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THE MAGAZINE ON FAITH, CULTURE & INTENTIONAL LIVING
SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2015, ISSUE 77 Death Pockets Publisher & CEO | CAMERON STRANG > cameron@relevantmediagroup.com Executive Director | JEFF ROJAS > jeff@relevantmediagroup.com Account Manager | MICHAEL SCHUERMAN > michael@relevantmediagroup.com Editorial Director | AARON CLINE HANBURY > aaron@relevantmediagroup.com Web Editor | JESSE CAREY > jesse@relevantmediagroup.com Associate Editor | DARGAN THOMPSON > dargan@relevantmediagroup.com Social Media Coordinator | TIFFANIE BRUNSON > tiffanie@relevantmediagroup.com Contributing Writers: John Brandon, Matt Conner, Alex Duke, Rob Fee, Emily Griffin, Collin Hansen, Adam Jeske, Emily McFarlan Miller, Ruth Moon, David Roark, Kevin Selders, C. Christopher Smith, John Sowers, Scott Sauls Contributing Photographers: D.L. Anderson, Joselito Briones, Elijah Dominique, Nabil Elderkin, Evan Klanfer, Darren Lau, Bob Miller, Scott Olson, Steven Taylor Designer | JOHN DAVID HARRIS > johndavid@relevantmediagroup.com Designer | LAUREN HARVILL > lauren@relevantmediagroup.com Digital Development Director | STEVEN LINN > steven@relevantmediagroup.com Systems Administrator | JOSH STROHM > joshs@relevantmediagroup.com Project Manager | LINDSEY STATON > lindsey@relevantmediagroup.com Audio & Video Producer | JEREMIAH DUNLAP > jeremiah@relevantmediagroup.com Circulation & User Experience Manager | AME LYNN DUNN > ame@relevantmediagroup.com Customer Experience Coordinator | CAROLINE COLE > caroline@relevantmediagroup.com Finance Manager | MERCEDES SIMON > mercedes@relevantmediagroup.com Facilities Coordinator | ERIC WARD > eric@relevantmediagroup.com Office Assistant | MORGAN BECK > morgan@relevantmediagroup.com ADVERTISING INQUIRIES: www.RELEVANTmagazine.com/advertise
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Are PEOPLE
PROBLEM?
WE FOUND 80 PEOPLE WHO HAD NEVER GIVEN TO THEIR CHURCH. WE GAVE THEM THE APP. WITHIN 90 DAYS, THEY WERE EACH GIVING AN AVERAGE OF $143 PER MONTH.
GOOD THINGS HAPPEN WHEN WE MAKE GIVING SIMPLE.
#peoplelovesimple
@echurchgiving
www.echurchgiving.com
first word
A LET TER FROM THE EDITOR
HEY, LET’S TRY ONE OF THOSE BY CAMERON STR ANG
ack in 2005, no one really knew what a podcast was. But iTunes had just added a directory of them, and they seemed pretty easy to make. So we thought, Hey, let’s try one of those. I can’t bring myself to listen to those early episodes, but I remember them. They were bad. Thankfully, it wasn’t long before I realized we couldn’t do a weekly podcast only talking about the content in a bi-monthly magazine, so we changed course by expanding the focus of the show. We created an ensemble cast and started giving the show segments with different content focuses, with breaks in-between. We hired a part-time producer, found a groove and the show started getting a unique personality. I had no idea if this was a proper, or even good, format for a podcast, because I actually refused to listen to podcasts. It was a fledgling media format, and I didn’t want to be influenced inadvertently by other shows. The fun of being in the first wave of a completely new thing is there are no rules. I didn’t want to limit our thinking. Podcasting was the Wild West of media, and it became a labor of love. We weren’t sure if anyone was listening, but we were having a blast. This August, the RELEVANT Podcast celebrated its 10-year anniversary. It now attracts hundreds of thousands of listeners each week, and it just won Best Spirituality & Religion Podcast of 2015 by the Academy of Podcasters. What in the world? To celebrate our 10-year anniversary, we recorded a live show in Orlando on August 21, and more than 800 listeners traveled to join us—coming from as far away as London, Los Angeles and Toronto. The response was mind-blowing, humbling and frankly, terrifying. The cast and show have evolved over the years, but some things remain constant: We still have a weird combination of high production value and great guests mixed with absolute absurdity and hilarity. It’s high-brow and low-brow. It has great music
B
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and editing, but feels like hanging out with friends. And it’s still an absolute blast to do. When we set out, we had no idea our podcast would last 470+ episodes, or that more than 600 guests would join us on the show, or that it would spawn the sort of community and connection it has. But now that the world is figuring out what podcasts are and they’re becoming a thing (thank you, Serial and Marc Maron), I’m realizing just how much time and work has gone into this over the last decade. We’ve learned a lot, but the lessons apply far beyond the show. No matter what God has sparked in you— and He has something unique for each of us—here are some tips from someone who tends to learn things the hard way: DON’T BE AFRAID TO TRY. When we first tried our hands at podcasting, all we had was an empty office and two mics. We weren’t afraid of failing because the worst case scenario was we’d learn from the experience. STICK TO IT. Very few ideas happen overnight. Most, like our show, grow little-bylittle over a long time. It will probably start out awful, but you’ll learn and get better— as long as you don’t stop. DON’T COPY. It’s human nature to emulate things you like. Be better than that. Push further. Seek God for that unique thing He’s called only you to do. Learn from other industries. I studied late-night TV in pushing our podcast during those early days. Inspiration will come from unexpected places if you avoid shortcuts. EVOLVE. The second you think you’ve mastered your craft and have “arrived,” you’re done. Be forever trying new things. HAVE FUN. Probably the top thing I’ve learned in my years leading RELEVANT is that we’re at our best only when we’re making stuff we genuinely love. Who cares about other people’s expectations—do work you dig and have fun doing it. The passion will show through. Don’t settle. And to everyone who has downloaded our podcast, shared it with your friends or tweeted at us over the last 10 years, a massive thank you. It really has been a blast.
CAMERON STR ANG is the founder and publisher of RELEVANT. Connect with him on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram at @cameronstrang.
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JULY/AUG 2015 ISSUE 76
JOY WILLIAMS R E: THE R EBIRTH OF JOY W ILLIAMS
[Joy Williams’] album is full of reverence to God. Part of understanding God is understanding ourselves and experiencing pain and breaking and renewing. Embracing ourselves, being the complicated creatures we are and not shying away from the mess is a part of spiritual growth and connectedness to God. This album is worship to me, and it deeply encourages my spirit.
T W E E T N E S S
@ SE AN K E R N O
I feel like @RELEVANT is the @Apple of magazines. It’s just always flawless in design and execution. Thank you guys so much. @ OK LAB OLD
Every Christian should read the article on ISIS and its assault on Christians in the Middle East from @RELEVANT.
SAR AH LEENDERS SIRIANNI / Via Facebook
I like your sneaky inclusion of Jude 2:1 [in “5 Verses That Don’t Mean What You Think”]. This is a great reminder to take Scripture in context, interpret carefully and to remain open. Misinterpretations happen. Some passages are complex. And remaining open to examination and growth is a good thing.
I recently purchased my first issue from a Barnes & Noble. I immediately ordered a back copy that I thought I’d enjoy. I am dazzled with the content. It has been years since I have found the truth in God that you provide. More importantly, your content has made me reconsider my relationship with God. Your material is intriguing and inspiring, and I have scoured your archives. CASSE / Via email
JED JURCHENKO / RELEVANTmagazine.com
There isn’t a page in this issue of @RELEVANT magazine that isn’t absolutely incredible and filled with such encouragement!
Honored to have an interview in this month’s @RELEVANT mag— and to share a little bit of the cover with @joywilliams. @ D OOSTMAN
@rachelheldevans As I’m about to fall off the cliff of cynicism, esp. after this week, I read your piece in the latest @RELEVANT. Thank you.
Church culture these days seems to be a split between “everything goes” or legalism. Your magazine treads the narrow path between, of grace and biblical responsibility. I have been subscribed for two years and it seems to get better every time!
[“5 Traits of Innovative Leaders”] lacked one thing: Remember not to make the significance of your life an idol. We are all scared of “not having made a difference.” But whether you cared for one person or 1,000 people, what ultimately matters is cultivating the relationship you have with the Lord. What flows from that is the graciousness of God in our lives, allowing us to take part in “extraordinary” things.
TORI D. RAUL / Via email
SEAN WITZKE / RELEVANTmagazine.com
SEPT_OCT 2015
Thanks @RELEVANT for illuminating nomophobia & for utilizing a few verses in doing so. We all struggle with social media attachment disorder. @ J OSHG AR R E L S
DBONDI15 / Via Twitter
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@ RYAN J WALTE R S
@ MWE S10
Loved that @RELEVANT declared the selfie stick this generation’s fanny pack. #TruthHurts @ WE STC L OV E
@RobFee Well done on your @RELEVANT article on dating! My anxiety level has skyrocketed after learning about #FOMO.
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P H O T O C R E D I T: S C O T T O L S O N
THE NUMBERS
AMERICANS CAN’T ESCAPE THEIR RACIST PAST—OR PRESENT F
rom Maryland to South Carolina to Texas, stories of black citizens killed unjustly by police officers have become some of the most common events on the evening news. Not surprisingly, racial tensions across America are at their highest levels since the late 1960s—and many
Recent events point to the shockingly commonplace sin of racism in our culture. Americans believe race relations are worsening. According to a recent survey from The New York Times and CBS, nearly 60 percent of Americans consider race relations “generally bad” in the country. Put in context, after President Barack
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Obama took office in 2009, two-thirds of Americans believed race relations were “generally good.” Perhaps the most striking attitude shift comes within the black community. Shortly after the president took office, around 30 percent of black Americans considered race relations “generally bad,” but that percentage now sits at a staggering 68 percent—a level of discontent untouched since the 1992 race riots following the acquittal of police officers charged in the beating of Rodney King. The survey also found “deep racial schisms” when it comes to the criminal justice system. While nearly 75 percent of black respondents think the system is biased against them—and “police [are] more likely to use deadly force against a black person”—only 44 percent of whites agreed. This new study proves that the idea that America is a post-racial nation just doesn’t hold up.
/10
6
Americans consider racial relations “generally bad”
75% of blacks think the criminal justice system is biased against African-Americans
44% of whites feel the system is biased against blacks
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THE PL AYERS
THE H T LIST
APPLE MUSIC
USERS: 10.8 million Gives you integration with your iTunes library—and approval from T-Swift.
BI-MONTHLY CULTURE POWER RANKINGS
SPOTIFY
USERS: 75 million
Spotify’s free tier offers the only ad-funded, ondemand playlists.
STEPHEN COLBERT [HOT TEST] Colbert drops the schtick for his jump to The Late Show, as the new late-night wars arrive.
PERISCOPE [HOT TER] A Twitter-integrated streaming video app that lets users broadcast their favorite subject: themselves!
JENNIFER L AWRENCE [HOT] The megastar is turning the tide on Hollywood gender inequality, earning $8 million more than Chris Pratt in their upcoming film, Passengers.
SURPRISE ALBUM RELEASES [COLD] It was cool when Beyoncé did it. Everyone else, please have the decency to give us a heads up.
CANDY CORN [COLDER] People either hate it or can’t seem to stop eating it. This waxy vegetable candy has plagued autumn far too long.
TIDAL
A STREAMING REVOLUTION
USERS: 800,000 Tidal’s main selling point is high-fidelity streaming and making Jay-Z even richer.
RDIO
USERS: They won’t say (?!) Rdio includes arguably the most comprehensive social sharing tools.
WHICH MUSIC SERVICE IS BEST?
T
he streaming wars have arrived. With the launch of Apple Music, users now have more options than ever when choosing how to get music online. Last year, for the first time ever, streaming generated more revenue ($1.87 billion) for the Recording Industry Association of America than traditional CD sales, as more and more people go online for their music. With so many services vying for your earbuds, here’s a look at six main platforms and what makes each unique:
PANDORA
USERS: 79.2 million Customized streaming radio based on taste—and un-mutable commercials.
VINYL
USERS: All of Brooklyn On the plus side, vinyl albums don’t run ads, and they double as frisbees.
POPE FRANCIS: ENVIRONMENTAL ACTIVIST POPE FRANCIS IS STANDING UP for climate change. In May, the pontiff
ONLINE OUTR AGE [COLDEST] Getting worked up about someone else’s offensive Twitter joke is officially the second most pointless waste of time on the Internet (behind cat videos).
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published a papal letter (encyclical) outlining why man-made climate change is an important issue for the Church. Not only is it a matter of creation care, it also adversely affects the “least of these,” he wrote. However, one major objection surfacing is that the pope’s proposed solutions could harm the people he wants to help—the poor. Some claim that giving up fossil fuels would require the poorest countries to forgo immediate needs like refrigeration and some medicines.
An Uncompromising Commitment Liberty University School of Law faculty are committed to teaching from a biblical worldview while incorporating real-world experience into the classroom. Our professors have garnered legal experience through these, as well as many other, distinctive careers: • State attorney general • State appeals court judge and administrative law judge • State and federal law clerk • District attorney • Trial lawyer • Judge Advocate General (JAG) Study law with professors who will encourage you to grow in your faith and remain uncompromised in your convictions.
LawAdmissions@liberty.edu (434) 592-5300 www.Liberty.edu/Law/Relevant
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Hopefully, this will not be a huge mistake.
M I S C. Eight pages from the first edition Gutenberg Bible sold for $970,000 at Sotheby’s New York auction this summer. The fragment, dating back to the early 1450s, comes from the first book printed using Johannes Gutenberg’s world-changing movable type.
THERE’S ALWAYS MONEY IN THE BANANA STAND. Arrested
Development producer Brian Grazer recently revealed that Netflix has ordered another season of the beloved sitcom. According to Grazer, the streaming content provider is targeting early summer 2016 for the debut of season five. The new 17-episode season will be the first time the dysfunctional family will appear on screen since Netflix revived the
show for a fourth season in 2013, which came after a nearly seven-year hiatus. Grazer said the challenge is “juggling all of these stars’ lives” now that most of the cast members have become Hollywood fixtures in their own rights. For season four, scheduling conflicts led to a disjointed storytelling style focusing on individual characters, but season five reportedly will ditch that approach.
WHAT’S BEHIND THE ABORTION DECLINE?
T
he number of abortions in America continues to fall. A new Associated Press survey found that abortions decreased by 12 percent from 2010 to 2015. Overall, abortion rates in the U.S. are at their lowest since Roe v. Wade legalized abortion in 1973. The decline occurred both in conservative states and more liberal ones. Prolife advocates say Abortion rates in the U.S. the laws regulatare at their lowest since ing abortions are Roe v. Wade. partially to credit, whereas pro-choice advocates say education initiatives and the widening availability and affordability of contraception is responsible for the drop.
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%
40
of unintended pregnancies in the U.S. end in abortion
%
21
of all U.S. pregnancies end in abortion
37
%
49
%
of women seeking abortion self-identify as Protestant
of Americans say having an abortion is morally wrong
When a Nike executive got a letter from a teenager with cerebral palsy who needs help tying his sneakers, he did something about it. Nike created The “Zoom Soldier 8 Flyease,” a shoe specifically for people with disabilities.
The United Nations Educational, Scientific & Cultural Organization (UNESCO) recently designated an area on the east bank of the Jordan River as the actual location of Jesus’ baptism. There is no archaeological evidence to back it, but what UNESCO says goes.
A BORT ION SOURCES: T HE GU T T M ACHER INS T I T U T E, OPER AT ION R ESCUE, PE W R ESE A RCH CEN T ER
‘ARRESTED DEVELOPMENT’ IS COMING BACK—AGAIN
Billy Fray Are you CALLED to join God in His mission? Kentucky • Orlando • Memphis • Online
owner of husk coffee house - london, uk. third space evangelist. asbury seminary m.a. in world missions and evangelism. go to asbury.to/voices to hear billy’s story
Download your FREE ebook Called, from Asbury Seminary visit: asbury.to/CT
MORGAN FREEMAN EXPLORES ‘THE STORY OF GOD’
MILLENNIALS: THE WORLD’S LEAST-RELIGIOUS GENERATION?
C
ollege students are losing their religion. According to recent research out of San Diego State University, young millennials are the least religiously oriented demographic in recorded history. In four surveys between 1966 and 2014, the study asked more than 11 million teens across the U.S. questions to gauge their feelings about faith, spirituality, religious organizations and prayer. The team found that young millennials are less religious than both Baby Boomers and Gen Xers. And the attitudes seem to be causing an exodus from the Church: Compared to 40 years ago, the number of
M
high school seniors and college students who don’t go to any sort of regular religious service has doubled, and twice as many gave their religious affiliation as “none.” PERCENT IDENTIFIES AS RELIGIOUS
75% 80% 87% 0
10 0
Millennials
Generation X
Baby Boomers
GIVING IS GOING UP—JUST NOT TO CHURCHES A MER IC A NS A R E GE T T ING GENEROUS AG A IN. In 2014, charitable donations in the United States
surpassed records set before the 2007 recession. Americans gave $358 billion last year—a whopping $47 billion more than the previous record. Curiously though, giving to religious organizations is down. While faith-based recipients remain the largest portion of all U.S. donations (32 percent in 2014), that percentage is dramatically shrinking. In 1987, 53 percent of all U.S. donations went to religious organizations and institutions.
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organ Freeman is looking for the man upstairs. The prolific actor—who played the God in comedies Bruce Almighty and Evan Almighty—is hosting a new TV series that explores how different cultures have been shaped by faith. The Story of God will follow Freeman as he visits sites of religious significance around
“For me, this is a personal and enduring quest to understand the divine.” the world, from the Vatican and ancient Mayan temples, to the jungles of Guatemala and even Joel Osteen’s Lakewood Church in Houston. “For me, this is a personal and enduring quest to understand the divine,” Freeman explained, “and I am humbled by the opportunity to take viewers along on this incredible journey.” The show will air next year on Nat Geo.
P H O T O C R E D I T: J O S E L I T O B R I O N E S
SLICES
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SLICES
I . C .Y. M . I .
M I S C. Former members of ‘N Sync and the Backstreet Boys announced they’re making a movie that, of course, includes cowboys and zombies. Backstreet Boy Nick Carter is writing, directing and starring in Dead 7. Joining in are A.J. McLean and ‘N Sync’s Joey Fatone.
IN C ASE YOU MISSED IT
ENTERTAINMENT ACTUALLY WORTH YOUR TIME
F IL M AUDIO B O O KS
1. SUFJAN STEVENS – CARRIE & LOWELL
Sufjan’s latest is a return to the beautiful folk sound of his early albums. It’s also surprisingly emotional, reflecting on his personal experiences of death, grief and faith.
2. BEYOND THE BRICK: A L E GO B RICKUM ENTARY
Jason Bateman narrates this in-depth look at the world’s most popular toy.
3 . MO DE RN ROM ANCE
Aziz Ansari teamed with a sociologist for an academically hilarious look at millennials’ view of love and dating.
KENDRICK LAMAR’S STATEMENT SHOES
H
ip-hop star Kendrick Lamar has designed a pair of Reebok sneakers inspired by his upbringing in the gang-divided neighborhoods of Compton, California. Though the tongue of the each shoe says “neutral,” Lamar alludes to the West Coast Bloods and Crips gangs on the shoe heels, with – a bold “BLUE” on the left and “RED” on the right sneaker. The design appears on the classic Ventilators, which turn 25 this year.
There could be yet another To Kill a Mockingbird sequel on the way. After already unearthing Go Set a Watchman, author Harper Lee’s lawyer made yet another surprise discovery: There may be another story in existence. Fool us once ...
4. GUNGOR – ONE WILD LIFE
This trilogy of albums from Gungor combines complex arrangements, catchy choruses and deeply spiritual lyrics.
5 . OTHE R SPACE
This Yahoo series is a sci-fi parody workplace sitcom by Paul Feig (Freaks and Geeks and Bridesmaids).
6. MYS TE RY SHOW
Each episode of this podcast solves a whimsical mystery. The real payoff is the people you meet along the way.
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WE GET MOST OF OUR NEWS FROM FACEBOOK NOW RON B URGUNDY A ND HIS K IND are officially relics of the past:
When it comes to delivering news, millennials turn to Facebook more than any other news source. A new study from Pew Research Center found that 61 percent of 19- to 34-year-olds receive their political news from Facebook, whereas only 37 percent learn about government happenings from local TV. When it comes to Baby Boomers, those numbers reverse almost exactly. Pew notes that taking political news from social media feeds does have a downside: Most of the articles and opinions users encounter already align with their own views (which is kind of a big deal).
New Jersey’s Action Park is one-upping every other water park by creating the world’s longest waterslide. The 1,975-foot-long inflatable slide has been certified by Guinness World Records as awesome.
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MARVEL CINEMATIC UNIVERSE MOVIES:
CAPTAIN AMERICA: CIVIL WAR —
The latest installment in the adventures of the Avengers heroes, Civil War will feature several familiar faces and the debut the latest Spider-Man—19year-old Tom Holland.
DOCTOR STRANGE —
A NON-GEEKS’ GUIDE TO THE DC VS. MARVEL HOLLYWOOD SHOWDOWN
O
f the 10 biggest box office movies in history, three are Marvel comic book movies released in the last three years (The Avengers 1 & 2 and Iron Man 3). They combined to earn more than $4 billion—yes, with a
“b.” Marvel has dominated Hollywood recently, but comic rival DC is rebooting franchises with its own iconic heroes, gearing for a box-office showdown of super proportions. Here’s a guide to the war for comic supremacy:
MOVIES:
TELEVISION:
The sequel to 2013’s Man of Steel features an angry Batman (Ben Affleck) squaring off with a not-so-heroic Superman.
SUPERGIRL — CBS’s Supergirl series is a family-friendly take on the grown-up world of DC heroes starring Melissa Benoist, best known for Glee.
SUICIDE SQUAD — David Ayers (Fury, End
ARROW — The CW’s series about
of Watch) directs the story of a group of supervillains—led by Jared Leto’s Joker—embarking on a suicide mission.
the Green Arrow shares villains and other universe elements with another network hit...
A NEW BATMAN MOVIE (TITLE TBA) —
THE FLASH — The premiere of the CW’s
Ben Affleck, who directed the Oscarwinning Argo, will helm an upcoming stand-alone film about the Dark Knight.
The Flash—about a young man given superhuman speed in a lab accident— was one of its biggest hits ever.
BATMAN V. SUPERMAN: DAWN OF JUSTICE —
SEPT_OCT 2015
SPIDER-MAN —
If this sounds familiar, it’s because it’s the third franchise reboot in the last 15 years. TELEVISION:
DC COMICS
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Benedict Cumberbatch stars as the supervillain alongside Rachel McAdams, Tilda Swinton and Chiwetel Ejiofor.
DAREDEVIL — Season 2 of the Netflix hit will feature another notable comic book name: The Punisher (played by Walking Dead’s Jon Bernthal). JESSICA JONES — Krysten Ritter (who played Jesse’s girlfriend Jane on Breaking Bad), stars as the superhero P.I. in the Netflix show. IRON FIST — Rumors have Ryan Phillippe connected to star as the martial artist with the power to revive careers of former heartthrobs.
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60% OF MILLENNIALS CAN’T USE WORKPLACE TECH APPARENTLY, SOCIAL MEDIA AND MS OFFICE AREN’T THE SAME.
J
“The files are in the computer!”
ust because millennials grew up tex- commonplace office responsibilities. They ting, binge-watching and gaming on a found that six out of 10 can’t perform even variety of digital devices doesn’t mean relatively easy tasks like emailing informathey have the tech knowltion from a spreadsheet. The study edge to make it in the modalso reported that the lack of real ern workplace. The American Institech skills could dramatically af% tutes for Research recently analyzed fect income: People who did well on a survey conducted by the Program the tests earn 40 percent more than for the International Assessment of those who did poorly. Maybe it’s percent more Adult Competencies that measured time to spend less effort getting past people who how well millennials (in this case, Candy Crush level 829 (it’s basically can perform 16-34 year-olds) perform a variety impossible anyway), and more tinthese common tasks earn. of mildly complex task that mirror kering around in Excel.
40
INTRODUCING TOE WRESTLING: THE REAL SPORT OF KINGS T HE W OR L D’S NO T- FA S T ES T -
CAMBRIDGE IS HIRING A FIRST-EVER PROFESSOR OF LEGO is never too late to go back to college. Cambridge University—the prestigious British institute of higher education—was recently endowed more than $6 million from The Lego Foundation to foster study in the field of playing. The Foundation, which owns a quarter of the Lego toy company, wants the school to create a professor position and a research center dedicated to examining the role that play (we’re assuming with Legos) has in development and learning. The right candidate will be smart, innovative and will obviously never go barefoot in the classroom.
IT
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SEPT_OCT 2015
growing sport is toe wrestling. Like a gross version of arm wrestling, two foot warriors place their feet inside a small ring on the floor, lock their big toes together, then try to drive their opponent’s foot to the ground. Toe wrestling’s biggest figure and reigning World Toe Wrestling Champion, Alan “Nasty” Nash (we’re not kidding), told an online paper, “I just love the fact that this is the one sport that England always wins at. We get hammered at everything else.”
SLICES
M I S C. The new iOS and Android app (and Google Chrome extension) “Who Deleted Me” memorizes your Friend list every time you log onto Facebook, and can then tell you when former friends no longer show up on the list. So now you know who unfollows/ unfriends you.
The best part is looking like Robocop—the ’80s version.
Sorry.
VIRTUAL REALITY IS ABOUT TO CHANGE ENTERTAINMENT FOREVER
Taylor Swift’s latest foray into pop, 1989, recently sold its 5 millionth copy. The last album to cross that threshold was Adele’s 21. It only took Swift 36 weeks to move 5 million records. That officially makes 1989 the fastest-selling album in a decade.
Time Warner Cable repeatedly called Araceli King’s cell phone 153 times trying to reach someone who previously held her phone number. When the company wouldn’t stop, King sued. A judge awarded her $1,500 per call.
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SEPT_OCT 2015
A
fter countless ’80s movies alluded to it, the virtual reality revolution is finally here. Soon, the Oculus Rift (which Facebook acquired for a staggering $2 billion) will join virtual reality devices from companies like Sony and HTC,
all hoping to make VR kits one day as indispensable as smartphones. With Sony and Oculus already commissioning films specifically for the new technology, and tons of games on the way, the way you experience entertainment may soon never be the same.
THE COOLEST REALITY IS VIRTUAL O C UL US R IFT ($350) plugs into
MIC R OSOF T HOLOL E N S ($800)
DVI and USB ports on a computer and tracks your head movements so it can add a 3-D experience to its stereo screens.
works with Windows Holographic, a new technology that adds 3-D images around you, so users see holographic images floating in front of them.
AVE GA N T GLYP H ($499), which you wear like headphones, uses “micro mirrors” to reflect an image directly into your retinas. No lie. The future is now.
HTC V IV E wants to allow you to
move around a room. The idea is that you can get up, walk and move around virtual objects—like in the movies. Available by Christmas.
EMOJI PASSWORDS ARE HERE T IR ED OF T RY ING T O R EMEMBER a confusing combina-
tion of capital and lowercase letters, numbers and random symbols? We’ve got good news for you: You can kiss your current impenetrable login “Pa$$word123” goodbye forever. Digital security company Intelligent Environment has launched emoji PINs, which they say are more efficient and
more secure. Not only is it easier to remember a random 4-digit picture combo—like dancing salsa lady, snake dragon, poo, taco—it’s also harder for a hacker to crack. As the company points out, there are “7,290 unique permutations of four non-repeating numbers,” but 3,498,308 million combos when using 44 different emojis.
Marcus Doe is a third year Master of Divinity Student and student government president at Gordon-Conwell’s main campus in Hamilton, Massachusetts.
SERVE THE CHURCH, NOT YOUR DEBTGa. Hentiuntur Ximodignis adi omnimi, quam
“I returned to my home country of Liberia in 2010 and saw so much suffering and bitterness. God put it in my heart to do something about the social injustice. My mission is to go back and be able to have a self-sustaining organization that will help the people of Liberia to have the opportunities that we take for granted in the Western World.” – Marcus Doe, M.Div. ’16
FIND OUT MORE ABOUT:
GORDON-CONWELL 800 428 7329
DEGREE PROGRAMS www.gordonconwell.edu/degrees
www.gordonconwell.edu
MARCUS DOE www.gordonconwell.edu/mystory
SLICES
HOW WELL DO YOU KNOW THE FAITHS OF THE PRESIDENTIAL HOPEFULS?
E 1
LECTION SEASON IS UPON US. With primaries fast approaching, it’s time to start thinking about who will get your vote. We can help with that. Check out what some have said about their personal beliefs:
MARCO RUBIO
HILLARY CLINTON
“The Church was a critical part of
“I believe Jesus Christ is God. Today
my growing up. In preparing for
we see a rising tide of intolerance
this event, I almost couldn’t even
in America, intolerance toward
list all the ways it influenced
those who cherish these
me and helped me develop as
values. ... How does promoting
a person, not only on my own
these values hurt anyone? The
faith journey, but with a sense of
millions of Americans who share these values are tired of being
obligation to others.”
constantly told that they need to 2
keep their opinions to themselves.”
MARTIN O’MALLEY
“My Catholic faith has taught me that there is no such thing as a spare person, and we progress as a community in response to diversity.”
5
JEB BUSH
“I think religion ought to be about making us better as people and less about things that end up getting into the political realm.”
3
RAND PAUL
“My faith has never been easy for me, never been easy to talk about and never
6
TED CRUZ
“I think anyone in politics, you’ve got a
been without obstacles.
special obligation to avoid being a Pharisee,
I do not and cannot wear my religion
to avoid ostentatiously wrapping yourself
on my sleeve. I am a Christian, but
in your faith. Because I think in politics, it’s
not always a good one. I’m not
too easy for that to become a crutch, for
completely free of doubts.”
that to be politically useful.”
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SLICES
STATEMENT
We can’t afford to point fingers at each other within the Church, not while the world desperately needs our helping hands. As ambassadors of Christ, we know how to negotiate a truce between the world and the Creator—but first, we need to make a truce with one another. Let’s start small. Can you love a fellow Christian who sins differently than you do? That shouldn’t be hard. You know you fall short too (Romans 3:23).
When we sin in the same ways as all our friends, we’re more likely to suffer blind spots.
DO WE REALLY WANT UNITY?
ALLOWING OTHERS TO REVEAL OUR BLIND SPOTS BY COLLIN HANSEN
IN
theory, we all desire unity in the Church. We talk about reconciling our differences and joining forces. But often, we actually mean that other Christians need to appreciate (and probably adopt) our gifts, passions and expressions of faith. We’re convinced that our convictions are correct, and we pick apart those who may care about different things. But unity doesn’t just look like conformity. We all have blind spots. We easily see faults in someone else or other groups, but then struggle to see limitations in ourselves. But unless we learn to see our own faults, we can’t appreciate how God gifts other Christians. And until then, we can’t have true unity. Based on God’s gifts to you, and on your experience and personality, you probably fit more naturally in one of three categories: 1) Maybe God has softened your heart with compassion for the broken, weak and abused; 2) Or He has gifted you with great courage to stand with truth; 3) Or He has commissioned you with particular zeal and effectiveness to make disciples in all the nations. None of us are equally strong in each area. We can’t be. But we do need to appreciate that God doesn’t work the same way in and through every person. God aims to bring us together in local churches with believers who confess different sins, who endure different temptations. And He blesses us with diverse spiritual gifts, with various passions and strengths and dreams so we can love the world together with the Gospel of Jesus Christ.
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Now let’s get specific. If you live in an affluent area where everyone seems to have a personal trainer, do you regularly spend time with Christians outside your neighborhood who are tempted by laziness and gluttony? Or, if you live in a middle-class community, can you identify close friends who confess their greed and arrogance? When we sin in the same ways as all our friends, we likely exhibit blind spots in exactly the areas God aims to shine the light of His holiness. Only when others help expose our blind spots through their different personalities, experiences and spiritual giftings can we clearly see the kindness of God to forgive us our sins. Our friends tempted to laziness and gluttony remind us that health and work are gifts from God more than rewards for selfrighteousness. And our friends confessing greed and arrogance remind us that grace extends even to those who seem like they have everything they need in this life. The good news of Jesus Christ unites us Christians as family, even when we seem to have nothing else in common except our humanity. And the Gospel creates an alternate community that is courageous, compassionate and commissioned and reminds us how much we need each other.
COLLIN HANSEN is the editorial director for The Gospel Coalition and author of Blind Spots: Becoming a Courageous, Compassionate and Commissioned Church.
We believe Jesus changes everything He touches, and that He uses us, His people, to do it. What is your part? InFaith offers unique mission opportunities to serve in your local community. Or dream a little— create your own. [ Watch the commercial. Follow your call. Start here: infaith.org ]
THE SOUTHERN ROCKER IS BRINGING HIS RAW HONESTY TO NEW GENRES
“T
“The ultimate goal of music is to take people to a place they can’t get without it.” 32
MUSIC THAT MATTERS
“They seeped into my bloodstream at a young age,” he says. “I can’t undo it.” Mayfield’s latest album, however, is a different beast. He’s experienced a bit of “musical bipolar disorder,” he explains, and he ended up writing Wild Eyes with more of a pop sensibility. Regardless of what genre his music fits, Mayfield says his main goal is to be as honest as possible. The rawness of his lyrics, coupled with his rich, gravelly voice, gained his songs placement on shows like Grey’s Anatomy and earned him slots on tours with bands like Needtobreathe. “The ultimate goal of music is to take people to a place they can’t get without it,” he says. “If they’re going through something hard and the song helps, that’s a huge payoff as an artist. Music has such a human mechanism wired inside of it. My favorite records have made me feel a range of emotions, but also taken me to a place where I’m not focused on the troubles I’m dealing with at the moment.”
WILD EYES
On Wild Eyes, Mayfield spices up his rock sound with some pop elements, but he still maintains his signature sense of grit. Songs on the album talk honestly about the trials and triumphs of love, couched in everything from old-school rock, to beautiful harmonies, to laid-back pop.
P H O T O C R E D I T: B O B M I L L E R
here’s something in the air in this town and certainly in the South. You can’t shake it. It comes out in music.” Matthew Mayfield is talking about his hometown, Birmingham, Alabama. He resists the urge to join the droves of up-and-coming musicians moving to Nashville, Tennessee, opting to stay in his slower, quieter hometown a few hours down the road. The feel of the South certainly influences Mayfield’s music. He grew up listening to classic Southern rock like Lynyrd Skynyrd and 38 Special. And for most of his career, Mayfield leaned toward that sort of Southern-infused rock and roll.
1 in 5 people will experience mental illness this year.
It’s time to talk about it. Join Rick and Kay Warren and other church leaders for The Gathering on Mental Health. Learn how you can join the conversation and compassionately care for those living with mental illness.
THE GATHERING ON
MENTAL HEALTH & THE CHURCH with Pastor Rick and Kay Warren
October 7–9, 2015 • Saddleback Church • Lake Forest, CA mentalhealthandthechurch.com
THE DROP
ARTISTS TO WATCH
tories define John Darnielle, who some even hail as “rock’s best storyteller.” His creativity drives The Mountain Goats, the band he’s led since the early 1990s. And the group’s rich, detailed songs all draw from Darnielle’s passion for stories. He calls his songs “personified narratives.” “I assume the personality of the person I’m writing about and let him speak,” he explains. The stories on the band’s latest album, Beat the Champ, all center around wrestling. Darnielle was a fan of the sport when he was a kid, he says, but there’s more to it than that. “[Wrestlers] are sacrificing everything for a craft they practice that a lot of people don’t take seriously. There’s something
S
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MUSIC THAT MATTERS
really noble in that, I think. There’s this concept of really giving yourself to your work that’s kind of beautiful.” Darnielle has certainly given himself to his work. He has been the main—and sometimes only—member of The Mountain Goats for the better part of 25 years. Even after all that time, he is still dedicated to storytelling, both in long-form (his first novel, released late last year, received a nomination for a National Book Award for Fiction) and the short-form of songs. “The value of stories is they take you out of yourself for a minute and bring you back to yourself at the end,” he says. “You’re sharing something that is first kind of alien. Once you chew on it, you connect it to your own story. With my smaller stories, hopefully people can live inside it for a minute, and when they leave, they take something useful.”
WHY WE L OV E THE M:
At this point, The Mountain Goats have written songs about just about everything. Now they’re bringing their fun, folky sound to the topic of wrestling. Beat the Champ is the most fun album about beating people up that you’re likely to hear. T HE MOUN TAIN GOAT S’ BEAT THE CHAMP
FOR FAN S OF:
The Decemberists, Elliot Smith, M. Ward Andrew Bird
THE BOTS
NOW S T R E A MING
These albums (& tons more) are streaming on The Drop at RELEVANTmagazine.com. Listen in!
MIK AIAH LEI WAS 12 YEARS OLD when he formed
The Bots. The other founding member, his brother Anaiah, was 9. Now, almost a decade later, the LA-based duo has played the festival circuit, self-released three albums and been highlighted by major taste-makers. The band recently released Pink Palms, their debut full-length with Fader Label. To hear them tell it, their sound—which mixes punk, blues and grunge—has grown a lot even in the last few years. “We’ve evolved as musicians,” Mikaiah says. “It’s evolved in many different ways from the rock band we used to be. Lyrically, I’ve put a lot of my emotions into my writing. I hope that connects with certain people.”
WAV E & R O M E
Across the Map
WHY WE LOV E THE M:
The Bots’ grungy version of punk sounds fresh and full of energy, but their sound is also surprisingly mature.
JO SH UA FL E TC H ER
Ready, Aim
FOR FAN S OF :
The White Stripes, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Jimi Hendrix
JOHN MARK & SARAH MCMILLAN
P H O T O C R E D I T: D . L . A N D E R S O N ( M O U N TA I N G O AT S ) ; E L I J A H D O M I N I Q U E ( T H E B O T S ) ; C I R C A WAV E S
(CIRC A WAV ES)
You Are The Avalanche
EMERY
You Were Never Alone
J O S H UA L U K E SMITH
Your Beauty
JOSH GILLIGAN
Steady On
CIRCA WAVES FIT TINGLY ENOUGH, THE MEMBERS OF CIRC A WAVES met at a music festival.
WHY WE L OVE THEM:
Frontman Kieran Shudall was working as a stage manager at Liverpool Sound City in 2013, but he was eager to form a band of his own. It turned out his new friends Sam Rourke, Colin Jones and Joe Falconer made the perfect bandmates. A year later, the indie-rock band was performing at summer music festivals around the world, and earlier this year, they released their full-length debut. “I think it’s a good album to listen to, to pump you up before you go on a night out,” Shudall says. “I hope people will look back and remember the record as something they listened to when they were growing up.”
Circa Waves’ music is irresistibly fun, the kind of music you can’t help but dance to. FOR FAN S OF:
The 1975, Spoon, Catfish and the Bottlemen
RELEVANTMAGAZINE.COM
35
THE DROP
CONVERSATION
Q +A
DEREK JOHNSON THE WORSHIP LEADER ON EXPLORING GOD’S LOVE AND GOING SOLO was worship music that first drew Derek Johnson to church. He was interested in music from a young age, but wasn’t that interested in God. When he was 17, Johnson visited a church where he encountered contemporary worship music for the first time. He was intrigued and kept coming back, eventually surrendering his life to Christ. Years later, Johnson became a worship leader with Jesus Culture, the youth ministry at Bethel Church in Redding, California. Earlier this year, Johnson released his first solo worship album, Real Love. WHAT DID YOU MOST ENJOY ABOUT DOING A
DO YOU EVER FEEL LIMITED BY THE GENRE OF TR A-
SOLO ALBUM?
I’ve always loved writing songs. It’s been the way I journal and process what’s happening in life—to just get real and start processing what the Lord’s doing in my life and what I want to say to Him. With any album, you want it to express the thing that’s on your heart. You want it to feel authentic, and it’s almost not until it’s all done that you listen to it afterward and you can go, “Yeah, OK, I’m happy with the decisions we made.” But the process to get there can be a bit of a journey. WHAT’S YOUR APPROACH WHEN YOU’RE WRITING A WORSHIP SONG?
After you have an idea or a song that’s starting to form, you have to start really looking at the song: Is this going to sing well? Is this something we could lead in church? Is it theologically correct? But before I’m even thinking about anything like that, I just start to tap into the heart of the moment and what I’m feeling like I want to say to Jesus or say about Jesus. I find that if I can protect that original spark of the idea so the authenticity is there, that resonates with people.
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MUSIC THAT MATTERS
“All the different versions and depictions of love we might experience in life are going to fall short of that real authentic love of Jesus.”
DITIONAL WORSHIP?
More than feeling limited by a genre or style, usually the box I’m trying to break out of is just to push myself to write a little differently. There’s always this interesting relationship between what I might want to do creatively as an artist, and writing songs that are going to work in worship. I try to toe that line well. But worship music is continuing to expand into new sounds, so that’s exciting when I think about the future of making other records. WHAT DO YOU HOPE PEOPLE TAKE AWAY FROM REAL LOVE?
The whole album is about the fact that Jesus is really the center of it all. He’s that love we’ve all either found or we’re still looking for. All the different versions and depictions of love we might experience in life are going to fall short of that real authentic love of Jesus. I wanted to expound on this topic of God’s love and help people experience it at a greater level. His love impacted my life and changed my life—and it’s still changing my life. The first stuff to put out there is about the real authentic love of Jesus. This is why our lives are laid down. This is what it’s about.
P H O T O C R E D I T: D A R R E N L A U
IT
Restore Dignity + Transform Lives
Meet Gora Bai. Before joining our training institute, she rolled local cigarettes, earning 50 cents per day for 14 hours of labor. We're proud to partner with 18 communities of change-makers like her. Watch our 3 minute video at avikas.org.
@aatmavikas
With low housing costs and a solid median income, Detroit’s new economy is ideal for startups. And with companies like Shinola already based there, it could be America’s next coolest city.
AU STIN, TE X AS
THE BEST CITIES FOR VISIONARIES you’re a millennial, odds are you’ve thought about skipping the “traditional” 9-to-5 career path in favor of building your own business. A recent study from Bentley
contrast, a mere 13 percent said they see themselves climbing the corporate ladder. It’s a huge shift from previous generations. An interesting—and for many, exciting—aspect of this shift is geographical. Because few millennials are choosing to work for traditional companies, they’re more free to live in a city based on factors other than just employment—facChoosing a city is all the tors like creative culture and churches. more important when If you’re wanting to you’re not simply relocat- venture out, we’ve identified the five cities best ing for a specific job. for young visionaries— people who care about University found that of millenni- launching a business and also als, two-thirds (67 percent) plan care about strong community and to start their own business. By their faith.
IF
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CREATE. INNOVATE. LEAD.
SXSW is awesome, of course. And for entrepreneurs, the city is just as cool—with fair housing and a ton of creative companies. Plus, churches like Austin Stone make it attractive for believers.
TU L SA, OK LAHOMA
Despite low cost of living, the average business brings in more than $1.2 million a year. That rivals bigger cities like New York and Portland. Plus, there are tons of churches.
INDIANAPOLIS, INDIANA
This area boasts over nine businesses per 100 people. It also ranks in the top of 10 for most religious venues. The capitol claims the 4th highest church/people ratio.
LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA
With more millennials moving west, parts of the city now reflect this new entrepreneurship. In recent years, churches like Reality LA and Hillsong LA are helping foster a growing community of Christians.
P H O T O C R E D I T:
D E TR OIT, MIC HIG AN
TRINETTE REED
TOP CITIES TO LAUNCH SOMETHING
“ECFA—The Gold Standard!” “By becoming an accredited member of ECFA, Elevation Church is excited to partner with the gold standard for church accountability. ECFA sets the bar high for its members, and by doing so helps increase trust and ensure confidence with our congregation that we are operating our church with the highest level of financial integrity and transparency. ” Steven Furtick, Senior Pastor Elevation Church – Charlotte, NC
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MAKER
WHY YOU NEED A MENTOR DOING YOUR OW N THING IS AW E SOME, B U T M AY B E YO U ’ R E M I S S I N G S O M E T H I N G ?
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CREATE. INNOVATE. LEAD.
T
hese days, it seems like everybody is starting their own businesses. In fact, it’s almost surprising to meet a twentysomething who actually has a boss. In many ways, this is awesome. This generation is one of the most entrepreneurial in a long time. But, as great as it is to strike out on your own, sometimes people skip the crucial step of learning from someone who has gone before them. Years ago, before I launched The Mentoring Project, my father-in-law gave me pieces of advice I think everyone needs to hear:
FIND AND ATTACH YOURSELF TO THE HIP OF A MASTER Millions of young men and women are confident, smart and talented. Most of them try to “make it” alone. They spend many years trying to figure out a craft, and then start excelling in their late 30s or 40s. But if you can attach yourself to a master (of any profession), you can speed up your mastery and accelerate the process by a decade. Since I was in my 20s, I have carefully sought out mentors of excellence. The choosing is critical. Masaaki Hatsumi, the famous martial arts grandmaster, once said, “Students deserve their teachers.” Do not choose poorly. But you do need to choose. Look for mentors who are masters in the field. Look for visionary leaders, writers and communicators.
FIND MENTORS WHO BELIEVE IN YOU AND LISTEN TO YOU Who you allow to speak into your life is a sacred choice. I see many young leaders damaged by submitting themselves to the next strong personality. The strong
BY JOHN SOW ERS
personality may be impressive and selfconfident, but with no personal concern for you. Worse, they may simply flatter and use you to build their own platform. The same way a good mentor imparts wisdom, character and craft, a bad mentor will impart their habits, reactions and particular worldviews, as well. A bad mentor can be like visiting a bad chiropractor: You leave worse than you start. When a mentor believes in you, it does not feel like a possessive or controlling thing. He does not insist you do this or that. She feels more like a patient, listening friend. These mentors often become great guides and friends. They are not just advice-dispensing machines, they are people who are genuinely interested in you.
FIND A MENTOR WHO HELPS YOU DISCOVER YOUR OWN VOICE Many young voices are echoes, striving to sound like others. But echoes have diminishing returns, they get weaker with each reverberation. When you find your own voice, you will create something original. This is where the power is: finding your divine fingerprint and walking in it, no matter what others think. You are the only you. There is no other precedent. The mentor who helps you find your voice is a rare gift. Part of finding your voice is allowing others to say hard things and speak direction into your life. King Solomon once said, “a rebuke impresses a discerning person” (Proverbs 17:10). Be open to criticism, especially from those you trust. The Twitter and blog trolls don’t really matter. They may on occasion say good things, but it’s mostly drama, one-upmanship and attention grabbing—sometimes name-calling and even bullying. The critics who matter are the ones you know and respect. These critics want the best for you. This is the key in receiving correction and advice. Does this
person love you and want the best for you? Is this person seeking your good? Or is this about ego or shaming or control or something else? Some feel obligated to say hard or mean things, which is forced and unnatural.
FIND PEOPLE WHO ARE NOT AFRAID TO TELL YOU THE TRUTH IN LOVE, ESPECIALLY AS YOU GROW IN INFLUENCE There is a narrow balance here. I have several famous friends who are surrounded by fan friends. Fan friends always smile and say, “You are beautiful. You are brilliant. No matter what you say or do, we are with you.” Fan friends leech off the charisma and fame for meaning and affirmation. They are terrified to say anything that might endanger their precious position. You shouldn’t let critics define how you live your life, but you do need friends and mentors who will be honest with you when they see red flags. Even if this is only two people, keep them, value them, appreciate them, listen to them. They won’t always be right, but if you eject all these people from your life, the “Yes” friends can warp you. Do not be discouraged if you have no great mentors in your life. For years, I had several I only spoke with a twice a year. Even these short conversations and small touches can make a huge difference. Also, some of your mentoring community can live in your mind (but not more than a third). Seek out the great voices, the writers and leaders and thinkers of history with whom you resonate. Devour books. Read letters. Find and emulate the rhythms of the great ones. It turns out, what’s missing from a lot of millennials’ professional work is a mentor. JOHN SOWERS is president of The Mentoring Project and the author most recently of The Heroic Path: In Search of the Masculine Heart. He is also a recipient of the president’s Champion of Change award. He is on Twitter @johnsowers.
RELEVANTMAGAZINE.COM
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MAKER
I WENT TO CHANGE THE WORLD
HOW ADAM JESKE’S PURSUIT OF JUSTICE L ED HIM DO W N T HE PAT H TO REAL CHANGE.
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CREATE. INNOVATE. LEAD.
B Y A DA M J E S K E
P H O T O C R E D I T:
HOWL COLLECTIVE
LOOKING back, I felt like a failure. I graduated college full of optimism, faith, passion for justice and judgment for anyone who didn’t share these. After graduation, my wife Christine and I flew off to Nicaragua, armed only with two suitcases, young love and a vague hope (from a sixweek old email) that a friend of a friend would meet us at the airport. We did get our ride. And we ended up serving for a year in El Porvenir, a mountaintop village of 40 families on a deadend road, surrounded by fields of corn and beans and tracts of shade-grown coffee. I also got giardia for much of the year, I had malaria once, and my “ministry” there mostly felt like a failure. Sustainable agriculture experiments, Bible studies and school teaching all pretty much flopped. I came home with my tail between my legs. In this season, we thought about the words of Don Mosley, a father figure we’d met at Jubilee Partners (a Christian community serving refugees east of Atlanta): People either burn out, give up or find a way to sustain their work for justice. We had to find our way. Our year in Nicaragua proved we had little tangible knowledge or aid to offer our friends there. So we decided to get some more training. For a year, we each worked multiple part-time jobs, took prerequisite classes and enrolled in a graduate program. We moved to China to teach English while earning our degrees. After we graduated, we once again found ourselves in the U.S., searching for a way to get back overseas, for a way to help people in the hard places. We had a son, and I worked as a residence hall director at a small state school near family in Wisconsin. Soon, we found ourselves back overseas, this time on a new continent. We spent more than three years in South Africa, first directing a pilot microfinance project and then teaching at a small local seminary. There, we interacted with incredible students from the Congo, Mozambique, Burundi and beyond. Then we ran into another wall. The seminary faced internal institutional strife that
threatened its stability. So, for the third time in nine years, we left our mission field. And I didn’t start Toms or plant a church. I didn’t found Kiva or write a bestseller. I didn’t start a ministry to trafficked women or launch charity: water. No, I just came home. Like the majority of Christians, Christine and I are no longer on what I would call “the front lines.” But I’ve realized that doesn’t make us failures. Sure, I didn’t have the massive impact for which I hoped. But working for justice, for God’s Kingdom, for people in hard situations, doesn’t always look like launching a nonprofit or starting a movement. Several realities can keep us going in spite of setbacks:
REDEFINING SUCCESS If we measure our “success” by popularity standards or the success of some highprofile brand, we would all be failures. But as Christians, those aren’t our standards. Thankfully, they’re not God’s either. We need to learn a different way to change the world: quietly and patiently. Embracing the nature of the changes we want to see makes all the difference in long-haul justice and missions work.
FOCUSING ON THE MISSION For those called to missions and justice work, it isn’t a phase or a hobby. Rather, our mission to help people in hard places is a life-long calling. If we don’t jump on a bandwagon, then we also can’t just jump off. So, in the words of those wise sages, Chumbawamba, “we get knocked down, but we get up again.”
STANDING ON A FOUNDATION We can only get back up again, though, if we stand on a strong foundation. My wife and I were driven by what we read in the Bible, particularly the care we see God exhibit for people on the margins. If we jettisoned that, it would be cataclysmic—our whole world and our relation to it would shimmer and slide. The foundation for our work should also be the foundation for our entire lives.
REMEMBERING THE NEED Simply put, we see too many people on the world’s margins today. Ultimately, what keeps us going more than anything else should be knowing that people need justice or an opportunity or health care or money. My friends in hard places are still there. And so we still need to work, doing whatever we can to help them and others in similar situations.
LEARNING TO LEARN We won’t get everything right. Like my wife and I, you’ll have to learn to learn. After all, failures are how we grow, and they’re only problematic if they are not instructive. Our learning came in the form of academics and role models like Don at the community in Georgia—people who showed and are showing us the way to be faithful.
LEANING ON JESUS Sometimes, we all need to admit, we just don’t know what to do. So we pray. It’s one thing to know that God cares about injustice, but it’s quite another to admit your doubts. Dumping our guts on the floor when we feel wounded and empty allows Jesus in, making space for His grace and healing. All kinds of things go awry in justice work. But there’s also good news worth celebrating. Working for justice or international development can feel like a never-ending uphill slog. But did you know that 36 percent of the world’s population was really, really poor (living on less than $1/day) in 1990? Today, it’s less than 14 percent. That’s nearly 1 billion fewer people in extreme poverty! We are making progress. That realization should fuel us on to more work. So, no, I didn’t start Toms or Kiva. But I don’t need to. And neither do you. There’s still good work to do. ADAM JESKE keeps busy by working on Urbana 15, the world’s largest missions conference for young adults, December 27-31, 2015. Find him on Twitter @adamjeske.
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THE DEVASTATING HUMAN TOLL IN QATAR ONE OF THE DEADLIEST PLACES IN THE MIDDLE EAST CENTERS AROUND THE 2022 WORLD CUP ince FIFA announced Qatar as the host country for the 2022 World Cup, workers from all around the Middle East have migrated to the area in order to find work in all manner of construction. By the time the tournament rolls around, up to 4,000 of those migrant workers may have died. A report from the Qatarian government shows that 1,200 migrants from India, Nepal and Bangladesh have died since the notoriously corrupt FIFA began building projects in 2010, with 964 dying between 2012 and 2013. These numbers appear not even to include deaths of workers from other countries such as the Philippines. As if that were not bad enough, multiple reports also reveal that some of these workers work incredibly long hours in grueling conditions while living in prisonlike dorms—sometimes, even, employers
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seize passports as some kind of control or intimidation tactic. Despite initial claims, not all of these deaths are linked directly to FIFA and the World Cup. Another statement by Qatar’s government claims that “not a single worker’s life has been lost” in connection with the new construction. But third parties like The Guardian still attribute many of the deaths to the World Cup projects. Regardless of the particular building project, the global spotlight on Qatar—which the International Trade Union Confederation calls “a country without a conscience”—illuminates the inhumane and often fatal conditions for the hundreds of thousands of migrant workers who journey to Qatar each year. Even though it remains uncertain how many these deaths connect to the World Cup project, these conditions produce a death toll that, by any reckoning, represents a humanitarian crisis.
THE NUMBERS 1, 20 0 MIGR A N T DEAT HS
in Qatar since FIFA named it a World Cup host in 2010 94 6 DEAT HS
of migrant workers in 2012 and 2013 1 /2 OF MIGR A N T WOR K ER S
are from India and Nepal Workers are paid as little as $50 PER W EEK to build the $260 billion World Cup stadium An estimated 4 ,0 0 0 WOR K ER S W ILL H AV E DIED in Qatar by the
time the World Cup is held in 2022
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FIGHTING FOR JUSTICE BY MOVING F R O M A PAT H Y T O A D V O C A C Y BY ALEX DUKE
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t one time or another, every Christian feels it: that adrenaline-pumping rush to change world. A conference or shortterm trip gives many Christians a momentary high on world-changing optimism, only to crash shortly thereafter—once they survey the land and find it overwhelming and even a bit scary. They certainly see opportunity. But, reminiscent of Moses’ dozen spies (Numbers 13:28), they also see that “the people who live there are powerful, and their cities are fortified and very large.” Overwhelmed, people begin to ask, “How can I care about the starving in South Sudan; the refugees in war-torn Nigeria; and those subjected to sex trafficking in Thailand all when the starving and the refugees and the trafficked are also nearby, and I do not know them?” Jenny Yang has some suggestions for how to move from awareness to activism without getting overwhelmed.
A PERSONAL HISTORY OF POVERTY Yang grew up in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, not far from her dad’s auto repair shop. She eventually moved to Baltimore, Maryland, to study international relations at Johns Hopkins University. Today, Yang works as vice president of advocacy and policy for World Relief, an international relief and development agency that functions as the humanitarian arm of the National Association of Evangelicals. This is a full-time policy job, where she considers how Christians should respond to a range of issues like immigration, global violence, racism and poverty. Yang spends a lot of time thinking through issues of immigration, particularly as they pertain to Christians in America.
She concerns herself primarily with two questions: What is the Christian response to immigration? And does the Church know it and act on it? For Yang, though, immigration is as much a part of personal history as public policy. Long before Yang was born, back when Korea was one country, Communist soldiers abducted Yang’s grandfather. Four years after that, her grandmother died, leaving Yang’s father—who was around 7 years old at the time—essentially orphaned. “Poverty defined his life,” Yang says. He went to live with an uncle and delivered newspapers, tutored fellow students and washed chalkboards to make enough money to buy his books so he could go to school. In post-war Korea, prospects for children like this were bleak. He was without a dad, a mom and any reasonable sources of income, independence or hope. Before Yang’s grandmother died, however, she heard the Gospel from American missionaries, and she accepted Christ. By becoming a Christian, she gave
eventually opened up his own auto repair shop downtown. For the past several decades, he has used his expertise to help the local community by fixing their cars and even writing the occasional column about auto repair for a local Korean newspaper.
OWNING THE STORY Rather than using her background to forge credibility, Yang’s identity as an immigration advocate born to immigrants initially discouraged her from sharing her story. She feared she would be ridiculed as partial or even self-serving. “I worried people would look at me and say, ‘Of course she’s talking about that, because she’s Asian and has a personal story that colors her view.’ I felt my story would be discounted. I didn’t want people to think I was only saying something because I experienced the immigration story myself,” she says. She kept her family history to herself and didn’t share it publicly until 2013. Even then, she did so on a whim to a
“THE LONG ROAD OF FIGHTING INJUSTICE IS VERY TIRING. YOU HAVE TO HAVE A FOUNDATION OF BEING ROOTED IN GOD AND SCRIPTURE, UNDERSTANDING WHY GOD REALLY DOES WANT YOU TO DO THIS.” her son a glimpse of an inheritance that is imperishable. “My dad’s experience has colored how I view the world and even my own faith,” Yang says. “You could so evidently see God’s hand on my dad’s life, even bringing him to [the United States].” In the late 1970s, Yang’s parents immigrated to Philadelphia, where her father
group of college students. Yet immediately, she discovered that what God did in her father’s life struck a chord far more resonant than well-researched data or stat-clarifying graphs. “People remembered it,” she says. “Because it was a story that showed God’s greater involvement in the world, [something different] than facts and data.
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“What I thought would be very detrimental to my credibility has become one of my greatest assets. I needed to embrace the fact that I am Asian-American and that my upbringing has colored the way I view these things.” But Yang is clear: Her views concerning immigration and other social issues are rooted in her faith, not her family tree. “A lot of my convictions on immigration are based on being Christian, first and foremost,” she says. Yang realizes that Christians will not all reach the same conclusions regarding the specific ins and outs of issues like immigration, nor will they all give their lives to thinking through public policy. But everyone who claims the name of Christ owns an inescapable and binding obligation to care for the poor, the oppressed and the marginalized in a distinctly Christian way. To be sure, everyone’s unique personal biography will influence their expressions of this obligation, but every Christian’s shared spiritual biography should somewhat democratize the work and passions of the Church, leaving apathy as the only unacceptable response.
LEAVING APATHY BEHIND To avoid discouraging those who sincerely desire to be involved but don’t know where to begin, Yang coined a useful diagnostic spectrum: People begin in apathy toward global needs and justice issues; as they learn about great needs around the world, they move to awareness; from there, they shift to activism, taking actions to make others aware of needs; and finally, they launch into advocacy, fighting for “the least of these” around the world. Realistically, most Christians begin in apathy, Yang says. In an effort to remedy this, she says the first step is moving from apathy to awareness of social justice issues, both local and abroad. The goal of this awareness is not to slouch back toward a wordless but wellintentioned inaction. It’s to develop into some form of activism, where you’re not simply “looking busy,” but seeking to change systemic issues through your faithful and fervent presence in the world.
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6 ADVOCACY ACTIONS YOU CAN TAKE RIGHT NOW ON IMMIGRATION 1. P R AY
Prayer is not a part of the battle; it’s the battle itself. Pray for immigrants and for elected officials, that they would have courage to reform laws. 2. STUDY THE BIBLE
Any action should be rooted in our understanding of the Bible. Take the “I Was a Stranger” Challenge, which guides you through verses on immigration. 3. BUIL D REL ATIONSHIPS
Relationships are critical to learn from others and understand the real impact of injustice. Volunteer with an organization serving immigrants. 4. S PEAK OUT
Share what actions you’re taking on social media with the appropriate hashtags (such as #Pray4Reform) to get your friends engaged as well.
5. FIN D PARTNERS
Follow organizations on social media who are actively tracking the issue you care about. Many organizations have email blasts and social media accounts that regularly update you on specific actions you can take.
6. ADVOCATE F OR REFORM
Look up your Member of Congress on opencongress.org or worldrelief.org/advocate and ask them specifically to support immigration reform.
Sure, Yang says, change your Facebook picture and your Twitter avatar to inform and perhaps influence your primary and immediate networks. But don’t stop there. Hone your activism, so it will, in time, look like prayerful and public advocacy for those who are suffering. Pay attention to your situations and your desires, understanding that God demands your noble stewardship of both. Yang encourages honesty and realism without veering into either an eagerness with a short shelf life, or a cynical hesitancy that baptizes inaction with words about fallenness. “I don’t believe acknowledging that sin is the root of all evil—that it’s a perennial condition of all humankind—excuses us from thinking that whatever we do can be used by God to redeem the world,” Yang says. “If we do that, we do ourselves a disservice and skew what God is doing through His Church and through His people, which is participating in God’s redemptive purposes for people to come to know Him.” So, she says, apathy isn’t an option for Christians. “Be aware,” she says. “[Your involvement] doesn’t have to be global. Do you see people who are hurting in your neighborhood, in your city, in the world? Some may go and help people in South Sudan, and others may help the immigrant family who lives across the street.” To privilege one response over another is foolhardy, says Yang. Her father forsakes apathy by fixing spark plugs and radiators, by getting his hands dirty and writing his newspaper column to help his community learn a slice of self-sufficiency. Yang herself forsakes apathy by bringing stories of injustice to the Church, so that Christians can become advocates for the suffering. Insofar as these good works—and the thousands more that nameless, unremarkable Christians do throughout the world every single day—stem from faith in God and Christlike compassion, they are beautiful in both their variety and their similarity. This foundation of faith and compassion is a non-negotiable for Yang.
“When you look at the long road of fighting injustice, it is very tiring,” she says. “You can get easily discouraged. [So] you have to have a foundation of being rooted in God and Scripture, understanding why God really does want you to do this, as opposed to just making yourself feel good.” She references Ephesians 4, that those without a faith anchored in the trustworthiness of God and His Word are prone to be swayed by opinions that are not true to Scripture. There is such a thing, she says, as decidedly non- and even anti-Christian activism and advocacy. At the top of this list is any type of activism that traffics in violence or coercion, regardless of
“[YOUR INVOLVEMENT] DOESN’T HAVE TO BE GLOBAL. DO YOU SEE PEOPLE WHO ARE HURTING IN YOUR NEIGHBORHOOD, IN YOUR CITY?”
otherwise noble ends. To those eager to give themselves to social justice work without first filtering their awareness through a Christian worldview, Yang speaks clearly: “It’s more important that you read the Bible and pray, and have that form your outward identity than anything else.” But because theology is for living, don’t stop there. This movement from apathy to awareness is a necessary step, but awareness followed by inaction is, as James writes, like faith without works: dead. ALEX DUKE is a writer and editor living in Louisville, Kentucky.
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FASHIONING JUS T ICE HOW SSEKO DESIGNS LOOKS AT THE BUSINESS OF JUSTICE IN A WHOLE NEW WAY B Y E M I LY M C FA R L A N M I L L E R
ocial justice always has been the lens through which Liz Forkin Bohannon sees the world. When Bohannon, now 29, came to know Jesus, it gave her a reason justice matters, she says. His example showed her “what it looks like to pursue justice and equality and to kind of go against culture in a way that empowers and takes care of and brings life to marginalized communities.” In high school, that community was the kids in her hometown of St. Louis.
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Later, studying journalism at the University of Missouri in Columbia, Missouri, she became interested in issues facing women living in poverty and in conflict around the world. “I wanted to be my generation’s Nick Kristof,” she says, referring to the popular New York Times columnist. Then Bohannon graduated college and took a job. And she realized she didn’t know a single woman who had grown up in poverty or conflict. Her own life revealed a gap between how she lived and what she said she cared about—and it
made her uncomfortable. So she quit her job and bought a oneway ticket to Uganda.
WHAT DOESN’T WORK When Bohannon arrived in Uganda, she got “a pretty intense crash-course on what doesn’t work.” She was surprised to see more signs for aid organizations than businesses, she says. “Over a long time, I think that creates a relational dynamic that is not dignified, and I don’t think it’s what the Lord had in mind for how we interact with each
other,” she says. Then she found an organization called Cornerstone Development that invests in a few students and equips them to become leaders. She was “all about that.” The longer she hung around Cornerstone, though, the more she encountered a common problem: Female students weren’t going on to college. In Uganda, there’s a nine-month gap between high school and college to give students time to make money for tuition, she says. But unemployment was high, and what jobs there were went to men. Bohannon decided to start a sponsor program to raise money, pairing women in the United States with women in Uganda based on career interests. But she almost immediately started questioning that model. The sponsor-a-child model “brought poverty into the homes of Americans, and it helped people grab hold of it, so I don’t disparage it,” says Stephan Bauman, president and CEO of World Relief and author of Possible: A Blueprint for Changing How We Change the World. “But we can’t stay there.”
DOWN TO BUSINESS Bohannon needed to create something that contributed to the local Ugandan economy, she says. She needed something that continued the support system women received at Cornerstone, which they lost when they returned home to look for work. She needed to start a business. Her first thought was a chicken farm, which “failed really quickly.” Then she was reminded of the “strappy, funky sandals” she had made in college out of ribbon and flip-flop soles. “That started the hilarious journey of figuring out how does one make sandals, and how does one make sandals in the middle of Uganda?” she says. She trained three Cornerstone students to make the ribbon sandals, promising them that in nine months, they’d have enough money from sales to go to college. Bohannon returned to Missouri, hawking shoes out of the trunk of her car and telling her story to everyone she could. Nobody was more surprised than Bohannon when, by the end of the summer, she earned enough to send the three women to college. Enough, even, to
convince herself and her husband to sell everything, move to Portland and launch a company to do the same thing again and again. And so, in 2009, Bohannon officially started Sseko Designs, taking the name of her business from the Luganda word for “laughter.” At the time, she says, “Toms was just kind of defining—or creating, really—what social enterprise meant.” It was so influential, when she told her story, people asked, “But who are you giving the sandals to?” “We’re not giving them anything other than opportunity,” she says.
A BETTER LIFE Angella Naayondo was born in Luwero, Bombo, in the central part of Uganda. She is the eighth child in a polygamous family. She says her mom supported her by taking any job she could after her parents separated 12 years ago. Now Naayondo wants to study law, to set up an organization to fight for the rights of widows and orphans—those who, she says, “can’t fight back.” “I want to set up a home that brings hope to people who are hopeless,” she says. Naayondo learned about Sseko Designs when she studied at Cornerstone’s girls school. The older students always talked about the program, and she liked the sandals. She also knew going to university meant, as she says, “there’s high chances of me getting a better life than if I stay at home.” So when she was old enough to apply, she thought, “I have to be there!” She says she and her classmates have learned about “time management, commitment to work and … how to associate with people” from Sseko. Her classmate Sharon Harmony Bakoko, 18, adds, “I’ve learned to do my best, and I’ve really achieved something.”
CHARITY AND JUSTICE Today, Sseko is the largest Ugandan exporter of footwear. And Bohannon is one of a growing number of social entrepreneurs addressing justice issues through business. This trend includes “a continued, steady increase, almost a movement of people who follow Jesus,” Bauman says. Bohannon continues to travel to Uganda at least once a year to meet each class of
girls who work for Sseko. When the current class graduates from the program, Sseko will have sent 60 women to college. The company puts half of each woman’s pay into a savings account they can access when they get to college. Then Sseko matches what’s in that account, guaranteeing students have enough money to pay tuition. “That’s a seat at the table—that’s not the crumbs off the table—and that’s a beautiful thing,” Bauman says. It’s easy to point to numbers, Bohannon says, but what’s most exciting to her is the way Sseko became “this incredible pathway for connecting women in the U.S. with women in Uganda.” It’s seeing the transformation in the lives of women like Naayondo. And it’s the
SSEKO DESIGNS
Sseko employs Ugandan women to make sandals, handbags and accessories, which help fund the women’s college education.
transformation of Bohannon’s life by the give-and-take of relationship with those women, how that’s challenged her to be tenacious and generous, to push the boundaries of what she thought was possible. “We’ve seen a massive cultural shift,” she says. “It’s been amazing, because I think people are starting to look at business in a new way, which is so exciting and inspiring to us, and it’s one of the main reasons we do what we do.” EMILY MCFARL AN MILLER is an award-winning journalist and truth-seeker based in Chicago. Connect with her at emmillerwrites.com.
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HOW GMOS MAY SAVE THE WORLD BUT DESTROY CREATION 52
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BY JESSE CAR EY
IF you’re like most people, you probably don’t know the origin story of your food. Sure, you may know which grocery store it came from, but chances are, you don’t know the farmer who grew the zucchini you’re eating. Most people probably wouldn’t view this as a problem, but it’s a driving factor behind one of today’s most controversial issues— and faith leaders are taking notice. Last year, leaders from different religions gathered at an event in Portland to discuss a controversial technology in food production. Despite their obvious differences, an Islamic leader, rabbi, Unitarian Church minister and several academics all shared a common concern: genetically modified organisms (GMOs). Ecumenical Ministries of Oregon’s food justice coordinator, Anna Burnham, was there. Her favorite argument against GMOs represented at the gathering? “We don’t need to mess with creation.” Altering creation—or at least making genetic changes to increase the output of crops—is an issue many Christians, health food advocates and environmentalists feel strongly about. Beyond concerns about potential health and environmental effects, the issue touches on a deeper conflict for Christians. In increasingly urban and developed societies, we’re disconnected from one of creation’s most fundamental features: Its ability to produce food and life through farming. How does that disconnect affect our judgment when it comes to manipulating God’s design? The answer may not be as black and white as it appears.
DISCONNECTED PRIORITIES In Genesis 2, the Bible records God’s first interaction with man: “The Lord God took
the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and take care of it” (v. 15). Before there were churches, communities, commandments or commissions, mankind had a job: to tend a garden. Since the 1800s, Greg Peterson’s family has done just that. Peterson, a 24-yearold Kansas State University graduate, along with his parents and three siblings, runs the same farm his Swedish ancestors founded more than a century ago. “I think in America especially, we’re so disconnected,” Peterson says. “And part of that is just because we’re so busy and constantly running all over the place. Food just becomes this thing I need to eat really quickly before I can get on to all these other things.” Burnham sees the same issues in the communities she works with in urban Portland. As food justice coordinator, she helps local churches start community gardens and manages a farmers’ market that brings locally grown produce into the low-income area. The farmers’ market even accepts different types of food stamps, giving these communities access to healthy, fresh food. For Burnham, the benefits of gardening and farming are more than simply healthrelated. She sees it meeting a spiritual need. It’s connecting something previously disconnected. “There is something really significant and powerful about someone who might not have access to fresh produce normally having it. And not only that, but being able to talk to the person who grew it,” she says. “That’s a really incredible kind of community we’re building with the farmers’ market.” The importance of maintaining a connection to where food comes from has become an increasingly popular idea among advocates of the slow food movement, farmto-table restaurants and food co-ops like the ones Burnham helps establish in urban areas. And for Peterson, like Burnham, being a farmer is about more than health or even an income—it’s a spiritual issue. “I think God calls us to be good stewards of what He’s given us,” he explains. “Taking care of His creation—whether it’s land or animals or resources—that’s a huge part of why I enjoy farming and raising food for other people. It’s all about stewardship.”
THE BENEFITS Peterson and Burnham may agree on some aspects of the theology of food, but they vehemently disagree on another, polarizing part of modern food production: GMOs. Unlike Burnham and countless other organic food advocates, Peterson supports genetically modified organisms. But broaching the topic can be difficult. “The conversation about GMOs just becomes too emotionally heated,” he says. “People let their emotions take away their open-mindedness about the subject. They come in with, ‘GMOs are evil and farmers who grow crops are evil.’ I know lots and lots of farmers who grow genetically modified crops, and they’re not evil people.” For farmers like Peterson, the benefits of utilizing seeds that have been modified to increase a crop’s most desirable traits are numerous: Farmers can more efficiently use land, meaning less fuel is used during the production process. They can employ notill soil conservation methods that prevent Dust Bowl-like conditions. And, perhaps most significantly, some GMOs can dramatically decrease the amount of potentially harmful chemicals and pesticides needed to protect the crops from insects. “I think the main concern people have with GMOs are safety and then chemical usage,” Peterson says. “Ironically, GMOs reduce chemical usage.” In the U.S., the legal debate over GMOs mainly involves whether they should be labeled, but in some parts of the world, access to food is a life or death issue.
FEEDING A HUNGRY WORLD From 1960 to 2000, the world’s population doubled, from 3 billion to 6 billion. Today, there are more than 7 billion people living on earth—all of whom require food. According to the World Food Programme, 795 million people—more than 10 percent of the entire global population—do not have enough food. Every year, poor nutrition is the leading cause of death for more than 3 million children, and currently, a quarter of all children on earth are stunted because of a lack of food. Professor and author David Zilberman is one of the world’s foremost experts on GMOs and biotechnology. He’s also an
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internationally recognized economist. For him, GMOs offer a solution to the growing issue of hunger. “People worry about hunger—which is a real problem,” explains Zilberman, who is Robinson Chair in the Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics at the University of California, Berkeley. “We have the potential, if we use this technology, to produce food to feed more people. But not only that, we will reduce the amount of land we use.” Zilberman, who has traveled the world looking at agricultural needs facing communities where geographical conditions
modified seeds into certain environments can have unintended negative consequences and can even destroy land, taking away poor farmers’ already limited means of food production. Burnham cites cases where GMO farms that were not properly regulated harmed local agricultural communities, pointing specifically to a case in India. “Agriculture has such a rich history there,” she says. “And in the past 75 years, GMOs have come in, and they’ve really destroyed the landscape and destroyed a lot of communities. There are a lot of issues with bigger companies that have these
“GOD CALLS US TO BE GOOD STEWARDS OF WHAT HE’S GIVEN US. TAKING CARE OF HIS CREATION IS A HUGE PART OF WHY I ENJOY FARMING.” —Greg Peterson make some types of farming difficult, says that despite bans on using GMOs in dozens of countries around the world, their prevalence in the U.S. and several other large food-producing nations is already making an impact. These GMOs, according to Zilberman, can dramatically increase the supply of crops such as corn, soy and cotton. In turn, prices for these crops decrease, which directly affects the availability of food for the poor. Zilberman says if large countries ban GMOs because of environmental or health concerns, it could be the world’s poorest that suffer most. “People even in China wouldn’t suffer if the price of soy [went up], but people in Africa will suffer. They are on the bottom of the [economic] pyramid.” Though Zilberman understands people’s reservations about GMOs, he cautions against pressuring legislators to outright ban them. Instead, he suggests genetically modified crops should be monitored, studied and regulated when necessary. “People, out of irrational fear, ban it,” he explains. “And when you ban it, you don’t give it a chance to see its potential.” Even using GMOs as a method of eliminating world hunger remains somewhat controversial. Anti-GMO advocates express concerns that introducing foreign,
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genetically modified seeds coming in and really abusing the communities there.” However, many large humanitarian organizations—even the Roman Catholic Church—have endorsed implementation of GMO technology because of the potential it holds to dramatically increase crop output and help alleviate hunger. In some cases, crops have been genetically engineered to be more fortified with vitamins. Proponents of “Golden Rice,” which has been genetically modified to biosynthesize beta-carotene, say the crop could potentially save hundreds of thousands of children in developing countries suffering from vitamin A deficiency.
FIRSTHAND EXPERIENCE Recognizing the technology’s ability to feed potentially millions is an important part of the GMO debate. But for many Christians, opinions about GMOs remain largely ethical—and spiritual. Burnham sees a difference in ancient techniques that enhance a crop’s most desirable traits—like crossbreeding—and what scientists do in a lab with GMOs. “We’re supposed to be stewards of creation,” she says. “We can certainly play around with agricultural techniques and figure out what works best, but actually altering the seed that has produced for thousands of years is problematic.”
Peterson, though, points to Jesus’ parable of talents in which a master gives each of his servants money and rewards the one who doesn’t bury it in a hole, but instead, finds a way multiply it. He sees utilizing GMOs as a moral and theological imperative. “We live in a world that has been polluted with sin,” he says. “That’s why there are weeds in fields. That’s why we need things like genetically modified organisms. In the Garden of Eden, we wouldn’t have needed any of those things. All the suffering around the world, all the people who are going without food and water, that’s because of imperfection. That’s why farmers have to use some of these things to fight against the things that can choke out plants.” Both sides of the debate, though, agree that the only way to truly understand the issue is to appreciate what goes into putting food on our tables. “Creation was designed in such an amazing, beautiful, complex way that we can plant a little seed, and it creates a zucchini or an apple tree,” Burnham says. “That’s amazing, and it’s something I feel like people are just very disconnected from” Peterson says if you don’t know where you stand on an issue as important as food production, see for yourself how it’s done. “No one should be trapped in eating something they don’t want to eat, but at the same time, you should know what’s really going on. Really, you should visit a farm,” he says. “If you’re questioning GMOs, go out and visit a farm and talk to a real farmer instead of just reading things on the Internet.” Most major studies have concluded that GMOs are safe to consume, and many in the scientific community are optimistic about their ability to increase the availability of food. But for those who have reservations or are still forming an opinion, people on both sides agree that the underlying problem isn’t confusion about GMOs—it’s being so far removed from the food production process that we don’t know what to think. Maybe the real issue isn’t a debate about genetically modified crops. It’s forgetting the importance of the first job we were given: Tend the garden and see that it is good. JESSE CARE Y is one of the editors at RELEVANT and a mainstay on the RELEVANT Podcast.
䘀伀刀 䴀伀刀䔀 䤀一䘀伀刀䴀䄀吀䤀伀一 嘀䤀匀䤀吀 伀唀刀 圀䔀䈀匀䤀吀䔀 圀圀圀⸀䰀唀䌀䤀䐀䈀伀伀䬀匀⸀一䔀吀 伀刀 䌀䄀䰀䰀 唀匀 䄀吀 㠀㐀㐀ⴀ㌀㌀㈀ⴀ㔀 㐀㔀
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REJECT APATHY
STATEMENT
weak and distressed position. And both sides are wrong when they give partial treatment toward one party, and dismissive treatment toward another. If we don’t show deep concern for both mother and child, James seems to say, then our religion is lopsided. Until we become both/and on this issue, our religion is not true. But how? I think our earliest brothers and sisters set a path forward for us, if we’ll learn from them.
If we don’t show deep concern for both mother and child, James says, then our religion is lopsided.
A PRO-LIFE VISION FOR JUSTICE B Y S C O T T S AU L S
bortion was a contentious issue long before Roe v. Wade, when the Supreme Court made on-demand abortions widely legal. Since then, political tensions have only escalated. If we continue to hold the pro-life vs. pro-choice debate hostage as a political issue, we will get nowhere. The only way forward is to adopt a Kingdom vision that transcends the civic vision on the issue. But what might this vision look like? The core question in the pro-life vs. pro-choice debate is, “Whose rights matter most?” Is it the rights of the mother or the rights of the infant in her womb? The answer is, “Yes.” Both matter immensely. In his letter to the early church, the apostle James writes that we must show no partiality. He reiterates Jesus’ great commandment to love our neighbor as we love ourselves (James 2:1, 8). In the Church, no one should receive “partial” treatment, because every person— wealthy or poor, obscure or famous, strong or with special needs, mother or infant—carries the divine imprint. Every human bears the image of God. As Martin Luther King Jr. aptly said, “There are no gradations in the image of God. … God made us to live together as brothers (and sisters) and to respect the dignity and worth of every (hu)man.” This is where the pro-life vs. pro-choice discussion breaks down. Neither side is broadly known to advocate for all parties—both mother and infant. Further, neither side sees the other as truly and consistently pro-choice or pro-life. Although there are exceptions, in many instances, these terms can be more euphemistic than honest. In a Kingdom vision, both sides are right in advocating for someone who is in a
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SUSTAINABLE CHANGE. SACRIFICIAL LIVING.
During the so-called “Roman Peace” (Pax Romana), only the powerful set the terms of justice. The weak had no choice but to be subject to those terms. Just as later, in Hitler’s Germany, certain classes of humans were seen as a drain on society and therefore disposable: widows, the infirm, people with special needs, the poor and unwanted children—all were vulnerable and none received the assurance that their human rights would be honored. Early Christians said to Rome’s Caesar, “We will take care of your sick. We will feed your hungry. We will shelter your widows. We will adopt and raise your children with special needs. We will take care of your pregnant mothers.” And by the third century A.D., the fabric of Roman society was transformed—“infected by love,” as one historian said. Even the Christian-hating Emperor Julian conceded in a letter that the growth of the “Christian sect” got out of control because the Christians took better care of Rome’s afflicted than Rome did. That’s a Kingdom vision. As a friend of mine said recently, “If the Church does what the Church is called to do, then there will be no poor or disregarded or demeaned in our midst. In short, I would rather build community and dialogue and live in a society where abortion—because of the love ready to be given to any child and any mother—is not merely illegal, but unthinkable.”
SCOT T SAULS is senior pastor of Christ Presbyterian Church and author of Jesus Outside the Lines. Find him on Twitter @scottsauls.
YOU’RE NOT THE TYPE OF PERSON WHO WOULD GO TO SEMINARY. OR ARE YOU?
Looking for an open, invigorating environment to explore your spiritual side? Learn how theology engages the arts, social justice and spirituality through an interfaith lens. Come discover Education for Transformation. unitedseminary.edu RELEVANTMAGAZINE.COM
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GET MORE
W ITH V IDEO, AUDIO A ND INTER ACTI V E DE SIGN, THE RELE VA NT IPA D EDITION BRINGS A RTICLE S TO LIFE LIK E NE V ER BEFORE.
IT ’S INCLUDED W ITH E V ERY PRINT M AGA ZINE SUBSCRIP TION, OR AVA IL A BLE IN THE A PP S TORE.
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B Y M AT T C O N N E R
ARE THEY THE NEXT GREAT ROCK AND ROLL BAND? It’s almost as if Yannis Philippakis knew he was on the precipice. The frontman for Foals says the quintet skipped their typical post-tour break in order to maintain momentum. Since the band released Holy Fire in 2013, they’ve headlined their first run of summer festivals, won numerous awards—including their second Mercury Prize nomination—and toured the world over. When you’re that close to the edge, says Philippakis, you do what it takes to go over. Instead of taking time off to rest and recharge, Philippakis and the rest of Foals—Jack Bevan (drums), Edwin Congreave (keys), Walter Gervers (bass) and Jimmy Smith (guitar)—went right back into the studio to record their fourth studio fulllength, What Went Down. Working with producer James Ford (Arctic Monkeys, Mumford & Sons), the band capitalized on strong tour chemistry and experimental energy to create an album that plays on all four corners of an expansive canvas. Critics are saying that What Went Down will be the album that puts Foals over the top. Think of The Black Keys’ Brothers or Muse’s Black Holes and Revelations as examples of releases that cemented the groups’ global platforms. So it will be with What Went Down.
P H O T O C R E D I T: N A B I L E L D E R K I N
WRITING AGAIN After wrapping a headline performance at Bestival 2014—a four-day music festival on the Isle of Wight in England, where Foals played alongside Beck and Outkast—Philippakis and company headed to their “tiny” writing room in Oxford, where they also wrote Holy Fire. It’s “purposefully punishing,” Philippakis says. “There’s no daylight. It’s really loud. It’s kind of smelly.” For six months, the small space served as proving ground for the 10 songs that became What Went Down. “We grew up learning our instruments in that room,” Philippakis says. “It was the go-to small, little room that cost nothing. ... We took it over a couple of years ago. It’s a really good grounding, unflattering environment. If something sounds good in there, it sounds good anywhere, hopefully.” Philippakis, who turned 29 years old earlier this year, is very aware of the band’s creative groove, which
is why the members of Foals were so keen to keep working despite the heavy tour demands. “I feel like we’re strong at the moment,” he says. “Creatively, there was a lot we wanted to get off our chests. There was a big creative appetite, and there was a desire to write. We were in love with the process of writing this record. We really enjoyed it. … It wasn’t contaminated by fear or overanalysis or by any active kind of thing. We had some ideas and we followed them through.”
A NEW ACHIEVEMENT What Philippakis is not certain of is exactly how Foals is cresting like they are. “Maybe just time?” he speculates. “Maybe we’re getting to the core of really what we want to do?” Nevertheless, Foals has figured out how to block out the sort of diversions that author Steven Pressfield, who penned The War of Art, terms “resistance.” “As time has gone on, we judge things more and more intuitively, and the chemistry within the band is one with a lot of trust and a lot of freedom for us to pursue things to their end point, and then judge them later on,” Philippakis says. The band’s habit is to avoid “meddling” as they write, even though they write in different ways. “Sometimes, it’s all five of us in a room in a kind of trashy, garage band style,” Philippakis says. “Other times, it’s very private, and it will be me on my own, or me and Jimmy will be on our own. There’s no rhyme or reason to it.” Foals hasn’t always employed such an experimental, anything-goes approach. The band’s debut, Antidotes, included two distinct styles: fast and slow. Over time, the band developed a wider array of styles, sounds and showmanship, culminating in 2013’s highly acclaimed Holy Fire. “In some ways, I would say that there’s no box,” Philippakis says. “I definitely don’t feel like there’s anything we shouldn’t aspire to do. “When the band started, there was a very strict kind of parameter on what we were doing. The sound on the first record is very narrow. It’s very specific. It came from that time and it came from the things we were trying to do. We had almost the pre-existing idea of what the band should be.
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THE FORD FOCUS What Went Down producer James Ford boasts some of the biggest albums in recent years.
A R C T I C M O N K E YS (AM)
“Ever since then, we’ve kind of dismantled a lot of that,” he continues. “There really isn’t any type of barrier. Things are basically just governed by intuition. We try to balance the record, so if we feel like we’ve written seven really heavy tracks, we’ll start to want to write tracks of a different palette or different atmosphere. We’re creatively greedy, and we want to express different emotions.”
IMAGINITIVE INFLUENCES H A I M (Days Are Gone)
M U M F O R D & S O N S (Wilder
Mind)
FLORENCE AND THE M AC H I N E (How Big, How Blue, How Beautiful)
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Philippakis credits his “atypical background” in the Greek Orthodox Church—of which he is not a part today—as a key element that shaped his imagination. “I think the stories in the Bible are beautiful poetry,” he says. “It’s very evocative and imagistic. There are big symbols. The drama of it probably influenced my imagination, I think, growing up—as much as whatever stuff you read at that age where you’re just kind of this fresh little sponge where things can permeate very easily.” His lack of familiarity with common pop cultural references also worked in his favor as the frontman in a band filled with British kids who were raised on the same early rock and roll influences.
“My dad is in involved in Greek folk music, solely,” he says. “He barely knows who Jimi Hendrix is. He’s not plugged in that way at all to Western culture. My mom is not either.”
THE TAKEAWAY While stages will grow and opportunities will arise, Foals’ goal for the record looks a bit different from chart position or crowd size. Philippakis wants the songs to connect with the listener more than anything else. “For this record, I want [listeners] to feel transported to a place they could never have gotten on their own,” he says. “It’s important to try to unlock doors in people’s heads that they did not know existed. “I remember feeling that when I heard songs I connected with; where I’d been taken somewhere inside myself I did not know was there. I felt something I don’t feel in day-to-day life and I don’t feel through interactions with actual human people. I can only feel it through art. “I like to think that there are moments on the record that would do that.” MAT T CONNER is senior editor at SB Nation and writes about all aspects of pop culture for the Indy Star and other places he says don’t matter.
REFLECT DEEPLY
“I believe in Christianity as I believe that the sun has risen: not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else.” C. S. Lewis As the Sun Has Risen is available wherever books are sold. dhp.org 63
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jim gaffigan IS
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THE BIGGEST MAN
“So many people got wind of where our old apartment was, and they would buzz the door all the time and ask if Jim was home,” Jeannie says. “I’d ask who it was, and I would get ‘Hot Pocket!’ It was really weird living in anonymity and then getting more popular, because we’re just not fame-seekers at all.” But whether the couple sought it or not, fame found them.
IN COMEDY
ABOVE AVERAGE
T W O B E S T- S E L L I N G BOOKS, A SHOW AND A TON OF KIDS, JIM GAFFIGAN MIGHT BE
W O R D S B Y E M I LY G R I F F I N P H O T O S B Y S T E V E N TAY L O R
This summer was huge for Jim and Jeannie Gaffigan. After years of work and jumping through TV network hoops, they finally got to see The Jim Gaffigan Show premiere on July 15. Then, a mere 24 hours later, Jim’s “Contagious” national stand-up comedy tour kicked off. Jim, of course, is the face of the television show and the tour. Jeannie is at the helm as executive producer of both. In their Manhattan home office, the couple shares a large wooden desk—he at one end and she at the other. Steps from their office is a mudroom filled with reminders of their busy life—neatly organized jackets, hats, shoes and sports equipment for the couple’s five children. These are the kids, all under the age of 10, who spur the jokes that put their dad on the comedy map. In the last year, the family moved out of the two-bedroom apartment made famous in Jim’s stand-up and his two best-sellers, Dad is Fat and Food: A Love Story, and into a larger space just a few blocks away.
Jim, who as a child in Indiana wanted to be a farmer, owns his average dude, American Catholic skin—and he makes it consistently hilarious. He jokes about mundane life, faith and raising five kids in a crowded New York City apartment. “Stand-up is this constant journey of going against your intuition and boldly trying things,” he says. “I wouldn’t think people would want to hear about my having kids, because when I was 26 and I heard someone talking about their wife and kids, I was like, ‘Dude, I can’t even get a date. What are you talking about?’ But here I am.” With this trial and error process, Jim has found success. Already, he’s garnered two Grammy nominations for Best Comedy Album, appeared in dozens of movies and TV shows, more than 200 commercials and toured basically everywhere in the country. When doing stand-up, Jim likens his role to “having a conversation with the audience … but also steering a huge bus. I’m in charge of everyone and ensuring they have a good time.” Jim is still humbled, perhaps even anxious, about this role he finds himself in. Admittedly a low-energy person, he’s forced to raise his energy both for standup and television acting. “I want everyone leaving the show
going, ‘That was amazing!’ Because, in the end, it’s not about money, necessarily, but it is about the value of time,” he says. “Someone gave me their Wednesday night. Someone gave me their Saturday night. Someone came with their 15-yearold son, or their 60-year-old mom—either way, time is precious. “For many people, this might be their first night out in a while, or for someone in their 20s, they spent some money— they don’t have enormous amounts of money and they are spending it on a ticket to your show, so you want them to walk away [saying], ‘That was worth it.’” This dedication leads Jim to dissect his performance after each auditorium clears. “Even if I have a good show, there are always things to work on,” he says. “It’s an ongoing conversation. Even the best jokes have reasons they don’t work long-term. “Some of the Catholic jokes might go over better in St. Louis or Boston than they would in Atlanta or Orlando. But also, if a joke about religion works everywhere—if it works in San Francisco and Boston and Tuscaloosa—then it’s a good joke. If you can get an atheist and an evangelical to laugh, it’s a good joke.”
COMEDIC COLLABORATION The Gaffigans, married since 2003, were first partners in comedy. “When I first met Jim, I was in theater and sketch comedy—but it wasn’t standup. I wasn’t familiar with that world,” Jeannie says. Several encounters between the two sparked a professional relationship that ultimately turned romantic. Jeannie, an actress and member of the King Baby sketch comedy group (which eventually became the namesake of a Gaffigan comedy album), recruited Jim to take
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part in her nonprofit theater company, Shakespeare on the Playground. Soon after, in 1999, Jim got the call to bring his stand-up act to the Ed Sullivan Theater for an appearance on Late Show with David Letterman—an occasion Jim would repeat 22 times. It was a decisive
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moment in his career. After his Late Show appearance, he was offered a television sitcom, Welcome to New York, from Worldwide Pants, a television and movie production company founded by Letterman. Acting seemed like an obvious next step for Jim. After all, some of his favorite
comedians acted. “When I was growing up, Carol Burnett was pretty amazing. That is not necessarily my style, but I remember thinking, ‘Wow,’” he says. “And Lily Tomlin, too. Now, I think Ricky Gervais in the British Office set a standard that is just insane.”
Eager to pursue the television opportunity with Worldwide Pants but concerned about his acting, Jim called upon Jeannie to coach him on transitioning from the comedy club stage to the television screen. “He came to me and said, ‘I’m not an actor.’ I said, ‘I can help you with that,’” Jeannie says. “We started working together on the scripts, and we really
The sitcom is a dramatized tale of the Gaffigans’ life in Manhattan. The set is nearly identical to the couple’s quaint former apartment frequently mentioned in Jim’s stand-up act and books. The sitcom’s characters are slightly more exaggerated representations of Jim, Jeanie and their friends. Shot on location in New York City, the Gaffigans’ love for their adopted hometown is apparent, with
“THERE IS NOTHING MORE SUSTAINING FOR A MARRIAGE THAN WORKING TOGETHER ON A CRE ATIVE PROJECT.” worked well as a team.” Welcome to New York only lasted a year (2000-2001), but at that point, Jim and Jeannie’s professional partnership was well established. Jeannie started producing Jim’s comedy specials and became comfortable enough to offer advice on how best to deliver punchlines and spur more laughs from Jim’s audiences. Pretty soon, she was co-writing with him. “I learned to write in his point of view, and I became very good at it, because I would know where he would go next, just like how a married couple can finish each other’s sentences,” Jeannie says. If you ask the Gaffigans about workflow, they are both quick to say it is a matter of constant collaboration, which they find rewarding. “There is nothing more intimate or sustaining for a marriage than working together on a creative project,” Jim says. “If you’re working together, even if you’re bickering—and you’re wrong most of the time, anyway,” he laughs and points toward Jeannie. “It’s not like someone’s coming home after working 18 hours and just going, ‘Hey.’ You’re experiencing life together.” Jeannie chimes in with, “90 percent of the time we agree [on what’s funny], but that 10 percent is [a fight] to the death!”
THE JIM GAFFIGAN SHOW In July, following several years of planning and network shuffling, The Jim Gaffigan Show premiered on TV Land.
the couple handpicking filming locations like the famed Katz’s Delicatessen (Jim says to order the pastrami) and Smith & Wollensky steakhouse (Jim says to order the hash browns). As with Jim’s stand-up performances and books, Jim and Jeannie took primary ownership of writing and producing the show. When CBS dropped the option for the show, cable came to the rescue, with TV Land ordering the sitcom. Rather than using Jeanie on screen, the couple decided she would stay behind the camera as executive producer, a role she relishes. “[Producing] was my role over the years with the stand-up, television specials and the books,” Jeannie says. “Even though I’m an actor, I’m really passionate about producing.” Jim’s character is a comedian known for his self-deprecating humor about his love affair with food and the happy chaos that comes with parenting five children in the city—sound familiar? The Jeannie character is played by actress Ashley Williams (How I Met Your Mother), and, according to Jeannie, she creates a close parallel. “The Jeannie character is great, because she’s not just the standard supermom, wagging-finger wife,” Jeannie says. “She’s also really quirky and has her neuroses—like me—and we try to show that on the show a lot.”
being “pro-religion.” As in his stand-up act, the show features Jim referring to his wife as a “Shiite Catholic,” and the family’s parish church and Catholicism figure prominently in the sitcom. One of the highest-billed characters is the family’s priest. The show’s fictitious family and storylines provide a unique vantage point into the Gaffigans’ unapologetic commitment to raising their kids within the Roman Catholic faith. As Jeannie maintains, “It’s just who we are.” For her, faith is all-encompassing. “My faith is of the utmost importance to me. I can’t imagine a world where I don’t get up and go, ‘OK, please God, help me get through this day.’ I just have that. It exists in my life.” For Jim, it’s about something even bigger than himself. “My faith is very associated with the notion of mercy,” he has said. “I understand that there is something greater than myself that does not judge me in a negative manner—or forgives me, I should say. For me, being in touch with the idea that I’m not in control of everything is important.” From the beginning, the family’s faith
BALANCING FAITH Since its premiere, The Jim Gaffigan Show has drawn repeated attention for
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“IF
YOU
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GET
ATHEIST
AND
AN
E VANGELICAL TO
L AUGH,
IT’S
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played a character in Jim’s stand-up and books, and the Christian community has long praised his “clean” comedy and devotion to his family. But the sitcom’s depiction of religion humorously mirrors Jim’s beliefs and isn’t afraid to address how elements of faith can create cultural conflict. “Normally, if there is a ‘Christian’ show, it’s only for Christians. And if there is a secular show about Christianity, it is usually really negative,” Jeannie says. “What people think from the outside, the stereotypes about Catholicism—we’re trying to blow them out of the water.” The cast of characters that populate The Jim Gaffigan Show have very different opinions and lifestyles from Jim and his fictional family, but nobody is pointing fingers or judging anyone. One episode, titled “The Bible Story,” concentrates on the dilemma of going public with one’s faith in an industry based on mass appeal. The Gaffigans chose to deal with this real dilemma through fantasy: The episode occurs almost entirely within the Jim character’s mind. “The Bible Story” opens with a scene where Jim agrees to Jeannie’s request that he pick up an oversized Bible at the family’s parish. From this point on, Jim’s mind takes over, and a hilarious “what-if ” nightmare scenario plays out. He ends up toting the bulky text to a comedy club where he is photographed holding the good book by a doting fan. The photo lands with a loud thud on social media and ends up plastered across the front page of The Huffington Post. Jim eventually finds himself in the hotseat on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart. Jim Gaffigan, the character, has just been “outed” as a Christian; and now the dominos begin to fall. He maintains that if secular people find out that he’s a Christian, he is going to alienate certain elements of his fan base. On the other side, there will be some Christians that will reject him for being too progressive and not “Christian enough.” “I don’t want to get involved in the culture war. Religion is a very iffy business. As soon as you identify yourself as believing something, you open yourself to ridicule,” Jim’s character says to his wife. During the episode, Jim fears his religious identity, progressive as it is, and his stand-up persona can’t occupy the same
“There are plenty of shows that we all have been recommended for a long time, and we trust our friends’ recommendations—but we don’t have a lot of time. So making it as easy as possible to sample a show—I thought was so important.” The preview episodes appeared two months ahead of the TV Land premiere on iTunes, Amazon, Hulu and on Jim Gaffigan’s website—a decision the comedian says “is nothing that revolutionary.” “It’s really important to do something you like and something that you feel represents your sensibilities, but if no one sees it, then it’s like, ‘Why bother?’” he says. The show’s early release revealed cameos from Chris Rock, Jon Stewart and Glenn Beck. It hooked audiences with Jim’s humor running through plotlines that broached subjects like vasectomies, X-rated toddler doodles and, of course, food. “The important thing was to show people—because I think there is an expectation surrounding a half-hour show about a guy with five kids that is on TV Land—and some of that is a positive perception and some of that is a negative one. Either way, I think our show doesn’t necessarily fit that perception, so we had to show people exactly what the show is,” Jim says. Like his show, Jim doesn’t fit perceptions. The same dedication to his fans that makes him want to make sure people see
space in popular culture, and ultimately, he fears he will wind up alone. After all of this drama and soul searching, the episode ends right back where it started: Reality kicks in, and Jim comes to his senses and refuses Jeannie’s request. The Bible remains at the church, and his career is unphased. This “nightmare” scenario in “The Bible Story” episode is one that is all too real and frequent for many in the public eye. Fictional Jim’s experience, while exaggerated, is authentic at its core. Emotions evoked from this episode resonate with religious Americans who are trying to figure out how to balance their politics, culture and faith. The story also shows how crazy this social media era can be for celebrities. Both Jim and Jeannie are particularly active on social media, each taking time to interact with their followers—even though sometimes, that can be challenging. “When we had four kids, Jim did this joke that said something like, ‘Want to know what it’s like to have a fourth child? Imagine you’re drowning and someone hands you a baby,’ Jeannie says. “Somebody took that to mean ‘Jim Gaffigan is anti-family’ and took that to social media. I got very defensive,” Jeannie says. “Even back to the 1970s, Erma Bombeck and others would write
“STAND-UP OF
GOING
AND
IS
THIS
AGAINST
B O L D LY
CONSTANT YOUR
TRYING
about family in a sarcastic way, and moms just loved it, because here was someone who finally exposed how silly [parenting] can get.”
DIGITAL DECISIONS Together with TV Land, the Gaffigans made the decision to release a handful of The Jim Gaffigan Show episodes via digital streaming prior to the July television premiere. “I think it is so important in this fragmented entertainment landscape to let people sample something,” Jim says.
JOURNE Y
INTUITION
THINGS.” his show for what it is drives him to evaluate each stand-up act and shape jokes for specific audiences. He’s a farm-town guy living in a ritzy Manhattan neighborhood, and a wildly popular comedian who embraces his role as a hands-on family man. That’s what makes him stand out. And that’s why Jim Gaffigan may just remain the biggest man in comedy for years to come. EMILY GRIFFIN is a freelance writer living in Manhattan. She and her husband Drew are planting Cross Church NYC in the Upper East Side.
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The RELEVANT Fall TV Preview
CALL IT A COMEBACK FRED SAVAGE
The Wonder Years star is returning to the screen in the Fox comedy The Grinder opposite Rob Lowe.
SET YOUR DVR—HERE ARE THE NEW SHOWS WORTH WATCHING
Go ahead and put suntans behind you, because fall is here—and with it comes a fresh new TV lineup. As networks launch a ton of new shows, it’s tough to know which are worth your time.
GILLIAN ANDERSON
The X-Files star will be back as Agent Dana Scully in the highly anticipated reboot in January.
Fortunately, we’re here to help. Here are a few of our favorite new offerings. And no worries if you don’t have TV— we’ve got you covered for streaming shows, as well.
KERMIT THE FROG
The Muppets never truly went away, but they’re coming back to TV for the first time in decades.
1
DRAMA FEAR THE WALKING DEAD // AMC
A spin-off the popular AMC zombie series The Walking Dead, this new show features a parallel story of survivors fighting to stay alive in a nightmarish apocalypse.
WICKED CITY // ABC
A promising true-crime drama following two LA detectives on the hunt for a pair of serial killers. THE CATCH // ABC
Produced by Shonda Rhimes (Scandal), this female-led crime drama is thrilling.
2
COMEDY
BEST TIME EVER WITH NEIL PATRICK HARRIS // NBC
Can NPH revive the variety show? NBC has tapped the actor to host a show inspired by a hit British series featuring games, music and comedy.
3
B I B L E-Y
OF KINGS AND
PROPHETS // ABC
ABC is adapting the Bible’s best soap opera drama: The show depicts the complicated rivalry, political conflicts and drama between King Saul and David.
THE DAILY SHOW WITH TREVOR
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NOAH // COMEDY CENTRAL
LUCIFER // FOX
Judging from his racy Twitter feed, Trevor Noah may be taking the show in a different direction than Jon Stewart.
An adaptation of a comic book character created by author Neil Gaiman, Lucifer follows the Lord of Hell as he teams up with the LA police to fight crime. Totally plausible.
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REBOOTS
THE MUPPETS // ABC
ABC’s Muppets may be more self-aware than before, but it still has all the satire and pop-culture references you’d expect.
PROJECT GREENLIGHT // HBO
HEROES REBORN // NBC
LIMITLESS // CBS
A decade later, HBO is bringing back the reality show about young filmmakers making movies with the help of Hollywood mentors.
Clearly, NBC is doing something unheard of here: Tapping a proven superhero series and bringing it back with slight changes.
Bradley Cooper will make appearances in this action series that serves as a sequel to the 2011 film he also starred in.
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SITCOMS
DR. KEN // ABC
Based on the real life of Ken Jeong (Community, The Hangover trilogy), this sitcom follows a doctor who also moonlights as a stand-up comedian.
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YOU, ME AND THE END OF THE WORLD // NBC
A priest (Rob Lowe), a white supremacist (Megan Mullally) and a death row inmate (Jenna Fischer) are among survivors attempting to live through the aftermath of an apocalypse that kills most of earth’s population. LIFE IN PIECES // CBS
SUPERSTORE // NBC
The everyday life of an extended family depicted in short stories focusing on each different character.
Former Office and Scrubs writer Justin Spitzer’s new workplace sitcom takes place in a megastore. It’s also something of a comeback for Ugly Betty star America Ferrera.
STREAMING
NARC O S // NETFLIX
Styled like a retro Breaking Bad, Narcos tells of the rise of drug kingpin Pablo Escobar and a law enforcement officer on a mission to stop him. HAN D O F G O D // AMAZON
Back for a full season after the pilot got rave reviews, Hand of God follows the story of a corrupt judge who believes God is calling him on a quest for vigilante justice.
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14 THINGS YOUR PARENTS WOULDN’T LET YOU DO IN
BY ROB F E E the 1990s. A simpler time when jeans were stonewashed, perms were cool and getting on the Internet required the patience of a Shaolin monk. But along with this boom in technology and entertainment came some new challenges for our parents: Putting up healthy boundaries for us in uncharted
AH,
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territory. Unfortunately, some of those boundaries turned a little odd thanks to pastors who were convinced most cartoons were now tools to make us sass our parents and probably commit arson. Here are 14 things your Christian parents definitely wouldn’t let you do in the ’90s:
1. MISS CHURCH
You weren’t allowed to miss church under any circumstances. If you had to study for a test the next day, then you just had to
pray that Jesus would help you remember the answers, because you were still going to church. And if there was a camp meeting or a revival, then you couldn’t make any plans between the hours of 5 p.m. and midnight for a week because you’d be getting there early to pray over the pews and you’d be staying late because that one guy wasn’t leaving until he had prayed for every single person in the building. Oh, and this was before cool things like children’s church with VeggieTales. You
had to sit in main service, or maybe you got some flannelgraphs. That’s it.
2. LISTEN TO ROCK AND ROLL
If you listened to rock and roll music, or even MC Hammer, you might just go to hell. The only way to remedy this would be to take all of your music to a Jesus bonfire, where you’d toss all of your Collective Soul and Sublime CDs into the fire. Either you or the music were going to burn, so the choice was obvious. Clearly, this would never work now—because what are you going to do? Toss a Spotify playlist into a fire?
3. WATCH ‘THE SMURFS’
The Smurfs were little blue demons, and Papa Smurf was evil because he had a beard, or something. Plus, Smurfette was the only female Smurf, so if they were making baby Smurfs, that meant she was having relations out of wedlock. At least that’s what I was told, so we weren’t allowed to watch the show, because they might be demons and Smurfette was possibly a lady of the night.
4. GET THAT FRESH HAIRCUT
You couldn’t get an unconventional or extreme haircut because that would be drawing attention to yourself and away from the Lord. However, your parents would still make you watch TBN for at least an hour when you stayed home from school—and it was ironic, because the host lady on there always looked like Rainbow Brite going to prom. It was a very confusing time indeed.
5. LISTEN TO COMEDY
Listening to comedy was out of the question because comedians were either racy or rude. Even Sinbad was iffy, and the most offensive thing he’s ever done was Jingle All The Way. That meant you were limited to Mark Lowry and his hymn parodies, which were thrilling for a teenager to experience. Plus, he usually toured with the Gaither Vocal Band, so that meant you had to endure a Southern gospel quartet in order to get any sort of comedic relief whatsoever. Sinbad was looking better by the minute.
6. GO TO PARTIES
There was no way in the world you were going to a party. Parties were where teens
would play kissing games and summon the dark lord with an Ouija Board. However, you could always attend the Christian version of a party—known as “fellowships.” The only time that word has ever been used is at church functions and The Lord of the Rings.
7. LISTEN TO RAP
The only rap music you were allowed to listen to was the melodic jams of Carman. While your friends were getting down with OPP, you were getting A2J. The only riots you knew about were the Righteous Invasions Of Truth. And you were completely prepared to match wits with any male witch who wanted to debate theology thanks to a riveting and unnecessarily creepy video called “A Witch’s Invitation.”
8. PARTICIPATE IN HALLOWEEN ...
Trick-or-treating? Nice try, Anton LaVey! You’re not celebrating Satan’s night on October 31. Instead you’re going to throw on a bathrobe, pick out a random name from the Old Testament and head down to the local church for a thrilling adventure known as a Hallelujah Party. The only fun part was seeing the one kid who found a loophole in the biblical costume criteria and came in KISS makeup so he could be Satan.
9. ... ESPECIALLY HAUNTED HOUSES
Haunted houses were completely out of the question. Instead, you got to attend a completely horrifying experience called Heaven’s Gates and Hell’s Flames. Instead of ghosts and goblins simply jumping out and startling you, local teens dressed as demons would walk around a dark church growling at you and then tossing people into hell. It’s still probably the scariest thing I’ve ever experienced—and I once got lost in Jacksonville, Florida.
10. WATCH R-RATED MOVIES
Watching an R-rated movie was a great way to purchase a one-way ticket on the Highway to Hell. R stood for “Really full of demons” for years until finally, Mel Gibson made the most graphic and gory movie about Jesus of all time, and suddenly it was completely fine. That movie was more graphic than if Saw 1-6 had a movie baby with Scarface, but the R-rated veil was lifted and, just this once, we were allowed
to see it. Sadly, that was years after the ’90s ended, so by that point, we were old enough to see whatever we wanted anyway.
11. WATCH ‘THE SIMPSONS’
George H.W. Bush ruined The Simpsons for us when he declared that the American family should get back to looking like the Waltons instead of the Simpsons. Didn’t the Waltons have 600 kids that all wore overalls? Let’s just be thankful our parents didn’t take that literally and make us twostrap our overalls like a bunch of dweebs. Thanks to Will Smith and TLC, you could buckle one strap and those boring overalls became instantly fly.
12. TAKE COMMUNION CUPS OUT OF ORDER
This may not have been a thing that you did, but I would always get yelled at for taking the center cup from the communion tray. Sure, I could’ve just taken the next one in line, but that’s boring and predictable. The least you can let me do is be the bad boy of communion trays for one Sunday night service, mom.
13. LISTEN TO CASSETTE TAPES
Even if that cassette tape you wanted to buy had no cursing in it whatsoever, it was off limits because some televangelist claimed that if you played it backward, there was a hidden message in it about Satan being cool. You can’t be listening to that and getting convinced that Satan is a cool guy. He is not.
14. WATCH TRENDY CARTOONS
Pretty much any cartoon that had some bizarre twist to it was forbidden. Ren and Stimpy were too rude. He-Man was fighting a skeleton, so Skeletor must have been the devil. Captain Planet was a liberal. Basically, if it wasn’t Gerbert or Psalty the Singing Songbook, you were going to end up having a conversation about their motives or their behavior. I’m just thankful my parents never watched pro wrestling with me, because as soon as Papa Shango started doing his voodoo on the Ultimate Warrior, it would have been gone forever. ROB FEE is a writer and comedian best known for writing and telling jokes. You can follow him on Twitter @RobFee to read more jokes or go to Del Taco. He’s probably there.
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THE BLOCKBUSTER ACTOR IS STORMING H O L LY W O O D W I T H UNFLINCHING FA ITH AND A FRESH VISION FOR CHRISTIANIT Y IN FILM BY T YLER HUCK ABEE
lot of what you need to know about David Oyelowo can be gleaned from a brief, viral, almost instantly GIF-able clip from the 2015 Academy Awards. On the heels of John Legend and Common’s rousing, staggering performance of Selma’s “Glory,” the cameras panned the Oscar crowd, who had leapt to their feet as one in spontaneous, rapturous applause. The adulation was richly deserved, but one man stuck out in particular: Oyelowo, who starred in Selma as Martin Luther King Jr. He was seated near the front, suited in a smartly tailored, Cabernet-red tuxedo (which would land him at the top of Esquire’s list of best-dressed men of the Oscars the following morning), applauding while tears ran freely down his cheeks. Even in our age of 24/7 celebrity coverage, in which a Google image search can turn up photos of Gwyneth Paltrow expressing every candid emotion known to man, the moment seemed purely human and vulnerable. The Oscars almost didn’t deserve it. The reason the moment was so indicative of Oyelowo (pronunciation: O-yellow-wo), is that, in person, it is exactly how he comes across. He is put together, but authentic—impeccably collected and utterly personable. Oyelowo is becoming well-known for his ability to play other people, but it’s almost as astonishing just how easily he inhabits his own skin.
PARTING THE RED CARPET Oyelowo’s presence at the Oscars was notable for another reason. For most of the awards season, his blistering Selma performance was widely expected to net him the Oscar for Best Actor, so it was a bit of a scandal when he wasn’t even nominated (Neil Patrick Harris even mocked the Academy for the snub during his hosting gig). “I would be lying if I said it wasn’t disappointing,” Oyelowo says, with refreshing candor. “Not least because it’s Dr. King, and I personally just want to see him celebrated in every way possible, and, of course, the film is an extension of that. You could argue that all the noise around not getting nominated actually gave the film more of a profile and more of a presence than if it had gotten nominations. “Don’t get me wrong,” he continues. “I would have no problem being an Oscar nominee or winner, and that’s something I hope is part of my feature. But for right now, I feel the film did everything it was supposed to do.” If you’re the betting sort, put money on an Oscar nomination being part of Oyelowo’s future. Rarely has an actor seemed to come so out of nowhere and
says. “We see that with Moses, we see that with David, we see that with Joseph, and with Jesus Himself. I feel that’s been my journey as an actor.” Something else you need to know about Oyelowo: He is wildly, plainly, unapologetically Christian. He’s obsessed with Jesus. You can hardly get him to talk about anything else. “I’m definitely an example of God using the foolish things of this world to confound the wise,” he says. “I know I’ve been given these opportunities for a reason. I’ve been given a degree of notoriety. I can now try to marry Hollywood’s desire to get to a faith-based audience, and try to get us as people of faith wanting to have films made that have broader reach and have high production value.” This is something Oyelowo is passionate about: raising the standard for faithbased movies. Not that he even wants to call them that. “We’ve had so many faith-based movies that I think are sub-par, I almost want a new phrase for them,” he says. He believes the market is ready for a new kind of film in which the production quality is high, the stories are compelling
“I’M DEFINITELY AN EXAMPLE OF GOD USING THE FOOLISH THINGS OF THIS WORLD TO CONFOUND THE WISE. I KNOW I’VE BEEN GIVEN THESE OPPORTUNITIES FOR A REASON.” yet simultaneously seemed so destined for greatness. After Selma, it became clear that Oyelowo belongs among our finest talents—a commanding, charismatic, magnetic force on screen and in person. Although it seems like Oyelowo burst into fame overnight, nothing could be further from the truth. “We all know from a biblical point of view of what God does in the secret place before you’re then put out in public,” he
and the message is forceful. “Hollywood has done some of these films and some of them are ginormous biblical movies, but you can tell the people making these are not invested in the truth of what those stories are biblically,” he says. “It shows in the work. It shows that they’ve just basically treated it as, ‘OK, millions of people believe in this certain Old Testament story. It has action elements, it has epic elements, it has murder, it has this
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P H O T O C R E D I T: E VA N K L A N F E R
Kate Mara as Ashley Smith and David Oyelowo as Brian Nichols in a scene from Captive
that and the other. Let’s go make a movie, and at the very least, all the Christians will come and we’ll break even and if we go beyond that, great.’ “The Bible I read, it doesn’t really correlate with those films.” But he says, before Christians get too judgmental of Hollywood, they need to consider the plank in their own eye.
“Everyone goes. And isn’t that wonderful because we are people of grace and we are people who love the message. So as long as that’s coming through, we’re very forgiving of the fact that it’s not well acted, it’s not well written and really no one outside of this church would be interested in it. “I think that there are films that are
“THE BIBLE IS UNDENIABLY A BOOK OF LIGHT. IT DOES NOT HOLD UP DARKNESS AS THE PATH TO FOLLOW, BUT IT SHOWS HOW LIGHT OVERWHELMS THE DARKNESS. SO THAT’S WHAT I LOOK FOR IN PIECES.” “Then, on the other side, you have films being made that are basically preaching to the choir,” Oyelowo says. “They are an extension of what you sometimes get in a church service, which is that the youth group put together a play to illustrate a biblical story or a biblical scene.
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basically extensions of what you get in any given church on a Sunday morning.” Oyelowo wants to reach a point where people who believe the Gospel, who believe in miracles and believe in the power of salvation are also “fantastically good artistically, creatively and have a
vision beyond a core Christian audience.” Then, he says, Christians will start producing great faith-based movies.
SETTING THE CAPTIVE FREE To that end, Oyelowo not only stars in but actually produced this fall’s Captive, costarring House of Cards’ Kate Mara. The film centers around the insane true story of Brian Nichols’ 2005 prison escape and killing spree, which eventually ended when he took a hostage by the name of Ashley Smith who read him excerpts of Rick Warren’s The Purpose Driven Life. It ended up being a very moving, lifechanging experience for both of them: He surrendered to the police. She kicked her meth habit and reunited with her daughter. The film had been languishing in postproduction purgatory for a few years until Oyelowo’s sudden stardom gave studio executives the motivation to release it. Their hesitation was understandable. On the one hand, a powerful, true story with a happy ending is to Hollywood what Corn Flakes is to Kelloggs. On the
other hand, the particulars of the story— the almost too redemptive to be believed inclusion of The Purpose Driven Life, the fact that both Nichols and Smith did meth while reading it—made the movie a tough one to peg. It was in the unenviable position of being too Christian for mainstream audiences and too mainstream for the crowd that made God’s Not Dead such a hit. But for Oyelowo, that very dichotomy is what piqued his interest. “The thing that drew me to it is the realness of it,” he says. “You have a murderer and a meth addict, but it’s completely reframed. Those two kinds of characters in a lot of movies would be the heroes of the piece. It would be Bonnie and Clyde. It would be the guys who are really cool. “But it was the opposite in this, and it was the truth. Not only was it the truth of what being a meth addict and a murderer means, but it was a true story. So it means you couldn’t be accused of being preachy if you’re telling the story in an artistically creative and integrous way, because this is what happened.” It’s clear Oyelowo went to great pains to retain this honesty. It’s a bit shocking, on the heels of his Selma performance, to see him portray a ruthless killer with such unfeeling ease. In Captive, he’s lean and muscular, having shed the extra weight he put on to play MLK. He speaks in a chilling monotone. When he’s on screen, you’re never quite sure what he’s going to do next. It’s a great performance. “I turn down a lot of movies because sometimes they glamorize violence or the darker side of sex or criminality,” he says. “I don’t shy away from the darkness, and anyone who has read the Bible knows that God does not shy away from the darkness, as well. The Bible, in some ways, is an R-rated book when you look at the content of it. “But the Bible is undeniably a book of light,” he says, “it does not hold up darkness as the path to follow but it shows darkness and shows how light overwhelms the darkness. And so that’s what I look for in pieces. “For instance, in Captive, we had to fight against every instinct to make it feel cool. Nothing should be glamorous about it. That’s what dictates my choices, is
OSCAR OYELOWO David Oyelowo has a knack for choosing roles in movies that end up on major award nominees lists.
basically telling that truth. These things are not edifying to anyone, whether it be the perpetrators or the victims. For me, I don’t mind showing those things as long as they are being shown for what they actually are. That’s what governs the choices I make.”
INCREASING TALENTS
SELMA
Oyelowo’s transformation into Martin Luther King Jr. somehow didn’t get an Oscar nod, though Selma did get nominated for Best Picture.
INTERSTELLAR
Oyelowo makes a brief appearance as a school principal in the sweeping Christopher Nolan sci-fi epic, which won an Oscar for visual effects.
LEE DANIELS’ THE BUTLER
Oyelowo plays Louis Gaines, Cecil Gaines’ rebellious Black Panther son, in the BAFTA-winning historical fiction drama.
LINCOLN
Oyelowo plays a union soldier who reminds Lincoln of his responsibilities to the country in the opening scene of this Best Picture winner.
“There’s no truth to it. It’s a lie that the devil is having a field day with,” Oyelowo responds to a question about the temptations of Hollywood, and whether Christians should keep themselves from delving too deeply in its purported culture of greed. “If we are not part of an industry that is arguably the most influential on the planet, then how can we get annoyed or frustrated when what Hollywood is putting out into the world is basically sending the world into moral decline? We only have to look to the Bible and how effective parables were for Jesus to convey His message,” he says. “He was with the sinners. He was with the broken. He was with those who He was criticized by the religious establishment for hanging out with, so I don’t know why we should think it should be any different now.” This is not necessarily a new thought regarding faith and film. Christians have been trying to elevate the quality of their movies for almost as long as the medium has existed. But having someone of Oyelowo’s caliber is a potential game-changer. He’s aware of that, and it weighs on him. He’s not taking anything for granted yet. “You look at the parable of the talents: God wants us to take our talents and increase them and make good on the investment He has made in us, and I take that very seriously. “I know that I am not owed the right to make movies. I know God has given me this privileged position and I have to work dog-hard as an actor to make the films the best they can be. I think that if you’re doing that, then you can really start doing some damage.” T YLER HUCK ABEE is a writer living in Nashville, Tennessee. Check out his work at tylerhuckabee.com and find him on Twitter @tylerhuckabee.
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HILLSONG UNITED STARTED A MOVEMENT. MEET THE BAND TAKING IT TO THE NEXT GENERATION.
R
BY KEVIN SELDERS
ecord labels—even those of the Christian variety—are notorious for signing and promoting acts simply to tap into a younger audience. Teens, after all, have the disposable income to download songs, buy official band merchandise and attend concerts, and they have the social networks to generate buzz. Bands are often marketed to reflect what’s taking place in youth culture—good or bad. Born out of the vibrant youth ministry that launched worship giants Hillsong United, Hillsong Young & Free’s hope is to point
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people to something more than today’s culture ever could. “We decided to call it ‘Young & Free’ because the theme of our youth at that time was, ‘How amazing would it be for this generation to be marked by their freedom found in Jesus Christ?,’” says Laura Toggs, who pastors the senior high school youth ministry at Hillsong Church with her husband, Peter, and is the daughter of senior pastors Brian and Bobbie Houston. “Freedom can be misunderstood as doing whatever you want whenever you want, but instead, knowing that true freedom comes from knowing Him and having a relationship with Him.” Clearly, Young & Free’s music is different. The title track from
THIS IS LIVING
Young & Free’s latest EP is dance meets worship.
the This Is Living EP—which features hip-hop artist Lecrae—and “Energy” are worship anthems pulsating with pop dance beats. Songs like “Pursue” and “Sinking Deep,” however, reinforce what Hillsong United has already established: The best worship songs ache for God rather than repeatedly declare how awesome He is. “I think in terms of spirit, it’s very much the same, because we’re one team,” Laura Toggs says of United’s influence. “They’ve progressed past the youth ministry, and they are some of our biggest examples and mentors.” Hillsong United came through Hillsong Church’s youth ministry more than a decade ago. In a sense, then, Young & Free is receiving their baton with an open hand and is ready to run with it. “They started with the same mission and intent of reaching young people, and they moved on and are focusing on writing relevant music that is outside of the four walls of the church, which is amazing,” says Alex Pappas, one of the worship pastors for Hillsong in Sydney. “[They’ve captured] the idea that young people can listen to something that’s fresh and current, but the mission and the heart behind the songs is bringing people and drawing them closer to Jesus.” To many listeners, Young & Free is already more than worship music. “At the end of the day, this exists to bless the Church,” Peter Toggs says. “I think it’s those moments when you get one-on-one with someone, whether it’s a mom or someone who has been praying for their brother or sister. When these guys led worship, we had parents come up, hug us and cry on our shoulders. That moment does it for me. “This is what it’s about—it’s about reaching people more than it is about an awesome new sound and all that.” The band’s members are still surprised by the reception their songs are receiving across the globe, including their 2013 album, We Are Young & Free. “When we released the album, it was really just songs we had been doing for a year in youth [ministry],” says Aodhán King, Hills Campus youth worship leader and songwriter for Young & Free. “To see it be so well received outside of our church, it was overwhelming. We definitely didn’t expect that.” As the band’s star rises, members of Hillsong Young & Free know they must stay grounded. They’ve been given the opportunity to minister to growing crowds, and if they’re not careful, it could turn into something else. “What we don’t want it to be about is our performance. It’s never ever about performance,” Laura Toggs says. “We just want to worship God, worship Jesus, and exalt Him, glorify Him and point people to Him. But if we ever make it about ourselves or
get seduced by the attention, then it’s not what it’s about. So we have to guard our hearts big time.” Laura Toggs says Young & Free’s primary drive is to be authentic in their worship. It has to be real for them for it to be real for the audience. Anything less ceases to be worship and instead collapses into what teens are already often spoon-fed by pop culture: a product. “At the end of the day, people can see if something is authentic,” she says. “We do it not for them, but for us. I worship Jesus. I’m going to worship
“IT’S NEVER EVER ABOUT PERFORMANCE. WE JUST WANT TO WORSHIP JESUS, GLORIFY HIM AND POINT PEOPLE TO HIM.” —Laura Toggs Jesus tonight because I need to encounter Him. I need Him. I think people see that and it resonates with them, and that’s when they respond. The most influential worship leaders, to me, are the ones I see worshipping Jesus and it compels me to want to worship the same Jesus they’re worshipping.” After performing around the globe, when the band returns home to Sydney, Australia, they enjoy getting back to everyday life. Some return to fulltime jobs, others get back to volunteering. Some return to their spouses and children. They wouldn’t want it any other way. “It is very normal when we get back home,” Peter Toggs says. “When we get back home, all these guys go back to worship leading week in, week out, investing and discipling young people. That’s what this looks like week to week. We don’t go back as these stars or anything, as some people would like to see it.” Whether they’re at home or halfway around the world, the band often finds themselves in awe of what God is doing through their ministry and among today’s youth. “For us to come from Australia, the suburbs of Sydney, all the way across the other side of the world and see it resonating in hearts here and seeing young people connected to Jesus,” Laura Toggs says, “it’s just mind blowing and amazing.” KEVIN SELDERS is a freelance writer living in the Kansas City area. Follow him on Twitter @KevinSelders.
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THE DIVORCE C ULT UR E H AUN T S O UR GENER AT ION. BU T W HERE DO VICTIMS TURN WHEN CHURCHES DON’T DO ENOUGH?
BY RU T H MOON
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THE CHURCH IS THE PROBLEM
or nearly two decades, Elisabeth Klein Fisher endured “every kind of abuse but physical” in her marriage, she says. It was pain-filled, but she fought through it. Then, her husband of almost 19 years filed for divorce. While her marriage fell apart, Klein Fisher’s professional life began to unravel, too. As she and her husband processed divorce papers, churches canceled requests for her to speak—about topics unrelated to relationships. One church even uninvited her to give a Christmas talk, “as if, because I was going through a divorce, I could no longer celebrate the birth of Jesus,” she says. As she walked through this difficult season, one way she coped was writing. She wrote a blog for a Christian website that—in her 10 years of writing for the site—quickly became her most popular. In it, she answered questions she received over and over about her marriage: “How did you stay married so long?” “Why did you stay married at all?” and “Why didn’t you stay married forever?” The answers to those questions resonated. “Women came out of the woodwork, emailing me, saying, ‘You just told my story—I thought I was the only one; I felt so isolated,’” she says. “That broke my heart.” But some accused Klein Fisher of hating men, and others decried her for “sending women to be divorced.” One detractor even pronounced that she “must not be a Christian if [she is] divorced.” It hurt all over again. “It’s a hard, hard ministry to be in to be a divorced Christian woman,” she says. “I’m a bit of a scandal.” All she really wanted to do, Klein Fisher says, is help women in difficult marriages and those contemplating divorce feel less alone. She also wanted to help churches better identify abuse and give advice. “I promised God I would never tell anyone they can or should divorce, but I want to give them resources to come to this decision on their own instead of just thinking they have to stay [in a difficult marriage] and die every day,” she says. “I also really felt compelled to shake the Church by its collective shoulders and say, ‘There are women dying in your congregations, and you are just giving them the same freaking list that you give a couple in a funk. You can’t tell her to go on a date night or have more sex or cook more.’” Klein Fisher is not alone in feeling like the evangelical church doesn’t know how to handle divorce. As society increasingly throws the marriage baby out with the divorce bathwater, Christians struggle to emphasize the theological weight of marriage while navigating the tricky waters of divorce with grace and truth. It turns out, in many ways, the Church is part of the problem.
Winston Smith, a counselor with the Christian Counseling and Educational Foundation, often meets with new divorcees or couples considering divorce. Many feel guilty and ashamed for their role in the relationship’s failure and are frustrated with how poorly the Church is equipped to deal with divorce fallout, he says. “Our culture doesn’t give us a very accurate idea of how profoundly painful it is to go through a divorce,” he says. “The Church needs to talk about the fact that there are a lot of people gathered together to worship who are wrestling with the impact of divorce or going through it.” Churches often also have trouble walking congregants through marital problems before they reach the point of divorce, Smith says. This makes churches seem offbalance when they step in to caution couples who file for divorce. “Sometimes, church discipline is done in a clumsy, heavy-handed way,” he says. “The church just shows up to tell people they’re breaking the rules and hasn’t been there loving all along.” One area churches handle particularly poorly—though it’s getting better—is the issue of abuse in relationships, says Kurt Fredrickson, associate dean and assistant professor of pastoral ministry at Fuller Theological Seminary. Pastors still largely neglect domestic abuse; a LifeWay Research survey last summer found that 42 percent of pastors rarely or never use sermons to speak to their churches about domestic abuse. Only 25 percent of pastors indicated that domestic or sexual violence was a problem in their churches. “When a pastor says ‘sustain your marriage no matter what,’ I think that’s malpractice,” Fredrickson says. “Marriage is sacred, and God’s best intention is that people stay together, but people do dumb things and act poorly so that other people get hurt emotionally and physically.” That “sustain your marriage at all costs” mentality means Christians like Klein Fisher still face heavy stigma from their own upbringing and spiritual communities. “I don’t know when I got this view in my head, but I would have rather died than divorced. That’s how wrong I thought it was,” she says. “I knew there
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DIVORCE RATES IN THE UNITED STATES
wasn’t a verse that said divorce was the unforgivable sin, but in my head, it was.”
THE BIBLE TELLS ME ... WHAT? To understand the Church’s views on divorce, one must, of course, turn back thousands of years to look at biblical texts, both on divorce and on marriage. The five major New Testament texts on divorce—Mark 10:2–12, Matthew 5:31–32 and 19:3–12, Luke 16:18, and 1 Corinthians 7:10–16—all affirm marriage as “a permanently binding commitment in which man and woman become one,” writes theologian Richard B. Hays in The Moral Vision of the New Testament. Old Testament teachings on marriage further support the image of marriage as a sacred covenant, emphasizing that God hates divorce and values faithfulness (Malachi 2:16). Hays notes that New Testament texts clearly allow divorce if one partner has been sexually unfaithful or if one is not a Christian, but the bulk of biblical theology emphasizes the importance of marriage as a lasting covenant relationship. Pastoral interpretations of those texts have been colored by particular traditions. The Catholic Church, for instance, does not allow remarriage unless the former marriage is pronounced not valid in the first place (or one spouse has died). Protestants, on the other hand, tend to allow divorce under circumstances that vary by denomination. But the view of marriage as a strong covenant persists across denominations.
RELATIONSHIP WITH BENEFITS In addition to broad theological consensus about marriage, sociology affirms that the institution is good for society across the board. Men who are married make more money, according to an American
42% of pastors “rarely or never” speak about domestic abuse
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47% of evangelicals disagree that divorce is the best solution for martial problems
23%
31%
34%
F I R S T M A R R I AG E S
A L L M A R R I AG E S
R E M A R R I AG E S > P E W R E S E A RC H C E N T E R
Enterprise Institute study (women’s salaries don’t increase, but don’t decline in marriage). Kids will likely be better educated than their peers in single-parent families, and thus will probably make more money than those peers, regardless of parents’ race or education level. And these benefits are infectious, says W. Bradford Wilcox, the director of the National Marriage Project at the University of Virginia. Kids who grow up in neighborhoods with a high percentage of twoparent families are likely to experience more upward mobility than those growing up in neighborhoods with more oneparent families, according to a recent study from Harvard University. (Of course, a few other factors, such as elementary school test scores and integration across socioeconomic boundaries, also affect the trend.) “Marriage matters not just for individual kids or families,” Wilcox says. “It matters for the larger community, for the city, for the state, for the country.”
(NOT) YOUR PARENTS’ DIVORCE CULTURE Americans have a love/hate relationship with divorce. U.S. divorce rates have nearly doubled over the past 42 years, rising from 17 to 30 percent among evangelicals, and 15 to 24 percent in society at large, according to the General Social Survey. Over that same 42-year time period, disapproval of divorce has also risen: In 2012, 47 percent of U.S. evangelicals disagreed with the idea that “divorce is the best solution to marital problems,” while only 39 percent disagreed with that statement in 1994. “The taboo of divorce is lessening, but the sense of the sacredness of marriage has not changed at all,” Fredrickson
says. “You don’t stay together just to stay together, and you don’t divorce just because the toast got burned.” While Baby Boomer and Generation X divorces have younger Americans afraid to pull the trigger on marriage, millennials actually are statistically less likely to divorce than their parents’ generation, Wilcox says. But as young adults forgo marriage in favor of cohabitation, they take on more challenges. Studies by Wilcox, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and others find that cohabitation tends to harm future relationships and any children who may come of them. Cohabitating couples are less likely to stay together, even compared to second marriages.
CHILDREN OF DIVORCE Experts agree that millennials—those born from 1980 to 2000—are more likely than earlier generations to shun divorce, in part because they are more likely to shy away from marriage altogether. This is partly due to the fact that millennials have seen so many divorces among their parents’ generation, says Glenn Stanton, director of family formation studies at Focus on the Family and research fellow at the Institute of Marriage and Family in Ottawa. Stanton faced the issue constantly when he worked at a call-in radio program. “I started to lose count of the young adults who would call in and say, ‘I have never seen an intact marriage, not in my family and not in my friends,’” Stanton says. “For so many in these last two generations, a healthy marriage is like a UFO sighting— they’ve heard rumors and hope it’s true, but they have no evidence that it is.” Another challenge facing marriages today is the mobile environment couples enter, Smith says.
“People move around a lot. They have multiple careers in a lifetime and they don’t live near family, and that puts more pressure on the marital unit,” he says. “When people are less inclined to have deep friendships and an external community, they turn to the marriage, and that’s too much pressure.” Shifting views on marriage lead to shifting views on divorce. This has upsides and downsides: Higher divorce rates are likely linked to a prevalent attitude that marriage exists to make the spouses happy, says Greg Smalley, vice president of family ministries for Focus on the Family. “If I believe the purpose of marriage is to feel this enormous happiness and sense of satisfaction, then what do I do when I’m not feeling that?” Smalley says. “There is no one alive who can keep someone enchanted for decades. All marriages are going to have rough seasons and conflict.” On the other hand, high divorce rates also give people—spouses, pastors and others— incentive to make marriage stronger. “Maybe that’s the backside of seeing more prevalent divorce—people don’t just stay together because you stay together,” Fredrickson says. “There is an option of divorce, so pastors and churches work harder to make marriages strong and strengthen them through sermons and programs.”
EVANGELICAL DIVORCE RATES
30%
24%
17%
15%
THE CHURCH IS THE SOLUTION Between a history that shames and blames those who divorce and a deep-seated fear of marriage born from the consequences of divorce, the Church has a fine line to walk. Churches need to recognize and promote the tension inherent in the Christian understanding of the sanctity of marriage and the necessity of divorce, says Timothy Paul Jones, professor of family ministry at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. “Divorce does represent a failure to keep a covenant,” Jones says. “There may be times when the failure is due to the actions of one or both spouses. Other times, it might be failure of the Church to support the couple as they need. But failure never speaks the final word to those who turn to Christ.”
“THE CHURCH JUST SHOWS UP TO TELL PEOPLE THE Y’RE BRE AKING THE RULES AND H A S N ’ T B E E N T H E R E L O V I N G A L L A L O N G .” —WINSTON SMITH Not surprisingly, part of the way forward lies in a better understanding of the problem. Children of divorce tend to be neglected by the Church—among adults whose parents divorced when they were children, two-thirds of churchgoers reported that no one reached out to them during the divorce process, according to Between Two Worlds, Elizabeth Marquardt’s book about children from divorced families. This carries over to adulthood: Adults whose parents divorced are less likely to attend church than their intact-family counterparts. “Churches have become a haven for the ‘marriage-haves,’ whereas the ‘marriage have-nots’ gravitate toward the margins,” says David Lapp, a researcher at the Institute for American Values. “This is a scandal. Instead of perpetuating divisions, churches should be breaking through them.” Some churches have begun integrating divorce support groups into their fellowship offerings. For instance, Overlake Christian Church, a 3,000-member church near Seattle, offers support groups for children and adults facing divorce or its aftermath. But mainly, it’s important for churches to get real in their portrayal of relationships. “The Church is better served if we provide people with a realistic picture of the
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challenges of relationships early on,” Smith says. “It’s needed at every level, starting with junior high, where we talk to kids about the challenges of romantic relationships. If we do a better job of discipleship in that regard, we may have to do less reactive repair work on the other side.” Along with the challenges, young people who are afraid to marry because they haven’t seen good marriages should be able to find those relationships in the Church, Smalley says. The Church could encourage more “foster parent” relationships between young couples and older couples who have stayed in marriages, Stanton suggests. And pastors, when they teach about marriage, should focus on sending realistic messages—not “You’re complete when you get married,” but messages that convey both the difficulty and beauty of the relationship. “It’s a huge challenge for the Church,” Stanton says. “To be able to say your desire for marriage is good—it’s a good, human, holy desire—and we as the Church can come alongside you and help you achieve and attain it.” RUTH MOON is a freelance reporter, contributing editor for Christianity Today and graduate student at the University of Washington in Seattle.
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FROM JUSTICE TO WORSHIP TO RAISING UP A NEW GENERATION OF LEADERS, CHRISTINE CAINE IS SPARKING A MOVEMENT
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BY T YLER HUCK ABEE
was January when Christine Caine took the stage at the Toyota Center in Houston during one of Passion’s mammoth conferences for college students. Notably, she was the only woman on the lineup of speakers (a list that included Francis Chan and Matt Chandler) but that’s a position she has grown accustomed to. She took to the packed-out crowd of nearly 20,000 with a terrific amount of poise and energy, speaking with an irresistible clarity and passion. She’s clever and approachable, but well-spoken and authoritative too. At times, she sounds like an old-fashioned preacher. “Church,” she cries, “how is God going to get some glory on this earth? Through the people of God doing the works of God that we were put on this earth to do. Not just talking about it. Not just blogging about it. We all want to write a beautiful story, but nobody wants to work and live that story. We need to work!” She says all this to thunderous applause. But it’s when she gets quiet that the crowd truly starts paying attention, like when she opens up about her recent bout with thyroid cancer. She’s vulnerable. It’s intimate. She’s speaking in hushed tones, but her voice resounds up in the top seats. As a speaker, Caine exists in a unique space. She’s an Australian woman leading within the male-dominated American evangelical sphere. She’s gaining an audience in schools, churches and arenas where her predecessors never stood. And she reaches streams of the Church like no other female leader before her.
But if all you know about Caine is that she’s a gifted speaker, you don’t know much about her. She has started two organizations—Propel Women and The A21 Campaign—both of which have made a huge impact even outside the realm of evangelical nonprofits. She’s a prolific author and a whip-smart organizer. At the risk of putting too fine a point on it, she may just be one of the most important leaders in the evangelical landscape right now. But Caine is a deep well of passions that go far beyond the spotlight and the masses. Talking to her, you’re left less in awe of her considerable talents than you are inspired to make more use of your own. And she wouldn’t have it any other way.
FINDING PURPOSE “There are a lot of naysayers who love to talk about the declining church,” Caine says. “They need to get out a bit more.” In conversation, Caine (her friends call her “Chris”) is an incurable optimist. She’s contrasting churches in her native Australia to churches in America, her adopted home over the last five years. She’s well aware of the spiritual energy moving Down Under these days, but she also dismisses any notion that Christianity in America is in decline.
Caine talks like someone dyed in the church wool, but she’s not. She comes from a Greek Orthodox background that she describes as “very religious and [having] no real understanding of any kind of personal relationship with Jesus.” She wasn’t proud of it. “It was before it was cool to be Greek,” she says, laughing. “Now everyone loves feta cheese and olives, but they certainly didn’t back in the day.” She also spent longer than a decade of early life being sexually abused. And even that did not prepare her for the shock she received at the age of 33: Caine learned then that the family that raised her is not her biological family. She’d been found in a hospital, unnamed and unwanted. Her experiences combined to make Caine feel “very much full of shame and just very confused in many ways.” But, on the last Sunday in January in 1989, a friend invited her to what was then called “Hills Christian Life Centre,” a growing church that met in a warehouse in Sydney. (A gathering that later became a branch of Hillsong Church). “It was the first time I’d walked into that kind of environment where you’re not quite sure if it’s a church or a disco,” she says. “When you come from a Greek
“The Jesus who healed this unnamed, unwanted, abused, adopted girl—I want the world to know that this Jesus can do it for them.” “The decline is only happening in places where there’s dead religion,” Caine says. “There are lots of pockets throughout America where God is moving powerfully. I have great hope for America. There’s no way God is finished with the American church. The naysayers and the doomsday people obviously don’t read their Bibles, because Jesus says, ‘I will build the Church, and the gates of Hell will not prevail.’”
Orthodox background, which is very liturgical, and you walk into that—back in the day, it was quite radical.” She says she took to it the minute she walked in. “I mean, I didn’t know what that was then, but I now know it as worship,” Caine says. “It was just so compelling. It just drew me in. With all my mess, as cliché as it sounds, I found home. It was so dramatic
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THE ESSENTIAL CAINE Christine Caine writes as well as she speaks. Her books challenge and encourage Christians to step out in faith in order to impact the world. UNDAUNTED
Through her personal life story, Caine explores how overcoming challenges, pain and tragedy can help us grow and give us the tools to make an impact wherever God has called us to. UNSTOPPABLE
Caine tells stories of how people who are living all-out for faith are transforming their worlds, and she shows how readers can do so, as well. It’s about finishing the race well, she writes. STOP ACTING LIKE A CHRISTIAN, JUST BE ONE
Allowing God to change us from the inside out will transform our lives and our behavior, Caine argues. Then we can truly model Christ to others. CAN I HAVE AND DO IT ALL, PLEASE?
Caine gives practical, encouraging advice for women balancing their lives and schedules jam-packed with faith, family, work, friendships and everything else.
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and distinct for me. I found home and never left.” But of course, just because she found a home doesn’t mean she was content just to sit there. “I wanted to work for God, whatever that meant,” she says. “My understanding of that was that I would be like a nun. I thought it would be like Mother Teresa. Thank God that didn’t work. I would have never gotten married. I don’t know how great celibacy would have been for me.”
FROM AVAILABLE TO REVIVAL Simply, Caine wanted to serve God and help others know Him. She didn’t set out for global recognition. “I look at a generation today that is so desperate about marketing themselves and establishing a career path and trying to make their calling a career,” Caine says. “For me, it was the total antithesis of that.” Caine isn’t speaking hyperbolically here. Her journey from Hills Christian Life Center visitor to esteemed global leader began in unlikely ways and has remained unlikely. “I just began serving, volunteering in the youth ministry,” she says. “I volunteered doing anything. I volunteered for the clean up. I volunteered for putting out chairs. I volunteered for vacuuming the floor. I just wanted to be around the house of God. I had no comprehension then that I would be doing what I’m doing now, because I didn’t know that a woman could do it.” The shift began when Caine volunteered to help clean out an old storage closet at the church. She was the only one who showed up. While she was there, the assistant youth pastor introduced himself and said they were looking for someone with a psychology major to help with their new youth center. He’d heard she majored in psychology. He’d heard wrongly, as it turned out. “I figure it’s not that [the assistant youth pastor] actually thought of me. He didn’t even know me,” Caine says. “I was literally the only one there. I’m a great believer that it’s not who’s the most gifted—it’s just who’s the most available.” Caine was available. She was also driven. She started volunteering at the youth center, but she took the job far more seriously than anyone probably expected. She says that, at the time, she didn’t know any better. “I just assumed that if it was in the Bible, it was meant to be true,” she says. “I just used to read it and go ‘OK, God’s favor is on
my life. God wants us to move forward and to bring change into cities.’ So I began in a community-based youth ministry which was really the outreach time of our youth ministry at our church.” Caine began to build partnerships between her youth center and local law enforcement and city officials. She even began visiting the then-prime minister, delivering workshops and seminars on how to work with Australian youth. Through these relationships, she secured the donation of a $1 million building to host the area youth pouring in. And that building wasn’t nearly as valuable as something else she began to acquire: a knack for public speaking. “I was speaking six times a day in high schools,” she says. “Now, people think, ‘Wow, Chris is really great at communicating to young people or to women or to the church.’ But the church is positively easy compared to unsaved kids in schools. I cut my teeth in rotary clubs full of men who were wondering who this young woman was speaking to them and in high schools with students who if you said, ‘Raise your hand,’ they would raise their fingers.” Caine was appointed the director of Youth Alive (the Australian equivalent of Youth for Christ), and she spent her days speaking in schools and planning huge outreach events over the weekends. “We would have 10,000 kids in arenas,” she says. “In Australia, that was a revival. We would have arenas every week. We would go into the country towns and there was nothing else going on, so everyone would come to the meeting. I didn’t realize how radical that was. I was the only women who had ever been appointed.”
THE LOST AUDIENCE Caine is much more mindful of her unique position in the Church today, despite numerous inroads women have made toward equality. The lack of roles for women in the Church is something she’s eager to change. “We as the Church are hemorrhaging a generation of young women,” she says, “because the Church has been very slow on the uptake of the changing goalposts in the world. So much of the literature that’s written to women in the Church is written to the women who no longer exist. It’s written to June Cleaver, and she doesn’t exist anymore.”
“I’m a great believer that it’s not who’s the most gifted. It’s just who’s the most available.”
Caine speaking at a Passion Conference in Atlanta, Georgia
Today, says Caine, more than 70 percent of mothers in North America work. And 53 percent of women are single; 48 percent will never birth biological children. It’s a different day for women. “And yet, 80 percent of all Christian books are written to women and read by women, but those books are written to the stay-at-home mother, which is awesome for about 20 percent of American women,” she says. “A lot of us are talking to an audience that is no longer there. We have this hugely educated generation of young women— more than 80 percent of American women go to college, 70 percent of all postgraduate degrees are women—and we talk as if they don’t exist. “We’re so scared to put the word ‘women’ and ‘leader’ in the same sentence, because we’re so scared of what that might mean,” Caine continues. “What we have done is ostracize a generation of young women who think ‘I don’t fit anywhere.’” But Caine manages to fit. First in her native Australia, where she became a renowned speaker and leader, and now in the United States. “I think to America it was kind of like, ‘Woah. Who is she and where did she come from?’ Well, I’ve been around for a long time. I’ve been prepared in the back
of nowhere for a really long time, it’s just that I was probably new in some of the American evangelical church circles. I’ve been coming here doing ministry for literally 20 years.” While Caine has become famous as a speaker, her real work goes on behind the scenes. That’s where The A21 Campaign comes in. It’s her organization dedicated to abolishing human trafficking in the 21st century. It’s seven years old and it has solidified itself as a major player in the ongoing war against human slavery. “We have offices in 10 countries,” she says. “Dozens of traffickers in jail and hundreds of girls and women who are victims of human trafficking reduced. We also received the Hero of Human Trafficking Award from Hillary Clinton and the European Union Award. God has given us great credibility.” Caine has also spearheaded Propel Women, an organization seeking to raise up women leaders within the Church. Caine calls it “the biggest, most influential thing I’ve been involved in.” And she speaks of it with obvious fondness. “I felt the Lord just say to me, ‘Christine, the feminist revolution did us a lot of favors. It actually got women out of the home and into the marketplace where the harvest is,’” she explains. “What we have is
these combine harvesting machines in the harvest field, but we’re too scared to put fuel in them and to give them keys because we think, ‘Oh no.’ But we’re not in Kansas anymore. We’re not going back.”
JESUS FOR ANYONE Clearly, Caine has a lot of passions. But she says her mission is really a simple one: “I’m a Gospel girl. I’m a Jesus girl and I’m a local church girl. “When people think, ‘Oh, she’s all social justice.’ I’m like, ‘No, I’m all Jesus and the Church.’ I’m a church builder, and justice should be what the Church does.” And while she’s become one of the most prominent, and important, figures in modern evangelicalism, the message Caine has now is the same one the young woman who showed up to clean out a church storage closet would have wanted the world to hear: “The Jesus who healed this unnamed, unwanted, abused, adopted girl—I want the world to know that this Jesus can do it for them,” she says. “It was not through any major seminary training. It was just common sense to me that if He did it for me, He could do it for anyone.” T YLER HUCK ABEE is a writer living in Nashville. You can check out his work at tylerhuckabee.com and read his random thoughts @tylerhuckabee on Twitter.
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As the pastor of Reality, a church in LA, Tim Chaddick has often watched people struggle with temptation. In his new book, The Truth About Lies, Chaddick looks at how we get the idea of temptation wrong. Temptation, he argues, can actually be an opportunity to grow spiritually. We also talk to worship leader Lauren Daigle about her new album.
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The first single off hip-hop artist JGivens’ debut album with Humble Beast, “Ignorantro” sounds like an intense part of a freestyle rap battle—and JGivens is certainly winning. Coupled with catchy beats and vintage styled, Download frantic cinema- your tography seemingly depicting Givens in a forest after a plane crash, the song grabs you and leaves you wanting more.
It’s impossible not to get Gungor stopped by the sucked into the music video for RELEVANT studio to perform “11 Miles,” off Songs of Water’s a few songs from their latest new album, Stars & Dust. The album, One Wild Life: Soul, this song is a sweeping ballad, laytime with a string ensemble in ering unique instrumentation, tow. As usual, the husband-wife harmonies and driving guitars. duo showed off both their musiFREE digital magazine The video takes viewers on an today. cal prowess and their knack for intriguing, beautiful journey. writing lyrics that deal honestly You won’t be able to look away, with the sticky regions of faith and you’ll want to watch it over and doubt. “You” is relatable and, and over again. ultimately, encouraging.
www.PROPELWOMEN.ORG
Few things are more encouraging than Kid President’s inspiritational videos, and this one addressing recent graduates is no exception. KP delivers the pep talk we need with his signature adorable quirkiness. “If at first you don’t succeed ... you’re normal!” he says. “The world needs you ... be your own Beyoncé,” he says, before ending the speech, as usual, by dancing.
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SEP T/OCT 2015 ISSUE 7 7
FEATURES
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FOALS: THE NEXT GREAT ROCK BAND? The band of the hour is earning critical acclaim for their new album, What Went Down. And they may be just getting started.
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THE RELEVANT GUIDE TO FALL TV Set your DVRs. Here are the comedies, dramas, reboots and streaming shows we’re watching this season.
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14 THINGS YOUR CHRISTIAN PARENTS WOULDN’T LET YOU DO IN THE ’90S Trick-or-treating? Absolutely not. Watching The Simpsons? Pretty much the worst thing ever. At least, that’s what your mom told you.
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JIM GAFFIGAN
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DAVID OYELOWO The actor who reimagined MLK and now stars in Captive combines rare talent and charisma with boldly public faith.
The comedian responsible for permanently defaming Hot Pockets has a new show, a second best-seller and probably a few too many kids. And after a huge summer, Jim Gaffigan might just be the biggest man in comedy.
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HILLSONG YOUNG & FREE The new wave of musicians out of Hillsong Church capture the voice of this generation.
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THE GREAT DIVORCE Examining how the Church can support divorced couples—and uphold marriages before they get to the breaking point.
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74 DAVID OYELOWO
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FIR ST WOR D
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FEEDBACK
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SLICES
A guide to the streaming music revolution, explaining the DC vs. Marvel comic wars, presidential candidates’ faith and more.
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SEPT_OCT 2015
How the globally esteemed speaker is breaking down barriers and becoming the face of a movement.
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THE DROP
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R E J E C T A PAT H Y
The humanitarian crisis in Qatar, Sseko designs, a look at the GMO debate, how to move from awareness to action and more.
Matthew Mayfield, The Bots, Derek Johnson and other artists you need to know. 38
CHRISTINE CAINE
MAKER
Why you need a mentor, what happens if you “fail” at changing the world, the best cities for visionaries and more.
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R E L E VA N T R E C O M M E N D S
The music, movies, books and digital media you should know about.
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