Michael Cerna, CEO of Accord Network, joins Today’s Conversation podcast, hosted by NAE President Walter Kim, to delve into these issues and more. In this episode, they also discuss:
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Walter: Are there Scriptures of hope, faith or even prophetic challenge that you find encouraging that helps you navigate challenging times?
Michael: Perhaps it’s too easy, but I can’t help but go to the life of Jesus and maybe even more specifically the life of his disciples, where what you see is a thousand reasons why the movement of Jesus should have died during or immediately after the life of Christ. There is an aggressive government that was rooting out the movement of Jesus at the time, Christ’s own religious powers were against the movement of Jesus at the time and were intimidated by and fearful of what Jesus was doing within his own Jewish community.
Thinking about that, and then you add to the fact that Jesus came in as a powerless, poor boy in some rural town in the middle of the Levant. There are just so many reasons why it should have failed. Power dynamics, political dynamics, resources that he and his people were lacking. And yet through all that, what we saw was that the sovereignty of God and the ability of Jesus to make friends of enemies, to create followers from people of all walks of life, it turned into a movement that obviously we’re still following today.
I can’t help but have hope knowing that if Christ and then his disciples were able to get past that political climate, to get past such outright persecution, to create a new kingdom that involved people from all over the known world at the time, and they could make it through that. And it wasn’t easy, and it wasn’t always quick. And it wasn’t necessarily always permanent, right? There have been ups and downs in all of that. But if those disciples of his day could make it through a culture and an environment of that time, there’s very little about today that can intimidate me to the point of losing hope.
Michael Cerna serves as chief executive officer of Accord Network, a coalition of over 100 Christian organizations dedicated to global relief and development. Prior to leading the Accord Network, Cerna served in strategic and partnership roles at HOPE International, Mission:Hope, and Renew Outreach. He also previously worked as a consultant at McKinsey & Company. Cerna holds a master’s degree in international management from Kennesaw State University.
Walter Kim became the president of the National Association of Evangelicals in January 2020. He previously served as a pastor at Boston’s historic Park Street Church and at churches in Vancouver, Canada and Charlottesville, Virginia, as well as a campus chaplain at Yale University. He preaches, writes and engages in collaborative leadership to connect the Bible to the intellectual and cultural issues of the day. He regularly teaches in conferences and classrooms; addresses faith concerns with elected officials and public institutions; and provides theological and cultural commentary to leading news outlets. He serves on the boards of Christianity Today and World Relief and consults with a wide range of organizations. Kim received his Ph.D. from Harvard University in Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations, his M.Div. from Regent College in Vancouver, and his B.A. from Northwestern University.
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