Martha Kearse knew the young men were out of their element as soon as she saw them milling in bewilderment at the grocery store’s vast array of options. Very tall, very thin and very confused, they stood out like flies in a glass of milk. Kearse suspected they were some of the Lost Boys of South Sudan that she’d seen featured on the TV news magazine 60 Minutes.
Photo Gallery: Lost Boys in photos
All photos taken in this photo gallery of the Lost Boys are by Norman Jameson. In this ‘Welcoming the Stranger’ series, we learn what happens when one church decides to live up to its covenant of “We will…
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Seeking Restoration
Congolese refugees and CBF field personnel build Beloved Community in Raleigh By Blake Tommey In 1994, the first time the Pew Research Center polled Americans about the effect of immigrants on the country, 63 percent agreed that immigrants are “a…
American pastor in Canada doesn’t miss culture wars, church growth pressures
When U.S. pastor Justin Joplin accepted a call to a Baptist church in Canada, he found a Baptist identity free from anxiety over a decline from majority cultural status. That is liberating, he says.
Latino churches adapting to declining Hispanic identity, pastor says
It would be understandable for pastors of Hispanic churches in the United States to worry about new data showing that Latino identity is fading across generations. Wouldn’t that ultimately portend membership declines for ethnic congregations as fewer and fewer self-identify…
Ready to ‘welcome the stranger,’ Baptist church invites Muslim spiritual leader to preach Advent service
Some folks may be stunned to learn that a Baptist church in Charlotte, N.C., has invited a Muslim to preach from its pulpit on the first Sunday in Advent. But the idea seemed a natural one for the congregation, given its 2017 preaching and formational theme titled “Awakening to Immigration.”
Bucking anti-refugee attitudes, small N.C. church opens ‘welcome house’
Refugees are increasingly unwelcome in many places around the world. But anti-refugee hostility wasn’t the challenge a North Carolina Baptist congregation faced in opening a refugee house on its Raleigh property this year.
‘Faith-inspired social justice’ is continued theme as Wild Goose festival expands geographically
The Wild Goose Festival held its first-ever regional event on Saturday — and not in one of the major urban centers its leaders originally envisioned. Cities like Atlanta, Chicago and Nashville were initially considered to host the one-day events. But a passionate…
Consciences: distressed and dissenting
In Dissent in American Religion, the great historian Edwin Scott Gaustad wrote, “Should a society actually succeed … in suffocating all contrary opinion, then its own vital juices no longer flow and the shadow of death begins to fall across…