he said, groups are cautious about sharing numbers, so the PMA doesn’t know how many OFWs are doing this ministry. He estimates that about 10 percent of the 1 million Christian Filipino diaspora serve in their church and that 20 percent have some kind of pastoral role, like leading house churches.

Despite the excitement and promise of OFWs taking the gospel to the nations, OFWs face many challenges and risks because of the nature of their situation as contract workers in foreign countries. OFWs are often subjected to poor working conditions, excessive work, low pay, discrimination, and abuse.

In 2020, the Philippines Overseas Labor Offices documented nearly 24,000 cases of contract violations involving the maltreatment of OFWs. In the Middle East, some are subjected to the kafala or sponsorship system where private citizens or companies have nearly complete control over OFWs’ employment and immigration status.

In 2023, the body of Jullebee Ranara, a Filipina domestic helper in Kuwait, was found in the desert. An autopsy found that Ranara had been impregnated by her employer’s 17-year-old son. He ended up confessing to her murder.

Challenges also arise with spouses and children left behind when OFWs spend most of the year thousands of miles away. Children of OFWs are often vulnerable to drug abuse, teen pregnancy, and school withdrawal, said Rene Bunsoy, manager of partnerships and multimedia at the Global Filipino Movement (GFW). One study found that one in four marriages end when one spouse becomes an OFW.

“I do a lot of exit interviews for those who were repatriated. … Those who were raped, those who were abused—it’s painful to hear them,” Bunsoy said. “But if you ask them, ‘Are you going to still go abroad after all this?’ some of them do.’” GFM works with government agencies, recruitment agencies, and churches to make sure that each prospective OFW knows the risks and challenges before they step on a plane or sign an offer. Illegal recruitment is common, as unscrupulous agents send Filipinos overseas on travel visas and have them work under the table.

GFM also works with OFWs to make financial plans to ensure that separation from their spouses and children is temporary. Together, they discuss the OFW’s goal, whether it’s putting a child through school, buying a house, or paying back a loan, and how much time it’ll take to reach that goal before they come home.

Bunsoy recognizes that he and others can’t prevent people from going abroad, but the group makes them aware of what it entails and provides assistance if they encounter problems in their new countries. The organization also partners with churches and ministries to provide spiritual support to OFWs both before they leave the Philippines and while they are overseas. At the same time, they care for the OFWs’ families back home.

Bunsoy noted that there is a divide in the church. “There are churches who want their members to go abroad because they want to fulfill the Great Commission,” he said. “But if you already know the concerns … if you want to send OFWs abroad, it should be together with their families, with the wife and the children, not the father or the mother only.”

Reaching Kuwait’s domestic workers

Each year, an average of 172,000 Filipina women move abroad to work as domestic workers. They face the greater challenges compared to other OFWs, as they often have little time off and are unable to leave their employers’ homes. They are a mission field themselves.

Anson Dionisio, an OFW in Kuwait who works as a graphic designer while pastoring a virtual church connected to Filipino Language Christian Congregation (FLCC), has seen these issues crop up with the household workers he ministers to. Many women who attend the church’s virtual Bible studies say they struggle with depression and anxiety due to their isolation, separation from their children, or unkind and abusive employers.

Marriages are frequently rocky due to the months or years wives spend away from their husbands. Some keep boyfriends in Kuwait or find out that their husbands back home are having affairs. They worry about their children growing up and dealing with life without their mothers.

To help these women, Dionisio started providing online counseling sessions with church leaders at all hours, even if the women had free time only late in the evening after finishing work.

Dionisio and others at their OFW church—most of whom work in white-collar jobs—had historically struggled to find a way to reach this population. A decade ago, church members would walk around the giant villas in the city praying for the live-in Filipina domestic helpers they couldn’t see.

Last year, when Dionisio took up the position of digital pastor, the doors finally opened. Using his graphic design background, Dionisio started creating social media posts to advertise their new online Bible study. At first, he used English to target everyone—professionals, students, and domestic workers. About 45 people showed up to the congregation’s first Bible study held in June 2023.

Then in October, he felt God call him to create a post targeting domestic workers. He initially thought to use an image of a woman cleaning, but a member of his team who worked in the profession explained that the image was offensive as it reduced these women to their jobs. So instead, he used a photo of an OFW at the airport heading abroad. In Tagalog, he wrote, “Are you an OFW here in Kuwait? Do you know that God loves you?” In the caption, he invited viewers to join the Bible study.

By boosting his Facebook post and targeting domestic workers in Kuwait, hundreds of comments and messages started pouring in.

“I was so surprised. It was overwhelming,” Dionisio recalled. “We couldn’t believe all the Filipinas who were asking, ‘Where is this church? We’ve been praying for this.’ We were not prepared.”

The virtual church grew from hosting a Sunday Bible study to adding Wednesday night groups at 9 p.m. and 11 p.m. to work with the women’s schedules. Today, the virtual church has seven discipleship groups. A total of about 300 domestic workers joined the meetings—not only from Kuwait but also from Bahrain, Qatar, and other Gulf states. Dionisio’s team identified and trained leaders from among the domestic workers to lead the groups.

“I’m amazed at how active [the domestic workers] are after 15 hours of working,” Dionisio said. “They start work at 6 a.m., and the Bible study is at 10 or 11 p.m. You see how energetic they are. Some of them are listening in while ironing clothes or taking care of their employer’s baby.”

Dionisio noted that he and his ministry team were not prepared for the toll the ministry would take on them physically and emotionally. Often they are up until 1 a.m. for prayer meetings or Bible studies but then need to wake up at 6 a.m. for work. Yet despite the lack of sleep, their conviction leads them to continue.

“I can testify that a lot of the ministry workers have found fulfillment in this ministry that they’ve never felt before, because right now they see with their own two eyes lives being changed, families being saved.”

Ministry to OFWs vs. locals

Over in Dubai, Marianna Garcia Bucud, administrative pastor of Sharjah United Methodist Church, is also consumed by a taxing schedule: Monday through Friday, she works as an instructional assistant at an American school in Dubai while her husband works at a telecom company.

On top of that, they hold Monday night Bible studies with OFWs, Tuesday night fellowship for Filipino teachers and faculty, and Thursday night worship services for Filipino mall workers. On Fridays, they drive two hours each way to hold Friday night fellowship from 11 p.m. to 1 a.m. for a group of OFWs working at hair salons, not arriving home until 3 a.m. Over the weekend, their church holds Sunday services, which her husband facilitates as the lead pastor.

Bucud admits it’s a struggle to manage everything, especially with three children—two in their 20s and one in elementary school—all while taking online seminary courses. The children have gotten used to missing out on family hangouts on the weekends and joining their parents in church activities. “We’re so happy to serve these people because they are enthusiastic and they’re very serious in their faith,” Bucud said. “They hunger for God’s Word. So, who am I to not go there?”

Like Dionisio, Bucud’s ministry is focused on other OFWs rather than the local population. Yet she desires to reach her physical neighbors as well. On the weekends, Bucud and others from her church go out to evangelize at the malls where people of all backgrounds congregate. Due to restrictions on proselytizing in the UAE, they always first ask the passersby about their religion, talk to them casually, and see if it’s appropriate to share about Jesus or pass out a tract.

“[UAE] is really diverse, and sometimes it’s challenging to penetrate into their situation and their lives,” Bucud said. “I think as missionary workers, we need to innovate ourselves to deal with this kind of situation.” She thinks that she and other OFW ministry workers need traditional missionaries to train them how to do cross-cultural missions as well as help them learn the local languages to connect with people. “If we just focus more on the Filipino culture base, I think the progress would be really slow.”

Reaching out to fellow Filipinos is often the default of OFW tentmakers, as they already understand the culture and language. Loneliness and the challenges of living overseas can drive OFWs toward faith in a way that may not have happened if they had remained in the Philippines.

Badoy, who also cofounded the GFM, noted that often denominations and mission groups will reach Filipinos rather than unreached people groups because it’s easier. Funding is dependent on the number of converts, so there is an additional incentive to focus on fellow OFWs.

Badoy believes there is a need to recast the vision of OFWs tentmakers: “You are not just there for Filipinos, but you’re there for the nations. Part of the vision should really be Muslims, Buddhists, Hindus, and atheists. … They should be one of the special focuses of the ministry.” He noted that some OFWs who initially left the Philippines with the goal of making disciples have instead become focused on making money.

In the past, Badoy said that he heard many stories of non-Christians coming to Christ. But recently when he asked leaders to give stories of a few people who were coming to Christ from a Buddhist background, they couldn’t find any.

“We’re praying that there would be more [people] who would respond to the challenge. … We have to always remind them that the scattering of Filipinos is God’s way of using Filipinos to be a blessing.”

In general, the PMA now takes a more supportive role in mobilizing OFW tentmakers since denominations are involved in training and commissioning their own OFW members. They share best practices, discuss challenges, and provide some training to mission directors but leave the denominations to do the work of directly overseeing, sending, and providing missionary care to OFW tentmakers.

For instance, the Church of the Nazarene created the SENT program, which ministers to around 200 OFWs online and in person. This year, they’ve also started online courses—made up of videos, journals, practical assignments, and one-on-one meetings with SENT leaders —to help OFWs start small groups in their homes. Completing the 12 courses counts toward ordination.

The group is also working to get their denomination to recognize OFW tentmakers as missionaries. A SENT leader, who herself is an OFW in Vietnam, said that she often hears OFWs tell her, “I cannot go out, but I pray for my employer. While I was mopping the floor, I was praying for all of this house.” The leader, who asked not to be named for security reasons, stresses that this is no small feat; their prayers are making a difference. She tells them, “You’re the only person who can get into that house—not me, not a pastor, not a missionary, but you.”

Sometimes the blessings return to the Philippines. One woman whom the SENT leader had mentored before leaving the Philippines and visited in the UAE ended up moving back to her home in Masbate, Philippines. She started the city’s first Nazarene church in her home. SENT’s chaplaincy program also worked with her children, who had gotten involved in drugs and prostitution, and they have since come to Christ and are now helping their mother with the church.

Back in Kuwait, Dionisio said that after gathering virtually for about half a year, members of his congregation finally had a chance to meet face-to-face at the church’s Christmas party, as their employers gave them the holiday off.

It was an unforgettable night, Dionisio recalled.

“Everyone was just crying. They couldn’t believe that they had found this spiritual family.” Many women expressed that as household workers, they never expected to be heading up a Bible study, leading singing, or exhorting the Word of God. “It was far from their wildest dream.”

Pope: OFWs are “smugglers of faith”

Lausanne’s State of the Great Commission report listed the Philippines as number 4 among the top missionary-sending countries in the world (behind the US, Brazil, and South Korea) with 25,000 missionaries, according to data from the World Christian Database.

The vast majority of that number are Catholic missionaries, according to Todd Johnson, editor of the database. Meanwhile, an article in Lausanne’s report noted that Protestant overseas cross-cultural missionaries number around 2,000. Johnson said the World Christian Database’s number doesn’t include tentmaker missionaries, yet his team is working to figure out a way to take bivocational missionaries into account in future editions of the book.

Catholics have also viewed OFWs as a missionary opportunity. “There are 10 million Filipino workers all over the world,” said Cardinal Luis Antonio G. Tagle, a Filipino prefect serving in the Dicastery for Evangelization, in 2021. “This migratory movement has become a missionary movement. We have been called by God to be missionaries and to share the gift of faith.”

The Philippine Catholic Lay Mission, founded in 1977, said it had sent out 193 lay missionaries to 136 mission areas in the Philippines as well as overseas to the US, Venezuela, Tanzania, Kenya, and Japan.

“In Rome, Filipino women are ‘smugglers’ of faith!” Pope Francis said in 2021. “Because wherever they go to work, they sow the faith. It is part of your genes, a blessed ‘infectiousness’ that I urge you to preserve.”

- More from Angela Lu Fulton

Church Life

These Christians Have Not Given Up on North Korea

Compiled by Sara Kyoungah White

Experts and practitioners discuss their top challenges and encouragements in serving the reclusive country.

People walking a street in Pyongyang, North Korea.

Pool / Getty / Edits by CT

The past seven years have been agonizing for any foreigner serving North Koreans.

Since 2017, the US has barred its citizens from going into North Korea without special permission, all but halting humanitarian organizations and businesses based in the US from operating there.

When COVID-19 hit in 2020, nearly all foreigners left China, including those serving near the North Korean border.

These two events have impacted how Christian nonprofits all over the world serve this isolated country, officially known as the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK), which has ranked first for the past two decades on Open Doors’ World Watch List of countries where believers are most persecuted.

There is no clear indication of when the country’s borders, which were shut in 2020, will reopen again.

Certain travel measures have been scaled back. Last year, North Korea resumed international flights to China and Russia, and the country is now allowing tourists, mostly from China, to visit the city of Samjiyon this coming December, although Pyongyang and other parts of the country remain off limits.

South Korean authorities also reported that the number of North Korean defectors resettling in South Korea rose to 196 last year, after falling from 1,047 in 2019 to just 63 in 2021.

Engaging North Korea is one of two special interest tracks at the Fourth Lausanne Congress on World Evangelization in Incheon, South Korea, on September 22–28. Ahead of the gathering, CT asked five experts and practitioners, “What most concerns and excites you about opportunities to serve North Korea today?” Responses ranged from leaders who articulated the need to reassess particular ways of engagement to others who expressed greater optimism.

Heidi Linton, executive director of Christian Friends of Korea (CFK)

Christian Friends of Korea is a US-based nonprofit that works with churches and other organizations to support more than 35 care centers for tuberculosis and hepatitis in the DPRK.

We are not seeing much that is truly encouraging. The borders have only recently reopened—very narrowly and selectively—to government-sanctioned trade, tourists from mostly one country, very few diplomats, and their own citizens. So far, Western embassy staff, UN staff, and nonprofit staff have not been invited to return.

Since we all work at the invitation of and under facilitation by the government, the continuing uncertainty in this space for going on five years is concerning.

The needs on the ground in the current context—significant flooding across multiple provinces, unpredictable harvests, new laws and policies, and the overall health of the people—are concerning. There are much deeper concerns relating to decades-long capacity building in communicable disease control measures as well.

We are grateful for recent amendments to the US regulatory framework that have opened up a bit more space for humanitarian actions, whenever that again becomes possible. Regardless of what we may or may not see on a temporal level, we know that God is working faithfully to bring about his purposes for good and for his glory.

Jamie Kim, CEO of Reah International

Reah is a transnational Christian nonprofit that organizes retreats and conferences to equip believers for opportunities to pray, give, and serve in the DPRK.

I’m concerned for those who believe that a base in China is the best way to engage North Korea. With Chinese president Xi Jinping’s crackdown and emphasis on only allowing foreigners who benefit China to stay, non-Chinese people engaged in North Korea work will find it difficult to justify their long-term residence in China moving forward. Those who stay in China should be a contributor to China even as they desire to do something for North Korea. North Korea should be an extension of their contribution in China.

The most exciting part of DPRK engagement for me is thinking about how the global church can be prepared to serve once the country opens again. We don’t know when that will happen, but with the border opening more these days, I’m hopeful it will be soon.

Getting the global church ready can be done first through harnessing the capacity, both human and financial, of the South Korean church to host meetings to bring global church leaders and fieldworkers together for collaboration, with humility and a spirit of partnership.

Also, leaders in the US, Canada, and other Western nations that have engaged more with North Korea in the past can create a consultative network to share their expertise—and mistakes—with the global church through member care and leadership development.

Kim Sungeun, founder and president of Caleb Mission

Headquartered in South Korea and the US, this international Christian group serves North Korean defectors in South Korea.

I’m concerned that the lack of communication and sharing of information among groups serving North Koreans—due to the sensitive nature of their work—may sometimes lead to multiple organizations unknowingly providing similar assistance to the same defector or, in some cases, leaving defectors without any help at all.

One way to overcome this might be to have a single, secure communication channel where organizations that serve North Korea can unite, communicate, and share various opinions through policy discussions.

I am constantly excited by how the grace of God can lead someone who once lived in North Korea and served idols to accept Jesus Christ. Many defectors suffer from trauma and guilt even after reaching South Korea, leading to a high suicide rate among them. Therefore, it is essential to share the gospel of Jesus Christ with these defectors and guide them toward spiritual freedom, which is just as important as ensuring their physical freedom.

An anonymous humanitarian worker (name withheld for security)

When we had to leave North Korea in 2017 because of the travel restriction for US citizens, it was heartbreaking. But recently, another organization was able to send a few team members into North Korea, so we are hopeful and excited that we may also be able to return to working on the ground soon.

More than anything, we are looking forward to reconnecting with our North Korean counterparts, whom we have not seen face-to-face since the onset of COVID-19. It has been four years of distant communication.

A theme verse for our organization has been Isaiah 43:19: “Behold, I am doing a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it? I will make a way in the wilderness and rivers in the desert.” This is a new era for North Korea. We have a lot to learn as there have been many changes in the country during COVID-19.

Ben Torrey, director of the Fourth River Project

Based in Taebaek, South Korea, the Christian nonprofit prepares people going into North Korea through education and training.

With a fewer number of defectors from North Korea, many South Korean churches and organizations focused on helping defectors or providing education for them now find that there is less for them to do.

Nevertheless, we are excited at what has transpired over the past four years. Many people from other nations have come to South Korea to learn and prepare for their work in the North. The students at our center come from nations that have greater access to the North, and they learn the Korean language and culture during their time here.

Lately, some of our students have been attending and speaking at various Korean churches in the area to raise the importance of engaging North Korea from a Christian perspective. Students from South America and Asia were asked to speak about how God called them to serve North Korea, what they are doing to prepare to go in, and what they plan to do when they do go in.

Their sharing was well-received, and many people have developed a heart for the North that they did not have before. That is truly exciting.

- More from Sara Kyoungah White

News

You Can Turn Off the News and Still Be a Good Citizen

Harvest Prude

Five experts share advice for Christians overwhelmed by the headlines

Forget October surprises; this election season has already had a dizzying number of twists and turns: criminal trials, consequential debates, attempted assassinations, a candidate dropping out and being replaced, and new vice-presidential picks coming on the national scene.

And every major development has been accompanied by plenty of 24–48 hour sideshows—controversies, partisan squabbles, scandals, and conspiracy theories. The crush of news may be catching up to Americans: While nearly half of Americans say they follow political news “extremely” or “very” closely, 6 in 10 also told researchers that they “need to limit” their news consumption due to feeling overwhelmed, according to a survey by the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research and USAFacts.

Christians eager to be informed citizens can feel both obliged to keep up with the news and overwhelmed by the volume of stories and level of outrage cycling around them.

“We were not designed to drink from a fire hose in our lives when it comes to media consumption,” Ryan Burge, an Eastern Illinois University professor and religion and politics analyst, told CT. “Honestly, most days, there’s two or three things you need to pay attention to.”

Burge’s approach to news consumption is more a measured cup of tea than a drink from a fire hose. To catch up on events, he’ll go to Google News, look at the aggregation of headlines, scroll, and choose one to three stories to read.

“I read for five or ten minutes, I close it, I go do something else. I’m caught up,” Burge said. “Think about how much ephemeral stuff happens on a day-to-day basis in America, where you’ll completely forget about it in about 24 to 36 hours.”

CT asked several media-savvy Christians for their advice on engaging with the news during an election year—and all of them recommended reading less and using discernment to determine which stories really matter.

“We don’t need to give oxygen to the outrage du jour, whatever it happens to be at that moment,” said Jeffrey Bilbro, an English professor at Grove City College and editor of online magazine Front Porch Republic. “I don’t think there is anything wrong with checking out of the outrage cycle.”

When it comes to developing a Christian orientation to news consumption, Bilbro has spent enough time on the subject to write books about the topic. He personally takes a minimalist approach to consuming political coverage during election years, admitting freely that he tunes out of events like conventions or debates.

“My goal is to care about the November election to the extent that I have agency and responsibility regarding it,” Bilbro said.

His goal is to be informed enough to be confident about his vote but avoid a “disproportionate emotional investment in the whole spectacle that doesn’t benefit anybody, has no positive effect, and causes me anxiety, and likely distracts me from the issues and the people that I can be responsible for.”

Overly avid consumption, particularly consumption focused on controversies or conspiracies, can lead to a distorted perception where these flash-in-the-pan topics overtake issues closer to home. Bilbro has seen political hobbyists become less involved in their local communities and church life.

For Christians who find themselves getting angry after watching cable news or scrolling through social media, Bilbro said they should explore if their time would be better spent seeking out hands-on community involvement, from volunteering at church or a local organization to joining a book club.

Daniel Bennett, a political science professor at John Brown University and author of Uneasy Citizenship: Embracing the Tension in Faith and Politics, advised Christians to dedicate more time to stories that impact them, or ones they have agency to impact in turn.

“I would pay attention to the stories or issues that are affecting you and your community more personally,” he said. “Rather than latching on to whatever is designed to get clicks by highlighting this one small town in this one state that you’ve never been to and letting that really fire you up, instead focus on, What’s going on in my community? What are the big issues that are influencing my neighbors? How can our church serve in these ways?”

Bilbro also pointed out the necessity to be mindful of which stories and outlets we choose.

“As fallen creatures, we tend to be drawn toward things that titillate us, that are exciting and interesting and shocking and rile us up. When we give into those cravings, we reinforce and support journalistic models that feed them,” he said. “I would hope that we could, as Christians, try to recognize that in ourselves, and then try to patronize different kinds of news, different kinds of journalism.”

Paul Glader, a journalism professor at the recently closed King’s College who has worked for outlets including The Wall Street Journal, CNN, and the Associated Press, recognizes the importance of media literacy.

In a world where misinformation and disinformation from foreign actors and anonymous pages posing as credible sources are a reality, he says Americans should approach sources and stories “critically but not cynically.”

Good outlets are recognizable because they take steps like clearly differentiating opinion from news, having a track record of reporting truthfully, and issuing corrections if and when errors are published, he noted. For outlets or journalists with a trustworthy record, he advised supporting that work through subscriptions or following them.

“People should shun sites and outlets that blatantly and repeatedly disregard the truth and facts,” he said. “The hallmark of a good news organization is, in my opinion, one that corrects and acknowledges its own mistakes. That is a Christian virtue and a virtue of quality news organizations.”

Glader cautioned against only reading outlets that align with your worldview and challenged Christians to pick one or two from a slightly different worldview or political view “to help you see how other parts of America are taking in information or presenting information.”

Exposure to different views can also help Christians break out of an echo chamber. “Remember, hey, there’s people who may go to my church or may live in my community who think differently.”

Bonnie Kristian, editorial director of ideas and books at Christianity Today, as well as an author and opinion writer, said much of how Christians should consume the news boils down to capacity and disposition.

“If you like following this stuff, if it’s intriguing for you to track the changes in our culture and governance in real time, then—with all due caveats about rightful priorities for a Christian’s time and attention—I’d say have at it,” she said. “But if politics is nothing but a duty for you, and perhaps a quite unpleasant one, don’t.”

Like others, Kristian said the amount of attention to pay also depends on the particular political race in question. Most voters are extensively familiar with Trump and “unless you’ve been in a coma and made a miraculous recovery, you probably don’t need to spend any time on his latest hijinks to know basically who he is and how he’ll govern.”

A new cast of characters, say, Minnesota governor Tim Walz or Ohio senator JD Vance might be different.

“Learn what you can about the candidate’s character; read insightful commentary about bigger issues in play if you encounter it; but don’t get bogged down in every detail of partisan bickering over competing or even unverifiable accounts,” Kristian said.

“There is plenty of passing garbage you can safely ignore. If you find yourself getting caught up—and worked up—over something your conscience is whispering is inconsequential, consider leaving it alone just for 24 hours, then seeing if you still care tomorrow.”

Burge also encourages readers to skip over the quick hits for bigger themes.

His advice to people who want to be informed is to skim the surface, resist doing a deep dive into clickbait, then sit back and think. “Let’s not say, Don’t be informed. But be macro-level informed.”

Stories that are flash-in-the-pan controversies lead him to ask questions like, “How can this story speak to the larger narratives that are happening in America, in the West? That’s how I consume news, is [asking], how does this little chapter fit into the bigger book?”

He’s found that in his newsletter, Graphs About Religion, topics related to current controversies get less traction and fewer views than stories dealing with more timeless themes. Burge, who also pastored a Baptist church for 20 years, believes this shows people are in search of “eternal, long-ranging trends and truths … compelling, interesting pieces of analysis that will stand the test of time.”

But ultimately, Christians interested in news should proceed with discernment, while others should not feel guilty for taking several steps back.

“If staying up on politics leaves you angry, jittery, fearful, or unpleasant, as it does for many people,” Kristian pointed out, “you can learn all you need to know to make a well-informed vote from a few hours of reading the Saturday before Election Day.”

- More from Bonnie Kristian

Books

Review

Parents Today Are Kinder and Gentler. They Can Still Take Sin Seriously.

Tabitha McDuffee

A new book aligns modern approaches to raising children with the ancient wisdom of God’s Word.

My husband and I found out we were expecting our first child in the summer of 2020. Ongoing pandemic lockdowns in California gave me ample time to read parenting books and research baby products.

I was raised in the shadow of fundamentalist evangelicalism at the turn of the 21st century, my parents and their peers guided by authoritarian parenting experts like James Dobson and Michael and Debi Pearl. I was eager to lay a different foundation for our own parenting philosophy, and I was also interested in fostering early independence in my child since I was approaching parenthood while facing a medley of chronic illnesses.

These motivations led my husband and me to explore the world of “gentle parenting.” We read several bestselling books on the Montessori approach to early childhood education and got acquainted with an organization known as RIE, or Resources for Infant Educarers. As we read, we came to recognize so many echoes of kingdom values: The authors and experts viewed children as full people in their own right, and they didn’t expect behavior that outpaced a child’s developmental capacities.

I knew, as I read these books, that they wouldn’t supply an exact formula for parenting. But over the last four years, we’ve tried to transfer great quantities of knowledge from our heads to our hearts and from theory to practice. During this time, I have occasionally struggled to harmonize different sources of parenting advice and my understanding of Scripture into a consistent plan for order and peace amid the chaos of raising young children.

So I was thrilled to encounter a new book from fellow Christian parents that makes explicit connections between some of these newer approaches to parenting and the ancient truths of God’s Word. In The Flourishing Family: A Jesus-Centered Guide to Parenting with Peace and Purpose, David and Amanda Erickson present a vision for Christian parenting that is grounded in Scripture and informed by modern understandings of neuroscience and child development.

“Our goal,” the authors write, “is to align our parenting approach with the teaching of Jesus and keep our focus on Him and our identity in Him.” The book serves this goal by challenging parents to address their fears and frustrations, first examining their own hearts and then working to cultivate the inner peace necessary to raise their children with a posture of trust. The Ericksons aim to provide tactical tools and answer practical questions that will enable parents of young children to begin establishing new patterns as they respond to common parenting challenges.

A key cultural moment

David Erickson is currently the president of Jacksonville College, a private Christian junior college in East Texas. Amanda, his wife and coauthor, has a passion for neuroscience sparked by her own struggle with postpartum anxiety and rage after the birth of their two sons.

The Flourishing Family (and the ministry the Ericksons began in 2019, Flourishing Homes and Families) arrives at a key cultural moment in parenting. In society at large and among Christian parents in particular, we see an unmistakable shift from authoritarian approaches to a more relaxed mindset.

Many millennial parents who were raised with the misguided (and sometimes outright abusive) “wisdom” of authors like Dobson and the Pearls are understandably anxious not to repeat those patterns with their own children. Others, who had milder experiences under authoritarian forms of discipline and essentially “turned out fine,” hope to continue that legacy as a hedge against the perceived flaccidity and permissiveness of gentle parenting. Still others have adopted modern parenting’s scripts of acceptance (“it’s okay to be upset”) while clinging to the behavioral expectations they grew up with (“but you need to stop pouting and tuck your lip back in”).

But while The Flourishing Family arrives during a particular cultural moment, the Ericksons have avoided tethering their work to that moment. They use occasional sidebars to briefly respond to common objections—like “What about the fear of the Lord?”—while keeping their distance from larger controversies. And while they devote an entire chapter to the topic of spanking (and properly interpreting verses in Proverbs that refer to “the rod”), they emphasize a holistic vision for Christian parenting that is founded on Scripture and supported by modern neuroscience. The result is a book that, while timely, figures to stand the test of time as a resource for Christian parents.

While the Ericksons set out to present a cohesive view of Christian parenting, I’m glad that the outcome is less a comprehensive manual than a facilitating guide—a starting point for deeper discussions and longer journeys into God’s heart for Christian families. This intention is evident in their use of storytelling to convey their experiences and convictions without being rigid or prescriptive.

And the authors include helpful reflection questions at the end of each chapter. These are not an afterthought, as they are in too many books. Instead, they further invite readers to consider their goals and hopes for their children and to draw nearer to Christ as they seek to disciple them well.

Constraining sin

The Ericksons clearly distinguish their peaceful-parenting approach from gentle parenting’s popular mantras like “There’s no such thing as a bad kid” and “All behavior is communication.” They are forthright in naming the reality of sin in our hearts and the hearts of our children.

They also (I believe rightly) call parents to focus more on building up their own spiritual growth than on rooting out every hint of sin in our young children through overzealous behavior modification. I wish, though, that they had gone a step further, acknowledging that parents might sometimes need to set narrower boundaries as a way to constrain their own sinful tendencies.

While acknowledging the effects of original sin on their children, my husband’s parents raised him with a careful eye toward the effects of original sin on themselves. This has led him to maintain a healthy skepticism of his own capacity to parent with peace and patience, while I tend to overestimate my ability to keep my cool amid toddler conflicts and constant messes. He tries to anticipate the dangers of his own resentments, preemptively saying no to a toddler art project at the end of a frustrating workday even though he would usually say yes. In contrast, my resentments come barreling down so overwhelmingly that we all end up literally crying over spilled milk.

“What would Jesus do?” is the question that, while never explicitly stated, seems to undergird the Ericksons’ parenting philosophy. Yet parents, within whom the flesh and the Spirit still wrestle (Gal. 5:17), probably need to pair that essential question with another: “Where are my limits in acting like Jesus today?”

An uncomfortable question

Early in the book, the Ericksons briefly note that their framework for parenting runs counter to many dominant tendencies within our society.

Fear-based parenting techniques are ubiquitous in modern Western culture. … And it overflows into day cares and classrooms. From our response to the earliest sign of defiance in a tiny toddler to the thick section on discipline included in the student handbook we give to college students, our world is set up to have children controlled, manipulated, and managed primarily through fear.

But even as they present a vision for Christian parenting that is rooted in peace and models grace, rather than punishment and behavior modification, the Ericksons never fully address the tensions that may develop between the environment we would foster inside our homes and the expectations our children may confront outside them. As I read, an uncomfortable question began burrowing into the back of my mind: Would this parenting paradigm work for all Christian families? What considerations, caveats, or tools might be missing for the parents of children who do not look like mine?

An example from the book may help to put some flesh on the bones of my question. In one chapter, the Ericksons address a disciplinary phrase I heard frequently while growing up: “Delayed obedience is disobedience.” They demonstrate that this phrase is not supported by Scripture (see the parable of the two sons in Matthew 21), and they argue for giving young children more expansive opportunities to learn and freely choose obedience, rather than focusing on immediate compliance.

Their discussion called to mind a short-form video I saw years ago. A mother is playing a classic game of Simon Says with her son. He is no older than five or six, and he is Black. His mom’s tone from behind the camera is playful, her instructions frequently punctuated by laughter. But as the game continues, the viewer realizes that the instructions “Simon” gives are eerily similar to the commands a police officer might bark at a Black teenager. The mother is using a preschool game to teach compliance, because while she may not believe that “delayed obedience is disobedience” in her own home, she understands the sober reality that delayed obedience elsewhere could mean death.

Can homes filled only with the expansiveness of grace and choice prepare children of color for the utter lack of grace they may find as adolescents? Can the Ericksons’ vision for peaceful parenting work for Christian families of every background and in any social location? I don’t have an answer to these questions, and I don’t necessarily expect the Ericksons to have one either. I only wish they had done more asking themselves.

Peace and trust

The Flourishing Family repeatedly applies Scripture to parenting in fresh ways, while taking great care to remain biblically faithful. It draws on the advancing field of modern neuroscience, not as an infallible authority but as a source of natural revelation and common grace that Christian parents would do well to consider. And while giving parents practical advice for the everyday exhaustions of raising young children, the Ericksons continually direct attention to the only one who provides true rest and lasting peace.

“Parenting with peace is ultimately about trust,” the Ericksons write toward the end of the book.

It is the embodiment of your knowledge of and hope in the trustworthiness of Christ. It is holding fast to His faithfulness rather than striving to stay faithful to a parenting paradigm. It is resting in the truth that His plans for your child are good, and He will complete the good work He started in them.

Parenting for me, for many of us, was once an idea, gestating (like my first baby) in mystery and anticipation. Today it is one of my identities—not the ultimate reality in my life but an ever-present reality nonetheless. As such, I’m called to live it out day after day, whether I feel ready and rested or not. What freedom to be reminded that I can explore new parenting styles while leaving my children right where they belong, in the faithful arms of Jesus.

Tabitha McDuffee is a writer and editor living in Southern California. She curates faithful Christian writing at BeautifulDiscipleship.com.

- More from Tabitha McDuffee

Ideas

School Screens Are Worst for the Least of These

Wendy Kiyomi

Contributor

Many children are adversely affected by laptops and tablets in the classroom. Some, like my son, are affected more.

Illustration by Mallory Rentsch Tlapek / Source Images: Unsplash / Getty

Halfway through fifth grade, the school district issued a laptop to our son. Up to then, his “accelerated learning” classroom had been a pretty good fit. He had a great teacher, dynamic peers, and a pace that challenged and stimulated him.

But with the laptop, our son’s learning immediately went off-track. He browsed the internet in class, played online games, fiddled around with display settings, changed his desktop photo, and then changed the photo again. His grades, behavior, and organizational skills suffered. Even after his 504 educational plan for attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) was adjusted, he had less and less success in school.

Our son is an insightful kid who’s in constant motion, as prone to getting locked into classic literature as arranging his toy cars. He joined our family through foster care and adoption and is, as his fourth-grade teacher informed us, “twice exceptional,” possessing both significant capabilities and significant impairments.

I’ve long observed that children like him, with backgrounds of early adversity, develop deep sensitivities to things that others do not particularly notice. In so many cases, their responses are the canary in the coal mine, alerting us to something important that will soon affect everyone.

Classroom tech is something important—and as another school year begins, parents and pundits, organizations and educators are hearing the canary’s song on school-issued laptops and tablets. Screen-based learning, it turns out, has not proven particularly effective, negatively affecting students by interrupting their focus, decreasing their attention spans, and desensitizing their brains’ reward systems. One study found that about 13 percent of US teens have viewed pornography on a school-owned device during school. Even when conventional social media platforms are blocked by internet filters, laptops open up channels of cyberbullying through Microsoft Teams, YouTube, and Google Docs.

These realities impact all students. But for kids like my son—for the 11 percent of school-aged children with ADHD or for children suffering the lingering impacts of trauma—screens have even more severe effects. Their conditions make them more susceptible to developing the attention fragmentation, sleep deprivation, social deprivation, and addiction that psychologist Jonathan Haidt identifies as the major risks of a high-tech childhood.

Thus, screen-based learning creates an educational disparity for children who are especially vulnerable through no fault of their own. My son’s disability meant that he paid a higher price for the district’s laptop decision relative to his peers—and there seemed to be no remedy. His school was unwilling to accommodate off-screen learning for him, telling me, “It’s just not possible.”

Christians should want to address this. We’re called to cherish children, helping them avoid whatever causes them to stumble (Matt. 18:6). We also serve a God who prioritizes the needs of the most vulnerable community members (Ps. 68:5; Matt. 19:14; 25:40). By advocating for school-tech policies that accommodate disability interventions and establish loving guardrails, we take a stand against the “war on the weak.” We flourish as Christ followers, becoming his hands and feet in specific commitments to the least of these.

Our Christian advocacy on this issue also offers an opportunity to understand anew God’s enduring intention for human flourishing. Through the struggles that our son and other vulnerable children have with screens, we reaffirm something marvelous about our created human nature and the Lord’s delight over us (Zeph. 3:17).

In our son’s encounter with classroom tech, it became impossible to ignore how essentially creatural he was—how important it was for him to learn in an embodied, relational environment. Already his childhood trauma—connected to his ADHD—had led him to struggle with attachment, a word that’s always felt too sterile to describe the rich sense of mattering. Babies matter first to their parents, through eye contact and loving touch; children who experience disruption or pain during their formative years develop “disordered attachment.” That intrinsic sense of being unique, cherished, and secure within loving relationships, that inner conviction of worth and innate sense of personal security, is broken.

Screens can exacerbate this brokenness for kids who already experience it. And screens also seem to break something in all of us, exerting a pull out of our God-ordained personhood and into a nonpersoned, disembodied, and nonreal world of missing attachments.

Good learning takes not more solo time in front of a screen but rich relationships that span the spectrum of intimacy. Close family is important, but so are peer, teacher, and public relationships. Good learning means we stop scrolling and involve our full bodies, moving in space and time.

Our family had a very rare opportunity to enroll our son in a school where every tech tool is “ruthlessly evaluated” before being used in the classroom. Students have scheduled sessions in a computer lab for writing, attend classes like website development, and can use a graphing calculator for some math problems but have no access to an “under-regulated digital world.” The school makes participation in class and extracurriculars independent of individualized screens as much as possible. Our son has wrestled with his attention and organizational skills, found decent academic success, and further developed his gifts.

A retreat from high-tech learning might not be a retreat at all. It might be an opportunity to affirm that learning apart from personal interactions is bankrupt for everyone, not just students like my son. It might be a chance for God’s people to shape education that honors children’s need for attachment as they grow and flourish. In that shaping, we refer back to a God who exists in eternal relationship, a God who took on flesh in the person of Jesus Christ and who provides for all our embodied needs.

Wendy Kiyomi is an adoptive parent, scientist, and writer in Tacoma, Washington, whose work on faith, adoption, and friendship has also appeared in Plough Quarterly, Image, Mockingbird, and The Englewood Review of Books. She is a 2023 winner of the Zenger Prize.

- More from Wendy Kiyomi

Ideas

Shielded from Truth at Our Own Expense

Justin Giboney

Contributor

The Bible consistently tells us we must examine ourselves and accept correction, but our culture is forgetting the art of fair critique.

Illustration by Elizabeth Kaye / Source Images: Getty / Lightstock

Around my sophomore year of college, I approached my African American History professor, Dennis C. Dickerson, to inquire about my performance. Honestly, I was fishing for a compliment. I spoke frequently in class and expected his praise. And since he was one of a limited number of Black professors on campus, I thought he’d flatter me as a show of solidarity given our shared identity.

He did not. In no uncertain terms, Dickerson told me I was a poor communicator and needed to tighten up my half-cocked and convoluted arguments.

I had to pick my jaw up off the floor. I was devastated. I was so shocked that I lost a couple nights of sleep. I’d assumed I was a proficient communicator, but he’d candidly burst my bubble. He exposed that I was more verbose than artful, more opinionated than informed. (I’m sure my detractors will say his assessment is still true.)

That was the most important and formative moment in my academic career and remains one of the most valuable moments of my life. As André 3000 said, his words were hard “to swallow. But so is cod liver oil.”

Once the sting of the truth subsided, I saw his critique was right. His reproach has rung in my ears for years, and I’ve become determined to communicate more concisely and persuasively. I don’t believe I could’ve learned the lesson so well without his frankness. A sugarcoated message wouldn’t have had the same impact.

Dickerson’s straightforward correction was the method of many of my elders. My grandparents’ generation had a way of bluntly letting you know when you were in the wrong. It was more than tough love. It was wise guidance that demanded humility and self-examination in the listener.

Both are necessary for self-awareness and growth. But in too many circles today, candor is frowned upon. And pointed critiques, no matter how truthful, are prohibited. We’ve expanded the definitions of concepts like harm and victim blaming to include anything that causes embarrassment or guilt. The question now is how a comment will make one feel, not whether it is right or wrong.

In some contexts, your social location can protect you from all correction. It has become acceptable to disallow candid critique of entire groups of people.

We identify an enemy—the “woke” for some, “cisgender males” for others—and imagine them as the source of all that is mean and evil. No one from these groups could possibly have anything to contribute to our betterment, we tell each other. We’re good, of course. And even if we’re not completely good, it’s only because they’ve forced us to be bad to survive. We parade around in our façades, shouting this false narrative to exalt ourselves while ignoring or trying to censor those who dissent.

It’s not only the commentary of outsiders that we are quick to malign. Sometimes we also scorn the unflattering appraisals of people inside our own tribes. Any conservative Christian who critiques Christian conservatism will quickly be branded a phony and a sellout—as if there’s no possibility that a culture that got slavery and Jim Crow wrong might also have more recent errors. I’ve seen the same basic pattern play out among Black social media influencers when someone questions whether an aspect of the culture is healthy or seeks in-group accountability.

This pattern is in partisan politics, too, where supporters of candidates Donald Trump and Kamala Harris reject even friendly scrutiny—which is not just unreasonable but undemocratic. The pushback I’ve received from fellow Christians for scrutinizing political candidates has left me to wonder, like Paul in his letter to the Galatians, “Have I now become your enemy by telling you the truth?” (4:16).

Of course, discomfort with criticism isn’t always unfounded. In America, women and racial minorities have too often been the recipients of malicious and unfair judgments. They’ve been measured by discriminatory scales and called unfit based on arbitrary norms. This is what happens when critique is disconnected from relationship and compassion, and it’s wise to be skeptical of critique from those who’ve shown us neither fairness nor love.

Still, that very important reality does not put anyone above or below fair and constructive criticism—especially not those running for office. The Bible consistently tells us we must examine ourselves, both individually and collectively (2 Cor. 13:5; Lam. 3:40). What does good reproof look like in practice?

I’ve found a model worth imitating in Nannie Helen Burroughs, who is the subject of two books from Jasmine L. Holmes and Kelisha B. Graves. Both have given me a greater appreciation for the art of cultural critique as Burroughs practiced it.

An advocate for civil rights and women’s rights, Burroughs was also an educator, orator, and devout Christian. She dedicated her life to bettering her people and America more broadly through social action and forthright commentary. She didn’t pander to white America, nor did she pander to Black America.

Burroughs’s work reflected the love of Jesus, and her words could cut like a two-edged sword. She told the white American church it needed to stop using the Bible to perpetuate lies. She told Black elites to stop separating themselves from and looking down on common people.

Burroughs would never have accepted the dangerous notion that her people—or any group—were without value or without their own cultural pathologies. She had the moral knowledge to understand that a love which only affirmed and coddled was a lesser love. She knew that when coupled with relationship and self-sacrifice, piercing words can liberate us from ignorance of our own faults.

Burroughs earned the credibility to critique through her sacrifices for the people she was critiquing. And if she could constructively scrutinize her own people in a time of great oppression, then Christians of all ideologies and races can do the same. We must have the courage to critique our own cultures and the humility to accept the corrections of others. The people we love cannot grow and thrive without self-examination, and neither can we.

We must “speak the truth in love” (Eph. 4:15, NLT) and reject the pride that lures us into rejecting good and fair critique—whatever its source. We are shielded from truth at our own expense.

Justin Giboney is an ordained minister, an attorney, and the president of the AND Campaign, a Christian civic organization. He’s the coauthor of Compassion (&) Conviction: The AND Campaign’s Guide to Faithful Civic Engagement.

- More from Justin Giboney

Books

Excerpt

God at the Bottom of the Glass

Francis S. Collins

An excerpt from “The Road to Wisdom: On Truth, Science, Faith, and Trust” on discovering the hand of God in the science of his creation.

Illustration by Elizabeth Kaye / Source Images: Getty / Unsplash / Pexels

As a child I had no formal religious training. My parents were not opposed to faith, but they did not find it particularly relevant to daily life.

At age five, I was sent to a local Episcopal church to sing in the boys’ choir so that I could learn music. I learned to love the hymns, but the theology washed over me without leaving any discernible residue. I can still play most of those hymns by heart on the piano—yet for the most part, I have trouble remembering the words because they had little impact on me.

As a child and adolescent, I had occasional moments of a strange longing for something that might be called spiritual, oftentimes inspired by a musical experience. But I couldn’t put it into words. Much later I learned to recognize this as a potential glimpse of the eternal, something described by C. S. Lewis in Surprised by Joy. But at the time, I had no framework for interpreting such experiences.

Going on to college and graduate school in physical chemistry, I lost any glimmers of spiritual interest and essentially became an atheist. I was unwilling to accept anything as having meaning or consequence if it couldn’t be measured scientifically. That of course denied the very possibility of anything outside of nature.

My adopted worldview thus presupposed that materialism is all there is. That in turn rendered such questions as “Why is there something instead of nothing?” and “Is there a God?” irrelevant. In its exclusionary stance, this philosophical view was actually not science—this was “scientism,” although I did not recognize it at the time.

But then I underwent a transition in my professional plans, moving from a focus on basic questions in chemistry and physics to an interest in life science and enrolling in medical school. I found the study of the human body fascinating on scientific grounds, and it was harder to keep those deeper questions about the meaning of life at bay when I found myself dealing with life and death on a daily basis.

I could see that many of the patients I was assigned to were facing the end of their lives and that our medical interventions were unlikely to save them for long. Some of them were angry, some depressed, but some who had strong faith in God seemed oddly at peace.

One afternoon, an elderly woman with advanced heart disease shared her Christian faith with me, explaining in deeply personal ways how her faith in Jesus provided her with a sense of comfort as she prepared to die. I was silent, awkwardly not knowing what to say.

But then, in a moment when time seemed to stand still, she looked directly at me and asked, “Doctor, what do you believe?” With an intense and unexpected flush of discomfort, I realized I had just been asked the most important question of my whole life.

Struggling to provide an answer, I knew that down deep I had nothing to say. I stammered something like “I really don’t know,” saw her look of surprise, and ran from the room.

This interaction tormented me over the next few days. I still thought atheism was the only rational option for a thinking person, but then why did her question make me so uncomfortable?

I realized that I had arrived at atheism without considering whether there might be evidence for other alternatives—something that a scientist is not supposed to do. I knew a few friends and professors who were Christians. While I assumed they must all have been brainwashed about this as children, I still wondered whether there was some explanation for how such scientifically minded people could hold ideas about God in the same brains that were studying biochemical pathways or cardiac surgery.

So, I began a search of books and people to try to understand this mystery. Through the assistance of a pastor who lived down the road, that search brought me to a little book by C. S. Lewis called Mere Christianity.

As I turned the pages, I realized with considerable alarm that my atheist arguments were laughably superficial. One by one, they were demolished by Lewis, an Oxford don who had also once been an atheist. Lewis anticipated my objections at every turn.

He helped me understand how atheism suffers from the arrogance of asserting a universal negative (again, something that scientists aren’t supposed to do). His logic also helped me see that atheism presents a colder, more sterile, and more impoverished view of humanity. Lewis led me to consider, for the first time, the true significance of good and evil.

He described something I knew from experience but hadn’t really thought much about: the universal human experience of being called to be moral creatures, though we all know that we regularly fail. Purely naturalistic explanations for morality (for example, the argument that it somehow has improved our chances for successful reproduction over many millennia) seem to account for some of this, but they fail to explain examples of sacrificial actions that we humans consider truly noble—the ministry of Mother Teresa, the legions of people volunteering for the Peace Corps or Habitat for Humanity, or countless other individual acts of radical altruism. Was this a signpost to God?

Lewis also opened my eyes to considering experiences he called “joy” that I had dismissed—those rare moments, often inspired by the beauty of music or nature, when I had a glimpse of something profound, a sense of longing I could not name, a piercing ache that was somehow more satisfying than any earthly happiness but gone too soon. I recognized those in myself. Was this another signpost?

Additionally, I became aware that science itself provides pointers to a Creator. Examining the data from multiple different perspectives, physicists now tell us unequivocally that there was an initial start to our universe around 13.8 billion years ago, where out of nothingness came this unimaginable explosion of matter and energy. This so-called Big Bang cries out for answers to the questions “How did that happen? What came before that?” But I was stymied.

Nature has not been observed to create itself. If there is to be an answer, therefore, it would seem to require a force outside of nature—a “supernatural” force. However, to resolve the dilemma of the origin of the universe, this Creator would have to be unconstrained by space and time. Otherwise, the next question would be “Who created the Creator?”

The more I looked at how our universe has been put together, the more amazed I became at the evidence for an intelligent Creator. As a scientist, I had studied and admired the elegant physical laws that govern matter and energy. These were simple, even beautiful, mathematical representations of scientific truth. But why should the universe have such properties?

As I further explored these laws, I learned something even more stunning—that the universe is precisely tuned to allow something interesting to happen after the Big Bang. Go with me here for a minute. The mathematical laws that govern matter and energy all include constants whose actual value cannot be derived by theory; you just have to measure them. They are what they are.

Take gravity, for instance. Gravity has a very specific, measurable, universal force. (Don’t worry about the exact number, but here it is, just to show you how specific it is: 6.674 × 10⁻¹¹ N⋅m²/kg².) Gravity made it possible after the Big Bang for matter to coalesce into stars, galaxies, planets, and ultimately us.

But what would happen if the value of that gravitational constant were just a little different? Here’s the stunning answer: If it were just one part in 10¹⁴ (that’s 1 with 14 zeros) stronger or weaker, there would be no stars, galaxies, planets—and hence no possibility of life.

It’s not just gravity that has this knife-edge fine-tuning to allow for an interesting universe. All the other major constants—the speed of light, the strong and weak nuclear forces, the mass of an electron, and several others—that determine the physical properties of matter and energy have precisely the value they need for us (or any other complex life form) to be here.

This can’t just be good luck. Even the atheist Stephen Hawking allowed that “the remarkable fact is that the values of these numbers seem to have been very finely adjusted to make possible the development of life.” Either these parameters were set by a Creator, or we are forced to consider the possible existence of an infinite number of alternative universes with different values of these constants.

Because we are here, we are in the one (or one of the very few?) where it all worked out. Scientists tell us that it is extremely unlikely that we will ever be able to observe the existence of these other hypothetical universes. Furthermore, their postulated but unproven existence does not solve the problem of how these universes all got started and why there is something instead of nothing. Given these options, I had to conclude that the Creator hypothesis was profoundly more compelling than the atheist alternative.

Ultimately, I seem to have lived out the predictions of a quote attributed to the Nobel Prize–winning physicist Werner Heisenberg, the author of the famous uncertainty principle: “The first gulp from the glass of natural sciences will turn you into an atheist, but at the bottom of the glass God is waiting for you.” I had reached the bottom of the glass.

Francis Collins is a physician scientist. He founded the BioLogos Foundation, led the Human Genome Project, served as director of the US National Institutes of Health, and leads an initiative to eliminate hepatitis C in the United States. He is the author, most recently, of The Road to Wisdom: On Truth, Science, Faith, and Trust.

Excerpted from the book THE ROAD TO WISDOM by Francis S. Collins. Copyright © 2024. Available from Little, Brown and Company, a division of Hachette Book Group Inc., New York, NY, USA. All rights reserved.

- More from Francis S. Collins

News

Wire Story

Half of Pastors Plan to Vote for Trump, Nearly a Quarter Wouldn’t Say

Aaron Earls - Lifeway Research

The former president receives the most support from Pentecostal, Baptist, and nondenominational leaders.

Dallas pastor and Trump evangelical adviser Robert Jeffress

Suzanne Cordeiro / Getty Images

Like other Americans, pastors are deciding who they’ll vote for in the November election. Compared to previous elections, however, they’re much more hesitant to share their preference.

Almost all US Protestant pastors (97%) plan to vote in the 2024 presidential election, according to a Lifeway Research study conducted August 8–September 3, 2024. But almost a quarter (23%) refused to answer the question of whom they’ll cast their ballot for. Few felt the same hesitancy in 2020 (4%) or 2016 (3%).

Still, among those who plan to vote and shared their preference, 50 percent say former president Donald Trump is their choice, while a quarter (24%) back Vice President Kamala Harris and 23 percent are undecided. No third-party candidate garnered more than 1 percent support.

“We ask pastors about many things going on in the culture today, and they are willing to provide their opinion. However, the growing number of pastors unwilling to respond with their voting intentions shows how sensitive or divisive politics has become in some churches,” said Scott McConnell, executive director of Lifeway Research.

The 2024 voting preferences are similar to those during the leadup to the 2020 election, when 53 percent of US Protestant pastors said they planned to vote for Trump, 21 percent for Joe Biden, and 22 percent were undecided. In 2016, 40 percent of pastors were still undecided in September, while 32 percent supported Trump, and 19 percent planned to vote for Hillary Clinton.

Currently, pastors are less likely to be solidly supportive of either major party candidate than their congregants, according to a Pew Research study. Around 3 in 5 US Protestants (61%) say they would vote for or lean toward voting for Trump if the election were held today, while 37 percent would choose Harris.

Self-identified evangelical pastors are more likely to vote for Trump (61%), while half of mainline Protestant pastors (50%) say they support Harris. African American pastors are among the most likely to say they plan to vote for Harris (71%) and among the least likely to back Trump (5%). Pastors under 45 are among the least likely to support Trump (41%).

Denominationally, Pentecostal (65%), Baptist (64%), non-denominational (64%), Restorationist movement (55%) and Lutheran pastors (48%) are among the most likely to plan to cast their ballot for Trump, while Methodist (52%) and Presbyterian/Reformed pastors (44%) are among the most likely to choose Harris.

Half of US Protestant pastors (50%) say they are either a registered member or consider themselves to be a part of the Republican party. One in 5 (18%) are Democrats, and 25 percent say they’re independent.

Evangelical pastors are more likely than mainline pastors to be Republicans (64 percent v. 30%), while mainline are more likely to be Democrats (35 percent v. 8%). Specifically, Baptist (67%), Pentecostal (67%), nondenominational (67%) and Restorationist movement pastors (57%) are among the most likely to identify as Republican. Methodist (36%), Presbyterian/Reformed (36%) and Lutheran pastors (25%) are among the most likely to say they’re Democrats.

Among Republican pastors, 78 percent support Trump. Among Democratic pastors, 85 percent back Harris.

“Out of all the descriptors of pastors, their own political party preference is the best predictor of how they will vote,” said McConnell. “Denominational groups often lean one way politically, but pastors must minister alongside many clergy who don’t share their political views. The same is true within their own congregations. In a culture that increasingly doesn’t want to tolerate people with different political views, pastors lead churches that strive for unity centered on their faith.”

From a list of 11 characteristics, a majority of pastors say 10 are important in deciding how to cast their vote. Around 4 in 5 say they are looking for a candidate with the ability to maintain national security (85%), the ability to protect religious freedom (84%), the position on foreign policy (83%), the ability to improve the economy (83%), the position on immigration (81%), the position on abortion (80%) and personal character (79%).

Three in 4 (75%) say likely Supreme Court nominees are important. Around 7 in 10 are looking for the ability to address racial injustice (71%) and the position on the size and role of government (70%). Fewer (38%) say the ability to address climate change is an important factor in how they vote.

When forced to choose the most important factor, 24 percent say personal character, 18 percent say the candidate’s position on abortion, 16 percent say the ability to protect religious freedom and 12 percent say the ability to improve the economy. Every other issue is the top priority of 4 percent or fewer pastors.

“Pastors are not single-issue voters. They care deeply about where presidential candidates stand on many issues,” said McConnell. “There are moral dimensions to all of the characteristics that could be selected, and pastors did not all pick the same characteristic as most important.”

Pastors voting for Trump are among the most likely to say an important issue in their voting decision is the ability to protect religious freedom (96%), the ability to maintain national security (95%), the ability to improve the economy (94%), the position on abortion (93%), the position on immigration (92%) and the size and role of government (89%).

Those voting for Harris are among the most likely to say they’re looking for a candidate with personal character (96%), the ability to address racial injustice (92%) and the ability to address climate change (91%).

Evangelical pastors are more likely than their mainline counterparts to say their primary vote-determining issue is the candidate’s position on abortion (22% vs. 12%). Mainline pastors are more likely than evangelical ones to say their top issue is the personal character of the candidate (35% vs. 17%).

Pastors planning on voting for Trump are the most likely to place as their top priority the candidate’s position on abortion (29%) and ability to protect religious freedom (25%). Those supporting Harris say their most important issue is personal character (58%).

- More from Aaron Earls

News

Arrested Filipino Pastor Apollo Quiboloy Claims He’s the Messiah

Beng Alba-Jones

Why millions of Filipinos are drawn to his movement and other heretical sects.

Supporters of Apollo Quiboloy, founder of the Philippines-based Kingdom of Jesus Christ church, hold a prayer rally at a park in Manila.

Ted Aljibe / Getty

Apollo Quiboloy called himself the “Appointed Son of God.”

But to Filipino and American authorities, he was a man wanted for years on charges of sexual abuse and human trafficking.

Quiboloy, the 74-year-old leader of the Kingdom of Jesus Christ, surrendered to authorities on September 8 after 2,000 security officers descended on the religious sect’s massive complex in Davao City in the Philippines. Thousands of followers gathered at the 74-acre compound to protest Quiboloy’s arrest as videos of his sermons blared on the building’s giant screens.

Authorities have accused Quiboloy of rape—including of minors—and engaging in sex trafficking, fraud, and smuggling cash into the US. Quiboloy’s lawyers denied these charges.

Quiboloy, who claims to have millions of followers in 200 countries around the world, is politically powerful. He has a close relationship with former Philippine president Rodrigo Duterte, allowing him to continue preaching even as the FBI placed him on its most wanted list. It was only after Duterte stepped down in 2022 that Philippine authorities brought charges against him and issued a warrant for his arrest.

The Kingdom of Jesus Christ is one of many sects that have sprouted up in the Philippines. They have an outsized impact on the country’s politics and culture. Because the Philippines is an archipelago of 7,000 islands, different homegrown religious leaders often come to represent certain regions, knitting people’s faith and identity closely together.

In a 2022 CT article, Timoteo D. Gener, chair of Philippine Council of Evangelical Church’s Theological Council, noted that indigenous non-Trinitarian heretical groups like Iglesia Ni Cristo, Ang Dating Daan (The Old Path), and Kingdom of Jesus Christ have grown out of “the prevalence of modalism, the belief that God is a single person who reveals himself in three forms, among folk Catholics. Countering modalism in faith and practice remains a continuing challenge for biblical Christians in the country.”

Another similarity in these communities is that they often center around a messianic leader. This is an idea that is attractive to the Filipino psyche, according to Rod Santos, a minister at Greenhills Christian Fellowship, an adjunct professor at the International Graduate School of Leadership, and the author of a book on why Filipino evangelicals disaffiliate.

“Historically, we as a people adore and value tagapamagitan [“intermediary”] figures,” Santos told CT. “There is always somebody who will be a go-between because it’s impossible to go straight to the mayor or it’s hard to court this girl, so you will need a ‘bridge.’ Likewise, we long for a deliverer, a savior who will save us from oppression or poverty.”

Here is a summary of the beliefs and origins of four Filipino local religious groups: Kingdom of Jesus Christ, Iglesia Ni Cristo, Ang Dating Daan, and Philippine Benevolent Missionaries Association.

Kingdom of Jesus Christ (KOJC)

Quiboloy claims that he started KOJC in 1985 after he heard God whisper, “I will use you” while attending a Billy Graham event in South Korea a decade earlier. Formerly a pastor in the United Pentecostal Church of the Philippines, Quiboloy left to start his own church after the denomination began investigating him for unorthodox teaching and disparagement of fellow pastors.

KOJC started with 15 people and grew quickly in the Philippines and among the Filipino diaspora. Today, the sect reports between 3 and 7 million members worldwide, according to The New York Times.

Quiboloy considers himself the “Appointed Son of God” because “he was the first man to have endured all the fiery trials of persecution and hardship and to have overcome them all without breaking his covenant with the Father,” according to an archived page of Quiboloy’s website. “He was the first man to finally eject the serpent seed, breaking the chain of sin by his absolute obedience to the Father’s will.”

The website went on to say that those who listen to Quiboloy, believe in him, and repent “will enter in the Kingdom of God on Earth today, and after judgment, unto eternity.”

In 2021, a federal grand jury in California indicted Quiboloy, claiming that girls as young as 12 who worked as Quiboloy’s personal assistants (called “pastorals”) were forced to have sex with Quiboloy or else risk “eternal damnation.” In addition, the group sent its members to cities in the US to solicit donations for a “charity”; the funds instead financed the lavish lifestyle of the KOJC leaders.

Iglesia Ni Cristo (INC)

Established in 1914 by Felix Y. Manalo, this religious group now has 7,000 congregations across 166 countries and territories, with about 3 million members worldwide. Followers of Iglesia Ni Cristo made up 2.6 percent of the Filipino population as of 2020, making it the third-largest religion in the country after Roman Catholicism and Islam.

Like Quiboloy, Manalo is viewed as a messianic figure, known as the “Messenger of God in the Last Days” and the angel from the east mentioned in Revelation 7:1–3. In Understanding the Iglesia Ni Cristo, Anne C. Harper noted that Manalo believed “his work is God’s last work of salvation,” according to official INC lessons.

“INC teaches that it is the only true church and the continuation of the church founded by Christ Himself,” she wrote.

The group asserts the only way to receive salvation is to join INC. Followers also recognize Jesus’ humanity only, not his deity. “We do not subscribe to the belief that Christ is a God-Man or both God and man,” INC’s website states. “He had in so many instances introduced Himself as the Son of God but never did He appropriate the title ‘God’ nor ‘God the Son’ for Himself because He is not God but a man.”

INC also endorses candidates whom its followers vote for in a bloc. As a sign of the group’s political influence, Duterte appointed INC executive minister Eduardo V. Manalo as special envoy for overseas Filipino concerns, a role he continues under current president Ferdinand Marcos Jr.

INC members who left or criticized the religion have faced intimidation and violence, according to an investigation by Canadian Broadcasting Corporation’s The Fifth Estate. In 2018, Canada granted ex-INC minister Lowell Menorca asylum, as the immigration and refugee board believed the group had “both the means and the motivation to seriously harm or kill” him if he returned to the Philippines.

Members Church of God International (MCGI), better known as Ang Dating Daan (ADD)

Eliseo F. Soriano, a former leader in an INC offshoot church called Iglesia ng Dios kay Kristo Hesus, Haligi at Suhay ng Katotohanan (“Church of God in Christ Jesus, Pillar and Ground of Truth”), started MCGI in 1977. The group started to grow rapidly after it began using radio and later TV programs—most famously Ang Dating Daan—to broadcast its message. During the 30-minute show, Soriano would discuss passages of the Bible, debunking the beliefs of other religious groups.

“Although ADD members claim to believe the Bible as their only source of authority, this is [only] half-true,” said the blog The Bereans: Apologetics Research Ministry. “They also believe Eliseo Soriano is the ‘sent one’ or ‘sugo’ the reason why he alone does the Bible explaining. In other words, an individual member could not just explain the Bible out of his own personal study.”

Soriano’s teachings reject the Trinity. He often cites Matthew 3:16–17 to make the claim that during Jesus’ baptism, God the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit were in three different locations, so they cannot be one. The Bereans also noted that followers believe Jesus is not the only Savior of humanity but that Moses, Paul, and Timothy were also saviors, and on his second coming, Jesus will save ADD members.

The number of ADD members is not public, yet the group has churches, known as “locales,” across the country and the world. The group’s 143-acre headquarters in Pampanga province includes a massive conference center that is one of the largest indoor facilities in Southeast Asia.

On his program, Soriano often skewered INC’s beliefs, leading INC to create its own TV show Ang Tamang Daan (The Right Path) to refute ADD. In 2003, INC sued Soriano for libel and later won its case. In 2006, a court issued a warrant for Soriano’s arrest on charges of raping his former aide, Daniel Veridiano. To escape what MCGI called “religious persecution,” Soriano fled to Brazil in 2005, where he continued to lead his ministry until he died in 2021.

Philippine Benevolent Missionaries Association (PBMA)

Another religious group centered around a messiah figure, PBMA, was founded by Ruben Edera Ecleo Sr. in Dinagat Islands in 1965. Ecleo claimed to have learned Arabic, Hebrew, Sanskrit, and Aramaic, which allowed him to interpret “ancient mysteries.” Through uttering a mantra given by God, he claimed to possess supernatural abilities, including appearing in more than one place at the same time, transfiguration, and the ability to heal and even resurrect the dead.

At its peak, PBMA had between 1 and 3 million members nationwide, according to the Philippine National Police. Unlike the other three groups, which primarily base their beliefs on Christianity, PBMA’s doctrine is a mix of Christian, Buddhist, Hindu, Jewish, and Akashic ideas.

PBMA teaches that the new heaven and new earth will be in Dinagat Islands, where the group’s shrine is located, said Fred Dungganon, an evangelical pastor in Manila who grew up in the religious group. PBMA also teaches that God is Ecleo, and Jesus Christ is his son, Ruben Ecleo Jr., he added.

The founder was also the mayor of San Jose from 1963 until he died in 1987. Ecleo Jr. took over leadership of the group and succeeded him as the elected mayor of San Jose. He later became the representative of Dinagat Islands’ sole district.

PBMA’s numbers dwindled after Ecleo Sr.’s death and then again in 2002 after Ecleo Jr. was accused and later convicted of murdering his wife. Similar to Quiboloy’s arrest, PBMA’s followers squared off with police as they sought to issue Ecleo Jr. a warrant. In the ensuing shootout, 16 PBMA members and 1 police officer were killed. Ecleo Jr. escaped arrest until 2020. He died from cardiac arrest a year later while imprisoned.

Dungganon, who now leads Blessed Church Manila, said he remembers seeing PBMA members heal illness and perform miracles presumably through reciting mantras. In 1998, he accepted Jesus at a church youth camp but ended up backsliding and returning to PBMA, even becoming a faith healer himself.

One night in 1999 after healing a feverish infant, he couldn’t sleep. “I didn’t feel satisfaction in what I was doing,” he recalled. “No joy, no peace.” He recalled the unexplainable joy he had felt at the camp and began searching for truth in the Bible. A few months later, he surrendered his life to the Lord, leaving PBMA and facing persecution from his family and friends in the group. “There was no turning back,” he said. “The grace of God was so overwhelming, and my experience with Jesus was incomparably better than my previous faith.”

Santos noted that some of these pastors initially started with orthodox Christian doctrines but found that they could amass a larger gathering by promising deliverance. “Since no one is checking them, then they are not accountable to anybody, leading them to [start] a cult.”

To reach more people like Dungganon, Santos said that Filipino evangelicals can take advantage of the cultural inclination to seek a mediator by pointing those enmeshed in unorthodox movements to the true Messiah. “To connect with them, Christians can emphasize the role of Jesus, the Son of God, as the only true Mediator and Messiah.”

- More from Beng Alba-Jones

Church Life

South Korea’s Missions Success Won’t Be Its Future

Isabel Ong

The extraordinary church story of the 20th century is struggling with a demographic crisis, disillusionment with Christianity, and a 2007 Taliban attack.

Illustration by Mallory Rentsch Tlapek / Source Images: Getty

Beginning in 2002, South Korean national Helen Lee served as a missionary in Bengaluru, India for five years. In 2015, she embarked on another mission trip to the country’s capital, New Delhi.

It was a new city and a different team, but one thing remained the same: She was the youngest missionary there.

Lee, 45, sees this same dynamic playing out in her work as a member care coordinator in a mission agency that reaches out to Muslims.

“In the last three or four years, we never had any young families candidate [to become long-term missionaries from South Korea],” said Lee.

By the first half of the 21st century, South Korea became a missionary-sending powerhouse. In 2015, the country was ranked second in terms of overall missionary-sending activity, according to the World Christian Database.

The East Asian country is now in third place, after the US and Brazil, in terms of missionary-sending activity, according to 2020 statistics from the World Christian Database that were cited in the Lausanne Movement’s State of the Great Commission report.

But the explosive growth of the country’s missions force does not appear to be sustainable.

“The Korean church and mission have recently plateaued due to secularization, a general disinterest in religion among young people, and the possible impact of megachurch scandals,” wrote Uchenna Anyanwu, Cristian Castro, and David Ro in the Lausanne report. “For this reason, the Korean missionary population is gradually aging.”

Data from the Korea Research Institute for Mission (KRIM) reflects steady growth in the number of missionaries over the past two decades, with a slight downturn beginning in the 2020s.

In the ’90s, the Korean church called for 10,000 missionaries to go and preach. This vision was realized in a decade, and the number of missionaries doubled to 20,000 by 2010.

Since then, growth has been marginal, KRIM’s data shows. Last year, South Korea sent a total of 21,917 missionaries, down from 22,204 in 2022 and 22,259 in 2020.

One reason for a slower missions pipeline in the aughts may be the 2007 kidnapping crisis in Afghanistan, where the Taliban killed two believers after abducting 23 South Korean church volunteers on a medical aid trip.

“The number of Korean missionaries continued to grow, but at a much lower rate since the hostage case in 2007,” said Steve Sang-Cheol Moon, founder and CEO of South Korea’s Charis Institute for Intercultural Studies. (More recently, two South Korean missionaries were kidnapped in Kenya this August.)

The incident, in which the Taliban claimed it received $4 million from the South Korean government to release hostages, prompted intense criticism of mission efforts from both Christian and non-Christian Koreans.

Many came to regard churches as self-serving and critiqued the exclusivity of the faith after this happened, Moon said.

The Taliban murder-kidnapping also created a “huge phobia” against Muslims among the Korean people, particularly in Christian circles where believers feel the need to protect the faith against Islam, said Lee.

“A lot of people in church are still very afraid of [Muslims]. … [They think] the Muslims are terrorists,” she noted.

Korean missionaries and leaders CT interviewed agree with the data and the trends observed by the Lausanne report. Still, most are optimistic about the future of South Korea’s missionary movement as they see growth in new conceptualizations and expressions of missional living among younger Korean Christians.

A prophetic push

In 1973, Billy Graham predicted that South Korea would become a base for evangelism and outreach across Asia. The history of the South Korean church has reflected this ardent devotion to missions that Graham pinpointed.

The first Korean missionary was ordained at the 1907 Pyongyang revival. In 1974, the Korean missionary movement (KMM) began when Korean churches sent out 24 missionaries. Since then, South Korean missionaries have brought the gospel to 170 countries.

Nationwide evangelistic events such as Explo ’74 in Seoul, attended by 300,000 believers from South Korea and around the world, contributed to boosting missionary fervor in that period. And after the country hosted the Olympics in 1988, the government allowed Koreans to travel freely, further propelling the KMM forward.

Central Asia and China were some of the places where Korean missionaries had a large impact.

In countries like Mongolia, they were instrumental in growing the Christian population. “In 1989, there were just four Christians; by 2008, that number had grown to 40,000,” a 2019 Lausanne article on the gospel movement in East Asia revealed.

Missions to China began when the Presbyterian Church of Korea sent three ministers and their families to the province of Shandong in the 1900s.

This was “the greatest and most significant missionary work of the Korean church,” wrote Timothy K. Park in Korean Church, God’s Mission, Global Christianity. “It was the first Asian mission by Asian people since the days of the apostles.”

By 2017, there were about 500 officially registered South Korean missionaries in China, although the actual number may have been closer to 2,000, a CT report stated. Many served in Jilin Province due to its proximity to North Korea, helping refugees resettle after they defected.

But after China expelled Korean missionaries that year, along with the Afghanistan kidnapping crisis a decade earlier, South Korean missionaries have had to look elsewhere for opportunities to serve.

Many missionaries stopped serving in Afghanistan and other creative access countries where sharing the faith is restricted or prohibited because “local people were more aware of the presence of Korean missionaries in their regions,” Moon says.

The COVID-19 pandemic, as well as a decline in church growth, has also caused the KMM to stagnate in recent years, Korean Christian leaders told CT. Churches are more financially strapped, which means less funding for missionaries.

And yet, while the number of Korean Christians going on overseas missions is decreasing, missionaries are venturing farther.

Today, South Korean missionaries serve in countries like the United States, the Philippines, Thailand, and other Southeast Asian countries that have more restrictions on preaching and sharing the Good News.

In the Hindu-majority country of Nepal, which has an anti-conversion law in place, a South Korean missionary couple has planted nearly 70 churches in the Dhading district as of last year. Kenya has also become “a bridgehead for Korean missions to Africa,” with more Korean missionaries based there compared to other nations on the continent, said a 2014 report.

Going gray

Only around 7 percent of South Korean missionaries are in their 20s or 30s. The majority (67.9%) of long-term missionaries are 50 years old or over, according to KRIM’s 2023 report.

These “silver missionaries” often enter the mission field after retirement, said 35-year-old Eun Hee Kim, who served as a church planter in northeastern Thailand and is currently on sabbatical.

Kim was 23 when she decided to serve God full-time in cross-cultural missions. There are young South Korean Christians interested in doing the same thing today, but how missional their church is plays a part in determining whether they pursue it, says Kim.

“If the churches no longer see missions as essential and cease to pray, support, or mobilize for missions—that would indeed mark the beginning of the end for Korean missions,” she said.

Traditional church sending structures may also inadvertently impact the age of missionaries being sent out. Most South Koreans think that to be a missionary, you have to be ordained as a pastor and undergo theological training, which takes around five to six years to complete.

While that perception is gradually changing, whether churches are willing to send people in their 20s and 30s on the mission field without theological study is debatable, said Kyungnam Park, international director of WEC International, which focuses on evangelizing unreached people groups.

Parents’ opinions also matter more in Korean culture compared to the Western world, says Sung-Min Park, Korean Campus Crusade for Christ’s (KCCC) vice president for East Asia. As a form of filial piety, young graduates feel pressured to work in a well-known company and become financially stable rather than serve the Lord as a long-term missionary in a faraway country.

Hyerin Kim, 26, went on two short-term mission trips with KCCC. After graduating from college in 2022, she moved to Japan for a short-term mission stint a year later.

When she told her family she wanted to be a full-time missionary, they opposed the decision fiercely. “They think that I am giving up a lot of good things and taking a particularly harder and more difficult path to be a missionary,” she told CT.

“But I don’t see it that way,” she said. “I am not giving up any of the good opportunities I have, but I am taking the best and most unique opportunity to please and honor God more than any other.”

Mission Korea Congress, an ecumenical and biannual conference for high school and college students, has also seen a drastic dip in attendance over the years, particularly after the new millennium.

At its peak in 1998, the conference had 6,300 participants. In 2010, the number of participants dropped to 3,975. Last year, there were 1,403 people.

Still, the waning attendance doesn’t faze the congress’s executive director, Job Choi. God’s ministry is not dependent on numbers, he asserted.

As they seek ways to live out their faith, Gen Z and Gen Alpha believers are asking different questions compared to previous generations, in Choi’s view. Young Christians are pondering questions like “What is beautiful, good, and human?” rather than “What is true or real?” he said. They’re also wondering: “If your gospel is right, why is your church not beautiful?”

Creating change

Not everything that has transpired in recent times has weakened the Korean church. To some leaders, the events of the last few years have helped to strengthen and reshape the Korean missionary movement, especially in its posture.

The pandemic has allowed the Korean church to reckon with its pride, arrogance, and sense of triumphalism in carrying out missions, opined Daewon Moon, senior pastor of Daegu Dongshin Church.

“We no longer emphasize that the Korean church will and should play a pivotal role in fulfilling the Great Commission,” he said. “We don’t want to repeat the same mistakes of European missionaries.”

The Fourth Lausanne Congress in September, held in the South Korean city of Incheon, is not a time for “the Korean church to celebrate its missional achievement before the global church,” said Moon, who serves on the board of the Korea Lausanne Committee.

Instead, it is a time for the Korean church to reflect, repent, and learn from the global body of Christ, Moon argues.

Some leaders pointed to the Korean wave—the booming popularity of South Korean pop culture in music, film, food, and more—as a propitious opportunity for mission work. “When we go to Latin America and Africa, a lot of people already know the songs [from K-pop groups] BTS and Blackpink,” said KCCC’s Park.

“Particularly notable is a new energy to combine worship and mission ministries among young Korean Christians,” said Moon, the pastor.

The birth of mission-oriented worship collectives like Isaiah 6tyOne is representative of this new movement. Recently, the group visited a high school in Iloilo, Philippines, where they shared God’s Word and taught students how to play musical instruments. “Jesus, you’re victorious / with the angels sing / the wonder of the risen King,” the teenagers sang.

Another discernible trend, say leaders, is that although long-term missions are decreasing, short-term missions are on the rise.

Many churches and mission agencies offer a range of options in duration, from week-long to three-month trips and one-year commitments. This summer, Moon’s church sent 17 short-term mission teams to countries like Japan, Cambodia, Turkey, Tanzania, and the UK.

KCCC is also “doing better than before” when it comes to sending short-term missionaries overseas, said Park. This year, the ministry has already sent 3,000 students and full-time staff on two- to four-week-long mission trips.

Going on a short-term mission trip helped Kim, the young missionary in Japan, to experience deeper and more authentic fellowship with God. “I felt that everything I did, whether it was eating, drinking, meeting up with friends to laugh and talk, or just walking around campus, was a mission and for the glory of the Lord,” she said.

A favorable future

While South Korea’s rankings in terms of missionary sending may have slipped, most leaders still think the country can be considered a powerful mission-sending force. Many expressed optimism about the future of mission in South Korea because they’ve noticed a shift toward a more holistic understanding of what being a missionary is all about.

“The division between evangelism and social responsibility (which older generations argued [about] and maintained) does not seem to bother younger generations,” said Moon, the pastor.

In the past, Korean missionaries would prioritize evangelism and church planting over other types of ministries such as area development, medical services, and relief work. Today, there are more missionaries seeking to care for a local community’s physical needs instead of solely focusing on their spiritual needs, said Charis Institute’s Moon.

In a 2006 cover story for CT, Moon also critiqued the lone ranger approach that many Korean missionaries possessed when starting projects. While this may still ring true in many cases, younger Korean missionaries are better at collaborating with local churches and leaders than before, he said.

Korean missionaries today also have a more “flexible missionary identity,” continued Moon. Previously, they would often link their identity with a certain country, but now they are more aware that their country of service can be changed.

Mission Korea Congress’s Choi experiences both worry and welcome when thinking about the future of missions. He also finds that the Korean Christian conceptualization of missions is healthier and more balanced now.

The dimensions of what missions entails are expanding, he says, where everything in life—education, government, creation care, social justice—is part of a believer’s missional identity.

“Revival is dependent on God’s time,” said Choi. “Our responsibility is to keep the fire holy and pure.”

Kim, the missionary in Japan, stressed the importance of living for God in the prime of one’s life.

“The young adult years are a time of great strength, energy, and possibility, and I think it’s the best time to think about what to do with your life and to discover your purpose, meaning, and values,” she said. “Whether we spend that time living according to the flow of the world or giving ourselves fully to the work of the Lord will shape the rest of our lives.”

Lee, the member care coordinator, also believes that young Christians might be missing out on opportunities to encounter God’s transformative love if they only stick to short-term mission trips.

“When you live [in another country] for a long time, I think you can see better how much God is really passionate about missions, and how God really cares for these people,” she said.

“Through those decades [as a missionary], I learned so much about his love.”

- More from Isabel Ong

Share

From the Philippines to the whole world

Abuses against OFWs

Reaching Kuwait’s domestic workers

Ministry to OFWs vs. locals

Pope: OFWs are “smugglers of faith”

Share

Related

Share

Heidi Linton, executive director of Christian Friends of Korea (CFK)

Jamie Kim, CEO of Reah International

Kim Sungeun, founder and president of Caleb Mission

An anonymous humanitarian worker (name withheld for security)

Ben Torrey, director of the Fourth River Project

Share

Related

Share

Share

Related

Share

A key cultural moment

Constraining sin

An uncomfortable question

Peace and trust

Share

Related

Share

Share

Related

Share

Share

Related

Share

Share

Related

Share

Share

Related

Share

Kingdom of Jesus Christ (KOJC)

Iglesia Ni Cristo (INC)

Members Church of God International (MCGI), better known as Ang Dating Daan (ADD)

Philippine Benevolent Missionaries Association (PBMA)

Share

Related

Share

A prophetic push

Going gray

Creating change

A favorable future

Share

Related