Category: Christian news

A call to spiritual care among our twenty-somethings. According to research, many emerging adults (those between the ages of 18 and 29) experience a spiritual slump in the years after high school. When comparing 18 to 23-year-olds with the teenagers below them, the National Study of Youth and Religion (NSYR) reported significant declines in the number of emerging adults viewing their faith as “very or extremely important” in shaping daily life. In addition, only 35 percent of... Read More

In the face of illness, death, and disability, Lamentations gives me a script for how to suffer. In 2015, my husband and I opened the doors to our church plant, Renewal Church. We celebrated the tremendous movement of God in our lives and our neighborhood. But the very same week, I woke up inexplicably unable to walk. I couldn’t put any pressure on my legs whatsoever. I didn’t know at the time that this surprising illness-visitor would become a long-term tenant. I now experience... Read More

Fallen flesh doesn’t like simply being sent. We’d rather build our own tower for our own glory. Last week, the Send Institute ran a poignant piece by John Davidson that argued for the decoupling of church planting and entrepreneurship. Davidson writes, “Rather than framing planting as ecclesial entrepreneurship, the church would be better served if we framed it biblically. The way to do that is by calling it what it is, apostolic ecclesiology.” He argues that the business... Read More

Science seeks to fix aging and death. But a Christian vision of the good life might actually embrace them. A preacher’s kid growing up in the Bible Belt, Micah Redding had a particular view of the physical world and God’s work in it. Singing popular hymns like “This World is Not My Home” and “I’ll Fly Away,” he took away this message: It’s all going to burn anyway, so why bother with the environment or curing diseases? That’s a... Read More

Researcher Mary Lederleitner explores the confusions and frustrations they face. What distinctive gifts do women have for the global church? Is the church helping or hindering women leaders? In Women in God’s Mission: Accepting the Invitation to Serve and Lead, missions researcher Mary Lederleitner describes both the particular obstacles women leaders face and the unique blessings they offer the body of Christ. Drawing upon two decades of personal experience and interviews with more... Read More

Muslims (and other minorities) shouldn’t have to elevate national ideals above faith commitments before gaining a seat at the table of citizenship. Eboo Patel’s latest book, Out of Many Faiths, explores the daunting challenges and encouraging possibilities at work amid America’s religious diversity. In what might be the book’s most important contribution, Patel explores the history of America’s wrestling with religious diversity through an alternative and revealing... Read More

Christian leaders have their own reasons for not reading Scripture. It’s worth remembering that Augustine was “weeping, with agonizing anguish in heart” over his inability to control himself before he read Romans 13:13–14. We tend to think that Scripture usually works the other direction. We read seeking instruction, wisdom, or intimacy and then read a challenging word like Paul’s that prompts contrition: “Let us behave decently, as in the daytime, not in... Read More

Are emerging adults are leaving their faith behind? We are hosting a conference to explore this question. It seems every few weeks a new article makes the rounds on social media heralding the collapse of religion in America. Often central to these pieces is an emphasis on the role of emerging adults, focusing either on their declining church attendance or their rejection of traditional beliefs or practices. Emerging adulthood describes that phase of life between adolescence and full... Read More

This grain’s genome echoes of the strength found in the diversity of God’s people. Like many kids, I grew up picking wild grasses believing that they were wheat. I would pick one from the yard of my childhood home, believing the harvest I held in my hands could be transformed into food. As I grew up, I quickly learned that the “wheat” in my yard was far from a bountiful harvest and instead was actually weeds and wild grasses. Yet, my childhood confusion about wheat is, in one... Read More

Though extremists separated me from my husband years ago, I know who holds us together. Two years ago this Valentine’s Day, I arrived in the United States after fleeing persecution in Pakistan. When I describe my journey, I often tell people it was like a journey from hell to heaven. I really do love it here. But the holiday where Americans around me celebrate romantic love is bittersweet. Although I have been married to my husband for seven years, we have only been in the same country... Read More