For decades, the Lord has steadily introduced Tenth members to vulnerable people in Philadelphia. As we are all now aware, to use a word like vulnerable is now a massive understatement. Before the COVID-19 crisis, Tenth’s immigrants and homeless neighbors lacked basic resources. As we are now more than 75 days into the lockdown, any margin these neighbors built into their life has dissolved and the relationships developed through the efforts of Tenth’s Mercy Commission and other charities are essential.

This of course is not a one-sided situation. We as church members live to serve in situations such as this—not because we want people to suffer, but because our Master gives us a deeper wisdom than the world has to offer. We know it is more blessed to give than to receive. Hopefully you are taking opportunities to lean into this blessing through your personal network. As a church, we welcome you to give to our May Project of the Month, which is focused on giving to our homeless neighbors and to SPEAK. SPEAK is an exciting and important ESL ministry at Kirkbride School to immigrant families in South Philadelphia.

Before you decide one way or another how to engage in what Jesus called “almsgiving,” let us provide a little more context to our request. First, since COVID-19 hit Philadelphia, we have been praying for opportunities to minister to the most vulnerable communities in our city. Second, this money (primarily used to buy grocery gift cards) is accompanying the holistic care we seek to provide for these friends of Tenth. Third, while we mourn the crisis, because the venue for our meetings has shifted out of the public elementary school and into Zoom chats, we have much greater freedom to share the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ. Before this, we respected the school’s rules about focusing on ESL instead of evangelism, but now there are no restrictions on the topics we can discuss. I hope you see why we are both mourning and rejoicing at the Lord’s mysterious providence.

Let me conclude sharing a story from Sunday, May 10. Following strict protocols for health and safety, members of the Mercy Commission set up tables in front of Tenth with appropriate distancing and precaution. Then, Joe Park and I (Enrique) went to Chipotle to pick up burritos. We were discouraged to find out they lost our order and would not be able to process it in time to feed our neighbors. We knew logistics would be a challenge during this pandemic, but we soon rejoiced that we were not in control. Seeing Qdoba down the street, we ran over there and learned that they had time to accommodate our request. After rushing back to the church to pass out the food, we were blessed to hand out our last burrito to the last homeless man in line. All of these friends also received a Bible tract which we pray feeds their soul just as the burritos feed their bodies. As Rudy, Sunlight, Kevin, Joe, and I cleaned up the tables and the empty Qdoba bags, our hearts were full. Of course, that is at best the tertiary goal of giving. On our best days, we first give out of worship to God, second to care for his image bearers, and third to receive his blessing.

This is just one story, but as you can see it is an exciting time to be generous. On behalf of our Lord Jesus Christ, we invite you to share in the excitement and receive the blessing of giving to this important Project of the Month. As you do, you will join us in the worshipful act of blessing our vulnerable neighbors in their time of need.

Jesus  says that the greatest commandment is this: “Love the Lord your God with all of your heart, soul, and mind.” And the second greatest commandment is like it: “Love your neighbor as yourself.”

Our Lord tells the parable of the Good Samaritan in response to the following question: “So, Jesus, who is my neighbor anyway?”

In the parable a man is injured by robbers and is left by the side of the road. Two people of high distinction in Israel’s society purposefully pass by him. But a third, a “looked-down-upon” Samaritan, the underclass, a foreigner, takes very compassionate care of him.

After telling the story, Jesus asks, “Which of these three, do you think, proved to be a neighbor to the man who fell among the robbers?” Answer: “The one who showed him mercy.”

On February 28 Tenth’s Medical Campus Outreach and Renewal Presbyterian Church hosted Opioid Overview: Christian Perspectives on the Current Crisis. We framed our conversation with this parable in mind, one that profiles a human being in need and a human being to respond. It is a beautiful picture of mercy, which may look different in different circumstances. We were reminded that everyone needs neighbors, everyone needs mercy.

We heard from Tim Leaman, MD, Kensington and Allegheny Site Medical Director for Esperanza Health Center; Kimberly Leonard, Senior Healthcare Correspondent for the Washington Examiner (now with Business Insider); Harry Holt, PhD/JD/MBA, Professor of Health Sciences at West Chester University; Ramon Cruz, Philadelphia native in long-term recovery who works for the city’s Department of Behavioral Health; and Leigha Osborn, nursing student at Jefferson who has spent the last 10 years serving the Lord with her family at Rock Ministries of Kensington.

Our discussion focused on several themes:

We have had drug epidemics before, such as the crack cocaine crisis of the 80’s and 90’s, yet the approach to that crisis had a strong punitive component and less of a therapeutic or healing response to addiction. That epidemic disproportionately affected communities of color and of urban inner cities and resulted in missed opportunities to develop an infrastructure to help people with addiction. Lack of accessible addiction care remains a hindrance to us now in addressing the opioid epidemic.

The pharmaceutical and medical communities of the last few decades have fostered the perfect storm of the current opioid crisis. A well-meaning push to require pain assessments in all health care encounters and prevailing opinion to treat chronic pain led to a quadrupling of opioid prescriptions from 2000 to 2014 with nearly half of a million deaths. And it has become clear that the motive for some pharmaceutical companies, and in rare cases health care providers, was profit over patient.

The outcome of the opioid crisis is overwhelming and heartbreaking. The mortality is staggering with nearly 50,000 deaths due to overdose in 2018 alone. Since 2013, death rates have been going up almost exponentially affecting all socioeconomic and racial and ethnic groups. Methamphetamines, cocaine, alcohol, and other drug combinations are also becoming more lethal as the battle continues. And what we see in the most alarming statistics is just the tip of the iceberg. More functional substance abusers are never counted; there are also increases in HIV, Hepatitis A/B/C, skin infections, and sepsis. While these collateral effects are additionally seen in this population, there are untoward effects of the opioid crisis to the entire society.

The United States has an addiction problem and lacks the systems to handle it; only 10% of the 22 million people with substance use disorders will get treatment. We all shared what we knew was being done regarding prevention, harm reduction, and recovery. We discussed the positive efforts, like getting kids into Christian neighborhood activity programs, and the controversies related to the pros and cons of supervised injection sites.

The full program, Opioid Overview: Christian Perspectives on the Current Crisis, is available on MCO’s website, including the slide presentations given. Please contact Laura Layer, MD, if you have questions or want to hear about volunteer opportunities.

There are no quick fixes, and we will be dealing with the opioid crisis for the next decade, at a minimum. We all have something to do. Pray, vote, work, volunteer. We know that the Lord cares for us, as his image bearers. Let us seek his wisdom, guidance, and compassion to serve those whose lives cross our paths and  who may be struggling with addiction. And let us find joy in his words: “Truly, I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these, my brothers, you did it to me” (Matthew 25:40).

We as a church have placed our hope in the “Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change.” Nevertheless, because of the truly unprecedented nature of this moment, each week the pastors and ministry leaders  have spent time changing. Changing plans. Changing expectations. Changing our strategy. What has not changed is our belief that all of us need to meet with God by the Holy Spirit through word and prayer. So, slowly, week by week we have created as many venues as possible for people to “gather” around God’s grace found in the gospel of Jesus Christ.

On the Wednesday before our first virtual Sunday we were strongly advised to cancel our normal services. Roughly a hundred emails later, that decision was made, and the morning and evening services transitioned to a single morning service and an evening devotional from Dr. Goligher. During the second week, small groups went virtual and people started praying for each other over Zoom and the like. We also saw what could be possible for community building during the pandemic as our tech savvy youth, college, and mercy ministries met virtually for Bible school. The icing on the cake, of course, was the videoed version of the Waltons’ pre-K Bible school class. Those of you singing “What can take Your love away, Nothin', nothin',  absolutely nothin'” know what I’m talking about. As Liam geared up to preach on Joel 2, Colin, James, and the tech team geared up for adding as many words and helpful pieces of information to our virtual Sunday experience as possible.

Moving toward the end of week two and into three, we heard wonderful reports of the ways our parishes were reaching out to Tenth members and regular attendees. At-risk individuals were contacted first—an effort which continues to this day. Throughout these early weeks we also kept up with our medical professionals through texts, phone calls, and the reports provided by Dr. Laura Layer and the Medical Campus Outreach team. We must continue to pray for these individuals. As the fourth week commenced, the pre-school has settled into a rhythm of providing creative visual activities for children, our Monday/Wednesday/Friday mid-day prayer gathering was now a familiar routine, and admin staff evolved into a new ever-faithful version of its previous self. Another reminder of the past and the future was our virtual Living Church promoting the Easter Sacrificial Offering. This attempt at re-establishing normalcy continued in week five with the Good Friday service. Moving into the weeks ahead, our hope and prayer is for the number of cases to shrink and the possibility of gathering to rise. Until then, Lord willing, we will resume the evening service via livestream starting this Sunday, April 19, at 6:15 PM.

Hopefully this gives you a brief look at how Tenth has responded to the pandemic. There is more going on and we covet your prayers for wisdom, creativity, and patience, as well as for our global partners around the world. Ultimately, we invite you to pray for God to intervene and for this pandemic to lift so that lives will be saved and the saints can gather for worship. As many of you have studied in your small groups, Exodus 2:24 tells us about a previous crisis situation for the church, “God heard their groaning, and God remembered his covenant with Abraham, with Isaac, and with Jacob.”  We rest in this truth knowing God hears, cares, and has the power to heal his good creation. If you are looking for a way to interact with others and meditate on God’s grace, join us Monday through Friday, 12:30-1:00, for a midday boost of encouragement; at one or of our Sunday services; or in a small group or Bible school class on an ongoing basis. Last, and perhaps most important, please let us know if you or a close family member tests positive for Covid-19, or if you are waiting for a test result. We are committed to walking with you through that trial.

The immeasurable significance of Holy Week is perhaps best attested by the amount of space given to recording its events in the gospels. From the total of 89 chapters in the four gospel accounts, 29 chapters are devoted to describing what Jesus said and did from Palm Sunday to Easter. Not only this, but each gospel is composed so the reader can clearly understand that there is an inexorable movement in Jesus’ life towards the cross and the empty tomb. For example, Matthew’s gospel reads this way, “From that time Jesus began to show his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem and suffer many things from the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and on the third day be raised” (Matthew 16:21). Luke 9:51 says Jesus “set his face to go to Jerusalem.” John’s gospel refers repeatedly to Jesus’ “hour,” pointing ahead to his death and the glory that would be manifested.

This movement toward the death and resurrection of Jesus in the gospels mirrors similar patterns found throughout the Old Testament. Many of these Old Testament patterns may be found simply by asking questions in response to the situations recorded. Who is the seed of the woman who will crush the head of the seed of the serpent in Genesis 3:15? Where is the lamb for the burnt offering that God will supply in Genesis 22:7? Who is the descendant of David who will rule on his throne forever? Who is the Servant of the Lord in Isaiah 53 who is despised and rejected, a man of sorrows?

Even as the Old Testament anticipates Jesus’ passion and resurrection, the New Testament books after the gospels work out the implications of Christ’s crucifixion and rising again. One example is Romans 6:8-11: “Now if we have died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him. We know that Christ, being raised from the dead, will never die again; death no longer has dominion over him. For the death he died he died to sin, once for all, but the life he lives he lives to God. So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus.” Many other instances could be quoted.

This emphasis in Scripture on the death and resurrection has profound implications for us as disciples of Jesus Christ. Here are just a few. First, by this means are we saved from our sin and the wrath of God. Romans 10:9 says: “if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.” Second, our lives are to have a cruciform pattern. Jesus said, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me” (Matthew 16:24). Third, our future is based on Christ’s accomplishment: “If in Christ we have hope in this life only, we are of all people most to be pitied. But in fact Christ has been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep. For as by a man came death, by a man has come also the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive” (1 Corinthians 15:19-22). Lastly, Christ’s death and resurrection shapes our worship of God: “Worthy is the Lamb who was slain, to receive power and wealth and wisdom and might and honor and glory and blessing!... To him who sits on the throne and to the Lamb be blessing and honor and glory and might forever and ever!" (Revelation 5:12-13).

So, why has Tenth traditionally had special services and concerts for Good Friday and Easter? The author of Hebrews tells us: “Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight, and sin which clings so closely, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God” (Hebrews 12:1-2). Let us look and worship!

This year, we are unable to hold our traditional Good Friday concert.  However, we hope you will consider watching our previous Good Friday concerts, and join us online Easter morning. 

In a previous Tenth Press article, we spoke about the work the Lord is doing through our Global Partners and the two relief projects we’re supporting for our 2020 Easter Sacrificial Offering (ESO). If you haven’t had a chance to read it, you can find it here.

In that article we distinguished between relief work and development work. Relief work provides an immediate solution to a pressing need, whereas development work is oriented around a long-term solution, looking to provide communities with the necessary means through which sustainable improvement can be accomplished. Following this model, our three ESO projects working in development ministries are as follows:

Children’s Ministries in Colombia

In the gospels, one of the things that has often struck me is Jesus’ care for children. In Mark 10 we see the disciples rebuking those who are bringing little children to Jesus, but the text tells us that “when Jesus saw it, he was indignant and said to them, “Let the children come to me; do not hinder them, for to such belongs the kingdom of God. Truly, I say to you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God like a child shall not enter it.” And he took them in his arms and blessed them, laying his hands on them” (Mark 10:14-16). While this passage speaks to the characteristics of those who will enter the kingdom of God, it also shows us a beautiful image of Jesus’ love and care for children. When he could have sent them away, Jesus calls them to himself and blesses them. The Lord’s care and compassion for children is one of the characteristics our partners in Colombia seek to model. In areas where children lack sufficient resources, and many come from difficult households, our partners are working to provide a safe place where children can receive care, food, access to education, and hear the good news of Jesus Christ. In connection with our long-standing partner, Rafael Leal of La Roca Church, this project will provide structural, aesthetic, and material improvements to three facilities providing care for at-risk, homeless, and underserved children in Barranquilla and Santa Marta. 

Building Up the Church in Egypt:

Our partners working in Egypt are serving in an area where Christianity is in the minority, making up less than 10% of the population. What our partners have found is that of those who identify as Christian, few actually know the central tenets of  the faith. Our partner’s goal is to see nominal Christians come to a true faith and pastors trained in sound theology, that many would come to know the Lord. While seeking to see Christians grow in their faith, our partners are also working to meet the physical needs of the community, to  reach them with the gospel, and then train them to faithfully proclaim it in their own towns. Your contribution will enable their ministry to develop new training centers, raise up new leaders, and meet the physical and medical needs of many Egyptians.

Reaching Lebanon with the Gospel

Like Egypt, our partners in Lebanon find that the churches in their communities lack sufficient training and their pastors are eager to learn sound doctrine. In connection with a long-standing Tenth partner, this ministry’s goal is to bring the gospel of Jesus Christ to Lebanon. They’re working to train pastors and congregants in sound theology and provide holistic care to those in the community that are primarily made up of different religious groups. They provide food, medicine, and clothing to those in need while also sharing the good news of our Lord.

A Global Church

As our Apostles’ Creed reminds us, we’re part of the one “holy catholic church,” not only made up of the saints of old, but also of all the believers around the world. Praise be to the Lord that his church is still being built, and that in his providence he allows us to take part in his work. During this time at Easter, we’re reminded of Christ’s victory over the grave and of the work taking place around the world. Please pray for our partners, that through them many would come to know the love and glory of our Lord, and please prayerfully consider giving toward our ESO projects as you feel so led.

“And they shall bring all your brothers from all the nations as an offering to the Lord” Isaiah 66:20.

We encourage you to pray for the work taking place around the world and invite you to give as you feel so led. You can give to the ESO here.

Each year as we celebrate the Lord’s resurrection at Easter, the Global Outreach Commission seeks out beneficiaries for our annual Easter Sacrificial Offering (ESO). This offering is collected and distributed to those who are working to meet the physical and spiritual needs of the global church in some of the harshest parts of the world.

This year we’re excited to announce that after much deliberation and prayer, the Commission and Session have decided to support five ministries that are working in areas of relief and development while also faithfully proclaiming the gospel around the world. We’ll profile two of our relief projects in this article and our three development projects later this week.

Relief vs. Development

Terminology can be confusing, but Steve Corbett and Brian Fikkert give us a helpful clarification in their book When Helping Hurts. They define relief as that which gives an “urgent provision of emergency aid to reduce immediate suffering during a crisis.” Relief ministries are our way of providing immediate care to those suffering as a result of violence, unrest, and unforeseen circumstances, whereas development deals more with long-term sustainability and improvement. Following this model, our two ESO projects working in relief ministries are as follows:

Caring for Widows and Orphans in Nigeria

In Psalm 68, David reminds us that our God is the “Father of the fatherless and protector of widows.” God’s care and love for widows and orphans is a major theme we see throughout Scripture. The calling on the church to care for them is something one of our long-standing partners takes seriously. He’s working with others in his community to provide physical and spiritual care for widows and orphans that have suffered tremendous hardship and loss. These women and children have not only lost their loved ones as a result of recent unrest, but many have also lost their homes and all sources of income. Our partner is working on the front-lines, meeting their immediate needs while also helping women and children re-establish themselves, offering schooling, job training, food, and spiritual care. Pray that the Lord would protect our partner and his family and that many would come to know the love of the Lord through their work.

Caring for South Sudanese Refugees

After twenty-one years of civil war, famine,  disease, and nearly two-million deaths, few could fathom the thought that the people of South Sudan would face another war in 2013. This, however, is the reality that many Sudanese face today. Since 2013, nearly 400,000 people have been killed and 4 million people have been displaced as a result of the war. Many fled to the neighboring country of Uganda, seeking refuge from the violence. One of these displaced refugees is named Peter. He and his family were displaced  and settled at the Koboko Refugee camp in Uganda. Peter was motivated by what God has done in his own life to see his fellow Sudanese come to know the love of the Lord. This motivation has led him to partner with the Lausanne Movement to meet the physical and spiritual needs of those displaced  to refugee camps in Uganda. At a recent Lausanne training event, Peter recalled : “I was reminded that Jesus, who knew what it was like to be a refugee and to suffer, intimately understands and shares in the pain of his people” (Cf. Matt. 2:13-14). Our partnership in this ESO project will provide food, education, and gospel ministry to the thousands of displaced Sudanese.  

We encourage you to pray for the work taking place around the world and invite you to give as you feel so led. You can give to the ESO here.

On March 3, we presented a gift of chocolates to the adult ESL student who won the contest to name the onsite ESL program. Submissions were numerous and included the following words: speak, learn English, class, program, South Philly, and community. For now, though, I need to back up.

Tenth’s Mercy Commission includes the South Philadelphia Immigrant Committee, which oversees an ESL outreach program to the adult community from the Kirkbride School, 1501 S. 7th Street. Most of its students receive English language services. A while back, one of its teachers, Yoon Park, wife of Mercy Ministries assistant, Joe Park, invited IO to offer an ESL program to the parents of the students.  

Parents from this mixed community of Mexican, Central American, and Vietnamese immigrants have a heartfelt incentive to learn English. They want to be a part of their children’s education, and learning English is essential. The program takes place on Tuesdays, from 3:15 to 5:00. Volunteer teachers from Christ Church and Tenth lead the adult ESL program and the concurrent children’s homework program. Both programs are necessary for this outreach.

We take our program seriously. Launching in February 2019, all ten of our volunteers taught from the online program, ESL Library. This past fall, we purchased two levels of the curriculum, Side by Side (Pearson) and we look forward to providing another published resource for the pre-beginner adults by September 2020. The adults are avid learners; they converse with their teachers and one another (a strategic ESL practice), as well as do their homework. Weekly lessons are characterized by many smiles and much laughter.

We teachers are drawn to this outreach for a variety of reasons. When I served at City Center Academy (CCA), I was intrigued by the international students from the Curtis Institute who attended our English and history classes. Working with their hand-held dictionary devices and a language that was not their first, many performed exceptionally well in their CCA classes. As a result, I returned to classes and added ESL to my Pennsylvania teaching certificate. Through the years of teaching ESL to internationals, the Lord gave me a heart for immigrant children and adults who have come so far and have given up so much.

The Kirkbride School setting is an outreach provision for us. However, because we are in a public-school setting during school hours, we are not permitted to include the Bible. Yet, other outreach efforts have promoted our adults and their families attending events at Tenth: a Cinco de Mayo celebration, Internationals Outreach Christmas dinner, and the memorial service for Paul Pisani—who was a fall 2020 volunteer teacher at Kirkbride. So we’re building friendships as we sort through ways to share our ultimate hope in the Lord with our adults.

I should share that Reyna is the adult who won the naming contest. And her submission (tweaked by us judges) was South Philly English at Kirkbride, SPEAK. 

“‘We are in the very bowels of hell,’ I thought to myself.” So said Brian Fikkert, development economist and founder and president of the Chalmers Center of Covenant College, recalling his observation of poverty so dire that surely anything—anything at all—he could do would help alleviate the suffering of the unfortunate souls so afflicted by it. Right?

Wrong, argues Fikkert in When Helping Hurts: How to Alleviate Poverty without Hurting the Poor...and Yourself. In fact, despite good intentions, he made things worse. (To learn the particularly “hellish” backstory, as well as numerous other anecdotes from Fikkert’s unique experience in poverty alleviation, as a professional and laymen, you will have to read the book.) Fikkert’s book is a call to caution against, paradoxically, our noblest impulses. Even the most desperate situations need careful analysis because there can always be remedies worse than the disease. Oftentimes the obvious or immediate solution is the one that exacerbates the situation.

Poorly executed “helping” can hurt both the helper and helped in a variety of ways. Misguided assistance can offend, belittle, and deride the recipient; it can distort incentives, create cycles of dependency, and rob them of long-run recovery. For the helper, it can foster frustration, smugness, or a sense of superiority, all of which is compounded when the poor “fail” to use effectively the “help” offered by the non-poor. Between the two parties, bad helping causes alienation, misunderstanding, and mutual distrust. In the aggregate, it causes resource misallocation, which can crowd out or even reverse better forms of alleviation.

What then is bad helping? Like any good two-armed economist, Fikkert’s answer is: “It depends.” Most of the book is devoted to explaining the nuances of different forms of poverty and how the appropriate response will vary with the situation. He also provides some general principles for avoiding pitfalls and executing effective, long-lasting mercy ministry.

First, the book argues that it is key to have the right mindset, recognizing true needs and not just the superficial ones. Most importantly, Fikkert emphasizes that poverty is not a problem to be fixed as if it were a leaky faucet; rather, the materially poor are people to love as image bearers of God. The practical principles will follow when the perspective is properly set. The outset of the book is devoted to developing such a perspective.

When helping hurts, the underlying cause of the problem is a fundamental misunderstanding of the nature and causes of poverty. To be poor is not simply to lack material resources, but to have an inability to control one’s circumstances. It is not just to have a low level of consumption but also a lack of insurance capacity against negative shocks. That is, minor setbacks become devastating, sending the poor on a downward spiral that no amount of bootstrap-grabbing can overcome. The accumulating effects are not only physical. Fikkert notes that when the financially secure define poverty, they speak in terms of unmet material needs—having too little to eat or not being able to pay a bill. But when the poor describe poverty, they speak in terms of vulnerability, exhaustion, and hopelessness. Persistent poverty can lead to a diminished sense of self worth or a nihilist outlook—I  will always suffer, thinks the poor person, so nothing I do matters.

The most important thing to recognize, therefore, is that poverty is another symptom of the fall of man. It is evidence of the broken relationships of man with God, man with creation, and men with each other; thorns curse the ground for all of us. As another manifestation of the fall, poverty results from both broken people and broken systems. This is a point Fikkert is deliberate to emphasize, as some (mostly the more socially and politically conservative) tend to attribute poverty to personal failings, and others (mostly the more socially and politically liberal) tend to attribute poverty to oppressive structures. Both are in effect in most situations because both are broken.

If the cursed ground is the root of the problem, poverty is a much harder problem to solve, and sparing one’s change will certainly not provide the answer. The good news is that Christ came to redeem all creation: the material and spiritual things, the people and the systems. By extension, Christians are called to alleviate poverty not merely out of sympathy but as a part of our participation in Christ’s redemption of the fallen world. The showing of mercy is not a substitute for or complement to evangelism—it is a thread in the cord of redemption, the entwining of physical and spiritual restoration.

With the proper mindset, one is better equipped to help without hurting. The essential guidance, which follows from framing the problem of poverty as a result of the fall, is an emphasis on process over product. The urge to immediately satisfy material needs—to “fix” the problems—while ignoring the person experiencing them is what drives many mistaken attempts at alleviation. Instead, we should be creating institutions and circumstances that will heal the broken relationships of all forms.

The most enlightening chapter of the book makes distinction between three types of help: relief, rehabilitation, and development. An analogy for these types could be the role of paramedics, physicians, and physical therapists in the field of medicine. Relief is appropriate when a short-term but dire circumstance comes upon the poor, such as a natural disaster, job loss, or a personal health emergency. This would be the paramedic step—immediate treatment for acute ailments, rescuing the patient until more sustained treatments can be applied. Rehabilitation is appropriate when the effects of a particular setback need time to be ameliorated, such as rebuilding a structure after a disaster or searching for a new job. This would be the doctoring phase of treatment—a surgery or medication to combat a particular problem in order to restore the patient to pre-crisis status. Development is appropriate when persistent circumstances inhibit the poor from attaining self-sufficiency. This would be the physical therapy stage of treatment—training and strengthening the patient so that he can abide in a healthy state.

All of these stages will confront the poor at some point, and there is nothing inherently good or bad about any one form of help. However, many failures in helping result from applying the wrong type of help given the actual need. In practice, this often means providing relief when recovery or development is actually in order, typically because relief is easier to motivate and provide without requiring a long-term commitment from the helper. Development is the most difficult form, and yet is most commonly needed.

The distinctions pivot the book from an abstract rumination of the nature of poverty to concrete lessons for executing effective poverty alleviation. The balance of the book contains a wealth of advice for recognizing and applying appropriate forms of help. (The practical guidance sections were expanded between the first and section editions.) This includes advice on how to set up institutions to provide development at all times but also enable them to provide relief and recovery when warranted. Fikkert offers churches guidance for conducting local ministries, sending and funding foreign missions (long and short term), and donating wisely.

In making conceptual distinctions and offering practical advice, the book contains some tacit lessons in economic principles. Fikkert admonishes prospective helpers to think about the constraints of the poor. The lack of material consumption is an effect, not a cause; the helper has to identify in a given situation what the underlying cause may be. In doing so, the helper should identify the assets and skills of the poor (and certainly should not assume there are none). Then, in crafting responses to relax the identified constraints, the helper should think about how incentives might be altered. For example, would the help penalize virtuous hard work or truth telling? If so, another response is in order. Finally, the helper should consider the dynamic created by the response. Can (and should) the help be sustained and offered again? How will the help offered today alter constraints and incentives tomorrow? Will it increase self-sufficiency in the recipient, or will it hamstring them from improving their own lot in the future?

A possible critique of the book is that it endorses a form of paternalism. To be fair, Fikkert is careful to state that paternalism is one of the most dangerous threats to effective help—whether from a haughtiness in which the non-poor think they are better because they are smarter, more disciplined, more moral, etc., or from a savior mentality in which the non-poor believe they rescue the poor from destitution with swift, decisive action. Fikkert notes that the poor understand their circumstances better than their prospective helpers, and he emphasizes that alleviation (especially development) necessarily takes time. He also argues that often the funding source of the help is not the best agent to administer it, especially in international contexts with substantial barriers of culture, language, and law. However, with caveats duly noted, some readers will see paternalism nonetheless in the very argument that help can hurt the poor, as it suggests that what the poor ask for is not what is best for them, and therefore they do not even rightly know what they need. Poverty is a delicate issue, and as such, there is something of a balancing act in responding to it—the poor need help but not validation from the helpers. Ultimately, Fikkert’s best advice is to approach any alleviation effort with a heavy dose of humility—both parties are sinners in broken relationships with God, nature, and each other.

The book is a call for caution and careful consideration, but it is certainly not a call to do nothing. The fact that helping can hurt is an admonishment to proceed thoughtfully and humbly, but clearly it would pain Fikkert if the reader used such caution as a cover for inaction. Indeed, if Christ is redeeming all creation and calls us to participate in his kingdom work, then doing nothing is a sin of omission. In mercy showing, as in all things, God commands not results, but obedience.

The views expressed in the book and by the reviewer are not necessarily those of Tenth.  We do believe, however, that they are a useful stimulus to our thinking about these important issues.

Brian Fikkert is the featured speaker at the Mercy Conference later this month. Learn more and register.

Each year as we celebrate the Lord’s resurrection at Easter, the Global Outreach Commission seeks out beneficiaries for our annual Easter Sacrificial Offering (ESO). This offering is collected and distributed to those who are working to meet the physical and spiritual needs of the global church in some of the harshest parts of the world.

This year we’re excited to announce that after much deliberation and prayer, the Commission and Session have decided to support five ministries that are working in areas of mercy ministry while also faithfully proclaiming the gospel around the world.

Our ESO ministries are operating in the following parts of the world:

Colombia

In connection with our long standing partner, Rafael Leal of La Roca Church, we’ll provide structural, aesthetic, and material improvements to three facilities providing care for at risk, homeless, and underserved children in Barranquilla and Santa Martha.

Egypt

Working to build up the local church, this ministry’s goal is to see Christians grow in their faith and have their physical needs met, all while being trained to faithfully proclaim the gospel in their towns. Our contribution will enable their ministry to develop new training centers, raise up new leaders, and meet the physical and medical needs of many Egyptians.

Lebanon

In connection with a long-standing Tenth partner, this ministry’s goal is to bring the gospel of Jesus Christ to Lebanon. They provide holistic care while also sharing the gospel. They’re also working to build up the church by training pastors, leaders, and laymen in sound theology.

Nigeria

In connection with a long-standing Tenth partner, this ministry is providing physical and spiritual care for widows and orphans that have suffered as a result of recent unrest. This ministry is helping the women and children re-establish themselves, offering schooling, job training, food, and spiritual care.

Sudan

Caring for the hearts, bodies, and souls, this ministry is providing food, education, and gospel ministry to the thousands of Koboko refugees that have recently been displaced.

We encourage you to pray for the work taking place around the world and invite you to give as you feel so led.  You can learn about ways to give here. 

As of March 2, close to 90,000 people worldwide have been affected with the novel corona virus, including about 100 cases in the US. As the virus continues to spread across the nation and world, Tenth’s leadership has thought and prayed about how we should respond. Thankfully, one of our Deacons, Dr. Jerry Jacob (Assistant Professor of Clinical Medicine at Penn Medicine and the Director of Infection Prevention at Good Shepherd Penn Partners), was willing to provide his medical opinion. 

Dr. Jacob has recommended two categories for us to think about regarding the corona virus. The first relates to wisdom, and the second to mercy. When it comes to wisdom, Dr. Jacob lists six ways for us to protect members of our community from transmitting or acquiring the virus. First, he advises us to stay home from worship services when ill with fever or when we are experiencing respiratory symptoms (cough, congestion, shortness of breath) and instead to utilize the livestream. Second, we should wash our hands often with soap and water for at least 20 seconds, especially before eating, after going to the bathroom, and after blowing your nose, coughing or sneezing. If soap and water is not easily available, use an alcohol-based hand sanitizer. Cleaning the environment around us is also important. We should regularly clean high touch areas in our church and home, such as tabletops, light switches, and doorknobs. Third, we should take extra effort to cover our mouth with a tissue when coughing or sneezing. If a tissue isn’t easily available, use your elbow to cover your face rather than your hands. Along the same lines, we should generally avoid touching our eyes, nose or mouth to prevent any germs on our hands from getting into our body. Fourth, we should avoid close contact with people who are ill where this is reasonable. This is not simply to protect us from illness, but to protect our loved ones who come in contact with us regularly. Conversely, we should keep our distance from others when we are sick to prevent them from becoming ill. Fifth, prepare your household by planning for ways to care for those who might become sick, especially those at higher risk for complications (i.e., elderly), and for emergency operations/closures at your work or children’s school. Finally, if the virus becomes truly widespread in Philadelphia, we as a church will need to consider cancelling services and/or postponing events.

The second category to think about is mercy. Dr. Jacob gives four suggestions about how we as the body of Christ should respond with mercy should we encounter a public health crisis. First, we should pray for those afflicted with the virus, for the healthcare workers placing themselves at risk by caring for sick patients, and for the Christians around the world who live in highly afflicted areas. Second, we should consider what support we can provide for parts of the country or the world that are heavily afflicted, including financially or materially. Third, we should combat potential stigma towards people from afflicted regions through our words and actions. Fourth, we should offer the Good News of Jesus Christ to people who are fearful.

As a Christian and an infectious disease specialist, Dr. Jacob believes following these principles and practices will enable us to respond to this virus with wisdom and mercy, which is befitting for followers of Jesus Christ. 

On March 20 & 21, join us as Brian Fikkert shares insights from his books at the Mercy Conference.  Learn more from this video of Fikkert and Kelly Kapic describing the books, and register for the conference here.  The video is transcribed below. 

About ten years ago, Steve Corbett and I had the privilege of coauthoring the book When Helping Hurts and God blessed that book beyond our wildest imaginations.  But despite that, we continue to pepper with all kinds of questions—very specific questions.  Missionaries will say, “some worm has infested our village in Africa, what do we do?”  A daughter will say, “I’m giving money to some ministry in Tibet, should I keep giving them money?” A church will say, “we don’t even have any relationships with poor people what do we do?”  All these very specific questions.

The challenge is, people think they want answers to the specific questions, but we're not really qualified to give those.  Nobody is.  But we can talk about wisdom.  We need wisdom: wisdom from God, wisdom from his word, wisdom from experience.  

We need to know what God is trying to do in the world and how he's trying to accomplish it because if we can understand God’s story, we can jump into the stream of God’s story and be more effective than we would be if we’re swimming upstream.

There's a lot of false stories going on.  A lot of ways in which we sometimes even talk about God that aren't very helpful. For example, we encourage people to get saved but all we mean is make a decision. Believe in Jesus and then live 30, 40, 50 years, and die and go to heaven.  But we don't have a good answer for what all of this is about.

We don’t really know how to live in the world.  We don’t know what human flourishing looks like.  We don't know how to achieve such flourishing.  Yet is our message to poor people is come be just like us even though we don’t know what we’re doing.

The statistics of how we're doing culturally in North America in terms of happiness and relationships in community—the data’s not good.

It's amazing. Even though income in America continues to rise, all kinds of measures of happiness are declining, mental illness is exploding, and western civilization isn't flourishing.  But we’re asking the poor to join us in this false story.  We need a better story.

This is where theology comes in. Theology sounds like a scary word, but it's like if I tell the group of my students, “the first person who goes to my house and touches it gets $500” and I have a really excited student who immediately jets out of the room super fast, it seems impressive. But if they don't know where my house is, if they didn't stop to ask, they're just going to get exhausted and never get there.

We have to know where we're trying to go and how we can get there both for ourselves and for people who are poor. This book, Becoming Whole, is very theological, accessible to laypersons, but very theological—helping us to dive deep into God’s story.  In that sense, it's a prequel to When Helping Hurts. The operating system behind it so people can have the wisdom they need to adjust to the very particular circumstance they’re facing.

But it isn't just theological, is it?  We’re trying to be practical, both in this volume and the one that comes after it, A Field Guide to Becoming Whole. We’re trying to be concrete.

In A Field Guide to Becoming Whole we explain many more principles than we did in When Helping Hurts and so in that sense it’s the sequel to When Helping Hurts.  We want to help people move effectively forward in ministry.

We really do think how we imagine ourselves, how we imagine God, how we imagine relating to one another affects everything. It affects our lives, it affects our communities, and we want to be faithful.

Many of us think that the goal is to turn Uganda into the United States, or to turn poor inner cities into suburbs, but that's not the right goal.  The goal with all these places is to look more like the New Jerusalem. The goal all of us is to become whole, and that's what these books are about.

As believers, we often dream of doing great things for God’s kingdom here on earth. We want to be part of something much bigger than ourselves. And many times, this dream causes us to look to some future time or large ministry as the solution. However, Jesus often spoke of looking to the needs of our neighbors and those most vulnerable as some of the highest callings for his disciples.

One of Jesus’ most loved parables, the Good Samaritan, is especially meaningful to believers in Philadelphia. While we may dream of grand plans for serving in God’s kingdom, we have a golden opportunity right now to help our neighbors, friends, and family who suffer on the streets next to us. Medical Campus Outreach and Renewal Presbyterian Church invite you to join us for a panel discussion about Christian perspectives on the current opioid crisis. Our panel includes speakers from national, state, and local levels who will provide information on both public policy and medical ministry initiatives.

Philadelphia has become an epicenter of the opioid crisis in America. Not only have lifelong residents of our city become hooked on opioids, but also people from all over the country are coming to Kensington as a destination for trying new drugs. Some of these people never leave. The streets are filled with people who want to escape the opioid epidemic overtaking Philadelphia at an alarming rate. The need for reaching out to those caught up in this horrible cycle has been noticed by many. Several nationally-broadcast television shows have come here to highlight this problem. Regularly, the press is providing coverage of what is going on and how the opioid epidemic has a ripple effect on those who call Philadelphia home. 

Learn more and register here.

For the last two decades, downtown Philadelphia has experienced a renaissance. Individuals from numerous ethnicities are putting down roots near the church by seeking advanced degrees, establishing careers, and in some cases starting families. Real estate prices, high ranking public elementaries, and new skyscrapers serve as constant reminders of change. 

With all of this said, most of these people are hostile to the exclusive claims of biblical Christianity. They mostly worship science, sex, and financial security. Their instinct is to reject authority while believing humans are good. They are typically busy, occasionally wealthy, and almost always lonely. As this new wave pushes its way into the neighborhoods surrounding the church, families and individuals who traditionally called downtown Philadelphia home are being displaced. As they leave, more and more once faithful churches are becoming condos and concert halls. 

This is a complex moment in Philadelphia’s history. Thoughtful followers of Jesus Christ will neither celebrate nor mourn this narrative. Instead there are three options for Tenth to pursue. First, we can slowly reject the exclusive claims of Christ to appear more relevant to the masses. Second, we can hold fast to the Word of God and retreat from the mission until this secular age loses momentum. Third, we can avoid these temptations toward relevance or retreat and instead recommit ourselves to the Reformed catholic worship of the Triune God.

If we choose this third path, we will strive to offer Word-centered, gospel-shaped and sacramentally rich worship to God. As we continue in this Way, we will behold the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ through the gospel. Through this humble posture, we will not create our own vision, but we will more and more receive God’s vision for his people to be a light in the darkness. Through this humble posture we will retrieve the resources of the Early Church and the Reformation. These deep mines of wisdom and truth will give us clarity and conviction as we seek to be a family of believers who love God and are sent out to love our neighbors made in his image.

Clearly, our strategy is not theological innovation but rather to follow the Spirit’s leading as the Lord Jesus calls us to follow him. There are four areas we are praying for the Spirit’s concrete guidance – worship, mercy, discipleship, and outreach. Since these categories represent the primary compass points of the covenant people in the Scriptures, we pray they will guide Tenth’s steps as well.

As we venture in this direction, we ask God to lead us to the good works he wants us to walk in over the next several years. As these plans become clear, we will allocate resources of all kinds toward these goals. Throughout, we plead with God to accomplish his work through us, and enable us to let our light shine in Philadelphia so that people will see our good works and praise our Father in heaven. 

We live in a culture obsessed with productivity books. If you want to use time or money more wisely, there are endless resources available. None of this is a surprise. We all feel the demand on our resources, and we want to be more disciplined in how we approach life. There is great wisdom to be found in these books, but they only discipline our actions or at best our thoughts. When we receive discipline from our heavenly Father, we are enrolled in the school of Jesus Christ, and the Holy Spirit leads us into all truth. When we follow Christ’s curriculum, and our minds are renewed in view of God’s mercy, we are transformed. This discipline is not easy, but as the author to the Hebrews tells us, “the Lord disciplines the one he loves.” The ancient Greek word for discipline in this passage is Paideia. According to one dictionary, in secular usage the word Paideia refers to “the act of providing guidance for responsible living, or, the state of being brought up properly.” (BDAG)

If you are looking for spiritual discipline, true paideia which cares for your soul, we encourage you to join us Wednesdays, February 19, March 18, and April 15, 6-8 PM in 1710 Spruce St., Large Conference Room. On these nights Dr. Goligher will lead a reading group focused on Martin Bucer’s (1491-1551) work “Concerning the True Care of Souls.” Dr. Goligher’s reading group is a part of a larger network of groups hosted by the Paideia Center of Reformed Theological Seminary. “The Paideia Center‘s mission is to provide leaders and lay-people in the church with resources to grow in their understanding of theology, through the reading and discussion of classic texts. Participants grow in their knowledge and application of theology in both local reading groups and at its annual conference.”

Please register to hold your spot. 

One of my favorite parts of working in college ministry for Tenth is that there is no gap between Tenth College Fellowship (TCF) and the church where students are able to encounter and worship the living God. This kind of proximity between campus and worship is essential to the discipleship and growth of the students who are a part of our congregation and who are becoming true worshipers of the Father. According to Bob Kauflin in his book True Worshipers, everyone seeks what is important to them. The Father, according to Jesus in John 4, seeks true worshipers because our worship is important to him. If this is the case, our efforts must reflect this enormous truth. 

One of the most common New Testament metaphors that Jesus gives to us is that of food. Everyone has felt and then satiated hunger, and most everyone can remember the kind of thirst that causes an overwhelming desire for a drink. In the story of the Samaritan woman in John 4, Jesus uses this common experience to offer a lonely, searching Samaritan woman a diagnosis and cure for her emptiness. When they meet, Jesus begins the conversation by asking the woman for a drink of water. The discussion twists and turns as Jesus quickly uncovers something fundamental about this woman’s soul. She was thirsty for something she could not seem to find. The only way to quench that thirst and her sense of endless emptiness was to worship the Father in spirit and truth. 

When we worship the Father, an untold number of things happen within our hearts and souls. We are inescapably placed before the words of the living God of the universe when the Bible is read and the word is preached. We are dropped into a long, broad stream of Christians who have been singing praises to the Father for millennia. Our thoughts and desires are bent into shape as we confess our sin and pray together. But, in my mind, the main reason that Jesus offers the woman worship as the solution is because, when we worship the Father, we are doing what we were made to do as human beings; glorify and enjoy God for eternity. 

This is the reason that TCF places a major emphasis on bringing students to church. It is not so that they are spending Sunday morning in a pew rather than in bed. It is so that they can experience the only way to quench their soul-thirst. Their worship matters to the Father, and is vital for their souls. It is our prayer that the Lord would use TCF to draw many college students to Himself so that they will join the rest of God’s people one day as we worship and enjoy Him for all eternity. 

The universal church is a clear demonstration of God‘s sovereign power. Think about this for a moment.  People from all nations gather together on the Lord’s Day with the same purpose, to worship God. Though we have various expressions of worship around the world, the Holy Spirit has the sovereign power to keep us together in one mind, which is to give glory and honor to the giver and sustainer of our lives. Now what a great blessing we have at Tenth that every Sunday morning representatives from this universal church gather together to worship in Fellowship Hall. This is only possible through the power of the Holy Spirit who mobilizes his people for worship.

Conversations and great fellowship happen before the Internationals Worship starts. People catching up about how their week went, how their families and relatives back home are, updates on how God is at work in their lives; then the time for worship starts. It is hard to break this fellowship but everybody knows that the most important thing is about to happen: worship. Here people from many nations use one tongue, English, to sing praises to the Lord, to read the scripture in a responsive way, and to pray. God is praised in one language but you can hear many accents, which again is another testimony of God’s power bringing us together.  Prayer requests are taken in the middle of the service; then we pray in three languages, Spanish, Chinese, and English. The word of God is preached in English but with the unique flavor of the accent of the speaker. After benediction sweet fellowship continues and new friends are often taken by the congregants to local restaurants. 

In summary, this is a sample of the universal church worshiping at Tenth every Sunday. Anyone is invited; it is not worship for internationals but worship for the Lord and all are welcome. It is also a good opportunity for outreach as nonbelievers often visit us from other countries that are seeking for friendship and wanting to know more about Christianity.

The Internationals Worship service is a demonstration of God’s power bringing people together across cultures and language barriers. Soli Deo Gloria.

The twentieth century was unkind to classical Reformed theology. While theological conservatives often blame liberals for undermining traditional Protestant doctrines, the staunchest conservatives and the neo-Orthodox also revised several key doctrines. One such was the doctrine of natural revelation. In his otherwise thunderous “Nein!” to Emil Brunner’s defense of natural theology, Karl Barth granted that Brunner was right about the tradition: the Reformers and their successors believed that God revealed something of himself equally to all men via nature. But, Barth continued, to avoid veering into Roman Catholic territory, we must not merely “repeat the statements of Luther and Calvin” but make their claims “more pointed.”[1] Solus Christus—Christ alone—is not merely a soteriological principle, but an epistemological one. Apart from Christ, we can know nothing.[2] 

Likewise, the anti-Barth and anti-liberal theologian Cornelius Van Til ironically followed Barth in departing from classical Protestantism on this point: “We must begin our meditation upon any fact in the world in light of the Son of God.”[3] Thus, both Van Til and Barth departed from the classical tradition, and both were enormously influential in their respective circles (although Barth’s circle was admittedly much larger than Van Til’s).

In this context, J.V. Fesko’s Reforming Apologetics, a defense and retrieval of the classical tradition of Protestant natural theology for apologetic purposes, is both warranted and welcome. Fesko wishes to appropriate the older Protestant approach to the “book of nature,” which treats it as a real source of knowledge alongside the “book of Scripture.” In making his case, Fesko focuses his first two chapters on explaining the phrases “light of nature” and “common notions.” Fesko demonstrates that Protestant theologians and confessions have historically defended “common notions and their connection to the order of nature.”[4] Common notions are self-evident truths “written on the heart” of all men, which attest to the existence of God, grant a basic understanding of good and evil, and, according to some theologians, include such self-evident principles as the law of non-contradiction.[5] 

As Fesko points out, this basic position is ubiquitous among the Fathers, including St. Augustine and Boethius; the Medievals, including St. Thomas Aquinas; and early modern Protestants, including John Calvin, Philipp Melanchthon, Peter Martyr Vermigli, and Francis Turretin, among others. They all generally held that believers and unbelievers alike have the natural law engraved upon their hearts and that apart from grace, humanity rebels against this knowledge.[6] Put another way, the principles of common notions are self-evident and immutable, while the conclusions reached by fallen reason on the basis of such principles are often twisted by sin.[7] Helpfully, Fesko does not merely cite the Reformed tradition as the final word; he also briefly sketches out an exegetical case that the catholic and classical Protestant doctrine is correct.

Following his account of the Catholic tradition, Fesko devotes chapters to John Calvin (where his welcome reliance upon the stellar work of Richard A. Muller shines through) and Thomas Aquinas. After treading the path laid out by the greats of Christian history, Fesko leads us from the origins of historic worldview theory in the philosophy of the German idealists to its adoption by Cornelius Van Til. Fesko’s extended engagements with Van Til, and his decision to put Van Til into conversation with St. Thomas, constitutes one of the most important contributions of the book. What emerges from Fesko’s work is a nuanced, charitable, but ultimately critical portrait of Van Til’s natural theology.

For Van Til, all concepts exist within “worldviews.”[8] Worldviews are complete, internally coherent, and exhaustive systems of thought derived from “presuppositions.” There is, on this understanding, a Christian worldview, a Postmodern worldview, an Islamic worldview, and so forth. Crucially, for Van Til it is not possible to import concepts or ideas from another worldview into one’s own because such concepts inevitably carry with them elements of the rest of the worldview.[9] Because of this, worldviews are exclusive and in competition; a Christian cannot adopt any element of another worldview without adopting some of its anti-Christian dimensions. There are not, therefore, independent truths to which the Christian and non-Christian share access. Apologetics becomes possible not on the basis of a shared world—a shared, if limited, access to the same reality—but only by assuming (“presupposing”) a Christian worldview and demonstrating its superiority. Interestingly, however, Fesko also demonstrates that what Van Til takes with one hand he gives with the other: while fiercely critical of the classical defense of “common notions,” Van Til reintroduces the substance of this position using the novel phrase “common ground.”

Fesko concludes his book with a chapter demonstrating how the positions for which he advocates can assist Reformed Christians in the task of defending the faith and sharing the gospel. Importantly, Fesko does not advocate—nor, crucially, did the great catholic thinkers by whom he was inspired—using “autonomous reason” to prove the truths of Christianity; rather, in thoroughly Augustinian fashion, he argues that we should proceed by beginning with faith and then seeking understanding.

My criticisms of Fesko’s cogent and accessible book should be understood as quibbles rather than major concerns. First, while Fesko mentions Karl Barth a couple of times throughout the book, he does not engage in any depth with Barth or his disciples. This is understandable, given that Fesko appears to be aiming this book at a decidedly conservative audience, for whom Van Til looms larger. Nevertheless, this limits the book’s reach, since Barth’s attacks on natural theology have had a far greater impact on the broader world of Christian theology than Van Til’s. Second, at times, German idealism seems to function as something of a boogeyman for Fesko; although he does, on occasion, state that the issue is not German idealism itself, but Van Til’s pretensions to being purely “biblical,” in contrast to his predecessors, while borrowing heavily from philosophy.

In summation, Fesko has given us a timely exposition and defense of the classical Protestant approach to natural law. Although differing from its Medieval predecessor in certain important respects, he agrees with the Catholic tradition in rejecting the notions that faith is opposed to reason, that nature is (in itself) opposed to grace, that the so-called “Christian worldview” is opposed to other philosophies at every single point, and which upholds that all truth is God’s, no matter where it is found. While defending this position, Fesko also ably interprets Van Til, charitably pointing out the good in his thought, fairly critiquing the bad, and, along the way, demonstrating some of Van Til’s surprising continuities with St. Thomas’ method. Reforming Apologetics is an excellent primer on the Protestant tradition of natural theology, a worthy treatment of van Til’s thought, and a contribution to Reformed discourse, which will, I trust, bear good fruit in the Church. In a time when many are suspicious of creation's capacity to be, in Calvin’s words, the “theater of God’s glory," it is a welcome book indeed which calls our minds to the truth that God has made all things good. As the Psalmist writes, "Let the heaven and earth praise him, the seas, and every thing that moveth therein” (Psalm 69:34, KJV).

Hear from Dr. Fesko at this year's Worship Conference.  Learn more and register here.

[1] Emil Brunner, Natural Theology: Comprising Nature and Grace by Professor Dr. Emil Brunner and the Reply No! By Dr. Karl Barth, F First Edition Used edition (Eugene: Wipf & Stock Pub, 2002), 101.

[2] Barth’s position, as George Hunsinger has shown in his essay “The Yes Hidden in Barth’s No to Brunner,” is a bit more complicated than my simplified description lets on. For Barth, although we can know nothing of God apart from Christ, God’s self-revelation in Christ had a “diversity of aspects within itself.”  Thus, once our interpretation of nature has been chastened by God’s self-revelation in Christ, it again becomes a gift of Christ testifying to God. See George Hunsinger, Evangelical, Catholic, and Reformed: Essays on Barth and Other Themes (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Eerdmans, 2015).

[3] Cornelius Van Til, The Reformed Pastor & Modern Thought (Phillipsburg, N.J.: Presbyterian and Reformed, 1980), 196, as cited in Fesko, Reforming Apologetics (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2019).

[4] Fesko, Reforming Apologetics, 4.

[5] Fesko, Reforming Apologetics, 30-33.

[6] Fesko, Reforming Apologetics, 15-21.

[7] Fesko, Reforming Apologetics, 43.

[8] Fesko, Reforming Apologetics, 107.

[9] Fesko, Reforming Apologetics, 107.

Join us for the 2020 Worship Conference as we learn from Dr. John V. Fesko, Professor of Systematic and Historical Theology at Reformed Theological Seminary. Dr. Fesko will guide our thoughts as we consider how the worship of God should motivate our apologetic. In addition to Dr. Fesko’s lecture, we’ll have workshops on prayer, Biblical exposition, and the sacraments. Dinner will be served Friday evening and light refreshments will be served Saturday morning.

Find more details and register here.

How does Christmas motivate you? How does it shape your calendar during the final weeks of the year?  Is it a time filled with activity, or a time for you to stay out of the fray? Each year when Christmas is on the horizon, we anticipate the emotions which come with the season. We see Christmas in our future, and what we foresee Christmas being like determines much of what we do.

As human beings we tend to be motivated by perceived outcomes, whether positive or negative. If an exciting outcome is possible, we can work tirelessly towards that end. Conversely, if we expect something painful might occur, we can expend huge amounts of energy worrying, doing preventive maintenance, or holding our emotional breath until it passes. Some see Christmas as a time of celebration, so calendars are filled with exciting activities. For others, Christmastime opens wounds from the past, so the activities become places to hide or things to avoid altogether. Perceived outcomes shape desire and desire motivates. We pursue most strenuously that which we most desire.

According to the Bible, the Christian life is like this, but with a twist: we are to motivate ourselves according to God’s desired outcomes, not our own. We are to make his will our desire. Thus we pray, “Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.” Of all the saints we could point to in Scripture, perhaps no one exemplifies this more than the Virgin Mary. When the angel Gabriel comes to her explaining she will be the mother of Jesus, she says, “Behold, I am the servant of the Lord; let it be to me according to your word” (Luke 1:38).

What did the angel tell Mary about her future, which motivated her to lay aside her dreams and live her life according to God’s priorities? The answer is Gabriel did not tell Mary very much about her future, but instead revealed who Jesus will be: “He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High. And the Lord God will give to him the throne of his father David, and he will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and of his kingdom there will be no end” (Luke 1:32-33). She saw that having this baby would not only change her life but the future of everyone who has ever lived. We see this later in the same chapter of Luke where Mary says, “My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior, for he has looked on the humble estate of his servant. For behold, from now on all generations will call me blessed; for he who is mighty has done great things for me, and holy is his name. And his mercy is for those who fear him from generation to generation” (Luke 1:46-50, emphasis added). Seeing her life as part of God’s great plan did not result in fear, worry, or regret but in worship and rejoicing. She realized what God had planned was the best plan for her and for the world. For this reason, she could rejoice. Mary was not alone in this kind of response. The shepherds, the Magi, Simeon, and Anna, all of these were given a glimpse of who Jesus is, and they responded in worship.

How does hearing about Jesus motivate you? What fills your schedule this Christmas season, or the year 2020 for that matter? Have you given priority to God’s purposes and laid aside your own, trusting that the best will come of it? Can you rejoice in the plan of salvation that God has for the world in the gospel of Jesus Christ, because you see that plan for you as well?

The Lessons & Carols services at Tenth are intended to motivate us to make Jesus our priority this Christmas season and throughout the year. In these services God’s plan of salvation through Christ will be set before us in the reading of the Scripture lessons and a homily by Dr. Goligher, and we will have opportunity to respond in love and praise together as we sing carols and hear the choir sing anthems proclaiming the good news of Jesus Christ. O come, let us adore him, Venite Adoremus, Christ the Lord.

The story of Esperanza Health Center (EHC) is a story of God’s faithfulness, and Tenth Church has been a vital part of this story. Since 2001, Tenth has supported Esperanza for a total of $177,646. The mission of EHC is fulfilled in cooperation with the church and others—this is unchanged in over 30 years of service. No patient is turned away because of inability to pay, and thousands of patients are either uninsured or underinsured. Each patient is cared for with compassion and excellence that reflects Christ’s love for them.

Early Years: The Vision for Christian Healthcare in Philadelphia

With a burden to reach out to the communities of North Philadelphia in the early 1980s, Dr. Carolyn Klaus participated in evangelism teams with her church that met with, prayed for, shared the Bible, and served neighbors in practical ways. When Dr. Klaus stepped in for a neighborhood medical practice that had lost its only doctor, she grappled with how to address her patients’ mental health and economic needs. She connected many of them to the evangelism teams and made an interesting discovery:  these patients recovered faster than patients who were not involved with them! She was on to something. 

"We had stumbled upon a model of healthcare I'd never done before,” Klaus said. "I realized I was doing whole person medicine. It wasn't just all taking place in the office." She asked the question, “’What would healthcare be like in our present culture if God’s will were being done?’ I like to call this kingdom health care:  a gospel-centered, compassionate, whole-person approach that brings hope (esperanza in Spanish) into the lives of people desperate for it.”

The First Decade: The Vision Unfolds

With abiding faith, the vision and calling to community-based Christian healthcare in North Philadelphia was born at last. God opened the doors of Esperanza on June 15, 1989. "When Esperanza first started, none of us had any idea that we'd even survive, let alone prosper for 30 years. If I had known all that would be involved with getting involved with Esperanza, I don't know if I would have had the courage to start. Thank God I didn't know. We blindly went forward, trusting, one step at a time."

Rev. Bonnie Camarda, also part of the evangelism teams, recalls, “In the early days, we accepted everyone. It didn’t matter who you were. If you came to the clinic, you were treated with respect, with love, and were given a message that you were important, because God was the one that was ruling us.”

The Second Decade: The Vision Grows

Esperanza continued to grow in faith and impact. In 2000, it outgrew the original space and moved into the basement level of the former Parkview Hospital in the Juniata neighborhood. Dr. Bryan Hollinger, one of Esperanza’s long-time physicians and current Medical Director, pulled together the “paper stones of remembrance” that staff posted on rolled paper years ago to chronicle specific ways God had provided for Esperanza. With the help of his family, he reconstructed it into a beautiful 25 foot-long “Wall of Faithfulness” that was framed and erected in the entryway of the new location. Despite improved business practices and achieving prestigious recognition for quality healthcare, financial challenges seemed unsurmountable. On the brink of closing, staff reserved a day to praise God for his faithfulness and pray for future provision. At the end of this time of prayer and praise, a voicemail message was played stating that overdue medical reimbursements from the state had been wired into Esperanza’s account that day! Current Executive Director Susan Post joined the team in 2005; and in 2006 God provided a new satellite site across the street from the original location on North 5th Street where it all began. In 2007 Esperanza moved into leased space in Kensington and continued to operate at this site for over 10 years.

Decade Three: The Vision Is Established

In late 2009, Esperanza received a federal grant to build a state-of-the-art health and wellness center in the Hunting Park community. Esperanza Health Center now employs over 215 employees and in 2019—Esperanza’s 30th year—over 14,000 patients are served per year through all sites. In 2016 the former Kensington Trust Company bank building was purchased and transformed into EHC’s new Kensington Health Center, which opened to patients on September 30, 2019. Says Dr. Klaus, "I think everyone who knew us back when we started is amazed at what Esperanza is now—it is a work of God." Susan Post affirms this: "We still operate the same way Dr. Klaus operated at the beginning, which is, bringing God's Kingdom come here on earth, and caring about patients in the way that Jesus cared about them!"

Born in the shadow of New York City, David Apple never knew life apart from urban America. As the grandson of Russian immigrants, he quickly learned as a child that life in Patterson, New Jersey, was not for the faint of heart. His high school days at Eastside High School proved to be a challenge from the start. Apple was a bookish sort of young man—always interested in reading and writing—and not so much in the rough scenes that greeted him every day as a student at a school that would ultimately become famous. Eastside High School was the place where Principal Joe Clark turned around a failing school as was chronicled in the hit movie, Lean on Me.

David Apple was nothing if not serious. The experiences of poverty and loss that dotted the landscape of his early life caused him no small amount of angst as he contemplated the existence of God in the face of suffering. It was always hard to reconcile the scenes of suffering all around him with the idea of a good God who was in control of a world that seemed to him to be just the opposite. In a small Christian Reformed Church plant, he first heard the words of the Bible being read to him. Immediately, he began to read the Bible for himself and was converted as a high school student.

As he walked on the campus of Calvin College in Grand Rapids, MI, his world grew to include research about human psychology, sociology, and the way people responded to trauma and pain in their lives. Quite naturally, after graduation from Calvin, he worked as a social worker and later came back to New Jersey to work for Governor Richard J. Hughes in a new program of crisis intervention. Apple helped to establish centers of help in different cities across New Jersey, and these experiences coupled, with serving in the diaconate of the church he attended, began to shape him and the future ministry he would build.

His world crashed when, after marrying at the age of 21, his wife of six years abandoned the family, leaving him with two small children and one adopted child. At 27, David Apple was alone in a large and brutal city and did not know what to do. He made his way back home to take over his father’s small and struggling printing business. It was during his work of teaching the way to print that he met Kate—the woman who would later marry him.

Soon after his 32nd birthday, his life was forever changed. One evening a drunk driver hit his car, and he was seriously injured. Barely able to stand or walk in the aftermath of the accident, he was disabled for almost four years. As he lay in bed, he would pray and ask God why his life had turned out as it had. Sorrow after sorrow, with grief as his constant companion, was something that daily haunted his heart. He knew the answers for his questions were found in the Bible, and he began to read through the Bible again—from start to finish—slowly as his body attempted to heal. He read of Joseph, Job, Hosea, and learned again the Christian life is one of suffering and (often) tragedy. “I began to understand the work and ways of God in new ways as I prayed to be used of God in a way that would impact others who suffered,” stated Apple.

He later enrolled in a biblical counseling course at a Messianic Synagogue in Brooklyn, and it was here he soon found his calling. Captivated by helping others in counseling, he and Kate made their way to the Christian Counseling and Educational Foundation in 1986 to study with their faculty. He later enrolled in Westminster Theological Seminary and completed his theological degree in counseling, having studied with professors who helped him better understand the primacy of Holy Scripture and its applications through the church to the world.

“After graduation, I applied to seventeen different ministry opportunities around the country,” he said. “Tenth Presbyterian Church was the eighteenth, and I was shocked when Dr. James Montgomery Boice talked with me about serving on the staff.” Initially, Apple did not want to come to Tenth, fearing that a Presbyterian church could not have a credible urban ministry. “Was I ever wrong,” Apple says as he remembers the work of Dr. Boice.

“I began my ministry here on Jim Boice’s 50th birthday—September 7, 1988,” he said. “I found myself in a small office with a Xerox computer and all the 8 inch disks I wanted to begin to form a mercy ministry.” Dr. Boice’s counsel to him? “Trust God, pray, and get to the work.”

Through the years, he has sought to organize a ministry of mercy to the poor and needy in terms of welcoming strangers into a family. “Scripture is very clear about welcoming strangers, and the Old Testament is filled with the call to care for the poor and feed the hungry—to care for people with critical needs of life,” Apple says. The work of mercy is not to be cut off from the preaching ministry of a local church.

“Jim Boice was the greatest gift God gave me because he helped me to read the Bible better; he prayed for me; and he helped me build the ministry. Over 31 years of ministry here, I have seen people rescued from sin. I have seen people transformed by the power of the gospel to become powerful witnesses of Jesus Christ in this world,” he said.

“Idolatry is at the heart of addiction,” he states. “People replace the truth of God with a lie—just as the book of Romans states. Our challenge as a church will always be to not be shocked or disgusted by the pain of sin, but to be willing to serve others by involving ourselves in their lives as we point them to the only one who can really help them—the Lord Jesus Christ himself.”

David Apple will retire from the Tenth staff at the end of 2019. As he reflects on his time at Tenth he remembers what he learned when he first began more than three decades ago: “I have learned to seek his righteousness through Christ Jesus and know that we are not our own, but we are bought with a price. Our greatest honor is to serve him joyfully and willingly while we are here on earth until that moment we leave this earth to join Christ in that place where sorrow will be no more.”

Mention of the Protestant Reformation still evokes passion 502 years after Martin Luther nailed 95 statements to the church door in Wittenburg, Germany. Luther’s “theses,” as they are commonly known, begin with a call to an ongoing personal repentance in the life of every true Christian and end with a statement of assurance grounding believers in the knowledge that “through many tribulations” they will enter the kingdom of their God.

Ever a controversial figure, Martin Luther still receives mixed reviews about his role and place in history. Many Roman Catholic scholars still view him as a crazed monk intent only on self-promotion and credit him with the destruction of the one true church of Jesus Christ. Some Germans hail him as an earlier version of the American president George Washington, who is affectionately known as the “father of our country.” During the days of the Nazi regime, Luther was touted as a precursor to Hitler as his writings were ransacked in search of phrases which would provide theological ammunition for the annihilation of Jews.

To be sure, Luther was a man of his time, as many of his offensive statements about Jews reveal. Yet, most historians agree that he was a man endowed with a capacity for getting to the heart of issues through his unusual ability to read, comprehend and communicate the message of the Bible to people who had little or no knowledge of Latin (the language of the Roman Catholic mass during his day). His formal statements about the doctrine of justification were the product of both his reading of the Bible in the original languages and his aggressive pursuit of the iustitia Dei (the justice of God).

For many years Luther confessed that he hated God because the absolute justice of God struck terror in his soul. After years of searching out ways to merit the grace of God through better performance of various ministerial duties as a monk (and later a professor of theology), he confessed that he “did not love” but actually “fumed against God” because of his righteous standard of meting out justice against sinners.

In theologian Timothy George’s classic work, The Theology of the Reformers, George refutes the idea that Luther’s understanding of justification by faith came through “one shattering insight.” Rather, George states that through careful study and prayer, Luther’s “doctrine developed over a period of years, being influenced by various strands of late medieval thought and undergoing several fundamental shifts.” As he continued to study the Apostle Paul’s letter to the Romans, Luther testifies that his understanding became clearer when he saw that “the justice of God meant that justice by which the just man lives through God’s gift, namely by faith.” In a now famous passage of Luther’s writing on justification by faith alone, he stated that “the justice of God is revealed by the gospel, a passive justice with which the merciful God justifies us by faith, as it is written: ‘He who through faith is just shall live.’ Here I felt that I was altogether born again and had entered paradise itself through open gates.”

Luther held that the Bible and the Bible alone was the only authority for the church. It was his adherence to sola scriptura (scripture alone) that framed his understanding of what he termed the “alien righteousness” of God given to sinners on the merits of Jesus’ victory on the cross. By faith alone, sinners were declared righteous as they personally trusted the work of Christ to grant them a right standing before God. So important was this doctrine to Luther that he boldly stated that an error here could easily cause the church to fail in her work on the earth.

Believing that justification by faith alone is “the article by which the church stands or falls,” he was careful to maintain that sinners were not immediately made perfect as a result of God’s declaration of them as righteous through Christ. Rather, they were simul iustus et peccator (at once righteous and a sinner) in their fallen condition as sinners in this life. Christians were now fully accepted before God on the merits of Jesus and were supernaturally recreated by the power of the Holy Spirit as new creatures in Jesus Christ with a capacity to resist sin and grow in the grace and knowledge of Christ.

Luther’s doctrine of justification was so radical that it shattered the entire theological superstructure of the Roman Catholic Church. The entire sacramental system on which the Roman Catholic mass was built was rendered powerless to make a man or woman right before God. The great doctrines rediscovered by Luther—grace alone by faith alone in Christ alone to the glory of God alone—became the foundation of a reformation carried along, in his estimation, by the power of the Word of God alone. For Luther, October 31, 1517, did not simply spark a reformation in Wittenburg. It was the culmination of a bold confession that he “simply taught, preached and wrote God’s Word. Luther “did nothing. The Word did it all.”

When Neil White reported to prison on May 3, 1993 after being convicted of bank fraud, he did not realize that Carville, Louisiana, not only housed a penal colony, but also the nation’s only remaining leper colony. Those suffering from Hansen’s disease (the formal name for leprosy) lived their lives in seclusion alongside prisoners—many of whom were convicted of white-collar crime. Before stealing almost $750,000 from several banks, White’s dream was to create a publishing empire that would influence people at the highest levels of American society.

Prior to his felony conviction, Neil and Linda White resembled a power couple from Oxford, Mississippi He was as handsome as she was beautiful. Their two children seemed to make the picture perfect in the eyes of all who observed them. They even attended church from time to time. White was finally caught, convicted and sentenced to prison. In the Sanctuary of Outcasts is his memoir of time among the sinful and sorrowing in Carville’s prison. He recounts his experiences as lepers and prisoners shared common space. The sheer force of daily interaction with people who were so seriously ill made for many unsettling and sobering experiences.

For the lepers, their lives showed outward decay from a disease that gradually eliminated their ability to experience pain and ultimately reduced them to nothing prior to their death. The prisoners—though physically healthy—revealed decay of a different sort. While their skin and nerves were not open sores, the rottenness of sin’s power had eaten away at their conscience to the point that they had been taken down to life’s dungeon where there was little to do but think about the series of events which landed them there.

On his first day in prison, White met a woman by the name of Ella Bounds. Her life had been a series of dramatic defeats, beginning when she entered elementary school in Abita Springs, Louisiana. When it was discovered she had contracted Hansen’s disease, Bounds was taken by force and left at Carville. Beginning in 1926, she lived among the lepers and watched as prisoners came and went. The sad saga of Bounds’ life was evident as she sat in her wheelchair with no legs—a result of the ravages of leprosy. Yet she constantly spoke of God’s power to comfort the afflicted. In a small chapel where the lepers and prisoners would gather together for worship, everyone seemed diseased in different ways.

When White first went into the chapel, he remembered that the last time he had gone to church he appeared in a Brooks Brothers suit and a $300 pair of shoes. On this day, he was clothed in institutional green prison garb, hearing about the glory of God for the first time. His experience in that small chapel radically impacted his thinking about God and the world. Secluded from the rich and powerful of the world, everyone present on that day had a powerful sense that they were “broken and chipped and cracked.”

By his own admission, White has never experienced a conversion to Jesus Christ. Yet, he has experienced the powerful dynamic that comes when brutal honesty meets the gospel. When this happens, the Ella Boundses of the world find hope and joy in Jesus Christ and him alone. Others walk away empty-handed.

In like manner, the local church should be a place where the power of the gospel confronts the catastrophe that is the human experience. In that encounter, the sheer force of brutal honesty should meet the power of hope in a God who freely justifies sinners at great cost in the death of Jesus. Sin’s effects in a fallen world are devastating to the human body and the human mind as Satanic power holds captive legions of individuals dead in trespasses and sins as they follow the prince of the power of the air and are by nature marked out as recipients of God’s wrath (Ephesians 2:1-3).

The tragedy is that so many churches resemble places where people wear fine suits and secretly live a double life rather than a hospital chapel where spiritual lepers come to worship a God who is their only hope both in life and in death. That this is often the case should raise questions as to whether much of modern Christian ministry serves as a prison for wealthy and intelligent convicts or a hospital for lepers who find refuge in the gospel of a peasant king who was raised from the dead.

“God, be merciful to me, a sinner,” Luke 18:13.

We are reminded of the relational realities for the early church, and the importance placed on time together, as an integral aspect of the fellowship of believers.  More specifically, Luke described in Acts 2, “…they devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers.”  Well, when we think of “breaking of bread”, we know and embrace the vital sacrament of the Lord’s Supper and how the Jesus instituted that for our behalf to remember Him, His sacrifice, and to bring us, His children, as a means of grace, in communion and unity with our Triune God. 

However, instituting the Lord’s Supper was also in the context of sharing a meal together.   The Scriptures are filled with examples of many different banquets and feasts. For God’s chosen people, meals were big events. And, while the cooks probably orchestrated some great, tasty meals, they were events that could last for hours (like a Metro Parish picnic!), a time when you could invite people to eat with you (like a Metro parish picnic!), including people you may not know personally (like a Metro Parish picnic!).  The Lord impressed upon His people then, and now, of the importance of hospitality. The purpose was to have deep fellowship with one another and to experience the presence of God amongst His people.  The early Church had that cultural context and knowledge (and practical sense) that they would grow closer together while sharing meals, as our families do (sometimes in spite of soccer practice or piano lessons).  Again, back to the spiritual foundation of our “breaking bread”, on the night before Jesus was betrayed, He sat with His best friends and He broke bread with them.  Best of all, when we meet in worship, in teaching, and in fellowship, even sharing a meal together, we are promised of the Lord’s presence with us (“For where two or three are gathered in my name, there am I in the midst of you” Matthew 18:20).  

I hope to see my Metro Parish family (and invite your friends!), as we share a meal together, devoted to one other in fellowship, in the Lord’s presence, with food, fun, and plenty of burgers, plus!  Learn more and RSVP here. 

I pulled my car to the front of the church building and saw that the police had already arrived. Nick stood on the sidewalk talking to the pastor, both looking at Nick’s car with its window broken, shattered glass filling the driver’s seat, sidewalk and curb. Nick, a Philadelphia medical student and participant in the Summer Medical Institute (SMI), had parked his car beside the church the night before, and it had been broken into and his spare tire and jack stolen.

SMI, an annual evangelistic medical outreach that was held June 22-July 13, is a joint project of Medical Campus Outreach (MCO) and Esperanza Health Center, a local Christian clinic. This year it involved 16 Christian health care students and over 40 rotating volunteer “faculty” (Christian medical professionals). They provided free door-to-door health screens and medical referrals in Kensington, and participants shared the love of Christ through conversation and prayer with those they met.  The students lived in the community, attended local churches, worked with interpreters for Spanish-speaking households and referred those who were interested to three local church partners for follow-up. 

I was grieved when I saw the broken window. To my knowledge, we had never had this happen during 27 years of SMI’s existence. Several questions ran through my mind: who had done this? How soon could we fix it? A camera captured video of the crime, but the young man’s identity was unknown. As the morning unfolded, however, we saw the initially jarring situation become whole. Victor, a church member, quickly brought out a vacuum and broom and cleaned up the glass. A Christian physician working with us volunteered to cover the cost of the insurance deductible for MCO, which had volunteered to cover it for Nick. A local auto glass shop was able to fix the window that same day. Nick was struck by the kindness of so many, including the SMI participants who prayed for him and the man who had committed the crime. “I’m glad that no one was hurt and the damage was just to things that could be fixed,” he said.

The incident ended well for Nick, buoyed by God’s provision and encouragement from the other believers around him, but I couldn’t help pondering the contrast of the everyday realities in Kensington, which are not so easily fixed. For many years Kensington has been ravaged by the opioid epidemic, and the local churches face the challenges of continuing their regular ministry while caring for the wounds and the wounded in their community.

One church partner has many ministries to those on the streets, but at the same time has to contend with keeping the addicts from camping out and getting high in front of their building, which prevents neighborhood children from coming to their daytime programs. Another congregation has had to be vigilant about keeping the sidewalk behind the church clear of human feces, which is a side issue of homelessness or addiction withdrawal.

During SMI the students studied the book of Galatians, where Paul writes, “You were called to freedom, brothers. Only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for the flesh, but through love serve one another. For the whole law is fulfilled in one word: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself’.” The students were able to see firsthand how many faithful believers and churches in the community serve as salt and light to reach people for God. One church gladly welcomed strangers who had been invited by the SMI students to a weeknight potluck the church hosted.  Students met an Esperanza staff member who had taken in a young mother and her baby and was helping her get on her feet. Members of our team helped escort an addict seeking help to a church that could direct him to a rehab program and support services. And they had daily opportunities to share their faith as they provided health screens and education to the community. “SMI has given me the confidence to love and serve my future patients boldly as a follower of Jesus,” said Tiffany, a medical student from Maryland.

Praise God for the work accomplished, detailed below:

SMI students, faculty and interpreters knocked on 2,488 doors

• 551 individuals received screens
• 493 blood pressure screens were performed
• 446 blood glucose screens were performed
• 143 new positives for hypertension were indicated
• 77 new positives for diabetes were indicated
• 32 HIV tests were performed
• 565 people were prayed with and 13 prayed to receive Christ 
• 35 asked to receive spiritual follow-up from a church partner

We are exceedingly grateful to all of the faculty, volunteers, and those who prayed for and financially supported SMI, making it possible for our participants to learn lifelong lessons on centering their identity in Christ and integrating their faith and career. While we may never know who broke into Nick’s car, we are reminded to pray for the young man, because Christ is able to redeem him from his sin, just as he has redeemed us from ours.

The James Montgomery Boice Center for Christian Studies exists to provide theological resources for the church.  Dr. Boice was our senior pastor from 1968 until his death in 2000.  The Boice Center continues his legacy through scholarly engagement by serving an important role for Christian faith: making the fruit of scholarship accessible and applicable to members of the church.

The mission of the Center is to:

• Promote the development of the Christian mind,
• Offer a coherent defense of the gospel to people in all walks of life,
• Educate and equip Tenth members and Christians in the City to engage contemporary issues for the sake of being witnesses for the Gospel,
• Encourage scholarship in various academic disciplines.

The Center will have also a particular emphasis on serving the residents of Center City Philadelphia and local college students by providing a place for non-Christians to genuinely explore the Christian faith and become acquainted with Tenth. With these goals in mind, we encourage you to attend our next Boice Center event this Friday, September 13, from 6:30-8pm. Our guest speaker, Dr. Brad Littlejohn, will present a lecture titled “What should Christians think about religious liberty in America?”

We believe this topic is especially relevant since we are living through a time when one of the most precious of our American liberties, religious freedom, seems to be under increasing attack. In haste to rush to its defense, many Christians have forgotten the historical, philosophical, and theological basis of this freedom, and have taken refuge in a dead-end philosophy of universal human rights. In this Boice Center lecture, Reformation scholar and Christian ethicist Dr. Brad Littlejohn will tell the story of how the Reformation's struggle for liberty against papal tyranny was the crucible in which modern religious liberty was formed. Along the way, he will challenge the individualistic categories in which we have come to think of religious freedom, both within and without the church.

Each year as we celebrate Easter, the Global Outreach Commission seeks out beneficiaries for the annual Easter Sacrificial Offering (ESO). This year we’ve partnered with seven ministries that ease the sufferings of others and faithfully proclaim the gospel around the world. As a result of the generous contributions made by the congregation, we’re pleased to announce that the ESO collected just over $87,000.  This amount will directly fund the work of our partners as they seek to make Christ’s name known around the world.  For information on how each partner will use the funds, please see below.

Forgotten Voices International

Forgotten Voices International is an organization that equips local churches to meet the physical and spiritual needs of children orphaned by AIDS in their communities. The organization has partnered with nearly 100 churches in Zimbabwe, Zambia, and Malawi and is currently on pace to serve more than 15,000 children and their caregivers this year. Our gift of $16,500 will enable Forgotten Voices to continue their ministry and help them attain their goal of serving as many as 20,000 children and their caregivers by next year.

Integration House

The Integration House is an initiative of the Exarcheia Church in Athens, Greece. It offers aid to those who arrived in Greece during the refugee crisis of 2015. They provide the occupants with housing, assist in job and education placement, and assist the families in finding low-cost apartments. Our gift of $12,000 will allow them to fully renovate and furnish one new bedroom.

Merkinch Church Plant

The Merkinch church plant is in the city of Inverness, a region that is among the most deprived in Scotland. Our partners have set out to establish a church that engages the gospel and serves the community. Our gift of $7,000 will allow them to continue making disciples through mission and evangelism.

Rock Spring Presbyterian Church

Rock Spring Presbyterian Church was planted in Monrovia, Liberia, through the teaching, encouragement, and financial support of our congregation. After renting a facility for many years, Tenth helped Rock Spring acquire a property on which a foundation and walls have been built. Our gift of $7,000 will aid in the completion of the building, with the hope that they’ll be able to use the new building later this year.

Sight for Souls

Sight for Souls is transforming the lives of communities in Ethiopia through the gift of sight. Started by Tenth members John and Lori Kempen and motivated by the love and example of the Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, Sight for Souls seeks to alleviate blindness through sustainable programs in the areas with the greatest need. Our gift of $15,000 will allow Sight for Souls to continue providing for the spiritual and emotional needs of patients and their families affected by blindness in the developing world.

SIM Galmi Hospital

Since 1950, the SIM Galmi Hospital has been an oasis in the desert. Located on the south edge of the Sahara Desert in Niger, West Africa, this 180-bed hospital provides compassionate care to Nigerians from all walks of life and serves as a training center for surgical residents from several African countries. Galmi’s outpatient and HIV clinics serve up to 300 men, women, and children daily, each of whom hears the message of the gospel through educational films and their interactions with hospital staff. Our gift of $20,000 will help them do major structural improvements and make new additions to their facility.

Widows and Orphans in Africa

Our partner leads a ministry focused on helping widows and orphans recover from tremendous hardship and loss. The ministry helps the women and children learn new skills and re-establish themselves by providing food, schooling, and job training. Our gift of $10,000 will supply these widows and orphans with food, sewing machines, and schooling.

Birthed in adversity when the Roman Empire was at its zenith, a fledging group of Jews surfaced near the time of the Jewish feast of Pentecost in Jerusalem. The Christian church emerged as a visible community of members who confessed the eternal Lordship of a resurrected Galilean executed at Golgotha a mere three days before he was recognized alive in the city of his death. Led by peasants turned Apostles who were informed by the writings of ancient Prophets, these people were gathered together as a new Israel in one place at one time for one purpose: the worship of Jesus.

From one assembly, other churches were begun first out of synagogues where believing Jews joined with Gentiles in a new type of community where ethnicity no longer defined the boundaries of association. Their identity determined their activity in ways that facilitated an ongoing relationship with each other as determined by the words of Jesus through the written instruction of his Apostles. Thus, Apostolic doctrine directed Apostolic practices in the fledging congregations that soon would spread all over the world.

How this was accomplished is not a matter of mystery. It was no accident. A defined and observable pattern of instruction, engagement, and management was realized among the early churches that has largely been ignored by the Christian church of the 21st century. Modern American business practices have bonded with various biblical concepts (normally proof texts taken out of context) to create an entity resembling a hybrid model the Apostles of Acts 2:42-47 would not recognize.

Many modern churches now face a leadership crisis because most church growth consultants (far too few of them pastors of local churches) lack a sufficient biblical theology of leadership training to navigate the cultural and technological shifts now challenging congregations. Phil A. Newton’s, The Mentoring Church: How Pastors and Congregations Cultivate Leaders is an antidote to the largely biblically vacuous literature of leadership resources for local congregations.

Influenced by his own experience of being “sixteen, called, and clueless,” Newton first begins to reveal just how widespread the problem is among entire denominations. Based on his research, most modular courses designed to help train future leaders are ineffective precisely because they ignore the very people they are designed to help–local churches. “Denominational protocols” absent a robust ecclesial vision of exactly how leaders are to be recognized, trained, and supported will result in “merely multiplying churches” that fail “to answer the need for effective Great Commission churches.”

Lest there be any doubt as to what a “Great Commission” church might be and how it is to function in the world, Newton supplies detailed research from Holy Scripture listing the priorities of a local church and the “organic leadership development” that flows from attention to and obedience of the Bible. Churches must first preach doctrinal sermons, “raise membership standards, practice church discipline, maintain doctrinal fidelity, embrace a missional mindset, and model Christian community.” Cultural contextualization need not result in doctrinal accommodation, but the latter will eclipse the former if pastoral service in churches does not “take seriously the call of Jesus” to a “deliberate approach to training and equipping the leaders” of a congregation.

This book is not a “Harvard Business School meets the local church” sort of work. Case studies do not precede or ignore biblical exegesis. The term, “mentor,” is itself a derivative of the words “to train.” Newton shows that when compared with other institutions whose future depends on the training of future leaders, the local church is often woefully deficient. The balance between academic training and practical experiences of application where mastery of academics drives and supports critical execution of pastoral leadership, an obvious dichotomy emerges. The theological seminary and the local church are often inordinately separated – even divided and absent one from the other. Too often promising pastors and elders are simply “sent to seminary” in hopes they will emerge as dynamic Christian leaders for local congregations. This is not the method of the Bible’s own vision for the training of ministers.

Newton offers a helpful model where the academy is “best suited to expand on the theoretical,” but “the local church brings theory into applications and experience.” He calls for a partnership in aspects of training “between academy and church” where both do “what they do best to train leaders.” Helpful contemporary models appear as case studies detailing a step by step analysis of exactly how such a partnership might work for future pastors and church leaders. As an example of how such an arrangement might work, Newton states:

Trainees also need to receive assignments from their mentors. Pastors and elders can involve trainees in various aspects of pastoral ministry, giving them guidance in fulfilling their responsibilities, while offering feedback and critique on their response. They can assign reading related to ecclesiology and pastoral ministry, followed by discussion of the reading in order to clarify and layer a better understanding of life in the local church.

To his credit, Newton does not only provide modern examples of leadership development, he draws on leaders in the 16th through the early 20th centuries when churches were often more effective in their ministries, outreach, and planting efforts than modern churches with all the advantages technology and the information age provide. Philip Jacob Spener, John Gano, Thomas Ustick (Gano’s protégé who served as the dynamic pastor of the historic First Baptist Church in Philadelphia at the time of the American founding), Charles Haddon Spurgeon, and even Dietrich Bonhoeffer with his emphasis on “life together” all combine for a holistic vision of mentoring in the context of a local church.

Essential to Newton’s mentoring model is a healthy congregation. Future leaders are not to view congregations as a separate entity void of their personal involvement in the lives of those they serve. Moreover, he believes the local congregation is the ideal location from which future leaders would initially emerge. The business school model (all too easily practiced by many seminaries) where a trained outsider armed with the latest fads of marketing, financial modeling, and administrative prowess descend on an unsuspecting congregation is the very reason many pastors experience great difficulty in their ministries. “The congregation must be involved,” he writes or the “materials without mentoring” model of ministry based on the research of missiologist D. Michael Crow creates the illusion of pastors “who think they’ve got it when they really haven’t.”

Newton’s greatest strength as a thinker and writer is the critical skill of closing gaps of understanding opened by time. Too often, the modern Christian does not understand the world of ancient Rome where the early church first flourished. For this reason, the Bible is not often studied as a model for church government let alone leadership training for the modern era. Such subjects seemingly have no connection one with the other. Newton’s work is a holistic work fusing academic and theological rubrics far too long separated. It is a work sorely needed in the literature of theological training. Congregations and seminaries should read and heed.

Have you ever listened to a young child talk about their world? A child sees the world with wonder and anticipation. They grasp onto small details and celebrate both the new and the familiar. Their brains work like sponges soaking up new information. They can observe and enjoy the world with eagerness and freedom when they have someone willing to guide them.

Wide Open World, or WOW, is a ministry of Tenth that taps into this young eagerness and curiosity. Each Sunday evening during the summer, children are offered a guided tour as they explore their world on a global level. Children explore faraway countries through crafts, activities, songs, books, and biographies. WOW provides vehicles for children to travel to far off lands and learn about the cultural diversity of God’s people. Through a multi-sensory adventure, children are introduced to people and places different from what they already know.

Beyond teaching children about different countries and cultures, WOW stirs children to understand the world’s desperate need for God. Each year, WOW’s passport program serves as a way for children to engage with a global need. By completing certain tasks, such as praying for Tenth’s global partners, memorizing scripture, trying international food, doing crafts related to other countries, or reading missionary biographies, children can earn passport stamps. Each passport stamp is matched monetarily by members of the congregation to fund projects around the world. Through this program, Tenth’s children have earned thousands of dollars to help refugees, orphans, the sick, and poor. They helped buy an oven for orphans in Colombia, pews for an international church plant, coffee hour supplies for a refugee church in Greece, and much more.

WOW’s passport program encourages families to continue their learning and exploration during the week at home. In many cases, the entire family gets involved. One of my favorite memories of WOW as a child was having Tenth partners over for dinner. I loved listening to them tell my parents stories and talk about their experiences. I also enjoyed playing with their kids! WOW still serves as a strong bond between my family and Tenth’s partners.

Hosting Tenth’s global partners is one of WOW’s greatest privileges. Through pictures, stories, and prayer requests, children learn about the countries our partners serve in, the people they work with, and the needs they encounter. They also hear about the incredible power of the gospel to work in these situations. Children are encouraged to pray with and for our partners and consider how they can go and share the gospel too.

“Jesus said, ‘Let the little children come to me and do not hinder them, for to such belongs the kingdom of heaven’” (Matthew 19:14). WOW seeks to encourage and equip the littlest of Tenth’s kingdom-bearers by introducing them to the world so desperately in need of their Savior and telling them stories of his wonderous love and provision.

WOW begins on June 2. Contact Julia for more information at juliap@tenth.org.

When a phone rings at 1:30 AM in the morning, the news is seldom good. The voice on the other end of the line spoke in official terms, “Is your brother’s name Michael?” I responded with a sheepish reply that yes, I had a brother by that name. I was informed at that moment his body had just been pulled from the river after drowning. My first thought upon hearing this news? I was glad my mother had died earlier and was not forced to hear these words. My next thought: I was the sole survivor of my family. At twenty-one years old, I was alone.

Sudden death isn’t the only sort of tragedy that creates the shock and awe of grief. For others it might come as the shock of discovering their spouse has been having an affair or a child is arrested for a crime or a job is lost. Whatever the cause, the experiences of loss and pain are universal in their reach and touch every human being in some way. Loss is common to all, but the modern American church has moved experiences of sorrow to the periphery of her public witness to the point that denial is the only psychological term that is an appropriate descriptor for much of modern ministry. In the words of Ligon Duncan, however, when life falls apart, “You will introduce yourself to yourself.” In moments of crisis, what resides in the heart is revealed with great force, and what is really believed is made clear.

But what about the Christian who truly believes the gospel and has sought to build their life on the Word of God? What about the Christian who has sought to live a godly and holy life in this present world but continually encounters trials to such a degree that even unbelievers who observe their lives begin to doubt the goodness of the God they profess to serve? When life crashes and the worst fears of the heart come true, to what and to whom does a Christian turn?

Don’t Waste Your Sorrows

Somewhere between the dark clouds of pain reside the deep mercies of God. How to find them and to abide in them requires that a believer learn to lament—and lament well. This idea of lament appears with such great frequency in the Bible that it is strange modern Christians have ignored it for so long. Read the Psalms, and lament is there. Read the Gospels, and lament is present as Jesus encounters the world, the flesh, and the Devil himself. Mark Vroegop’s book, Dark Clouds, Deep Mercy: Discovering the Grace of Lament, is a corrective to the pabulum of the modern prosperity gospel.

Somewhere between the dark clouds of pain reside the deep mercies of God.

Early in the book, he admits, “to cry is human, but to lament is Christian.” Lament is not a common word used in modern conversation, so he carefully and with great precision defines it according to biblical categories. “Lament is a prayer in pain that leads to trust,” he states. “Lament is the honest cry of a hurting heart wrestling with the paradox of pain and the promise of God’s goodness.”

This man has read the Psalms over and over during seasons of mourning and grief, and he has discovered what previous generations of Christians knew all too well. The Psalms provide the language of prayer for Christians to use in order to speak their complaints to God even as they trust in the core doctrines so carefully articulated for them in the Bible. It is not that the doctrines of God’s sovereignty, goodness, and power are hidden from their eyes. It is that their experience has created a gap between what they feel and what they know. Lament helps close that gap, and the process Vroegop gives is the roadmap for grief during seasons of lament.

Vroegop doesn’t present mere formulaic prescriptions for grief. Rather, he uses what could be described as a return, of sorts, to what the Puritans accomplished in their writing more than two centuries ago. He searches the Psalms and discovers a pattern of prayer and action that sustained the people of God in every age. When circumstances of sadness and woe rained down upon them, they first turned to God in prayer, spoke words of complaint to God in those moments of prayer, learned to ask God boldly for help and hope, and chose to trust him and his mercy even when answers were few and understanding was hidden from their eyes.

“To be a Christian means trusting in what God says and who he is,” writes Vroegop. “Choosing to trust through lament requires that we rejoice without knowing how all the dots connect.” Lamenting helps the believer practice what he calls, “active patience.” In this season of despair and heartache, the continual turning to God in prayer where the Christian breathes out their woe in prayer gives way to a fervency of asking God for help that finally expresses a trust in his providence and mercy even and especially when the trial continues. Over time, the providence of God and the patience of the Christian comes to a point of believing what they know to be true “even though the facts of suffering might call that belief into question.”

Lament for Life

An entire book of the Bible written by the prophet Jeremiah is dedicated to the spiritual reality of lament. The book? Ironically, its name is the very practice itself—Lamentations. This is an area of the Bible most Christians avoid except, as noted by Vroegop, the famous verses of Lamentations 3:22-23: “The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases; his mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning; great is your faithfulness.”

Most assume these verses appear in a place much like a Thomas Kincade painting where all is peace, joy, and light. Frankly, Jeremiah wrote these words “over a dark and tragic landscape.” The ashes of Israel’s existence were shattered and virtually everything about their life and civilization was gone only to be replaced by violence, abuse, and death.

Lamentations teaches that every sorrow of earth can ultimately be traced to the reality of sin. Vroegop is careful to state that while it is not always the personal sin of someone that leads to the sorrow they experience, the presence of sorrow is, at some level, the direct result of sin. Somewhere, somehow, the stench of sin is present, and it is important to allow the experience of lament to accomplish its work of reorienting the mind toward a less dependent attitude on the changing scenes of earth and anchoring them more in the certainties of God’s eternal justice.

Waiting on God is not a waste of time.

To say this is hard when the fires of grief burn hot is an understatement. The active waiting on God must be driven by a continual recitation of the facts of doctrinal truth that will, over time, help the Christian discover that waiting on God is not a waste of time. Through the process something happens to the believer. The experiences and places of grief become a memorial that speak of God’s presence in the midst of horror and tragedy. The book of Lamentations helps the church to anchor itself in the truth that through the agonies of life something happens to the company of those who lament. They are changed and made more like Christ. They learn to see with new eyes and feel with hearts made more holy as they open their hands to release the idols of earth only to find God himself fills their lives with his great mercy and help in time of need.

“Lament is the language that calls us, as exiles, to uncurl our fingers from our objects of trust,” Vroegop writes. Somehow, through the pain, believers are taught not to waste their sorrows, but to use them as pathways toward peace as they journey to the end. Perhaps Vroegop’s counsel might best be communicated by Ecclesiastes 7:4: The heart of the wise is in the house of mourning. More funerals, fewer parties; more prayer, less idle talk; more trust, less anger. For through many tribulations, we must enter the Kingdom of God (Acts 14:22).

God has been showing me through the lives of others how he brings hope and begins new work amidst grief and loss. He pointed this out to me again during our time at Hogar La Providencia (which houses John Calvin School) in Santa Marta, Colombia. The people there had just lost their visionary founder and leader, whom I had heard referred to as a “power house” multiple times—Jaime Leal, Pastor Enrique’s uncle. Our team traveled from Barranquilla and arrived in Santa Marta on a sultry Tuesday afternoon. The school children had already been dismissed for the day. Our goal for Tuesday was to get the lay of the land, meet with some of the leadership, and return the next morning to work on the projects we had been tasked with.

As we explored our surroundings, walked through the classrooms and the empty corridors, the sense of loss seemed evident. I was subconsciously comparing what my eyes were seeing at Hogar to what I had surmised of the operations at Los Olivos (an outreach of La Roca church, which hosts an after-school program for under-resourced children in Barranquilla). Los Olivos seemed like a well-oiled machine, whereas it seemed clear that Hogar was moving through a transitory phase. I heard Frank Esposito, who had visited Hogar several times previously, echo these observations. I was tending toward concern. But, thankfully, with the next day the Lord revealed fresh perspectives and brought new hope.

The joyful noises of children running down those same corridors and filling the classrooms drew my focus. Their adorable smiles and sincerity in wanting to get to know us was heartwarming. They lavished love upon my one-year-old son, Daniel, and one of the young boys even sang him a song in Spanish, with encouraging applause from his peers.

The hospitality of Alex and his wife Sofia (who had just moved from Barranquilla to lead Hogar) was generous and kind. Among larger undertakings, the team was tasked with a simpler job of replacing the light bulbs in the classrooms with brighter ones. As Aaron Redus and John Ward switched out the bulb in one classroom, the students clapped with excitement as the new one went on; and you would’ve thought their faces lit up brighter than the light bulbs!

Judy Ward and I had the privilege of going to many classrooms and sharing our testimonies of Christ’s work in our life with the children in various grades. Some listened intently with their attention riveted on the one speaking, and of course there were some to whom an afternoon snooze seemed more welcome! I particularly enjoyed interacting with our translator Rosa (the English teacher at Hogar) and exchanging some cross-language English-Spanish tips. Later that evening when we met at Iglesia La Puerta for the scheduled prayer dinner, Rosa shared with me how she thought the children needed to hear more of people’s salvation stories. She was encouraged at how the students absorbed what we said, and I was encouraged by her report. One of the most uplifting aspects of the day was witnessing the resolve and commitment of leaders and staff to press on in their call to serve the students at John Calvin school.

Our Tenth leaders met with the leadership at Hogar, and there was mutual encouragement emerging from that meeting as well. A path forward remains to be established as to how Tenth will continue partnership with Hogar La Providencia in Santa Marta. The process of building up must continue. It is encouraging to be reminded that God is actively present there, working all things together for good. Amidst loss, he is bringing about new vision and ideas, raising up faithful men and women to steward and water the ministry that he planted through his servant, Jaime Leal. Let’s keep our brothers and sisters in Colombia in earnest prayer and seek how the Lord would best have us at Tenth Church partner with them.

There hides a man within the shadows who I know all too well. He follows me day and night crying: “Come to me! For it’s only your soul you must sell!” I answered: “No, no! From outside of His presence I cannot dwell!” In a cunning manner he spoke: “You needn’t worry, for who have I to tell?” Despite the pain, I gave into his demand, and into the darkness I reached my frightful hand. What started as a shadow, had turned into a flame! In agony I cried: “What wicked place is this?! Surely you are to blame!” Laughing he spoke: “Foolish man! It was your heart that brought you here! I merely whispered its longings into your ear.” I screamed: “Darkness! Oh darkness, free me from your grasp! Who can save me from this eternal clasp?!” But in the midst of the darkness I saw a shimmer a light. There appeared to be a man, just barely within sight. Upon His back, He carried what looked to be a tree. As He passed, He whispered: “Go now! For I have set you free!” Just then, the chains of darkness had shattered so! As I jumped for joy, I stopped and thought: “That voice I’m sure I know.” “Jesus of Nazareth!” the demons cried. “From the darkness you may leave, it was for you that Man had died.” I jumped for joy and yelled: “Lord! Lord! You have come for me! You were the Man who carried the tree!” Into the shadows my soul fell, yet from the darkness He rescued me from the depths of hell.

This article was published with permission from Travers' personal blog. 

We have spoken previously in a Tenth Press article about some of the ministries that we at Tenth will be supporting this year through our Easter Sacrificial Offering. As a reminder, those ministries are: SIM Galmi Hospital, Sight for Souls, Jiyii-nun, Forgotten Voices, and Rock Spring Church in Liberia. The final two ministries that round out are giving recipients this year are the Merkinch Church Plant in Scotland and the Integration House Ministry in Greece.

Merkinch Church Plant

The Merkinch church plant is located in the Merkinch community of Inverness, Scotland. The area is among the most deprived areas in Scotland, with many facing low income and poor overall health. The Merkinch Free Church has set out to serve the community by establishing a church that engages the gospel and provides believers with a place to fellowship with one another. Funds from the ESO will enable the Merkinch Free Church to continue in their goal of making disciples of the Lord Jesus Christ through mission and evangelism. Here is a video explaining how the church is actively working. 

Integration House Renovation

The Integration House is a Christian based initiative of the Exarcheia Church in Athens, Greece. It operates as part of the Exarcheia Church’s ministry by providing aid to those who arrived in Greece during the refugee crisis of 2015. Integration House provides initial housing, assists in job and education placement, and aids the families in finding low-cost apartments. Funds from the ESO will provide funding for needed building renovation that will provide further housing for refugee families and a new place of worship.

Paul says in Galatians 2:10, “Only, they asked us to remember the poor, the very thing I was eager to do.” Jesus says in Matthew 25:40, “And the King will answer them, ‘Truly, I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these my brothers, you did it to me’.”

Here is an awesome thing to contemplate. Our spiritual ancestry traces back to the early ministry of Paul in Greece and to the later work of Protestant Reformers in Scotland. One might say that we owe a debt of gratitude to these lands for the spiritual blessings we have received from them. How fitting it is that at this time, through ESO, we can be a blessing to them for both material and spiritual needs.

If you have already contributed to ESO this year, thank you. If not, please do so as soon as you are able. Every little bit helps.

Meeting Mez McConnell is a bit like encountering a Buzzsaw. He moves quickly past the pleasantries and wants to know the story of how someone arrived where they did and what they are doing with their life. He doesn’t like small talk. Rather, he jumps into deep conversations with both feet and moves forward in ways that can catch a person off guard if not ready for a serious discussion about areas of life most haven’t thought deeply about.

Knowing his history, he can’t be blamed for a desire to get to the heart of the matter quickly. This is a man whose mother abandoned him when he was two years old. His father was seldom present in his life. By his own admission, his step-mother “used his kidneys as a punching bag” for most of his early childhood. A northern England "scheme" was his home as a child and now he serves in the "schemes" of Scotland. The “schemes” of Scotland are a “cross between an American trailer park, an American urban housing project, and an American Indian reservation.” These areas were built as low-income housing for what has been termed the “new working class” in the late 1800’s across Scotland.

By the age of twelve, he was convicted of assault. He landed in prison, and one day some Christians came to see him. McConnell was converted to Christ by reading through the book of Romans. A Matthew Henry commentary on the Bible helped him learn more about the Bible, and as he read the Bible all the lies he had been taught all his life collapsed in his mind. So many social workers and drug counselors told him he was “a product of his environment.” Reading through the Bible, however, he realized he was a terrible sinner with a terrible future before him. His past was only a precursor to the judgement awaiting him as his life would most certainly continue on a downward spiral because something was wrong in him, not just outside of him.

The Gospel, the Local Church, and Social Ministry

He has dedicated his life to establishing churches in hard places, and he joined another pastor, Mike McKinley, to author a book by this title. The 2016 book, Church in Hard Places: How the Local Church Brings Life to the Poor and Needy, remains a widely read source for those seeking to better understand how the gospel and the local church impacts and transforms the poor and their communities. This book is a standard reference at a time when the issues of social justice, racial reconciliation, and cultural renewal are hot topics in Evangelical and Reformed circles.

McConnell and McKinley aren’t naïve when it comes to the complexity of poverty. Systemic and structural forces combine to perpetuate crisis in the lives of people abused beyond belief. Reading of McConnell’s own experience as a young boy when one of his friends was stabbed to death in front of him or of Innocencia, a thirteen-year-old street girl from northern Brazil whose parents abandoned her when she was five years old and survived since that time as a child prostitute, or of Picachu, a ten-year-old little boy whose grandfather beat and sexually abused him are horrific. Such circumstances immediately issue a call to action by the church of Jesus Christ. Surely, the church must not turn away from such suffering, but what exactly is a faithful church to do?

Analyzing the modern Evangelical scene, the practices of many local churches are to send short-term ministry teams into critical areas in partnership with sophisticated (and well-funded) para-church ministries. By his own testimony, McConnell has seen numerous teams from the United States and the United Kingdom “show up with their paintbrushes and hammers, but with no understanding of the gospel message they think they’ve come to proclaim.” The gospel, therefore, is the starting point for McConnell, and he admits that most who think about doing mission work in hard places do not readily understand the content of the gospel and how it applies to the thinking and habits of poor people.

The Gospel at the Center

Using the framework, of “God, Man, Christ, and Response,” McConnell exposits the gospel from the Bible and quickly moves to emphasize the prioritization of local churches being the chief means by which the poor are helped. Communities are transformed as the result of the work of a biblical church established according to the clearly defined and rigorously enforced aspects of church life. For McConnell, serving in a church is not glamorous or easy, but required for all Christians. He is well aware of the objections against teaching the poor Christian doctrine and calling them to become members of local churches to learn theology.

One objection that I hear from time to time is that poor communities typically have less access to quality education, which means the people in those communities do not have the necessary tools to learn doctrine…If you try, you will shoot over their heads and lose their interest…Honestly, such attitudes strike me as paternalistic and condescending. Poor people are poor, but they are not stupid. They are just as capable of understanding the character and ways of God as anyone else. Paul didn’t write his letters to the faculty of a seminary. His readers were generally not wealthy, privileged, or well-educated. And the Israelites leaving Egypt didn’t have advanced degrees in theology, but God didn’t hesitate to tell them all kinds of in-depth and complicated things about himself.

McConnell isn’t shy about critiquing the prevalence and wealth of some parachurch ministries who often take money from local churches and do not advance the gospel. He takes to task ideas that a church is a bad means of changing society, and he thinks “mercy ministries are dangerous” because they can be “easily abused;” actually be designed to “support sin” and become “self-serving” in ways that undermine the primacy of preaching, meaningful church membership, and stop the natural diversity endemic to a local congregation that is growing in its awareness and obedience to the Great Commission.

The book is often met with criticisms of reductionism and false caricatures of those whom the authors single out as agents that stymie the real path to advancement of the gospel. Yet, these men are convinced as pastors of local churches that their work is hard because sin has infected the world with its deadly poison of godless rebellion, and only the church of Jesus Christ has the God-ordained task of reaching beyond the immediate to the eternal by preaching and teaching and serving and living the gospel. At bottom, they call each Christian to invest their lives in whatever hard place God has deployed him because “the pearl of great price is worth selling everything to buy.”

You can hear more from Mez McConnell and his work in Scotland at this year’s Global Outreach Conference. Learn more and register here.

I have always appreciated how Dr. Goligher consistently returns us to our most fundamental reality and its principal truths. Before we think about ministry, we must first think about God. If we do not understand who the God we serve is, how can we serve God rightly and well? This attention to first truths also clarifies the proper ends to which we should be oriented. In our finite, fallen natures, we tend to conflate means with ends. Dr. Goligher consistently points us to our true end—union with God—as an antidote to this flawed thinking: thinking to which we so often succumb.

The ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle established the ultimate end of human beings as eudaimonia, a word that, because of our inescapably human tendency to infuse words with unwelcome connotations, defies simple translation, but can be approximated by “happiness” or “flourishing.” From the most mundane trip to the grocery store to the biggest life decisions, think through the causal process involved and eventually, according to Aristotle, you will get to eudaimonia. (Without attributing too much to Aristotle where it not warranted, we might also conclude that sinful endeavors are motivated by a corrupted form of eudaimonia, most often self-serving pleasure-seeking.)

The idea of eudaimonia has intuitive appeal, but it is still fundamentally self-oriented. Under a Christian understanding, a purely human pursuit of happiness is bound to fail. The beauty of the gospel is that true happiness is attained as an “accident,” or byproduct, of the achievement of our true end, which is union with God. In other words, God, by virtue of his character, necessitates that our ultimate end be union with him, which requires worshipping and glorifying him, but he, in his great mercy and love, has established that a byproduct of achieving this end is our eternal happiness. Put more simply, the only way to achieve our natural, desired end (our own happiness) is to consciously not pursue it and pursue God instead. This truth unlocks the wonderful paradoxes of the gospel (e.g., the first shall be last, for whoever wants to save his life must lose it, etc.).

It also puts into perspective the responsibilities of the church. Because our ultimate end is union with God and not happiness or something else, everything else we do is necessarily some kind of means toward that end. Bible studies are means, prison ministries are means, even global outreach is a means. So are capital campaigns.

I have heard murmurs that Tenth should not be in the “real estate business.” This is obviously in reference to Tenth’s growing list of buildings and what we should do with them. One might imagine a similar charge leveled against fundraising: “A church should not be in the fundraising business.” In the context of our ultimate end, however, these objections fall short of their intended target. For as long as churches need money and churches need buildings—read: until Christ comes again—we will be in the “business” of fundraising and the “business” of real estate. These pursuits serve the church, which was instituted by Christ as the primary means toward our ultimate end. 

Just because these things are means does not entail that there are no moral principles to govern our pursuit of them. The church must uphold certain standards in its work—higher standards, in many cases, than the law, or even similar organizations, uphold. It also goes without saying that the church has a biblical call, as do all of God’s people, to be faithful stewards of the resources we have been given. But these are principles that govern the church’s means; they do not preclude the use of these means in the first place. Likewise, the church should not be buying up buildings in the name of a quick profit. Nor should it engage in any other means that run afoul of any principles that derive from our ultimate end. But to claim that the church should not be in the “real estate business” is to throw the baby out with the bathwater. 

Just because these things are means does not entail that there are no moral principles to govern our pursuit of them.

So where does all of this leave us? Well, buildings are not our end. Neither is missions, nor even is Sunday worship. Each is a means toward our glorious end. Some means are more effective at striving toward our end, and other means are not worth pursuing at all. The relevant question, then, is whether the current capital campaign is effective means toward our pursuit of our ultimate end. I would submit that it is. 

For decades, God’s people at Tenth have prayed over the buildings at issue here. They earnestly believed that these buildings would help Tenth church better pursue the ultimate end of his people. They believed this, because they had an abiding confidence in God’s providence and a great hope that he had wonderful plans for the future of our church. They also believed this because they had the wisdom to recognize that the church needed resources—practical, tangible resources—in this pursuit. 

This is not to diminish the costs associated with our pursuit. Monetary costs, yes, but also of our time—time that could be invested in any number of Tenth’s fruitful ministries. Those faithful congregants of Tenth who prayed over our neighboring buildings were laying a foundation. They laid a foundation with their monies, with their time, and most importantly, with their prayer. We have been given an opportunity to expand this foundation for the next generation of God’s faithful servants at Tenth. It is up to us to meet this call. 

It also goes without saying that the church has a biblical call, as do all of God’s people, to be faithful stewards of the resources we have been given.

I ask that you would pray for wisdom for those who will decide how Tenth stewards these buildings that we have been given, for the monies to sustain these buildings, and that these buildings—these “means”—will bring us closer to the achievement of God’s glorious end. What great love God shows in welcoming us to participate in his grand work in our world!

Finally, I also ask that, if you do feel the call, you will consider supporting our capital campaign with your money as well as your prayer. If you would like to learn more about the campaign’s vision, our buildings, and anything else, please pull one of us committee members aside; we’d love to hear from you. Thank you for your support of Tenth Presbyterian Church.

In our house, Easter morning is wholly unlike any other morning all year. We wake up at 4 AM, disoriented and not yet very joyful. The cat is displeased that we woke him up instead of the other way around. As we drive through the quiet city and turn on lights at church, I like to think about the women who went to see Jesus believing he was still in his tomb. What heaviness they must have felt walking to his body. But like these women, Easter is also one of my favorite days and particularly at Tenth. The cares and burdens of everyday life are put in perspective as we come together to celebrate what the resurrection means for our earthly and guaranteed everlasting life. Following the sunrise service at Rittenhouse Square, we invite you to join Maranatha for breakfast. Over the years, we’ve had cooks create this meal so that it is delicious and attentive to various allergies. This event also serves as a fundraiser for the youth summer mission trips. We need to raise roughly $60,000 this year to provide our day camps in West and Northeast Philly and an urban farming and learning from refugees trip to Buffalo, NY. The pancake breakfast is a time to provide a meal for those attending the sunrise service, serve and welcome visitors and newcomers, and give us time together as a church family on this special day. I love the energy and joy in the building on Easter morning! 

Here a few testimonies from some members of Maranatha that testify to how the Lord has used these trips in wonderful ways in their lives.

Not only have I learned more about the love of God during mission trips, but I have also gained and strengthened bonds. This great community that God has made for us not only allows us to help others, but also allows others to know more about him. Every day I see God working in the hearts of the kids, and it makes me smile to see that he cares so deeply about every one of them. That is why I love being a part of these mission trips.

–Rickey Cheng, 10th grade

Every summer, the Maranatha youth group embarks on a journey throughout the city and to places such as Buffalo or Puerto Rico to help with hurricane relief and rebuilding. We do it to help kids to come to know Jesus Christ. However, it isn’t just the kids that learn. For the past two summers I have gone on the Northeast Philadelphia Mission Trip, and it was amazing to watch those kids come back each day excited to learn about God and do fun activities. It was exciting for me because I was able to teach what I had been learning in Sunday School and the sermon to them. With the funds we make from the Pancake Breakfast and the students’ support letters, we are able to send Maranatha on an exciting adventure every year to help other students learn about Jesus.

–Adam Humeniuk, 8th grade

Mission trips are so valuable to me, because while I was on them, I was able to devote everything to the Lord and serving others. Upon reflecting, nothing has made me happier than serving alongside my peers, and I would never have known that if I had not gone on these trips. They didn’t change my relationship with God. Instead, they strengthened it by calling me to rely on him for things like energy and strength. In addition to this, they allowed me to learn more about the gospel. The pancake breakfast is an opportunity for many of Christ’s children to be together on a day that is so important for worship. The breakfast is a great way for us as children and young adults to show our love for others through sacrifice (getting up early) and hard work.

–Anna Cole, 11th grade

Working on mission trips has taught me the value of Christian community. I am consistently amazed at how God uses trials and difficulties to drive brothers and sisters closer together and to accomplish amazing things.

–Seth Humeniuk, former teen, now leader

The immeasurable significance of Holy Week is perhaps best attested by the amount of space given to recording its events in the gospels. From a total of 89 chapters in the four gospel accounts, 29 chapters are devoted to describing what Jesus said and did from Palm Sunday to Easter. Not only this, but each gospel is composed so the reader can clearly understand that there is an inexorable movement in Jesus’ life toward the cross and the empty tomb. For example, Matthew’s gospel reads this way, “From that time Jesus began to show his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem and suffer many things from the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and on the third day be raised” (Matthew 16:21). Luke 9:51 says Jesus “set his face to go to Jerusalem.” John’s gospel refers repeatedly to Jesus’ “hour,” pointing ahead to his death and the glory that would be manifested.

This movement toward the death and resurrection of Jesus in the gospels mirrors similar patterns found throughout the Old Testament. Many of these Old Testament patterns may be found simply by asking questions in response to the situations recorded. Who is the seed of the woman who will crush the head of the seed of the serpent in Genesis 3:15? Where is the lamb for the burnt offering that God will supply in Genesis 22:7? Who is the descendant of David who will rule on his throne forever? Who is the servant of the Lord in Isaiah 53 who is despised and rejected, a man of sorrows?

Even as the Old Testament anticipates Jesus’ passion and resurrection, the New Testament books after the gospels work out the implications of Christ’s crucifixion and rising again.  One example is Romans 6:8–11: “Now if we have died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him. We know that Christ, being raised from the dead, will never die again; death no longer has dominion over him. For the death he died he died to sin, once for all, but the life he lives he lives to God. So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus.” Many other instances could be quoted.

This emphasis in Scripture on the death and resurrection has profound implications for us as disciples of Jesus Christ. Here are just a few. First, by this means we are saved from our sin and the wrath of God. Romans 10:9 says: “if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.” Second, our lives are to have a cruciform pattern. Jesus said, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me” (Matthew 16:24). Third, our future is based on Christ’s accomplishment: “If in Christ we have hope in this life only, we are of all people most to be pitied. But in fact Christ has been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep. For as by a man came death, by a man has come also the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive” (1 Corinthians 15:19–22). Lastly, Christ’s death and resurrection shapes our worship of God: “Worthy is the Lamb who was slain, to receive power and wealth and wisdom and might and honor and glory and blessing!... To him who sits on the throne and to the Lamb be blessing and honor and glory and might forever and ever!" (Revelation 5:12–13).

So, what is the purpose of the special services and concerts at Tenth on Good Friday and Easter? The author of Hebrews tells us: “Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight, and sin which clings so closely, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God” (Hebrews 12:1–2). Let us look and worship!

“that I may know him and the power of his resurrection, and may share his sufferings…”

—Philippians 3:10

This is what the Easter Sacrificial Offering at Tenth Presbyterian Church is all about. Because we have experienced the power of Jesus’ resurrection from the dead, which we celebrate at Easter, we give sacrificially. We give sacrificially to ministries that bring aid to those who share in Jesus’ sufferings, sometimes physically, sometimes spiritually, and sometimes both. We also give to those ministries that aim to bring people who have not yet experienced Jesus’ resurrection power under his reign as resurrected king.

Each year the Global Outreach Commission solicits requests from ministries who wish to receive funds from the ESO offerings in support of their work. The GOC gathers these requests and prayerfully deliberates regarding which ministries to support. The Commission then brings a list of these ministries to the Session for approval. This year, we at Tenth will support seven ministries through ESO, five of which we will highlight in this article. Two others will be profiled in an upcoming Tenth Press article.

SIM Galmi Hospital

Since 1950, the SIM Galmi Hospital has been an oasis in the desert. Located on the south edge of the Sahara Desert in Niger, West Africa, this 180-bed hospital provides compassionate care to Nigerians from all walks of life and serves as a training center for surgical residents from several African countries. Galmi’s outpatient and HIV clinics serve up to 300 men, women, and children daily, each of whom hears the message of the gospel through educational films and their interactions with hospital staff. This year’s offering will support the general operation of the facility and provide funding for much needed structural improvements.

Sight for Souls

Sight for Souls is transforming the lives of communities through the gift of sight for the body and for the soul. Started by Tenth members John and Lori Kempen and motivated by the love and example of the Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, Sight for Souls seeks to alleviate blindness through sustainable programs in the areas with the greatest need. Their inaugural project is the establishment of the Discovery Eye Institute (DEI) in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. The DEI is a joint initiative of Ethiopian and American ophthalmologists to provide world class clinical care and serve as a leader in advanced training for doctors and eye care personnel in Africa. This sacrificial offering will allow Sight for Souls to continue providing for the spiritual and emotional needs of patients and their families affected by blindness in the developing world.

Orphans and Widows in Africa

Joseph leads a ministry focused on helping widows and orphans recover from tremendous hardship and loss. The ministry helps the women and children learn new skills and re-establish themselves by providing food, schooling, and job training. A portion of the 2019 Easter Sacrificial Offering will supply these widows and orphans with food, sewing machines, and schooling.

Forgotten Voices International

FVI is an organization that equips local churches to meet the physical and spiritual needs of children orphaned by AIDS in their communities. The organization has partnered with nearly 100 churches in Zimbabwe, Zambia, and Malawi and is currently on pace to serve more than 15,000 children and their caregivers this year. Our ESO offering will enable Forgotten Voices to continue their ministry and help them attain their goal of serving as many as 20,000 children and their caregivers by next year.

Rock Spring Evangelical Reformed Presbyterian Church

Rock Spring Presbyterian Church was planted in Monrovia, Liberia, through the teaching, encouragement, and financial support of Tenth. Since 2003, Tenth saints have visited Rock Spring, engaging in training, evangelism, and medical ministry. Tenth supported a youth leader from Rock Spring, helping him to graduate from African Bible College University. He has since helped to plant two new churches in the northern part of the country. Thus, a fledgling presbytery of about six mission churches is beginning with the denominational name of Evangelical Reformed Presbyterian Church of Liberia. This April, Rock Spring will celebrate their 13th anniversary with representatives from Tenth in attendance. After renting a facility for many years, Tenth helped Rock Spring acquire property on which a foundation and walls have been built. The Easter Sacrificial Offering will help towards completing the project with putting a roof on the structure. The hope is they can start using the new building later this year.

Romans 6:4 states, “We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life.” Our gratitude for that newness of life can be very concretely expressed in giving to this year’s Easter Sacrificial Offering. Thank you for your participation.

In celebration of a ministry that has spanned forty-three years, Westminster Brass, in our final season, will present a “Concert of Thanksgiving” at Tenth Presbyterian Church on Saturday, March 30, 2019, at 2:00 PM. We are truly thankful for God’s blessing on our ministry these many years and for all of the friends and acquaintances we have made during our time together. It is out of our affection for God and his people that we present this concert.

Our name, Westminster Brass, is not taken from the Abbey in the borough of London, nor the seminary where two of the members of the quintet attended and later taught, but is an affirmation of what we believe as found in the Westminster Confession of Faith.

Westminster Brass is “a brass quintet performing for the glory of God.” What could have moved a group of young men to make such a bold statement early in their lives? To answer this question you need to know that we, in those early years, were just out of college with degrees in music. God had further plans for all of us, though. The Holy Spirit called two of our members to full-time ministry as pastors, another to teach as a theologian, and two more to be called to the office of ruling elder in the church. The Holy Spirit continued to move through the ensemble, directing our paths and teaching us not only through colleges, universities, conservatories, and seminaries, but also through the men who were the featured speakers during the conferences of Ligonier Ministries and the Philadelphia Conference on Reformed Theology. We had “box seats,” so to speak, as we helped lead the worship portions of those conferences and shared the same platform as the speakers. What better teachers to have than Eric Alexander, James Montgomery Boice, John Gerstner, James I. Packer, R.C. Sproul, Ravi Zacharias, Robert Godfrey, Sinclair Ferguson, and other well-known speakers and writers of the Reformed faith. We got to know some, if not most, of these men of the gospel. We may not have realized it, but upon reflection we were being discipled by them: hearing the Word of God and spending time in fellowship, watching and learning from their actions both on the platform and during the “off hours” of the conferences.

It is during the worship portions of conferences and the participation in hundreds of worship services that, in every instance, it is clear God has given Westminster Brass the mandate to perform for his glory alone. This is one of the Reformation’s five Solas—Soli Deo Gloria.  What better way to glorify God than to perform hymns and sacred songs and accompany his people singing praises to the one, holy, triune God. We, who are members of Tenth, are privileged to not only hear the truths of the gospel expounded from the pulpit but to hear the doctrines of our salvation being proclaimed through the great hymns of our faith.

Christ has called the members of Westminster Brass to be his disciples. In my own life, Christ called me to himself, working through the members of Westminster Brass, Dr. Boice and his family, and through the person who later became my wife. I left my father and mother not only for marriage but to be a disciple of Christ.

The members of Westminster Brass have shared life’s blessings and heartaches with one another. We are a fellowship of like-minded believers who have shared the gospel with our colleagues in music, some even making a profession of faith and coming to know Christ as their personal Savior. It has been our hope that God will use us as his disciples through this witness for Christ.

One of the greatest compliments that our group has ever received came after we performed a concert of sacred music, proclaiming the gospel through word and music. It was natural for us to express our faith through the verbal program notes of each piece and through the beauty, solemnity, power, and joy of the performance. On the way to my car I asked the venue director if he heard any feedback about the concert. He almost apologetically said that some of the audience members thought it was “different.” Knowing the venue and the groups and individuals who usually speak and perform, I was glad to hear that we were different. We are to set ourselves apart, boasting only in the Lord.

Our hope is that throughout these past forty-three years we have both glorified God and, as a disciple of Christ, proclaimed the saving power of Jesus with conviction.

“The steadfast love of the LORD never ceases; his mercies never come to an end” (Lamentations. 3:22). “Be merciful, even as your Father is merciful” (Luke 6:36). Both the Old and New Testaments contain the truth of God’s mercy and the command to act similarly. For the Hebrew nation, it meant obeying the law and the prophets. New Testament believers were commanded and encouraged to follow the Lord's commandments of Christ to follow him.

Jesus still tells us the same words: “Follow me.” And for us, following Jesus still means leaving everything behind. In him, we have a new identification and a command to act as he did. The apostle whom Jesus loved wrote, “Whoever says he abides in him ought to walk in the same way in which he walked” (1 John 2:6).

As Jesus’ disciples, we follow him by living lives of mercy and obedience. When we were children, we played a game called Follow the Leader. No matter what the leader did, we had to follow his or her steps. Now that we are adults and have put away childish things, our Christian walk consists of following in the thoughtful, loving, obedient steps of Lord—self-denial, cross-bearing, and being merciful with an awareness of the needs of our neighbors.

Who Is Our Neighbor?

As our minds become more and more like the mind of Christ, we beome increasingly sensitive to the needs of those around us. Whether we agree or disagree, the truth from Scripture is that anyone in need is our neighbor. Therefore, we must replace the question, “Who is my neighbor?” which restricts our response, with “Whose neighbor am I?” which liberates our response. As we cannot know beforehand whom we will meet, the immediate sight of a neighbor demands a spontaneous answer. In The Deacons Handbook, Lester DeKoster says

Why waste time discussing how we will know who our neighbor is? Just go and be “neighbor” to someone, to anyone, in need. Let the needy find his neighbor in you. Drop the talk. Cut the chatter. Take God's gifts of time, money, goods, talents, counsel, a listening ear, a helping hand out there where someone can use them. To love your neighbor as yourself means simply to be a neighbor whenever and wherever you can.

The person in need is the one whom God places in our path. His or her need may be big or small, physical, emotional, or spiritual. It may be obvious to all, or obvious only to those who can see through the person’s mask or cover-up. In the Gospel of Luke, Jesus tells the parable of “The Good Samaritan” to make clear to his listeners who he says our neighbor is. The familiar story tells of a Jewish man who was beaten, robbed, and left for dead. Those who passed by were aware of his injuries and needs but ignored them. The Jewish priest had religious reasons: If the body had been a corpse, and he touched it, he would be unclean for seven days (Numbers 19:11). The Levite, a temple worker, would not take any risks to help, either. To these religious officials, law and ceremony were more important than mercy. The Samaritan, however, the one Jewish people despised, was prepared to help. He risked his safety and altered his schedule to show mercy to a needy person of another race and social class.

I often tell the story of how a group of black Christian teens befriended me. At the time I was a high school student who, because of a childhood skull fracture and abuse, was physically and emotionally crippled, despairing of life itself. These friends made it their business to come alongside me, establish a relationship, and offer hope. For three years they showed me God’s mercy and his love for me. They listened to my pain and opened their homes to me. What was the result of this friendship? The result, praise God, was that as a college freshman I came to saving faith in Jesus Christ. Like the merciful Good Samaritan, they understood how to be good neighbors.

Welcoming and Forgiving

Jesus lived a life of submission to the Father. He gave up the right to have his own way. He surrendered the right to retaliate and gave up the right of having “sweet revenge” against those who opposed him. His submission was seen in his ability to forgive his oppressor-neighbors: as he was being crucified, Jesus said, “Father forgive them, for they know not what they’re doing” (Luke 23:34). Jesus’ submissive attitude allowed him to love others unconditionally. Neighbors were a reality for him. He saw worth and value in the needy people he encountered, which is the opposite of what most people—even Christians—do. In our own minds, we keep “those people” at arm’s length, making them peripheral beings, sometimes even worse. We often speak as if such people do not exist as humans (i.e., not created in the image of God). Our perception is that people only have worth if they possess what the world values: money, property, and fame. I have heard people say, “I am not my brother’s keeper” when given some responsibility to help others. Their body language—a shrug or a frown—indicates to me that, to them, “those people” are not worth it.

Despite whether or not people have possessions, Jesus knows the worth of all humankind, and he demonstrated a unique mercy to his neighbors by bearing his cross and walking obediently before his Father. For Jesus, being merciful was not merely performing a service task, but being a servant. His mercy was an intentional, conscious statement of who he was and who we should be as we follow him. Jesus showed us that mercy is a gift that must be shared. He showed us that to be hospitable means to be receptive, welcoming the stranger and turning him/her into a guest. Jesus’ mercy toward his neighbors flowed out of an inward sense of love, joy, peace, and obedience. Our motive for loving and showing mercy to our neighbors is gratitude to God for his eternal, unchanging love for us (think about how the French word merci means “thank you”).

The heir of the Borden Dairy Corporation, William Borden, was a follower of Jesus Christ. And he was thankful. For his high school graduation, his parents gave him a trip. While on the trip, he began to feel a burden for those less fortunate. Later at Yale University, he started a Bible study and founded a mission for those who were on the streets of New Haven. He shared the gospel with orphans, widows, the homeless, and the hungry, offering them hope and showing mercy. When Borden graduated, he entered Princeton Seminary and, upon graduation, sailed to China intending to serve Christ there. Along the way, however, he contracted spinal meningitis and died soon after. When his Bible was discovered, six words were found written on its inside page: “no reserve, no retreat, no regrets.” Knowing God’s mercy, he gave up his earthly possessions to follow Jesus in ministry to those in need. The fruit of his faith was the desire to answer Jesus’s call to follow him and “Be merciful as your Father is merciful.”

Tenth will be hosting a conference on Mercy: God's Call to Embrace our Neighbor with Dr. Ligon Duncan as the featured speaker. You can find more details and register at tenth.org/mercyconference
 

Last summer a medical and a nursing student walked into a small bodega in the Hispanic neighborhood of Hunting Park in North Philadelphia. They wore scrubs, stethoscopes around their necks, and carried a medical backpack filled with health assessment forms, educational handouts, and supplies needed to carry out basic health screens for reading a person’s blood sugar, blood pressure, and body mass index. The temperature was in the 90s and they were already sweating, so they were glad to stop in the store to escape the heat and ask the people behind the counter if they were interested in getting free health screens.

The workers said they were busy, but told the students they could check and see if any of the customers in the back of the store were interested. The back of the store held a small café, where customers were busy ordering Puerto Rican dishes and eating on small tables with red and white checkered vinyl tablecloths. Not only were several customers interested, but some people shared that they hadn’t been to a doctor in a long while, and many people waited patiently around the tables to take their turn. The students worked steadily for almost three hours, providing each person with a small summary of their readings, referrals, and praying with many people.

Some people were interested in learning about the local church the students were partnering with, and the students provided information to those who requested it. More than six months later, the church confirmed that a few of those people who were screened in the neighborhood have now become regular attenders, and the church has now realized a need to develop a Spanish speaking service because of the interest they found through their partnership with the medical outreach!

Similar encounters like this will take place again from June 22 to July 13, when approximately twenty Christian health care students will participate in the Philadelphia Summer Medical Institute (SMI), an annual medical outreach for Christian health care students run by Medical Campus Outreach (MCO) in partnership with Esperanza Health Center, a Christian medical center in North Philadelphia.

Medical Campus Outreach sincerely believes in helping others learn the confidence and joy found in using their vocation and skills to tangibly serve people, especially the poor and underserved, while demonstrating God’s love and sharing the gospel in the health care context. The SMI project is a practical outgrowth of this mission and has continued for 28 years.

The students will live at a local church and will work in the underserved communities of Kensington and Hunting Park. They will provide free door-to-door health screens, health education, and referrals. Esperanza sends members of their HIV team to provide free in-home HIV tests to those who want them. The students will also share the love of Christ through conversation and prayer, referring those interested to local partner churches who provide follow-up. During each week the team spends time in Bible study, breakout teaching sessions, attending church services with local church partners, and shadowing at Esperanza Health Center for a day.

Last summer MCO was also able to take four SMI participants to a predominantly Muslim Eastern European country for two weeks to participate in an SMI project modeled after our own but run by the local physicians from a Christian medical center in the country’s capital. It was both educational and inspiring for our students to see our approach applied in a different cultural and religious context, to build relationships with the local team members, and to see the church’s work bearing fruit there. In 2019, we are excited to continue and build upon this partnership, as one or two of the young physicians in the Christian residency program from that country will be joining us this year for SMI Philadelphia 2019.

How Can Members of Tenth Get Involved?

Members of Tenth have played a pivotal part in helping make this project possible each year and can provide help in a variety of ways.

Faculty: If you’re a medical professional and would enjoy providing informal relational mentoring to students as you accompany them in their work, come volunteer a day or more as a SMI faculty member (no training needed). Not only is it a meaningful opportunity to meet and serve our neighbors in North Philadelphia, but the relationships made with the students are so valuable.

Cooks: We use different volunteer cooks each night to provide a meal for the group (we can reimburse you for your costs if you keep the receipts), to feed our hungry people. It’s a great blessing for the teams to return to a delicious meal after a long day walking the neighborhoods. Also, cooks are welcome to join us for dinner, which is a great time to talk to the students and learn about the work they are doing. Meals can also be dropped off ahead of time at our location or another location that’s mutually convenient.

Interpreters: We will need substitute Spanish/English interpreters for our group. While we do have regular community interpreters, we often need extra who can fill in when needed.

Financial Support: Half of our budget is raised by student support, and the rest through grants and individual donations.

Prayer: Pray that needs will be met and that people can be introduced to the local churches. Pray that students will be spiritually strengthened and learn to have a heart for the underserved and those without a belief in Christ, wherever their career takes them. Pray for Esperanza Health Center, our church partners, our faculty, and our interpreters.

Please contact me at smiphilly@gmail.com if you have any questions or are interested in more details about serving SMI in any way. We look forward with anticipation to June!

At the forefront of the Great Commission (Matthew 28:18-20) is the exhortation to go and make disciples. Jesus says that the discipling of the nations is to be done by baptizing and teaching them to observe all his commands. In other words, discipleship follows the order of baptism unto instruction and obedience, which is true of all members of God’s covenant household. This is the biblical picture of the church, which “[grows] up into him who is the head, into Christ” (Romans 4:15). We do so by becoming skilled in the word of righteousness, moving little by little from milk to solid food, and from being a child to being mature (Hebrews 5:13). This skillfulness is not merely academic, it involves a delight and submission to the teachings and demands of Christ, thus loving him “with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength” (Mark 12:30). This is what is means to be a disciple, to whom Christ says, “Go and make disciples of all nations.”  This is at the heart of our Adult Bible School classes each Sunday morning at Tenth, where we seek to foster spiritual growth and nurture disciples to the glory of God.

A number of months ago, I was handed an old brown paper bag with a bunch of loose papers, folders, brochures, and other bits and bobs. I was told, “You may want to look through this. It may be of interest to you and possibly a help in your new task of overseeing the Adult Bible School.” This old weathered bag turned out to be a little gold mine. As I leafed through some of the pages, I was taken back in time, back to Tenth’s Fall Leadership Retreat in 1987 at Eagle Lodge where Dr. Tim Keller was the plenary speaker and the topic of the two-day getaway was A Church of Vision. I was also transported into the various classrooms of Tenth’s Adult Bible School in the early and mid-1990’s, where elective classes such as Racial Reconciliation, Exploring Men’s Issues, Financial Counseling, Evangelism, Biblical Servanthood, and Christianity and the Arts were on offer. These electives supplemented what used to be termed core courses—Bible Study class, Theology class, New Members class, and Preparation for Marriage—and ongoing special groups—Tenth International Fellowship, Tenth College Union, and Campus Medical Outreach—within Adult Bible School back in the nineties.

This fascinating little glimpse through a few windows into our past highlights a few key distinctives integral to Tenth’s DNA. Adult Bible School was a broad umbrella that covered both specific groupings of people (college, 20’s and 30’s, medical professionals, et al.) and general offerings that catered to a far wider array of people. The more specific classes by nature included a relational component to them, a distinctive vital to a large city-center church. As such, many of these classes were entry points into the church for people getting connected to Tenth.

Today, the Adult Bible School (as is true of the church as a whole) stands between its past and its future, grounded upon and informed by its rich history while simultaneously building for the generations to come, seeking to be effective for the glory of God within a surrounding culture that is ever-changing. Our mission remains the same: to disciple men and women with the truths of God’s word into the maturity and likeness of Christ and to see the kingdom of God extended here at home and into the nations of the world. Many of our classes are very similar to those in the 80’s and 90’s, though we speak to a world 30+ years down the road. Structurally, we have returned to the threefold structure of core classes, ongoing groups, and electives, which, in turn, prompted us to bring back the Bible study/survey class to compliment the theology class that George McFarland has been involved with the last two decades.

So why consider one of the classes in the Adult Bible School this coming spring quarter? Well, there are many reasons, a few of which may be true of you. No two classes are alike, though each aims to encourage and strengthen the various members of the church. The class format differs from the Sunday sermon in several ways: the class is orientated around teaching and deliberately makes room for lively discussion, Q&A, and you can bring coffee and a donut from the lobby to class. Moreover, as has been frequently shown, churches without Sunday Schools tend to be biblically illiterate. It is our desire to serve the expositional preaching ministry of Tenth by teaching new and longtime members alike the deep truths of the faith, so that together we can grow in our knowledge of Christ and his salvation. We also see the various classes as doorways into the church for friends and seekers looking into the church, be that the college ministry, the newly marrieds’ class, a parenting class on offer, etc.

The upcoming spring quarter begins with a time of prayer on March 3 at 1710 Spruce (room 1R) at 9 AM. Individual classes and groups begin meeting on Sunday, March 10, at 9 AM. This spring you can look forward to the next section in our Bible survey class as we cover Joshua through Ruth, or else pull up a chair in the theology class for a study of various Christian biographies. The women’s class will be working through Melissa Kruger’s new book Identity Theft, while the men’s class will continue to work through Thomas Watson’s classic, The Godly Man’s Picture. We also have the very exciting news that Tenth College Fellowship will be moving upstairs to the newly renovated room on the second floor (1710 Spruce), beginning this spring quarter at 9:30 AM. 

Please join us for our day of prayer on March 3 and then for the beginning of classes on March 10.  More information on upcoming classes will be posted to tenth.org/abs later this week. 

In April of 2016, Olivia Kong, a junior at Wharton College, took her own life at 40th Street Station. Her death sent shockwaves through the University of Pennsylvania, as students reacted with a mix of horror, sadness, and frustration. Ultimately, her death helped bring further attention to the difficult topic of suicide, which is becoming an increasingly serious problem nationally, and a near epidemic at Penn, where fourteen students (including Olivia) have taken their own lives over the past five years.

Dr. Britt Beasley, a psychiatrist with John Applegate & Associates, explains that the most essential duty of college counseling centers is to recognize which patients need urgent help: “The counseling center needs to have a good protocol for referring to an emergency room or some kind of emergency psychiatric service that can evaluate these people. That’s the standard of care; to have people who have enough experience to know which people need to be evaluated urgently.” 

After her death, many Penn students began to question how the campus culture at Penn creates or aggravates mental health issues. The university itself has admitted it has a “highly competitive academic and extra-curricular culture that some students perceive to demand perfection” and that life at Penn can lead to students feeling “overwhelmed.”

The Center for Disease Control (CDC) estimates that around half the U.S. population will be diagnosed with a mental health disorder at some point in their life, and as many as one in five will suffer from mental illness in a given year. A 2012 survey from the National Alliance on Mental Illness found that 36% of college students suffering from mental health issues reported that stigma surrounding mental illness served as a barrier to seeking treatment.

Although Penn’s problems with student mental health and suicide are especially concerning, they are far from unique. The disturbing trend of increasing suicide rates is found across the nation. The CDC estimates that suicide rates have risen in forty nine of the fifty states since the year 1999. In fact, according to a recent AP story, last year the U.S. government estimated over 47,000 suicide deaths nationwide, the highest number in fifty years. This trend has seen suicide rise to the tenth leading cause of death in the U.S., and the second among people aged 15-34 as stated by the National Institute of Mental Health.

Beasley thinks the church can help change the way mental health issues are discussed. “Clearly there’s stigma on the part of patients and families, especially so in churches in general. There’s an added level of stigma which is ‘there must be a problem in your spiritual discipline; you’re just not exhibiting enough faith.’ I think a bigger discussion and education on mental illness and the theology of mental illness and its treatment is definitely needed.”

Practical steps can be taken to help address the growing crisis of suicide. Although treatment of those contemplating suicide is best left to professionals, it's up to patients (or their friends) to reach out for help. Beasley says there are some times when a person needs emergency intervention: “One of the predictive questions we ask people is ‘are the patients future oriented… are they making plans for their future?’…If they have an end point in their mind, when their life is going to end—if you’re seeing that, definitely have them see a psychiatrist.” As with any other illness, it is also wise to come alongside to pray for and encourage any who are dealing with mental hardship and illness; for “the prayer of a righteous man has great power as it is working” (James 5:16, ESV).

For those who have been affected by suicide and issues surrounding death, Tenth is hosting a talk followed by a panel discussion by Dr. Matthew McCullough — “Taking Death Personally.” More about the event and registration can be found at www.tenth.org/rememberdeath

It’s 2:00 AM, and the sounds of college students are still rumbling through the house. Some are playing a game, some are laughing together as they chat, and all are enjoying the freedom that comes from no class the next morning. Eventually, the group will dwindle down to a few stubborn stragglers who keep talking, while the rest collapse and get a few hours of sleep before the next day of the Tenth College Fellowship Winter Retreat.

Tenth College Fellowship (TCF) is Tenth Church’s ministry to the many undergraduate campuses scattered around Philadelphia. All throughout the week, students join from the various campuses to study the Bible and enjoy different events with one another. Recently, many TCF students traveled up to Lake Wallenpaupak together to spend a couple days having fun, eating, singing, and talking about the book of Zephaniah.

Perhaps one of my greatest joys since moving to Philadelphia this past summer has been watching these students consistently make decisions to commit themselves to church. They wake up early on Sunday mornings to attend two services worth of church activities, they sacrifice valuable homework time to study Scripture with one another throughout the week, and they stay up late playing games and talking with one another on retreats as they build and strengthen their relationships with their Christian brothers and sisters.

This commitment has borne fruit outside of the church community, as our students have shown extraordinary courage and consistency in their witness to non-believing friends and peers. Within the last few months, I have had two conversations with students who attend TCF, but who are open about their unbelief at this point in their lives. When asked why they continue to attend TCF and Tenth, their answer was simple. The community that they have experienced is too attractive to leave. Our students’ commitment to their church community is actively forming their witness to their peers who do not follow Christ yet.

TCF is currently studying the book of Zephaniah on Sunday mornings. Zephaniah 3:9,10 says this:

For at that time I will change the speech of the peoples
to a pure speech,
that all of them may call upon the name of the LORD
and serve him with one accord.
From beyond the rivers of Cush
my worshipers, the daughter of my dispersed ones,
shall bring my offering.

The image Zephaniah gives us is of God’s people worshiping him while dispersed throughout the world. That worship, as verse 9 says, will help usher in a time when all peoples serve the Lord with a pure speech. I see this taking place in the lives of our college students. Their worship has given them a strong witness to the world around them, and the world has noticed it.

We are grateful for your continued prayers for TCF. Our students face many challenges as they navigate college life as followers of Christ. However, we are encouraged by the reminder that the Lord is drawing to himself a people of pure speech who will serve him with one accord. I know I can speak on behalf of our students in thanking the church for those prayers and ongoing care and support.

The Kingdom Discipleship Commission (KDC) exists “to grow Tenth as a God-centered fellowship of loving disciples in Christ who apply the gospel to all of life and share a total commitment to advance the kingdom of God in our neighborhood, our city, and our world.”

Did you know such a commission exists? Established in ages past (12 years ago?), its charter was to foster spiritual growth within Tenth. Originally providing oversight to the many ministries and small groups, KDC supported and logistically helped approximately 40 groups.

Thankfully, through the years of maturation, many of these groups are well established and flourishing. KDC has therefore focused upon five areas in particular: encouraging parish engagement, bolstering officer efforts, teasing out elements of congregational surveys, encouraging volunteerism, and strengthening membership assimilation.

This year KDC was asked by Session to temporarily oversee the Director of Christian Education duties, which included the Adult and Children’s Bible School, officer training, and membership classes. Our Lord graciously provided many wonderful people who continue to lead in these areas. Deryck Barson, while finishing his doctoral work at Westminster Theological Seminary, created a structured officer training and codified our membership classes. Melissa Frederick, our Parish and Membership staff member, has faithfully supplied the administrative underpinning for these endeavors. David and Crystal Hanrahan, along with Judd Van Dervort Jr., lead the Children’s Bible School.

Meeting monthly, our small commission continues to generate and implement ideas which may engender spiritual growth within our fellowship. If you have any good ideas to pass along to KDC, contact either Bob Kempf, chairman, Deryck Barson, Amy or Chris Oeste, Melissa Frederick, Sarah Staley, Anne Tartikoff, or Carroll Wynne.

It’s 8:25am on the first day back after Christmas break, and there’s a whirlwind of excitement on Delancey Street. However, no one is more excited than Sam today. It seems like it has been forever and ever since he last saw his friends. But wait! He sees a car pull up and just knows that his friend Sarah is in there. Sam leaps out of his stroller, peers around the car door, and gives Sarah the biggest hello hug. Their excitement keeps building until the doors are unlocked and they run to their classroom to begin their day at Tenth Church Preschool.

The friendships that are being formed in the classrooms and overflow to the Delancey Street entrance are a fruit of the seed that Tenth Church Preschool seeks to sow and cultivate: community. Not only are the children growing as they learn but are doing so in a loving community. The children form friendships that give an avenue for their parents and caregivers to have conversations and develop friendships. Sometimes, as in the case with Grace and John, they were so preoccupied with learning how to use John’s new toy that they gave their moms the opportunity to talk and catch up!

These genuine friendships are a fruit of the community. While living in Center City Philadelphia can be overwhelming and lonely at times for families, Tenth Preschool is a space for the parents and caregivers to be supported and encouraged. Families are given the opportunity to walk with each other through this season of life. They support one another through sharing parental advice, toddler stories, and a practical hand when needed. While the children have their community in the classroom, the parents are given the opportunity to fellowship during the pickup and drop off times and monthly picnics. The picnics are also a time for the teachers to connect more with the families.

As they foster their little communities within the classroom, the teachers are also supported by one another as they seek to love and serve the children and their families. Prayer is the biggest and richest means in which this community flourishes. Not only are they spending time at the beginning of their day praying for one another, they are also praying for the preschool families. The community is growing and flourishing—which is an evident sign of how “God is at work in our midst.” He is at work in the Tenth Church Preschool community as the parents form friendships, the teachers pray, and as the children reunite and run into preschool.

During my years of study in seminary, I worked at a funeral home. It was the best laboratory in which to learn the Bible and theology. Frequently, I saw dead bodies and attended funerals as I helped direct the families and friends of person after person to a hole in the ground where a once vibrant life would find its final resting place in a cemetery. One night as I was reading through Millard Erickson’s Christian Theology, a phone call came from Houston, Texas informing me that an entire family had been killed in an automobile accident.  

I remember the shock as I wrote the details of the incident. The bodies of a mother, a six-year-old boy, a four-year-old girl, and two 18-month-old twin boys were on the way to the funeral home where I worked. The father was just about to be told what had happened to his family by the police department. I’ve never forgotten that experience, and I’ve never forgotten what the funeral home parlor looked like when I saw three caskets open containing the lives of five people who died a horrible death.  

I was young (23 years old), but I had already experienced death in my own life. By this age, my father, mother, and brother had all died tragically. Two of my uncles had died and one of my cousins was killed when he was five years old. One of my best friends from high school was killed in an automobile accident. I’ve also experienced the death of relationships and the loss of jobs. By the time I was 30, life had become a series of losses that shaped my worldview in ways I once thought impossible.  

I wish Matthew McCullough’s book, Remember Death: The Surprising Path to Living Hope, was available to me back then. Now, at 50, I am able to better understand all that death has taught me, and this book has been the catalyst for a deepened hope in the promises of God in Jesus Christ. But just what about this book is all that helpful? There are numerous titles about death and dying. The grief industry is a subculture all to itself. What is it about McCullough’s thoughts that are even worth reading in an already crowded space?  

Of Losses and Crosses 

Observe the modern Evangelical movement, and just beneath the surface, you see a pronounced death-avoidance. Some of the largest churches in the United States are led by pastors who preach the exact opposite of what McCullough writes in this book. Health, wealth, harmony, and prosperity are seemingly the byproducts of an accurate Christian theology. McCullough is aware of that, and he uses a skillful pen to dismantle these thoughts built on such flimsy scaffolding.  

Make no mistake, this isn’t a book for the faint of heart. McCullough states the obvious fact that no one really wants to accept: “Death makes a statement about who we are: we are not too important to die,” he writes. “We will die, like all those who’ve gone before us, and the world will keep on moving just as it always has.” He admits when this fact finally penetrates our defenses, it is a “harsh, even terrifying statement.”  

The book kindly bludgeons its reader. Yet, it is a mercy. “The truth is that nothing lasts, that you can never go back, and that therefore everyone loses everything to death.” Think about this for more than five minutes and it becomes disorienting. What exactly is the value of my life? This is where McCullough pushes hard.  

Death raises questions about where our place actually is. Besides an organic mass that eats, sleeps, reproduces, and decomposes, who am I? What is the value of a life that doesn’t even exist in someone’s memory? The question is this: if my life turns to dust in the end, am I more significant than the stray dog picked apart by buzzards, the goldfish flushed down the toilet, or the cockroach crushed under foot? You still end up dead, just like the animals. In the end, no one resists nature. So, remind me, where do you get this idea that humans matter more than animals do? 

The Horrible Truth 

McCullough is a pastor in a university city. Holding a Ph.D. in history from Vanderbilt University, he stands before doctors, lawyers, and aspiring business leaders in the prime of their life every week in a rented school auditorium just off the Vanderbilt campus and teaches them about Jesus and the promises of God. He does this week after week not because he couldn’t do something else (he could), but because reading, thinking, and studying deeply about the Bible’s words has created a crisis of sorts for him that is not unique to him.  

The truth is that life works like a savings account in reverse. Zoomed out to the span of an entire life cycle, you see that no one is actually stockpiling anything. You’re spending down, not saving up. Everything you have—your healthy body, your marketable skills, your sharp mind, your treasured possessions, your loving relationships—will one day be everything you’ve lost. 

McCullough knows what he is up against. Modern culture lies to modern people. And in order to fully experience joy in this dying life, a new way of thinking must be learned. It is not automatic, and it does not come naturally to human beings—especially to the modern “church” culture that has been taught life is a continuing series of successes and wins. Knowing this, he helps his readers trace their thoughts home to their logical conclusion. By doing so, he helps Christians better know, understand, and apply the promises of God in the future to the problems of the present.  

He does this by clearing away cobwebs around areas of the Bible often avoided. Case in point: the changing of the water to wine at the wedding in Cana—John 2. Far too often (if this text is even read or preached) this account in John’s Gospel is not understood for the true “sign” it is. “Packed into what may seem like a little random or offhanded showboating is a concentrated version of everything Jesus came to do,” he writes. This miracle is vitally connected to Isaiah 25 where the promise of God to remove death and its sting forever is clearly promised to the people of God. It is an incident packed full of meaning that points to the promise of Jesus to remove the ultimate experience of loss so that eternal life—both a quantity of life (eternal, never dying) and a quality of life (“a life beyond the reach of death”)—can be experienced by all who trust in him.  

Ever the exegete, he is careful to mine the truth of the trajectory of John’s Gospel for his readers. With every turn of the page, McCullough’s readers are led first to the precipice and then to the promise (you really can’t appreciate the power of the latter without realizing the peril of the former). Jesus helps people “understand where his signs are pointing” all the while he is “warning of what blinds” them to his work. Many modern readers will find themselves numbered with the crowd who hurried to Jesus for yet another free meal (see John 6:26). “You’ve seen my power, but missed my point,” McCullough writes in what is surely the best phrase to explain so many modern readers of the Bible.  

The Christian hope hinges on the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. Nothing else will do. No other hope can provide anything other than a growing nihilism. Discontentment, envy, and anxiety are exposed for the frauds they are and how they rob life of its joy because they feed on what dies a little more with each passing day. By admitting the horror of the present life, McCullough reframes grief as he brings forward words from the past into the sorrows of the present so that the promises for the future can comfort and bring true and lasting joy. Moving from honesty to grief to hope is the clarifying process of growth in the grace and knowledge of Jesus Christ. All who walk in this way will find an anchor for their soul even as their body dies. 

Matt McCullough is the featured speaker of Taking Death Personally on Friday, February 22.  Learn more and RSVP for this free event here.

“The doctrine of the Trinity, taken literally, has no practical relevance at all.” 

—Immanuel Kant 

How great the number of modern Christians who would agree with Kant’s assessment! The Holy Trinity—if mentioned at all—seemingly has no benefit to the modern understanding other than some sort of clever formulation for an orthodoxy of the obscurant. Kelly Kapic, professor of theological studies at Covenant College, is best known for his work with the writings of John Owen. The 1657 publication of Owen’s work, Communion with God, provided a framework whereby Christians would better understand the nature and work of the Trinitarian God and their capacity through grace to speak with and hear from their Creator. Kapic has dedicated much of his academic work to helping the church understand Owen’s work and thereby learn more about the Holy Trinity.  

The 2018 re-release of his 2010 book, The God Who Gives: How the Trinity Shapes the Christian Story is best read alongside his 2017 release of Embodied Hope: A Theological Meditation on Pain and Suffering. These books form a theological compendium revealing the majesty and power of a God at work in the ruins of what Kapic calls “a magnificent failure.” The failure, however, is not the result of God’s mistake, but of the sin of the human race. One of Kapic’s greatest achievements in these books (and there are many!) is to carefully, but forcefully, state the obvious. For a culture allergic to the idea of sin, he propounds the idea of total depravity as a rupture in relationship with God and others not as a peccadillo, but a complete loss. He laments (a concept important to understand Kapic’s overall theological trajectory) that “we do not think as we ought, feel as we should, will as we might.” Like Owen, Kapic understands that “sin has distorted our judgments, twisted our affections, confused our volitions, and even damaged our physical bodies.”  

To even think of God correctly requires assistance from God himself, and Kapic models the correct path forward to explore the simplicity of God. Contrary to so many strange ideas about God, Kapic returns to the book of Genesis for the formation of Christian doctrine that is not contingent on human analogies for its foundation. To be sure, to even think thoughts of God requires some reordering of the modern mind because human beings are taught to think of God in the image of John Locke (1632–1704). Kapic unearths the invisible forces bordering modern thought when he quotes John Locke’s famous phrase, “every man has a property in his own person; this nobody has any right to but himself.” While this might be good political theory for the establishment of a statecraft free from the tyranny and exploitation of an unjust state power, theologically, it is dangerous.  

Origin of the Species 

Human beings are creatures, not creators. As such, their existence is owed to the purpose of God as understood in the actions of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Kapic underscores the actions of the Holy Trinity as an established order over the created earth and places human beings as the regents of the reign of God. Rightly does he feature Genesis 1–3 as the centerpiece and “story of Israel in a nutshell.” Here in the first chapters of the Bible are the “foundational narratives of God’s spectacular gift of creation and the rebellion of his royal representatives.” Between Genesis 1:28 and Genesis 3:15, the beginning of the world is described as well as the heightened anticipation of “the end of all things.”  

Even as humanity is plunged into sin and exiled from the Garden of Eden into the wilderness of a world of sin, Kapic is quick to highlight that “God has never given up his original design for creation.” The “progress of God’s kingdom” is seen through the lives of those humans born after Adam in the establishment of covenants with key figures that advance the kingdom of God on earth.  

These covenants serve as anchors for a divine plotline culminating in the person and work of the Lord Jesus Christ. Throughout the biblical narrative, however, he is quick to point out “this progress was not made without pain and suffering.” So very often, “the advancement of God’s purposes takes place in the context of extreme adversity” as seen most clearly in the slavery of the Israelites in Egypt. It was in this harsh environment of injustice and pain that God worked an exodus through Moses that remains the picture of the redemption provided for God’s children through Christ’s death, resurrection, and ascension.  

Emotions, Suffering, and the Holy Spirit 

Kapic’s theology of suffering is best seen as a pastoral companion to the doctrinal foundations of realism seen throughout the Bible. He isn’t afraid to speak of the terror of sickness, sorrow, and loneliness because he isn’t shy about speaking of the Holy Spirit. Seizing on the puzzling aspect of the departure of Jesus from the world as a something good for the apostles and the world (see John 16:7), Kapic shows how God gives himself to the world even as Jesus is absent from it through the person of the Holy Spirit.  

When God gives, he gives nothing short of himself. As the one who alone is called the “gift of God” (John 4:10; Acts 2:38, 8:20; 10:45, 11:17; Ephesians 4:7; Hebrews 6:4), the Spirit is given by all three persons of the Trinity, not only proceeding to us from the Father and the Son (John 14:26, 15:26, 16:7), but also freely giving himself and distributing his gifts as he wills (Hebrews 2:4). When the Father gave the Son, this was not his final gift. In his triune generosity, God continues to give in ways that his disciples could not have asked or imagined. Encountering the resurrected Jesus confirmed the reality of God’s presence with the disciples through the Son. Receiving the “gift of God” meant the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit—the triune God—now abides within all who believe. By the Spirit, God gives himself in such a way that he is not only with us, but in us.  

Kapic is at his best when he shows how misunderstood and misapplied “familiar” texts of Holy Scripture are misconstrued in the life of the church. From John 3:16 to Matthew 6:33 to the central message of the gospel found in the initial preaching of John the Baptist (Matthew 3:2), the message of Pentecost after the gift of the Spirit is repentance and faith. What true repentance means, however, is critically linked to the person and work of Jesus who “had come in obscure humility, had lived in faithful constancy, and was crucified in shameful poverty.” It was this Jesus who was raised in power to give the gift of repentance and faith as “a kind of disorientation and reorientation that simultaneously shakes up and revitalizes every area” of life by the power of the Spirit. The righteousness of Jesus Christ is now consistently carried forward in and by the life of a follower of Jesus who lives for the good of one’s neighbor and works for the advantage of others by disadvantaging themselves in obedience to Christ.  

What the Bible calls “sanctification” (or becoming more holy or more like Christ) doesn’t happen easily, and it doesn’t happen apart from great struggle and sorrow. The world in all its harshness beats down on a Christian in ways that often increases the pain of life to such a point that “hard thoughts” of God (to employ the words of John Owen) become the norm for those who suffer. Such thoughts “reveal broader problems” in the “thinking and attitude” of Christians that must be addressed. Rather than run from them or avoid the subject all together, Kapic’s pastoral counsel is to “dig in and rebuild” areas of doctrine that seem unbelievable when facing sickness and sorrow.  

More Plato Than Jesus 

Many prevailing beliefs about the body and the physical world are overturned as he exposes the fault lines in modern theology that are not correct. With a deft hand, he shows “how the Enlightenment tended to elevate the mind over physicality” and viewed “the body with deep suspicion.” In essence: “the body existed solely for the mind.” More Christians are influenced by Plato than Jesus, and Kapic is quick to point out that when encountering pain, the “strangeness of God” is best understood in the Incarnation of Jesus Christ.  

The way that God takes responsibility for our condition is by becoming one of us. The Son’s incarnation, suffering unto death, and bodily resurrection are God’s answer. In these three movements, God takes possession of our sin, misery and battle with suffering. This reality refutes any conception of a distant and unconcerned deity, for God enters our world to hand the cosmic crisis.  

Kapic is a theologian of pastoral concern who desires that love be the impetus for action in the context of the church of Christ. Doctrinal foundations are essential to withstand the shock of pain, but Christians are to use doctrinal formulations to “develop both pastoral sensitivity and theological instincts.” For Kapic, “doing theology is more often like farming than it is like stacking doctrinal bricks.” Lament by the people of God—for themselves and others—is the hallmark of what it means to be a person of true faith as they experience the pain in waiting for the coming inheritance promised to them. To be able to use the Bible as that which gives voice “with which to pray to God” as well as to “hear God’s voice to his people” through Scripture’s words is made possible by the presence of the Holy Spirit.  

Theology, done rightly, results in love for God and one another. This distinguishing mark of the Christian is the path of peace found when doctrine and devotion join forces to build faith in the written promises of God. For Kapic, the promises of Christ and the power of the Holy Spirit are linked to the people of God because death itself cannot separate them from him who died and rose again for his people. And this is the embodied hope of the God who gives. 

Dr. Kapic is the featured speaker of the Philadelphia Theology Night on Friday, January 25.  Learn more and register to attend here.

As we approach the end of another year, we are grateful to God for his sustaining mercies, his sovereign purposes, and the reassurance of his covenant promise that he is with us. For many, the new year can be a time of mixed emotions as one remembers a year filled with blessing and trial, celebration and loss. As the Scriptures teach us, we are not without hope. Our hope is neither fleeting nor vain. Our hope is grounded in the gospel of God. We have a Savior who has risen from the dead and has entered into the heavenly temple as the Lamb of God and great high priest who intercedes for his own.  

The hope that we have is a hope that impacts our every day and stretches beyond the grave. This is because the God of hope is with us in Christ, his promises are true, and he is faithful to his word. He comforts us in our suffering, and he empowers us in our witness of him to those around us. And it’s in this light that we gather together on New Year’s Eve as God’s people to pray, to worship, and to feed upon Christ in the Lord’s Supper.  

Please join us this New Year’s Eve to worship our sovereign and good God, to cry out in prayer for our city, nation, and church, and to sup at the Lord’s table in communion and be strengthened in grace.  

Our New Year’s Eve Communion service will be in the sanctuary and will be held 6:30pm through 7:30pm.  Find more details here. 

Our meeting at the International Cooperation Department at our university in China was to be a routine meet-and-greet. Our foreign affairs officer offered us water. Not thirsty, we declined. She made some welcoming comments and then offered water again. We declined again, and as the meeting started she placed two bottles of water in front of us. Her English was excellent, we had said “No, thanks,” and we proceeded to drink the water we had been given. Wait a minute…what?  

Early on in our cross-cultural training for teaching English in China, we learned some of the rules of etiquette in social situations in China. No matter how thirsty or hungry you are, say “No” when offered food or beverage. Twice. Your host will expect this and offer a third time because that’s what is polite. Now imagine you are a Chinese visiting scholar in America and your host offers a beverage…only once. Does being a guest in America mean wishing for water one’s entire visit? For a Chinese guest, placing a plate of cookies on the table and saying “Help yourself” is insufficient encouragement. At English class, we often laugh together over repeatedly offered cookies, teaching newcomers that in some American homes “if you snooze, you lose!” 

Has the fear of making a cultural faux pas kept you from stepping out to begin a cross-cultural friendship? Being the guest in the foreign culture of America, visiting international students and scholars are more concerned about making these errors than you are. Yet there are (at least!) three helpful principles to remember in interactions with international guests. First, become an objective observer. When there is a disconnect in communication or behavior compared to what you might expect, ask questions. “You know, in American culture we often…. Is it different in [your country]?” This places both of you on the equal footing of being a learner and saves face for both guest and host. Culture is frequently so deeply ingrained that one often does not realize something is cultural! Second, choose not to be offended. Questions about how much your house costs, how much money you make, or your age are your guest’s efforts to understand where you fit in the social and economic structure of America rather than a rude violation of privacy. Finally, relationship is everything. A small act of kindness goes many miles toward closing the relational distance between different cultures and countries. A few visits to your home means that you are friends. In the context of a relationship, mutual sharing is the norm, cultural mistakes can be easily smoothed over, and discussions about deeper life issues becomes natural. 

Becoming a student of culture is a process that takes time, observation, and yes, a little training. On Saturday, February 9, the Mercy Commission will be offering the half-day seminar “Words that Resonate” which will increase your awareness of basic differences in culture and communication as well as help you apply these ideas to sharing the gospel cross culturally. In the plenary session, Dr. Rudie Altamirano, Director of International Student and Scholar Services at the University of Pennsylvania, will share practical information about the pitfalls and opportunities in communicating across cultures. Workshops will focus on learning a few basic touchpoints that are key to sensitively sharing the gospel with specific cultural groups. By becoming a student of culture, and developing relationships with internationals, you will see your international friend no longer wishing for water after declining your first offer of a beverage and openly asking questions about the Water that quenches thirst eternally.