Culver Palms Church of Christ member Kelly Shaw, right, reads with Teresa Nicolin as part of the FriendSpeak ministry. (Photo by Ron Cox) Want to reach out? Here are five creative approaches by Churches of Christ. • 1. Build a house. Read our 2011 column on the Northeast Church of Christ in Oklahoma City, which endeavors to provide salt, light — and affordable housing — in its urban community. • 2. Teach an English class. Read our 2010 story on the Culver Palms Church of Christ in Los Angeles, which helps internationally born neighbors learn English using the Bible. • 3. Help an addict. Read our 2008 story on the North Atlanta Church of Christ in Georgia, which counts hundreds of former crack cocaine addicts, drunks and homeless people among its members, and our 2011 story on the Holgate Church of Christ in Seattle, which ministers to addicts through a homeless center a few miles from the church building. • 4. Serve a cup of hot chocolate. Read our 2012 story on the Mt. Juliet Church of Christ in Tennessee, which endeavored to change from an internal congregational mindset to an outward focus. • 5. Give away school supplies. Read our 2010 story on the Fifth Ward Church of Christ in Tennessee, which invites neighbors to an open house where Bible skits and displays are featured and free school supplies and clothes are distributed. What ideas would you add to this list?

  PHOTO PROVIDED BYKARON JOHNSON Pioneering Christian - Trailblazing church member Gladys Hawkins stands next to J.S. Winston, the minister for whom she worked for many years in Cleveland. Gladys Hawkins was a trailblazer. In the 1960s, long before e-mail and Skype, she arranged meetings, kept detailed notes and did the work of the church as personal assistant to renowned minister J.S. Winston. Back then “employment of full-time secretaries was rare, particularly in largely black congregations of the church,” said Darryl Bowdre, a family friend and minister for the South Central Church of Christ in Tyler, Texas. “Winston had hired Hawkins with a vision.” Hawkins also had a vision to support Christian education. During her  life she contributed and raised funds for the school Winston helped  found — Southwestern Christian College. Now, more than two years after Hawkins’ death, her family seeks to carry on her legacy by sponsoring a scholarship fund for young, working women to attend Southwestern, a historically black college in Terrell, Texas, associated with Churches of Christ. Hawkins lived in Cleveland for 42 years and worked for Winston, longtime minister for the University Church of Christ, before moving west to Los Angeles. There she worked on the campus of Pepperdine University. She  served on the board of the Los Angeles Bible College and was a ladies  Bible class teacher at the Figueroa Church of Christ. Calvin Bowers, minister for the Figueroa congregation, called Hawkins “great PR for the church.” “She lived next door,” Bowers said. “She…

intergenerational relationships are vital Ron Bruner David Kinnaman has confirmed what many of us have long suspected: The  church is losing too many members of its younger generations. Why is that?In “You Lost Me,” Kinnaman tells us, “It’s a disciple-making problem.  The church is not adequately preparing the next generation to follow  Christ faithfully in a rapidly changing culture.”This is no new problem. After visiting congregations across Kentucky in  1843, Barton Stone concluded, “There has been more labor expended in  reaping down the harvest than in preserving it when reaped.”Societal changes since the time of Stone have worsened the situation.  Labor laws and public schools have shaped a better world for children  while unintentionally complicating day-to-day, intergenerational sharing of faith like that described in Deuteronomy 6. As a fellowship, our response to these changes has been inadequate.“So many of us think that when we’ve baptized our children, we’re done,” says Dudley Chancey, associate professor of youth ministry at Oklahoma Christian University. “We tend to forget the second part of the commission from Jesus: ‘Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you.’”Accelerating change in all areas of life over the past decades has made it even more difficult for churches to help young people seeking to build a coherent faith. For young disciples, the church seems overprotective, shallow, anti-science, repressive, exclusive and doubtless.In…

PHOTO BY BOBBY ROSS JR. WEST TEXAS INTERVIEW -       At a ministry intern job fair at Lubbock Christian University, a student, left, visits with youth ministers from the Golf Course Road Church of Christ in Midland, Texas. LUBBOCK, TEXAS - “Speed dating” is how one Christian university official refers to it. Only, the matchmaking does not involve potential romances. Instead, ministry intern job fairs — hosted by most colleges and universities associated with Churches of Christ — allow students to interview with a number of churches in one day. For church leaders, the benefit is mutual. “An intern job fair ... offers the opportunity for me to meet with a larger number of candidates in one setting than if I had to track down students and set up interviews on my own,” said Jennifer Schroeder, children’s education director with the McDermott Road Church of Christ in Plano, Texas. Here in West Texas, Lubbock Christian University drew about 30 churches to its recent ministry intern job fair — conducted as part of the annual Betenbough Lectures on Youth and Family Ministry. “I had the opportunity to interview with five different churches in about a two-hour time frame,” said Ryan Robertson, 21, a youth and family ministry major. “There is simply no way to be prepared to work in a church until you have been mentored and trained in an environment comparable to an internship,” said Robertson, who served last semester as a college ministry intern with the Greenlawn Church of Christ…