This article was written by Carl Nelson and originally appeared in the Minnesota Christian Examainer, Jan. 2012.

Recently I was stunned to hear about the divorce of someone in ministry whom I’ve known for nearly 15 years; a couple whom I admire and who appeared to have had a beautiful, healthy relationship.

In the last year alone there have been three couples in my life whose marriages have ended – each of them leaders in the church – each of them a complete surprise to me. For each one I have grieved for all that has been lost.

I don’t judge them; rather I grieve for them because they sincerely wish this wasn’t happening to them. Their children are wracked with pain and confusion. Their finances are decimated. Their families and futures have been forever disrupted.

But neither do I give up on the hope and promise of marriage. Rather I am compelled to advocate more vigorously for the joyful promise of marriage that God holds out for us in the Bible.

I acknowledge that within the Western Church, we Christians have often fallen well short of God’s ideals for marriage. That doesn’t mean that we should abandon the idea. Instead we need to pursue these ideals more vigorously and help marriages succeed because we believe in the profound benefits of marriage.

GOD’S GOOD GIFTS OF MARRIAGE AND SEX

Transform Minnesota recognizes that we need to work together to strengthen marriages. In December our board of directors committed ourselves to inspire and equip evangelical leaders to communicate God’s vision for marriage as seen in the Bible.

One of the ways to do that is to affirm that God created us as men and women and introduced marriage between a man and a woman as a divinely-ordained covenant relationship to be the context for enjoying sexual intimacy, conceiving children and raising them.

We believe that marriage and sexual intimacy in marriage are good gifts from God that are beneficial for individuals, children and society.

BENEFITS OF MARRIAGE

There are profound benefits when marriages are stable and lasting.

• CHILDREN: Research consistently shows that children raised in safe and stable families with their mother and father have much better outcomes throughout life (e.g. better education and income, less crime, depression and drug use). When churches work to strengthen marriages it benefits children and thereby the wellbeing of society.
• PARENTING: The demands of raising and caring for children are significantly easier when shared between two parents in a stable relationship. Being a single parent is extremely hard (and I hold up single parents with admiration). Not only is it hard for the parent, but children miss out on having two parents investing in their lives.
• INTIMACY: I can attest to the personal benefits of marriage. I’ve been married to my wife Kari for nearly 15 years. We enjoy the trust we have in each other. We have shared years of life experience and creating memories together. A widowed friend recently stated what a loss it has been to no longer have his wife’s loving but trusted voice there to speak truthfully and frankly to him.
• FINANCES: Economic data demonstrates that married couples are better off financially than co-habiting or divorced couples. Sharing living, household and transportation expenses by married couples increases their economic position, but expenses nearly double and household assets or other savings are cut in half when divided by divorce.

PREPARING FOR MARRIAGE

Some in our society complain that the church has been overly fixated on sex and marriage. We may be guilty of this in that sense that we have been judgmental and ungracious towards people whose marriages have not survived.

What I think the Western Church is legitimately guilty of is failing to prepare young people for marriage, failing to honor God’s unique image in both male and female, and failing to treat sexual intimacy as a joyful gift from God to be enjoyed and honored within marriage.

So rather than talking about sex and marriage less, we need to talk about it more. For our part Transform Minnesota has committed ourselves to helping evangelicals talk more about God’s good gifts of sex and marriage to the culture we live in today.

This is one of the reasons why Transform Minnesota encourages churches to support marriage and to promote the Biblical teachings of marriage as between a man and a woman.

Marriage Lowers the Rates of Poverty: Marriage Drops the Probability of Child Poverty by 89 Percent [link to PDF]

In Minnesota, 74% of poor families with children are not married. In contrast, only 25% of families with married parents live in poverty.

Single-parent families with children are nearly nine times more likely to be poor than families in which the parents are married.

The higher poverty rate among single-mother families is due both to the lower education levels of the mothers and the lower income due to the absence of the father.

Married households are safer for women and children. [link to PDF]

“Analysis of ten years worth of findings from the National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS), which the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) has conducted since 1973, demonstrates that mothers who are or ever have been married are far less likely to suffer from violent crime than are mothers who never marry.”

A 2004 Heritage Foundation Report documents these results and shows that :

• The incidence of spousal, boyfriend, or domestic partner abuse is twice as high among mothers who have never been married as it is among mothers who have ever married (including those separated or divorced).
• Children of divorce or never married mothers are six to 30 times more likely to suffer from serious child abuse than are children raised by both biological parents in marriage.

Social research shows that healthy marriages impact social indicators in many ways. [link to PDF]

In a study by family scholars from the Universities of Texas, Virginia and Chicago, these researchers identified “21 conclusions from the Social Sciences” including:

• Marriage increases the likelihood that fathers have good relationships with their children.
• Divorce and unmarried childbearing increase poverty for both children and mothers.
• Children who live with their own two married parents enjoy better physical health, on average, than do children in other family forms.
• Boys raised in single-parent families are more likely to engage in delinquent and criminal behavior.
• Marriage appears to reduce the risk that adults will be either perpetrators or victims of crime.
• A child who is not living with his or her own two married parents is at greater risk of child abuse.

Transform Minnesota wants to encourage support for marriage. It is clear that within our churches we need to do more to prepare people for marriage, help marriages survive and help both single and married people understand God’s ideals for their sexuality and human relationships.

We acknowledge that within the Western Church, we Christians have often fallen well short of God’s ideals for marriage and expression of our sexuality. However we continue to pursue these ideals because we believe that marriage is a good gift from God that is beneficial for individuals, children and society.

At its December 2011 board meeting, Transform Minnesota adopted the following resolution regarding our support for marriage:

• Transform Minnesota seeks to encourage a Biblical understanding of marriage within our churches and society.
• Transform Minnesota will help to inspire and equip evangelical leaders to communicate God’s ideas for sex and marriage so that marriages are healthier and sexuality is treated honorably.
• Transform Minnesota supports a Biblical understanding of marriage as between one man and one woman.

RESOURCES

One of the ways Transform Minnesota will work to support marriage is to provide resources and ideas pastors and leaders.

• “Theology of Sex” [Link to PDF] A booklet compiled by evangelical scholars and theologians that “traces the biblical account of humans as sexual beings and identifies the tensions between sex as God intended it and sex as people often experience it. For those who wish to live happily and responsibly as single or married persons, these words may serve as a guide toward celebrating the fullness of sex.”
• Marriage – Minnesota’s #1 Weapon Against Childhood Poverty [Link to PDF] Reports & graphs showing link between single-parent households and poverty. “Single parent households have poverty rate 9 times higher than 2-parent households.”
• Why Marriage Matters: 21 conclusions from the social sciences [Link to PDF] Review of social research by scholars from Universities of Texas, Virginia and Chicago identifying 21 social outcomes impacted by marriage.
• Marriage – Still the Safest Place for Women & Children [Link to PDF] Report from the Heritage Foundation analyzing 10 years of data showing the link between mothers who marry or don’t marry and incidences of crime and child abuse.
• Do Mothers & Fathers Matter? [Link to PDF] A review of social science research questioning whether child well-being is the same in married mother-father households as in alternative family structures. 

Evangelism is changing. The methods we use to tell people that Jesus can open the door to a relationship with God are different than what was effective before.

Carl Nelson, President of Transform Minnesota

Americans today know less and less about God and the Bible. A generation ago, a majority of people were aware of their own sin that separated them from God. Today, most non-religious people have no concept of sin, nor recognize that they are separated from God.

So we need to learn new ways to tell the Good News and help people meet Jesus.

One effective way is to integrate the spoken words of truth and explanation of Good News with the active and living results of Good News. Many call this a Holistic Gospel—combining the words and deeds of Jesus’ Gospel into an integrated living and spoken witness.

Some Christians have resisted this movement because it appears to some that it places less emphasis on evangelism. However, we should be just as concerned when proclamation-only-evangelism produces less and less fruit, as it is doing in American culture today. It is also true that deeds of mercy and justice cannot replace words and proclamation that explain and announce the Good News to help people accept Jesus.

Rather than viewing this as an either-or approach, Christians should consider a both-and approach. We should learn better how to combine and integrate the living results of Good News with the spoken explanation of Good News.

The book of Ephesians has helped give me a framework to understand how we can stay focused on proclaiming the Good News about salvation in Jesus, and at the same time be working to fight injustice and show love and mercy to others in the name of Jesus.

Here’s my summary of the book of Ephesians in a nutshell. We were separated from God by sin, but Jesus sacrificed himself to make peace between us and God, then gathered us into a new community called the Church, and through the Church, God intends to overcome suffering and destruction and reestablish His created order, with the end result being that God’s glory is revealed to the ends of the universe.

A mistake I have made is to minimize the entirety of God’s redemptive purposes achieved through Jesus Christ.

Yes, Christ is the one who achieves our salvation, but our salvation is not just for us; it also serves a greater purpose. Too many times we end the story right there. We only think about our salvation, and we forget why God has saved us.

God is on a mission to rescue a broken and hurting world and to bring people back to himself. Ephesians 3:18 tells us that after we become followers of Jesus, we should seek to understand and be filled with the “the breadth and length and height and depth” of the love of Christ. By doing so, we become like Jesus as we take on the defining characteristic of Jesus—His all-consuming love for others.

When we are filled and moved with the compassion and justice of Christ, we become part of God’s mission to bring the world back under His control.

And this I believe gets to the heart of the matter of how we collectively as the Church bring glory to God.

As a historical movement, evangelicalism has been at the forefront of both spiritual revivals and combating injustice. But in the past century, we’ve become caught up in a debate about which is more important, evangelism or compassion, telling people about Jesus or loving them.

But if we properly understand the eternal purposes of God, I think the answer is easy. It’s not either-or; it’s both. God didn’t come here to just save us in the eternal realm and then leave us to exist in a broken world abounding with suffering and injustice. No, instead He created the Church to be filled with the overwhelming compassion of Christ to be at work in the earthly realm. To do what? To honor God by doing His will—to bring people back to God and to combat human suffering.

One year ago, I was at the Third Lausanne Congress in Cape Town, South Africa, and the Rev. John Piper offered this explanation of the full complexity of the Gospel with our simultaneous responsibilities to tell people about Jesus and love people like Jesus commands. He offered this statement, explaining how Christians respond when we have met Jesus and been filled with his love: “As Christians, we care about all human suffering; injustice and human suffering on earth and especially eternal suffering of people who never know God.”

In other words, when the Church does evangelism and at the same time works to end human suffering, we’re doing it for the same reason. We do it because we are filled with the person of Jesus and motivated by His love for others.

That love manifests itself through two simultaneous actions: telling people about Jesus and loving people as Jesus wants us to, recognizing that our ultimate problem with eternal consequences is our separation from God, to whom we can only be reconciled to through Jesus Christ.

This article originally appeared in the Minnesota Christian Examiner in December 2011, and is used here with permission.

Chaplain Winn welcomes religious leaders from Minnesota to Ft. McCoy

2,400 soldiers from Minnesota will deploy to Kuwait later this month, leaving behind their families and dependents for close to 1 year.

GMAE calls on churches to connect with staff liaisons at Family Assistance Centers in communities throughout the state to offer your help to military family members. (See below)

On July 6 Carl Nelson traveled with 7 other religious leaders from Minnesota to Fort McCoy aboard a Blackhawk helicoptor to visit MN National Guard soldiers from the  First Brigade Combat Team who is preparing to deploy to Kuwait within a few weeks.

Carl Nelson, representing GMAE, visiting soldiers at Ft. McCoy.

Chaplain (LTC) John Morris of the MN National Guard invited these leaders to visit the soldiers and learn about their mission with the goal of mobilizing local congregations to support military family members while their soldiers are deployed.

Of the 2,400 citizen soldiers being deployed from Minnesota, almost 40% of the soldiers are leaving family members at home. As the commanders briefed the delegation on their mission they asked them to mobilize their congregations to help take care of their families.

Religious delegation meeting with chaplains at Ft. McCoy.

GMAE has already been working to mobilize churches. In April we helped Bethel Seminary sponsor a training for pastors called Ministering to Military Families, with instructors from the MN National Guard to help church leaders learn practical ways to care for military families. This seminar will be repeated on October 13 at Wooddale Church in Eden Prairie.

Family Assistance Centers

One of the first steps that churches can take is to introduce yourself to the staff liaisons at the Family Assistance Center located near you. (See address and staff contacts here).

FACs are local resource centers for Servicemembers and military family members. The FAC staff provide information and referrals to local resources as well as state and federal military support programs. Centers are located in these cities throughout Minnesota:

Bemidji
Brooklyn Park
Camp Ripley
Detroit Lakes
Duluth
Mankato
Marshall
Rochester
Rosemount
Saint Cloud
Stillwater
St. Paul

.

In October 4,000 Christians from every country of the world met in Cape Town, South Africa to discuss evangelization in the 21st century and to identify key challenges facing churches today.

Carl Nelson, GMAE President, was one of 20 evangelical leaders from Minnesota invited to participate in the congress.

One of the repeated themes is that the 21st century will be a century of missions “by everyone to everywhere”. For American Christians this will mean learning to partner with sending churches from Nigeria, India, China, Brazil, Kenya and many other places where churches are thriving. It also means being ready to welcome and engage missionaries coming to the US.

One of the highlights of Cape Town 2010 was celebrating the explosive growth of the church in the “global south” of Latin America, Africa and Asia. Today 80% of all the world’s Christians live in these regions of the world. Reflecting that new reality, this congress was not dominated by American speakers  and issues, rather, many godly and gifted spiritual leaders from other regions of the world were involved in planning, leading and teaching at Cape Town 2010.

You can access resources and watch dozens of videos from the congress online at conversations.lausanne.org.

When some of us over-40 folks talk about “defending marriage” with statements like “kids need a mom and a dad” or “traditional marriages are healthier,” we are essentially using an ineffective message.

For the generation of under-30-year-olds, we have to go back further than that; we have to help the re-imagine marriage.

Carl Nelson, GMAE President, and his wife Kari

When we use statements like “kids need a mom and a dad” they reject that as untrue because their experience tells them otherwise. They might have wanted a mom and dad that stayed married, or wanted a mom and dad who didn’t fight with each other, but when they take stock of their life so far — if they have any degree of success and normalcy — they deduce that you really don’t need a mom and a dad to succeed in life. (Sure, it might be desirable, but its not an absolute.)

Even if millennials did grow up in a stable two-parent family they most certainly had extended family members and close friends who did not, and as they assess life through their friends’ experience they reach the same conclusion – kids don’t really need a mom and a dad.

So we have to help the next generation – mellennials particularly but also many gen-xers – to re-imagine marriage. The vision of a conflict-free family with both biological parents married to each other has to be re-introduced to most Americans, along with a compelling vision of its benefits, peace and pleasures.

So how do we do that? I’m open for suggestions.

And the harder the truth, the more generous and lavish the love must be.

Christians are the primary supporters of a constitutional amendment in Minnesota to define marriage as a union between one man and one woman. Many people do not understand this view that marriage is a special relationship created by God to allow for sexual intimacy, procreation and nurturing family systems. Instead they misinterpret attempts to strengthen the idea of marriage as being discriminatory or unjust and hateful.

We have a lot of work to do to communicate a vision of marriage as God describes it in the Bible, and at the same time demonstrate that we also love and care about people who have developed alternative ideas of marriage.

Even a few Christians no longer understand the original purpose and importance of marriage. In fact, Christian marriages have just as many difficulties as most other couples. But rather than abandon the benefits of marriage, we need to strengthen it, support it, and encourage it.

The primary beneficiaries of stable, loving marriage relationships are children. While other parental models can provide for children – and many single parents work extra hard and sacrifice so much to raise their children alone – we hold on to God’s promise that the best and most fulfilling way for children to grow up, is when they can be in a loving relationship with both their mom and dad, living in the same, nurturing household.

That is a very hard truth that right now is not understood by many people in Minnesota. The harder the truth, the more generous our love must be.

So I agree that amending Minnesota’s constitution may be the best way to strengthen society’s vision of marriage and promote the health and well-being of future generations. But as we move towards that, we have an enormous responsibility to be known first and foremost as people of love.

As Christians, one of our highest priorities is to attract people to Jesus. One of the strategies Jesus gave us to do that is to embody the love of the Kingdom of God.

We can learn from the model given us by Jesus. While Jesus came to earth to convince us of God’s love for us, he also spoke the truth. He challenged racial and cultural stereotypes. He confronted superficial religiosity. But he loved and served the vulnerable, the social outcast, the poor and the needy.

I see two important lessons from the life of Jesus that apply here. First, it was because of his compassionate love and generous service that Jesus’ words of truth were received by his audience. Second, some people never accepted Jesus’ words of truth, but his kindness towards them never changed.

Today it is easy to say “I love you.” But these words are empty unless they are accompanied by actions. As we try to share truth about a God-centered vision of marriage, we need to communicate that truth with a love that is proven through service.

I propose that Christians launch an unprecedented season of service – as has been seen in the recent response by churches in North Minneapolis following the devastating tornado last week – lavish enough to prove to anyone that we are people of love.

Let’s flood Minnesota with acts of charity. Let’s pour ourselves into the lives of vulnerable people, the oppressed and the poor. Let’s exhaust ourselves in love, to care for the homeless, to help single mothers, support teachers in our schools, and to create jobs for the unemployed. Let’s become known as a people who rescue people from sexual slavery, who work for reconciliation, who care for creation, who advocate for immigrants, and build strong communities.

And let’s do this because we are people of love who are transformed by Jesus.

This article was originally printed in the Minnesota Christian Examiner, June 2011.

We live in a society suffering from the consequences of misguided sexuality; broken relationships, bitter divorces, father-less children, unplanned pregnancies, sexual trafficking of women and children, and fragmenting family systems, to list just some of the suffering we experience.

Disordered sexuality is at the root of much of this relational conflict.

Article by Carl Nelson

Yet in Genesis we see that when God created us as male and female, and gave us the ability for sexual intimacy, God said is was “very good.” How is it that something God created for good has become the source of so much pain and conflict in our society?

How can Christians rediscover God’s design for the good gift of human sexuality and teach it to our children and share a better vision with society? Unfortunately, when evangelicals have tried to communicate our views about God’s design for human sexuality, our message has been perceived as judgmental and restrictive.

As Staton Jones, Provost of Wheaton College, said in a major address last year on “How to Teach Sex”, evangelicals fail to present human sexuality as a good gift from God because our messages about sex “too often are shame-oriented, ‘just-say-no’ litanies.”

Instead we need to explain that God’s design for human sexuality is “very good,” and by following his patterns we can experience wholeness and fulfillment. And we need to start by sharing this message within our own Christian family.

Regardless of how much society’s views and sexual practices have departed from God’s created design for us, I’m increasingly concerned that more and more Christians don’t understand human sexuality as a good gift from God to be enjoyed carefully according to God’s designs.

Statistics show that 42% of unmarried evangelical young adults (18-29) are in a sexual relationship. 30% of unmarried evangelical young adults have experienced a pregnancy, and 43% of women who have abortions self-identify as Protestant Christians*. The divorce rate among Christian couples is similar to that of the general population. Use of pornography by Christian men is very high. Homosexuality is increasingly viewed by younger Christians (including evangelicals) as a harmless lifestyle choice.

How do we teach the next generation that God’s design for human sexuality is good?

It begins by understanding that God created us as male or female, and while each of us are made in the image of God, neither male nor female alone fully reflect the image of God. Each needs the other. Even in monogamous human relationships, males and females are created to compliment each other.

Furthermore, God created us as sexual beings, and intended for the human race to multiply and expand on the basis of sexual intimacy, and for newly created life to flourish in the context of a loving relationship between a man and a woman.

Dennis Hollinger, President of Gordon Conwell University, does an excellent job explaining how loving, committed relationships and sexual intimacy are to go hand in hand, based on the creation account in Genesis. In his book “The Meaning of Sex” he writes that the four main purposes of sexual intimacy are the “consummation of marriage, procreation, love and pleasure.” He continues, “These are God’s designs for physical intimacy, and our Maker desires that they be held together as a unit.”

To get this right, it is important that we communicate a vision for sexual intimacy that preserves this deepest human connection for the safety of marriage, but also communicate that this intimacy is a way to express love, experience pleasure, and procreate new life.

Sexual intimacy may be the most powerful act in which a man and woman can engage because this one flesh union has the possibility to create another human life. The fact that God allows humans to join him in the process of creating new life – that will either live with God for eternity, or suffer in hell forever – is one of the reasons he provides such clear and necessary boundaries for human sexuality and family life.

It should come as no surprise to us that if God intended for human life to enter the world through the intimate, loving, life-long relationship of a husband and wife that a cascade of problems and consequences emerge when we don’t follow God’s good and perfect plan.

As Christians living in a society that sees sex merely a means for personal pleasure, we need to rediscover God’s created design for our sexuality, and communicate that it is a good gift given to us by God.

This article originally appeared in the Minnesota Christian Chronicle, April 2011.

For additional resources, see “A Theology of Sex: Honoring God’s good gift” printed by the National Association of Evangelicals as a guide for pastors and Christian leaders, at www.naegeneration.com/resources. Also listen to related messages by David Clark, Stanton Jones and Dennis Hollinger.

* Data from the National Campaign to Prevent Unplanned Pregnancies, 2009. Summary available at www.transformmn.org.

When the 112th US Congress meets this month the balance of political power will change significantly. What should be the legislative priorities of this new congress from an evangelical perspective? The answer to that question is not as predictable as some would think.

It is important to understand that American evangelicals are not a political monolith. While mainstream media may depict evangelical Christians as a singular voting bloc reflecting a right-wing conservative agenda, the facts on the ground are that evangelicals are politically diverse. The reason is that American evangelicalism is made up of a wide swath of Christians, held together by their religious beliefs rather than by their political identity.

Further, neither the political right, nor left, adequately reflect all of the policy and legislative priorities of a growing number of evangelical Christians.

Evangelicalism in America today includes a rapidly growing number of Hispanic Christians, many Historic African-American Christians (although most avoid the label of “evangelicalism” because of its misuse as a political label), as well white evangelicals. There are many common values within this diversity of evangelicalism, but not necessarily uniform political priorities or strategies.

The framework that I typically use to shape my ideas of an evangelical policy platform is the landmark document “For the Health of the Nation: An evangelical call to civic responsibility” adopted in 2004 by the National Association of Evangelicals, and used widely today by evangelical churches, denominations and para-church ministries.

For the Health of the Nation outlines seven political values that are consistent with biblical teaching and provides a framework for political engagement and represents the concerns held by a majority of American evangelicals, of any political leanings. They are:

1.    Protect religious freedom and liberty of conscience.
2.    Nurture family life and protect children.
3.    Protect the sanctity of human life and safeguard its nature.
4.    Seek justice and compassion for the poor and vulnerable.
5.    Protect human rights.
6.    Seek peace and work to restrain violence.
7.    Labor to protect God’s creation.

Where should they start?

As a starting point, evangelical Christians should demand that members of congress act with “civility and statesmanship”. As Galen Carey, NAE’s Director of Government Affairs noted, “a divided Congress will require the two parties to work together and find common ground;” they should “debate issues honestly, and not demagogue and demean those who disagree.”

As Christians, our identity in Jesus Christ must be primary and our political beliefs secondary. This means that as individual citizens, we too should hold ourselves to a higher standard of civility in the words we say and in the pundits we choose to listen to.

As the 112th Congress convenes, these are some of the contemporary issues that many evangelicals would encourage legislative action on:

Protect and strengthen marriage. Congress should eliminate various marriage penalties in current tax benefit codes in order to treat married couples equal to others. Congress should also keep the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) intact, keeping in place the beneficial and historic definition of marriage as the faithful union of one man and one woman.

Protect the sanctity of human life: While it doesn’t seem likely that there would be major legislation in this area, evangelicals have long insisted that there should be no taxpayer funding for abortion, and many have suggested that supporting programs like Minnesota’s Positive Alternatives Act are an effective way to help mothers carry unplanned pregnancies to term.

Comprehensive Immigration Reform is long overdue, and a broad coalition of evangelical networks have advocated for reform since before 2006, when it was last seriously considered during the Bush administration.

Last May a coalition including Liberty University, the Southern Baptist Ethics Commission, the National Association of Evangelicals and Hispanic NAE, issued a call for immigration reform that would, among other things, “respect the God-given dignity of every person, protect the unity of the immediate family, respect the rule of law, guarantee secure national borders, ensure fairness to taxpayers and establish a path toward legal status and/or citizenship for those who qualify and who wish to become permanent residents.”

However there is concern that the new leadership of the House Immigration Subcommittee and House Judiciary Committee will instead put forward legislation that that is contradictory to this call; proposals that break up family units, fail to resolve the lingering fate of undocumented workers or deal unsuccessfully with border security. As a result, effective and humane immigration reform may be difficult to advance in the upcoming session, but continues to be a leading concern for many evangelicals of both political leanings.

Our nation is facing a series of crises: morally, economically and defensively. As Christians we should pray for our President and congressional leaders, for the health of our nation, the wellbeing of our citizens and the capacity of our nation to extend justice and goodwill beyond our borders.

(This article originally appeared in the Minnesota Christian Chronicle, January 2011).