Why Today’s Generation of High Schoolers Need a Gap Year

Five benefits of taking a year off before college.

When it comes to keeping the faith, the odds are increasingly against Gen Z, those born between 1995 and 2015. According to the evangelical Christian polling firm Barna Group’s recent study, the percentage of the U.S. population that identifies as Christian has been on a downward trend since the generation before baby boomers, which Barna calls “elders.” And the percentage of Gen Z that identifies as atheist is double that of the U.S. adult population (13% vs. 6%). 37% of Gen Z believe it is impossible to know for certain if God is real, compared to 32% of all adults. Not only that, Gen Z is uncertain about many other issues pertaining to morality and religion, with an increasingly relativistic worldview.

A Crisis of Knowledge

Jonathan Morrow of the Impact 360 Institute explains why he believes Gen Z can’t seem to commit to a Christian worldview. He lists two main reasons: the fear of being seen as judgmental and all that it encompasses, and what he calls the “crisis of knowledge.” The crisis of knowledge is the belief that we can only glean knowledge from the hard sciences. Both factors contribute to moral ambiguity; both are the product of this “unique cultural moment.”

This is what today’s Christian youth are up against. The answer, Morrow says, is not just sound apologetics. “True information is essential, but by itself it is not enough. It’s just as essential that students have space, relationships, and practices to take ownership of their faith.”

In partial response to this, HoneyRock, the Outdoor Center for Leadership Development of Wheaton College, launched a faith-based gap year called Vanguard. This program invites students into a year of Christ-centered ...

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Jesus’ Life Chosen for Two Very Different TV Series

One is scholarly with a big cable budget, the other is gritty and crowdfunded.

This month brings two profoundly different takes on the biblical Gospels to the small screen. In Jesus: His Life, which premiered Monday and runs through Easter, History seeks to commemorate the Lenten season with a reverent, fast-paced, inclusive miniseries.

“The story of Jesus is one of the cornerstones of Western civilization,” says Mary Donahue, executive producer of the series and senior vice president of programming for History. “Our production partners at Nutopia came to us with this new angle on the life of Jesus. As a network always looking for fresh ways to tell great stories, we were fascinated by the concept.”

History’s docudrama series combines dramatic vignettes filmed on location in Morocco with a wide spectrum of talking-head faith scholars. Its narrative scenes bring to life first-century Judea with desert vistas, elaborate palace sets, and other fitting locales over eight episodes.

Meanwhile, the other TV project has less emphasis on visual spectacle and more on character development. Independent show The Chosen is already turning heads in Hollywood. When upstart platform VidAngel Studios pitched the concept to followers online, they brought in $11 million—a new crowdfunding record for any media project.

Debuting online April 15, The Chosen will reimagine the radical ministry of Christ upending societal norms in a multi-season show. Creators aim for it to be faithful to the biblical text while gritty in tone. “A lot of Jesus projects on-screen are intentionally formal, which often means emotionally detached and less human,” says writer/director Dallas Jenkins.

“We’re striving in this show to lift the curtain and get to what is authentic and real,” ...

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Died: Robert Finley, Reformer of Foreign Missions

After preaching at Billy Graham rallies and revivals in Asia, the Christian Aid Mission founder introduced new emphasis on supporting indigenous missionaries.

Robert Finley—who founded Christian Aid Mission, considered the first missionary organization dedicated to supporting indigenous missions abroad—died last week at age 96.

Finley’s long ministry career intersects with major evangelical leaders and organizations, and his early insistence in the effectiveness of local missionaries over Western outsiders has become a driving principle among missions experts.

“Looking back on 85 years of memories, I am humbled to see God's hand leading me to be an advocate for native missionaries,” he wrote in his autobiography Apostolic Adventures. “I've seen these brave men and women who have sacrificed so much, sometimes their own lives, because of the call of God to reach their own people for Jesus Christ.”

As a young evangelist with InterVarsity Christian Fellowship and Youth for Christ, Finley preached alongside Billy Graham at US rallies, with Cliff Barrows leading the crowds in song. Traveling to China and then South Korea as a missionary, he served alongside Bob Pierce, who went on to found World Vision and Samaritan’s Purse.

His experiences in east Asia and India led him to prioritize the work of local missionaries overseas and to start ministries dedicated to supporting their evangelistic work in their own contexts: International Students Inc. (ISI), a college ministry dedicated to reaching and equipping foreign students, and then Christian Aid Mission, which helped fund indigenous missions around the world. (ISI partnered with the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association and Navigators for office space and staff in its early years.)

Over its history, Christian Aid Mission backed more than 1,500 ministries in 130 countries, including ...

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When Was Your Church’s Last Haystack Prayer Meeting?

Many evangelical mission organizations trace their history back to the Haystack Prayer Meeting.

On a balmy Saturday afternoon in August of 1806, five students from the Williams College in Williamstown, Massachusetts, gathered in a field for a prayer meeting.

Suddenly, a fierce thunderstorm broke above them. Caught unprotected from the storm’s winds and lightning strikes, the students turned to the nearest shelter at hand—a large haystack.

There, huddled under hundreds of pounds of cattle fodder, the students carried on with their meeting. One of them, Samuel Mills, laid the groundwork for a vision to reach South Asia with the gospel. But the students did not forget their own backyard: reaching America remained in their hearts.

That gathering became known as the “Haystack Prayer Meeting.” Out of that meeting emerged the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions, founded in 1810.

One of the first sending agencies in America, the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions, galvanized the modern missionary movement. The board sent dozens of Americans across the ocean, including Adoniram Judson, who would be called the father of Baptist missions.

Luther Rice, another of its early members, founded the college that became the prestigious George Washington University and played a pivotal role in creating the Southern Baptist Convention, the largest Protestant denomination in America.

At the place where the meeting occurred, a monument stands today commemorating this historic moment. At the top of the monument is the phrase, “THE FIELD IS THE WORLD.” Underneath those words, it says, “The birthplace of American foreign missions. 1806.”

Today, many historians would tell you that, in some way, virtually all mission organizations trace their history back to the Haystack ...

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‘Pointless’ Bones, ‘Flawed’ Birth Spacing, and ‘Broken’ Genes

Why our flaws alone can’t disprove God’s purpose.

Human mothers have remarkably short interbirth intervals, compared to other ape species. While birth spacing averages four years in gorillas and nearly eight years in some orangutans, women can return to fertility by two months postpartum or earlier, if not lactating, while those who breastfeed begin ovulating again sometime between three months to up to two years postpartum. That puts human interbirth intervals as short as one year—and we can all name a few Irish twins to prove it.

Biologist and popular science writer Nathan Lents sees humans’ cramped birth spacing as a “design flaw.” After all, decreased interbirth intervals are associated with higher infant mortality rates, as parents must shift already limited resources from one helpless infant to another. If nature is obviously capable of addressing this “flaw”—as it did in other apes—why are humans so defective? he asks.

Lents’s answer: It was an accident. Evolution, he writes in his recent book Human Errors, “doesn’t make plans.” Working through the mechanisms of genetic mutations and natural selection, evolution patches together adaptations that ensure the reproductive success of each generation but doesn’t consider long-term outcomes. The result is an array of human “glitches”—from pointless bones to backward retinas to superfluous or broken genes—which Lents cites to support his conclusion, that evolution is “random, sloppy, imprecise—and heartless.”

Lents draws these conclusions at a time when the church is already struggling to articulate the purpose of the human body amid ever-increasing opportunities for bodily enhancement and shifts in sexual ...

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Black and Evangelical: Why I Keep the Label

A conversation with an incredulous friend gave me a chance to tell my story.

I am both black and evangelical.

Two years ago I was challenged on these dual allegiances because they have been deemed mutually exclusive. It was during the 2016 presidential campaign and I was online registering for the annual conference of the Evangelical Theological Society. A friend was nearby and, upon noticing what I was doing, exclaimed, “You’re an evangelical?!”

It was a challenging question. For some it would seem odd. My friend is seminary-trained, robustly academic, and his theology abides squarely within the pale of historic Christian orthodoxy. He would seem to be the quintessential evangelical. In spite of this, he has chosen to cast off the label.

Why? Because he is African American and acutely aware of the intricacies associated with being both black and evangelical. He is unsettled by the bifurcation of the Gospel and social ethics. In his estimation, the division is the byproduct of privilege and is a reductionistic understanding of the Church’s mission. While he concedes that evangelicalism is a theological movement, he contends that it has been shaped by the dominant culture. The movement has a cultural identity that debases him based on his ethnicity. Consequently, he has chosen to uphold his theological identity while eschewing the term evangelical and its baggage. In contrast, I have concluded that preserving my theological identity obliges me to redeem the term and unpack the movement’s baggage.

In my opinion, my friend deserved a response. His confusion is understandable because he knows that I affirm his assessment. I too have been wounded by evangelicalism’s posture toward social ethics. But I have concluded that an exodus of ethnic minorities amounts to segregation ...

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China Shuts Down Another Big Beijing Church

Shouwang Church kept going even after it lost its pastor and worship space. Now, the government is again going after the unregistered congregation.

A prominent unregistered church in China, Shouwang Church in Beijing, was raided by Chinese police over the weekend and officially banned from gathering to worship.

Shouwang, which draws more than 1,000 attendees, is the fourth major underground congregation shut down by the Communist government over the past several months, as party leaders and heads of the state-sanctioned Three-Self Patriotic Movement intensify efforts to rid religious groups of Western influence and exert control to make them more Chinese.

Similar to earlier incidents at Early Rain Covenant Church in Sichuan, Zion Church in Beijing, and Rongguili Church in Guangzhou, officials interrupted Bible study gatherings at two Shouwang Church locations on Saturday, putting the activities to a halt, interrogating and briefly detaining 20-30 of the attendees, and switching the locks of their buildings to keep them from returning, according to International Christian Concern (ICC).

The church had been charged with violating the country’s Regulations of Religious Affairs and Regulations on the Registration and Management of Social Organizations by operating without government registration.

Shouwang members refused to sign a document pledging to never attend the church again, and leaders said the church will continue to worship by adjust meeting times and locations.

Throughout its 26-year history, Shouwang has refused to come under Communist authority and persevered despite persecution, with their “underground” services forced outside when evicted from their buildings starting in 2009 and founding pastor Jin Tianming under house arrest since 2011.

“China’s oppression against house churches will not be loosened,” Bob Fu, president of ChinaAid, ...

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