Page 2848 – Christianity Today (2024)

On first impression, The Visitor might appear to be just another “white guy gets rhythm, learns about a new culture” film. Certainly it fits this description, and has its clichés. But The Visitor—the second directorial effort by actor Tom McCarthy (The Station Agent was his first)—also turns out to be thoroughly, refreshingly unique, a film that weaves a tight, timely tale that is equal parts heart-warming and wrenching.

The Visitor centers upon Walter Vale (Richard Jenkins), a crotchety economics professor who masks his loneliness (he’s a widower) with a veneer of “cell phone in hand” self-importance. Appropriately for what is to come in the story, Walter is about as white as you can get. He lives in a pristine Connecticut house but also maintains a Manhattan apartment. He drives a Volvo, is never without a glass of fine wine (even at the breakfast table), and takes piano lessons from an old white lady named Barbara Watson. Wherever he goes, Walter seems surrounded by white walls and an antiseptic aura.

On a trip to New York for a conference where he reluctantly must present a paper, Walter’s boring, hyper-white life takes a decidedly colorful turn. Upon entering his Manhattan apartment, Walter discovers that two undocumented immigrants have made themselves at home. A predictably dicey confrontation ensues (but is quickly ameliorated) as the foreign intruders try to explain themselves to an understandably shocked Walter. Tarek (Haaz Sleiman) and Zainab (Danai Jekesai Gurira) are the pair in question—two “invisible” immigrants from, respectively, Syria and Senegal. What could have been a violent interaction turns out to be the unlikely first step toward a deep friendship—albeit a tentative step. The lonely Walter feels pity on the couple and—as they gather their belongings to quietly leave Walter’s apartment—he invites them to stay as long as they need to.

Soon the oddly paired trio becomes something of a family—especially Walter and Tarek. Tarek is a djembe drummer and makes a living playing gigs with jazz bands throughout New York City. For whatever reason, Tarek takes it upon himself to teach the rhythm-challenged Walter to play as well—a process that provides many of the film’s funniest moments (including some hilarious scenes of Walter in a suit, banging away in a Central Park drum circle). It also provides the means for some serious cross-cultural bonding, which is ultimately what The Visitor is all about.

Of course, just as things are working out so swimmingly for our ethnically-diverse threesome, the whole immigration issue comes barging in to spoil the multicultural party. Tarek is nabbed on a bogus charge and locked up in a mysterious Homeland Security holding facility in Queens. Since Zainab is also an illegal, she cannot visit Tarek in jail (as she would be apprehended as well). Thus it is up to Walter to be the liaison and lone advocate for Tarek as he tries to fight his way out of deportation. Walter hires an immigration lawyer on Tarek’s behalf and prepares to do everything in his power to get Tarek on the path to legal residency.

But just as The Visitor looks like its second half will be some sort of courtroom drama, it totally shifts and becomes an unexpectedly moving love story. After hearing about her son’s incarceration, Tarek’s mother, Moana (Hiam Abbass), arrives in NYC from Michigan. Conveniently, Moana is just about Walter’s age (and she is also a widow). Bound by their mutual passion to set Tarek free, Walter and Moana find themselves drawing closer and closer, picking up the cross-cultural connection where Walter and Tarek left off.

As the film goes on, the title—The Visitor—becomes ever more meaningful. Each of the four main characters is at some point in the film an “outsider”—stepping into a world that is not comfortable, and certainly not “home.” But in spite of the “fish out of water” motif, the film finds plenty of occasions for deeply felt connection, even if tainted by a pervasive sense of temporality (as the title implies). Ultimately the film is about impermanence, both in its beauty (sharing moments and memories, growing, changing) and ugliness (leaving things behind).

Far from a downer, though, The Visitor is a cheerful bit of comedy-drama with some great acting performances from its four leads. Jenkins is especially brilliant in his first starring role. He’s one of those “familiar face” supporting actors who makes an impact in almost every scene he’s in. And despite his stoic face and unremarkable countenance, Jenkins exudes more than enough charisma and “everyman” empathy to carry the film. The other actors are equally empathetic, imbuing their characters with emotional range and a complexity that eschews simplistic stereotypes.

Though The Visitor tackles a weighty issue and—ultimately—provides no easy answers, it is a thoroughly satisfying film. It oozes goodness and humanity and—especially in the “love story” portion—a classy reverence for dignity and trans-cultural decorum. The film reminded me of another NYC-based film that tackles a “big issue” with goodness and grace—Bella. Both of these films revel in the good of their characters, offering the audience a glimpse of the joy that comes when people truly care for one another and uphold the value and beauty of life.

During an election year in which immigration is sure to play a significant role, a film like The Visitor is utterly refreshing. Far from a heavy-handed, agit-prop polemic, this is a film that asks us simply to humanize the issue. In the sometimes-harsh post-9/11 climate (and the constant shots of a WTC-less Manhattan skyline remind us that this is what the film is about), humanity sometimes takes a beating by the various “isms” (nationalism, terrorism, patriotism) that swirl around the ashes of 9/11. Christians have long preached (but not always practiced) the importance of loving people, first and foremost—despite their race or culture or religion. The Visitor shows us just how lovely and healing this idea—in practice—can be.

Talk About It

Discussion starters

1. Who is to blame for what happens to Tarek at the end of the film?
2. Are you satisfied with the current immigration policies in the U.S.? How does this film change (if at all) the way you approach this issue?
3. Walter obviously learns quite a bit from his interactions with people of various cultures. But does anyone in the film learn anything from Walter?
4. Why do you think music is such a focal point in this film?

The Family Corner

For parents to consider

The Visitor is rated PG-13 for brief strong language—a few expletives during the film’s most intense scene of confrontation. Otherwise, it is a clean film that revels in the goodness and kind actions by all of its lead characters. It’s definitely a film that families (with older children) can enjoy together, and it provides a nice introduction to a complicated issue (immigration) that viewers will surely want to discuss.

Photos © Copyright Overture Films

Copyright © 2008 Christianity Today. Click for reprint information.

What other Christian critics are saying:

1. Plugged In
2. Crosswalk
3. Catholic News Service
4. Past the Popcorn

Forgetting Sarah Marshall, the latest project from the Judd Apatow factory, features the same unique blend of raunchy humor and genuine emotion that has characterized his other movies, but unlike The 40-Year-Old Virgin and Knocked Up, it lacks the moralizing and social commentary found in those other films.

Perhaps that’s because while Apatow wrote and directed both Virgin and Knocked Up, he was merely a producer—and thus far less hands-on—for Sarah Marshall.

Written by and starring Jason Segel, and directed by newcomer Nicholas Stoller, Sarah Marshall does attempt to make some kind of comment about the damage caused by infidelity. But none of the “infidelity” involves married couples; most of the sex in the film is extra-marital. And the movie even touches on the need to stand up for a loved one’s honor. Decent messages, yes, but subtly presented, and mostly buried beneath the crassness. While 40-Year-Old Virgin and Knocked Up were also quite bawdy, their underlying messages—the former celebrated the sanctity of marriage, the latter the sanctity of unborn life—were decidedly more redemptive.

Forgetting Sarah Marshall begins with the most unusual break-up scene in recent memory. Segel (co-star of TV’s How I Met Your Mother) plays Peter Bretter, a composer who has just come out of the shower when his girlfriend, a TV actress named Sarah Marshall (Kristen Bell, star of Veronica Mars), comes home and lets him know that she is breaking up with him. Peter, shocked, drops his towel—and then spends the rest of the scene completely and utterly naked, even as he pleads with the fully-clothed Sarah not to leave him, or to at least give him one last hug.

As it happens, the nudity is not simply there for comedic shock value. In a way, it ties into one of the film’s recurring themes, which is the reversal of gender roles and the feminization of men like Peter. Unlike most films of this sort, this one tends to avoid or obscure female nudity, which leaves Peter the only character who is ever fully exposed to the audience—and he turns out to be emotionally vulnerable, too, in a way that has typically been associated with the so-called weaker sex. The women in this film tend to be confident and sexually assertive, and a few of them are all too happy to pick Peter up on the rebound—but even after he sleeps with them, Peter cries and cries like a baby, still overwhelmed by the pain of being dumped.

Eventually, Peter decides that what he needs to do is to go far, far away and forget all about Sarah, and so he goes to Hawaii—where he promptly discovers that he is staying in the same hotel as Sarah and her new boyfriend, a casually narcissistic and sex-crazed British rock star named Aldous Snow (Russell Brand, who has a subtly hilarious way with his oddball dialogue). Oops. But fortunately for Peter, several of the hotel’s staffers take pity on him, not least the woman at the front desk, Rachel (Mila Kunis of That ’70s Show), who quickly becomes a potential love interest.

As ever, the film is buoyed by amusing turns from veterans of Apatow’s other movies. Bill Hader appears as Peter’s stepbrother, who is married and expecting a child and thus represents, in some sense, the “normal” life that Peter can only aspire to. Paul Rudd plays an upbeat but absent-minded surfing instructor. And Jonah Hill plays a waiter who develops an almost stalker-ish interest in Aldous Snow.

Other actors seem a little more typecast. Jack McBrayer, who plays the dweeby NBC page on TV’s 30 Rock, here appears as Darald, the male half of a newlywed couple spending its honeymoon in Hawaii but having some difficulty in the bedroom, largely because Darald feels inhibited by his religious beliefs. Ultimately, Darald discusses his problem with Aldous, of all people, and the rock star, for whom everything is ultimately sexual, gives Darald tips on sexual technique and tells him to say outrageous things to his bride like, “You’ve got Christ between your thighs.”

But the film’s real focus is on Peter, the two women in his life, and the man who has come between Peter and his ex-girlfriend. It is to the film’s credit that it gives each of these characters a chance to show some humanity, even when it would be all too easy to write them off as cartoonish or worse. Sarah, for example, may have broken Peter’s heart, and that might in some sense make her the villain, but the film still has some sympathy for her, especially where her fears about the state of her career are concerned. (In one scene, two guys rip apart a low-budget horror movie that she starred in, and while their nit-picking works as a funny, spot-on critique of the genre, Sarah’s irritation is genuine, and even justified.) And Aldous, for all his libidinal tendencies, takes no pleasure in sex when he can tell that he is being used—especially in a scene where Peter and Sarah go at it loudly, and competitively, with their respective partners on opposite sides of the same wall.

Compared to The 40-Year-Old Virgin and Knocked Up, this is a more lightweight sort of film, and the way its characters obsess over sex is less enlightening, for lack of a better word, than the exploration of sexual mores in those other films. This is especially true in the film’s final reel, where people hook up and break up in a somewhat hasty fashion, and where decisions are based more on how the body responds to sexual stimulation—or doesn’t, as the case may be—than on any conscious commitment to existing relationships.

Talk About It

Discussion starters

1. The film shows Peter sleeping with strangers in a futile effort to forget Sarah, and then, after he goes to Hawaii for a vacation lasting only a few days, he begins a relationship with Rachel, the girl at the front desk of his hotel. Is his relationship with Rachel different from his one-night stands? How or how not? What sort of advice would you give him? Do rebound relationships ever work out? Why or why not?
2. What sort of attitudes do the characters in this film have toward sex? Is it just a casual activity? Is it something deeper? What sorts of contradictory attitudes are reflected in the behavior of these characters?
3. How does the portrayal of the religious newlywed couple come across? Realistic or unrealistic? Sometimes couples who have made a point of abstaining from sex before marriage have difficulty with sex after marriage—how would you deal with that?
4. Aldous tells Darald that God has a place in the bedroom, which eventually leads to Darald telling his wife, “You’ve got Christ between your thighs.” Do you agree with Aldous? Disagree? Where and where not? What about Darald’s statement to his wife? What is the relationship between sexuality and spirituality?

The Family Corner

For parents to consider

Forgetting Sarah Marshall is rated R for sexual content (including several scenes of people in bed together), language (mostly four-letter words) and some graphic nudity (mostly shots of a naked man; plus a man goes to a public restroom that is decorated with photos of women flashing their breasts). One subplot involves a newlywed couple that has difficulty in the bedroom because of the husband’s religious hang-ups; the husband turns to a rock star for advice and eventually says things to his wife like, “You’ve got Christ between your thighs.”

Photos © Copyright Universal Studios

Copyright © 2008 Christianity Today. Click for reprint information.

What other Christian critics are saying:

• Plugged In
• Crosswalk
• Catholic News Service
• Past the Popcorn

Martial-arts fans have been waiting for years to see Jackie Chan and Jet Li co-star in the same movie, and when these two living legends finally meet for the first time in The Forbidden Kingom, you can sense that the filmmakers wanted to make the most of this historic moment.

Chan plays Lu Yan, a slightly comic figure who is always drinking wine and does a lot of his fighting “drunken” style, while Li plays a mysterious figure known only as the Silent Monk—and their first encounter, in an abandoned temple, leads to a seemingly non-stop series of kicks and blows, choreographed by The Matrix‘s Yuen Woo-ping, that looks incredible but eventually begins to seem a little long.

You know how musical numbers are sometimes called “showstoppers”? That’s pretty much what this fight scene does: it puts the story on pause, and as it goes on, you begin to realize that neither of these men is going to win the fight. Both of them have devoted fan bases, after all, and while both sets of fans will no doubt be thrilled to see their heroes in action, you can’t really let either group down by declaring, in effect, that one man is more powerful than the other. It’s like those old comic books where Superman engages The Flash in a foot race, and it ends in a tie.

Why are the two men fighting? Because the Silent Monk stole a magical staff from a friend of Lu Yan’s. And the fight comes to an end when this friend finally shows up and reclaims the staff. But here’s the part that martial-arts fans probably didn’t expect all those years: The friend in question is an American teenager, and the first film to co-star Jackie Chan and Jet Li casts them both as supporting characters in this teenager’s story. What’s more, the film, directed by former Disney animator Rob Minkoff (The Lion King, Stuart Little), almost feels like it was made for kids.

I say “almost” because it does feature enough violence and off-color bits to qualify for a PG-13 rating, beginning with a sequence set in the present-day U.S. in which the teen in question, Jason Tripitikas (Sky High‘s Michael Angarano), is accosted by bullies who use his friendship with a Chinese merchant to break into the merchant’s store, and then shoot the merchant when he tries to defend himself. Jason, holding on to a staff that he found in the merchant’s shop, tries to flee the bullies, but instead falls off the roof, after which … well, maybe he goes back in time, or maybe he sort of dreams it, Wizard of Oz style. Or, given the movie posters that adorn Jason’s bedroom wall, perhaps he is transported into a kung-fu movie itself.

At any rate, Jason finds himself in a corner of China that is currently being oppressed by the Jade Warlord (Collin Chou), a supernatural military figure who, many years before, tricked a godlike entity known as the Monkey King into setting aside his magical staff, and thus turned him to stone. It seems that the staff in Jason’s hands is the staff that once belonged to the Monkey King, and so it is up to Jason—along with his newfound friends, Lu Yan and the orphaned, revenge-seeking woman Golden Sparrow (Yifei Liu)—to liberate the Monkey King by bringing him the staff and setting him free so that he can fight the Jade Warlord one more time.

Along the way, Jason meets the Silent Monk, and once they realize that they all have the same basic goal—to get the staff back to its rightful owner—they decide to team up, with Lu Yan and the Monk taking turns training Jason for the fights to come. In addition to the usual physical challenges, this means dispensing the odd bit of wisdom, such as when Lu Yan tells Jason he must abandon his preconceptions if he is ever to truly learn: “How can you fill your cup when it is already full?”

The film touches on other noteworthy themes, albeit briefly, such as the dangers of hate, the nature of immortality, and whether a life without attachments—the Buddhist ideal—is worth living. As Lu Yan puts it, a person who eschews personal attachments will never suffer a broken heart, “but then, does he really live?”

All of this is packaged fairly entertainingly. There is humor throughout the film, from the mocking laughter of the Monkey King himself to Lu Yan’s occasional quips, and the action sequences are a marvel to behold, expertly combining physical stunts with computerized effects. The opening credits, which play over a series of images from old kung-fu posters, also feature a jazzy retro score by David Buckley that sets just the right tone for a film that has, in a sense, been years in the making.

The sad thing is, at some point you know that the traditional Chinese story in the traditional Chinese setting will have to fade away, so that the movie can get back to that grim back alley where Jason last saw the bullies, and where Jason will no doubt turn out to be far more empowered than he was when he left. (Think of how the kids dodge, and then fight, the bullies in C. S. Lewis’s The Silver Chair.) For a North American audience, this may bring the story back to familiar territory, but for fans of Chan and Li, the movie will already be over, even though the credits aren’t running yet.

Talk About It

Discussion starters

1. Lu Yan tells Jason, “How can you fill your cup when it is already full?” How have you needed to “empty your cup” in order to learn what someone—God, your pastor, a family member—was teaching you? How do you know when to “empty” the cup and when to leave it “full”?
2. Lu Yan asks whether a person with no personal attachments ever really lives. What is a Christian approach to personal attachments? How are we “attached” to each other by our faith, our common humanity, or our attachment to God? Is there ever a time when attachments are bad? If so, when?
3. Jason tells Lu Yan, “I’ll never forget you,” to which Lu Yan replies, “I guess that’s what being immortal truly means.” How is memory linked to immortality? (Think of how the thief asked Jesus to “remember” him in his Kingdom.) How is living on in the memories of others an inadequate form of immortality?
4. When one of the villains learns about Jason, she says, “Isn’t that like the Monkey King, sending a boy to do a man’s job?” What other examples can you think of, of proud people who were brought low by the humble or small in stature?

The Family Corner

For parents to consider

The Forbidden Kingdom is rated PG-13 for sequences of martial arts action and some violence, mostly of a bloodless sort. A few bad words are also spoken; an old man teases an adolescent kung-fu fan with a reference to masturbation (“crouching tiger, spanking monkey”) that may fly over the younger audience members’ heads; and in one scene a man urinates on another while he prays for rain. One of the heroes also drinks a lot of wine and does his fighting “drunken” style. Because the bulk of the film is set in Asia, it also assumes a sort of Buddhist religious worldview, though the religious bits are far less significant than the Chinese mythic elements

Photos © Copyright Lionsgate

Copyright © 2008 Christianity Today. Click for reprint information.

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• Past the Popcorn

We are counting down the Top 40 articles in Leadership Journal’s history, including this interactive one from 2008.

For some reason of late, I have become fascinated with the portions of the Bible we don't tend to read, passages like the story of Jephthah. Or how God was on the verge of killing Moses for not circumcising his son, and his wife stepped in, did what needed to be done, and tossed the foreskin at Moses' feet, and God let him alone.

I'm curious why one of my friends dismisses the Friday-evening-to-Saturday-evening Sabbath observance as "not for us today" but insists that capital punishment can't be dismissed because it's in the Old Testament.

I have become fascinated with what goes on in our heads and our minds and our traditions (and the latter is far more significant than many of us recognize) in making decisions like this.

What decisions? Which passages not to read as normative. The passages we tend not to read at all.

If we're all subject to selective perception, at least to some degree, it's important to recognize what we tend to miss or gloss over, especially if we're church leaders.

This quiz is designed to surface the decisions we make, perhaps without thinking about them, and about how we both read our Bible and don't read our Bible. Some will want to quibble with distinctions or agree with more than one answer. No test like this can reveal all the nuances needed, but broad answers are enough to raise the key issues. On a scale of 1-5, mark the answer that best fits your approach to reading the Bible. (If you fall between response 1 and response 3, give yourself a 2.) Your score will reveal where you land on our hermeneutical scale.

Take the Hermeneutics Quiz

Your score, our findings

I ran this test with about twenty pastors, professors, and former students. No one answered every question with "1" and no one answered every question with "5." I was surprised by the low score of an emergent friend and the high score of a professor at a very conservative Christian college. Some answer progressively on one controversial issue (say, women in ministry), while answering conservatively on others (hom*osexuality, for example).

The fodder for conversation is how we discern when to be a "1," when to be a "3," and when to be a "5." Broadly speaking, there are three groups here.

First, the conservative hermeneutic group scores 52 or lower. The strength of this view is its emphasis on the authority, ongoing and normative authority, of all of Scripture. It tends to operate with the line many of us learned in Sunday school: "If the Bible says it, that settles it." Such persons let the Bible challenge them with full force. Literal readings lead to rather literal applications. Most of the time.

The problem, of course, is that very few people are completely consistent here. At times one suspects something other than strict interpretation is going on when the conservative is willing to appeal to history to suspend the commandment to observe a Saturday Sabbath, but does not to appeal to history on other issues (e.g., capital punishment or hom*osexuality).

The moderate hermeneutic might be seen as the voice of reason and open-mindedness. Moderates generally score between 53 to 65. Many are conservative on some issues and progressive on others. It intrigues that conservatives tend to be progressive on the same issues, while progressives tend to be conservative on the same issues. Nonetheless, moderates have a flexible hermeneutic that gives them the freedom to pick and choose on which issues they will be progressive or conservative. For that reason, moderates are more open to the charge of inconsistency. What impresses me most about moderates are the struggles they endure to render judgments on hermeneutical issues.

The progressive is not always progressive. Those who score 66 or more can be seen as leaning toward the progressive side, but the difference between at 66 and 92 is dramatic. Still, the progressive tends to see the Bible as historically shaped and culturally conditioned, and yet most still consider it the Word of God for today. Following a progressive hermeneutic, for the Word to speak in our day, one must interpret what the Bible said in its day and discern its pattern for revelation in order to apply it to our world. The strength, as with the moderate but even more so, is the challenge to examine what the Bible said in its day, and this means the progressives tend to be historians. But the problems for the progressives are predictable: Will the Bible's so-called "plain meaning" be given its due and authoritative force to challenge our world? Or will the Bible be swallowed by a quest to find modern analogies that sometimes minimize what the text clearly says?

Wherever you land on this scale, it is my hope we all will engage the seriousness of how we read the Bible—and don't read the Bible.

Scot McKnight is professor of religious studies at North Park University in Chicago and the author of The Blue Parakeet: Rethinking How You Read the Bible (Zondervan, 2008).

Copyright © 2008 by the author or Christianity Today/Leadership Journal.Click here for reprint information on Leadership Journal.

“Teach us to number our days aright, that we may gain a heart of wisdom. May the favor of the Lord our God rest upon us; establish the work of our hands for us—yes, establish the work of our hands.”(Psalm 90:12, 17)

A popular worship song based on these verses asks God, “Teach us to count our days/ Teach us to make the days count … “

Making the days count—how do you do that?

If there is anyone who needs to “gain a heart of wisdom,” it is the children’s ministry leader. It’s not easy to lead kids these days, because it’s not easy to be a kid these days. Kids today face tremendous pressures. They see and experience violence everywhere, from the playground to the PlayStation. They’re hurried and busy, which sometimes makes them stressed. Many live in fractured families.

Last weekend at church, our pastor shared a sobering statistic. Even though we have an excellent, relevant, and thriving children’s ministry, and there are lots of kids in Promiseland (our children’s ministry) classrooms on any given week, it’s apparently not the same kids every week. The average child shows up for Promiseland 1.6 times a month. That’s less than half the time.

Young kids can’t drive themselves to church, so you have to assume when the kids are missing, their parents have chosen not to be in church. Although as spring soccer and baseball seasons gear up, it may be the child’s agenda that is driving the attendance pattern, as sports sometimes trump Sunday school.

So as a leader, you’ve got time with the children you’re ministering to only a few hours a month, maybe only one hour a month. How will you make those days, or rather, hours, count?

Let’s break it down a little more. In the work you are doing, your main tools are loving actions and words. You have a limited number of words that you will be able to share with the kids you lead.

Making the days count, according to Scripture, begins with prayer. The verses from the Psalms give us a model for prayer. “God, please establish the work of our hands for us.” God will establish, or give permanence to, our work, for us. It is not we ourselves who can mold a child. We work with God, and bring our gifts, and he establishes, or makes to last, the work we do. Knowing this, pray this prayer each week before you spend time with the children you lead. Establish this work, Lord. Make it last, give it permanence.

What words will last? What words should we say to these children? We should say the words that they most need to hear. “I believe in you,” for example, or “You can count on me,” or “I treasure you.”

These are just three of the phrases that Promiseland director David Staal says are Words Kids Need to Hear, the title of his newest book.

I started reading David’s book because I was looking for ways to strengthen and encourage my own children. And as a mom, I found this book both challenging and encouraging. But this is also an invaluable resource for anyone who relates to children—as a coach, teacher, even grandparent, aunt or uncle.

As a children’s ministry leader, you are in a unique position—you are a significant adult in the life of each child you lead. Children need love and encouragement from parents, but they also need it from other adults. We all have a tendency to think, at least occasionally, that perhaps our family loves us because they are stuck with us, because they sort of “have to.”

But a teacher, coach, or ministry leader doesn’t have to engage emotionally. They can, especially if the church is desperate enough for volunteers, just show up and make sure the kids don’t hurt themselves or anyone else. They can basically baby sit.

Or, they can choose to number their days aright, and attain a heart of wisdom. They can make the days count by saying words that will be established, permanently, in the hearts of the children they lead. They can choose to be intentional, and by so doing, not only help kids, but attain a heart of wisdom—that is, nurture their own spiritual life.

If that’s your heartfelt desire, to affirm and encourage the kids you lead, and grow in Christ yourself, pick up this book, which offers you seven phrases that kids need to hear. Through engaging stories about encounters with his own children, Dave offers wisdom of not just what to say (things like, “I’m sorry, please forgive me”) but also, how to say it.

Words Kids Need to Hear also includes a helpful appendix titled “When You’re Not the Parent” which ministry leaders will find very helpful.

These words will have a lasting impact on the kids who hear them. But just saying them will also shape you, as well. Especially if you are mindful that these are words that express how God feels about you. And he’s entrusted you to pass along these messages of affirmation to children who may not get these words elsewhere. Make the days, and your words, count!

Keri Wyatt Kent is the author of six books, and is a sought-after speaker and retreat leader (www.keriwyattkent.com).

Copyright © 2008 Promiseland.

For years I have worried weekly about how to effectively shape messages from God’s Word. You know how it goes: begin with an attention-arresting anecdote, follow with scholarly exegesis peppered with witty, well-timed illustrations, and close with a heart-wrenching final story to lead toward application and call for response.

But I’ve been gradually growing in my awareness that it’s a whole lot more effective, for everyone, when the Word shapes the messenger first.

My transformation in this area has been gradual, but the realization came suddenly. It happened over dinner with our middle child, a college sophom*ore.

I recalled the time a New Age guru glided into our church in Merlin’s best duds.

About a month into his fall semester, I drove to his college and took him to dinner at an Italian restaurant off campus. He explained that anything tastes better when it’s prepared somewhere other than the cafeteria. As we talked he told me that he’d been assigned to give a five-minute devotional thought at choir the next day.

“Got any ideas?” he asked.

I didn’t, but to stall for time, I replied, “What are you thinking about these days?”

He replied somewhat sheepishly, “Well, I don’t know if this is devotional worthy or not, but I’ve been reading quite a bit in the New Testament lately …” (Tell me if that’s not one of the most inspiring things a dad can hear) “… and I noticed—you’re going to think this is a little silly—”

“No, no. I promise.”

“Well, you know how you look ahead a few pages to see how far you have to go to finish the chapter?” (Yes, I do.)

“When I look ahead and see a bunch of red letters on the next couple of pages, my heart starts to beat a little faster.”

(I’m with you buddy. My heart’s beating faster right now!)

“So I guess what I’ve been thinking about is that there’s something pretty cool about reading the red letters. I mean, when I’m reading the red letters, I’m actually reading the actual words that God spoke. Isn’t that a trip?”

I don’t know if he noticed that it wasn’t the red pepper in my tortellini that had just caused my eyes to water. I nodded again.

He continued, “I guess I grew up hearing the Bible all the time from you and Mom so I didn’t think that much about it, but now that I’m reading it more—for myself—I’m starting to understand that it’s a pretty powerful thing to be able to read the actual words of Jesus. I mean, that’s God talking, man!”

Yes. That’s God talking.

And in a way, through my son, that was God talking to me. Over the years, as I had been trying to carefully craft messages, God had been trying to mold me.

My son added, “It seems like when you get the red letters up there in your brain where they can operate, they seem to just show up when you really need them.”

“Yeah, I know exactly what you mean,” I said.

We have a situation

My mind wandered a bit back to when my wife and I had sat across the table from a hard working, high tithing couple in our congregation who, with folded arms and wrinkled foreheads, made it clear that if we continued to let a certain young lady (you know, the sinful type) come to church, they would have to leave.

Some of the red letters moved from the back of my brain to the front, and I knew what my response had to be.

“I’m terribly sorry that this young lady has hurt your daughter,” I said. And I meant it. Truthfully, this young lady had seriously hurt several people in the church with her words and behavior, our own eldest daughter included.

“But,” I continued, “she has demonstrated remorse and repentance. I really believe that when Jesus taught about forgiving 70 times 7 times, he meant that we believers should forgive the sinner who asks, even if it’s not the first time they’ve repented.”

I shared this through a choked voice, silently praying for reconciliation. But the couple clenched their jaws and cemented their minds. They took their tithe and left. For good.

I wish I could say that we’ve since reconciled. We haven’t. I’ve bumped into them on three or four occasions, and they remain hardened to this day. The young lady who sinned against us, the one who experienced forgiveness from some grace-giving believers, is still walking with Jesus. She’s married now and doing well. God has confirmed, through his Word and through the results of its transforming power, that forgiveness is the right choice.

Those red-letter thoughts in the brain? That was God talking.

I also thought about the time a self-appointed New Age guru glided into our church wearing an outfit that rivaled Merlin the Magician’s best duds. It was 10:55 a.m. and I was changing for a baptism when a couple of deacons popped their heads in and said, “Pastor, I think we have a situation.”

After explaining who had just entered the sanctuary, they asked, “What do you want us to do?” Underneath their question was the subtext, “Do you want us to throw him out?”

Perfect love casts out fear. That was my first thought.

“Well,” I said while buttoning my robe, “we should demonstrate that we love him and that he’s welcome here.” The second thought that came to mind: For this reason I was born, and for this I came into the world, to testify to the truth. Everyone on the side of truth listens to me.

“Tell you what,” I said, grabbing a towel, “If he’s here seeking truth, let’s let him listen. God’s Word will be proclaimed and God’s truth will be revealed. If he’s here to make trouble, we’ll know it soon enough. If that’s the case, I’ll warn him once not to disrupt the service, and I’ll politely ask him to stay afterward so we can get to know him better. If he persists in making trouble, then we’ll follow through on our promise to politely remove him. And if that happens, one of you should call the police—just in case.”

The moment I stepped into the baptistery, I looked out and saw that man and began a silent prayer for him to know that he was loved. God’s perfect love was casting out fear—in the messenger.

I found out after the service that one of our elderly members, a gentle fellow named Elmer, had seen the Merlin look-alike walking in and had whispered to his wife, “Oh, good! It looks like we’re going to have a skit today.” He and all the others in the church had smiled graciously and warmly welcomed our guest, Merlin costume and all.

That morning our congregation loved that uniquely clad man. He stayed. He listened. He didn’t cause trouble. He heard the gospel. And he even stayed after to discuss the gospel with several of us for nearly an hour.

Those thoughts that rushed into the brain back in the changing room? That was God talking.

Killing the messenger

I also recalled the time our church council had sat uncomfortably after one council member complained because our church didn’t have a program that would attract college-age single adults like her daughter. I was tired, frustrated, and (I’m ashamed to say) in that moment, carnal. I retorted in a tone that was far from gentle, “If you can provide some handy volunteers ready to lead the program, we’ll start one.”

Like a knife thrown hard, the words stabbed in my mind: Therefore, as God’s chosen people, holy and dearly loved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience. Ugh! We had just covered that passage in Bible study. (God’s Word has an uncanny habit of being timely.)

More words followed into the conscious part of my feeble brain: Be completely humble and gentle; be patient, bearing with one another in love. Ouch. When God’s Word pierces, it pierces deep. Surgically deep.

After about five agonizing seconds of cheek-reddening silence, I said, “I’m so sorry. The Holy Spirit has just convicted the fire out of me. That was uncalled for. Please forgive me.”

That frustrated council member has remained one of our faithful friends for years. Those thoughts that pierced so quickly? That was God talking.

His message has continued to shape the messenger far more than the messenger has been able to shape the message. I’m not suggesting that being shaped by the Word is an excuse for poor message preparation. Not at all. In fact God has far more effectively accomplished his transformation in others’ lives when I’ve been well prepared to deliver his Word.

But I’ve also noticed that the times when the messenger exemplifies the message, outside the pulpit as well as in, it has been because the Word has been shaping the work-in-progress heart of an often inadequate messenger.

So to my son the college student, I said, “Sounds like you’ve got your devotional. You just tell the choir what you just told me. Trust me on this one. It will be well received.”

And then I added, “And son?”

“Yeah?”

“I’m really glad your heart beats faster when you read the red letters. Really glad.”

Clark Cothern is pastor of Living Water Community Church in Ypsilanti, Michigan.

Copyright © 2008 by the author or Christianity Today/Leadership Journal.Click here for reprint information on Leadership Journal.

Last summer, I received an essay from a friend—a leading Evangelical intellectual—who said that the label Protestant should fade out in favor of the label Evangelical because, in part, Protestant was “negative.”

In many people’s minds, it certainly is. It sounds like it is about dissent and disagreement. It evokes images of picketers carrying poorly made signs back and forth in front of a factory. Indeed, it sounds disagreeable.

More recently, another friend published an engaging account of his exploration of Catholicism. The book is Jon Sweeney’s Almost Catholic, and you can read an excellent review of it on my wife LaVonne’s blog.

The book is a good read, but its argument rests in part on his contrast between the “universal” character of Catholic faith and the negative Protestant alternative:

To be Protestant is to define yourself as protesting against certain forms of religion. … there is little need for Protestants anymore. What are we still protesting? The Reformation of the sixteenth century was a European event.

So many seem to think that the essence of being Protestant is to conscientiously object to what is or was Roman Catholic. A little history and a little linguistic research shows Protestant to be a much more positive word, referring to what the original Protestants stood for rather than what they stood against.

Sweeney rightly ties Protestant to the Second Diet of Speyer (1529), and the response of the German evangelical princes to its decision to restrict their freedom. But he misleadingly labels Protestant “a political moniker,” when the cultural context thoroughly mixed religion and politics. The word religion certainly existed, but it remained for the Enlightenment to create it as a distinct category of thought and experience. Sixteenth-century people were more likely to think in concrete terms of the overlapping authorities of king and pope, bishop and prince, priest and magistrate. Neither religion nor politics was an abstract category for them.

What do the major historians of Protestantism say? Like almost all their colleagues, John Dillenberger and Claude Welch link the origin of the word Protestant to the ‘Protestation’ of the German evangelical estates in the second Diet of Speyer. But they see in that term “the duality of protest and affirmative witness.” That protest, they write, was

from the standpoint of affirmed faith. Few churches ever adopted the name “Protestant.” The most commonly adopted designations were rather “evangelical” and “reformed.” … [W]hen the word Protestant came into currency in England (in Elizabethan times), its accepted significance was not “objection” but “avowal” or “witness” or “confession” (as the Latin protestari meant also “to profess”).

That meaning lasted for another century, say Dillenberger and Welch, and it referred to the Church of England’s

making its profession of the faith in the Thirty-nine Articles and the Book of Common Prayer. Only later did the word “protest” come to have a primarily negative significance, and the term “Protestant” come to refer to non-Roman churches in general.

Writing about the second Diet of Speyer, the esteemed Luther biographer Roland Bainton called the word Protestant

unfortunate as a name because it implies that Protestantism was mainly an objection. The dissenters in their own statement affirmed that “they must protest and testify publicly before God that they could do nothing contrary to His word.” The emphasis was less on protest than on witness.

Diarmaid MacCulloch, professor of the history of the church at Oxford University, traces the history of the term. From 1529 until 1547, Protestant was limited to the sphere of German politico-religious life, identifying those princes who followed Luther or Zwingli and who in 1529 “issued a protestatio, affirming the reforming beliefs that they shared.” The term entered English in 1547, when the officials who were organizing the coronation of Edward VI listed “in order the procession of dignitaries through [London].” There, in that list, was a place for “‘the Protestants,’ by whom they meant the diplomatic representatives of [the] reforming Germans.”

When Edward VI was crowned, the word still had a positive connotation. On the CultureVulture blog for the Guardian, Sean Clarke notes that it was 60 years from the introduction of Protestant in English until its first use in the extended sense of “object, dissent, or disapprove.” That (according to the Collins Etymological Dictionary) was first recorded in English in 1608. The Online Etymological Dictionary places the first use of protest to mean “statement of disapproval” in the year 1751—another century and a half. Through much of that history and well after, protest continued to mean “avow,” “affirm,” “witness,” or “solemnly proclaim.”

Poor, misunderstood protest has had a history something like that of another word—apology. That word has gone from its positive, head-held-high sense of “a formal justification or defense” (as in “the essay was an apology for capitalism”) to something tinged with shame and remorse (“a statement of regret or request for pardon”).

We need to recover the positive sense of protestant. It denotes things that we stand for: the authority of Scripture, salvation by grace through faith in Christ alone. It’s a matter of principle. And because it is about standing for truth, Catholics can be protestants too.

Works cited:

Roland H. Bainton, The Reformation of the Sixteenth Century (Enlarged Edition, Beacon, 1985)John Dillenberger and Claude Welch, Protestant Christianity Interpreted Through Its Development (Scribner’s, 1954)Diarmaid MacCulloch, The Reformation: A History (Viking, 2003).

Originally posted on the Ancient Evangelical Future blogsite.

Copyright © 2008 Christian History & Biography, or the author. Click for reprint information.

News reports of the recent tragic plane crash in Goma, Democratic Republic of Congo, are just beginning to trickle out. One story getting much attention is focused on the heroic action of 14-year-old April Mosier.

In this Mosier family photo, April Mosier is on the far left.

Adventist Review news editor, Mark A. Kellner, reports:

The young woman, was traveling with her mother, father, and 3-year-old brother from Goma to Kisangani, Congo, where her older brother Keith, 24, has begun a mission project. The Mosiers are all serving with Outpost Centers International, a lay ministry that supports the Seventh-day Adventist Church. The flight did not clear the runway ? media reports indicate a tire may have blown out ? and the plane crashed into a nearby open-air market. At least 40 people were reported killed; more than 100 survived, reports indicate. April “probably was one of the first ones to get to the opening,” Barry Mosier, her father, said in a telephone interview from Goma two days after the crash. “She was right there, knowing what to do; none of the exit doors were open. She told a man, in Swahili, that ?We’ve got to get out of there or we’ll die,'” he added. Young April pushed at a panel until a passage large enough for her to get through was found; she then made a run for it. Her father said that April had feared her family had died in the crash; they were later reunited at a local hospital.

Click here for the CNN version.

The Mosier family, originally from Minnesota, has been focused on missions work in southwestern Tanzania. For the full story from Adventist news, click here.

Click here to view the slideshow.

This month, Rwandans by the tens of thousands in hundreds of churches around the East African nation are taking part in Forty Days of Purpose, a campaign Saddleback Church’s Rick Warren kicked off with 19,000 people in Kigali on Sunday, March 30.

Forty Days of Purpose, a discipleship and evangelism program, has been featured in thousands of North American churches. It’s tied to Warren’s global best-seller, The Purpose Driven Life. There have been city-wide campaigns before, but this is the first time a nation, including its president and other top leaders, has taken part in the program.

In 2005 Warren announced his global PEACE plan, which in its current formulation stands for: Promoting reconciliation, Equipping servant leaders, Assisting the poor, Caring for the sick, and Educating the next generation. The Forty Days of Purpose program is to correspond with church-based PEACE-plan projects in Rwanda.

On Sunday, traditional Rwandan music, dance, and bunting colored the event in Kigali’s Amahoro Stadium. Rwanda’s President Paul Kagame and Anglican Archbishop Emmanuel Kolini were among the prominent people taking part. Kagame said, “The PEACE plan combines the talent and energy from three sectors of society — public, private, and faith.”

President Kagame affirmed Saddleback Church’s Western Rwanda HIV/AIDS Healthcare Initiative. This program uses church facilities as local medical clinics. “This model can be replicated in other parts of our country,” Kagame said. “More importantly, more Rwandans of faith need to adopt this mindset.”

During his remarks, Warren touched on the key concepts in his book. Two Scriptures that he chose to support his message were “Faith without works is dead” (James 2:20) and “Overcome evil with good” (Rom. 12:21). Close to half the stadium stood up when he concluded by asking if they were ready to live for Christ and begin a life of new purpose.

The service also recognized nearly 200 pastors, each wearing a cap and gown. The pastors had completed two years of training in the principles of the Purpose Driven program.

Fifty volunteers from Saddleback also attended the event. Since 2005, nearly 1,000 volunteers from the church have been involved orphan care, law enforcement, and other social services in Rwanda.

In Kigali the next day, Warren met with Kagame, health experts, and officials from the White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives to discuss the HIV epidemic.

“Never sacrifice sustainability for speed,” Warren said to U.S. business, government, and development agency representatives. “This conference is about partnership, not paternalism. The number one problem in international development is not lack of money, but lack of trust in local leaders to know what to do.”

Forty Days of Purpose will overlap with Rwanda’s annual observance of the 100 days of genocide that began on April 6, 1994.

Click here to view the slideshow.

Alex Garcia, a newspaper photojournalist from the Midwest, traveled with the Saddleback team to Rwanda as a ministry volunteer. He is a former member of Saddleback Church in Southern California.

Copyright © 2008 Christianity Today. Click for reprint information.

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Our articles on Rick Warren’s ministry in Rwanda are in our full-coverage section.

What We Do with our children—and what we do to them—is a worryingly accurate indication of what we think about the world, God, and ourselves. To many adults, children are just a nuisance. But the point is that they’re a nuisance (if they are) because they matter. They disturb our organized adult world because they are real people.N. T. Wright, Matthew for Everyone: Part Two

BLESSED are those who number babies and animals among their friends; in their embodied innocence, such small creatures keep us simple.Margaret Guenther, Holy Listening: The Art of Spiritual Direction

[T]HE ONLY OBSERVATIONS worth making are those that sink in upon you in childhood. We don’t know we’re observing, but we see everything. Our minds are relatively blank, our memories are not crammed full of all sorts of names, so that the impressions we gather in the first twelve years are enormous and vivid and meaningful—they come laden with meaning, in a way that experience does not later on.John Updike, interview with Philip Yancey in Image journal

IT SHOULD BE NOTED that children at play are not playing about; their games should be seen as their most serious-minded activity.Michel de Montaigne, Essays

ALL MEMBERS of the congregation share in the responsibility of educating and nurturing children. … Christian education of children depends upon adults who actively and intentionally mentor children in practices of faith, and upon the ability of children to have access to and participate in the community’s practices.Joyce Ann Mercer, Welcoming Children

“CHILDREN aren’t coloring books. You don’t get to fill them with your favorite colors.”Khaled Hosseini, The Kite Runner

WE GAZE at the future through the window of our children; how we shape them shapes the future. And they will be shaped, by the world if not by us. Each small face harbors the same question, unanswered by self-help books and talk shows. … Who am I and why am I here?Sallie Tisdale, “Grace,” in God Is Love: Essays from Portland Magazine

WHEN WE HAVE CHILDREN, we know they will need us, and maybe love us, but we don’t have a clue how hard it is going to be. We also can’t understand when we’re pregnant, or when our relatives are expecting, how profound and dicey it is to have a shared history with a child, shared blood, shared genes, even humor. It means we were actually here, on earth, for a time, like the Egyptians with their pyramids, but with kids, it’s an experiment: you wait and see what will come of it, and with people, that almost always means a mess.Anne Lamott, Grace (Eventually): Thoughts on Faith

BIRD LEAVES the nest, child leaves the home / It’s so hard, this letting go.Lori Lieberman, “Letting Go”

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