  Beeson Podcast, Episode #573
Karen Ellis
Nov. 2, 2021

>>Announcer: 


Welcome to the Beeson podcast, coming to you from Beeson Divinity School on the campus of ���ֽ���. Now your hosts, Doug Sweeney and Kristen Padilla. 


>>Doug Sweeney:


Welcome to the Beeson Podcast, I’m your host, Doug Sweeney, here with my co-host, Kristen Padilla. This is an exciting week in the life of our school. Every fall we host our Go Global Missions Emphasis Week in which we bring in an expert in world Christianity to shine a light on what God is doing around the globe. This year’s speaker is our guest on the podcast today.

Go Global is hosted by Beeson’s Global Center, which prepares missional Christians to participate in gospel and Kingdom work around the world. If you feel called to missions or would simply like to learn more about what God is doing around the world today, I invite you to get involved in the work of our global center. It’s Director, Dr. David Parks, would love to tell you more. You can reach him at daparks@samford.edu.

Kristen, would you please introduce today’s guest?


>>Kristen Padilla:


Yes, thanks Doug. Hello, everyone. Welcome to the Beeson Podcast. We have Karen Ellis on the show today. She is the Director of the Edmiston Center at Reformed Theological Seminary in Atlanta. She also serves as the Robert Cannada Fellow for World Christianity at RTS. She is married to Carl who is a professor at RTS as well. I’ve just gotten to know Karen today. I am just thrilled that you are here with us at Beeson. I’ve already been blessed by your ministry today. So, welcome to the Beeson Podcast.


>>Karen Ellis:


Thank you so much, friends. it’s good to be here with you both.


>>Kristen Padilla:


Well, we always like to begin by hearing more than just your short bio; getting to know you better. So, would you please introduce yourself to our audience? Where are you from? Anything you want to say about your upbringing or your faith journey and what you’re doing today?


>>Karen Ellis:


I’m originally from Baltimore, Maryland. Was very much an east coast baby until, I guess, I turned 25 and then I just started busting out all over the world and going to new places. (laughs) My work in theater took me to a variety of different places first, even before I was a Christian. Then once I was a Christian I sort of started becoming involved in working with global religious freedom and the persecuted church. Similar to being a luminal figure, sort of standing in between advocacy and ground work in serving different organizations.

So, grew up in a Christian home except I was not a Christian. (laughs) It was pretty much, “Saint on Sunday, ain’t on Monday” we like to say. And but then when I was in graduate school the first time I was about 25 years old and I heard someone actually break down the implications, not just the gospel itself, but the implications of the gospel and what that meant for a life well lived, what that meant for a life of flourishing, what that meant for a life dedicated to justice and dedicated to a communal body of people set apart for God’s purposes. After that day in 1993 everything changed and I’ve sort of just been working out my salvation with fear and trembling as they say since then.


>>Doug Sweeney:


Professor Ellis, I’ve got a first question for you that is different from any first question I have ever asked an interviewee before. And it has to do with your love life. The Gospel Coalition, not too long ago, published an article entitled, “A Love Story With Kingdom Potential,” and I think it had a lot to do with you. So, we thought we’d begin and get some interest from our listeners by asking you what is that article all about? What is that love life story on the Gospel Coalition website?


>>Karen Ellis:


(laughs) That is an article that was written by a dear friend at TGC named Sara Zylstra, a very gifted writer, a very gifted storyteller, and one of the few people I think my husband and I would have trusted that story with. But it’s the story about how we, as two older people, got together. Both of us kind of hurting. Both of us just kind of looking for someone to live out that rocky one last good punch phase of life with. And can be focused on things of the Kingdom.

We met in the library at seminary. I was a middle aged returning student. I was in my 40’s and he was a Dean, so that was a little bit scandalous. (laughs) And yeah, he and I ... we became good friends for about three years and then after about three years the article just kind of goes into depth of how long it took me to realize that this was a really great guy. It was a guy I had been praying for. Neither of us ... The reason the story is called “A Love Story With Kingdom Potential” is because neither of us wanted to be married at our age unless it was going to maximize what we were doing for the Kingdom. I would have rather served single if we couldn’t do something that was going to make a dent in eternity that we could see when we got there.

So, my husband and I, he’s a theological anthropologist, I’m a theological ethicist, and we get to serve the Lord at Reformed Theological Seminary in Atlanta and we’ve crafted the curriculum at the Edmiston Center that’s dedicated to Christian life on the margins of the world’s societies. And we’re having a really great time. 


>>Kristen Padilla:


That’s wonderful. My husband is a faculty member here and there is a such a joy when your ministries kind of collide at the same place and you are able to serve next to one another. You’ve already kind of touched on this in your answer to the first question, but I want us to talk a little bit more about your work with this organization called International Christian Response. Which I believe you began working in 2006 with them, advocating for religious freedom around the globe. 

So, what got you interested in religious freedom and world Christianity? And perhaps you can tell us more about your work with this organization?


>>Karen Ellis:


Yeah. I don’t think I was drawn by religious freedom as much as I was drawn by the story of Christian perseverance. When I was in eastern Europe in the ‘90s just after the iron curtain fell I was exposed to the work of Richard Wurmbrand, and his wife Sebina Wurmbrand, who started another organization that actually was the parent ministry of International Christian Response. Now it is an independent support agency. Just sort of helping Christians live life on the margins of their societies. These are people in places where western missionaries can’t go. 

The story of Richard Wurmbrand fell into my hands when I was in eastern Europe. And if you know about his story it was the story of living under Communism in the Soviet Union. His book was called, “Tortured for Christ.” I mean, here I was a new Christian in the ‘90s and most of my friends were reading, “Hinds’ Feet on High Places,” and “Purpose Driven Life,” and here I was reading, “Tortured For Christ.” 

So, that sort of set me on a trajectory to learn more about the persecuted Church. When I started out I had a really romantic view of what it must have been like for Christians to live under hostility and working alongside International Christian Response has really given me a window and a view into the day to day lives that are very difficult, under very difficult circumstances, yet full of hope, full of creativity, full of at times disappointment and difficulty and despair. But also it just gave me a view of what normal Christian life is for people around the world. I think it’s something like 75 percent Christians of the world lives under some sort of anti Christian hostility. That’s 75 percent, we in the freer world, represent 25 percent that actually they need us to pray.

So, my role with them sort of became ... I have had a number of different roles with them. I served on their board, I’ve done advertising for them, I’ve done voice over’s, I’ve done fundraising, and my current role and function with them is to basically be the hands and feet. Whatever they need when they ask me to do something. (laughs) 

I delight in being able to be in those spaces and being able to hear firsthand how God is moving in oftentimes miraculous ways. It’s a fresh view of New Testament life. I work with a number of different organizations but the one that I have the longest relationship with is International Christian Response.


>>Doug Sweeney:


Another one of the many hats you wear these days, Karen, at RTS, Reformed Theological Seminary – for those in our audience who don’t know the acronym, is the Director’s hat at the Edmiston Center. I guess to say it officially, the Edmiston Center for the Study of the Bible and Ethnicity. We want our audience to learn a little bit about it and what the center does. Could you introduce us to the ministries of the Edmiston Center?


>>Karen Ellis:


Yeah, well, the way these questions have fallen out is perfect because the Edmiston Center is sort of the marriage of the last two questions we just discussed. (laughs) My husband and I when we first got married we were hosting a lot of students who were coming through our house saying, “Hey, listen, I got this really good thinking and theology from my seminary experiences but I’m not really sure how they apply on the ground in a context under hostility.” 

And these were people like urban pastors, people in rural areas, people who were working with the marginalized, like anti human trafficking folks, and they were saying, “Just help me to get my theology on the ground.” And so they were coming to our kitchen table and then the folks from the work that I was doing with ICR from different capacities were also coming to the kitchen table. And so they were meeting and finding out that they had a lot in common.

The more they came, the more folks came my husband and I said, “Let’s start putting these folks in cohorts so they can all study at the same time together and we can actually have some more free time.” (laughs) So, we started putting them in cohorts at our house. And one day Dr. Guy Richard, who is the President of Reformed Theological Seminary in Atlanta, came and visited with us and he said, “I have this vision for a center that discusses the things that you guys are talking about around your kitchen table. What would it look like if that was a formal part of the seminary experience and a part of a certificate program that rolled into all the other degrees, any of the degrees that you can get at RTS?”

I said to my husband, “Well, that sounds like a really great plan. What does that look like in practice?” And so we’ve spent the last three years hammering out a vision that connects the local and the global for encouragement of dialogue between people who live on the margins of the world’s societies. And that can be anywhere, anything from apathy towards Christianity, outright hostility towards Christianity, and some of that is deserved in our context, and then some of it is there’s an offense built into the gospel that causes people outside of it to be hostile towards it. We see that all over the New Testament. And then people living under outright persecution.

So, what does it look like to facilitate dialogue between people having those experiences? And what can we learn from each other? So, that’s the environment that we’ve created at the Edmiston Center. And we have five classes that sort of give you exposure to some skills and methods and practices of the Church on the margins.


>>Kristen Padilla:


Do you have a website where people could go and find out more information?


>>Karen Ellis:


They do. You can check us out at www.EdmistonCenter.org. Hit us up through the contact button. We’d love to talk with you.


>>Kristen Padilla:


Thank you. We have many active laity and ministers who listen to the podcast. I’m thinking of several who come to mind who really care about – well, all of them care about what God is doing in the world but they don’t have access to all the stories. So, I wonder if you could just share a little bit about what God is doing around the world? I’ve heard you speak today already about the underground Church. So, maybe there’s something there to share. But what would you like our listeners to know about what God is doing among his people around the world?


>>Karen Ellis:


I think one of the most significant things ... There’s a number of things that are going on that are very exciting. I spoke about this a little bit in the chapel message that I was blessed to deliver earlier today. But this is just an unprecedented time in church history. First off, because you can’t step in the same stream twice. I mean, any season in church history is unprecedented because it’s the first time its happened.

But some of the things that are going on in and through the Church globally make it even more distinctive. I think the rise in anti Christian hostility globally is really significant. We haven’t seen this kind of persecution, these levels of persecution, these levels of martyrdom. And also the dynamics of some of the fastest growing disciple making movements are in closed countries. And that’s really significant as well. I think about several different places in the Middle East. I think what’s also significant about them is who it is happening through. Mostly a lot of indigenous leaders, a lot of leaders who are in places where Western missionaries cannot go. And out of that is growing a number of organizations and centers that are focusing on publishing works from outside into the West. I think that’s also a really exciting and significant shift. Because the arrogant assumption we have, “Oh, how to do ministry flows from the ...” And it’s like, wait a minute, no, we’re starting to see new material and new thought and new theology and new applications of all theology of the biblical ways of thinking being published and translated into English by places like the Center for House Church Theology. It is publishing the works of Chinese house church pastors and theologians. They’re publishing the works of Pastor Wang Yi who is now serving a long prison sentence, nine years of hard labor. The theology that he left behind for his parishioners. 

So, that kind of movement is really exciting. We also see an increase in dialogue among regions from across languages of people who have been under hostility for a very long time writing letters to each other, writing letters to other parts of the Body in other parts of the world, and seeing letters translated into other languages. So, there’s a lot of really exciting New Testament feel life happening in and around the Church. In the midst of very difficult circumstances.

So, those are some of the things that I talk about when I say it’s really exciting what’s happening in the world right now. To see in the Iranian context disciples being made at such a rapid rate that they’re trying to keep up with training and disciple making. And disciple making unto knowing that everybody has to be a leader because at any time someone can be taken away, someone can be martyred, someone can be put in prison, somebody can be exiled, kicked out of the country, and so just the amount of life on life discipleship activity that’s happening in some of those regions. Seeing that reflected around the world. It’s just super exciting.


>>Doug Sweeney:


You made reference already, Karen, to the chapel message that you gave today on campus entitled, “God’s Wisdom For God’s Call.” I want our listeners to know that by the time this podcast interview drops it will be available on our website, on our YouTube channel, and I encourage you if you haven’t heard it already please go and listen to it. But give us a little teaser, Karen. What are they going to hear when they go and listen to this? And for those who just are not going to be able to get to the YouTube channel, could you give us a brief summary of what you told our community today in chapel?


>>Karen Ellis:


Yeah, I can. I think the principal message was that because the world sort of stands at an unprecedented time where a lot of assumptions that we’ve been able to make over the last 500 years, assumptions about personhood, assumptions about identity, assumptions about people’s knowledge of the gospel and Christ and what he came to do and what he has accomplished on behalf, and even who he is. Those are gone. 

Because the world sort of is in a different place, an unusual place in church history, and because we in the West are a part of the Body of Christ I sort of laid out exploring understanding what our response could and should be to be in line with historical thinking of the Body of Christ, the people of God. 

I sort of talked about how there’s this persistence of institutional rot and institutional implosion even around Christianity because of our orientation towards self exultation and self worship, and yet in the middle of all of that, in the middle of the implosions which are not new historically, this has always happened around the Church. You can look throughout church history and see these movements blossoming ... budding, seeding, blossoming, declining all over the place – and in the middle of all of that God is still keeping his promise and is going to sustain us ... sustain his people to Revelation 7:9 when he gathers us around his throne. Revelation 21, every nation, every tribe, every tongue. He’s going to keep the promise that he is keeping a people for himself.

He is the keeper, so how can our response to that be framed as a people who create not a counter culture, not being apolitical, as if culture and politics don’t matter, but how do we represent a whole other culture and a whole other politics based on the life, death, resurrection, and glorification of Jesus Christ?

And what I talked about was that that’s required living in wisdom’s house as opposed to folly’s house. And I juxtaposed wisdom’s house and folly’s house as founded in Proverbs 7-9 that when we live in wisdom’s house we create that other cultural reality, because we are a people about life. And every other culture that exists in folly’s house eventually leads to some form of death or destruction or dehumanization or oppression or injustice. The people of God that you’ll never read about, you’ll never read about them in man’s history books because they’re always on the margins, just keeping that Kingdom ball, passing it forward to the next generation.

So, those people have passed a kingdom ball forward to us. How do we then pass an other cultural, other political kingdom ball forward well to the next generation? How do we disciple people into understanding what it really means to live in wisdom’s house? What it really means to be a set apart people willing to suffer, willing to enter into the reality that the rest of the world’s Christians, many of the world’s Christians, live already in? What does it mean for us to be those kinds of people, living closer to the reality of the people of God?


>>Kristen Padilla:


It was a beautiful sermon, Karen. It was inspiring and biblical and Christ focused. And so I encourage you, our listeners, to please go listen to that message. I believe that the Lord will speak to you through it.

If you could give us another teaser ... We’re recording this episode the day before your lecture that you’re giving in conjunction with Go Global Week called, “Your Mission Story in the Lamb’s Book of Life.” What will you be sharing with our students tomorrow?


>>Karen Ellis:


I’m going to be unpacking more of the details of what exactly what I was just talking about. But some communities and stories about places in history where we’ve seen these kinds of folks step forward to pass this Kingdom ball. And just kind of explore the persistence of our ... in the middle of institutional corruption, in the middle of institutional and organizational and denominational implosion there’s always this group of people that are saying, “Hey, what is the Church supposed to be doing right now?” (laughs)

When they want to return to simplicity and they want to get back to the New Testament ideals. So, we’re going to explore some communities that have actually actively lived these principles and these ideals outside of the New Testament and hopefully find some things that are useful for us to practice as well as we develop these kinds of communities. 


>>Doug Sweeney:


That sounds great. I can’t wait, Karen. You know, Professor Ellis, Kristen and I always ... we make it a habit to conclude our interviews with people by asking them what the Lord’s been teaching them recently. We want to end on a note of encouragement for our listeners. We don’t have to tell you this has been a really difficult time for so many of us in the churches and in the world. In view of that, would you mind sharing with us just for a few minutes about some things God’s been doing in your life or teaching you recently that might be an encouragement to the rest of us?


>>Karen Ellis:


I don’t know if I’m built this way or I don’t know if God is forcing me to look this way. I can be a person given to despair and it doesn’t take much for me to circle the drain. (laughs) So, I feel as though the Lord has really been encouraging me in an atmosphere that is focused heavily on all the places where the Church has gotten it wrong. Horribly wrong sometimes. Historically wrong. Ethically wrong. Spiritual abuse, slavery, all of the things for which there’s so much focus, so much weight on where the Church has gotten it wrong. 

I’ve been exploring the places where the Church got it closer to right. Not perfect, because the only person to walk and do the Christian life perfectly was Jesus. Because he is the Christian life. He is the Way, the Truth, and the Life. So, not perfectly. But closer to the ideal of how he would have us live. And there are so many stories. These are the people who have been passing the Kingdom ball forward. 

So, that’s where I’ve been looking to for encouragement. That’s the place that’s really kept me sane, kept me healthy, I think, in the middle of so much church hurt, so much disappointment. I’ve been trying to put more weight on ... Even as we engage in truth telling, which I think is absolutely necessary on all for honest telling’s of history and honest telling’s of the failings of our heroes. Certainly for academic freedom and being able to say those things out loud, but at the same time God is keeping and sustaining his promise to keep a people to himself.

That’s what he has been encouraging me to do. I think who was it, Mister Roger’s Neighborhood. Mister Rogers used to say, “Look for the helpers when distress comes out.” I’ve been looking for the places where the Church actually did well, the Church lived Christ well. And I’ve been drawing a lot of encouragement from that. 


>>Doug Sweeney:


That’s a great word and encouragement to all of us, to focus despite all the trouble in our world and all the sin we continue to run up against every single day. Focus every once in a while on the things that God is doing in the world to redeem a Bride for Christ and build up his Church. Thank you, Professor Ellis. Listeners, you have been listening to Professor Karen Ellis. She is the Director of the Edmiston Center for the Study of the Bible and Ethnicity. She is also the Robert Cannada Fellow for World Christianity at Reformed Theological Seminary, RTS, in Atlanta. She is with us this week for our Go Global Emphasis and we are grateful that she joined us today. Thank you, Professor Ellis, for being with us. Thank you, dear listeners, for tuning in again. We say goodbye for now. 



>>Kristen Padilla:


You’ve been listening to the Beeson podcast. Our theme music is written and performed by Advent Birmingham of the Cathedral Church of the Advent in Birmingham, Alabama. Our engineer is Rob Willis. Our announcer is Mike Pasquarello. Our co-hosts are Doug Sweeney and, myself, Kristen Padilla. Please subscribe to the Beeson podcast at www.BeesonDivinity.com/podcast or on iTunes.