I am writing a lot of other pieces right now, starting a family blog (www.allabouttheverhages.blogspot.com) and enjoying summer with our one year old! I’ll be back online at this site this fall, hopefully with a refreshed layout as well.

This article is by Dr. Soong-Chan Rah, a former urban pastor and current professor at my alma mater, North Park Theologial Seminary. This article was first posted on the God’s Politics blog, and points out how the future of the evangelical church IS growing, but that it may be post-white, post-American in its fruitfulness. Read his prophetic reflection: 

Last month, in an issue of Newsweek, Jon Meacham describes what he perceives to be “The End of Christian America.”  Meacham asserts that “Christians are now making up a declining percentage of the American population,” leading to the “end of a Christian America.”  In the opening paragraph of the Newsweek article, Al Mohler, president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, laments what he perceives to be a disturbing trend. “As Mohler saw it, the historic foundation of America’s religious culture was cracking.”  Mohler is particularly disturbed by the decline of Christianity in New England, as he states: “to lose New England struck me as momentous.”

As many lament the decline of Christianity in the United States in the early stages of the 21st century, very few have recognized that American Christianity may actually be growing, but in unexpected and surprising ways.  Let’s take for example the Northeastern city of Boston in a region of the country that Mohler believes we have “lost.”  In 1970, the city of Boston was home to about 200 churches.  Thirty years later, there were 412 churches.  The net gain in the number of churches was in the growth of the number of churches in the ethnic and immigrant communities.  While only a handful of churches in 1970 held services in a language other than English, thirty years later, more than half of those churches held services in a language other than English.

Between 2001 and 2006, 98 new churches were planted in the city of Boston.[1] In a city the size of Boston, 98 new church plants in a six year time periods is not spiritual death, it is spiritual life and vitality. Of the 98 churches planted during that six year time period, “76 of them reported the language of worship.  Of those 76 churches, almost half of them … [have] non-English or bi-lingual [services], 19 worship in Spanish, 8 in Haitian Creole, and 9 in Portuguese.”[2] The perception nationally was that Boston was spiritually dead because there was noticeable decline among the white Christian community.  In contrast, there has been significant growth among non-white Christians and churches.

When I was a pastor in Boston, I consistently heard the lament over the decline of Christianity in the city of Boston.  However, the Boston I knew was filled with vibrant and exciting churches.  New churches were being planted throughout the city.  Christian programs and ministries were booming in the city.  Boston is alive with spiritual revival, particularly among the ethnic minority communities.  But very few seem to recognize this reality, even as this trend begins to appear nationally.

As sociologist R. Stephen Warner points out, “What many people have not heard … and need to hear is that the great majority of the newcomers are Christians. … This means that the new immigrants represent not the de-Christianization of American society but the de-Europeanization of American Christianity.”[3] Contrary to popular opinion, the church is not dying in America; it is alive and well, but it is alive and well among the immigrant and ethnic minority communities and not among the majority white churches in the United States.  As we enter into a new era for American Christianity, we may indeed identify this era as a post-Western, post-white American Christianity.  But we may also assert that this development may actually be the salvation of American Christianity rather than the decline and demise of American Christianity.

Instead of the collapse of evangelicalism, we are actually seeing the revival of American Christianity in a vastly different form.  Evangelicalism has been consistently portrayed in the media as a group of white, upper-middle class, suburban, Republicans.  Is it any wonder that the black church will oftentimes refuse this designation?  Or that other ethnic minority Christians feel marginalized from the very community that shares their basic values and beliefs?

But now there is a new era for Christianity in America.  A Next Evangelicalism — an evangelicalism that crosses across racial and ethnic lines with a shared value system rather than a political agenda.  Evangelicalism is not dead, it is being redefined by a new constituency – hopefully for the better.

Soong-Chan Rah is the author of The Next Evangelicalism: Freeing the Church from Western Cultural Captivity and the Milton B. Engebretson Associate Professor of Church Growth and Evangelism at North Park Theological Seminary.  www.ProfRah.com

Eva Margaret at One Year Old

The age that Eva is right now (thirteen months), has been truly delightful for us as parents so far!  Her unique personality is constantly developing, as well as her little funny quirks and her ability to interact with us. Of course, in the journey toward expressing herself more fully, we have experienced a few mini-tantrums and her throwing back her head - so not all delightful, I suppose. But this age has been really fun so far, and I’ve felt like each day she’s been learning and developing, and has been excited about the world in a new way.  Here are a few of my favorite things at this stage:    

I love that Eva…

• crosses her ankles over each when she’s sitting down

• hugs her lamby and her teddy each morning in her crib, and wants us to hug each animal too

• sings along with music in a sing-songy voice

• does a butt/hip dance when sitting down or standing up, whenever she hears music playing  

• turns up her nose and mouth and breathes hard, now that she’s learned it is funny when she does it

• giggles and laughs at us and with us; we can start a giggle fest just by laughing hard with her!  

• gives us sloppy, wet (and slightly open-mouthed) kisses, especially in the morning  

- eats almost all the same food we do now, including Indian-spiced (marsala) chicken!     

• drinks milk out of a cup, and often turns it totally upside-down over her mouth, throwing her head back and swallowing  

• says “momma,” “dada,” “pup” (for puppies), and most recently, “hi!”

• waves adamantly for saying “bye-bye,” and sometimes to say “hi” - but always waves with her hands toward her own face (she often waves with both hands simultaneously) 

• loves to sit in her room on the floor and “read” books to herself, complete with gingerly turning the pages and making her voice rise and fall

• whispers sweet nothings to herself while she is playing (mostly under the dining room table or as she is talking to her animals and dolls by the chair in her bedroom) 

• walks with her chair in front of her (like a walker) and pushes it up and down the hallway while chattering

• likes playing the piano, and listening to momma play it 

• pulls up her foot to touch the page when we read the “F” alphabet book that ends with a picture of a foot

• likes pulling covers over her head to play peek-a-boo; and she giggles while under the covers, anticipating how funny the reveal will be! 

• points to things that she wants, often making up a sound for it (like “os” or “whoo” or “ba”), and (usually!) hands over things to momma when asked to

• takes out all her toys, or all the bags in mom’s drawer, or all the supplies in her baby bath basket, and then looks up at me and smiles  

• still makes her “birdie face” - going “ooo” with her mouth, pursing her lips and looking wide-eyed

• flails all four limbs, often clapping her feet together, when she gets excited - especially when we see other kids out on walks in her stroller    

• has a little curl of hair forming around her right ear, and has more fluffy hair curls growing on the back of her head

• illicits complete strangers coming over to us when we are out and about to tell me how beautiful her blue eyes are (I know!)

Lyrics from my latest favorite song, “How It Matters,” by Sara Groves:

Sit with me and tell me once again Of the story that’s been told me of the power that will hold us and the beauty, oh the beauty, why it matters

Speak with me until I understand
why our thinking and creating and our efforts at narrating about the beauty, oh the beauty, why it matters

(CHORUS) Like a statue in the park of this war-torn town And its protest of the darkness And this chaos all around With its beauty, how it matters how it matters

(cello interlude)

Show me a love that never fails some compassion and attention meets confusion and dissension like small ramparts for the soul how it matters

like a single cup of water how it matters

This prayer is from a sermon podcast by Rob Bell that a good friend sent along to me. In the midst of my own waiting for spring, for warmth, for answers, for what our next steps in our life will look like, this prayer echoes my heart’s cry today:

“God we ask for new possibilities. We come to you today and we bring our despair, our disillusionment, the weariness in our bones and we ask for new life. We ask for new wind, new energy. God, for those of us who find ourselves mired in routine and the everyday order of events and it feels like it’s just draining us - we ask for new possibilities. We ask that our thinking would be challenged, our boxes would be smashed, and that the ways we’ve limited things and drawn boundaries where there aren’t any - that we would be confronted in that. We ask for resurrection. We bring before you relationships that are strained, difficult, tense. We bring economic realities, debt, unemployment, bills… we drag this all in and set it down on the ground in front of us. We ask for hope, for new possibilities for a new day.”