EDITOR’S NOTEBOOK: Seattle Pacific’s Lessons For Us All, Commending CURE International, and the “Seamless Garment”

Editor’s Note:  Most Saturdays we will feature this “Editor’s Notebook” column. MinistryWatch President Warren Smith will comment on one or more stories in the week’s news, adding an additional perspective or, sometimes, a behind-the-scenes look at how the story came to be.

SPU Coming To A Christian College Near You.  Students from Seattle Pacific University (SPU), a Christian school associated with the Free Methodist Church, have ended their more than month-long sit-in protesting the board of trustees’ decision to uphold a policy prohibiting the hiring of people who identify as LGBTQ. 

But they say the fight is not over.  They are now pursuing legal action against the trustees, according to a statement posted Friday (July 1) on Instagram by the Associated Students of Seattle Pacific, who have raised more than $37,000 through GoFundMe to cover legal fees. 

The students are upset because the trustees re-affirmed the school’s stand on traditional marriage and human sexuality.  

I think it’s important to pause on that sentence.  The trustees didn’t change the position of the school.  They simply said to the faculty and students: “You know that stuff in the Bible we said we believed when you came here?  Well, we still believe it.”  Though, to be fair to the students, SPU had spent a decade or more not doing a good job of saying that, and a lot of students and faculty there reasonably took the trustees’ silence for assent of the progressive drift taking place at the school.

And that’s why others not associated with SPU should care:  Constantly re-affirming one’s Christian faith should be an ongoing process, not a one-time event.  SPU is finding this out the hard way.  

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Small is Beautiful.  MinistryWatch has a database of the 1000 largest Christian ministries in the nation, and we are constantly updating financial and other information.  Some of those updates are automated.  For example, when an organization files a Form 990 with the IRS, we automatically import that data.  

But I get a daily email report telling me which organizations are updated, and one day I saw something that caught my attention:  It’s not often that the assets of a Christian ministry drop by nearly 50 percent in a single year.

But that’s what happened at CURE International, a nonprofit that ministers primarily to children with disabilities through a network of pediatric hospitals, mostly in Africa.  From 2020 to 2021 CURE’s assets dropped from $114 million to about $61 million. 

At first, I though:  “Uh-oh.  That doesn’t sound good.”  And that’s why I asked our reporter Kim Roberts to reach out to the organization for an explanation.  And it turns out that she found a great story.

Dave Helman, CURE’s chief financial officer, told MinistryWatch this significant change was primarily attributable to the transferring of a hospital facility in the United Arab Emirates to another like-minded ministry.  The hospital in UAE was primarily a maternity hospital that didn’t align with CURE’s mission to help disabled children as closely as they’d like for several reasons. 

So this big drop in assets was in fact a great story of a ministry staying focused on what it was called to do.  Not many Christian ministries would have the courage to make such a pivot.  In fact, one of the problems of many well-established Christian ministries is that they experience mission creep, or mission drift.  To see an organization recognize that tendency in themselves, or at least the possibility of that tendency, and then to do something about it, is commendable.

Roe, Dobbs, and The Body of Christ.  We’ve interviewed a number of pro-life life leaders this week in order to get a handle on the landscape of the pro-life movement in the post-Roe era.  You can find those stories here and here.

I was especially taken by something Ryan Bomberger said.  Ryan and his wife Bethany founded The Radiance Foundation in 2009 by Ryan and Bethany Bomberger.  Its purpose is to create “a culture that believes every human life has purpose.”

Ryan said he sometimes hears progressives and even some Christians criticize the pro-life movement for being too focused on overturning Roe and not working to end the causes of abortion:  poverty, sexual and emotional abuse, and others.  Ryan said he finds the criticism dishonest.  For one thing, he says, Christians are and have been at the forefront of helping pregnant women.  Virtually every hospital, orphanage, pregnancy resource center, and maternity home in the country has a Christian heritage.  Many of them are still run by Christians.  

Further, he says, “Abortion is a great evil. It is worth a single minded effort to end it.”

What about the argument from some Christians for “whole life”?  These people argue that pro-life is not enough.  We must also fight against poverty, for an end to capital punishment, and a whole range of issues if our pro-life position is to have credibility.  That position is sometimes called the “seamless garment” approach.  Ryan’s answer: “I’m all for the ‘seamless garment.’  Let’s work to end all forms of injustice.  But that’s a job for then entire Body of Christ.”  He believes we should not criticize someone who is being faithful to a specific calling that may not cover all aspects of a problem.  

I think he’s right.  Step up if you are called to a ministry in foster care, or adoption, or poverty eradication, or criminal justice reform.  But we should respect each other’s calling.  That so-called “seamless garment” is a worthy goal, but it cannot be one person’s or one organization’s work alone.