Carolyn Custis James

Saturday evening at Synergy2011, we are breaking with tradition. If you have read Sheryl WuDunn’s book, Half the Sky, you will understand why.

Half the Sky describes a crisis that is destroying the lives of millions of women and girls and labels what is happening as “the paramount moral challenge” of the twenty-first century. In response, the Synergy video shown at Lausanne made this bold assertion:

Last weekend, the Super Bowl brought a disturbing reminder that sex trafficking is a local problem—rampant in our own cities and at heightened levels during major sporting events. According to statistics, thousands of foreign women and girls are trafficked into the U.S. every year. That doesn’t account for thousands of young American girls who are lured into the clutches of pimps and a life of forced prostitution.

Here’s a fact: while Synergy2011 is happening—on the streets of Orlando just blocks away from us—women and girls will be trafficked.

How can we keep Sheryl’s message to ourselves?! We have an opportunity to sound the alarm and to raise awareness in the local community. So on Saturday night, we are flinging open the doors and inviting in the community. The DeMoss Group, a public relations firm, is graciously promoting this important event.

Of course we hope people will want to come for the full conference. But please join us in praying that many will come to hear Sheryl’s message and that God’s people in Orlando will mobilize. Please invite anyone you know in the Central Florida region to come.

For details, go to www.synergytoday.org/wudunn.html

Amazon is selling Sheryl WuDunn & Nicholas Kristof’s book, Half the Sky, and Half the Church together!  Every Christian should read Half the Sky! Those who do will not be able to escape connecting what these authors are saying with the impassioned cries of Old Testament prophets.

“Learn to do good. Seek justice. Help the oppressed. Defend the orphan. Fight for the rights of widows”                                                 —Isaiah 1:16-17

In Half the Church, I take the discussion of the Bible’s message for women into the devastating world described so powerfully in Half the Sky. Our quest to know God’s heart for his daughters and our understanding of God’s call on our lives is incomplete if we leave any woman or girl out of this discussion. 

“If the questions we ask and the answers we embrace do not give them the same hope and kingdom purpose we seek for ourselves, then our conclusions cannot be trusted.”                                                 —Half the Church

Sheryl WuDunn writes:

“Carolyn Custis James has written an unusual and compelling book, mixing her personal story with the dramatic changes in today’s world and her thoughtful interpretations of the scriptures and how women can respond with greater fervor to the Bible’s call for change and betterment of the world.”

I hope you’ll order and read both books!    amazon.com

Photo by Horia Varlan

People say it when they they meet someone new and discover they have mutual friends. They sing it at Disney World and experience it on FaceBook and Twitter. Factor in globalization, the speed of travel, and the wonders of technology and it seems more true today than ever.

“It’s a small world!”

But there’s another kind of small world that Synergy is working to change, not merely for ourselves, but for our daughters and other women we know. It’s the small world women inhabit when we embrace a small vision of ourselves and of God’s purposes for us in this world. It leads inevitably to small living that is antithetical to our calling as God’s image bearers.

In her provocative post on Her.meneutics, Caryn Rivadeneira is emphatic:

“… if only men are oriented to transform this world, women are in trouble, because a woman who is being “good” and eating healthy, hoping that the world changes for the better as it twirls around her, isn’t living the gospel.”

Two of this year’s Synergy2011 plenary speaker—Andy Crouch and Nikki Toyama-Szeto—are going to blow out the walls on small world thinking and open our eyes to a much, much(!) bigger world and to a bigger gospel!

I won’t be forgetting the first time I heard Andy Crouch speak at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary last year. Author of Culture Making: Recovering Our Creative Calling, Andy is unleashing a stirring manifesto, calling Christians to bring all of ourselves and all of our gifts to the enterprise of culture making. Once you hear him, you won’t think of yourself (or others) in the same way. And the possibilities for kingdom living will truly explode!

Former Synergy speaker, Lauren Winner calls Andy’s message “bracing” and “super-smart”, adding:  “I am hard-pressed to think of something that twenty-first-century American Christians need to hear more.”

If you’ve been to InterVarsity’s Urbana Conference, you will need no introduction to Nikki Toyama-Szeto, Urbana Program Director and co-editor of More Than Serving Tea. Nor will you need anyone to explain why hearing her is hugely important.

I met Nikki last year in Dallas at the gathering of U.S. Delegates to Lausanne. She completely blew me away with her powerful presentations designed to expand our vision of the rest of the world and how our lives and ministries will be enriched if we avail ourselves (and impoverished if we don’t) of the resources, wisdom, and insights that are flourishing beyond our borders.

Having long been painfully aware of the disadvantage to American Christians when we isolate ourselves, our study of God’s word, and our thinking from the rest of the world, for me Nikki’s presentations broke open a whole new vista of ideas. I knew Synergy needed to hear her message!

I for one can’t wait to hear from them!

The thought that both of them are speaking at the same conference—individually and then together—ought to send everyone racing to secure a place at Synergy2011.  

Our world is bigger than we imagine. And our gospel is richer and more powerful than we’ve yet seen.  So don’t miss out!  Join us in Orlando for this mind-boggling experience and let’s catch a bigger vision together!

Register here!

If you missed Midday Connection on Tuesday, February 1, 2011, with Anita Lustrea and my first interview on Half the Church you can listen here. 

Anita is a master interviewer, and I love working with her. FYI: she will be at Synergy2011. It’s a great chance to meet her!

The biggest losers at this year’s Super Bowl will be neither the Pittsburgh Steelers or the Green Bay Packers. The biggest losers will be girls . . . and us if we remain silent.

The downside of the Super Bowl for everyone is the increase in sex trafficking that clusters around this event.

We can get upset and talk about how awful this is. Or we can act. Everyone can do something to combat what is happening. This will get you started:

• Watch the video below.
• Read Katelyn Beaty’s article: Christians Launch Anti-Slavery Efforts for Super Bowl XLV
• Visit this website and find out how you can do something: http://www.itsnotmyfault.org/

If you live in the Dallas area, there are specific ways you can help. The rest of us need to spread the word and donate.

It’s supposed to snow again tomorrow, but I’m hoping that won’t stop me from making it to New York City. If you happen to be in the neighborhood, I hope you’ll drop by.  I’m speaking:

Oscar buzz surrounds Jeff Bridges’ portrayal of U.S. Marshal Reuben J. “Rooster” Cogburn, a crusty character with a reputation for true grit. The marshal lives up to that description. Grit is written all over the scene where an outnumbered Cogburn charges fearlessly on horseback into a hail of outlaw bullets with the reins gripped in his teeth and both hands firing pistols.

But true grit is also written all over 14-year-old Mattie Ross (played by Hailee Steinfeld) who is determined to avenge her father’s murder and will stop at nothing to right the wrong against her family. She hires Cogburn, stubbornly insists on accompanying him on this mission, then matches his grit with plenty of her own. It’s a great ezer story! And anyone watching the movie will be cheering her on.

True grit is one thing in a movie, and we like what we see of it in Mattie. But is grit a quality we want to see in ourselves? I’ve never heard grit mentioned in any list of suitable attributes we’d encourage Christian girls to cultivate. And grit is almost certainly missing from eHarmony’s search criteria for eligible single women.

Surprisingly, in the past couple of weeks, women with grit have commanded the news. Their stories support the notion that true grit could well be one of the most important virtues an ezer can acquire—doubly important for us given what God is asking his daughters to do.  

Right now, the nation is watching and praying that Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords has enough true grit to fight her way back from the bullet wound to her head she suffered on January 8. Our spirits lift every time someone—her husband, the doctors, a friend—says of her, “Gabrielle is a fighter.” We all hope that’s true because she’s fighting this battle for all of us.

Christina Taylor Green, who died tragically during the shooting, is being lauded for showing remarkable grit in her brief nine years. Embracing her family’s baseball legacy, she earned a spot on the Pirates Little League baseball team where she was the only girl and a solid contributor. She recently won a spot on her school’s student council. Aware of inequalities in the world, she already aspired to serve some day in government leadership. With grit like that, who knows what she might have accomplished or how many people she might have helped.

When there are battles to fight, when suffering, violence, and injustice are rampant, when opportunities present to do more for others, when Jesus’ rescue efforts is underway and he summons us to help . . . nothing less than grit will do.  

At Synergy2011, we’re going to take an honest look at the twenty-first century landscape for women—a globalized landscape that contains unprecedented opportunities, powerful technological resources, and unspeakable suffering. We will be viewing that landscape through image bearer eyes—as those God has called us to be his eyes and ears, his hands and feet in this world. We are his preferred method of taking care of things in his world, light bearers and grace-bringers on a darkened planet, and there is work to be done for his kingdom.  A job like this—no matter where we tackle it—will take a lot of grit from all of us.

So come to Synergy2011 if you dare, and be prepared for a major outbreak of true grit!

It wasn’t love at first sight. Not by a mile. In fact, even after finding himself somewhat cornered and agreeing to marry her, Martin Luther said of Katharina von Bora,“I feel neither passionate love nor burning for her.” 

Not exactly what you’d call an eHarmony success story . . . at least not at first.

Happily, the story doesn’t end there. Marriage to the strong renegade nun turned Protestant would bring about a second reformation in the infamous reformer’s stony heart, not to mention some significant changes in his hard-held views of women. It’s one of my favorite stories of the Reformation and the saga of a remarkable Blessed Alliance that was unlikely from the start.

To hear the whole story of Martin and Katie Luther, told my my favorite Reformation Historian, come hear Dr. Frank A. James on The Reformation of Marriage, Christ Church of Hamilton and Wenham, Sunday, January 23, at 10:15am

Missing this year’s Synergy conference is like watching a cliff-hanger movie and walking out before you learn how things turn out. Instead of seeing how things come together into a completed story, you’re left with pieces of a puzzle.

For the past three years, we’ve been asking deep questions about our place in God’s Story for the world and collecting pieces of the puzzle.

Together, we’ve learned that:

• all of God’s daughters have leading roles as ezers in his Story
• when God’s male and female image bearers unite as allies for God’s purposes, kingdom power is unleashed in the world 
• God reverses the destructive effects of conflict in our stories to shape us into kingdom leaders and ready us for the challenges ahead.

Synergy2011 will connect these pieces—ezers, Blessed Alliance, and conflict—into a jaw-dropping global vision that will ignite our hearts and mobilize us to engage our mission as God’s image bearers and followers of Jesus in every arena of life.

GUEST SPEAKER! This year, we have the rare opportunity to hear Pulitzer-Prize winning journalist and bestselling author, Sheryl WuDunn.  Sheryl is a leading expert on the global crisis impacting millions of women and girls today. Half the Sky describes this crisis as “the paramount moral challenge” of the twenty-first century. Sex trafficking, female genocide, poverty, child marriages, honor killings are some of the topics she has researched.

So when the curtain rises at Synergy2011 on the final act of this 4-part series, make sure you and your friends are buckled up with the rest of us and ready for The Rest of The Story!

NOTE:  If you’ve missed any or all of those first three conferences, we’ll bring you up to speed with our pre-conference session Friday—a don’t miss session for newcomers and a recharge session for past attendees coming back for more.

Friday-Sunday
March 4-6, 2011

In SUNNY(!) Orlando, Florida

For more information and to register, go to:

http://www.synergytoday.org/conferences.html

If you’re anywhere near Jacksonville, Florida, Frank is preaching Sunday, January 16 at: Christ Church—Mandarin Campus Time: 9:30am – 10:45am Location: 9794 Old St Augustine Road, Jacksonville, FL 32257 For those who have never heard Frank speak (or haven’t connected him to the family spokesman on network television during the Mt. Hood Crisis in December 2006, when three climbers lost their lives, including his youngest brother Kelly James), here’s a little background.

Frank A. James is Provost and Professor of Historical Theology at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary in Massachusetts. He has two doctorates (which is a story in itself), a D.Phil. in History from Oxford University and a Ph.D. in Theology from Westminster Theological Seminary/Pennsylvania. He has taught at Villanova University and Westmont College and was Visiting Professor at the Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies in Oxford, England.

I won’t go into his publishing activities, only to say he is currently wrapping up the manuscript of a Church history volume, co-authored with John Woodbridge, Trinity Divinity School, (Zondervan), that in my opinion is earthshaking.

Lest you imagine him a stuff-shirt academic (and those who know him can feel free to chime in), he is an insanely loyal Dallas Cowboys fan and a Country Western Music buff (a quality that can be trying on the best of marriages, although I admit he has expanded my taste in music).  And the women in his life—his students, colleagues, friends, mother, wife, and daughter—never had a better champion and advocate than Frank! 

If you want to sample the flavor of his work and his heart, read: In the Shadow of Mount Hood

So if you’re anywhere near Jacksonville tomorrow and want a spiritual feast, head over to Christ Church at 9:30am tomorrow!