One in Four Pastors Plan to Retire Before 2030

Yet churches struggle to prepare those coming next.

Olive Baptist Church in Pensacola, Florida, has gotten serious about raising up a new generation of pastors. Normally, the congregation produces one or two young people every couple of years who feel a call. Right now, however, 12 young men are preparing to enter pastoral ministry.

Ted Traylor, who has led the church for 33 years, meets with them weekly.

“You’ve got to get old and see that you’ve got to have someone else coming,” Traylor said with a laugh. “I really do laugh at that, but it was a reality in my life. I’m now 69 years old, and I take a greater responsibility for the coming generation.”

Research released this month from the Barna Group suggests more baby boomer pastors need to follow suit. America’s churches are struggling to find a new generation of pastors as the current generation prepares to step aside, according to the research.

The graying of America’s pastors isn’t a new phenomenon, but it has become more pronounced. In 2022, just 16 percent of Protestant senior pastors were 40 years old or younger. The average age of a pastor is 52. Thirty years ago, 33 percent of US pastors were under 40, and the median age was 44.

“As a generation of clergy ages and prepares to step down, it is not clear that churches are prepared for the transition,” Barna says. “If this trend goes unaddressed, the Church in the US will face a real succession crisis.”

Many pastors worry their successors won’t be ready by the time they retire. Seventy-five percent agree with the statement “It is becoming harder to find mature young Christians who want to become pastors.” That’s up from 69 percent in 2015. Just 19 percent disagree ...

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Sammi Cheng: ‘Not Having a Smooth Path Allowed Me to Be Gentler and More Humble.’

The Hong Kong Christian actress and singer experienced God’s grace in depression and marital crisis and grew in her acting career

“I give today’s glory and praise to God. I want to thank God for not giving me a smooth path, because only without a smooth path have I better learned to be humble and gentle.”

On April 16, 2023, Sammi Cheng won the Best Actress and Best Original Film Song Awards for her part in the movie Lost Love at the 41st Hong Kong Film Awards, and she thanked God in her acceptance speech. Over the past 20 years, Sammi Cheng has been nominated six times for Best Actress without winning. She looked excited and moved as she stepped up to the stage to accept the award.

Though Sammi Cheng is not the only Christian among the many Hong Kong entertainers, she is indeed a special one. At a time when many Christian entertainers have left the public view for various reasons or even abandoned their faith, she never seemed far from us. Not only has she been present for the growth of our generation of Hong Kongers, but she has also let us witness her own transformation.

Those days of smooth paths

“Chotto matte yo…” (Do not pour out your love at once). “Chotto” (“Wait”) is a Cantonese pop song cover of a Japanese song. (“Chotto matte means “wait a minute” in Japanese.) Sammi Cheng performed the song with cool dance moves and in cutting-edge fashion in the 1990s, beginning her path to Cantopop Queen. She won third place in a contest as an up-and-coming singer and, within a few years of starting her career, captivated the attention of music fans with this particular song, winning over many Hong Kong youth in the day.

Later on, Sammi Cheng switched label companies and came out with many familiar hits, such as “Miss You,” “Can’t Let You Go,” “Understanding,” ...

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Bridging Sydney’s Churches and Southeast Asian Buddhists

A Thai-Chinese Australian works to help Christians better engage the invisible migrants in their midst.

This is the third article in the Engaging Buddhism series, which explores different facets of Buddhism and how Christians can engage with and minister to Buddhists.

Sydney is Australia’s second most populous city, with about 4.8 million people, and has one of the largest multicultural populations in the world—nearly half of its residents were born overseas. Based on the 2021 census, a little less than a quarter of the population is of Asian ancestry and 4 percent identify as Buddhists.

Yet Sydney churches don’t know how to connect with Buddhist-background immigrants in the city, especially those from Southeast Asia, according to Sage, a Thai-Chinese Australian woman ministering to the population. (Sage asked CT not to use her real name as it could impact her ministry.)

As someone with a foot in both worlds, Sage is working with Anglican churches in Sydney to bridge the divide and help them learn how to build trust within their communities and empower Buddhist-background believers. Her experience in this burgeoning ministry provides insights to Christians in the West who want to better engage Southeast Asian Buddhists. Below is a Q&A that has been edited and shortened for clarity.

Can you tell me about your background?

I’m part of two diasporas: I am of Chinese descent, and my mother is a Chinese-background Thai. I was born and raised in Australia by her and my Australian father. My father passed away early in my life, so I was really raised in Australia by someone in the Buddhist diaspora.

I wasn’t raised religiously Buddhist, but at the same time, I managed to inherit a lot of the worldview themes through my mom’s parenting. I think the biggest thing in classic Theravada Buddhism is the ...

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Jesus Is Calling … on Netflix’s ‘Beef’

The tearful worship prompted good and bad memories from growing up in Korean American Christianity—and a needed discussion on church hurt.

Are you hurting and broken within? Overwhelmed by the weight of your sin? Jesus is calling…”

I’ve sung these lyrics from “O Come to the Altar” countless times. I’ve heard the song at church, at conferences, in my car … but never did I expect to hear it on a hit Netflix show.

It wasn’t just the song. The entire church scene from Beef felt pulled from my life. As the worship band sang, the camera panned through the room to reveal congregants with their eyes closed and hands raised, a sea of black hair swaying in a rhythm that I knew all too well.

The sanctuary was well worn and outdated, the kind of space that could easily be converted into a multipurpose room. Mismatched chairs in rows served as pews, and the tilted commercial vertical blinds didn’t really block out the light. The doughnuts after the service were all too familiar. The only way it could’ve been better is if they had eaten rice, kimchi, and bean sprout or radish soup.

In the Netflix dark comedy Beef—currently the most popular show on the platform—actor Steven Yeun costars as Danny Cho, a struggling contractor who gets involved in a road rage incident. He’s had a hard life, and in a rock-bottom moment, he walks into a church sanctuary. Danny feels out of place in a room that aesthetically is anything but conducive to worship, yet he gets immersed in the communal praise around him. He cries, and a pastor comes to pray over him.

The worship hit especially close to home for me; not only did it remind me of nearly every Korean American immigrant church I attended growing up, but I also used to serve at the Los Angeles church whose band appears in the show. Hearing lyrics about God’s ...

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18 Christian Colleges Closed Since the Start of COVID-19

Enrollment numbers, financial challenges, and the pandemic spelled the end.

Iowa Wesleyan University freshman Emma Soukup started crying when she heard the news that her school, a 181-year-old United Methodist institution, would close at the end of this semester.

She told the Des Moines Register it felt like a tornado devastated her home. She called her dad. “I don’t know what to do,” she told him.

She is not the only one.

A new study from Higher Ed Dive found three dozen colleges and universities have closed or merged since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. Eighteen of them are Christian, including Methodist, Lutheran, Roman Catholic, Baptist, Church of Christ, and Independent Christian Church institutions. One minute they were there—seemingly as solid as the buildings, invested with the mission of integrating faith and learning, full of students’ hopes and ambitions—and then they were gone.

The schools were all small and struggling before COVID-19. They faced devastating demographic shifts, declining enrollment, internal conflict exacerbated by ongoing crises, and, most of all, unrelenting financial challenges. Some would have certainly closed even without a global health crisis. For others, the coronavirus was the last stiff breeze that blew them over the edge.

“Small institutions are resilient or they wouldn’t still be in existence,” said David Fincher, head of Central Christian College of the Bible, which absorbed St. Louis Christian College in 2022. “At the end of the day, though, there’s only so much resiliency gets you when there’s a perfect storm.”

In Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, a mainline Lutheran university saw the storm rising in high school statistics. Fewer and fewer students attended the region’s ...

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Gratitude Changes Our Desires

Christians worship a strange Giver who gives strange gifts in strange ways.

Gratitude is all the rage these days.

Since the mid-2000s, when the writings of positive psychologist Robert Emmons got the train rolling, a veritable industry has sprung up around the study of gratitude. A number of research projects, special academic journal issues, reference books, and entire scholarly monographs are devoted to the topic. There are also hundreds of journals, phone apps, and podcasts offering practical advice on how one can lead a grateful life.

Christians should welcome all of this. We are, after all, supposed to be a grateful people, perhaps the most grateful of everyone. And considering the malaise of post-pandemic life, our embittered political polarization, and the vitriolic cancel culture today—it’s hard to imagine a better time for us to double down on the value of gratitude.

For Christians, of course, gratitude should begin and end with our thankfulness to God. And yet many of us do not experience this with the kind of frequency, intensity, and durability that seem appropriate given how extraordinary God’s benefits are.

Why do we struggle to be consistently grateful to God, even when we believe—or at least say we believe—that God is our ultimate and incomparable benefactor?

One problem is inattention. We may know in an abstract sense that God is the greatest Giver, but until we start paying attention to where God’s gifts show up, we’re not likely to experience gratitude. Another issue is resentment. We know God is often good to us, but we’re also mad when God doesn’t give us what we want, so we withhold our gratitude.

Paying more attention and dealing with our resentment are crucial if we are to grow in our gratitude toward God. But even when we are ...

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Alliance University’s Financial Woes Threaten Accreditation

The school formerly known as Nyack College has had money troubles for years. But school leadership is optimistic with rising enrollment.

Alliance University, known until a name change in 2022 as Nyack College, faces the loss of its accreditation due to financial troubles, after a 2022 audit cast doubt on the school as a “going concern.” Accreditors visited the Manhattan campus on Monday, and a June hearing will determine the school’s accreditation status.

The Middle States Commission on Higher Education (MSCHE) recently placed Alliance on “show cause” status, meaning the school must show why its accreditation should not be revoked. MSCHE also placed The King’s College in this status last month, threatening the only two historically evangelical colleges in Manhattan—and the only two Council for Christian Colleges & Universities (CCCU) members in New York City—with removal of accreditation at the same time. The schools’ troubles are part of a larger crisis in Christian higher education.

Alliance’s auditors in 2022 noted “recurring losses in net assets” and “recurring negative cash flows from operations” that caused them to doubt its ability to continue. MSCHE put Alliance on probation in June 2022 just before the school’s audit was released.

But an audit of the school in 2017 also warned of a failing institution, and Alliance has survived the years since of declining enrollment and a pandemic. It has been coming out of its financial free fall, especially with support from its parent denomination, the Christian and Missionary Alliance (C&MA).

Enrollment last year was up 12 percent, and the school expects to have a positive cash flow for the first time in a decade next year, Alliance’s president Rajan Mathews told CT. Applications for next year are up significantly, ...

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What Are Evangelical Voters in Iowa Focusing On: Everything

The world feels out of control. They want someone who will fix it.

Sitting in rows of rectangular tables and eating boxed dinners from Chick-fil-A, over a thousand evangelicals in Iowa got their first look at 2024 Republican presidential hopefuls.

The Iowa Faith and Freedom Coalition’s Spring Kick-off event on Saturday represented the first cattle call of the year, a forum for GOP candidates to court an indispensable voting bloc.

From the podium, candidates celebrated recent anti-abortion victories in the states and in the legal system. Former vice president Mike Pence, Sen. Tim Scott of South Carolina, and former Arkansas governor Asa Hutchinson spoke of the importance of religious liberty, decried “wokeness,” and expressed concern over the southern border and the threat of China’s economic ascendance.

The audience paid attention as the politicians recounted their faith experiences and emphasized their commitments to conservative values, but many voters had no top-of-mind policy issue they wanted the candidates to address. A small exhibition gallery off the main event hall housed display booths for candidates, local businesses, and advocacy groups focusing on issues like abortion and parental rights.

“I’ll be honest; it’s hard to pick one,” said Kevin Branstetter, a 56-year-old project manager from Waukee. “I just want somebody who is going to tell me the truth.”

When asked what she is most concerned about this election cycle, Jolene Rosebeck, a former teacher from Waukee, said, “Everything.”

Other Iowans at the event echoed the view that there are too many important issues and crises; they just want someone who can fix things. For many evangelicals, the ideal person for that job is still former president Donald Trump, who ...

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Barely Anyone Reads the Bible in Germany. So Why Are Luther Bibles Selling So Well?

A revised edition of Reformer’s translation ranked among 2022 bestsellers.

Only 4 percent of Germans say they read the Bible every day, according to a poll conducted by Insa-Consulere and the German Christian news agency IDEA. A full 70 percent say they never read it at all.

And yet in 2022—500 years after its initial publication—Martin Luther’s German translation of the Scripture was a bestseller once again. The German Bible Society (Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft), based in Stuttgart, sold 130,000 copies last year.

This could, perhaps, presage a resurgence of Bible reading, but Christoph Rösel, the Bible society’s general secretary, would be surprised if that’s the case. It’s more likely, he said, that people care about the historic importance of the Bible for German language and literature. They buy it out of curiosity and respect.

“It is and will remain a classic,” he said. “Our understanding of the world and nature, our art, literature and music, our annual holidays have all been shaped by Luther’s Bible and the religious practice derived from it over the centuries.”

Just don’t ask too many questions about what that Bible says.

“People may not know it much,” Rösel explains, “beyond the parts they already have in their head.”

The German language is peppered with idioms from Luther’s translation, like “better an end with horror than a horror without end” (Ps. 73:18–19) and “growing with his pounds” (Luke 19:11–27). Every day, people use words developed by the 16th-century Reformer to express the holy text in workable, common language—vocabulary like bloodhound, baptism of fire, and heart’s content.

And the language itself owes a debt to Luther.

“Luther’s ...

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‘I Am Jesus Christ’ Invites Gamers to Play God

But doing battle with Satan in the Savior’s sandals prompts some to press pause.

Joe Morgan approached a man in a market in the video game and asked if he knew John the Baptist.

“Yeah, I punched him in the face last week,” the man said. “If I get the chance, I’m probably going to kill him.”

Morgan laughed. That wasn’t what he was expecting someone to say to Jesus. Playing as the Messiah in the new video game I Am Jesus Christ, which challenges players to walk in Jesus’ sandals from just before his baptism all the way to Calvary, the grave, and resurrection, was turning out to be kind of odd.

For example: “After 40 days fasting in the desert, you basically have a magic fireball fight with Satan,” Morgan said. “You have to destroy dark crystals and pray before you can perform a miracle. It’s very bizarre.”

Morgan is a founding member of evangelical pop culture group Geeks Under Grace, which among other things reviews new video games. He isn’t opposed to biblical games. But I Am Jesus Christ, a demo version of which came out on the gaming platform Steam in December 2022, didn’t seem great.

“I don’t want to naysay anyone who’s trying to spread the gospel,” Morgan said, “but people can tell the difference in quality in a thing that is good and a thing that is bad. And this does not scream quality.”

Maksym Vysochanskiy, the Polish game developer behind I Am Jesus Christ, is not surprised by reactions like this. But he’s not dissuaded either.

“Many players thought that this was a joke game at the beginning,” he said. “That doesn’t stop us, and we continue development.”

The idea for the game first came, Vysochanskiy said, when he was watching ...

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After Fasting Deaths, Kenyan Police Find Dozens Buried on Preacher’s Property

Christians and politicians are once again calling for authorities to protect citizens from dangerous faith leaders.

In the forest compound owned by the founder of Good News International Church, Kenyan police have discovered dozens of starving people and 65 bodies buried in unmarked graves. They arrested two people who weren’t starving: the church’s leader, Paul Mackenzie, and Mackenzie’s ministry partner, pastor Zablon Wa Yesu.

Since Friday, authorities searching Mackenzie’s land outside the coastal town of Malindi have exhumed bodies in shallow graves, including mass burials with as many as seven people—men, women, and children.

The investigation follows the police rescue of 15 members of Mackenzie’s congregation from the property earlier this month. Their fasting was so severe that four died before they reached the hospital. Others continued to refuse food despite being emaciated.

Police believe the victims are acting at the direction of Mackenzie, an end times preacher who promised them heaven if they starved to death.

Christians in Kenya have longed for a solution to regulate the spate of fraudulent preachers in their country. Mackenzie’s high-profile case has once again alarmed them, their politicians, and their neighbors, upset at the fatal consequences to manipulative, cultish practices by leaders who claim to be pastors.

Police found nine more starving people on Monday, when they arrested Yesu, who was reading a Bible on the property. Yesu said he wasn’t fasting but had a planned to in June. Authorities have not yet released details on the condition of the bodies or how long they have been buried.

The horrific discoveries at Mackenzie’s property have reignited the call for the government to ensure illegal and dangerous activity cannot use religious freedom as a cover.

Kenyan president ...

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‘Suzume’ Opens a Door to the Spiritual Discipline of Delight

To journey out of nostalgia and amnesia, we need to pay attention to God’s presence in our present.

There’s something irresistible about viewing an empty, abandoned building on the big screen. The camera often pans slowly from left to right or zooms in menacingly while we watch with bated breath, unable to tear our eyes away as a sense of impending doom grows.

I felt this visual tension viscerally while watching Suzume no Tojimari (literally “Suzume’s Locking Up”), the fourth-highest-grossing anime film of all time, even before its North American release on April 14. Written and directed by Japanese auteur Makoto Shinkai (of the award-winning 2016 film Your Name), Suzume is a coming-of-age movie where deserted places like a hot spring, an amusement park, and a school become breeding grounds for end-of-the-world-type … stuff (spoilers ahead).

In some ways, the apocalypse has already arrived for the film’s protagonist, 17-year-old high-schooler Suzume (voiced by Nichole Sakura in English). She lost her mother in the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami, which killed 20,000 people and activated the Fukushima nuclear reactor meltdown.

On her way to school one day, she encounters Souta (Josh Keaton), a traveler on a mission who is mysteriously turned into a three-legged chair. The duo traipse across Japan locking otherworldly doors popping up in various abandoned places in a bid to prevent a ghastly wormlike creature from wreaking destruction.

Reviewers have praised Suzume as a unique story of hope amid grief and loss. While I agree with their assessment, what enthralls me most about the film is in how it probes Japan’s collective experience of nostalgia and amnesia—a desire for what once was and could have been, alongside a creeping erosion of treasured memories ...

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Our Civic Leaders Are Not Above the Law

Trump’s arrest is another reminder that presidents don’t have political immunity in a democracy

In the past couple weeks since Trump’s arrest, I’ve seen some reactions from his conservative supporters along these lines: “If they can go after Trump, they can also go after you”—which is the whole point of the rule of law.

Donald Trump was indicted on 34 counts of falsifying business records. He and his defenders claim the indictment is a “witch hunt” and is evidence that the justice system has become politicized.

Politicized justice is a real problem. In many countries, the courts are not independent and there are few checks and balances protecting their integrity. In such cases, courts become little more than rubber stamps for executive rule or, on the other end of the spectrum, for the tyranny of the majority.

Judicial independence is a cornerstone of the rule of law for a free society. Without it, newly empowered parties have a habit of prosecuting, imprisoning, and even executing former presidents and prime ministers on flimsy charges as political revenge. Officeholders will seek to stay in power by any means necessary to escape prosecution. Political life deteriorates into a soap opera of charismatic criminals rotating between prison and the presidency.

But that should not lead us to make the opposite mistake and grant all former presidents and officeholders immunity from any legal prosecution. Officeholders are human, like the rest of us, and just as prone to sin, corruption, and criminality. As Christians, we should know this better than anyone.

In fact, it is precisely because of their access to power and wealth that officeholders are likely to face even greater temptation and have more opportunity to commit crime. Unless we think they are somehow immune to such temptation, ...

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Died: Ron Hamilton, Better Known as Patch the Pirate

When cancer took his left eye, he saw a God-given opportunity for children’s ministry.

Ron Hamilton wrote hundreds of hymns and worship songs, including “Rejoice in the Lord,” “Here Am I, Lord,” and “I Saw Jesus in You.” He was also a composer and published 20 Christmas cantatas.

But he is known most for his sillier work: 41 kids albums, written by and starring him as the one-eyed “Patch the Pirate.” Alongside his wife as “Sissy the Seagull” and their kids playing assorted sea creatures and crew, he went on adventures and sang lessons about life, the Bible, and God.

“Not a lot of Christian pirates around,” Hamilton told a church in 2014. “I’m about the only one. It’s a lot of fun.”

Hamilton lost his left eye to cancer when he was 26. He started wearing an eye patch, and as he recounted many times over the years, children began to recognize him as a pirate, pointing him out to their parents, asking if they could be pirates too, and greeting him in his home church with a hearty “Ahoy!”

The Hamiltons put out the first Patch the Pirate album in 1981, a second in 1982, and released them annually after that. More than two million copies have been sold, and the songs are broadcast on more than 450 radio stations, making Patch the Pirate one of the largest children’s outreach programs on the radio.

In 2018, as dementia was rapidly shrinking his world, Hamilton’s wife, Shelly Garlock Hamilton, tried to encourage him by reminding him of that success. “Do you realize how many people you have blessed with your music, Ron?” she said.

Hamilton replied: “I’d like to think God did it.”

He died on Wednesday, surrounded by family, at the age of 72.

Tributes and remembrances poured in ...

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Nashville Shooting Intensifies Attention Around Christian School Safety

Administrators are seeking ways to “be alert and sober minded,” adding specialized training, personnel, and physical upgrades.

Last month’s shooting at The Covenant School was not only the deadliest in Nashville—it was also the most high-profile attack on a church school in the US. The incident has shaken views of Christian schools as safe havens against violence and led administrators across the country to revisit their own security measures.

“There’s been a sense of, ‘Those problems don't seem to happen in our types of schools,’ and (the Nashville shooting) shattered that,” Sean Corcoran, who leads Brainerd Baptist School in Chattanooga, Tennessee, told Reuters.

He said the recent shooting exposed how deadly incidents can happen even when leaders "did everything right”—The Covenant School had security cameras, locking double doors, alarms, and procedures in place from a training the year before.

Safety is among the top reasons parents choose private education, but how schools protect students—staff trainings, building features, and procedures—is up to its leaders.

Several church security experts told CT they see an uptick in interest following mass shootings. The Nashville shooting in particular has been a wakeup call for parents who send their children to Christian schools and church academies.

Indiana mom Brooke Wine chose Heritage Christian School for her daughter because they have numerous security guards on campus, including at an entry point for vehicles.

“Without the proper ID or badging system, you get stopped and checked,” Wine told CT. “I personally felt much safer with my child going to a place with increased protection, in comparison to many other schools we looked into.”

At the Dade Christian and Masters Academy in ...

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Interview: Evangelical End Times Thinking Has a Baby-and-Bathwater Issue

We shouldn’t toss out Christ’s second coming with bizarre theories of how it will unfold.

In recent decades, many Christians have taken pains to emphasize that faith in Christ is more than a mere “ticket” to eternal life. This has led to a renewed focus on the significance of faith in the here and now. At the same time, however, it can also cause us to downplay New Testament references to a hope grounded in a future event—Jesus’ second coming.

Chris Davis, pastor of Groveton Baptist Church in Alexandria, Virginia, was among those who avoid the topic of the Second Coming, out of embarrassment at the wild speculations and contentious debates that eschatology sometimes inspires. But in a season when hope was running thin, he returned to the theme and discovered afresh how it focuses our hopes and desires upon Jesus. This journey of rediscovery culminated in a new book, Bright Hope for Tomorrow: How Anticipating Jesus’ Return Gives Strength for Today.

J. Todd Billings, author of The End of the Christian Life and professor of theology at Western Theological Seminary in Holland, Michigan, spoke with Davis about his book.

Your book opens with a story. You had been a pastor for 10 years and experienced various health and family struggles. You and your wife were aching for a looming two-month Sabbatical. As you write, “Our daily goal was simply to make it to that day when the Sabbatical would set everything right.”

What happened when your sabbatical came? And what’s the significance of our tendency to look forward to some moment when everything, presumably, will be set right?

What happened was we took ourselves on sabbatical with us. Which meant that very little changed over those two months. I wish I knew why humans expect things to get better. I’d like to think that it ...

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To Whom Shall We Go: Conservative Anglicans Discuss Divorce from Church of England

Rwanda gathering of Gafcon conservatives draws 1,300 from 53 nations as Global South fellowship moves toward merger.

A “revived, renewed, and reordered” Anglican Communion will be the core message delivered tomorrow to 1,300 conservative Anglicans from 53 countries meeting this week in Kigali, Rwanda to discuss “to whom shall we go?”

The final statement of the fourth Global Anglican Futures Conference (Gafcon) will outline an extremely critical response by the conservative majority of the Anglican Communion to the recent moves by Church of England bishops to adopt prayers to bless same-sex marriages.

Gafcon is the network that welcomed the Anglican Church in North America (ACNA) into the Anglican family, if not the official Anglican Communion, in 2008.

“We owe our existence to Gafcon,” said ACNA archbishop Foley Beach. “The first Gafcon called for the formation of a new province in North America.”

Chair of the Gafcon primates council, Beach called for the liberal provinces of the Anglican Communion to repent. He added, “Unless the Archbishop of Canterbury repents, we cannot regard him as the first among equals.”

Then pointing out that “sexual sins are not the only sins in the Bible,” Beach called for Gafcon churches to be repenting churches also.

Archbishop Stephen Samuel Kaziimba Mugalu, leader of the eight-million-strong Church of Uganda, also called archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby to repent.

“I am disappointed because, in Uganda, the message of the gospel came from the Church of England in 1877,” he toldThe Pastor’s Heart, a livestream podcast produced by Sydney Anglicans. “The first missions came, and we had polygamy as a normal way of marriage, and every man had three, four, five women. And they ceased having [that number of] wives because ...

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Save the Planet. Read Nature Fiction.

As an ecologist, I believe that works of literature draw us closer to God and deeper into creation care.

In my senior year of college, I studied ecology in Costa Rica and Ecuador. For two weeks, I lived with other students on a small boat in the Galápagos Islands. On one of our excursions, the captain told us there were whales in the area, and I went up to the deck just in time to see a humpback swimming straight at the side of our boat.

At what seemed to be the very last second, the whale turned on its side and looked up at me. Staring into the eye of that whale was one of the most wondrous moments of my life. In that moment, I experienced awe and joy. I was deeply curious about the whale and felt compelled to act—to learn, to change, and even to protect.

That encounter lasted only a minute, if that, but it had a profound effect on me. In the years since then, I’ve had similar experiences while camping or hiking or wandering beyond a trail. Not everyone experiences creation in this way, nor is everyone physically able to hike through natural landscapes. Still others simply don’t have access.

Nevertheless, I believe everyone can pursue wonder by spending time in fictional landscapes.

On this topic, the works of C. S. Lewis have been significant to me. I remember the first time I “heard” Aslan’s song in The Magician’s Nephew:

In the darkness something was happening at last. A voice had begun to sing. … The voice was suddenly joined by other voices; … the blackness overhead, all at once, was blazing with stars. … The Lion was pacing to and fro about that empty land and singing his new song. … And as he walked and sang the valley grew green with grass. It spread out from the Lion like a pool. It ran up the sides of the little hills like a wave. In a few minutes ...

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Chicago Settles $205K Case to Allow Evangelism in Millennium Park

After security stopped Wheaton College students from sharing their faith, a federal lawsuit forced the city to change its speech rules.

The city of Chicago has settled with four Wheaton College students who were prohibited from evangelizing in the city’s Millennium Park in 2018. The case pushed the city to change park regulations to allow evangelizing and other public speech.

The city council approved a $205,000 settlement on Wednesday, which includes $5,000 each for the students as well as attorneys’ fees for the five-year litigation.

“I’m thankful that the gospel is going to be preached in Millennium Park again,” Caeden Hood, one of the Wheaton students, told CT. Hood has graduated from Wheaton and is now studying at Knox Theological Seminary in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. “We’re willing to work with the authorities. … That’s fine. We just don’t want the proclamation of the gospel to be hindered.”

A group of Wheaton students would go to Chicago every Friday, into the subways or on street corners, and start conversations, pass out tracts, or do street preaching. Sometimes they would go to Millennium Park, one of the most popular parks in the city with the famous “Bean” sculpture.

City rules prohibited “the making of speeches” and passing out of literature in most of the 24-acre park. In 2018, park security had asked Wheaton students passing out tracts to stop, which they did, but then in subsequent interactions security also stopped them from evangelizing. Four students—Hood, Matt Swart, Jeremy Chong, and Gabriel Emerson—consulted with a Wheaton professor who reached out to a Christian law firm, Mauck & Baker.

Attorney John Mauck had previously handled religious land use cases, especially for Black storefront churches in Chicago that were being zoned out ...

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Charles Stanley Was Everyone's Pastor and Mine

One of the most beloved televised preachers was also a dear friend and spiritual father to my family.

Charles F. Stanley had the unflinching zeal of Billy Sunday and the neighborly compassion of Mister Rogers.

A shy, small-town boy from Dry Fork, Virginia, who came to be known as “America’s Pastor” and one of the most prolific broadcast preachers around the world.

Stanley pastored First Baptist Church of Atlanta for over 50 years and founded the global broadcasting organization In Touch Ministries. On Tuesday at the age of 90, he entered Heaven—a place he often described as his final and permanent home.

His ministry spanned 65 years, growing from humble origins to a worldwide reach. He authored more than 70 books and his sermon messages have been heard in over 127 languages internationally through radio, shortwave, television, and solar-powered audio devices.

Stanley’s appeal to diverse audiences was reflected not only in his global footprint, but also—perhaps most so—in the diversity of his local congregation at First Baptist Atlanta. This thriving church community incorporates members from over 100 nations who experience a wide range of socio-economic realities.

My family was one of those immigrant families who found a home at his church, which means Stanley’s influence played an integral role in shaping our trajectory. I came to know him as a spiritual grandfather of sorts—he discipled my dad in the 1970s, led my mom to faith in Christ in 1980, and has personally encouraged me at critical points in my own journey for over three decades.

Stanley grew up in poverty during the Great Depression. His dad died when he was 9 months old, and his mother worked at textile mill to support them making $9.10 a week. At the age of 13 in 1945, Stanley became a newspaper delivery boy, working ...

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Neither Snow Nor Rain Nor Sabbath: Mail Delivery Debate Goes to Supreme Court

An evangelical from Pennsylvania argues the postal service should have accommodated his Sabbatarian beliefs.

Maybe if Gerald Groff had only asked for one Sunday off, that would have been okay. Or he could have just asked for part of Sunday, shifting his schedule to deliver the mail after church, and that would have been fine too.

But Groff was a Sabbatarian, refusing to deliver mail any Sunday or any part of a Sunday. According to solicitor general Elizabeth B. Prelogar, that meant it was “unwarranted” and “inappropriate” for him to ask the United States Postal Service to accommodate his ongoing, every-week religious commitment.

“It’s about the nature of the accommodation,” Prelogar told the US Supreme Court during oral arguments in Groff v. Dejoy on Tuesday. “You’re just excusing someone from doing part of their job.”

The attorney representing the evangelical postal worker protested that wasn’t the right way to think about religious accommodations. The mail carrier wasn’t shirking. There were just limits on his time, because of his faith.

“It’s not a get-out-of-work free card,” attorney Aaron Streett said. “He offered to work Saturdays and non-Sunday holidays.”

The court will now have to consider when an employer has to accommodate an employee’s religious practice. In the Equal Employment Opportunity Act of 1972, Congress said that employers have to be accommodating—as long as that doesn’t cause “undue hardship” to their businesses. A few years later, in Trans World Airlines v. Hardison, the Supreme Court ruled that a “hardship” meant anything “more than a de minimis cost,” using the Latin for “minimum” or “trifling.”

The nine justices and two lawyers debated ...

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Died: Charles Stanley, First Baptist Church Atlanta Pastor Who Led with Stubborn Faith

In Touch preacher lived by the motto “Obey God and leave all the consequences to him.”

Charles Stanley once took a punch to the face for his church. The longtime pastor and oft-praised preacher, who died on Tuesday at age 90, fought hard to lead in his Southern Baptist congregation, earning him a reputation for faithful obstinacy, a commitment to following God’s will, and a life of devout prayer.

He frequently repeated his life motto, which he learned from his grandfather: “Obey God and leave all the consequences to him.” That kind of obedience wouldn’t come without cost, Stanley said, but God rewards stubborn faith.

“Granddad told me, ‘Charles, if God tells you to run your head through a brick wall, you head for the wall,’” he wrote in his 2016 memoir, “‘and when you get there, God will make a hole for it.’”

Stanley was the pastor at First Baptist Church Atlanta for 51 years. He started as associate minister in 1969, when the megachurch had 5,000 members, and remained in the pulpit until 2020, when it had about 15,000 members. He also preached daily on the radio and television through In Touch Ministries, which he founded in 1972, and was widely regarded as one of the best preachers of his generation, along with Charles Swindoll and Billy Graham.

Stanley’s son, Andy, is also a megachurch pastor in Atlanta and a much-praised preacher. They were the only father-son duo to rank on Lifeway Research or George W. Truett Theological Seminary’s lists of most-influential living preachers.

Stanley was a founding member of both the Moral Majority and the Christian Coalition, served as president of the Southern Baptist Convention at a key moment in the struggle between conservatives and moderates, and wrote more than 50 books.

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ERLC President, Covenant Parent Urges Tennessee to Pass Proposed Gun Reform

Southern Baptist leader Brent Leatherwood calls on the state to “restrain evil” through Governor Lee’s plan to keep weapons from those deemed a threat to themselves or others.

Writing as the president of the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission (ERLC) and the father of three children who survived the shooting at the Covenant School in Nashville, Brent Leatherwood pleaded with Tennessee’s elected officials to “oppose evil and protect innocent lives” by taking action on gun reform in the state.

In a letter published by The Tennessean, Leatherwood backed a proposal by Gov. Bill Lee to enact extreme risk protection orders, allowing authorities to temporarily restrict weapons from people at risk of hurting themselves or others.

Leatherwood urged the lieutenant governor and legislators to overcome partisan divides to move forward, even if it requires extending the legislative session to do so.

“Yes, it is true we live in a world tainted by terrible acts and deeds, but that is never an excuse for inaction,” he wrote.

“While it may not prevent every instance of this sort of violence, it will prevent some, and thereby save innocent lives. That should be more than enough reason to advance this proposal.”

His discussion of the government’s responsibilities to protect its citizens and their essential liberties, including the right to life, echo a thread he shared on Twitter last week in response to statistics that gun deaths among kids in the US grew 50 percent in two years.

Leatherwood, who worked as the executive director of the Tennessee GOP prior to his six years at ERLC, said “we all have a responsibility” to address gun violence as a community—including Christians who are called to love their neighbors and “law-abiding ...

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Lawsuit: Pastor Judah Smith Expects Staff to Leave a ‘Money Trail’

Plenty of churches preach about giving 10 percent. But is it legal to make it a condition of employment?

It started with a car crash in 2020. Rachel Kellogg, a video editor for a megachurch in Seattle, was hit in her Volvo by a driver who failed to yield the right of way. With her car totaled and hefty bills from her ER stay, Kellogg found herself saddled with debt. She didn’t tithe for most of 2021.

Her supervisors noticed. “Im [sic] not sure if you have started giving since our last conversation, but that needs to happen asap,” one wrote to her via Slack, a work messaging app.

Then came a written reprimand from another: “It is my hope that you will take advantage of this opportunity to correct your behavior so that you may succeed in this position.” If her “misconduct” did not change, the note said, she could face termination.

Many churches see a 10 percent tithe as the scriptural standard—and an often-unspoken expectation for church staff. But can it be a condition of employment?

That is the question at the center of a class-action lawsuit Kellogg has filed against her congregation, Churchome, the church led by bespectacled nondenominational pastor Judah Smith. Smith is known for his connections with celebrities including Justin Bieber, Russell Wilson, and Lana Del Ray.

The suit alleges Churchome engaged in “a systemic scheme of wage and hour abuse against their employees” by requiring them to give back to the church a tenth of what they were paid. Under Washington state law employers cannot rebate their employees’ wages.

Beyond the legal questions, Kellogg’s dispute with Churchome reveals another dimension to the longstanding tension around giving in churches. Some pastors can be nervous to preach on tithing or to ask members to make financial commitments, ...

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​​One Night with George Verwer Changed My Life

I had never heard of him, but here he was convincing me to pray for a country I couldn't even find on a map.

It was October 1959.

I was a sophomore at Wheaton College, majoring in history and planning to attend law school after graduation. One Friday night, four friends convinced me to drive with them into Chicago to attend an all-night prayer meeting.

The leader of the prayer gathering was one George Verwer, a 20-year-old student at Moody Bible Institute whom I had never met before. The focus of our evening was to pray for unreached Muslims in Muslim-majority countries. No one in my group of friends had ever thought about Muslims, much less about doing anything on their behalf.

I had become a Christian a couple of years before this meeting, and was deeply in love with Jesus. I knew about missionaries and was even attending the same school as Jim Elliot and Nate Saint, who had died in the South American rainforest while evangelizing to the Huaorani people a few years earlier. But “missions” still felt like something for other believers to embark on.

Nevertheless, my friends persuaded me into spending my Friday night in a room that I soon found out was devoid of coffee, alcohol, or food. Instead, the space was full of people who were hovering over maps of the Middle East, the Indian subcontinent, and Southeast Asia, praying for the Lord to send laborers in obedience to his mandate in Matthew 9:36-38.

I walked towards the skinny young man I assumed was George, intending to shake his hand. Instead, he poked his finger into my chest and growled, "What country are you praying for?”

“What's left?” I said, barely above a whisper.

“YOU'VE GOT LIBYA!” he thundered and sent me to join one of the prayer groups.

I had no idea where Libya was. I guessed it might be an island in the West Indies.

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Died: George Verwer, Who Asked Christians ‘Are You Ready To Go?’

The founder of Operation Mobilisation moved untold numbers to proclaim God’s love around the globe.

George Verwer had a question.

When the 18-year-old and his friend finished praying in a dorm room in Maryville, Tennessee, Verwer looked at his college buddy and asked, “Well? Are you ready to go?”

Dale Rhoton was startled. He had only just heard Verwer’s idea that they should sell what they owned and use the money to buy a truck that summer, fill it with Spanish-language editions of the Gospel of John, and drive it to Mexico, where 70 percent of people didn’t have access to Scriptures. They had only just prayed about it.

“George,” he said, “it takes longer than that.”

Verwer didn’t see why it should. The future founder of Operation Mobilisation (OM) saw a spiritual need. They could meet that need. The rest didn’t matter to him.

“His one all-consuming passion in life has been to be a channel, whereby people would become long-term friends of Jesus,” Rhoton later wrote. “His comfort zone is breaking out of his comfort zone. He only really feels secure when he’s risking it all.”

That lifelong “Verwer fervor” for missions moved untold numbers of Christians to cross borders, cultures, and continents to proclaim the good news of God’s love. OM became one of the largest mission organizations of the 20th century, sending out thousands every year on short- and long-term trips. OM currently has about 5,000 workers from 100 different countries. An estimated 300 other mission agencies were also started as a result of contact with OM or launched by former OMers.

Verwer died Friday at the age of 84.

Lindsay Brown, who led the International Fellowship of Evangelical ...

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MLK’s Epistle to the White Church Still Preaches

On the 60th anniversary of Martin Luther King Jr.’s Letter from a Birmingham Jail, Christians are reminded of how much further we must go.

On Good Friday in 1963, eight white Alabama clergymen published an open letter in Birmingham calling for the Black community to cease their civil rights demonstrations.

These church leaders—from Methodist, Episcopal, Presbyterian, Baptist, Catholic, and Jewish traditions—advised that “when rights are consistently denied, a cause should be pressed in the courts and in negotiations among local leaders, and not in the streets.”

In response, Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. penned a timely message—beginning on the margins of newspapers and then on smuggled-in scraps of paper—not knowing the profound impact it would have for generations to come. His “Letter from Birmingham Jail” is said to be the most important document of the civil rights era, compared by some to Jefferson’s Declaration of Independence for its impactful call for social change.

Although the “separate but equal” segregation law had been struck down a decade earlier through the landmark case of Brown v. Board of Education, some cities and states were resistant.

In Birmingham, one of the most segregated cities in America, notorious local safety commissioner Eugene “Bull” Connor and other white segregationists got a state judge to pass a temporary injunction banning all pro-integration activity. And after leading a peaceful march, King and other protesters were arrested.

From his cell, King made a compelling argument for the importance of peaceful, public protest in the pursuit of justice. He explained the four steps of nonviolent activism: collecting facts to determine whether injustice exists, negotiating with local officials to work toward just resolution, practicing restraint when actions ...

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Water, Water Everywhere: How Christians View Thailand’s Water Festival

During Songkran, Christians find parallels in honoring their elders but point to the living water.

This is the third article in the Engaging Buddhism series, which explores different facets of Buddhism and how Christians can engage with and minister to Buddhists.

For the first time since the pandemic began, the massive water fights of Songkran have returned to Thailand’s streets. Taking place during the hottest week of the year, children and adults spray each other with colorful plastic water guns. People stand in the back of truck beds and use buckets to fling water and ice at neighboring trucks. Motorcycle drivers squint to see through the deluge—which often comes at them from multiple directions—while their passengers soak as many people as can as they pass.

Water—and lots of it—replaces fireworks in Songkran, Thailand’s new year celebration, held April 13–15. The holiday is also celebrated in Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, Sri Lanka, and several other regions that follow the Buddhist calendar. According to Buddhist tradition, water symbolizes ritual cleansing, righting last year’s wrongs, and welcoming the clean slate of a new year.

Beyond the raucous water fights on the streets, Thai Buddhists visit temples during Songkran to pour water over statues of Buddha and the hands of monks. This symbolic act is believed to atone for sins, bring purification, and make merit (gain good karma by performing good deeds). Worshipers also bring food for monks to make merit.

Spending time with family is also integral to Songkran. During the holiday, Thais travel across the nation to visit their family and strengthen familial bonds as they move toward the new year. They also pay respect to their elders and seek their blessing by pouring water over their hands. People exchange floral garlands ...

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The Evangelical Temptation to Prove Ourselves

This piece was adapted from Russell Moore’s newsletter. Subscribe here.

For a long time, I have feared that my fellow American evangelical Christians were yielding to the third temptation of Christ: to sacrifice integrity for the conquest of power. Yet over the past year, I’ve started wondering whether we’re falling for an entirely different temptation—the one we least understand and were least taught to withstand.

The Gospels tell us that right after Jesus’ baptism in the Jordan, the Spirit directed him into the wilderness where the Devil set before him three temptations (Matt. 4:1–11; Luke 4:1–13). One temptation was to turn stones into bread—to satisfy his own appetites at the Devil’s direction.

This was, of course, the primal temptation of humanity (Gen. 3:1–3). This one is easy enough for us to understand because all of us grapple with our appetites—some for food, some for sex, some for drink—in ways that can make those appetites ultimate.

Another of the temptations was that the Devil would give Jesus “all the kingdoms of the world and their splendor” (Matt. 4:8) if he would just become a momentary Satanist. (Spoiler alert: Jesus passed up this offer.)

Again, most of us can understand this one because almost everyone is tempted at some point to trade principles for power. For a few, that power is a position in the White House, but for many of us, it is the ability to get the last word at the family dining room tables in our homes or to get the best seats at the conference tables at our jobs.

That temptation is still at work and transcends almost every tribal boundary. Forms of Christianized Marxism often yield to this temptation by replacing ...

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Making Haste Slowly in Our Walk With God

In these hurried times, Christians are called to a steady journey of faith.

I have met with but one or two persons in the course of my life
who understood the art of Walking, that is, of taking walks—
who had a genius, so to speak, for sauntering.
—Henry David Thoreau, “Walking”

The restless, distracted energy of our technological age has risen to a fever pitch. With each advancement, we are bound closer together into a collective fragmentation without intimacy.

The loneliness and relational divides that flow back to the beginning of recorded history are being amplified rather than silenced. We engage in everything from religious practices, mindfulness, yoga, and exercise to television, sex, food, drink, and drugs. We do all this to escape.

As Don DeLillo wrote in his brilliant and funny novel White Noise, “That’s why people take vacations. Not to relax or find excitement or see new places. To escape the death that exists in routine things.”

The forsaken God has entered into and dealt with this cosmic loneliness, yet often followers of the crucified King are just as lonely as the rest. What is missing?

There is a classical adage that might prove helpful: festina lente, which means to “make haste slowly.” A crab and butterfly first symbolized this saying. Its meaning lies in the paradox that existence is not meant to be static or careless but defined by conscientious and careful movement.

As one who leans into life with a relatively free-spirited disposition, when I look at the crab-and-butterfly image, I find myself uneasy at the way the butterfly seems held back by the crab’s clamp on her wings. But that tendency has led me to make many grievous errors throughout my 48 years of life. The crab is a necessary reminder ...

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How Bethel and Hillsong Took Over Our Worship Sets

“If you have ever felt like most worship music sounds the same, it may be because the worship music … is written by just a handful of songwriters.”

On Easter Sunday, the worship band at Bethel Community Church in Redding, California, opened the service with “This Is Amazing Grace,” a 2012 hit that has remained one of the most popular worship songs of the past decade.

Chances are thousands of other churches around the country also sang that song—or one very similar to it.

A new study found that Bethel and a handful of other megachurches have cornered the market on worship music in recent years, churning out hit after hit and dominating the worship charts.

The study looked at 38 songs that made the Top 25 lists for CCLI and PraiseCharts—which track what songs are played in churches—and found that almost all had originated from one of four megachurches.

All the songs in the study—which ranged from “Our God” and “God Is Able” to “The Blessing”— debuted on those charts between 2010 and 2020.

Of the songs in the study, 36 had ties to a group of four churches: Bethel; Hillsong; Passion City Church in Atlanta; and Elevation in North Carolina.

“If you have ever felt like most worship music sounds the same,” the study’s authors wrote, “it may be because the worship music you are most likely to hear in many churches is written by just a handful of songwriters from a handful of churches.”

The research team, made up of two worship leaders and three academics who study worship music, made some initial findings public Tuesday. More details from the study will likely be released in the coming weeks.

Elias Dummer, a worship leader and recording artist, said he and his colleagues have been watching changes in worship music over the past decade. They wanted to know how worship songs become ...

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Carl Henry’s Temptation (And Ours)

What we can learn from Christianity Today's troubling history of working with J. Edgar Hoover.

Billy Graham tried.

He preached in the White House the first Sunday after Richard Nixon was inaugurated in 1969, and he tried to preach clearly enough that the new president would hear his message. Graham engaged directly with Nixon’s inaugural address and said Nixon was wrong to rely so much on himself, his own ingenuity, his own goodness. Nixon was wrong when he said, “We need only look within ourselves” to solve the country’s most pressing problems. The president and the American people, Graham preached, should humble themselves, turn, and put their trust in God.

Or at least that is what he meant to say. His critique was so subtle that no one in the East Room of the White House noticed. After the service, they all drank orange juice and coffee and commented how nice it was, winning an election, taking control of the White House, and having a worship service under the famous portraits of George and Martha Washington. They completely missed the call to humility, because Graham couldn’t quite bring himself to make it.

What the founder of CT was really saying is only clear if you look at what he quoted from the inaugural address and then look at what Nixon said next and compare that to what Graham said next and see Graham is directly countering the president. No one did that though, so one noticed. Not even the notoriously sensitive Nixon.

The new president just felt affirmed. Graham’s message was missed. And he kept getting invited to the White House, where he had access to power, as long as he continued to make morally devastating compromises.

The temptation to appease people in power is a strong one. The temptation to compromise for the sake of access isn’t new. For white evangelicals, ...

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Youth Pastors Ditch Gross-Out Games and Help Student Ministry Grow Up

Today’s groups are becoming more integrated with the rest of the church.

In the 1990s and early 2000s, youth group culture relied on delivering fun and entertainment by any means possible: gross-out games, Christian rock concerts, hip hangout rooms, and pizza-party blowouts.

The activities were seen as vehicles to get kids in the door before sharing the gospel or offering Bible lessons.

Things have changed a lot since Jeremy Engbers grow up “playing games, getting dirty, and drinking blended Happy Meals” in church youth ministry.

Engbers, the 31-year-old director of worship, youth, and family at Olympia Christian Reformed Church, is trying to be the youth pastor he needed back then.

Like other pastors working in youth ministry today, Engbers focuses on relationship-building, intergenerational discipleship, and partnership with parents. His studies at Fuller Theological Seminary and access to resources at Fuller Youth Institute were helpful in building his current approach. Engbers also noted books like Sticky Faith and Growing Young as influential for him.

Prior to the past five or ten years, youth groups generally operated on their own schedule and programming within the church. In some churches, that even meant separate meetings during the church service on Sundays.

The siloed activities often isolated youth from the larger congregation, making it harder for them to integrate into grown-up ministry as a college student or adult. Engbers called it a kind of “spiritual daycare.”

Churches across denominations have seen young people stepping away from faith, and researchers at the Fuller Youth Institute say they don’t need a pastor in skinny jeans or a hip meeting space to make them stay. They need practices to root them in faith and community in a way that sticks.

Heather ...

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Interview: The Bible Does Everything Critical Theory Does, but Better

Scripture offers a deeper analysis of modern society than modern society could give itself.

Many people become suspicious at the mention of critical theory, especially as it applies to controversial matters of race, gender, law, and public policy. Some see the ideologies traveling under that banner as abstruse frameworks only minimally related to real-world affairs. Others see critical theory as a ruse meant to confer unearned scholarly legitimacy on highly debatable political and cultural opinions.

Christopher Watkin, an Australian scholar on religion and philosophy, wants to reorient discussions of critical theory around Scripture’s grand narrative of redemption. In Biblical Critical Theory: How the Bible’s Unfolding Story Makes Sense of Modern Life and Culture, he shows how God’s Word furnishes the tools for a better, more compelling critical theory—one that harmonizes the fragmentary truths advanced by its secular alternatives. Mark Talbot, professor of philosophy at Wheaton College, spoke with Watkin about his book.

Let’s begin with a basic question: How do you define critical theory?

There’s more than one answer to that question. There’s a narrow sense and a broad sense. The narrow sense is probably the one that most people come across first today. People have heard of things like critical race theory that involve very particular ways of critiquing society through a specific lens. But critical theory, more broadly conceived, is a way of engaging with society that points out what’s wrong with the world on a deep level and then suggests what needs to change to make it better.

As I’ve studied critical theories over the years, I’ve noticed that almost all of them do three things. First, critical theories make certain things viable so that you begin to think ...

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Jesus Christ Is Not a Superstar

Popular portrayals of the God-Man can draw admiring crowds, but they can’t create imitating disciples.

In the past couple of weeks, people have been talking once again about Jesus Christ Superstar.

Not only did a recent Ted Lasso episode feature a song from the 1970s musical, but the original film is airing on BBC—prompting countless reactions, including many from first-time viewers. It is also celebrating a 50th anniversary tour in both the UK and the US.

Taking place during Holy Week and ending just before the Easter resurrection, the production “casts a skeptical, and at times flamboyantly irreverent, light on the story of Jesus.” It reflects society’s fascination with the Jesus movement of the ’70s, just as Jesus Revolution and The Chosen reveal a growing resurgence of interest in the person of Jesus.

As believers, it is satisfying to see Christ brought to the forefront of the public’s consciousness. And as author Luke Burgis explains, these popular portrayals of Jesus can make us want to conform our desires to his. But memorializing any version of Jesus that appeals to a mass audience, whether in church or in culture, also comes with the risk that we might do the exact opposite and model Christ after our own desires.

That is, we’re in danger of casting Christ as whatever kind of superstar or superhero we value at any given time—a temptation faced by even Jesus’ earliest first-century followers.

The script for Jesus Christ Superstar is told from the viewpoint of Judas, “who thinks highly of Jesus as a political revolutionary figure but is disturbed by the idea of Jesus’ divinity.” In the play, the Judas character sings the famous song lyric, “Jesus Christ, Superstar, do you think you’re what they say you are?”—referencing ...

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NASA Astronaut Asks for Prayer for Moon Mission

A Christian who wants to see God’s will done “on earth as it is in heaven” is piloting the first lunar flight in more than 50 years.

Victor Glover will pray his way to the moon.

When the Artemis 2 takes off sometime late next year, four astronauts will strap into a gumdrop-shaped capsule atop a tower of rockets taller than the Statue of Liberty. Mission control will count down—10, 9, 8, …—and a controlled explosion with 8.8 million pounds of force will fire, throwing the four astronauts from the coast of Florida into high-earth orbit, where another engine, setting spark to a mixture of liquid hydrogen and oxygen, will thrust them beyond the bonds of Earth for the first time in more than half a century.

And Glover, the pilot of the spacecraft, will say a few words to God.

He told CT he will listen to God, too, attending to the quiet stillness in his mind where he can lay down his own personal interests and desires and truly say, “Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.”

“I know that God can use us for his purposes,” Glover said. “When Jesus was teaching the disciples to pray, he used that very specific prayer that we all know, ‘Our father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name …’ So, listen, I am a messenger of his kingdom; his will be done.”

Glover was named Monday as one of the four people who will lead humanity’s return to the moon more than 50 years after we stopped going. The other members of the crew are Reid Wiseman, Jeremy Hansen, and Christina Koch, who will be the first woman to go to the moon.

Glover, 46, is a Navy captain who flew combat missions in Iraq before becoming a test pilot, a NASA astronaut, and a crew member of the International Space Station. He will become the first Black man to go to the moon, breaking a racial barrier the American ...

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In Nashville, Death Hangs Over Our Doorways

But our community also feels covered by the shadow of God’s presence.

On March 27, I dropped my kids off at their schools in Nashville. My youngest, who goes to preschool three days a week at The Covenant School, was home with me that day. As I drove home in the spring sun, I turned on a morning prayer meditation and heard Jesus’ words over my car speakers: “I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness but will have the light of life” (John 8:12).

As I listened, I pondered this paradox of light and dark and wondered how Christians are supposed to live into it during hard circumstances. Psalm 23 assures us that we can walk through the valley of the shadow without fear. Psalm 91:1 says we “rest in the shadow of the Almighty.” Different parts of Scripture reference this unique contrast: We walk in the shadow of death, yet in Christ, we’re covered by God’s protective shadow. Even in darkness, the only shadow over us is his.

At 10:18 a.m. that morning as I was thinking about these ideas, I received a text from my husband at his office at Covenant Church saying, “Pray for Covenant right now.” In the 10 minutes that followed that message, the terrifying shooting at our church and school unfolded. Fear and uncertainty gripped me, and as I prayed, my morning meditations became immediately and stunningly personal to our community. The shadow of death invaded our hallways, ushering in chaos that we haven’t yet been able to make sense of.

Since those moments, I have found few words to pray. But I have looked to the Psalms for comfort: “Be merciful to me, O God … for in you my soul takes refuge; in the shadow of your wings I will take refuge, till the storms of destruction pass ...

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What Christ Accomplished Before ‘It Is Finished’

Don’t diminish Jesus’ ministry in your celebration of his work on the cross.

Good Friday services were well celebrated within my Afro-Baptist ecclesial tradition. And unlike liturgical settings, where gathered worshipers depart from the service in silence to await the jubilant praise of Easter Sunday, our Good Fridays were often the most energetic services of Holy Week. They were also the zenith of each preaching year and usually featured sermons on Christ’s seven last words.

Many of us have heard a sermon preached on the sixth word, “Tetélestai!,” which is commonly translated into the English phrase “It is finished!” It is one of the few transliterated Greek verbs many believers are familiar with. On that dark day, Jesus shouted this word from the cross shortly before giving up his spirit—conveying the hope of Good Friday.

Tetélestai comes from the Greek verb teleō. In most ancient Greek contexts, the verb means “to finish, accomplish, or complete.” We rightly view this proclamation as Jesus signaling that his death has satisfied the wrath of God fully and forever—that he alone has accomplished the work of atonement, of redemption, and of mediating the way to God.

This statement seems to be the peak of John’s presentation of the salvation story—the time to play the Hammond organ, grab the tambourines, lift holy hands, and sing “Hallelujah,” for Jesus has paid it all!

But there is another moment in John’s Gospel where Jesus states he has finished his work: just one day earlier, on Maundy Thursday—a day that was foreign to me before I stepped into my first pastorate.

Although my childhood church held revival services throughout Holy Week, there was no event held to celebrate the fifth day. And even when ...

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Seven-Hour Oratorio Sings the Gospel of Mark Word for Word

If any man have ears to hear, let him hear: “The KJV actually sang quite well.”

When composer Christopher Tyler Nickel set out to create an oratorio of Mark’s gospel, he made an ambitious decision to set not just the narrative but the whole text to music, word for word.

The resulting work is an expansive, seven-hour musical. Nickel’s composition leads the listener through Mark’s account of Jesus’ ministry, sculpting and shading the story through the use of voices, timbre, theme, and meter.

As many Christians around the globe observe Holy Week, The Gospel According to Mark offers a musical addition to the canon of artistic meditations on the suffering, death, and resurrection of Christ. The work will be released in its entirety on Good Friday by Avie Records, and excerpts are available in three EPs: Salvation, Prophecy, and Death and Resurrection.

Nickel’s composition contributes to a genre with historical roots dating back to the 17th century; Handel’s Messiah is one prominent example of a sacred oratorio, as is Bach’s St. Matthew Passion. Besides its length, The Gospel According to Mark differs from these older works in its exclusive use of the gospel text, without poetic elaborations or additions.

Nickel’s work invites listeners to meditate on the gospel text and open themselves to the ways that the marriage of the music and Scripture might move their emotions.

The conclusion of the work, “The Ascension and Amen” (Mark 16:19–20, KJV), isn’t a glorious crescendo or grand chorus. The orchestra and voices weave together, swelling and retreating as the amen repeats over and over, accompanied by deliberate and steady open chords. The voices and instrumentation subtly, peacefully fade away.

The passage “leaves the listener with an unfinished ...

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