Category: grace

Redeeming Evangelical Christians and Our Church Universal

books, evangelism, grace, identity, Jesus, mission, struggles, theology

I”m almost finished listening to Tim Alberta‘s FANTASTIC book, “The Kingdom, the Power, and the Glory: American Evangelicals in an Age of Extremism,” published in December 2023. It’s included with a “Spotify Premium” subscription, which is how I’ve been listening to it the past couple weeks.

As a follower of Jesus who now identifies as a former evangelical Christian or “ex-vangelical,” the stories Tim shares in this book connect so many dots for me. As a 15 year member (including service as an ordained deacon and elder) of First Presbyterian Church of Edmond, Oklahoma, subsequently a Christian refugee attending Saint Augustine of Canterbury Episcopal Church of Oklahoma City and Grace Church of Yukon… and now Caldwell Presbyterian Church of Charlotte, North Carolina.. I’ve struggled to understand exactly WHAT HAPPENED to many mainline Protestant Christian congregations during my adult lifetime?

During the years of COVID and those that followed, I not only resigned from leadership in our wonderful Friday Morning Men’s Group at FPC Edmond, after 15 years of attendance and participation, I also stepped down as an adult Sunday School teacher from a class and community we absolutely LOVED… and our family decided to leave that church entirely and try to find another congregation… which both believed and followed Jesus Christ in greater alignment with how we understood Him (and God’s Holy Spirit) to call us to live. The simple slogan of Grace Church of Yukon, Oklahoma, summarized a big part of what we found ourselves running TO in making these significant changes in our church communities: “God’s love is for EVERYONE. There are no exceptions.”

God Loves You. No Exceptions! (CC BY 4.0) by Wesley Fryer

I am trying to choose all my words here with care and intention, because Shelly and I LOVE and still CARE FOR so many people we had to leave behind at FPC Edmond. We raised all three of our children in that church, and had SO many powerful and transformative experiences together there over the years.

Eager Easter Egg Hunters in 2007 (CC BY 4.0) by Wesley Fryer

I felt more connected to our church family there through my friendships and experiences with our Friday Morning Men’s Group than any other organization, so it was both excruciatingly difficult for me to leave / step down from leadership as well as CLEAR that this was the path I had to follow in late 2021… along with our family.

Christmas Eve 2008 with The Wards (CC BY 4.0) by Wesley Fryer

It turns out, the struggles I faced with brothers and sisters in Christ who became politicized and strident in their political views at church were not unique. Tim Alberta shares SO MANY stories of Christians and Christian churches facing similar circumstances, and I find his perspectives to be both instructive and clarifying.

I want to share my recommendation for Tim’s book in this post as well as a series of resources and organizations Tim references which remind me of my current passion projects, “Heal Our Culture” and “Resist and Heal.” It is abundantly clear to me that the voices and roles of Christian pastors in the United States have and continue to play a significant role in our present political pickle. As I write this three days before the “No Kings 2 Protests” nationwide on Saturday, October 18, 2025, which promises to be the largest day of political protest in our nation’s history, I believe we already are in the midst of “a slow civil war” (as Jeff Sharlet calls it, in another book I highly recommend) and unfortunately will face additional waves of political violence.

We need to find paths forward, to maintain our hope and joy in the face of difficult circumstances… but also to serve God on this earth with the time and resources we have been given. I believe we need to “Heal Our Culture,” and it turns out many other people and organizations do too.

Tim highlights the work of Curtis Chang, who (among other professional work) is the founder of Redeeming Babel. The homepage explains the project’s focus and mission:

Clarity in a Confusing World
Christians are called to serve as signposts to the coming Kingdom of God, when Jesus will finally repair all brokenness. In a culture afflicted by division and confusion – a condition depicted by the story of Babel in Genesis 11:1-9 – Redeeming Babel equips Christians to navigate the chaos with timeless Biblical truths.

Along with Nancy French, Curtis is the author of “The After Party: Toward Better Christian Politics,” and the the flexible, FREE, six week course, “The After Party.” The pitch for the course is:

For pastors & people who know there’s a better way
The intersection of faith and politics doesn’t have to be messy. Our free video course will give you an on-the-ground, biblically based approach to navigating today’s challenging political environment.

This course reminds me of “Confronting Whiteness,” a 9 week course Shelly and I experienced about 2 years ago and opened up for us a rich and important array of voices, perspectives, books and films. In the past few months I’ve been helping the founder of Confronting Whiteness, Rev Ben Boswell, start a podcast which will be launching this month, and completed facilitator training for the course earlier this year. I’m interested in learning more about “The After Party” and taking the course myself, hopefully with others.

In the latest episode of “The Good Faith Podcast,” Christian conservative David French asks and answers the question, “What the Heck Is a Christian Nationalist?”

These are all topics about which I have a deep interest. While the Heal Our Culture project is explicitly secular, I’m growing more aware of the opportunity as well as responsibility my past identity as a Christian evangelical provides for me to advocate and work for the redemption of Christian evangelicals and mainline Protestant church congregations more generally. That is work the people and organizations I’ve linked to in this post are committed to as well.

So I wanted to pass along these links and recommendations!

Christmas 2015 (CC BY 4.0) by Wesley Fryer
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Storychasing Easter’s Home and Affordable Housing

digitalstorytelling, grace, history, housing, mission, priorities

Members of our church in uptown Charlotte, North Carolina, Caldwell Presbyterian, have been working for many years to address the affordable housing crisis in a novel and courageous way. “Easter’s Home” is the former education wing of Caldwell Church which is now ALMOST ready to be opened (in fall 2025) as an efficiency apartment complex for 21 Charlotte residents in need of affordable housing. Roof Above is one of the primary partner’s in the Easter’s Home project, and already operates multiple housing complexes as well as housing shelters for Charlotte residents today.

Easter’s Home (Outside View – August 2025 (CC BY 4.0) by Wesley Fryer

One of the members of our congregation asked about a new virtual tour / walk-through tour of Easter’s Home, now that it is nearing completion and opening, and this prompted me to gather some of the photographs as well as videos I’ve taken of the Easter’s Home project since we joined Caldwell in January 2023. Here are links to some of the photos, videos, and news articles I’ve shared and found.

On July 2, 2023, members of our congregation went on a tour of Easter’s Home to view the progress of the renovation, and I recorded a 7.5 minute video to document part of what we saw and heard.

Multiple news articles since 2022 have shared updates and news about Easter’s Home, and I’ve collected those (11 links as of today) in a public / shared Wakelet collection.

Those links include the book by our Pastor, Rev John Cleghorn, “Building Belonging: The Church’s Call to Create Community and House Our Neighbors.” That book and it’s accompanying congregational study guide (a free PDF) offer an outstanding deep dive not only into the background and history of Easter’s Home in Charlotte, but also the efforts of other Christian and community leaders around the United States seeking to find innovative ways to address affordable housing with the land and property owned by many church congregations and denominations.

To date (as far as I could find today) I’ve taken 42 photos of Easter’s Home since January 2023, in various stages of construction and renovation. I’ve shared all of these in a Flickr album, and images are sorted in reverse chronological order, with the newest first. Here are a few highlights.

One of the wonderful features of the original “Price Education Building” at Caldwell church is the stained glass window over the entry door. The architects for the renovation of Easter’s Home were able to preserve it, so it is visible from the 2nd floor as well as the entry area on the first floor.

Entry and Stained Glass Window: Easter’s Home (August 2025) (CC BY 4.0) by Wesley Fryer

The story of the stained glass window deserves its own video and audio podcast to share it fully, but I’ll attempt to summarize from what I remember our pastor, John Cleghorn, sharing during our most recent tour on June 22, 2025. Emma-Ford Adams was a young girl in the Caldwell Congregation who died in November 1922 during the Spanish Flu pandemic. Her family commissioned this beautiful stained glass window, which beautifully filtered the outside sunlight into classrooms in the Caldwell education building for many years. It’s so special that this unique and important part of the history of the Caldwell family is preserved within Easter’s Home.

Stained Glass Window for Emma-Ford Adams in Easter’s Home (CC BY 4.0) by Wesley Fryer

Another important part of the story of Easter’s Home is the building’s history as a women’s shelter for women experiencing homelessness in 2013. The January 2023 Caldwell church newsletter shares some of that background. Caldwell member and elder, Jesca Yiskah-El, also highlighted that history in her testimony, sharing during our worship service on October 13, 2024. The Caldwell church community has been engaged in efforts to support and provide for those experiencing homelessness and hard times for many years, and those efforts continue today in the Easter’s Home project.

One sad footnote to this story of “storychasing” or documenting the renovation and construction of Easter’s Home regards some hand-drawn art and murals from the back stairwell of the Price Building. Back in May of 2025, members of our congregation took another short tour of Easter’s Home and Pastor John pointed out these inspirational works of stairwell art. I took two photographs of them at the time: “I Thought I Could” and “Ingredients for Success.” The artist depicted the journey of a caterpillar on its way to becoming a butterfly, making an analogy to the process of developing confidence and ability to escape poverty and homelessness.

I Thought I Could! – Stairwell Art in Easter’s Home (May 2025) (CC BY 4.0) by Wesley Fryer
Ingredients for Success – Stairwell Art in Easter’s Home (May 2025) (CC BY 4.0) by Wesley Fryer

Sadly, during our June 2025 tour of Easter’s Home, we discovered that the contractors had painted over these precious stairwell murals / art pieces. They had been specifically asked to PRESERVE them and not paint over them, but unfortunately sometimes instructions are not fully communicated and understood in renovation projects like this.

Painted Over Stairwell Art – Easter’s Home (CC BY 4.0) by Wesley Fryer

Perhaps this will become a sermon illustration down the road. Whether or not the stairwell art has been painted over, the STORIES, the HISTORY, and the ways the Price Building / Easter’s Home and the Caldwell Presbyterian Church community cannot ever be erased.

Shelly and I are thankful to be members of Caldwell and our “beloved community.” Truly we are striving to “build each other up in love – brick by brick.”

Our Beloved Community – Stewardship 2025 (CC BY 4.0) by Wesley Fryer

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AI Helps Sunday School Lesson Planning

God, grace, technology

Our adult Sunday School class (ACE) at Caldwell Presbyterian Church is reading and studying the book, “Grace Can Lead Us Home: A Christian Call to End Homelessness” by Kevin Nye. Tomorrow I’m facilitating our lesson, focusing on Chapter 2 of his book. As a middle school STEM teacher, I’ve been using a variety of AI tools in the past few months to help me create lessons, vocabulary lists, and even create web-based software applications using JavaScript. In addition to ChatGPT, Claude by Anthropic is my favorite text-based generative AI tool de jure, particularly because it allows users to upload PDF files (up to 10 MB in size) and use those for analysis and processing.

Since I purchased a Kindle version of Nye’s book and was able to convert it into a non-DRM PDF, I used the following AI prompt this evening to generate a lesson handout for tomorrow:

“AI Helps Sunday School Lesson Planning” (CC BY 2.0) by Wesley Fryer

As has happened multiple times in the past 10 months, I was blown away by the speed, accuracy, and quality of the AI result to my query. Here’s a link to the 2 page handout Claude helped me create this evening, which includes:

  1. A short summary of Chapter 2 of the book
  2. Some main ideas
  3. Some vocabulary terms
  4. Some suggested discussion questions

AI truly can give each of us “superpowers” relative to the skills and abilities we had without it. Teaching (and learning) will never be the same, IMHO.

To learn more about AI, AI tools, and my analysis of what this means for teaching, learning, our culture and society, check out and SUBSCRIBE to the (almost) weekly podcast I co-host with Jason Neiffer, “The EdTech Situation Room.”

Addition: I also asked Claude (in the same chat thread” the following question: “Please analyze chapter 2 of the attached PDF, and list the Bible verses which are specifically mentioned by author Kevin Nye in that chapter.” Claude’s answer:

Here are the Bible verses specifically mentioned by Kevin Nye in Chapter 2 of the book “Grace Can Lead Us Home”:

  • Psalm 24:1 – “The earth is the Lord’s and all that is in it”
  • 1 Corinthians 10:26 – “For ‘the earth is the Lord’s, and everything in it'” (Partial quote)
  • Philippians 2:6-7 – “Who, though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness.”
  • Romans 5:20 – “But where sin increased, grace abounded all the more”
  • 1 Thessalonians 5:21 – “Test everything; hold fast to what is good”

In this chapter, Nye references these Bible passages to support various points in his discussion of housing and theology. Psalm 24:1 and 1 Corinthians 10:26 establish that the earth belongs to God, not individuals, which relates to his arguments around property and land ownership. Philippians 2:6-7 highlights Christ’s example of giving up power and privilege for others, which Nye connects to housing justice issues. Romans 5:20 supports the idea of responding to homelessness with grace rather than judgment about who deserves help. And 1 Thessalonians 5:21 encourages taking what is good from existing programs and philosophies while leaving behind what is unhelpful.

Via Claude.AI
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Human Rights and Southern Baptist Protestant Christians

God, grace, history, Jesus, LGBT, questions, theology

This should be obvious to all people in all modern cultures, but sadly it is not and some groups are working to “turn back the clock.

Women are full human beings and should be accorded FULL human rights. This goes for ALL people by the way. Check the Universal Declaration of Human Rights if you or someone you know is unclear about this:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_Declaration_of_Human_Rights

Both in secular and religious contexts, women have full rights (just as men do) to live, lead, and serve as human beings irrespective of their sexuality or gender identification. HUMAN RIGHTS. These rights are foundational, unconditional and irrevocable.

Jesus did not come to our earth, live among us for 30 years, willingly submit to crucifixion and death on a cross, and bodily resurrect from the dead so that His followers could “keep women in their place” or His followers would act as legalistic jurors presiding over tribunals on the basic rights of fellow humans.

Jesus came to our earth for many reasons, but principal among these was to teach us (as humans on this planet) how to LOVE and better care for each other. He also came to free us from the legalistic and oppressive rule of religious groups like the Pharisees, and offer us a NEW covenant based on grace, love, forgiveness and community.

It’s really quite remarkable and wonderful. We can all even read about it in our own language today!

Some Southern Baptist Protestants “need a heads up” on these topics.

Southern Baptists’ Fight Over Female Leaders Shows Power of Insurgent Right (NYTimes, 16 June 2022) – Gift Link 🎁:

http://wfryer.me/44j

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Gospel Encounter: The Last Supper (Matthew 26:17-35)

discipleship, God, grace, history, Jesus

Tomorrow in our adult Sunday School class, “Gospel Encounters,” we will be reading and discussing The Last Supper as recounted in the 26th chapter of the Gospel of Matthew, in verses 17-35. These are the slides we’ll use during our lesson. Please feel free to use them and any of the ideas/resources which are included for your own Christian teaching and learning. (My slides are licensed CC-BY. Linked video content, however, is shared by others under varying license terms.)

After reading this scripture together, we will watch this six minute depiction of the Last Supper with Jesus and his disciples, focusing specifically on what Jesus SAID and DID during this time.

If we have time, we may watch The Lumos Project’s video about Matthew 26:1-35. (It’s free to watch from the previous link, but not embeddable or readily downloadable.) In the Lumos Project version, a narrator reads the words of the scripture while actors re-enact the scenes. Both are powerful and valuable for better understanding this pivotal episode in the life and ministry of Jesus Christ. I’m choosing to share the LDS website version (the video embedded above) because it is a more detailed and theatrical presentation, which seems to provide a more immersive peek into the world and life of Christ. (As noted in my slides, the use of this LDS video should not be interpreted as an endorsement of the Mormon Church or LDS beliefs.)

I plan to focus some of our discussion on both the Old Testament and New Testament contexts for “atonement,” and will show The Bible Project’s excellent six minute video, “Sacrifice and Atonement.” Note a freely downloadable version of this video is available on their project website, which does not include the request for project donations included in the YouTube version.

If you live in Edmond, Oklahoma, or the Oklahoma City area and are able, please visit our church (First Presbyterian of Edmond) and consider attending our Sunday School class! You can check out past lessons as well as our upcoming schedule, continuing our focus on “Gospel Encounters” both historical and contemporary, by visiting pocketshare.speedofcreativity.org/ge/.

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Participating in God’s Divine Nature

God, grace

I pray God would fill me with His Holy Spirit, as Peter described, to escape “the corruption in the world caused by evil desires.”

His divine power has given us everything we need for a godly life through our knowledge of him who called us by his own glory and goodness. Through these he has given us his very great and precious promises, so that through them you may participate in the divine nature, having escaped the corruption in the world caused by evil desires. (2 Peter 1:3-4 NIV)

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Life Without God

grace

These verses summarize life without God, when people choose to become slaves to sin:

Romans 1:29-31 NIVd

They have become filled with every kind of wickedness, evil, greed and depravity. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit and malice. They are gossips, slanderers, God-haters, insolent, arrogant and boastful; they invent ways of doing evil; they disobey their parents; they have no understanding, no fidelity, no love, no mercy.

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Sins Passed On to Children?

God, grace

Our Pastor referenced this passage from Exodus this morning:

I lavish unfailing love to a thousand generations. I forgive iniquity, rebellion, and sin. But I do not excuse the guilty. I lay the sins of the parents upon their children and grandchildren; the entire family is affected— even children in the third and fourth generations.” (Exodus 34:7 NLT)

It is worth considering if this changed in the new covenant which God established with the people of the earth, through the sacrificial death and resurrection of His Son, Jesus. Some people at that time mistakenly believed all people who were blind were born or made that way because of the sins of their parents. Jesus corrects them as documented in the Gospel of John:

As Jesus was walking along, he saw a man who had been blind from birth. “Rabbi,” his disciples asked him, “why was this man born blind? Was it because of his own sins or his parents’ sins?” “It was not because of his sins or his parents’ sins,” Jesus answered. “This happened so the power of God could be seen in him. We must quickly carry out the tasks assigned us by the one who sent us. The night is coming, and then no one can work. But while I am here in the world, I am the light of the world.” (John 9:1-5 NLT)

Sins of parents and grandparents DO affect both current and future generations. We are such consumers,  we buy a cool kids electric cars here and there,  and then wonder why they have no sense of value or worth. Sin has a powerful and negative affect on all it touches, but the power of sin is broken when we confess to God and ask for His forgiveness through Jesus.

Sin does not always account for disabilities or suffering, however. We shouldn’t assume to know the reasons for these things. Through all circumstances and conditions, God works for good through His people who are called according to His purpose. Rather than focusing on trying to understand the source or cause of suffering (which we may never understand fully in this life) we should focus on the purpose with which God has called us to act in the midst of suffering.

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Redeeming the Family: Blessing Children of Incarcerated Parents

grace, mission

(cross-posted from Redeeming the Family)

This is a 14 minute video reflection by Wesley Fryer, who volunteered with Redeeming the Family on May 15, 2013, at the Cimarron Correctional Facility (prison) in Cushing, Oklahoma. Oklahoma currently has 17 prisons, and Cimarron is one of three which is privately operated. Corrections Corporation of America has owned and operated this prison commercially since 1997. Last week Redeeming the Family volunteers assisted 50 incarcerated dads to record video messages of love for their children, which will be mailed to their children before Father’s Day on Sunday, June 16th.

Sixty-six men had signed up to record video messages for their children on May 15, but because of security conditions at the prison not all those inmates were allowed to record their messages. Redeeming the Family will return to the Cimarron Correctional Facility again in the fall to record more messages which will be delivered prior to the Christmas holiday in December.

Redeeming the Family

Redeeming the Family

Redeeming the Family

Redeeming the Family

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