According to Christian Post, the Vision Church of Atlanta, Georgia, a progressive congregation, has added a psychic medium who claims to commune with the dead to their staff.
Vision Church
Vision Church’s Bishop Oliver Allen and his ‘family’ made history by being the first Same-Gender-Loving couple to be selected as one of Ebony Magazine’s “top 10 Coolest Black Families” in America. In 2015, Bishop Allen was appointed by President Barak Obama and the U.S. Secretary of Health and Human
Services to the Presidential Advisory Council on HIV/AIDS (PACHA). In 2016, He was appointed Southeastern Chair of the DNC-LGBT Advisory Board. Allen is currently a National Ambassador and consultant for the NAACP – Black Church/HIV Initiative. Vision Church is also a strong proponent for social justice.
Lakara Foster, who holds a doctorate of ministry from The Interdenominational Theological Center, is now a licensed minister at The Vision Church of Atlanta, Rolling Out reported. She is also the creator and star of the YouTube series “The Gift,” which she argues God told her to do. It follows her life as a medium, minister, and spiritual teacher.
“God told me to do the show. Honestly, I was reluctant at first because I felt very vulnerable and thought I would get a lot of pushback and negative feedback being a minister and a medium. I thought people wouldn’t understand but I knew I still had to do it. I knew I had been called to do it. When I asked God, ‘Why this gift? Why not singing? God said, ‘I promised my people eternal life. How will my people know that I’ve kept promise if you don’t demonstrate your gift?’” she told Rolling Out.
Foster argues that psychic mediumship should be included among the spiritual gifts of the modern Church because James 1:17 teaches that “every good and perfect gift is from above.” Lakara also has an interest is African spiritualism and hopes to bring that to Christianity.
Foster holds a doctorate of ministry from the Interdenominational Theological Center. She wrote her thesis on what she believes is the biblical case for ministers who speak to the dead.
In an interview with Great Day Louisiana earlier this year, Foster discussed how her gift allows her to communicate with the dead.
“A psychic medium, what I try to explain to people is, psychic is a very umbrella term. I believe to some degree we all have some type of psychic intuition. A medium falls under that umbrella. Being a medium allows me to communicate with our loved ones who are departed. So I tell people all mediums are psychic but all psychics are not medium,” she said.
She explained that she has been using her gift for a long time and had always wanted to use her gift without sacrificing her faith in Jesus.
Foster noted that she has received a lot of support from her church and members of her family, like her father who also claims to possesses the gift to commune with the dead.
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“The living know that they will die, but the dead know nothing” (Ecclesiastes 9:5).
“When you come into the land which the LORD your God is giving you, you shall not learn to follow the abominations of those nations. There shall not be found among you anyone who makes his son or his daughter pass through the fire, or one who practices witchcraft, or a soothsayer, or one who interprets omens, or a sorcerer, or one who conjures spells, or a medium, or a spiritist, or one who calls up the dead. For all who do these things are an abomination to the LORD, and because of these abominations the LORD your God drives them out from before you” (Deut 18:9-12).