A warm welcome in Windy City
CHICAGO — By the time my son Keaton and I…
Editor’s weekly roundup: June 28, 2019
Our end-of-the-week review of important and/or simply interesting headlines from the world of religion.
Got a tip for this column? Email Editor-in-Chief Bobby Ross Jr. at [email protected]
From the editor
FORT WORTH, Texas — Some kindnesses stick with you forever.
That’s the case with the warm welcome I received from Leonardo Gilbert, longtime minister for the Sheldon Heights Church of Christ in Chicago, when I visited that congregation in 2006. At the time, I wrote a column about my experience for The Christian Chronicle.
I enjoyed catching up with Gilbert, incoming national director of the Church of Christ Crusade, at the 40th anniversary crusade this week in Fort Worth.
I also was blessed to visit with Daniel Harrison, minister for the Chatham-Avalon Church of Christ in Chicago, who is retiring as the crusade’s longtime national director; and John Dansby, minister for the Russell Road Church of Christ in Shreveport, La., who is retiring as the crusade’s longtime finance director.
Look for full coverage of the crusade — including the Fort Worth event’s focus on racial unity — soon.
From our pages
• When the terrorists came for us: After his wife became Muslim, to appease militant Islamists, François March fled with the couple’s children — and found Christ. Erik Tryggestad reports this compelling story from the rural African village of Dono-Manga, Chad.
François March talks to his 11-year-old son, Pascal, outside the meeting place of the Dono-Manga Church of Christ in the Central African nation of Chad.
• ‘We just felt like a dark cloud was lifted off of us’: Chellie Ison talks to Joey Spann, minister for the Burnette Chapel Church of Christ in Antioch, Tenn., about the sentencing of the gunman who opened fire at the Nashville-area church nearly two years ago.
• ‘A journalism of hope’: “I’m even more convinced than before that the goals of good journalists and Christ followers are one and the same,” Tryggestad writes in reflecting on a recent panel discussion at the Thomas H. Olbricht Christian Scholars’ Conference at Lubbock Christian University in Texas.
Recommended links
• Hospice fulfills dying man’s wish to be baptized: In his final days, Tommy Reid chose to follow Jesus, reports the Times Record News of Wichita Falls, Texas. Reid often would attend services with his wife at the Burkburnett Church of Christ. “He had just never been baptized,” minister Tom Box told the newspaper. “He had never accepted Christ as his personal savior.”
• Freed-Hardeman Class of 1969 celebrates 50th anniversary: “I think it’s love — love for the Lord and love for each other,” Deborah Simon said of what drew the former classmates to the reunion. “We have a common bond and a common goal, and that’s what’s really important, is what binds us together.”
More religion news
• Survivors of tragedy lend each other support: “We’re two communities with the same experience,” Steven Willeford said of the barbecue that brought together victims of mass shootings at Texas high school and a Baptist church.
• U.S. Supreme Court launches a new church-and-state era: GetReligion’s Richard Ostling reflects on the court’s decision to allow a century-old, 40-foot cross at a public war memorial in Maryland. “Importantly,” Ostling suggests, “we can now assess new Justices Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh, who filed separate opinions supporting the cross display.”
Finally, a fun video from Mt. Palomar Bible Camp
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P.S. I got a little good news this week: I was named a finalist in the 2019 Religion News Association Awards for Religion Reporting Excellence.
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