Showing posts with label FELLOWSHIP. Show all posts
Showing posts with label FELLOWSHIP. Show all posts

Thursday 24 September 2020

Historically Black college welcomes white pastor with passion for racial justice

When Chris Caldwell thinks about student housing and food services, his pondering goes deeper than the mere campus amenities that concern administrators at most colleges.

“We have many students who are insecure in terms of their housing, and we have significant problems with food insecurity,” said Caldwell, vice president for academic affairs at Simmons College of Kentucky. At Simmons, a historically Black institution in Louisville, it is not uncommon to hear of students sleeping in their cars, he noted. “We try to do everything we can to try to help with those situations.”

Some students are single parents, so the housing situation for them is even more complex. Since Simmons has limited college-owned housing, it looks to various community resources to aid students in their search for a decent place to live.

Like most schools, Simmons stresses the importance of class attendance. Yet its leaders know students can be present but too hungry to pay attention. “We work hard at feeding our students during the day so they can focus on class,” Caldwell said.

While not all Simmons’ students come from dire circumstances, most come from impoverished backgrounds they are seeking to transcend. This is a key part of Simmons’ mission, and its leaders believe Historically Black Colleges and Universities, like Simmons, are uniquely positioned to empower all segments of the African American community.


From a tall-steeple white church to Simmons

Caldwell, who is white, came to Simmons as a part-time professor in 2015 and moved to full-time status in 2017. He had been pastor of Louisville’s Broadway Baptist Church, a congregation situated in an affluent neighborhood eight miles across town from Simmons. He assumed his vice-presidential role in 2018.

An academic vocation was not a novel idea for Caldwell. As he finished his doctorate in New Testament at Baylor University in 1997, he was considering a career in either the classroom or the pastorate. An address by former President Jimmy Carter at Baylor helped him choose parish ministry. “He talked about his post-presidential period and how he had been guided by a pretty simple concept,” Caldwell said. “He went where he was needed.

“I thought about that and prayed about that and at that point, there were a hundred people lined up for every job in the academic world,” he recalled. He sensed he could make a larger contribution by serving moderate Baptist congregations that were “seeking to navigate the waters of those times.”

It was an era when many moderate congregations had either recently left or loosened their ties to the Southern Baptist Convention because of its far rightward shift. Caldwell has no regrets serving in congregational ministry and would “absolutely do it all over again.”


Racial justice observed as a child

However, when he decided to follow his calling to Simmons, it was a step in a long journey of interest in racial justice that began when he was a child in the 1970s. Growing up in a northern suburb of Nashville, he frequently heard racist epithets and lived on a street where a cross was burned on the lawn of an African American family. He did not forget the anguish he felt, and it helped spur him to engage in interracial work as a pastor.

His energies became more focused in 2015 when pastors from predominantly white East Louisville started meeting weekly with pastors from predominantly Black West Louisville. The group, known as Empower West, “put some wheels on the vehicle when it came to the passion I had,” he explained.

“It gave me an opportunity to learn a lot,” he continued. “I had given thought to a lot of those issues but basically from a white perspective.” He and other white pastors began reading books written by Black intellectuals and learning more about the structural injustices encountered by Black people, such as the wide wealth gap that separates white and Black Americans. They began sharing their knowledge with their church members and inviting them to greater interracial involvement.

Through Empower West, Caldwell learned more about Simmons College, an institution founded in 1879 by former slaves. While it eventually became a comprehensive university, it ran into financial difficulties during the Great Depression and sold its property to the University of Louisville. The campus became the home of Louisville Municipal College, the arm of the university that served Black students during the days of segregation. Simmons continued to hold classes on the campus but limited its course offerings to theological studies. After U of L integrated in the 1950s, Simmons moved to a new location and became known as Simmons Bible College.


Season of growth at Simmons

Kevin Cosby, senior pastor of St. Stephen Baptist Church in Louisville, was elected president of the school in 2005 and began to greatly expand the curriculum. Simmons now offers bachelor’s degrees in business entrepreneurship, cross-cultural communication, music, sociology, and religious studies. It also reacquired and moved to the property it had sold to U of L. Under Cosby’s leadership, Simmons gained accreditation by the Association of Biblical Higher Education and recognition from the U.S. Department of Education as the nation’s 107th Historically Black College and University.

Asked why HBCUs remain important, Caldwell said they provide students “ethnic armor,” a term he said Cosby often uses. “We pass along the skills for students to be successful and thrive in the dominant white culture, but we also pass along the intellectual and academic traditions of the African American community,” he said.

Simmons students live in a city where feelings of anger and alienation now permeate the African American population due in part to the fatal police shooting of Breonna Taylor, a 26-year-old Black woman, on March 13. For months, protesters have taken to the streets demanding the officers involved be charged.

The city’s housing patterns have helped inflame racial tensions, Caldwell said. “Louisville is a very segregated city. It is one of the most segregated cities in the United States, but it is not an outlier by any stretch.”

While much racial justice work needs to be done in Louisville a
nd elsewhere, Caldwell sees Simmons as an example of empowerment that can help society move toward racial equity.

Motivating students to be “agents of change” is a priority at Simmons, Caldwell said. “We are trying to help students make their life situations better, but also to remember they have a calling to reach back and bring others along.”

While some Simmons students are “academic rock stars,” most come to Simmons “woefully underprepared,” he said. Yet he emphasizes when a student demonstrates potential Simmons is determined to help them achieve. “We don’t lower the bar,” he said. “We show them where the bar is and help them get there.”

Colleges and universities typically gain prestige by touting the sterling academic credentials of the students they attract. Yet Caldwell measures academic quality by a different standard.

“The measure of excellence of a school is not what kind of students you attract but how far the student travels in four years under your tutelage,” he declared. “And by that measure, you can make a case that Simmons is the best college in the state.”

Thursday 17 September 2020

Church Cares for Pastor Family During Cancer Battle

Bless Your Pastor

Brian and Sandi felt called by God to pastoral ministry when they were both 45 years old. Brian left his leadership position with a national nonprofit and took a $70,000 pay cut to become a pastor.

Two years into accepting the call to become a pastor of a 250-person church, Sandi was diagnosed with terminal cancer and was told she would only live about another year. In addition to dealing with the tragic news and fighting cancer, they also were parents to three school-age children who were 9, 7, and 5 years old.

The cancer was taking its toll on Sandi and Brian in every way – physically, financially, and emotionally. Sandi went through surgery, radiation, and chemotherapy, which left her feeling fatigued on a regular basis. Additionally, more than $100,000 in medical bills were beginning to pile up. They were having a hard time making ends meet with the medical bills, five mouths to feed, and Brian’s income. But, they were not alone.

Church families and others voluntarily rallied around them to provide financial support and free meals. They paid all of their medical bills and provided so much food that it left their refrigerator and freezer overflowing.

While much appreciated, Brian and Sandi realized that the food preparation, clean up and returning dishes were sometimes creating more work, not less. What was the solution? Church families started providing gift cards to all of the local restaurants and fast food establishments. All that Brian and Sandi had to do was pick up the kids after their school activities and ask, “Where do you want to eat tonight?” No food prep, clean up, or dishes to return. 

Instead, they were able to spend quality time as a family eating hot meals together and feeling loved and cared for by their church families and friends.

And, that’s not all. Miraculously, it turned out that the doctors were wrong. Sandi didn’t live just one year she lived eight years before God called her to heaven. And, they had a year’s supply of restaurant gift cards after Sandi passed away. As a widower and new single dad, Brian could ensure that his three hungry children, who were now teenagers, were fed.

Many churches have limited budgets and are not able to compensate for their pastors, or church staff very well. But the Bless Your Pastor's movement is mobilizing Christians and churches everywhere to show and share God’s love for their pastors and church staff. 

What can you do to bless your pastor with your time, skills, and resources? The Bless Your Pastor's website has free video training and a toolkit of resources that will encourage and empower you, your church board, and families to care for your pastor and church staff.

Monday 3 August 2020

4 Useful Steps to Build a Strong Relationship With God



God says: “Establishing a good relationship with God is of the utmost importance to anyone who believes in God; everyone should regard it as a task of paramount importance and the biggest event in their life” (“How Is Your Relationship With God?”). We can see from God’s words that building a normal relationship with God in one’s faith in God is a truth of the utmost importance. If we wish to pursue God’s commendation and serve God’s will, only through building a normal relationship with God can these things be achieved. If we do not have a normal relationship with God, then we do not deserve to be called believers—that is why building a normal relationship with God is so important. So how are we to build a normal relationship with God? Below is a simple fellowship of the four principles.

1. Quiet Your Heart Before God and Truly Pray to God


The Bible says: “Keep your heart with all diligence; for out of it are the issues of life” (Proverbs 4:23). The Lord Jesus said: “But the hour comes, and now is when the true worshippers shall worship the Father in spirit and in truth: for the Father seeks such to worship Him” (John 4:23). God sets great store by the heart of man. Though sometimes we may not say our prayers to God, or we get busy with our jobs, our hearts still draw close to God, God has a place in our hearts, and our hearts obey God in everything we do. 
In this way, we are able to obtain the guidance, leadership, enlightenment, and illumination of the Holy Spirit and our relationship with God becomes ever more normalized. Therefore, the most important principle in building a normal relationship with God is to quiet our hearts before God.

We live nowadays in this world of infinite distractions, and our fast-paced lives mean that our hearts end up occupied with all manner of people, events, and things, thereby giving us very little time to quiet ourselves before God, draw close to God and contemplate God. Because our hearts are often drawn away from God, and because we cannot give our hearts to God, much less obey God in our hearts, we are therefore incapable of obtaining the work of the Holy Spirit, we are without God’s guidance and leadership in our lives, we often end up overworked and exhausted in both body and mind as we busy ourselves with all the various people, events and things in our lives, and nothing we do turns out well.

But we have all certainly experienced that, when we quiet our hearts before God, when we look to God and rely on God with our hearts, and we seek the truth in all things, we are then able to obtain God’s guidance and leadership, we become aware of what actions conform with God’s will, what actions cannot satisfy God and, through prayer, we become able to forsake our flesh and let go of the things which are at odds with God’s will. 

Moreover, when our relationship with God becomes normalized, we have God’s guidance in all things, we can have a more accurate perspective on problems, we can discover the shortcomings and deficiencies in our actions in a timely way, and we can find the right path and achieve twice the result with half the effort in the things we do. From this, we can see that, if we wish to build a normal relationship with God, then giving our hearts to God is of the utmost importance. If we wish to achieve this, then we must consciously pray more to God and frequently contemplate God’s love and grace. 

That way, we will be moved by the Spirit of God without us even being aware of it, and we will then be able to live always in God’s presence.

2. Often Ponder God’s Words and Practice the Truth


The Lord Jesus said: “I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man comes to the Father, but by Me” (John 14:6). God’s words are the truth, they can show us the way, and they are the principles by which we act and conduct ourselves. By reading more of God’s words and understanding the truth, and by bringing God’s words into our lives so that we may experience and practice them, we come to live out the reality of God’s words, and our relationship with God becomes ever more normalized.

A lot of the time, we neglect to read God’s words because we are busy with our jobs, or with our families, or with our careers. We cannot quiet our hearts before God, much less put God’s words into practice. We grow farther and farther away from God, our spiritual lives gradually become barren, we fail to understand thoroughly many of the things we encounter in our lives, and we grope blindly around in the darkness, without direction or purpose. 

If we can read God’s words often and ponder God’s will and requirements within His words, then we will be able to practice correctly in accordance with His words, and our relationship with God will become normalized. As the Lord Jesus said: “Truly I say to you, Except you be converted, and become as little children, you shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven” (Matthew 18:3). We discover in God’s words that God’s essence is faithful, that God loves honest people, that He requires us to be honest people, and that only honest people bear the likeness of a genuine human being and are able to attain God’s salvation and enter into His kingdom. 

Once we have understood this requirement God has of us, then when in our daily lives we wish to tell lies and engage in deception in order to protect our own interests, we are able to realize that this type of behavior and practice is hated by God. We are then able to consciously seek what we should do, to be honest people and what to do to conform with God’s will. Once we have forsaken our flesh and have put God’s words into practice, our spirits feel incredibly at peace and at ease, free and liberated, and our relationship with God draws even closer.

Furthermore, when we come across any of God’s words we do not understand, we must seek out brothers and sisters who do understand the truth and fellowship with them, and through seeking, we will come to understand the truth and put it into practice. In short, only by reading God’s words more and frequently contemplating, fellowshiping, and practicing God’s words will our understanding of the truth and our knowledge of God get better and better, and in this way, our relationship with God will become normalized.

3. Harbor Right Intentions and Accept God’s Observation in All Things


If we want to build a normal relationship with God, then it is also very important to have the right motive in all things. Though there may be many who believe in God, there are very few who can act on God’s will in all things. Many people’s faith in God comes with their own personal motives and aims, and very little of what they do can be brought before God to receive His scrutiny. 

Take dedication and service, for example. True dedication and service should be built upon the desire to repay God’s love, without any personal motive or aim. Spontaneous dedication may include giving one’s money, one’s time, or giving one’s whole self. But what is undeniable is that, when we make dedications and we expend ourselves, it always involves numerous personal motives and impure intents. Take me, for example. When I saw God’s words saying, “Bring you all the tithes into the storehouse, that there may be meat in My house, and prove Me now herewith, said Jehovah of hosts, if I will not open you the windows of heaven, and pour you out a blessing, that there shall not be room enough to receive it” (Malachi 3:10), I then actively dedicated a tithe of all my earnings. 

I believed that everything I was earning was given to me by God anyway, and so I should give some back to God and that this was something I should give as a created being. But my own personal motive was kept hidden within the deepest recesses of my heart. I believed that, now that I had made this dedication, then God would certainly commend me, and I would be bound to receive even more rewards from God; that was the only reason I made such an active dedication. Let’s take another example from the words spoken by Paul the apostle: “I have fought a good fight, I have finished my course, I have kept the faith: From now on there is laid up for me a crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous judge, shall give me at that day” (2 Timothy 4: 7–8). 

But what we have never considered is that, by making dedications, rushing about and expending ourselves in this way, we are not performing the duty of a created being, but rather we are making deals with God, and we are doing these things to get even greater blessings from God in return. In that case, no matter how much we may dedicate, or how much we may rush about or how much we may suffer, what is the point in any of it? God scrutinizes the innermost heart of man, so how can we be commanded by God by trying to deceive God and by using Him in this way? And how can we build a normal relationship with God when we do things like this? 

The Lord Jesus said: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the first and great commandment” (Matthew 22: 37–38). “If you continue in My word, then are you, My disciples, indeed” (John 8:31). God requires that we follow His way, and He clearly requires that we dedicate ourselves and expend ourselves for Him without any personal motive or impure intent, and without making deals with Him or expecting anything in return. 
We should expend ourselves for God purely to repay God’s love and out of our love for God, and we should give our all to satisfy God and serve God—this is the way we should follow as created beings, and it is the standard by which it is decided whether or not our faith is commended by God and acceptable to God. 

Therefore, in order to build a normal relationship with God, we must examine our aims in dedicating ourselves, suffering and expending ourselves for God, and immediately eliminate all the various impurities and improper motives which exist within our faith in God.



4. Seek the Truth in All Things and Submit to God’s Rule and Arrangements


Our lives are filled with uncertainties every day, and we have no idea when we might come across something at odds with our own ideas. If we have no place for God in our hearts and we do not seek the truth, then all we can do is use our brains to analyze and study the things that happen, and we then become mired in the rights and wrongs of things. 

We are unable to submit to God’s sovereignty and arrangements, we even blame and misunderstand God, and we fall into a darkness of great suffering. Recently, a church friend of mine lost the vote to be Senior Executive in her company, which made her feel like she had lost a lot of faces. In terms of qualification and business acumen, she was the best in the company. So why was she not chosen? She took what happened to her heart and was unable to quiet her heart before God. A good friend then said to her, “You have to trust in God’s sovereignty with this matter. God’s goodwill is behind everything that happens to you. 

You must seek the truth in God’s words, and you must understand what God’s goodwill is for you now that you have lost the vote, and what lessons you need to learn.” Thanks to the reminder given by her good friend, she went before God to reflect on herself. After praying and seeking many times, and through reading God’s words, she finally saw that God’s good intentions were behind her losing the vote to be Senior Executive. After she had made some achievements in the company, she had become filled with wild ambitions and desires and had wished to rise higher in the company and have better prospects. 

In order to realize her plans, for a long time, she had kept herself busy only with work, and had neither prayed, nor read God’s words, nor attended church meetings regularly. Her heart had grown farther and farther from God, she had been living in sin without feeling much self-reproach and had even been wantonly sinful. God saw that she was living in pursuit of fame and gain and was unable to free herself, and so He used her losing the vote to remind her and to urge her to come before God in her suffering to reflect on herself, to halt her degenerate ways, to return once more before God, and to conduct herself and act in a down-to-earth manner. 

My church friend finally saw that what had appeared to be a bad thing actually turned out to be a good thing and that God’s good intentions had been behind it all! Therefore, seeking the truth in all things, submitting to God’s guidance, and practicing in accordance with God’s will are also practices that are crucial to building a normal relationship with God.


Above are the four principles of building a normal relationship with God, and by practicing in accordance with these principles, we will surely be able to establish and maintain a normal relationship with God. Thanks to the enlightenment and guidance of God! May we all build normal relationships with God, and may our every action meet with God’s acceptance. Amen!




By Jingnian, the United States.

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