Christina Crook, the author of “The Joy of Missing Out: Finding Balance in a Wired World,” writes and speaks about the intersection of technology, relationships and joy. The views expressed in this commentary do not necessarily reflect those of BCNN1.

In the treetops of Fewell Island, South Carolina, six young adults in harnesses dangle awkwardly from ropes. Down below, a group stands huddled in windbreakers and hoodies in the frigid February air, calling out encouragement to the Irish girl tearfully embracing the 20-foot-high pole overhead.

“Come on, Paula! You’ve got this!”

Forty minutes later, a crowd greets Paula as she ziplines her way back to solid ground.

Our group’s easy camaraderie belies the fact that most of us have met less than 24 hours ago. We are here for an A-GAP experience — all of us Christians and all of us voluntarily without our phones.

Started in 2018 by Marygrace Sexton, founder and CEO of Natalie’s Orchid Island Juice Co., A-GAP is a nonprofit with the mission to help people of Christian faith journey to clarity, unity and simplicity in a technology-free environment. In short, Christian digital detox.

Over the last decade, Sexton, a Florida business owner, mother and grandmother, had developed an acute sense of technology’s adverse effects, particularly decreased intimacy and professional performance within her own organization. This led to the launch of A-GAP: a reprieve to encourage contemplation, spiritual rejuvenation and healthy technology habits.

Most of the attendees, ironically, found out about the retreat through the internet: A post on the Instagram account of Charlotte One, a young adult ministry in Charlotte, North Carolina, drew a sizable portion of the group. Paula McKee — Paula from the high ropes course, an au pair originally from Belfast — was invited by text. But we each took a step of faith and showed up.

We can credit the internet with fostering these kinds of trusting acts, which have also powered the growth of the sharing economy. While the debate rages on whether this so-called gig economy is undermining secure jobs by replacing them with an army of mercenary, part-time workers, it has opened up new avenues of trust and camaraderie between citizens as they become customer and client.

The traditional commercial relationship, too, becomes more complex in the gig economy. Instead of grunting a rote “How are you today?” or “Have a nice day” or other platitudes as we do at retail outlets, we want to know more about the person we’ve contracted before we accept their services or rate them. That’s opening up intimate conversations and relations most consumers have never had to have before, which in turn opens up all types of opportunities to network, trust and share.

Ten years ago, no one would have dreamed of getting into the back of a stranger’s car or staying in their apartment. Now, thanks to Airbnb and car services like Lyft and Uber, it’s commonplace. (The Anabaptists, cool kids that they are, were doing their version of Airbnb, called Mennonite Your Way, long before there was an internet.)

Trust is built (and broken) the same way online and off — through the keeping or severing of promises. While trust can begin to grow online, it is solidified in close proximity. That’s why when we meet our ride-share driver, our trust in them and the sharing economy grows. We’ve closed the gap.

Of course, this trust can be broken in stunning ways, and the internet, through people’s use of blatant visual distortion and propagation of misinformation, provides plenty of opportunities for that as well. Trusting communities require a balance between nurturing existing relationships and extending outward to form new ones. Mistrust can grow when communities only take care “of their own.”

Chris Lawrence is a pastor of Living Hope church in New York City’s East Harlem, an English-speaking congregation in a historically Spanish community. His church members are making progress slowly with what they call “re-neighboring the street”: connecting 400 households that share the same block but do not currently have much to do with each other.

Source: Religion News Service

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Southern Baptists remembering an historic revival that swept through Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Fort Worth, Texas, say remembering what God did in the midst of one divisive period of American history should motivate believers to pray for it again.

This month marks a half century since revival broke out at Asbury College and Seminary in Wilmore, Ky., on Feb. 3 of 1970. Thanks to the testimonies of those Asbury students, the revival spread to college campuses and seminaries throughout the United States. Asbury students visited Southwestern in March of that year and spoke after a chapel service, launching the revival at the Southern Baptist seminary.

Tom Elliff, then a 24-year-old student at Southwestern, said students knew the Asbury students were on campus and expected them to be at chapel that day. Robert Naylor, the Southwestern president at the time, announced the Asbury students would speak after chapel and students could say and listen.

“Nobody left,” said Elliff, who later became the president of the Southern Baptist Convention (1996-97) and president of the SBC International Mission Board. “To my recollection, the chapel was full. That began a seemingly endless time of confession. What started everyone confessing was that not only were students confessing, but there were guests confessing sin. There were also professors confessing sin.”

The time of confession continued all night. Elliff, who lived in Dallas at the time, drove home at 7 p.m., took a shower and then returned. As he exited his car, Elliff met a man who was frantically coming out of the chapel. He asked for prayer and the two slipped into a nearby prayer room. The man then confessed to Elliff that he had been bitter toward God because he hadn’t had an opportunity to preach while at the seminary. Elliff prayed with him. As they walked out of the room, they ran into another man who said his church needed revival and wanted someone to come and share their experience of that evening.

“I told him, ‘I think you have someone right here,” Elliff said, pointing to the man with whom he had been praying. “I left those men talking and rejoicing and made my way back to the chapel where the prayer service was taking place.”

As Southwestern students went to local churches that next weekend, the impact spread throughout the Dallas-Ft. Worth area and beyond. Elliff connects his Southwestern experience to another revival he led a few months later in Colorado that touched an entire town.

Tim Beougher, the Billy Graham professor of evangelism and church growth at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Ky., points to two factors that laid the groundwork for the Southwestern revival. First, leaders had prayed for revival for several years. Jack Gray, who taught spiritual formation at Southwestern at the time, began gathering students, faculty, and staff together to pray for revival at the seminary.

Elliff remembers these volunteer prayer times as significant experiences in the life of the seminary and in his own life.

Source: Baptist Press

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MESQUITE, Texas (BP) — Josiah Presley, one of the abortion survivors featured in a 30-second ad that Fox Sports chose not to run during the Super Bowl, is a Criswell College graduate and a youth pastor at Galloway Avenue Baptist Church in Mesquite, Texas.

“Can you look me in the eye and tell me that I shouldn’t be alive?” Presley asks in the ad made by Faces of Choice. “We are the survivors of choice. We are the faces of choice,” abortion survivors say in the ad.

The group’s founder, Lyric Gillett, told the Washington Times she repeatedly met additional terms set forth by Fox and in the end was not given a suitable reason why the ad was rejected.

Though he was disappointed, Presley said he wasn’t surprised Fox Sports chose not to air the ad. He hopes the chatter that has followed the decision will still get the message into American homes, especially as pro-life people direct others to the various abortion survivor videos at facesofchoice.org.

“Our prayer is that it still has an impact and it still shows people the truth of what abortion is,” he said.

When Presley’s birth mother was two months pregnant and in South Korea, she had a curettage abortion, “the type of abortion where a doctor goes into a mother’s womb and rips the baby apart and brings him out in pieces,” Presley told the TEXAN.

Presley’s birth mother was sent home, but a few months later she realized the abortion “had actually failed and I was still very much alive,” he said. Presley was born in 1995 and placed in a foster home in South Korea. Randy and Kathy Presley of Norman, Okla., adopted Presley when he was 13 months old, and raised him along with nine other adopted and two biological children.

Presley has a deformed arm, which is believed to have been caused by the type of abortion attempted. Throughout his childhood, he struggled secretly with low self-esteem, thinking he was less than others because of his deformity. “I thought I wouldn’t go anywhere in life,” he said.

When he was 13 years old, Presley’s parents told him he had survived an abortion. Though he was grateful to know his story, the news sent him deeper into darkness.

“It became apparent to me at that time that my life actually was worthless because the people who should have loved me the most thought my life was so ‘unvaluable’ they tried to take it,” Presley said.

As a young teenager, Presley developed hatred toward anyone who was pro-choice, including abortion doctors, post-abortive women and Planned Parenthood workers. “I thought they were the scum of the earth because it was people like them who made me the way I was, so broken,” he said.

All the while, he continued projecting a good church kid façade at Trinity Baptist Church in Norman, where his father was a worship pastor. The summer after his sophomore year of high school, God got Presley’s attention at Falls Creek Baptist Conference Center in Oklahoma. The camp pastor that week talked about the Greek word dunamis and how God imparts in the believer the power to overcome the trials of the world.

“I remember thinking I didn’t have that in my life,” Presley said.

He accepted Christ as his Savior that week and started seeing changes in his outlook. He realized his value was not in what he did but in the fact that he was created in the image of a God who had a purpose for his life, he said.

Source: Baptist Press

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Authorities in northwestern Brazil are searching for two men who held up an evangelical church during the middle of a mass. One them pointed a gun at a woman.

The frightening scene was all caught on video Sunday night shortly after the gunman and and his accomplice interrupted the evening prayer service at the house of worship located in Manaus, the capital of the state of Amazonas.

A congregant recorded the tense moment as the unidentified suspect wearing a red sweatshirt ordered the churchgoers to give up all of their personal belongings.

A young boy could be seen approaching the congregants under orders of the gunman and filling a backpack with their possessions.

The gun-totting church thief then instructed the woman that was sitting next to him to walk over and sit next to the rest of the worshipers before he followed her.

He then appears to look search through the bag before escaping the church.

Source: Daily Mail

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The views expressed in this commentary do not necessarily reflect those of BCNN1. Opinions expressed are solely those of the author(s).

The Kansas City Chiefs defeated the San Francisco 49ers in yesterday’s Super Bowl by a score of 31 to 20. The Chiefs came back from a ten-point deficit in the fourth quarter to give their beloved head coach, Andy Reid, his first NFL championship.

What about the game will be remembered long after the score is forgotten?

Patrick Mahomes was “always about the other person” 

Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes is now the first quarterback in NFL history to win a Most Valuable Player award, a Super Bowl, and a Super Bowl MVP by the age of twenty-five. However, he has been known for his humility since high school.

According to his coaches, “He was always about the team, always about his teammates, always about the other person.” Mahomes has been following Jesus since coming to faith in middle school.

Chiefs punter Dustin Colquitt has been active in the Fellowship of Christian Athletes and Athletes in Action. He says, “As a Christian, I think God has given me that platform to say, ‘Hey, I’ve allowed you to do a lot of things, and I need you to speak my Name.’”

49ers receiver Jordan Matthews became a Christian during his second year in the NFL and says “everything changed.” Another 49ers receiver, Marquise Goodwin, made headlines when he and his wife lost a premature son just hours before a game but continued to trust the Lord.

And Chiefs CEO Clark Hunt has been very public about his commitment to Christ. I was his pastor in Dallas and know personally of his family’s love for the Lord.

After the Chiefs won the AFC title, Clark said: “I want to thank the Lord for blessing us with this opportunity. The glory belongs to him.” After his team won the Super Bowl last night, he told the world: “I want to thank the Lord for blessing our family with all these incredible people who helped us bring this championship home.”

SOURCE: Christian Post, Jim Denison

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Pop star Jessica Simpson made an appearance on “Today” recently and broke out in worship after opening up about her past struggles with alcohol and sexual abuse.

Simpson sat down with Hoda Kotb last week to discuss her new memoir, Open Book. In the interview, the singer opened up about being molested as a child and not immediately speaking about it to her parents, who were in ministry at the time, because of the shame she felt.

She also talked to Kotb about her addiction to alcohol, which Simpson overcame a couple of years ago. The new author admitted drinking as early as 7 a.m. at times. Everything changed in 2017, however, after being unable to participate in Halloween with her kids and family. The next day Simpson sought therapy and has been sober ever since.

“I just realized that I had to surrender,” she said. “I just want to continue on the path that I’m on and at this point in my life, now I’m strong enough to deal with anything that comes my way because I don’t have something to retreat to that will numb me from actually going through it.”

At the close of her interview with “Today,” Kotb requested the singer sing the song that brings Simpson peace since faith is such an important part of her journey. She then sang a verse from the popular hymn, “Amazing Grace.”

SOURCE: Christian Post, Jeannie Law

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The views expressed in this commentary do not necessarily reflect those of BCNN1. Opinions expressed are solely those of the author(s).

Recently, I attended a worship service in a small rural church in North Carolina with a segment of our country’s citizens, who, by the standards of many today, would be deemed as rednecks, uneducated buffoons, bigots, and deplorables. Because of their support for President Trump and other alleged faults, they would unquestionably be thrown into that same broader category of people CNN’s Don Lemon, Rick Wilson, Wajahat Ali laughed to scorn on Lemon’s television show.

But let me describe to you what contrasts these people from the elitists who think of them as a joke. They may not have several degrees behind their names. They might not know where Ukraine is located on a map. Still, they possess a depth of wisdom that makes the elitists look shallow and foolish.

Generally, they discern well between the truth and a lie, good and evil. They trust every word of the Bible to be fully inspired by God – the definitive source for measuring every truth claim. They take the Bible literally, wherever it’s clear it should be taken literally. They believe its principles are sufficient for providing direction in the great questions of life, ethics and morality, personal and corporate.

They reject man-made utopian visions of the world. They believe Jesus is the Savior – there are no more Messiahs, whether perceived in men or systems of government.

Yet they are earnest patriots and law-abiding citizens. They participate in their government. They love the flag and would die for their country, even though they know it’s currently on a trajectory that marginalizes them and could result in its national implosion.

They believe God made humanity in the dual fixed sexes of male and female, and their gender roles are quite different, equal in importance and complimentary.

Although they struggle in some of the same ways all families struggle, they are committed to the preservation of traditional family life. They believe a husband and wife (one man and one woman), who in marriage love and cherish each other for a lifetime and rear their children in eternal verities, is what constitutes God’s plan for the home. They believe children, whether born or unborn, are God’s greatest gift.

SOURCE: Christian Post, Rev. Mark H. Creech

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The Super Bowl Gospel Celebration kicked off the highly anticipated Super Bowl 2020 weekend Thursday, and along with star-studded performances the event honored NFL stars Quinnen and Quincy Williams for their work with the American Cancer Society.

Quinnen, who plays for the New York Jets, and his brother, Quincy, of the Jacksonville Jaguars, were awarded the 2020 Faith in Action award at the James L. Knight Center.

The Williams brothers sadly lost their mother to breast cancer a decade ago and decided to turn their tragedy into something positive by working with the American Cancer Society to ensure that people of color in the United States receive proper cancer screenings in urban communities.

The Figgers Foundation awarded the American Cancer Society with a check for $2,500 during the celebration.

The Super Bowl Gospel Celebration along with the BET Network will highlight the American Cancer Society during its broadcast of the event at 7 p.m. Eastern time Saturday. The brothers stress the “critical importance of cancer prevention and awareness,” said organizers in a statement to The Christian Post.

SOURCE: Christian Post, Jeannie Law

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