October 13, 2022
"With the passage of years the movement . . . has been identified with restoration, not unity," Lewis Foster wrote in 1984. "In fact, with many, this early essential unity thrust of the movement has been allowed to drift out of sight compared with the place it once occupied."
May 1, 2022
By Tom Ellsworth In 1856, postal authorities accepted a new name for a little community in southern Indiana: Santa Claus. Then, in the 1920s, the Postal Service decided there would never be another Santa Claus Post Office in the United States. Consequently, every December, more than 400,000 pieces of mail are routed through the town because of its Christmas-themed postmark. I suspect the community’s founders never anticipated the full impact of the unique name. On a little knoll just a mile or so south of Santa Claus stands quaint, white-framed Mt. Zion Christian Church, the oldest church building in Spencer
January 24, 2022
How can we honor the Lord when conflicts arise? Is it possible to hold firm convictions without destroying relationships? Several principles found in Romans 14 can help us put this slogan into practice.
January 17, 2022
Romans 9–11 is often neglected in many Christian churches. Depending on where one falls on the nuances of Calvinism and millennialism, the content is challenging. . . .
August 19, 2021
"It was here in the summer of 1838 that a very pretentious doctor . . . had so frightened one of our able debaters of those times, that he obtained and rejoiced in the name of ‘Campbellite Killer.’”
April 7, 2021
In early 2017, if The Solomon Foundation not come to the rescue, Christian Standard would not be celebrating its 155th anniversary today.
Today, on this 155th anniversary of Christian Standard, we share an article from five years ago by Richard Cherok that describes how this journal has both informed and influenced the Stone-Campbell Movement from the time of its first issue in 1866.
April 1, 2021
I visited many churches for various reasons during 2020. In quite a few houses of worship, I experienced roughly the same thing. As the doors opened, I could feel vibrations from the percussion and bass in my chest. The smell of coffee would drift toward my nose and awaken me. The welcoming team would greet me and ask about my week with genuine interest. “Don’t forget to check in on social media!” they would say. Sign-up sheets for “groups who do life together” and other activities to “get involved” were on strategically placed tables. Finally, I’d enter the sanctuary, grab
Kentucky Christian University plans to host a celebration at Cane Ridge (near Paris, Ky.) on the 220th anniversary of the Cane Ridge Revival this August.
February 1, 2021
(Read “When Brothers Dwell in Unity,” a companion article by Rudy Hagood’s brother, Fate Hagood.) Behold, how good and pleasant it is when brothers dwell in unity! It is like the precious oil on the head, running down on the beard, on the beard of Aaron, running down on the collar of his robes! It is like the dew of Hermon, which falls on the mountains of Zion! For there the Lord has commanded the blessing, life forevermore (Psalm 133, all Scripture quotations are from the English Standard Version). I have always been passionate about unity. While it might be a manifestation
November 19, 2020
And now, part 2 of John L. Morrison’s series on Alexander Campbell from 1967.
November 12, 2020
I spoke with a former Christian college professor a couple of times in the past few weeks. John L. Morrison is a pleasant gentleman enjoying retirement in California. Through the years, he taught at San Jose Bible College (now William Jessup University), Milligan College (now Milligan University), and Puget Sound College of the Bible (now closed). I can’t recall Mr. Morrison’s exact age, but it’s in the neighborhood of 90. Mr. Morrison told me he had written for Christian Standard a number of times. I became curious and checked into this. Sure enough, I found articles by him from the
August 11, 2020
By Ben Merold As I think about Marshall Leggett, who passed away on March 2 at age 90, two personal experiences keep coming to my mind . . .
July 15, 2020
By Gene Wigginton Marshall Leggett will be remembered by all who knew him as a man whose ambition in life was to be a faithful minister in God’s service. That ambition was never compromised. As a preacher and Christian college administrator, he honored God and touched countless lives with the truth of God’s Word. Marshall Leggett died March 2, 2020, at age 90. Faithful in the Churches He Served I had the privilege of meeting Marshall in the early years of his ministry. While traveling on behalf of a Christian college, I visited Marshall and his wife, Jean, in their
Here is the conclusion of our four-part series on Barton W. Stone, as excerpted from Frederick D. Kershner’s 1940 series on six of the “most significant advocates” of the Restoration Movement. (Click on any of these to read the earlier installments of the series: Part one — part two — part three.) _ _ _ “Stars: Message of Barton Stone” May 4, 1940; p. 7 The first relations of [Alexander] Campbell and [Barton] Stone appear to have been somewhat strained and not altogether cordial. The Kentucky reformer was a little dubious about too much emphasis being placed on water regeneration;
May 17, 2020
By Scott Kenworthy A few years ago, I attended the International Conference on Missions with a friend from a different church tradition. As we entered the exhibit hall filled with hundreds of missionaries promoting their various initiatives, I said to my friend, “This is the strength of our movement.” When we left the same hall a couple hours later, he turned around, took one last look, and commented, “That is the weakness of your movement.” Where I saw innovation, entrepreneurship, and bold risk-taking for the sake of the gospel, he saw chaos and the lack of a centralized strategy. So,
We continue this week with the third installment of Frederick D. Kershner’s biographical study of Restoration Movement father Barton W. Stone from 1940. (Part one and part two are available here.) _ _ _ “Stars” April 27, 1940; p. 7 There was a group of young ministers, of which Stone was probably the center, which reacted against the high Calvinism of their fathers after the Cane Ridge revival. Stone, McNemar, Marshall, and three or four others withdrew and organized the Springfield Presbytery. They published an apology, some part of which was comprehended in the autobiography of Barton W. Stone. The
We continue this week with our second installment of Frederick D. Kershner’s look at Barton W. Stone from 1940. Though Kershner wrote his profile on Stone in three installments, we shared only a portion of part one last week; today we share the rest of the article originally published April 20, 1940. _ _ _ “The Message of Barton Warren Stone” April 20, 1940; p. 7 BARTON WARREN STONE[’s] . . . life may be summarized under the following outline: Early period (1772–1799). Cane Ridge Revival (1799–1801). The Springfield Presbytery (1802–1804). Independent career (1804–1831). Union with the Campbells (1831). Later
In 1940, Christian Standard published a lengthy series of articles called “Stars” by Frederick D. Kershner, then serving as dean of the School of Religion at Butler University in Indianapolis. In introducing the series on March 9 of that year, Kershner wrote, “We shall strive to interpret the ongoing of a great movement in the life of the church through the contribution of six of its most significant advocates. . . . We shall be occupied only secondarily with the mere details of biography. . . .” Those six Restoration Movement “advocates” included: • Thomas Campbell . . . “who
A comprehensive indexing of Christian Standard upon our magazine’s 100th anniversary in 1966 failed to chronicle a recurring one-page feature called “Vitamins Club”—a hodgepodge of sermon outlines, memory verse listings, random poetry, original and submitted items, and also snippets gleaned from other sources. All of these had one thing in common: brevity. Today we will feature a few of these items from early in 1935 . . . 85 years ago. _ _ _ DEFINITION OF A DENOMINATION April 6, 1935; p. 6 A. E. Sterrett, of Leipsic, O., sends the following definition of a denomination, that he says he
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