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Chris McCurley has noticed something: “People are angrier than ever.”

That includes many Christians, said McCurley, who preaches for the Oldham Lane Church of Christ in Abilene, Texas.

Dan Cooper, elder and retired minister for the Pitman Road Church of Christ in Sewell, N.J., shares McCurley’s concern.

“Both COVID opinions and political expressions have created greater division,” Cooper said.

In light of the rancor, The Christian Chronicle asked a few ministers how they are — or are not — addressing politics ahead of the 2022 midterm elections.

Bobby Ross Jr. reports.

The one-time farm town of Marysville, Ohio, is booming.

The century-old Marysville Church of Christ is not.

Even before the pandemic, the congregation in central Ohio struggled to increase its flock, much less match the area’s rapid growth.

The past few years only exacerbated the numerical concerns as the congregation — like many Churches of Christ — grappled with COVID-19 restrictions, George Floyd’s murder and the nation’s political polarization.

Bobby Ross Jr. reports.

In August last year, historic flooding hit Middle Tennessee, irreparably damaging homes and churches in the area.

The building of the Pinewood Church of Christ in Nunnelly flooded for the second time. The congregation had rebuilt once before, when storms caused devastating floods in May 2010. As a consequence, the church was unable to insure the building again, leaving it with no coverage to pay for a new building this time.

But a year later, with support from Christians in the area and across the country, Pinewood is midway through construction at a new site about half a mile away from its previous building. The property previously belonged to a cattle company. Pinewood elder Phillip Bates told The Christian Chronicle construction began in May and is expected to be complete early next year.

Calvin Cockrell reports.

Rudy Taylor, who attended Oklahoma Christian College — now Oklahoma Christian University — in 1964-65, recently wrote a small book about a congregation that was a pioneer in rural evangelism.

“A Kind Remembrance — Stories about a small church in the Oklahoma hills where a brush arbor meeting touched the hearts of future generations,” gives a century-old history of the Timber Hill Church of Christ, located four miles west of Bluejacket.

The book is only 67 pages in length but tells the story of a young, self-taught evangelist, A.C. Williams, who came to the farming and mining community in 1921 to hold a gospel meeting in a country school yard. There were no members of the Church of Christ in the community, so the 21-year-old Williams saw the fields as white unto harvest.

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Workers with One Kingdom, a mission supported by Churches of Christ, recently traveled to the Dominican Republic to check in with their longest-tenured minister, Prudencio Rodriguez.

Rodriguez has worked with the Lousiana-based ministry, formerly World Radio, for more than 40 years. In addition to church planting, he produces weekly gospel radio programs. During the pandemic, he recorded the programs on his cell phone in his bedroom.

In Mao, a small town in northwestern Dominican Republic, Rodriguez has helped to plant at least eight congregations — including churches of immigrants from neighboring Haiti. He has acquired land for the congregations but does not put the property in his name, workers with One Kingdom said. Instead, he deeds the land to the churches.

Erik Tryggestad reports.