|
Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...
|
by Guy Page
With everything inside of me, I raise a ‘Hallelujah!’ for “Acts of the Apostles,” a story in this week’s Seven Days about a new church in Barre ministering to and comprised of drug addicts, starting with former cocaine abuser Pastor Chuck Clark. Written by national heavyweight reporter Joe Sexton, ‘Acts of the Apostles’ profiles the hard lives and real hope of the congregation of addicts, the history of the new church founded by retired Army Col. Dan Molind and Clark, and civic leaders like Mayor Thom Lauzon, a police detective, and the Pruneau-Polli Funeral Home operators who pick up the bodies of overdose victims. Here’s one paragraph from the don’t-miss-it article:
“But the flame started by free food became a considerable fire, and soon chairs and speakers had to be placed in the street outside the kitchen to accommodate the congregation. The Gospel was straightforward: All of us, whether handing out the food or accepting it, are imperfect, even broken, people. Your failings don’t define you. The broken still have value. Your former lives are not some imperceptible, irretrievable dream. Saying yes to Jesus can give you a new life.”
Vermonters of faith often look askance at Vermont news media for their failure to report, or even understand, the importance and impact of the Kingdom of God. In her column this week, 7D publisher Paula Routly admits that “Seven Days rarely writes about faith, not simply because we live in one of the most secular states in the nation. Seventy-five percent of Vermont adults seldom or never attend religious services, according to the Pew Research Center, compared with 66 percent in New Hampshire and Maine.
“More likely we avoid the topic because journalists are trained to be skeptical, to concern themselves with verifiable facts and evidence, datasets and test results. We want proof.
“Joe [Sexton] got over that in 2007, working on a yearlong project for the Times about a Pentecostal church in Harlem. He recalled, “All it took was a determination to take believers seriously, to be comfortable writing about the idea of the miraculous, to realize that such churches in fact had their own array of empirical evidence: mouths fed, homes repaired, lives rescued.
“Those hard facts are every bit the equal of the documented good achieved by government programs and modern science.”
Seven Days specializes in the lengthy, in-depth feature news story. In both topic and delivery, they’ve outdone themselves this week. Worth the read.
Chuck Clark is perhaps the second-best known pastor named Clark in Washington County. His son, Aaron Clark, is the author of yesterday’s commentary on abortion and natural law, founder of Imago Christi Church in Montpelier, which recently merged with Crossroads Christian Church in East Montpelier. Clark serves now as Associate Pastor at Crossroads. Like his dad, he ministers to people in addiction at Crossroads, along with his many other preaching and teaching duties. – Editor (and elder at Crossroads Christian Church)
Discover more from Vermont Daily Chronicle
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
Categories: VT Headlines
Yes, this is truly an Hallelujah. Seven Days is not who I would have guessed would put this story as a front page story. They were heavy early promoters of commercialized cannabis, something we might have done better without – there’s a gotcha Vermont has yet to realize. I guess 7D feels the need to follow some who didn’t do well with the drug doors cannabis opened and follow it to where people could find hope, help, and if they really sought it freedom from addictions.
Dan Molind has been offering the genuine hope of Christ to the needy for years. It started with a soup kitchen at the base of the Barre Aud hill. It has deservedly grown to encompass the church where it has ample food shelves, a rack of clothes and some big Enough Ministries trucks and a cargo carrier that were idle, while he was off assisting Vermont flood victims in Plainfield, St. Johnsbury, and the Burlington area last summer. This is an example of what the call to ministry perhaps should look like. Paul sat in the market place where people could find him or in jail, not in spiked topped cathedrals. The other disciples followed that route, too.
Vermont churches, take note, this is the way it should be. The church should not be a gathering of the proper and elite, but as Dan has aptly portrayed, it should look more like a hospital zone where people can find the Way, the Truth, the Life of Christ doled out with HOPE, LOVE, and FAITHFUL perseverance.
Praise God ! Hope and faith for a multilayered issue plaguing all of the American people .
“Paula Routly admits that “Seven Days rarely writes about faith, not simply because we live in one of the most secular states in the nation. Seventy-five percent of Vermont adults seldom or never attend religious services, according to the Pew Research Center… “More likely we avoid the topic because journalists are trained to be skeptical, to concern themselves with verifiable facts and evidence, datasets and test results. We want proof.”
Well Paula, when it comes to COVID-19, climate change, human trafficking, or dangers of chemical sterilization of minors, your profession punts facts and evidence to the curb! All by design and compensation incentives.
Statistics are funny business by design also. If a Vermonter doesn’t attend church services, it does not prove they are not believers of God and Jesus Christ. Some Christians believe they don’t need a middle man/woman to worship or walk in faith, in the Truth and the Light. Some also realize the corruption and infilitration of demonic forces within their churches, and they rebuke the ear ticklers, blasphemy, and heretics. Others believe, as is written in the Bible, Matthew 18:19-20 “For where two or three are gathered together in My name, I am there in the midst of them.”
Anyone can be saved right up to their last breath. It is free will. Most do not turn to God until they have hit rock bottom with no where and no one to turn to – a recent report stated that Bible sales are at an all time high – a good indicator of how our society is feeling these days isn’t it? The end times not quite yet, but if the gospel is reaching the four corners, and more seeking the Truth, we are much closer than every before.