Envy Apartment

At the ribbon cutting this month for the Wesley Village affordable housing complex in Garden Grove, Laura Archuleta couldn ’t resist referencing Joni Mitchell ’s 1970 environmental protest “Big Yellow Taxi.” Built on underused land that’s part of the Garden Grove United Methodist Church campus on Main Street, Wesley Village offered Archuleta , president of the nonprofit community organization Jamboree Housing Corp ., a chance to riff on one of Mitchell’s most famous lyrics. Where Mitchell sang “They paved paradise/And put up a parking lot,” Archuleta told about 300 people packed into the steamy church sanctuary on a hot afternoon that “Today we are going to learn how a group of dedicated organizations and individuals re-purposed a parking lot and put up a paradise.” Then she and others who spoke, including a single mom with six children who now reside at Wesley Village , told how the project became reality through a unique collaboration that involved the church, Jamboree and other...

The following testimony from JD Hall regarding a recent visit to Jim Bakker’s studio and Morningside Ministries was sent to Pulpit & Pen for publishing. While on a working vacation in Branson, Missouri on August 2 – just prior to my debate on Cessationism and Charismaticism in Cleveland the following weekend – I spent time with my extended family on the campus of College of the Ozarks. While there, I planned to visit the television studios and survivalist retreat (for lack of a better word) of Jim Bakker, the disgraced televangelist who had a multi-millionaire fund his ministry come back and who is now hustling survival supplies in the name of Jesus. Prior to leaving on vacation, I planned this visit to Morningside and received permission for what I had expected would happen from my local church leadership , lest anyone think I am a completely crazy man who had gone rogue or something like that. My leadership gave me the okay to do what I, indeed, ended up doing. First, a few th...