{"id":6381,"date":"2006-08-22T00:41:32","date_gmt":"2006-08-22T00:41:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/viamedia\/2006\/08\/mustard-seeds.html"},"modified":"2006-08-22T00:41:32","modified_gmt":"2006-08-22T00:41:32","slug":"mustard-seeds","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/08\/mustard-seeds.html","title":{"rendered":"Mustard Seeds"},"content":{"rendered":"

Mercartor.net has loads of good articles on Christianity in the developing world – right now.<\/a><\/p>\n

Really good stuff…did you know that T.D. Jakes recently preached in Kenya…to a million people?<\/p>\n

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Christ is the Answer\u201d screams a billboard at the Valley Road Pentecostal church, catching the eye of motorists as they speed down into Nairobi city centre. The Valley Road church attracts the more up-market crowd. Recently an American preacher, T.D. Jakes, pulled nearly 1 million people to a crusade in the city\u2019s central Uhuru Park, where his simple message to the congregation — that they had to pull up their socks, elect better leaders and have confidence in themselves — hit a chord that most political speakers miss. This is one side of Pentecostalism in Africa. <\/p>\n

The other, more sensational side, which features on the TV news and in newspaper columns, tells such stories as these: the West African preacher who promised his congregation prayers if they paid him a certain proportion of their income or possessions. All was going well, until one of his faithful brought along his car in return for prayers, and it quickly became a police case. Or the preacher who promised to heal people with AIDS through his prayers — and their stipends. The ones he tested as positive would be asked to come back in a week, would be tested again, and, \u201cmiraculously\u201d, all had recovered. That is, until the authorities heard about it. He also has to face the courts. <\/p>\n

In a large city like Nairobi where most people live on the edge, the streets are crowded with unemployed men, young and old, with mothers (single or married) contending with a drunken or unfaithful partner and many children to bring up on the pittance they earn selling vegetables. Many are close to despair and search out someone who gives spiritual consolation, since in the towns witch doctors are few and largely discredited by people with some education. The itinerant preacher is the answer to the problems of many. In Kenya he has become an institution. <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Much more…go visit!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Mercartor.net has loads of good articles on Christianity in the developing world – right now. Really good stuff…did you know that T.D. Jakes recently preached in Kenya…to a million people? Christ is the Answer\u201d screams a billboard at the Valley Road Pentecostal church, catching the eye of motorists as they speed down into Nairobi city…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":180,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6381","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"\nMustard Seeds - Via Media<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/08\/mustard-seeds.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Mustard Seeds - Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Mercartor.net has loads of good articles on Christianity in the developing world – right now. Really good stuff…did you know that T.D. Jakes recently preached in Kenya…to a million people? Christ is the Answer\u201d screams a billboard at the Valley Road Pentecostal church, catching the eye of motorists as they speed down into Nairobi city…\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/08\/mustard-seeds.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2006-08-22T00:41:32+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"awelborn\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Mustard Seeds - Via Media","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/08\/mustard-seeds.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Mustard Seeds - Via Media","og_description":"Mercartor.net has loads of good articles on Christianity in the developing world – right now. 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The Catholicism comes from her side. Amy grew up in a number of places - Indiana - Washington, DC - Lubbock Texas - Arlington, Virginia - DeKalb, Illinois - Lawrence, Kansas - and Knoxville, Tennessee, where the family settled in 1973. She attended Knoxville Catholic High School, then the University of Tennessee where she majored in history. She received an MA in Church History from Vanderbilt University, where she wrote a thesis on the changing role of women in 19th century American Protestantism, and the ways Scripture was used to justify those changes. She worked as as a teacher in Catholic high schools and a Parish Director of Religious Education and started writing for the diocesan press - the Florida Catholic - in 1988. Amy has written columns for Our Sunday Visitor and Catholic News Service at times over the past twenty years. Her articles have been published in venues ranging from Our Sunday Visitor to the New York Times to Commonweal. She has written 17 books. 18, if you included the as yet tragically unpublished novel. Amy has five children, ranging in age from 26 to 4 and was married to Michael Dubruiel, who died unexpectedly in February 2009. She lives in Birmingham, Alabama.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/author\/awelborn"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6381","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/180"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6381"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6381\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6381"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6381"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6381"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}