Multi-instrumentalist Brackin Kirkland together with his lovely wife Lindsay and their seven children (six boys and one girl) are a homeschooling, musically gifted Christian family who live in North Carolina and have been vlogging on YouTube since 2015. On “Sounds Like Reign” they present music videos to go with their albums (ten so far), and on “Tiny Notes from Home” until recently they shared the life of their family and also interviewed other families.

Sounds Like Reign’s music can also be found on Facebook and Spotify. On their web page all albums can be downloaded for free.

Two years ago they released an album “King Jesus” and I thought this would make suitable listening to accompany the Feast of Christ the King which many liturgical churches celebrate on the last Sunday of the church year, i.e this upcoming Sunday, November 24, 2024.

Here are Links to their other album playlists on Youtube:

In my constant search for “clean” reading material to keep me from getting bored in my bedridden state at some point I came across the genre of “Amish romances”. They present life in an Amish community as an idyllic, God-fearing life with a quaint language (Pennsylvania Dutch), marred only by the occasional natural disaster, buggy accident, the quandary of who to court and get married to, and the occasional tension with the “Englische” (the surrounding non-Amish).

On the face of it, that certainly is attractive to me, an Evangelical Christian with some ties to the Anabaptist tradition and a fascination with language, but it very quickly struck me as “too good to be true”.

Not only does wider reading reveal that in many Amish communities and for many Amish people the focus is on tradition and strict conformity to the “Ordnung” (the community’s rule book) rather than on personal faith and discipleship, but of course the Amish, like everyone else, are all sinners, and all manner of sin exist in their communities including jealousy, adultery, failed marriages, dictatorial leadership, domestic abuse and violence, etc., which sometimes even make secular news headlines.

And, as a recent search for “Amish” in Amazon revealed, there is not just the genre of “Amish romances” but also a plethora of books with titles like “Hex and Spellwork: The Magical Practices of the Pennsylvania Dutch“, “Folk Religion of the Pennsylvania Dutch: Witchcraft, Faith Healing and Related Practices”, “Der Volksfreund: Hex Signs, Folktales, and Witchcraft of the Pennsylvania Dutch”, etc. — most by authors with clearly Amish names.

This brings home to me the fact that we should not idealize or idolize any group of humans, for “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.”

Likewise, we should not idealize any past era, because, again, people have always “sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.”

And everytime we put a man or woman, or a group of people, on a pedestal, they will sooner or later fall off that pedestal and fail to meet our expectations.

Nevertheless, I shall continue to enjoy them, as a welcome counterpoint to the real world with all of its conflicts, division, and violence.

Peter Wehner, senior fellow at the Trinity Forum and a former Republican speechwriter points out some inconvenient facts and asks disturbing questions, but I doubt somehow that this will sway many of Trump’s followers.

If I were an American I could not in good conscience vote for either Trump or Harris come November, and in the absence of a credible and viable third party candidate would simply not vote, but I don’t really have a problem with those who would vote for either one of the candidates as the lesser of two evils–that is a legitimate prudential judgement.

My issue is, rather, with those of my fellow evangelicals (and Christians of other traditions) who voted for Donald Trump in 2016 and/or 2020 because they consider abortion the most significant of all issues, and did so while holding their noses with respect to Trump’s character, and who now, in the wake of January 6 and when Trump has had the Pro Life plank removed from the GOP platform and repeatedly expressed his support for “reproductive rights” and greater abortion access are still Trump loyalists defending their champion and their support for him. Unfortunately this group includes many prominent evangelical leaders (such as Al Mohler, Franklin Graham, Tony Perkins, Robert Jeffress, Michael Brown, and many others) as well as most of my American evangelical friends.

Here are the two, in my opinion most important paragraphs from Wehner’s article:

Now ask yourself this: How could an evangelical who claims to be passionately pro-life vote for a presidential candidate who now promises that his administration will “be great for women and their reproductive rights”? Especially when that person has cheated on his wives and on his taxes, paid hush money to porn stars, and been found liable of sexual assault?

And how can those who profess to be followers of Jesus cast a ballot for this candidate, once the excuse of casting a pro-life vote is gone? For a convicted felon and a pathological liar, a man who has peddled racist conspiracy theories, cozied up to the world’s worst dictators, blackmailed an American ally, invited a hostile foreign power to interfere in American elections, defamed POWs and the war dead, mocked people with handicaps, and encouraged political violence? How can they continue to stand in solidarity with a person who has threatened prosecutors, judges, and the families of judges; who attempted to overthrow an election; who assembled a violent mob and directed it to march on the Capitol; and who encouraged the mob to hang his vice president?

I feel an immense sadness for this once great country which in many important areas increasingly looks like a third world nation and which out of a population of 335 million could not find two suitable candidates for the nation’s, if not the world’s, most important office. Unfortunately neither of the current candidates will make America great again.

And I feel an even greater sadness for that segment of the American church which seems to have lost its moral compass.

A number of years ago, at the height of the Roman Catholic clerical abuse scandal first in the US and then also in Europe (Ireland, Austria, etc) there was quite a bit of tut-tuting among some of us Evangelicals, combined with finger-pointing at the celibacy requirement for Catholic clergy.

In 2017 prominent Evangelical apologist Ravi Zacharias was shown to be a sexual abuser and in 2022 the clerical abuse and lack of safeguarding scandal errupted in the Southern Baptist Convention.

In the past couple of years “The Roys Report” has reported almost weekly about clerical abuse cases (both sexual and other) across the entire Evangelical spectrum in the US[1], from small country churches to megachurches, from charismatic to non-charismatic churches and ministries. Most of these, of course, involved married abusers.

And just like the Catholic leadership twenty years ago, many Evangelical leaders who were tasked with the oversight of these abusive pastors and youth ministers seemed more concerned with reputational and financial damage control than with justice for and pastoral care of the victims.

It’s time we stopped the finger pointing and started praying for a cleansing in the entire Body of Christ, of whatever tradition. Abuse victims don’t care in the slightest whether their abuser professes belief in the “Solas” or in transsubstantiation, or what he thinks of the pope, whether he speaks in tongues or not. The damage is the same, and in all these cases it is the name of Christ that’s being dragged through the mud.

(BTW I am not raising this under some illusion of my own sinlessness or holiness, but I confess that I am utterly unable to fathom how one could commit such acts and then stand up at the front of the church and preach the gospel or handle the communion elements.)

1. I believe that if we hear less of this in Europe the reasons are sociological rather than the greater holiness of European churches[↩]

1. This rash of abusive pastors should also give pause to those who blame the R.C. scandal on the celibacy requirement for Roman Catholic clergy — all these evangelical pastors are married.[↩]
2. The passage talks about giving offense to children, and the most recent case I was referring to is about child abuse, but I do not want to in any way imply that the abuse of adolescents or adults is any less abhorrent[↩]

In a recent prayer of lament over the state of the church and society posted on social media one aspect being lamented was “You do not go out with our armies”.

But where does the expectation come from that God SHOULD go out with our armies?

God went out with Israel’s armies of old because they are His people and they were fighting in direct obedience to His instructions and with His promise of victory.

Our armies, as a rule, have NO direct mandate from God, our wars are not commanded by Him, our nations are not His people the way Israel is, and our governments do not even acknowledge Him, so why should He go out with them?

Throughout church history whenever the church has invoked God on behalf of the nations’ military campaigns — frequently, in fact, both sides in a conflict invoked God’s help — the results were not to the glory of God.

A guest post by James Kushiner of Touchstone Magazine

“So shall my word be that goeth forth out of my mouth:
it shall not return unto me void, but it shall accomplish
that which I please, and it shall prosper
in the thing whereto I sent it.”

The future is the only thing in man’s field of vision that appears enticingly within his power to shape. So the present is dominated by plans for and promises about “the future.”

This is all grist for the rhetoric that will dominate media in another election year in the U.S. (where it officially began this past Monday) as well as in other countries. Candidates talk about what they will do in the future to change things for the better. The only problem is they can rarely deliver on their promises.

This does not stop the promises and predictions. Some of the predictions are also of what will happen if one’s political opponent is elected instead. Sometimes a candidate really believes he will be able to stop crime and lower taxes. At other times, a candidate will just say what he thinks he needs to say to get elected, and then, once in power, do what he wants, not keeping to his previous script.

In other words, “Put not your trust in princes, in the sons of men in whom there is no salvation.” Even the best, honest, and wisest candidate cannot control the future. And any president or prime minister may find himself (and his country) in circumstances not previously envisioned or prepared for (e.g., George W. Bush on 9/11 or Benjamin Netanyahu on Oct. 7). We cannot announce the future—unless we are a prophet.

Our grasp of the future is illusory, unless we base it on the Word of God. By that I mean recognizing not only that God alone has the final say, but that he has also shown himself to be clear about what will happen in the future, unlike the sons of men and unlike their adversary, the devil, who lies about the future to deceive us.

The adversary told Eve “you will surely not die” if the forbidden fruit was eaten, and “you will be like God, knowing good and evil.” A proposal was made with an assurance. Well, Man does, sort of, know good and evil in that he experiences them, but surely does not know what to make of evil or how to explain it to our satisfaction.

God, on the other hand, from Genesis on, clearly announced to man what he will do and what the consequences will be for man for the deeds man does. To Adam and Eve, he declared, “In the day the you eat of [the tree of knowledge] you shall surely die.”

Prior to the Fall, God needed to make no promise to mankind; only directives: “Be fruitful and multiply…I have given you every green plan for food.” It was all “very good.”

But after the disobedience, God began weaving a lifeline for man, who had severed himself from God like an astronaut drifting off into deep and deadly space. God began to speak of what he would do in the future; he made promises, in the form of covenants. “I will put enmity between you and the woman…her offspring…shall bruise your head.”

He made promises to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob; promised a scepter to Judah; promised deliverance from Egypt to Moses, and a ruler of the line of David to redeem and save us. In all cases, God is able to call the shot, make it happen, and retrieve mankind from the jaws of death.

We have a choice: to place full confidence in God or mammon; in the Lord or the rulers of the earth. God has announced that the end of men’s delusions will come and none of their schemes will abide, while the kingdom of this world will become the kingdom of Christ.

Modern man denigrates all this as “pie-in-the-sky” religion. Perhaps he has it backwards: politics is pie-in-the-sky optimism. God delivers. He has not hidden his purposes. He warned Israel that they would suffer in the Land if they did not keep the commandments. That they would be exiled. The Lord said not one stone of the Temple would remain on another and all would be swept away. He said, and we confess, that he will come again with glory to judge the living and the dead, that his kingdom shall have no end. That is our anchor.

Who are you going to believe? Trust? Jesus said he would build his church. He did that. It struggles when it is faithless and sins (as warned), and shines when faithful to the Word and commandments of God. No other ruler can claim such an influence on the world, and Christ is not done yet. He is coming to clean house and make a final end to the devil and his works.

That’s the only right side of history to be on.

James Kushiner is Director of Publications for Touchstone Magazine — A Journal of Mere Christianity.

This article was first published in First Things’ e-mail newsletter for subscribers, on Jan. 20, 2024.

Copyright C 2024 by James Kushiner and Fellowship of St. James. Used by permission.

In conversation with a friend who leads a Christian ministry, she said that the ministry has now “shrunk to health”: Several employees had moved to another, similar service, and she found clear words for those others who were just followers without actually pulling their weight, leading to a further exodus. Now she has a small team of people who are all pulling together.

In many ways, a church and a Christian ministry are very similar, not only because they both represent Christian values and pursue Christian goals: they are a group of Christians; now and then some migrate to the “competition”; people engage at different levels and some can actually be described as mere hangers-on.

However, it would be fatal to want to “shrink to health” a church:

A Christian ministry has, beyond the hopefully present sense of fellowship among the employees, a clearly defined task that needs to be fulfilled. For this, it is important that all employees actually pull their weight, and a “shrinking to health” can actually be healthy.

In contrast, a church is primarily a community, a family, the body of Christ: a place, a fellowship where Christ’s love is lived and thereby made visible. In every family or human body, there are naturally stronger and weaker members – people who contribute more or less diligently, with more or less skill, to the life of the community, and it is part of the calling of the stronger to bear the weaker.

A few days ago, a brother told me he had been kicked out of a church because he is ill. He didn’t give me any details of his illness, I don’t really know the church, and therefore can’t determine what actually happened; but this brother does not feel carried but abandoned in this situation, he has not experienced God’s love but indifference and a lack of compassion.

“Performance thinking” has its place in a business, a company; in a family, it is out of place.

“Bear one another’s burdens, and so fulfil the law of Christ” says the Apostle Paul, and he also says that we should not judge or despise the weaker members but honour them.

When Christ talks about tearing out a member which offends or tempts us He was talking about our human bodies, and most of the time we do not literally tear off an arm or pluck out an eye; but, very importantly, he was not talking about His body, encouraging us to purge offensive members — as it is His body, only He gets to do this. On the contrary, He warns us not to try to distinguish wheat from weeds, and tells us to leave the weeds alone: He doesn’t say so, but seriously, He who changed water into the best wine can certainly change weeds into finest wheat.

“See how they love each other!” — that is what people outside the church should say about us, not “See how efficient they are.”

Collect for Christmas Day:

Almighty God, you have given your only-begotten Son to take
our nature upon him, and to be born [this day] of a pure virgin:
Grant that we, who have been born again and made your children
by adoption and grace, may daily be renewed by your Holy Spirit;
through Jesus Christ our Lord, to whom with you and the same
Spirit be honor and glory, now and for ever. Amen.

From the Book of Common Prayer (2019) of the Anglican Church in North America

Collect for the Third Sunday of Advent:

Stir up your power, O Lord, and with great might come among
us; and as we are sorely hindered by our sins from running the
race that is set before us, let your bountiful grace and mercy
speedily help and deliver us; through Jesus Christ our Lord, to
whom, with you and the Holy Spirit, be honor and glory, now
and for ever. Amen.

From the Book of Common Prayer (2019) of the Anglican Church in North America