This picture holds a story familiar to every woman that’s navigating the duality of life’s hills and valleys. Whether you live in the U. S, the Caribbean, Canada, Europe, Mexico or the continent of Africa, you have been there. It captures something sacred: the holy tension of holding both joy and sorrow, faith and fear, strength and surrender, all at once. There are seasons when life doesn’t fit neatly into joy or sorrow.  There are seasons when life won’t let you choose one emotion. You laugh while your heart aches. You celebrate with a lump in your throat. You pray while panic breathes down your neck. And yet, somehow, through trembling hands and tearful prayers, you find a way to show up. This tension is not weakness it’s the essence of womanhood. It’s courage in motion. It’s faith in action. Last Saturday night, I found myself standing in that tension. My baby sister was fighting for her life in New York, while here in the Midwest a celebration awaited-a room drenched in beauty, love  and gratitude, honoring my husband and our family for ten years of faithful Pastoral service. The world was swirling with contrast: one space pulsing with applause, the other echoing with intensive care unit monitors. I wrestled hard. The questions flooded my mind. They made me restless anxious. How do you celebrate when your soul is breaking? How do you dance when you can barely stand? How do you stand in faith when fear is relentless and loud? And then I heard her; my sister’s spirit, full of that radiant Shaunette energy, whispering, “Sissy, go. Live. Love. Laugh. Don’t let fear rob you of love’s moment.” So I did. Trembling. Praying. Breathing. But I went. And God met me there. The room held light and laughter, but also grace for tears. There was no pretending, just pure presence. Linwood radiated warmth that night, not the kind that denies pain, but the kind that holds it gently and says, “You’re safe here.” I felt the Spirit settle in the space between the laughter and the lumps in our throats. Grief sat beside joy, and somehow, both were welcome. Every time fear tried to rise, I yelled back with faith: “She shall live and not die.”That became my heartbeat and my declaration of faith. That was warfare. That was worship. Because faith is not the absence of fear, it’s the decision to move anyway, believing that God is still good. That night, I didn’t just talk about faith, I practiced it. I built capacity. I experienced the tension of building resilience. I’ve learned that; – You can be heartbroken and still hopeful. – You can be scared and still strong. – You can be shaken and still called. Once again I was reminded that sometimes, the miracle isn’t that the storm stops, it’s that you learn how to face it without crumbing or hiding. Linwood showed me that community is where weary hearts come to rest.  That love and presence can heal what words can’t. That even sorrow and celebration can hold hands. So, to every woman reading this, wherever you are, you are not alone! I see you and I hold space for you. Maybe you’re in between healing and heartbreak, between motherhood and burnout, between your calling and your own exhaustion, between being “strong for everyone” and wanting to finally fall apart. Maybe you’re holding your faith in one hand and your fear in the other. And you don’t know how to carry them both anymore, remember, you are not failing you are being forged. Take heart, be encouraged, hear this:  You can! Just keep showing up. The Word reassures us, “We are hard pressed on every side, but not crushed; perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not abandoned; struck down, but not destroyed.”- 2 Corinthians 4:8–9 God says, “My grace is sufficient for you, for My power is made perfect in your weakness.” – 2 Corinthians 12:9 So right here in the messy in- between, you are powerful. You don’t have to wait until you feel brave to be powerful. You don’t have to wait until you have peace to take a step forward. You don’t have to wait until the fear disappears to live your life out loud. This Women’s History Month, may we remember: Our power is not in perfection, it’s in perseverance. It’s in walking with the fear, not waiting for it to leave. It’s in showing up in the tension, letting grace do what strength alone never could. So keep standing in the in‑between. Keep walking when it’s blurry, keep believing when it hurts, keep living when your heart is still healing. Because as long as there is breath, there is purpose. As long as there is purpose, there is power. My Sister, even in the tension, you are still enough. Even in your weakness, You are still powerful. You are still becoming everything God called you to be.

The numbers are in. According to the Public Religion Research Institute, 38 percent of Americans aged 18 to 29 identify as unchurched, an increase from 32 percent in 2013. A Gallup survey states that around 57 percent of Americans today seldom or never attend religious services, an increase of 40 percent over 2000. Reporter Robert Conteras states, “The great unchurching of America comes as identity and reality are increasingly shaped by non-institutional spiritual sources—YouTube mystics, TikTok tarot, digital skeptics, folk saints and AI-generated prayer bots. It’s a tectonic transformation that has profound implications.”1 The Adventist Church in North America (NAD) is challenged in the twin areas of church growth and community impact.2 Eight-year growth rates of 0.52 percent in the NAD and just 2 percent worldwide3 were greatly improved upon in 2024 as the NAD saw a growth rate of 2.37 percent and the General Conference 3.95 percent.4 Still churches are challenged to remain relevant to the needs of their communities. The pace of life and the demands of work and family obligations keep people very busy, resulting in a lack of genuine social connections.5 Rapid changes in society have confounded the ways of reaching people, hampering our ability and nimbleness to meet the needs of an ever-increasing secularism and the rise of the “nones.” Pew Research data from 2024 shows that, among the “religiously unaffiliated,” only 17 percent are atheist, leaving 20 percent agnostic and the remaining 63 percent simply “no affiliation.” This underlines the importance of our ability to adjust our methods in communicating the gospel and ministering to these people. Reaching the unchurched Make the church a spiritually vibrant place. If we want the church today to be effective, we need to tap into the power of God that is available to us through prayer. “You shall receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you” (Acts 1:8).8 Earthly solutions and human effort, without the power of the Holy Spirit, may produce temporary results but nothing of eternal significance. However, prayer will bring about eternal results. “A revival need be expected only in answer to prayer. While the people are so destitute of God’s Holy Spirit, they cannot appreciate the preaching of the Word; but when the Spirit’s power touches their hearts, then the discourses given will not be without effect.”9 The disciples experienced firsthand the power of prayer as they gathered together in unity. “And when they had prayed, the place where they were assembled together was shaken; and they were all filled with the Holy Spirit, and they spoke the word of God with boldness” (Acts 4:31). The early church grew as a result of their effervescent love for Jesus, the urgency of the gospel message, and the power of the Spirit. When we come into the presence of our Creator, earnestly seeking His face and asking for His Holy Spirit to saturate our hearts and minds, we will see great results for His kingdom. Pastor and author Charles Stanley states, “The amount of time we spend with Jesus—meditating on His Word and His majesty, seeking His face—establishes our fruitfulness in the kingdom.”10 In the last church I (Joseph) pastored, I tried various types of programming, strategies, and techniques, and the result was a decline in the church. But when I tried prayer, the church became healthy and started to grow. Though it began as a personal effort on my part, eventually it spread like wildfire throughout the congregation. And the Lord added many to the church as this spiritual vibrancy made an impact on the community. Implement multiple means of engagement. We need to return to the New Testament methods of reaching people, a more comprehensive approach to outreach as outlined in the book of Acts. The believers did public evangelism, proclaiming the truth of the resurrected Christ (Acts 2:4–12), but they also had small group interactions (vv. 42–47) and one-on-one conversations (such as Paul speaking to women at the river; Acts 16) and contextualized the message for their hearers (as Paul did on Mars Hill in Acts 17). They freely proclaimed the gospel message to earthly kings as well as the common people. The early church operated in both Jewish and Gentile cultures, adapting their methods to the particular worldview of the people to communicate the beauty of the gospel of Jesus. In all that they did, they did not wait for people to walk in to the church to preach to them. Rather, they seized every opportunity to “go” to others and tell them of the love of Jesus. Today’s church would likely see more fruit from this type of multifaceted approach to evangelism. In our research for this article, we discovered churches that were doing multiple forms of outreach. Some are traditional, such as offering food and clothing, and others focus on family needs, such as parenting classes, free counseling, supporting single mothers, and teaching English to immigrants. One church showed up at their local community college on registration day to serve strawberry shortcake to all the students and staff, which resulted in a number of visits to their congregation. The shortcake was just the appetizer before several events that the church offered students throughout the school year. Another church learned of a leukemia patient in their community, and they raised $25,000 for that patient’s family. Led primarily by the youth of the congregation, the church raised awareness and funding through social media, and the story was featured in the local TV news. Build relationships while meeting the needs of the people. There is no shortage of problems and suffering that the church can be involved in to relieve people’s burdens. Some traditional examples include clothing and food distribution, while more recent methods incorporate literacy programs, school tutoring, and health and recreation activities. However, when we open our facilities to community groups (Little League, orchestra, or addiction recovery groups), it is almost useless if there is no human engagement with the church members. We must not miss the opportunity <a class="cat-post-excerpt-more" href="https://www.outlookmag.org/challenges-for-todays-church/" title="Continue reading Challenges for today’s church: How to reach an increasingly unchurched society“>Read more…

In the early 2000s, the Seventh-day Adventist church in Granby, Colorado, officially closed. But in the years since then, a little at a time, church members from various places moved there for work, retirement or other reasons. They came from other parts of Colorado, other states and even other continents, with one member coming from Nigeria to make a life for himself in the Rockies.  Being so remote from the nearest churches, they tended to worship at home, often viewing a worship service on Hope Channel or some other provider. None of them knew much about the presence of any other Adventists nearby.  That began to change over the last couple of years. As members made occasional trips to distant churches, they heard about the possibility of someone else living in their area. For Tad and Michelle Long, it was enough to encourage them to do something about it. While visiting the Estes Park Church, all the way on the opposite side of Rocky Mountain National Park, they made acquaintance with Pastor Rex Bell.  Bell and his two brothers have a long history in Granby. Their parents helped establish the church there, and they spent much of their childhood in and around the mountains of Grand County. There could not have been a better advocate for finding a way to put a light in the community. With his encouragement, they put out fliers all over the county inviting people to a study of the Book of Revelation. This led to the discovery of five other local Adventist residents, in addition to a couple they already knew who live there part time.  Tad’s brother, Elder Robb Long, is a pastor and evangelist who served in several conferences and is currently the ministerial director of the Indiana Conference. It did not take much persuasion for him to agree to come to Granby and hold meetings as part of the North American Division’s Pentecost 2025 initiative.  “The first blessing to come out of the meetings is that it brought together about a dozen Seventh-day Adventists who live in the area,” commented Doug Inglish, RMC vice president for administration. “They are meeting regularly for church services and getting to know one another. No longer do any of them wonder if it’s true that other believers are around; they now know it and are doing something about it.” The congregants were joined in celebration of this by Robb Long and his wife Chris, Bell, and Inglish.  “The second blessing is that seven people who knew nothing of our church came the first night,” Inglish continued. “Not only do all seven continue to come, but they have also been joined by three more! The meetings are still going on, so please pray for the Lord to work His will through them.” Inglish remarked on a “third blessing” that happened December 6 when they gathered for a meal and worship service. Following an encouraging message from the Bible about the effectiveness of prayer led by Tad, Inglish talked to them about officially forming as a group within the Rocky Mountain Conference.  “There are still some steps to take in the process, but the day ended with a handshake agreement that they could represent themselves as a Seventh-day Adventist Church, so that the process of recognition and the status as a group rather than a full church yet would not be confusing to seekers who come to learn about God and about what the Bible teaches us,” said Inglish. And what they chose to call themselves is the Grand Valley Seventh-day Adventist Church. They wanted a name that would not limit them to one community but would imply an invitation to all within the immediate area. Other actions that day included identifying a group leader, a treasurer, and a communication leader.  “We are beyond excited to see where our God leads with this endeavor!” says Tad. What began for him and Michelle as a four hour round trip a couple times a month to the nearest church, and longer in winter, has already resulted in bringing together other Adventists who didn’t have that option, and now is connecting them with “souls who are looking for truth.” There is strong hope for the future in what seemed to be a dormant territory. Inglish reflected, “Though the church closed a couple decades ago, it is clear that the Lord’s work did not end in Granby and the surrounding area. He always had believers there, and He always had a plan.” As Bell says, “What a joy it will be when we get to the kingdom and tell those who built the previous church that the work was reestablished! The light never went out in Grand County.” Information provided by Doug Inglish, RMC vice president for administration.

I am starting my ninth-grade year in the Adventist education program. It’s been a blessing to step into Maplewood Adventist Academy as I grow in God. This year my relationship with the Lord is growing exponentially! Growing up, I attended three different private schools. Hillcrest Adventist School was where I spent most of my elementary years. My teacher, Mrs. Coto, greatly impacted my life when it comes to knowing God. She constantly prayed over, cared for, and loved us. I remember she would always decorate the classroom in such creative ways; all of these ways would show the glory of God. It is important to me that people live out their faith through their actions, not just their words. So when I go to school and see God’s character through classmates, teachers, and friends, it comforts me. I know that these people don’t just claim to be Christians, but instead, they truly live through Christ. That has been one of the clearest signs that I’m where God wants me to be. Early each morning, I have the opportunity to go to the Maplewood library and participate in Bible studies and fellowship with those willing to wake up at 6:30 a.m. These studies have been a source of guidance for me. I go to these studies and feel refreshed for the rest of the day. I immensely appreciate Mr. Defranca and the students who partake in these studies. I find myself having amazing conversations and hearing wonderful testimonies about God with kids my age. Seeing classmates with a burning passion for God encourages me as I walk with Him. Everyday, I have the opportunity to be a messenger for God, and at school I show it by my actions and my words. I watch my mindset and what I say. When doing so, I can praise God with every word that leaves my mouth instead of using His name in vain. Another way I show God through the person I am is by my actions. I keep the verse, “…do all for the glory of God” (1 Corinthians 10:31), in my head. So,  every time I work I can feel comfort that I’m doing it for the Lord. I have a plan for my future, and, believe it or not, that plan is to follow God’s plan. Knowing that, I don’t have a solid idea of what my future will look like— although I assume that God will use the gifts He gave me to impact my future for His purposes. Being in a Christian community has shown me what gifts God has given me. As I grow in Christ, I am learning that the gifts He gives us are characteristics of our mighty God. I love the Lord, so I act in His likeness; many people perceive the qualities of God as a gift. Kindness, compassion, sympathy, understanding, and gentleness are some of my favorite qualities of God, so I tend to mimic those the best I can. Those aren’t the gifts God gave me, though; those are simply the footsteps I follow. Overall, I feel a deep connection with God, and because of my Christian education, I can continue that connection no matter where I am. Even in the hardest times, I know I can give my praise to God because I am there for a reason. School has had a huge impact on strengthening my relationship with Him, but God Himself did all the work to bring me back. He waited for me with open arms, listened to me in my hardest of times, and blessed me with the little things He knows will make me smile. I won’t give the glory to Christian education; instead, all glory goes to God!   Anna Rittenbach, a student at Maplewood Academy in Minnesota, submitted this article for the 2025 student essay contest last September.