Lebanon Evangelicals Serve Shiites Displaced by Hezbollah-Israel War

Jayson Casper

Despite safety risks and strained resources, churches work hard to help Muslims unaccustomed to experiencing Christian love.

Shiite women and their children who fled south Lebanon for shelter in Beirut.

Marwan Naamani / AP Images

On September 23, Mustafa put his family of five on a small motorbike and drove seven hours north from Tyre to a village in the Lebanese mountains, weaving slowly through lines of gridlocked vehicles. Some in those cars—like his brother Hussein’s family of six—would not arrive for another two days.

The path normally takes two hours.

Mustafa, and thousands like him, were frantically fleeing Israeli bombs aimed at Hezbollah, the Shiite militia designated by the US government as a terrorist organization. Until that moment, he and his brother had been agricultural workers in a farm outside the city, living in a spartan two-bedroom apartment provided by his employers.

CT agreed to withhold his family name for security reasons. Mustafa is a Christian originally from Afrin, a Kurdish area in northwest Syria. Asked if he shared his brother’s faith, Hussein said, “Not yet.”

Their home nation does not recognize converts from Islam. And while Lebanon is the only Arab nation to grant freedom of conversion, Tyre is a socially conservative Shiite city under the political sway of Hezbollah.

This was Mustafa’s second displacement. In 2013, he and his brother fled the Syrian civil war. But over the past five years, as poverty rates tripled in Lebanon, the nominal Sunni Muslims found support from a local Christian ministry offering aid.

Eighteen months ago, Mustafa professed faith in Christ.

“I follow Jesus,” he said. “He saved me.”

When Israel began its ground invasion of Lebanon, it issued evacuation orders to both Muslim and Christian villages in the south. But the large majority of the displaced come from Shiite areas suspected of housing weapons depots and underground tunnels—where resident Shiites may or may not align with Hezbollah’s Islamist ideology.

According to a survey conducted in early 2024, while 78 percent of Shiites viewed positively the militia’s role in regional affairs, only 39 percent said they felt closest to Hezbollah among Lebanon’s political parties, compared to 37 percent of Shiites who felt closest to none.

Only 6 percent of Christians had “a lot of trust” in the Shiite militia.

Within these realities, Christians are eager—and cautious—to help. Gospel commitments and national solidarity require hospitality. Sectarian guardedness encourages suspicion. And Israel’s bombing campaign creates fear that welcoming the displaced might make them a target.

Many are helping anyway.

Mustafa and Hussein found shelter in living quarters offered by an evangelical church in the mixed Muslim-Christian village where they sought refuge. A plastic rug covered half of the cement floor in their private allotment, with thin mattresses pressed up against the walls. Blankets and pillows strewn about were evidence of their children’s fitful night of sleep.

“This is our message: to show love in action as we lead people to Christ,” the church’s pastor said. (CT is granting him anonymity due to the uncertain political situation in Lebanon.) “As they receive, we teach them to give.”

His congregation currently hosts about 100 people, displaced from their homes in the south and in Lebanon’s Bekaa Valley. More than half are from neighboring Syria; the rest are primarily Lebanese Shiites. The pastor said 60 percent of the total are believers in Jesus. Others, like Hussein, are their relatives or Muslims already closely connected to churches in their original area.

They all pitched in to prepare 500 tuna sandwiches for local distribution.

Not Just Talk

Hezbollah’s current conflict with Israel began last year on October 8, one day after Hamas invaded from Gaza and killed approximately 1,200 Israelis, taking 250 hostages. The Lebanese militia initiated what it called a “support front” for Hamas, launching missiles that caused 80,000 Israelis to flee from villages near the border.

A similar number of Lebanese also fled from Israel’s retaliation, and for 11 months the two sides had kept their missile exchange relatively contained, aiming to avoid a larger and perhaps regional conflict with Iran, which backs both Hamas and Hezbollah as proxy forces.

That status quo held despite the deaths of 12 Druze children, hit by a Hezbollah missile in the Golan Heights, and Israel’s increased targeting of militia leaders inside Lebanon, Syria, and Iran. US-led negotiations to de-escalate or stop the fighting failed to overcome Hezbollah’s insistence on a simultaneous ceasefire in Gaza. And on September 17, Israel included the return of northern citizens to their homes as an official war goal.

Hours later, an attack of exploding pagers, and, the next day, of walkie-talkies—widely suspected to be conducted by Israel despite its official denial—killed tens and wounded thousands of militia members and affiliated medical personnel in Lebanon and Syria. Six days later, the bombing campaign began. Israeli officials reportedly stated their policy was “de-escalation through escalation.”

Lebanon estimates that the fighting has displaced 1.2 million of its 6 million residents. More than 950 public schools, warehouses, and other facilities now serve as shelters. Ninety percent of the displaced, nearly half of whom are children, are unable to meet their basic needs.

The above-mentioned mountain village pastor secured permission from the Muslim-led municipality to provide aid alongside several other relief groups in coordination with a local ministry run by a church elder.

One local assistance coordinator, a member of the heterodox Druze Muslim community, said “the church is number one” in providing help, while some other groups “say they are helping but are mostly just talk.”

But with classrooms throughout the country filled with families seeking refuge, he laments that his three children have nowhere to go for school.

The last Israeli-Hezbollah conflict, in 2006, sent 900,000 people from their homes. Then, churches and citizens of all sects rallied to help, but today, the resources are far fewer.

Many are reluctant to rent their apartments to displaced Shiites, afraid the refuge seekers cannot—or will not—continue to pay. Hyperinflation and a 98 percent currency devaluation had many Lebanese already scurrying simply to provide for themselves. Political gridlock has kept the nation without a president for two years, while the prime minister works in a caretaker capacity.

Who to Blame?

Many people blame Hezbollah.

“I am against Shiites in politics, but in humanity we can’t refuse to help them,” said the Druze assistance coordinator. “We suffered from Syria; we suffered from Iran. Maybe we are waiting for America to help.”

American and French diplomats attempted to broker a three-week ceasefire in Lebanon, and the Lebanese foreign minister stated that Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah had agreed. Days later, an Israeli airstrike using bunker-buster bombs leveled four residential apartment buildings and killed Nasrallah in his underground quarters. US officials denied knowledge of Nasrallah’s approval.

Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu reportedly agreed to ceasefire negotiations, then backtracked. Israel stated its war is against Hezbollah, not Lebanon. Netanyahu, addressing the Lebanese, referenced the campaign against Hamas.

“You have an opportunity to save Lebanon before it falls into the abyss of a long war that will lead to destruction and suffering like we see in Gaza,” he stated. “Free your country from Hezbollah so that this war can end.”

Lebanon has long officially supported implementation of UN resolution 1701, adopted to end the 2006 war. It calls for the disarmament of all militias and the withdrawal of Hezbollah beyond the Litani River, about 18 miles north of the Israeli border. But Lebanon’s 2008 effort to dismantle the militia’s private communication network failed after Hezbollah’s armed show of force in Beirut.

The United States is reportedly pushing now for Lebanese politicians to elect a president, who, under an unwritten but 80-year-old agreement, must be a Maronite Christian. Members of the Lebanese parliament, divided equally between Muslims and Christians, elect the head of state.

But Christians are divided into two main political parties and other smaller ones, some of which ally with Hezbollah as a political entity to win support from the Shiite electorate. Prior to the Israeli escalation, leading Shiite politicians repeatedly blocked completion of the voting process for the Christian president, insisting on a candidate sympathetic to Hezbollah’s cause.

But the two primary Christian party heads are understood to nurture presidential ambitions and have failed to work together consistently to represent their community.

“I blame Christian leaders—they work for their own interests, not the interests of our country,” the mountain village pastor said. “If you give the space to others, you can’t blame them when they take it.”

In 2000, Hezbollah won widespread social favor, even from many Christians, by compelling Israel to end its 18-year occupation of southern Lebanon, originally intended to impose a buffer zone against incursions of Palestinian militants. Since then, the militia squandered Sunni Muslim support by entering the civil war in Syria on behalf of Bashar al-Assad, publicly confirmed in 2013. Ordinary Christians joined many in disenchantment when Hezbollah sided with sectarian leaders against the 2019 popular revolution, ushering in the past five years of economic decline.

The militia’s support for Hamas prompted “We Don’t Want War” posters throughout Beirut.

Offering Christian Love

“We are angry. Without any consultation with the government, Hezbollah dragged Lebanon to war,” said Joseph Kassab, president of the Supreme Council of the Evangelical Community in Syria and Lebanon, who said no lasting peace can come through violence. “Many Christians feel that Israel has no restrictions in war, and the militia was wrong to provoke its enemy.”

The winds of change are blowing, however, said Jihad Haddad, pastor of True Vine Church in Zahle, a Christian town in the Bekaa Valley, as he modified a Chinese proverb: Some build walls to resist the wind; windmills would better serve ministry. Since Christians have no political voice in the current conflict, he is directing his efforts to support the displaced.

The relief center at the church already distributed 2,000 food parcels a month before the current escalation, with much grown on its own farmland. To care for the many now sheltering in schools, the church has adapted the parcels so they provide nutrition without requiring cooking. The displaced also face a shortage of blankets, but the church has already emptied its warehouse.

Haddad sees a revival on the horizon, but it is not easy. Lebanon, he said, is stuck between the “hammer” of Israel and the “anvil” of Hezbollah. Missiles have hit one mile from his home and, in the other direction, one mile from the church.

Perceptions of Gaza create poignant fear.

“We are very cautious about welcoming families we don’t know,” Haddad said. “Where Israel finds militants, they bomb them.”

The people of Zahle, he said, carefully check Shiites for affiliation with Hezbollah. True Vine has provided shelter in church apartments for 17 families connected to the congregation, as believers and others seek out what they hope is safety in a Christian location. But Haddad also fears that if the church were to become overwhelmed by housing all those seeking refuge, it could not provide services to everyone.

Church-based help across denominations has made a strong impression.

“If there had been no Christians in Lebanon, we would have been devoured,” stated Mohamed al-Hajj Hassan, a Shiite sheikh known for his opposition to Hezbollah, in a widely shared video clip of his television interview. “They are the ones who protected us and helped those who roam the streets. They are the ones who took in our women and children.”

Christians could have sided with Israel, he said. Shiites must now “reexamine our conscience and think about whether we may have wronged our partners in the country.”

Thimar / Edits by CT

Volunteers supported by Thimar prepare meals for the displaced

Such appreciation, however, does not make it any easier for evangelicals to open the doors of their institutions, said Nabil Costa, head of the Association of Evangelical Schools in Lebanon. Its 35 schools serve 20,000 students, a mix of Christians and Muslims. Lebanon’s government compelled a Seventh-day Adventist school in a Shiite neighborhood in downtown Beirut to provide shelter for the displaced.

Costa said evangelicals will be willing to open their schools once the government decides all private school facilities are needed to help. This can include discussion of how to cooperate with the education ministry to provide supplementary instruction for public school children forced from their classrooms.

The war has displaced 40 percent of Lebanon’s 1.25 million students.

Costa also heads Thimar, the local Baptist social service organization overseeing Beirut Baptist School (BBS), which negotiated with the government to transform its campus into a distribution center for the displaced. Located three miles north of the densely populated Dahiyeh area of Beirut, where Nasrallah was killed, the school’s vicinity is not currently threatened by Israeli airstrikes. But amid the ferocious echo of regular bombing, BBS assists seven nearby public and private institutions that host the displaced, providing 700 daily meals. Additional aid is provided to mountain churches.

“We have no right to reject refugees,” Costa said. But he cautioned the government, “Do not take advantage of our Christian love.”

Open Our Hearts

Some, even among the displaced themselves, are offering it freely.

On Monday, September 23, Laya Yamout woke at 6:30 a.m. to the sound of Israeli airstrikes. A registered nurse serving with Horizons International, she also volunteers at Tyre Church, founded by her now-deceased father 14 years ago as a church plant in the Shiite city. She had already curtailed her local movements as precision drone strikes targeted Hezbollah militants riding their motorbikes. Best not to be caught behind one, she said, in case they miss.

But this attack felt different. Four hours later, Yamout was visiting an elderly patient with dementia when another blast hit nearby. She rushed home, packed her bags, and drove 55 miles north to Beirut with her dog by her side. The 50 people in her congregation—nearly all Muslim-background believers in Jesus—eventually found their way to scattered locations, sheltering in schools, churches, or with family members. One returned to Iraq.

Yamout stayed with a friend in a Christian neighborhood of the capital.

“Honestly, it is safer,” she said. “I don’t want to have to flee again.”

The next morning, Yamout rose to volunteer at a clinic connected with a large Kurdish church in Beirut. On Wednesday, she went back to Tyre with two others, hoping to volunteer with the Red Cross.

After taking seven hours to reach Beirut two days earlier, it took little more than an hour to return home amid the “apocalyptic” scenes of stalled-out cars abandoned on the side of the road and a half-dozen smoldering buildings to the right and the left.

Almost immediately, she turned around. Tyre resembled a ghost town, with no water, electricity, or cell phone reception. The streets were emptied of nearly everyone but Hezbollah militants, but she was not intrinsically afraid of the environment.

Her father was jailed twice for his evangelism, and church property repeatedly vandalized. But over the years, Yamout said, Tyre Church won the begrudging respect of its community, and the road it is on became popularly known as “Church Street.”

Yet it was not safe to remain. Two believers slept on the beach in fear that their apartments would be hit. Yamout filled a 15-passenger van to return to the capital with the church families that were unable to find earlier transportation to safety.

On Thursday, she was back serving a clinic in a Christian town 50 miles north of Beirut that has received many people displaced from the Bekaa Valley. Each day on average she treated 150 people.

“Now is the time to open our hearts,” Yamout said. “We may never get this chance again.”

Lebanon has Christian content on the airwaves and churches throughout the country, but many Lebanese villages of all sects self-isolate from other communities. Ordinary southern Shiites who know few Christians now find themselves sheltering in Christian areas. They are deeply traumatized, Yamout said, but they light up with a smile when she tells them she is also from Tyre and takes time to listen to their stories.

At each school, Yamout works with the local church to follow up with any who show openness to the gospel. She advocates caution when extending hospitality since some militia members are likely to slip in. But while most are now fighting the Israeli ground invasion on the border, believers might show love to militants’ wives and children. Alongside them are thousands of Lebanese Shiites, unrelated to Hezbollah, who are meeting Christians for the first time.

Meanwhile, at the mountain village church where Mustafa, Hussein, and other “not yet” Christians shelter, they and their families eat around long plastic tables set up in the church parking lot. Mustafa hopes to return to Tyre but not to his hometown in Syria—it is too dangerous there. Despite the uncertainties of an indefinitely temporary residence, he is at peace in Lebanon.

“We don’t know what to do next,” he said. “Only God does, and we trust him.”

- More from Jayson Casper

Ideas

Bring the Evangel, Leave the ‘Ism’

Janel Breitenstein

The harvest of spiritual seekers today is aplenty, but the mentality of the workers is outdated.

Illustration by Mallory Rentsch Tlapek / Source Images: Unsplash

If you grew up in the modern evangelical world, you’re familiar with old-school evangelism methods: walking along a beach, clutching brochures in sweaty hands. Memorizing the Romans Road and cinching knots in beaded, wordless bracelets, we stood ready to deliver our formulaic gospel presentations. And to be clear, methods like these have wrought beautiful eternal ends over the years.

Yet I wonder if our approach to evangelism is evolving as rapidly as the changing culture we hope to love. In 2022, an Evangelism Explosion study released by Lifeway Research reported that 35% of respondents would feel less open to continuing a faith conversation that employed pamphlets, brochures, or phone apps.

We may not see as many Christians handing out tracts today, but there are many modern-day equivalents—impersonal faith-sharing strategies that can leave the hearer with the impression You don’t even see me. Perhaps now via an app, a platitude offered on a social media post, an apologetics argument removed from the soul-questions of the asker—we may inadvertently communicate that the gospel is a one-size-fits-all, plug-and-play solution rather than the Good News of a God who levels his gaze, offers his presence, and engages us directly with our individual stories and needs.

This disconnect also discourages many believers from even wanting to share their faith. Curiously, the same Lifeway study referenced above found that while the majority of Americans are open to faith conversations, most of their Christian friends “rarely talk about their faith.” Likewise, a 2019 Barna report found that while 73% of millennials feel equipped to share their faith, close to half (47%) aren’t sure they even agree with the ethics of evangelism.

Perhaps the reason we feel so uncomfortable sharing the gospel is that our mentality lacks integrity and authenticity and often sees people as projects. But what if we reframed our understanding of evangelism, such that even the most disenchanted could fall in love with sharing their faith?

First, we know much reluctance toward Christianity these days is due to the image problem of the church. Close to one in five non-Christians claim hesitancy toward Christianity due to overpoliticization, and nearly half (42%) of those with no faith report resistance due to the hypocrisy of religious people—unsurprising given the abuse crisis among Christian leaders. Surveys and studies consistently show American Christians are perceived as self-righteous and judgmental or simply inauthentic, unsafe, and irrelevant.

In Evangelism in a Skeptical World, Sam Chan writes, “When our non-Christian friends think of Christianity, they don’t think of good news, salvation, forgiveness, restoration, justice, mercy, or love. Instead, they think of hate, fear, power, and violence.” They see Christians as hating and treating gay people contemptuously, as worse sinners than the ones guilty of any other sinful lifestyle, like those listed in Prov. 6:16–19 or 1 Cor. 6:9–10. In short, for non-Christians who prize the ethics of equality, rights, and justice, Chan reasons, Christians are seen as oppressors rather than friends of the oppressed.

This perception is particularly problematic with Gen Z. Instead of viewing religion as a set of truth claims to be dismissed on its own terms, the next generation is characteristically one of “ethical absolutism, [where] some discard and denounce any religious outlook that seems to produce unpopular ethical conclusions,” observes Benjamin Vincent in a previous CT piece.

Consider, too, the possible need to approach Gen Z and Alpha as we would do for honor/shame cultures of the Majority World. Many young people today are geared toward saving face or, perhaps via cancel culture, “finding ways of shaming people who are considered a threat to their social group,” explains one youth pastor. Rather than revealing Jesus as the antidote to a personal guilt they don’t feel—how might they respond to him as a communal shame-lifter?

In an article entitled “How to Share Jesus so He’s Actually Good News,” Asian American Tony Wee writes of how the guilt-innocence gospel framing failed to reach him growing up in a collectivist family. Even in his youth, Wee cared far more about the shame or honor of his community than about his own individual guilt. And like Wee, most of my own teenagers and their friends hardly seem concerned by personal guilt. But shame? Shame, they understand.

Wee encourages us to consider how the gospel offers radical solutions to a new set of burning questions: “How can we present the good news for their unique longings—to the point they might genuinely find it beautiful (Romans 10:14-15)?” For instance, youth pastor Sean Dotson proposes tracing shame for this generation throughout the Bible and exposing how “Jesus conquers shame through his death and His resurrection,” serving as the scapegoat for the shame of all humanity.

Rest assured, the burning questions and longings are there. As a missionary and mother of teenagers, I see so many of my kids’ peers feeling their way toward God (Acts 17:27)—like the many Gen Zers among the 50,000 people who flocked to the Asbury outpouring. One article [with research on a spirituality-focused app for younger generations] that “most Gen Z (77%) consider themselves spiritual … and over half (51%) of millennials report feeling deep spirituality at least weekly.”

A wider understanding of all God saves us from isn’t just advantageous for non-Christians. In The 3D Gospel: Ministry in Guilt, Shame, and Fear Cultures, Jayson Georges observes that “a one-dimensional gospel […] threatens the veracity and integrity of the Bible. We misread Scripture and construct a sub-biblical view of God. If God does not save us from shame and fear … we severely minimize his glory.”

When we seek to grasp all dimensions of the gospel and its saving power, we put ourselves in a position to know God more deeply and make him known more effectively. To that end, we might ask ourselves what questions the gospel has answered for us and healed in our own hearts.

How have we beheld different facets of God in various seasons of our own lives? Can we truly proclaim that “which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked at and our hands have touched … concerning the Word of life” (1 John 1:1)? Does our experience of Jesus and his healing demonstrate “the power of God that brings salvation” (Rom. 1:16)?

As Ruth Haley Barton describes in Life Together in Christ, effective evangelism acts as “an invitation to spiritual transformation offered by someone who can bear witness to that transformation in their own life.” Or to paraphrase Spurgeon, we are beggars telling other beggars where we found bread; humility is an irreplaceable ingredient. But before we can rightly offer this sustenance to others, we must first examine how we have personally tasted and seen (Ps. 34:8) Jesus as our Bread of Life (John 6:35)—not just when we were first saved, but for fresh manna day after day.

With that kind of authenticity and self-awareness, initiating conversations about Jesus becomes as natural as it is inescapable. Let what pastor Trevin Wax observes of his believing friend be said of us: “it would have been impossible for us to form a lasting friendship without talking about Christ. His Christianity was so central to his identity that it could not go unnoticed or unmentioned.”

I am always ready to talk about Jesus—whether on the beach, in line at the grocery store, or in the comments of a social media post. I still strike up conversations with people who sit next to me on flights and share testimonies of all that God’s done in my life. Sensitivity to social situations and awareness of others’ needs doesn’t dampen our courage, our urgency, or the frequency with which we share about the love of Jesus. It simply prevents us from doubling as an annoying gong (1 Cor. 13:1).

It’s also easier for us to lean into this authenticity (rather than forcing a “gospel” conversation ill-suited to the moment) when we remember that salvation belongs to God alone (Rev. 7:10) and only the Holy Spirit can truly change a human heart. God’s preferred method of reaching people is through the body of Christ as his ambassadors of reconciliation (2 Cor. 5:19–20), but his process is ultimately a long-suffering, journeying one. As Paul said, “I planted the seed, Apollos watered it, but God gave the growth” (1 Cor. 3:6).

Which means, in our approach to evangelism, we must hold in tension both eager exigency and peaceful patience. When I served as a missionary in a Muslim context, I learned about the Engel scale’s fifteen stages of someone’s posture toward Christ—spanning from the time when someone has no awareness of God to the moment they feel comfortable sharing their faith with others. I knew I might never move someone from 1 to 15. But guiding someone from a 3 to a 6? That was cause for gratitude.

Being present, opening ourselves to empathy, and embarking on the often painstaking yet vital process of establishing trust must critically precede any method or strategy. We must prepare ourselves for the long haul of receiving someone’s searing pain or unshakable questions if we are to avoid bypassing the suffering of others, not unlike the priest and the Levite who walked past the man bleeding by the wayside.

Drawing near to those who seem far off empowers us to respond to their church hurt with compassion rather than defense (2 Tim. 2:24). We learn the invaluable skill of active listening (James 1:19), so we know when to pose thoughtful, tell-me-more questions and when to share our own stories (1 Pet. 3:15).

The late Steve Douglass, former president of Cru, once remarked from stage at a missions conference I attended in 2003, “The gospel flows best through the holes in people’s lives.” Each of those holes are specific to the person: No doctor would perform CPR as an antidote to a broken femur. And when we take the time to listen each person’s story and pinpoint their pain, we can offer words of life that bind and heal their unique wounds.

For this reason, Galatians exhorts us to “carry each other’s burdens, and in this way you will fulfill the law of Christ” (6:2). The former action satisfies the latter command in ways that are messy, self-sacrificial, unique to every person—and decidedly unformulaic. This is, after all, how God bears our burdens.

God descending to dwell with us now and forever—to the point of carrying our sorrows (Isa. 7:14; 53:4)—underscores the steep prerequisite of modeling this all-in love as people first encounter Jesus. Evangelism extends its plea from a high priest who keenly sympathizes with weakness (Heb. 4:15). Christ alone is the unique balm for both my crippling pains and theirs, where God himself shoulders all our suffocating burdens and responds to our overwhelming questions.

Even in his ministry, Jesus responded to vastly differing needs with responses that were equally diverse. Jesus repeatedly addressed his listeners with dignity, engaging their needs with unconditional love—often long before he ever asked them to follow him. As John Marriott reminds us, Christ met each person wherever they were, with kindness that led them to repentance (Rom. 2:4). “Think of the woman at the well,” Marriott writes. “Zacchaeus. The woman caught in adultery. All had rejected him with their lifestyles. But Jesus pursued them, loved them, and kept the conversation going.”

The high calling and standard set by Jesus’ unconditional love does not change, whether its message is accepted or not. Even after Adam and Eve’s rejection of God, courtesy of their sin, he kept leaning in. And in a culture where Christians are viewed as either pretentious or suspicious—and impersonal evangelistic agendas can be sniffed out a mile away—our desire to share the good news about Jesus must be modeled after his example. That is, any compulsion to talk about our faith must proceed from a deep conviction of our own testimony and an even deeper regard for the recipient.

So don’t throw away that impromptu chat on the beach about the hope you have! But just as the Great Commandment precedes the Great Commission in every Gospel, we first love our neighbor, so we evangelize—not the other way around. And in both directives, our obedience to Christ is as urgent as ever.

Janel Breitenstein is the author of Permanent Markers: Spiritual Life Skills to Write on Your Kids’ Hearts and a missionary with Engineering Ministries International, with which she served in Uganda for five years.

- More from Janel Breitenstein

News

SBC Pastor Admits Creating Fake Document to Deceive FBI

Daniel Silliman

Former Southwestern Seminary professor Matt Queen faces possible five years in prison for his part in cover-up.

Youtube screen grab

Southern Baptist pastor Matt Queen pleaded guilty Wednesday to the federal crime of making a false statement to the FBI. He created a fake document and gave it to agents as evidence, allegedly in an effort to help Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary (SWBTS) cover up its failure to report a student accused of sexual assault, according to court documents.

Queen got caught in his lie and admitted it to federal prosecutors in June 2023. On Wednesday, he pleaded guilty to one felony charge after the US government agreed to drop an additional charge of obstruction of justice.

“He made a false statement. He has great remorse for doing so,” Queen’s attorney, Sam Schmidt, told The Tennessean. “He regrets it and wish[es] that never happened.”

Queen, who had taught evangelism at the seminary and currently serves as a minister at a church in Greensboro, North Carolina, faces a maximum possible sentence of five years in prison but is expected to be sentenced to several months. If he had been found guilty in a trial, the judge could have sent him to prison for as long as 20 years.

The North Carolina pastor is the first—and so far only—Southern Baptist to face criminal charges in a federal investigation of the convention’s handling of sexual abuse allegations.

The US Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York has been looking into the nation’s largest Protestant denomination since 2022. The probe was prompted by a report commissed by the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) that found Executive Committee staff, who are responsible for the denomination’s day-to-day operations, refused to do anything about allegations of sexual abuse. Executive Committee presidents had a secret list of more than 700 abusive pastors but flatly rejected calls for reform and maligned abuse survivors and advocates calling for change.

SBC lawyers turned internal discussions about abuse into discussions around legal liability, according to the report, until protecting the institution from lawsuits became the highest priority—higher than protecting people from sexual predators in pulpits and Sunday school classrooms across the country.

The Executive Committee announced in March the federal investigation concluded without any charges but later clarified the broader investigation was still ongoing.

Queen was indicted on federal charges two months later. The author of Everyday Evangelism worked at SWBTS for 14 years and served, for a period, as interim provost.

“The FBI will never tolerate those who intentionally lie and mislead our investigation in an attempt to conceal their malicious behavior,” FBI assistant director in charge James Smith said at the time.

According to the indictment, Queen “knowingly altered, destroyed, mutilated, concealed, covered up, falsified, and made a false entry into a record, document, and tangible object with the intent to impede, obstruct, and influence” a federal investigation.

Prosecutors sent a subpoena to the Fort Worth, Texas, seminary in October 2022, demanding any and all documents “related to allegations of sexual abuse against anyone employed by or associated with” SWBTS. The following month, an employee later identified as dean of women Terri Stovall was told that a current student had committed sexual assault.

Nothing happened to the student for three months, until a local police force received a report and made an arrest.

In January 2023, Stovall wrote up a document detailing the allegations against the student, the actions she had taken in response, and the seminary’s failure to report the student to police. According to the federal government, Stovall’s report became evidence in the investigation as soon as she created it and was subject to the subpoena.

The next day, however, she was told to destroy it by an employee later identified by SWBTS as seminary chief of staff Heath Woolman. According to federal prosecutors, Woolman ordered Stovall to make her report “go away.”

Queen was at that meeting, according to the indictment, in his capacity as interim provost. But when FBI agents asked him about Woolman’s instructions to destroy evidence, he said he had not heard that.

Queen then wrote about the meeting in a notebook—leaving out the part about destroying evidence—and gave it to the FBI, according to the indictment. He told the investigators it was a contemporaneous account of the meeting and supported his account of events. His notes said the administrators had discussed giving Stovall’s report to another department but noted nothing about destroying evidence or covering anything up.

Queen had actually written it five months later, according to prosecutors, manufacturing evidence to back up his story and strengthen the lie.

In June 2023, Queen confessed under oath that he had in fact heard the seminary chief of staff tell the dean of women to make her report “go away.” He acknowledged the notes were falsified.

Federal prosecutors have not filed any other charges in the case. They also have not indicated whether the investigation is ongoing. Federal officials usually do not speak about investigations before bringing charges.

Woolman, who allegedly ordered evidence destroyed, left SWBTS and now ministers at a church in Florida. He has not spoken publicly about the allegations. The head of campus police has also left the seminary.

SWBTS president David Dockery praised Stovall for refusing to cooperate with a cover-up.

“This episode is a matter of deep regret to me,” he said in a statement earlier this year. “I am, however, grateful that several employees in whom I placed great trust acted responsibly, especially Terri Stovall. I commend the service and integrity of these employees.”

On Wednesday, the school reiterated its commitment to complete cooperation with authorities.

Queen’s sentencing is scheduled for February.

Correction: A previous version of this article misstated the year that Matt Queen said under oath that he had made a false statement to the FBI. He confessed in 2023.

- More from Daniel Silliman

Theology

The ‘Least of These’ and the Quest for a Post-Christian Conscience

Russell Moore

Editor in Chief

Human suffering should not cause us to categorize our neighbor but to be one.

Illustration by Christianity Today / Source Images: Unsplash

This piece was adapted from Russell Moore’s newsletter. Subscribe here.

Every few years, someone makes the point that, “actually,” the “least of these” passage from the Gospel of Matthew doesn’t really have anything to do with how we treat the poor or the stranger or the hungry.

The “brothers” to which Jesus refers, the argument goes, are the messengers he sent out—meaning that the way one responds to the bearers of Jesus’ word signifies the way one responds to him. It’s not about the poor, the argument goes, but about mistreated fellow Christians.

A friend told me last week that some social media controversy dusted up for a bit over just this question. He needn’t tell me who posted it, because it doesn’t matter in this ephemeral medium—the players always change and the game remains the same.

Anybody who’s ever been a youth pastor knows that there’s a certain kind of question—like “How far is too far?” or “Actually, Jesus wasn’t talking about the kind of sex I want to have”—that’s less about “just asking questions” of the text than about doing what one wants to do.

The text in question here, of course, is a familiar one to those who’ve been in the orbit of the Bible for any time at all. After a series of parables about the kingdom of God, Jesus portrays for his disciples a haunting description of Judgment Day, in which the nations are gathered before Christ the shepherd, who divides the sheep of the redeemed from the goats of the damned.

To both groups, Jesus notes that he had been among them—as hungry, thirsty, naked, imprisoned, a stranger. The sheep, Jesus said, had fed him, given him water and clothing, welcomed him in, visited him in his distress. The goats, Jesus said, had ignored him. Both groups are shocked and ask, “When did we do this?” Jesus responds, “Truly, I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these my brothers, you did it to me” (Matt. 25:40, ESV throughout).

Even those who believe that “brothers” refers to those whom Jesus sent out with the gospel are quick to say that the point of his teaching is hardly “Which vulnerable people can we safely ignore?” As a matter of fact, under any reading of Jesus’ words, the application is the exact opposite, and it’s hard to imagine how Jesus could have worded it to make the point any stronger.

Suppose, for a moment, that the “brothers” here are, in fact, those whom Jesus sent out. The scene is of the gathering of all the nations—very few of whom would have encountered this relatively small group of people. As a matter of fact, all of those originally sent out are now dead. Are the nations of people outside that small circle now exempt? Of course not.

More to the point, the entire teaching centers on the surprise of both groups—sheep and goats—as to when, in fact, they ever encountered Jesus. The sheep do not respond, “Yes, we know. That’s why we did it. We had the chart telling us which strangers to welcome and which to ignore.” The goats could not have said, “If we’d known they were with you, we, of course, would have given them some porridge!”

The question is about conformity to Jesus himself. This is the one charged, repeatedly, with eating and drinking with those outside the approved definition of “brothers” (Matt. 9:9–13; Luke 19:1–10; John 4:5–26). This is the Jesus who told us that the “friend/enemy” distinction—love those who are “with” you, and hate those who aren’t—is contrary to the kingdom he is announcing. “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy,’” he said. “But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you” (Matt. 5:43–44).

The question raised by these sorts of “actually” arguments, about parsing out who fits in the “least of these” and who does not, is not a new one. It is, quite literally, the question Jesus answered from a lawyer seeking to parse out how he was within the bounds of “love God and love your neighbor” with the question, “Who is my neighbor?” (Luke 10:29). One can almost hear the equivocating “Actually, neighbor in the context of the Torah refers to those within the household of Israel, so …”

Jesus deconstructs all of that with a story, choosing the most hated possible example of negative identity politics—a Samaritan—to make the point that the question is not about figuring out how to categorize “neighbor” but about how to be a neighbor, by showing mercy and compassion (vv. 36–37).

The entire canon makes the case that our response to the poor does indeed tell us something about our response to God. “Whoever is generous to the poor lends to the Lord, and he will repay him for his deed,” and “whoever closes his ear to the cry of the poor will himself call out and not be answered,” the Bible says (Prov. 19:17; 21:13).

The Psalms repeatedly argue that the fatherless, the widows, the strangers, those deemed too powerless to matter, have a God who knows and hears them and who will plead their case (Ps. 68:5). The prophets make the point that the ill treatment of the vulnerable—the poor, orphans, widows—makes worship noxious in the presence of God (Isa.1:14–17).

Jesus’ own brother, James of Jerusalem, likewise argues that landowners robbing their workers of wages is an offense to God because “the cries of the harvesters have reached the ears of the Lord of hosts” (James 5:4).

Why else have Christians—from the first century—cared for unwanted children and opposed abortion and infanticide? Our treatment of the vulnerable reveals what we think about God, for the vulnerable are made in his image too. The idea that some people are disposable because of their lack of value by the world’s categories of power and wisdom is directly opposed to Christ and the meaning of the Cross. An assault on human dignity is an assault on the image of God (James 3:9).

And the image of God is no abstraction. The exact image of the radiance of God has a name: Jesus of Nazareth (Col. 1:15; Heb. 1:3). As we do to those who bear that image—even the “least” of them—we have done unto him.

Does that resolve all of our prudential arguments about how best to care for the poor when it comes to governmental systems and policies? Of course not. It does not answer every question about how best for you, personally, to address the needs of those around you. It does mean, however, that when you confront the need of a vulnerable person in need of help, your response is not to ask for their papers. Those who welcome strangers have, at times, entertained angels unaware, the Bible tells us (Heb. 13:2). And the key word there is unaware.

If one is embarrassed by the miracles or morality of Jesus, one can always demythologize him with all the fervor of a 19th-century German scholar. If one is embarrassed by the compassion or empathy of Jesus, one can demythologize him there too, with all the frenzy of a 20th-century German soldier. None of that will change, not one iota, that Jesus is ultimately seated on the throne. Before him, “Has God really said?” is a terrible question to ask. So is “Who is my neighbor?”

And when confronted with the suffering of human beings around you, making the point that those who are suffering are less than the “least of these” is no argument at all.

Russell Moore is the editor in chief at Christianity Today and leads its Public Theology Project.

Ideas

Pastors and Public Servants: Lead Your Neighbor as Yourself

Claude Alexander

Lessons from the prophet Ezekiel during exile on guiding our people through times of crisis.

Illustration by Elizabeth Kaye / Source Images: Getty

As a pastor, I’ve found one of the main difficulties in leading faithfully and living as good neighbors is that we can’t always choose our neighbors or the context and circumstances in which we lead and live. And in a time of tense divisiveness, global conflicts, natural disasters, and other complex crises, this sense of helplessness is nearly universal.

We have all experienced the reality of a world beyond our control—not least during the COVID-19 pandemic, when life changed for all of us. Many of us were shuttering in place and scrambling to find masks, sanitizers, and so forth, grappling with a staggering amount of uncertainty about what we could and could not do. For me personally, the pandemic was a crucible for my leadership, and one I find instructive for ministry to this day.

As a multigenerational, multisite African American congregation in Charlotte, North Carolina—one of the earliest cities to issue stay-in-place mandates—we faced multiple challenges and points of tension during the initial years of the pandemic. Our staff wrestled with the same questions many Christians did as we sought to balance our individual and congregational freedom with community responsibility.

How do we honor the value of embodied, collective public worship while simultaneously protecting our congregation, especially those most vulnerable with comorbidities? How do I negotiate concerns about the budget and potential loss of income considering my responsibility to protect the livelihood of my staff and their families? How does a congregation of our size and influence set a good example in how we operate during a public health emergency, including in our rhetoric?

Above all, I believe the pandemic—as any major crisis facing our community can—created a unique opportunity for us to demonstrate our confidence in God when every aspect of life as we know it seems threatened and compromised. And as I’ve reflected on this truth since then, I’ve gleaned insights from the life and ministry of Ezekiel about what it means to lead faithfully and live as good neighbors in a world beyond our control.

In the first verse of the book, the 30-year-old prophet Ezekiel identifies himself as being among the Israelite exiles by the Kebar River in the land of Babylon for seven days, “deeply distressed” (1:1; 3:14–15).

The first step for us as leaders guiding our people through times of turmoil is to absorb the reality in which we find ourselves. Rather than being in denial, withdrawing from the world, or detaching from our emotions, we are called to stay present in moments of crisis and experience life alongside those we lead. Ezekiel himself was among the people of Israel who were being exiled, and he remained in their midst.

This kind of presence cultivates the necessary empathy to know where our people are and what they need. Part of leadership in general and pastoral leadership in particular is the work of giving language to whatever our churches are facing and feeling. Leaders must name the tension in those they lead, just as Ezekiel named the emotion of the exiles, who were “deeply distressed.” Identifying a traumatic event and the feelings it causes can help people come to terms with their reality—which in turn helps them understand and transcend it.

One way our staff tried to absorb the reality of the pandemic was by reading surveys provided by Gloo, which helped us identify trends and gave us snapshots of how people were doing in real time. We tried to name the disruption, dislocation, displacement, and disappointment people were facing, along with their losses, grief, frustration, and fear.

In the book’s opening, Ezekiel also described the experience of receiving a vision of God (1:4–28). It is here that we get the next aspect of leadership during crises, which is reframing—that is, placing people’s experience and feelings within a larger framework.

Providing your people with the bigger picture often involves seeing and showing how God is at work in any given situation. Ezekiel’s vision of God’s glory did not take him away from where he was but happened while he was seated among his fellow exiles. This vision broadened his frame of reference and showed him God was at work in their midst. Likewise, it is crucial for faith leaders to identify God’s presence in situations that are out of our control.

With the pandemic, reframing moved me from asking why it happened to seeing how God was at work. It prompted our church to look for God sightings in the lives of our fellow congregants, in our neighborhoods, and in our own families. Some might call this attunement—the practice of attuning ourselves to the personal presence of God. Reframing can move a person from a posture of frustration or blame into one of curiosity and empowered expectation.

The next aspect of biblical leadership is discerning purpose.In the book’s second chapter, Ezekiel received God’s call to be a prophet. Having absorbed his people’s reality, identified their tension, and seen God at work in their midst, he learned of God’s purpose. Part of living faithfully is discerning the purpose to which we are called. How is God calling us to live, and what is God calling us to do? Whom has he placed near us, and how can we serve them?

In the case of our church not being able to meet during the pandemic, we found ways to volunteer in our community and distribute food to people in need. We chose to see our virtual worship as honoring our city and assisting our health-care system by avoiding super-spreading events. And while our gathering function was removed from the equation, we leaned heavily into our serving function.

This leads to another aspect of leadership in crisis, which is embracing opportunity. While there were restrictions during the pandemic, there were also a host of opportunities. Seeing them required a liberated imagination, intensified curiosity, and out-of-the-box creativity. It necessitated us letting go of how things used to be and embracing what might be—asking questions like “What could we do and what would it look like if … ?” and “Where might we meet people if … ?”

In the process, we came up with an idea to help our unhoused neighbors by developing a mobile unit that provides showers, washers, and dryers—named M25:40 after the famous passage Matthew 25:40 (“Whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me”). We also developed our virtual presence and resources, which broke down barriers in terms of who we could reach, where we could interact with them, and how we could reach and engage them. As a result, our numbers did not shrink after the pandemic but grew.

The next aspect is clinging to hope. What we initially thought would last two weeks or even couple months ended up persisting for far longer than we anticipated. In the meantime, our church suffered tragic and unexpected losses. The length of displacement—when our services stayed online only—tempted many in our congregation to despair. Those who grew fatigued with virtual services began attending churches that opened earlier, producing another point of tension.

The encouragement of Psalm 27:13–14 comes to mind: “I remain confident of this: I will see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living. Wait for the Lord; be strong and take heart and wait for the Lord.”

The final aspect is encouraging our people to look toward the future. In the case of the pandemic, after having gone completely virtual for so long, we could not assume our congregation’s attending habits would immediately return to what they were before the pandemic. That change caused us to ask how our future might look.

With some people remaining virtual, some showing up primarily in person, and others opting for hybrid attendance, did we really need to keep our three campuses? After praying about whether having three campuses was the highest and best use of our resources, we discerned that it wasn’t and eventually sold one of our buildings to another ministry.

We continued gathering Sunday mornings at the main campus location, and we are redeveloping our second campus into a 30-acre hybrid site with residential, office, retail, hotel, and conference spaces. We also opened an affordable senior living project and are in the process of developing another 30 acres to build a combination of market-rate homes and independent living. All these ventures meet critical needs in our community.

While many see the pandemic as a net loss, the decisions our church made in that time allowed us to pursue other opportunities which ultimately redefined our vision for the future. As a people of faith, we are called to be forward-thinking. Whatever the present may bring, there is a future reality which we can anticipate and pursue. Chasing that future assumes a degree of risk and ambiguity, which calls for faith, discernment, and courage.

Bishop Claude R. Alexander Jr. is the lead pastor of The Park Church in Charlotte, North Carolina, and author of Becoming the Church and Necessary Christianity. He also serves on the board of Christianity Today.

Learn more about Evangelicals in a Diverse Democracy.

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Ideas

Mind the Power Gap in Missions

Josh Irby

Western missionaries can make good partners if they avoid trampling on their majority world friends.

Illustration by Elizabeth Kaye / Source Images: Getty, Unsplash

In the past 50 years, the center of Christianity has shifted from the West to the Majority World. As Zambian mission leader Lazarus Phiri told me during a recent interview, “Those who were once a mission field are now looking like a mission force.”

Yet all too often, well-meaning mission partners in the West operate as if this shift has not occurred. The reason, in part, is that the centers of power (including money, education, institution, passport privileges, etc.) remains in the West.

This power gap in mission partnerships between Western and Majority World members, if it is not acknowledged, can result in wasted resources, discouraged missionaries, decreased engagement, and broken relationships.

Author and missiologist Miriam Adeney relates a story she once heard from an African Christian leader:

Elephant and Mouse were best friends. One day Elephant said, “Mouse, let’s have a party!” Animals gathered from far and near. They ate, and drank, and sang, and danced. And nobody celebrated more exuberantly than Elephant.

After it was over, Elephant exclaimed, “Mouse, did you ever go to a better party? What a blast!” But Mouse didn’t answer. “Where are you?” Elephant called. Then he shrank back in horror. There at his feet lay the Mouse, his body ground into the dirt—smashed by the exuberance of his friend, Elephant.

“Sometimes that is what it is like to do mission with you Americans,” the African storyteller concluded. “It’s like dancing with an elephant.”

When I first read this story, it felt like a gut punch. I mentally scrolled through my 25 years of cross-cultural mission engagement and wondered if anyone would say this of me. Have I been an elephant? In my exuberance for the mission, have I ever crushed my friends and partners?

Of course, no one enters global missions with a plan to stomp on their partners. But if you speak with missions leaders from around the world, as my colleagues and I have in researching for the Mission Shift podcast, you will discover many unwitting elephants dancing across mission fields.

Considering the power differential in missions, how can we Westerners work with others in a way that lifts our partners rather than grinding them into the dirt?

First, we need to recognize the power of money. Mary Lederleitner, author of Cross-Cultural Partnerships: Navigating the Complexities of Money and Mission, writes of the distorting power of wealth, “The person coming from the more affluent or developed country assumes he or she knows what is best.” She adds, “It is very counterintuitive to learn from people that have less wealth and less education than you.” But a failure to do so can lead to a sense of superiority that, when played out in partnership, becomes a patriarchal relationship.

As Layo Leiva, who has developed partnerships between Latin America and the United States through his regional role with Cru, said succinctly in an interview for our podcast, “The role of money is the role of power—who has the money has the power.” This is not to say that money should not be involved in missions. The sharing of resources within the body of Christ is central to gospel transformation. But we need to recognize the challenges to partnership it creates.

We also need to recognize the power of choice. Brian Virtue, who researched hundreds of cross-cultural partnerships for his PhD work, describes a scenario he saw multiple times:

People [on the lower side of the power difference] were granted access to the initial conversations, but when it came time for the decision-making and the implementation, they were no longer part of the process. It’s almost like they heard, “We’re going to go to the adult’s table and talk about it. And we’ll get back to you.”

Who is at the adult table in a partnership? If the table is populated exclusively by those from the West, or with the highest degrees, or with the biggest budgets, then your partnership is probably affected by power disparities.

There are many more powers in a mission partnership we need to recognize: education, nationality, organizational size, language, and history, to name a few. If we have eyes to see them, then we have a chance to use them for the benefit of the mission. You have money? Great! Invest it in God’s mission. You have education? Great! Use it to uplift your brothers and sisters. “Having gifts that differ according to the grace given to us, let us use them” (Rom. 12:6, ESV throughout).

But also, if we recognize the effect power has on partnerships, we can heed Paul’s warning: “I say to everyone among you not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think, but to think with sober judgment” (v. 3). Elephant could have done so much good with his size if only he had recognized the potential dangers it presented.

Once we recognize the presence of power, we need to learn to walk softly in our partnerships. Slavko Hadžić, an evangelist in Bosnia and Herzegovina and associate regional director with Langham Preaching, advises, “If you come for the first time to a country or region, don’t come with an agenda. Come to observe. Don’t rush with promises. Wait, learn, be open to hear. Let the Lord lead the steps.”

Part of walking softly is recognizing that God is already at work on every continent and in every corner of the earth. What if we entered every cross-cultural situation looking for the signs of God’s work rather than a place to plant our flag or insert our own agendas? Too often we use the urgency of the mission as an excuse for injuring our partners in the mission. To walk softly, we must walk slowly.

Milan Michalko, a local pastor in the Czech Republic, also encourages a slow pace. “Partnership without relationship? I have no time for that,” he says. Relationships take time to build. Michalko has a theory as to why this is often hard for American organizations: “Because they have money, they have no time.” The abundance of money demands an abundance of quick results, but healthy partnerships demand more than a 30-minute lunch and a shared Google spreadsheet. “If you want a quality partner, that’s time consuming. You have to be here. You have to invest time. You have to build trust,” Michalko says. To walk softly, we must walk in relationship.

Forrest Inslee, coauthor of the book Re-Imagining Short-Term Missions, shared of a moment in Haiti when a team learned how to walk more softly in partnership. On the island of Haiti, the history of colonialism and inequality have embedded the idea that, because of their superior resources, the West always knows best. The actions of Western teams have only confirmed this conclusion.

Once, when a team was participating in some community performances, the American visitors took center stage, as if they were compensating for a program that was deficient or incomplete. But this time, the Haitian leaders spoke up. “Would you please stand in the back of the room instead of on stage?” they asked.

By speaking up, these leaders risked offending their guests and jeopardizing the flow of resources from their American partners. And some were offended. But the majority learned from the challenge. They stood in the back. Over time, the partnership grew in mutuality, trust, and health. To walk softly, we must sometimes stand in the back.

Leiva shares one nonintuitive way of walking slowly. In mission partnerships, the higher-power partner often shares the products of their system (money, books, programs) but rarely lets the lower-power partner behind the curtain to see how the products are made.

Money is sent, but no one shares how to raise money. Books are translated, but no one shares how to write a book. One partner maintains control, and the other becomes dependent.

Layo now asks his partners to not only send the product but also “transfer the technology” that produced it. This way, instead of creating endless dependency, we contribute our strength to grow our partners’ strength. As we walk softly, our power lifts our partners rather than crushing them.

When we recognize our power and learn to walk slowly, we have an opportunity to make the most important discovery in partnerships. The principle is found in another story of a mouse, this one from Aesop:

A Lion lay asleep in the forest, his great head resting on his paws. A timid little Mouse came upon him unexpectedly, and in her fright and haste to get away, ran across the Lion’s nose. Roused from his nap, the Lion laid his huge paw angrily on the tiny creature to kill her.

“Spare me!” begged the poor Mouse. “Please let me go and some day I will surely repay you.”

The Lion was much amused to think that a Mouse could ever help him. But he was generous and finally let the Mouse go.

Some days later, while stalking his prey in the forest, the Lion was caught in the toils of a hunter’s net. Unable to free himself, he filled the forest with his angry roaring. The Mouse knew the voice and quickly found the Lion struggling in the net. Running to one of the great ropes that bound him, she gnawed it until it parted, and soon the Lion was free.

“You laughed when I said I would repay you,” said the Mouse. “Now you see that even a Mouse can help a Lion.”

Too often, we in the West define power by the ways we are powerful: money, education, passport privileges, and other resources. Like the Lion, we laugh at the idea of being helped by a Mouse. But other powers are at play than those that can be measured: cross-cultural flexibility and understanding, dependence on God, willingness to suffer, and missional ingenuity.

Every follower of Christ—even the one who appears small—is powerful. Every believer is filled with the Spirit. Every believer is a part of the body with a crucial role to play. Every believer is formed by God for his mission. And as Paul reminds us, those who seem the weakest are indispensable (1 Cor. 12:22–27).

Even lions and elephants have needs. In fact, sometimes our strengths are the sources of our needs. Because of our abundant resources, we can be slow to pray. Because of our efficient systems, we can be slow to improvise. Because of our set plans, we can often miss what God is doing in the margins. More than ever, the West needs the many strengths of the Majority World.

Even Jesus, whom Lederleitner calls “the ultimate high-power partner,” positioned himself to rely on the strengths of others. He made himself nothing, taking the form of a man. He walked softly among us. He invited the disciples “behind the curtain” of his life and shared everything with them. He entrusted them with the mission.

The Lion of Judah did not laugh at the contribution of common men and women from the villages of Galilee. He called them friends and gave them the keys of his kingdom. Likewise, our Lord has commissioned and empowered us with his Spirit. And whenever we follow his example, our mission partnerships will give us all a reason to truly celebrate.

Josh Irby is Cru City Global’s partnership director for Europe and a cohost of the Mission Shift podcast. He is a former missionary and coauthor of Cross on a Hill: A Personal, Historical, and Biblical Search for the True Meaning of a Controversial Symbol.

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News

Died: Bill Pannell, Black Evangelical Who Raised the Issue of Racism

Daniel Silliman

He wanted white believers to reckon with “cultural captivity,” but saw them become “more and more American and less and less Christian.”

Courtesy of InterVarsity Press / Edits by Christianity Today

Bill Pannell, a Black evangelical who pushed white evangelicals to recognize their captivity to the culture of American racism, died on October 11 at age 95.

The evangelist and seminary professor argued that the Good News is all about reconciliation—between God and humanity, but also horizontally, between people—and Christians are called to the ministry of reconciliation. But white Christians who claimed the name evangel, he said, could only seem to muster occasional interest in racism, even though it was the most acute division in American society, the area in the greatest need of reconciliation.

And then they mostly asked Black people to do the reconciling.

“It’s like inviting someone to comment on the quality of the dinner when you haven’t [invited them] to the table,” Pannell said in the 2024 documentary The Gospel According to Bill Pannell. “Most of the evangelical movement could only go so far. They could only go so far.”

Pannell wrote about his experience of racism in My Friend, The Enemy, published in 1968. He described how pervasive assumptions of white supremacy impacted him and his sense of dignity and worth, growing up. He found his dignity restored by the gospel, but then discovered, to his dismay, that the people who preached it to him were not interested in addressing the social problems caused by that sort of sin.

Twenty-five years later, he wrote about racism again. Watching the city of Los Angeles consumed by six days of riots following the acquittal of four police officers who severely beat a Black man named Rodney King, Pannell warned white evangelicals about the possibility of a coming race war. Americans could not afford to keep ignoring the problems caused by racism, he argued, and Christians are uniquely called to reconciliation.

The book was republished 28 years after that, in 2021, as four more officers in another city appeared in another court to face more charges of “unreasonable force” following the death of a Black man named George Floyd. Pannell couldn’t help but notice that while the names and dates had changed, the problem persisted. And white evangelicals still seemed captive to a culture deeply invested in ignoring the issue.

“Somehow or other in my lifetime,” Pannell said, “the evangelical movement became more and more American and less and less Christian.”

Pannell was born on June 25, 1929, to William and Olive Davison Pannell. He was the eldest of eight children and was raised as part of a tiny Black minority in Sturgis, Michigan. The census counted fewer than 200 Black people in Sturgis in 1930, which was less than half a percent of the population of St. Joseph County. Some of the Black people, like Pannell’s stepfather, Joseph Perkins, wouldn’t have lived there at all, but they had jobs just across the border in Indiana in towns where they weren’t allowed to stay after dark.

Pannell recalled later he never heard the word racism as a child, and yet the sense of it pervaded everything.

“I was aware that I was different and that the difference made a difference in a white world,” he said. “You belong and yet you don’t. You are embraced—but not really.”

Pannell excelled in sports and was a high-scoring shooting guard for the basketball team. And yet off the court, he was not accepted as an equal by his peers or their parents. He was not made to feel welcome.

The one significant exception was Eunice Randall. A pastor’s daughter, she invited Pannell to a party for young people at Sturgis Missionary Church. He went and found a community of people eager to embrace him. Pannell started attending the church, went forward during an altar call, and accepted Jesus as his Lord and Savior.

The church gave Pannell a Bible and told him to read it. He did—and discovered a sense of worth and dignity he’d never known before. He was peeling potatoes at a segregated country club and reading Ephesians 1:4–14 when it hit him.

“To think that God has chosen me before the foundations of the world—had his eye on me, chose me, picked me out, plucked me out of the tribe as it were, made me his own. If that’s true, whew! Lord have mercy,” Pannell later said. “I really am somebody, no matter what anybody else says.”

After high school, Pannell went to Fort Wayne Bible College with the encouragement and financial support of a Black housekeeper, or “domestic,” named Mildred Bedford. She had somehow saved $500 and gave it to him, he recalled in the 2024 documentary, telling him he needed to “strike while the iron’s hot.”

In Fort Wayne, he learned he needed to go out into “all the world” to preach the gospel, but received very little education about that world, Pannell later recalled.

“I didn’t know from beans,” he said.

Nevertheless, the young Black man became an evangelist, traveling around the country with white classmates to lead revivals and crusades, calling people to come forward, confess their sins, and accept Jesus. It gave Pannell another perspective on American racism. Christians across the country were happy to have him lead the singing as people got saved, he noticed, but they wouldn’t want him to live in their communities.

“A singing Negro has always been welcome,” he wrote in My Friend, The Enemy, “as long as he is a vagabond.”

Pannell said evangelicals in the north were not fighting to maintain segregation—but he noticed they wouldn’t speak out against it either. Their silence seemed to handcuff him to his suitcase, he wrote, making sure he never unpacked, never made himself at home.

Pannell decided he needed to learn more from Black Christians. At 25, he moved to Detroit to work under B. M. Nottage, a Plymouth Brethren minister from the Bahamas who evangelized in Black communities across the US. Nottage and his two older brothers started gospel halls and Brethren assemblies in New York, Chicago, Philadelphia, and Detroit. In the Detroit alone, they founded Gospel Chapel, Grace Gospel Chapel, Berean Bible Chapel, River Rouge Bible Chapel, the Open Door Rescue Mission, and Bethany Tabernacle, where Pannell joined Nottage as an associate pastor in 1954.

The young evangelist considered Nottage a mentor and a father figure. Pannell lived with him in a back room and in 1955 married his secretary, Hazel Scott, who was from Memphis.

After a decade, Pannell went back to working with white evangelicals. In 1964, he joined Youth For Christ, the evangelistic ministry that launched Billy Graham’s career.

He quickly found himself unsettled, however, by the way white evangelicals cared about Black people’s souls but not their civil rights, economic conditions, educational opportunities, or housing. When practical issues impacting the well being of Black people came up, Pannell said, the white evangelicals objected that they didn’t want to get distracted by politics. Other issues, however, did not seem like a distraction: prayer in schools, liberals on the Supreme Court, and communism around the globe.

Some problems seemed to merit social and political action, “but mention the inhumanity of a society which with unbelievable indifference imprisons ‘the souls of black folks,’” Pannell wrote, “and these crusaders begin mumbling about sin.” He tried to argue the impact of racism couldn’t just be waved away like that but was mostly unsuccessful.

Much of white evangelicalism seemed to be captured by the culture of the suburbs, Pannell said. As white people fled cities following desegregation, white evangelicals went with them. Born-again Christians came to identify so strongly with their white, middle-class, family-focused, conservative communities, Pannell said, that they found it impossible to understand or even consider the concerns of their minority brothers and sisters.

In the 1990s he pointed to Christianity Today as an example.

“It ought to be called Suburban Christianity Today,” he wrote in The Coming Race Wars. “Its board of directors comes from suburbia, as do most of its writers, most of its editors, and all of its management elite. Not surprisingly, this is reflected in the values espoused in the magazine.”

There were some white evangelicals, of course, who did want to address the problem of American racism. Pannell said they expressed hope for racial reconciliation and encouraged him and other Black evangelicals to work on the issue. But their focus would quickly wander, their interest fade. Few seemed committed to anything that would require change.

“Long after all the coffee was drunk and the little sandwiches eaten, the uneasy smiles were retracted and it became clear that reconciliation with most of these saints was still a ways off,” Pannell said. “In fact, it was a long ways off.”

He came to believe that, in the meantime, white evangelicals didn’t have the moral authority to evangelize Black people. Ignoring the reality of racism undermined their ability to proclaim the gospel.

“Don’t preach love to me. Especially if you intend I do all the loving,” Pannell wrote. “What right has the oppressor to demand that his victim be saved from sin? You may be scripturally and evangelistically correct, but you are ethically wrong. You have the right message, but your timing is off.”

Pannell wrote his book on racism, and it came out in 1968, the same year Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated and it seemed like hope for peaceful change vanished in America. Pannell left Youth For Christ and joined a group of Black evangelists led by Tom Skinner. Pannell thought he was done with white evangelicals.

A few years later, however, he was approached by David Allan Hubbard, the president of Fuller Theological Seminary, and asked to join the board of trustees. Pannell wasn’t interested. But Hubbard argued the evangelical school was not interested in affirmative action of symbolic representations of diversity. Fuller believed Black leadership was essential to its mission.

“Almost everybody needed one of us,” Pannell said. “He didn’t seem to be playing that game. He said, ‘We don’t think we can model the kingdom of God well monoculturally.’ Whoa!”

Pannell joined the board in 1971, becoming the first Black board member. He left the board to join the faculty in ’74, becoming the first Black professor. He ran an innovative program for the theological education of Black pastors, which later became the African American Church Studies Program and in 2015 was renamed the William E. Pannell Center for Black Church Studies.

Pannell spent the rest of his career teaching and mentoring Black ministers. He was, on occasion, drawn back to the task of challenging white evangelicals to take racism seriously but noted that despite “some paroxysms of curiosity” about the theology of racial reconciliation, little seemed to change.

And yet he continued to believe that white evangelicals could change.

“The evangelical movement could be born again,” Pannell said. “I would issue a call back to the cross, back to repentance, and I would ask that God would, somehow or other, save us from our cultural captivity.”

Pannell’s eldest son, Philip, died in 2015; his wife, Hazel, died in 2021. He is survived by his son Peter.

- More from Daniel Silliman

News

How Messianic Jews Are Serving Israelis Displaced by Hamas and Hezbollah

Heather M. Surls

In Israel’s only communal village of believers in Jesus, three women reflect on loving their neighbors—and their enemies—in the midst of war.

School principal Chani Kalni surveys damaged classrooms at Shalhavot Chabad elementary school in Gedera, Israel.

Leon Neal / Staff / Getty

As the sirens wailed on October 1, Nirit Bar-David took refuge in her familiar safe room. Iran had just launched another 180 missiles at Israel, and she had about a minute to take cover. So did the other 350 residents of Israel’s only Messianic Jewish moshav.

Sitting on a pine-covered ridge about ten miles west of Jerusalem, the Yad HaShmona community has lived in steady tension over the past year of war with Hamas in Gaza—now extended against Hezbollah in Lebanon. Thirty members of the community have served with the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) on both fronts, severely disrupting their families’ lives.

Yad HaShmona’s sirens did not sound on April 14, when Iran first launched drones and missiles at Israel, because the projectiles did not come within range of the village. But Bar-David, a financial manager who has lived at Yad HaShmona since she was seven years old, took cover in her bomb shelter anyway. Intelligence reports indicated that the unprecedented Iranian attack would arrive at night, so she decided to play it safe. She slept in the shelter attached to her home—an enclave with thick cement walls and a heavy metal door—and all the while, surrendering herself to God’s sovereign care.

“A bomb can ruin my whole house—not only this room,” she said. “I really believe that God is here and will protect me—and if not, it will be his decision, not a mistake.”

Since October 7, members of the moshav—a community resembling a kibbutz but with more individual autonomy—have had to make similar decisions over and over again: how to act quickly while trusting God.

At 6:30 a.m. that morning, Ayelet Ronen, chair of Yad HaShmona’s management committee, turned on the radio and heard the initial reports of a security breach on the border with Gaza. One of her sons, a member of IDF, wanted to ride her husband’s motorcycle south to help. Ronen and her husband convinced him to stay, but two hours later, he and around two dozen others from the community were officially called up to serve.

That was a Saturday, the morning after the moshav celebrated the end of Sukkot, the Jewish Festival of Booths. As a leader in the village, Ronen worked to soothe shock and panic in those who remained. While older men patrolled the village’s perimeter, she and the staff of the moshav’s Logos Hotel started to receive calls from Israelis fleeing the towns and kibbutzim near the Gaza Strip.

“By Tuesday we were fully booked,” Ronen recalled. “To all of them, we just said, ‘Come, we’ll figure out the funds later.’”

Yad HaShmona—which in Hebrew means “memory of the eight”—was founded in 1971 by a group of Finnish Christians who wanted to atone for the sins of their country in a tangible way; during World War II, Finland had surrendered to the Nazis eight Jews, seven of whom died in Auschwitz. Miraculously, Israel granted land to this group of Gentiles, who envisioned building up the Jewish state alongside Jewish believers in Jesus, known in Hebrew as Yeshua.

Fifty years later, Yad HaShmona is home to around 60 families. A member of the moshav must be a believer in Jesus, an Israeli citizen for at least 10 years, and willing to serve beyond his or her immediate family for the collective success of the village.

“Yad HaShmona has played an essential role in the formation of the Messianic community’s identity in Israel,” said Danny Kopp, general secretary of Evangelical Alliance Israel. Not only does the moshav host national gatherings for believers, he elaborated, but also it models communal life while remaining integrated with the broader society.

Within a week after Hamas’s attack on Israel, Yad HaShmona had welcomed around 200 evacuees—a fraction of the 200,000 Israelis displaced in the conflict’s early months. Since evacuees were housed in small hotel rooms without kitchens, the moshav’s management decided to convert a large hall into a common area for them. Between piles of donated clothes and toys, observant Jews gathered to pray. Sometimes men of the moshav would join them to make a minyan—the quorum of ten Jewish men needed for prayer.

“The religious people didn’t want to talk about [faith],” Ronen says, “but whenever we had an opportunity, we would tell them.”

Evacuees learned about the Christian organizations that helped pay for their room and board before Israeli government aid kicked in, a month and a half after the start of the conflict. And as they were able, moshav residents testified to their belief in Yeshua as Messiah.

Ronen recounted the story of an ultra-Orthodox woman who was driving to stay at Yad HaShmona when she received a phone call.

“Don’t go there,” her caller warned. “Those people are dangerous; they will change your faith.”

She immediately purposed to reverse her course. But Highway 1, a major road between Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, had no place for a U-Turn. She ended up at the moshav, and sometime during her stay, expressed her appreciation for the community’s welcoming members.

“You’re nothing like what people told me,” Ronen said the woman concluded.

Historically, Israel’s Messianic community has been maligned, especially by ultra-Orthodox Jews, who are estimated at 10 percent of Israel’s Jewish population. But with conservative estimates of 30,000 believers in Israel worshiping in at least 75 congregations, Ronen thinks secular Israelis increasingly consider Messianic Jews an acceptable stream of society.

When the first group of evacuees was able to return to their homes after a three-month stay at Yad HaShmona, the moshav received a new group of 25 families, who stayed in temporary housing until the end of August. And since Israel’s offensive in Lebanon began in late September, in response to near-daily rocket exchanges with Hezbollah, more than a dozen families from northern towns have taken refuge at Yad HaShmona.

Mona Pelled, a guide with the Messianic Jewish travel agency Sar-El Tours, has lived at Yad HaShmona since 2017. Last fall, she interacted with her displaced neighbors at a sandwich bar opened in the moshav parking lot by the Christian Broadcasting Network. When anyone asked questions about Jesus, she shared the gospel in ways appropriate to each person’s background.

“We need to respect everyone,” Pelled said, “and if they see Yeshua in you, they will discover the truth.”

Pelled’s friendships extend beyond her Jewish circles as well. For 12 years, she has regularly met with Arab Israeli Christian women for fellowship and prayer. Most of these women are pacifists, she said, and she wishes she could be one too. But her parents and grandparents were Libyan Jews sent to a work camp in Italy at the end of World War II. As a Jew living in a state facing hostile extremist groups, her instinct for self-protection runs high.

Hamas’s massacre was a mini-Holocaust, she said. Though Israel must maintain a strong military because of its many outspoken enemies, she lamented the isolation Jews feel now that international opinion has turned against them.

“People in the world do not understand that this is the only land we have,” Pelled said.

Ronen’s background also informs her position on politics; in 1948, her grandfather came to Palestine during the British Mandate with an Auschwitz ID tattooed on his arm. Within a month, he enlisted with the Haganah—the early Jewish paramilitary organization—to fight for Israel’s independence.

Since October 7, Ronen said the people of Yad HaShmona have spent many hours studying the Bible and considering the meaning, in light of their new reality, of the Messiah’s command to love one’s enemies—a complex discussion, she admits. Distinguishing between armed militants and Palestinian civilians who are suffering the consequences of war, her community agrees that Hamas is not the enemy Jesus meant for them to love.

Believers are called to love enemies in close proximity to them, Ronen said, individuals who spitefully use and hate them. Jesus commanded love and prayer for these because he knows it is human nature to despise people who wrong them. To these people, she said, Jesus’ followers are called to “turn to them the other cheek” (Matt. 5:39), to do good (Rom. 12:20), and to share God’s transforming message of salvation.

But as an evil organization that opposes God’s plan for the Jewish people in their covenant land, Ronen said, Hamas differs from these individual, personal enemies. Citing Psalm 83:1–4, she said that any group set on Israel’s annihilation is in fact an enemy of God. As such, war can be waged against these groups without transgressing Jesus’ command.

“You can actually fight an enemy—fight a just war—and not develop hatred in your heart for the individual person before you,” Ronen said.

In agreement, Pelled added that Jesus does not intend for believers to love the “demonic,” which is how she characterizes Hamas.

“If the enemy comes against you, you have to protect yourself,” Pelled said. “It doesn’t mean I don’t love them or that I don’t pray for them. We do pray for them … we pray for the Gazan people, for those that are innocent. We pray for the children. We pray for a future for them.”

Nirit Bar-David also mentioned wicked spiritual forces at work, calling Hamas’s animosity toward Israelis “the work of the devil.” But even in the face of attacks against her people, she said she turns to God and prays that everyone—including her nation’s enemies—will find salvation in Jesus. Their repentance is necessary, she said, to halt the evil Hamas perpetuates.

“We need this change,” Bar-David said. “And having this attitude which Hamas has toward Israel, I think it comes from a very deep, wrong place that really needs healing—if they would choose that.”

- More from Jayson Casper

Theology

My Friend, Bill Pannell

Edward Gilbreath

A reflection on the trailblazing Black theologian and his influence on American evangelicalism.

Photo courtesy of Fuller Seminary

I first met the late William Pannell in 1993 in a hallway of Christianity Today. I was in my early 20s, just a year removed from graduating college. Dr. Pannell was visiting his old friend, former CT president Paul Robbins, and the pair was on a leisurely tour around the office.

I remember being enthralled by this dashing Black man in a tailored suit, his throaty laugh echoing around the building. Excited to see a young Black editor on CT’s payroll, Pannell greeted me with that winsome smile that had launched a thousand provocative sermons.

We were both slightly taken aback to see another African American in an office that was then so thoroughly white. At the time, I was one of only two or three people of color employed by CT and the lone Black person on the editorial team. What I didn’t know then was that I was shaking hands with one of the people who had helped create the conditions for me to hold that very role.

Pannell was a trailblazer whose leadership at organizations such as Youth for Christ, Tom Skinner Associates, and Fuller Theological Seminary had unlocked doors for later generations of Black evangelicals to enter through. Long after that first meeting, he would tell me, “When we [pioneering Black leaders] were taking our lumps in the ’50s and ’60s at evangelical ministries, colleges, and publishers, we were imagining a future where leaders like you could be possible.”

Over the years, I had the privilege of interviewing Pannell for various articles, books, videos, and other projects, both public and personal. In each interaction, he was brilliant and exceedingly generous with his time. Although he was a walking embodiment of “speaking truth to power,” he always led with humor and humility.

I quickly learned that I was not alone in my fandom; he was a mentor to scores of women and men—pastors and preachers, scholars and activists, folks who had passed through his classrooms at Fuller, as well as scraggly strays like me whom he happened to find along the way. When I wrote my 2006 book, Reconciliation Blues, about being a Black evangelical in mostly white settings, I was taking cues from what he did in his groundbreaking 1968 tome, My Friend, The Enemy, a passionate corrective to a white evangelical community that he both loved and distrusted.

Pannell loved Jesus and his church. As a preacher, his heart beat for the gospel and its biblically rooted values of evangelism, discipleship, and justice. His teaching was grounded in a strikingly honest understanding of how Christianity and the church really operate in the world. He was frank about how they are often accessories to the sins of racism and social injustice rather than proponents of reconciliation.

A lack of real discipleship was at the core of our troubles, Pannell believed. “Christ’s parting command was that we go and make disciples of the nations,” he wrote in his last book, an expanded edition of his 1993 release, The Coming Race Wars? “It wasn’t build more churches; it was make disciples. It seems fairly clear today that we have far more churches and Christians than we have disciples.”

Before going into hospice care earlier this month, Pannell more or less worked until his 95-year-old frame could go no further. He preached via Zoom, finished a memoir, and conducted interviews for two documentaries, including one about his life and ministry. Throughout our three decades of acquaintance, he and I would periodically call or send a text to check in on one another. I never took the gift of his friendship for granted, but now that he’s gone, I’m appreciating those exchanges even more.

My final text from him came early Sunday, September 22. I had sent him a message the day before to congratulate him on The Gospel According to Bill Pannell, a documentary that had its premiere that weekend. “Beautiful film about an amazing man of God! That Bill Pannell is a remarkable fella,” I wrote.

His reply: “Thanks be to JESUS! And to his friends like you.”

Edward Gilbreath is the author of Reconciliation Blues and Birmingham Revolution.

- More from Edward Gilbreath

News

When the Elder Calls—From Outer Space

Emily Belz

Two sick church members in their 90s got a pastoral “visit” from a friend—an astronaut stuck on the International Space Station.

Astronauts Barry "Butch" Wilmore and Suni Williams were the first humans to fly a Boeing Starliner to the International Space Station.

Courtesy of NASA / Robert Markowitz

Billy Adkison, 91, spent his life farming in East Texas; he never wanted to go to outer space.

“I don’t want to be higher than pulling corn and lower than digging taters,” he told CT.

All the same, he has watched the skies from his yard to catch a glimpse of the International Space Station passing by—“like a big old star,” he said.

Adkison wanted to keep an eye on one of his church elders, astronaut Barry “Butch” Wilmore, whose weeklong trip to space has been extended to eight months.

Wilmore and his fellow astronaut Suni Williams left Earth in June as the first humans to ride a Boeing Starliner spacecraft, but the craft had helium leaks and thruster problems during the launch. NASA decided to return Starliner to Earth without its human passengers for safety, leaving the two astronauts for a much longer mission than they anticipated.

NASA recently launched a SpaceX Dragon capsule to the International Space Station with two empty seats. It will bring Wilmore and Williams home in February.

This is Wilmore’s third expedition to space. Adkison has tracked him in space on his iPad since that became possible, knowing where Wilmore was any time of the day or night.

What Adkison didn’t know was that Wilmore, who is one of his elders at Providence Baptist Church in Pasadena, Texas, was keeping an eye on him too.

While Wilmore was in space this summer, Adkison was admitted to the hospital with a serious heart problem. Wilmore heard the news from his wife, Deanna Wilmore, and called Adkison to check on him from the space station.

“It surprised me, but it made me feel very good,” said Adkison, who is now out of the hospital and back at his assisted living facility, although he has struggled with other ailments lately.

In the 17 years that Adkison has known him through church, Wilmore has never acted “high class” as an astronaut, he said. “He’d find people like us that were having trouble.” Adkison said. He’s not sure why, but Wilmore always calls him “Mr. Billy.”

Over the years, the Wilmores have visited Adkison regularly and made him birthday cakes. Adkison said Wilmore would drive him home from visits, knowing Adkison didn’t like to drive at night. When Adkison’s wife of 64 years died in 2020, Wilmore gave a sermon at her funeral.

“I plan on him doing mine,” Adkison said, but since Wilmore is stuck on the space station, “I’m going to have to hold off for a bit.”

That wasn’t the only pastoral call Wilmore made from space. Providence Baptist pastor Tommy Dahn’s mother-in-law, Suda Smith, lives with him and his wife. Smith turned 93 this summer, and Wilmore called her on her birthday. Wilmore called her again at the end of August. She is blind and had just gotten out of the hospital.

“Her countenance of course lifted, her eyes sparkled, and that’s all I can say,” said Dahn. “She was just thrilled.”

She tells everyone she meets, “I got a call on my birthday from space,”he said.

NASA astronauts have access to the internet to make calls when they’re off duty. Dahn said other than calling the older invalids, Wilmore mostly stays in touch with his wife.

“That’s the epitome of Barry’s personal ministry—he looks for those who are down and outers,” said Dahn. “He could not have loved my mother-in-law and Billy any more than a simple phone call. … It’s more almost than him coming to see them in one sense, when he’s here.”

Other NASA employees go to Providence Baptist, a church of about 250 attendees. Astronaut Tracy Dyson, who just returned from the space station on a Soyuz capsule after six months in outer space, is a member there.

Wilmore and his family have been at Providence for 17 years, Dahn said.

“He’s really put his life into the church. … For us as a church, we miss him,” added Dahn. “All the glory goes to God. He does not take the glory to himself.”

The church had considered cutting the livestream of its services since the pandemic ended because leadership didn’t want people to stay home instead of coming to church. But they decided to keep it for the people like Adkison who were homebound and couldn’t attend. And now Wilmore is streaming the services from space.

Dahn said NASA allowed the church to be linked into the space station at one point for Wilmore to do a devotional, and the congregation on Earth sang songs like “Amazing Grace” with the astronauts at the station.

When Wilmore was last on the space station in 2014, he sent Adkison’s wife a video of him praying for her from the station’s cupola. Adkison said he accidentally erased the video from the iPad at some point.

“I thought I would send Barry back up there to get another ,” Adkison quipped.

In a NASA press conference after the announcement that the astronauts would be stranded for additional months, Wilmore and Williams remained upbeat about their extended stay. Wilmore, 60, said the gravity-free environment would give him relief from his aches and pains.

Retired astronaut Terry Virts, who commanded the space station in 2014–2015, was stranded on the station in 2015 for an extra month after a cargo capsule blew up. He saw that as “bonus space time.” But he said an eight-month extension was a long trip.

“There’s been astronauts that got stuck or delayed—never as dramatically as the two Boeing astronauts,” he said in an interview with broadcaster Pablo Torre. He added that the families of stranded astronauts are the ones who bear the brunt of the extension, often with spouses having to care for children on their own.

On a personal level, Wilmore is missing the bulk of his youngest daughter’s senior year of high school. In his press conference from the space station, Wilmore said astronauts train for the unexpected.

“It’s a very risky business,” he said. A reporter asked him about his faith sustaining him, and he said he didn’t want to speak outside of his role as an astronaut but said anyone interested could look at 2 Corinthians 12:9–10.

Those verses say in part, “‘My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.’ … for Christ’s sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong.”

He added: “You’ve got to be resilient and go with whatever the good Lord gives.”

- More from Emily Belz

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