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33 episodes with cultural apologetics
14 episodes with cultural apologetics
9 episodes with cultural apologetics
8 episodes with cultural apologetics
4 episodes with cultural apologetics
3 episodes with cultural apologetics
3 episodes with cultural apologetics
3 episodes with cultural apologetics
3 episodes with cultural apologetics
Has modern evangelicalism forgotten about key aspects of who God is? In this episode of The Missions Podcast, Alex and Scott welcome Dr. Peter Sammons, Associate Director of Academic Development at Founders Seminary, to discuss the "forgotten attributes" of God—those less-discussed incommunicable aspects of God's nature. Sammons argues that modern Christians tend to focus on God's relational and communicable attributes (like love and kindness) because they are easier to grasp and more emotionally resonant. Sammons stresses that a proper understanding of God's essence and metaphysical attributes is crucial for true worship and doctrinal precision. The discussion also explores why understanding God's immutable nature is essential, especially in missions. Many pagan and world religions depict gods as moody and human-like, but the Christian God stands apart as wholly other, unaffected by human emotion or manipulation. This, Sammons emphasizes, highlights the necessity of theological depth for missionaries. Without it, missionaries risk portraying God as just another tribal deity. Key Points Forgotten Attributes: Focus on God's immutability, impassibility, and aseity, which are often overshadowed by more "relatable" attributes. Essence of God: Importance of understanding God's essence versus merely his relational attributes. Modern Challenges: Cultural and intellectual laziness has led to theological illiteracy and avoidance of difficult doctrines. Missional Importance: Proper theological understanding is critical for distinguishing the Christian God from false deities in missions work. Training Solutions: Founders Seminary offers a Master of Arts in Cultural Apologetics and Missions to deepen theological literacy for missionaries, even remotely. Do you love The Missions Podcast? Have you been blessed by the show? Then become a Premium Subscriber! Premium Subscribers get access to: Exclusive bonus content A community Signal thread with other listeners and the hosts Invite-only webinars A free gift! Support The Missions Podcast and sign up to be a Premium Subscriber at missionspodcast.com/premium The Missions Podcast is powered by ABWE. Learn more and take your next step in the Great Commission at abwe.org. Want to ask a question or suggest a topic? Email alex@missionspodcast.com.
If God is good and all-powerful, why does evil persist? In this thought-provoking episode of Candid Conversations, Jonathan Youssef sits down with Collin Hansen to tackle one of the most challenging questions people of faith will wrestle with.Drawing from his new book Where Is God In a World with So Much Evil?, Collin explores the age-old struggle with suffering through the lens of Scripture, history, and personal reflection. From the cries of Job to the silence of Jesus at the cross, from the horrors of the Holocaust to the hidden pain many carry today, this conversation invites listeners to wrestle honestly with doubt while discovering the surprising hope God offers—not always through answers, but through His presence.Whether you're walking through hardship or beside someone who is, this episode will equip you with Biblical wisdom, historical perspective, and deep compassion. Don't miss this honest dialogue on justice, suffering, and the power of resilient faith in a broken world.About This Week's Guest:Dr. Collin Hansen is an author, editor-in-chief of The Gospel Coalition, and executive director of The Keller Center for Cultural Apologetics,Connect with Collin:Facebook: @hansen.collinX: @collinhansenFollow Candid Conversations on social media:Facebook: @candidpodInstagram: @candidpodTwitter: @thecandidpodSubscribe & Share:If this episode inspired you, please subscribe, leave a review, and share it with others.
This Postmodern Realities episode is a conversation with JOURNAL author Cole Burgett about his article, “What is Truth in ‘Dune: Prophecy'?.” Editor's Note: This review contains spoilers for Dune: Prophecy.]This is also part of the ongoing column by Cole entitled, Cultural Apologetics. Coming Soon
Are you ready to be encouraged and challenged? Listen in to this week's episode of The Narrative as Sam Allberry explores biblical anthropology! Sam dives into the theology of the body and how God has uniquely and intentionally designed us in His image, offering powerful reflections on how our identity, both as individuals and as a community, is rooted in God's perfect plan for creation. Whether you're looking to deepen your understanding of Scripture or seeking a fresh perspective on God's design for humanity, this discussion with Sam Allberry is not to be missed. Before the conversation, CCV President Aaron Baer, Policy Director David Mahan, and Communications Director Mike Andrews run through some of the latest news of the week, including Kieran Culkin's pro-life Oscar acceptance speech, DEI rollbacks at The Ohio State University and Target, and President Trump's address to Congress. More about Sam Allberry Sam Allberry is Associate Pastor at Immanuel Nashville Church and a Fellow at the Keller Center for Cultural Apologetics. He is a canon theologian for the Anglican Church in North America and is the co-host of The Gospel Coalition’s podcast You’re Not Crazy: Gospel Sanity for Young Pastors. He is the author of several books, including Is God Anti-Gay?; 7 Myths About Singleness; Why Does God Care Who I Sleep With?; and What God Has to Say About Our Bodies. Sam studied theology at Wycliffe Hall University of Oxford.
In this episode, Collin Hansen explores how to reconcile the existence of evil and suffering in the world with a good God. Collin Hansen is the vice president for content and editor in chief for the Gospel Coalition and the executive director of the Keller Center for Cultural Apologetics. He is also the author of 'Where Is God in a World with So Much Evil?' from Crossway. Read the full transcript of this episode. ❖ Listen to “Is Christianity on the Decline?” with Rebecca McLaughlin: Apple Podcasts | Spotify If you enjoyed this episode be sure to leave us a review, which helps us spread the word about the show!
Culture is the air that we breathe. It informs how we view the world around us and is a necessary consideration for any apologetic discussion. Dr. Nate Shannon sits down with Dr. Bill Edgar to discuss culture, apologetics, and cultural apologetics.
This Postmodern Realities episode is a conversation with JOURNAL author Cole Burgett about his article, ” Space Pirates and Treasure Planets: A Review of Star Wars: Skeleton Crew“. [Editor's Note: This review contains spoilers for Star Wars: Skeleton Crew.] This is also part of new ongoing column by Cole Burgett entitled, Cultural Apologetics. https://www.equip.org/articles/space-pirates-and-treasure-planets-a-review-of-star-wars-skeleton-crew/Related articles and podcasts by this author on Star Wars: An Occasion for Just War: A Review of AndorEpisode 318 An Occasion for Just War: A Review of AndorObi-Wan Kenobi and the Freedom of Forgiveness (A Series Review of Obi Wan Kenobi)Episode 295 Obi-Wan Kenobi and the Freedom of Forgiveness (A Series Review of Obi-Wan Kenobi)Happy and Glorious in The High Republic: A Review of The High Republic Era beginning with Star Wars: Light of the Jedi by Charles SouleEpisode 234: Star Wars Happy and Glorious in The High RepublicRelated articles and podcasts about Star Wars:The Last Jedi: A Star Wars Movie for the Era of “the Nones”Episode 054: The Last Jedi: A Star Wars Movie for the Era of “the Nones”May the Force Bewitch You: Evaluating the Star Wars WorldviewEpisode 027: “Evaluating the Star Wars Worldview”This is the Way…Or is It?: Thinking About Religion in The MandalorianEpisode 217: Thinking About Religion in The MandalorianThe Dead Won't Stop Talking: A Review of The Rise of SkywalkerEpisode 154: The Dead Won't Stop Talking: A Review of The Rise of SkywalkerEpisode 276 Boba Fett's Character Arc Actually Makes Sense ( A Review of The Book of Boba Fett)Boba Fett's Character Arc Actually Makes Sense ( A Review of The Book of Boba Fett) Don't miss an episode; please subscribe to the Postmodern Realities podcast wherever you get your favorite podcasts. Please help spread the word about Postmodern Realities by giving us a rating and review when you subscribe to the podcast. The more ratings and reviews we have, the more new listeners can discover our content.
In this episode, Collin Hansen discusses the origins, impact, and practical applications of the 'New City Catechism'. Collin Hansen is the vice president for content and editor in chief for the Gospel Coalition and the executive director of the Keller Center for Cultural Apologetics. He is also the editor of 'The New City Catechism Devotional: God's Truth for Our Hearts and Minds' from Crossway. Read the full transcript of this episode. ❖ Listen to “If You Don't Catechize Your Kids, the World Will” with Kevin DeYoung: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | YouTube If you enjoyed this episode be sure to leave us a review, which helps us spread the word about the show!
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In this episode, I'm wrapping up our series on apologetics by talking about how to engage in cultural conversations in a way that's loving, effective, and rooted in truth. We're living in a time when Christianity is often misunderstood and seen as intolerant or irrelevant, and the enemy is working overtime to deceive. So, how do we share our faith in this kind of world? This episode is all about cultural apologetics—how to show that Christianity isn't just true, but that it's deeply satisfying. We'll talk about understanding where people are coming from, asking the right questions, and why prayer is the most important tool in your apologetics toolkit. Let's dive in! Resources Mentioned In This Episode: Tactics, 10th Anniversary Edition: A Game Plan for Discussing Your Christian Convictions by Gregory Koukl and Lee Strobel Gregory Koukl: Tactics for Discussing Christian Convictions __________________________________________________________ Ready for more? Here are 3 ways we can help you: 1)
Collin Hansen joins Shades Midweek for the third time! Collin Hansen serves as vice president for content and editor in chief of The Gospel Coalition, as well as executive director of The Keller Center for Cultural Apologetics. He hosts the Gospelbound podcast and has written and contributed to many books, most recently Timothy Keller: His Spiritual and Intellectual Formation and Rediscover Church: Why the Body of Christ Is Essential. He has published with the New York Times and the Washington Post and offered commentary for CNN, Fox News, NPR, BBC, ABC News, and PBS NewsHour. He edited Our Secular Age: Ten Years of Reading and Applying Charles Taylor and The New City Catechism Devotional, among other books. He is an adjunct professor at Beeson Divinity School, where he also co-chairs the advisory board. JM's Album Of The Week: Bon Iver - For Emma, Forever Ago Bradford's Book Club: Family Unfriendly: How Our Culture Made Raising Kids Much Harder Than It Needs To Be by Timothy P Carney
What is the true story of reality? Is there a grand narrative to the world, & is it a good story? We all long to be a part of something grand, epic, & beautiful. What if there is a good & true story, a story that centers on the person of Jesus Christ & what God has done, is doing, & will do to restore all creation? Listen in as Dr. Jeff chats with Dr. Paul Gould & his book, A Good & True Story: Eleven Clues to Understanding Our Universe & Your Place in It. Paul Gould received his PhD from Purdue University & is an associate professor of philosophy & director of the philosophy of religion master's program at Palm Beach Atlantic University in Florida. He is the founder & president of the Two Tasks Institute, an apologetics institute & podcast, & is on the faculty of Summit Ministries & the Colson Center Fellows Program. Gould is the author of eleven books, including The Story of the Cosmos & the award-winning Cultural Apologetics. He is also the co-author of Philosophy: A Christion Introduction & Stand Firm: Apologetics & the Brilliance of the Gospel. Truth Changes Everything was formally known as the Dr. Jeff Show. For more resources from Summit Ministries, visit our Resource Library at www.Summit.org/Resources.
Dr. Darrell Bock joins us to discuss his take on cultural apologetics and making the case for the Christ. Tune in! ***GlossaHouse resources are available at our website! - https://glossahouse.com/ ✏️ ***Sign up for classes with GlossaHouse U - https://glossahouse.com/pages/classes
Renowned Christian philosopher and theologian Dr. Paul Copan joins us to explore our shared values and address the ethical questions people are faced with when reading the Bible. He discusses how modern readers often overlook the Torah's revolutionary impact by viewing it solely through a contemporary lens, which strips it of historical context. Together, we examine the Mosaic laws in contrast to other ancient laws, like the Code of Hammurabi, revealing just how transformative the Torah was within its pagan surroundings. Dr. Copan shares his approach to interpreting morally challenging passages, applying a “charitability and Golden Rule” perspective that uncovers the depths in the Torah's narratives. Dr. Copan provides a nuanced understanding focused on careful textual analysis. He highlights the Bible's distinct stance on slavery, distinguishing it from the brutal chattel slavery of later times and showing how Judeo-Christian values contributed to its eventual abolition. Naysayers and skeptics are challenged to rethink their preconceived notions about the Torah, especially regarding topics like divine justice, slavery, capital punishment, the Wayward Son, the Sotah ritual, and other often misunderstood sections. What are we to make of what appears to be God's call to wipe out Canaanites and Amalekites? How do we understand the massive loss of life decreed by God in the Great Flood and the death of the Egyptian first-born? This is a discussion you don't want to miss. --- • Bio: Paul Copan (Ph.D., Philosophy, Marquette University) is a Christian theologian, analytic philosopher, apologist, and author. He is currently a professor at the Palm Beach Atlantic University (Florida) and holds the endowed Pledger Family Chair of Philosophy and Ethics. He is author or editor of nearly 50 books, including the very popular, strong-selling book Is God a Moral Monster? as well as its companion volume, the award-winning Is God a Vindictive Bully? He is coeditor of The Routledge Companion to Philosophy of Religion, The Naturalness of Theistic Belief, Philosophy of Religion: Classic and Contemporary Issues, and The Kalām Cosmological Argument (a two-volume anthology). He is coauthor of Creation out of Nothing and Biblical Ethics: Walking in the Way of Wisdom. He has also contributed essays to over 60 books, both scholarly and popular, and he has authored a number of articles in professional journals. In 2017 and 2024, he has been a Visiting Scholar at the University of Oxford (Wycliffe Hall and Oriel College). For six years, he served as president of the Evangelical Philosophical Society. He also helped establish the PBA's M.A. in Philosophy of Religion; PBA also a B.A. in Apologetics, and it offers a Program in Cultural Apologetics (which is heavily scholarshiped). He is co-chair of Tyndale Fellowship's Philosophy of Religion Study Group, which meets every summer in England. Paul is married to Jacqueline, and they have six children. --- • Welcome to JUDAISM DEMYSTIFIED: A PODCAST FOR THE PERPLEXED | Co-hosted by Benjy & Benzi | Thank you to...Super Patron: Jordan Karmily, Platinum Patron: Craig Gordon, Gold Patrons: Dovidchai Abramchayev, Lazer Cohen, Travis Krueger, Vasili Volkoff, Rod Ilian, Silver Patrons: Ellen Fleischer, Daniel Maksumov, Rabbi Pinny Rosenthal, Fred & Antonio, Jeffrey Wasserman, and Jacob Winston! Please SUBSCRIBE to this YouTube Channel and hit the BELL so you can get alerted whenever new clips get posted, thank you for your support! --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/judaismdemystified/support
This is the third in a series of episodes dedicated to a young woman named Olivea. This episode is with special guest, Jesse Childress. In this episode Jesse shares with Janell and Olivea about his own faith journey, how childhood attachment impacts our view of God, how mental health is impacted by Christian faith, the problem of suffering, the power of experience, and much more. ABOUT JESSE CHILDRESS Jesse Childress has an MA in Cultural Apologetics from Houston Christian University and is currently a student at Denver Seminary studying counseling, focusing particularly on the relationship between trauma and faith. He spent a term studying at Francis Schaeffer's L'Abri Fellowship in Switzerland and has a deep appreciation for good food, philosophy, theology, and literature. He has written for Summit Ministries, the Anselm Society, Conciliar Post, and An Unexpected Journal. -- -- -- -- -- LINKS: How Do You Know You're Going to Heaven? What If Following Jesus Isn't Worth It? FSR YouTube channel FSR Speaking page FSR Patreon
In Episode 4 of Season 4, hosts Shane Pruitt, Paul Worcester, and Lacey Villasenor are joined by special guest Trevin Wax to explore the topic of cultural apologetics. They dive deep into ways that the next generation can engage with and navigate the prevailing ideologies of our time without being swayed by them. The discussion covers the most influential ideologies shaping the minds of young people today, including radical individualism, the quest for identity within groups, and the rise of pseudo-religions. Also in This Episode: How to communicate the truth and beauty of Christianity in a way that resonates with today's culture The importance of listening to and understanding the deep longings of those we engage with in evangelism Practical advice on creating environments where students can ask tough questions and explore their faith deeply Helpful Resources: Reconstructing Faith Podcast: Trevin Wax offers perspective from church history and the church around the world to help listeners recommit to both removing the rot from the church and fortifying the foundations of unchanging truth. NAMB Apologetics: As you share the gospel with friends, neighbors, coworkers, and more, you may encounter questions about your faith and other religions. Find answers to the most common questions here. Shareable Quotes: “Whether it's social media, sermons, podcasts, or conversations at a coffee shop, church service, or large-group gathering on campus, whatever way we can get the story out there is what we want to take advantage of. We have the greatest story of all time.” – Shane Pruitt “At some point when you cross the threshold of true conversion, you're not simply saying, ‘This is true for me.' You're also saying, ‘I believe this is the truth about the world.'” – Trevin Wax “The best stories win the day, and there's nothing more compelling than the story of Jesus.” – Paul Worcester
In Episode 4 of Season 4, hosts Shane Pruitt, Paul Worcester, and Lacey Villasenor are joined by special guest Trevin Wax to explore the topic of cultural apologetics. They dive deep into ways that the next generation can engage with and navigate the prevailing ideologies of our time without being swayed by them. The discussion covers the most influential ideologies shaping the minds of young people today, including radical individualism, the quest for identity within groups, and the rise of pseudo-religions. Also in This Episode: How to communicate the truth and beauty of Christianity in a way that resonates with today's culture The importance of listening to and understanding the deep longings of those we engage with in evangelism Practical advice on creating environments where students can ask tough questions and explore their faith deeply Helpful Resources: Reconstructing Faith Podcast: Trevin Wax offers perspective from church history and the church around the world to help listeners recommit to both removing the rot from the church and fortifying the foundations of unchanging truth. NAMB Apologetics: As you share the gospel with friends, neighbors, coworkers, and more, you may encounter questions about your faith and other religions. Find answers to the most common questions here. Shareable Quotes: “Whether it's social media, sermons, podcasts, or conversations at a coffee shop, church service, or large-group gathering on campus, whatever way we can get the story out there is what we want to take advantage of. We have the greatest story of all time.” – Shane Pruitt “At some point when you cross the threshold of true conversion, you're not simply saying, ‘This is true for me.' You're also saying, ‘I believe this is the truth about the world.'” – Trevin Wax “The best stories win the day, and there's nothing more compelling than the story of Jesus.” – Paul Worcester
What categories would Lewis have included in "Modern Man and His Categories of Thought" if he was writing in 2024? We are joined by Dr. Paul Gould, philosopher, author, professor, and podcaster, who was just been writing on this very topic. We highly recommend checking out Paul's podcast The Eudo Podcast, and his book Cultural Apologetics as companion pieces to this season of Lewis' essays. Find out more about Paul here, and find his excellent books here. Find more Lesser-Known Lewis — Online: pintswithjack.com/lesser-known-lewis Patreon: patreon.com/lesserknownlewis Instagram: @lesserknownlewis Facebook: Lesser-Known Lewis Podcast Email: lesserknownlewis@gmail.com Graphic Design by Angus Crawford. Intro Music - Written by Jess Syratt, arranged & produced by Jordan Caruso and Jordan Duncan. Ad Music - Written & produced by Jordan Caruso and Jordan Duncan. Intro & Ad music produced by Jordan Caruso.
Episode Notes Michael Graham is the program director for The Keller Center for Cultural Apologetics and coauthor of The Great Dechurching: Who's Leaving, Why Are They Going, and What Will it Take to Bring Them Back? In this episode, he joins Dr. Keith Plummer and co-host Pastor Ben Best to talk about the 40 million Americans who have left the church in the last 25 years. They discuss the cultural drivers behind this exodus, the various types of dechurched individuals, and their reasons for leaving. Michael also shares insights from their study on how churches and individual believers can re-engage those who have left.
Collin Hansen serves as vice president for content and editor in chief of The Gospel Coalition, as well as executive director of The Keller Center for Cultural Apologetics. He hosts the Gospelbound podcast and has written and contributed to many books, most recently Timothy Keller: His Spiritual and Intellectual Formation; Young, Restless, and Reformed, and A God-Sized Vision- Revival Stories that Stretch and Inspire. Among many other contributions, Collin Hansen also edited The New City Catechism Devotional. He is an adjunct professor at Beeson Divinity School, where he also co-chairs the advisory board.
In this episode, Dr. T. Michael W. Halcomb ( @tmichaelwhalcomb ) interviews leader Dr. Louis Markos ( @louismarkos1777 ). They will talk about "Classical Christian Education & Cultural Apologetics", and more. This is a fun interview you don't want to miss. Tune in! ***GlossaHouse resources are available at our website! - https://glossahouse.com/ ✏️ ***Sign up for classes with GlossaHouse U - https://glossahouse.com/pages/classes
This week on Family Policy Matters, host Traci DeVette Griggs welcomes Michael Graham, Program Director for The Keller Center for Cultural Apologetics, to discuss what is known as the "great dechurching" and how Christians should respond.
Another free book giveaway this week and next (a $99 value!). If you'd like a copy of the book, Atheists Finding God, we're featuring on the next two broadcasts, just drop Daniel Ray an email at Dray@watchman.org with your current mailing address (USA only) for your chance to win. In Matthew 19, the disciples were astonished at Jesus' teaching about salvation. "Who then can be saved?" they wondered. Jesus told them "With men, this is impossible, but with God all things are possible." If you have been a believer for any amount of time, you have likely experienced what the disciples experienced, the seeming impossibility of an unbelieving friend, family member or neighbor coming to believe in Jesus. Here on part two of our conversation with author and Teaching Fellow at the C.S. Lewis Institute in Atlanta, Dr. Jana Harmon, you'll be encouraged to hear how God has moved and still is moving in the hearts of unbelievers to do the impossible. Come and see.Jana Harmon, Ph.D, is a Teaching Fellow for C.S. Lewis Institute Atlanta and serves on the Atlanta Advisory Board and is an Adjunct Professor of Cultural Apologetics at Biola University. Her doctoral research studied the religious conversion of atheists to Christianity looking at the perspectives and stories of 50 former Atheists. She views apologetics through a practical, evangelistic lens. She is the host of Side B Stories podcast for the C.S. Lewis Institute. Jana received her PhD from the University of Birmingham, England.Related Links: Free access to some related Watchman Profiles: Watchman Fellowship 4-page Profile on Atheism by Dr. Robert M. Bowman, Jr: www.watchman.org/Atheism Watchman Fellowship 4-page Profile on Agnosticism by W. Russell Crawford: www.watchman.org/Agnostic Watchman Fellowship 4-page Profile on Naturalism by Daniel Ray: www.watchman.org/Naturalism Additional ResourcesFREE: We are also offering a subscription to our 4-page bimonthly Profiles here: www.watchman.org/Free.SUPPORT: Help us create more content like this. Make a tax-deductible donation here: www.watchman.org/give.Apologetics Profile is a ministry of Watchman Fellowship For more information, visit www.watchman.org © Watchman Fellowship, Inc.
Rebecca McLaughlin is joined by Michael Graham to discuss why Americans have stopped going to church and Questions Covered in This Episode:How did you become a Christian?How did you become interested in “The Great Dechurching”?What is the history of American church attendance?What happened from the height of attendance in the 80s to now?What proportion of Americans who previously went to church have stopped attending church?Why did Americans stop going to church?How would you respond to people who think that fewer people attending church is good for society?Are more educated people less likely to go to church?Guest Bio:Michael Graham is the Program Director at The Keller Center for Cultural Apologetics and is the co-author of “The Great Dechurching.”Resources Mentioned:Galatians“The Great Dechurching” by Jim Davis, Michael Graham, and Ryan BurgeAs In Heaven PodcastTyler J. VanderWeele Follow Us:Instagram | TwitterOur Sister Shows:Knowing Faith | The Family Discipleship Podcast | Starting Place | Tiny TheologiansConfronting Christianity is a podcast of Training the Church. For ad-free episodes and more content check out our Patreon. Produced by The Good Podcast Co.
Another free book giveaway this week and next (a $99 value!). If you'd like a copy of the book, Atheists Finding God, we're featuring on the next two broadcasts, just drop Daniel Ray an email at Dray@watchman.org with your current mailing address (USA only) for your chance to win. As we've been covering over the first part of 2024 here on the Profile, there has been a growing trend called #deconstruction where people are leaving the church and deconstructing their faith. But now for some good news. God is still at work. Despite what you might hear on line or in statistical trends about the growth of the "Nones" and the rise of atheism and unbelief, there are in fact atheists walking away from atheism. That's our focus this week and next as we speak with author and Teaching Fellow at the C.S. Lewis Institute in Atlanta, Dr. Jana Harmon, who discusses with us her 2023 book, Atheists Finding God. It's a conversation you don't want to miss!Jana Harmon, Ph.D, is a Teaching Fellow for C.S. Lewis Institute Atlanta and serves on the Atlanta Advisory Board and is an Adjunct Professor of Cultural Apologetics at Biola University. Her doctoral research studied the religious conversion of atheists to Christianity looking at the perspectives and stories of 50 former Atheists. She views apologetics through a practical, evangelistic lens. She is the host of Side B Stories podcast for the C.S. Lewis Institute. Jana received her PhD from the University of Birmingham, England.Related Links: Free access to some related Watchman Profiles: Watchman Fellowship 4-page Profile on Atheism by Dr. Robert M. Bowman, Jr: www.watchman.org/Atheism Watchman Fellowship 4-page Profile on Agnosticism by W. Russell Crawford: www.watchman.org/Agnostic Watchman Fellowship 4-page Profile on Naturalism by Daniel Ray: www.watchman.org/Naturalism Additional ResourcesFREE: We are also offering a subscription to our 4-page bimonthly Profiles here: www.watchman.org/Free.SUPPORT: Help us create more content like this. Make a tax-deductible donation here: www.watchman.org/give.Apologetics Profile is a ministry of Watchman Fellowship For more information, visit www.watchman.org © Watchman Fellowship, Inc.
After gathering in NYC with the other fellows of The Keller Center for Cultural Apologetics, Bob shares some insights he gained and lessons he learned. He also discusses some of the ways the fellows are seeking to apply the intellectual work of the Keller Center to the practices of the local church.
Today, we have Michael Graham on The Way Home Podcast! Michael is the program director for the Gospel Coallition's Keller Center for Cultural Apologetics and a writer and producer for their As In Heaven podcast. Today on the Way Home Podcast, we discuss a book co-authored by Michael and Jim Davis, The Great Dechurching: Who's […] The post The Way Home Podcast: Michael Graham on the Great Dechurching appeared first on Daniel Darling.
In this episode we discuss the overlap between two approaches to reaching the lost, "Cultural Apologetics" and "Cross-Cultural Evangelism." Whether seeking to relate to people operating from a secular worldview or majority world religion, we've got to remain confident and clear in the gospel but aim to be accessible to our audience.
In this first episode of this series, "Believe," Jeff and Laura sit down with Michael Graham, Program Director for the Keller Center for Cultural Apologetics. Mike unpacks the findings of his latest book, The Great Dechurching: Who’s Leaving, Why Are They Going, and What Will It Take to Bring Them Back? In it, he looks at the different profiles of Americans who are leaving or have already left the church. Their conversation sets up this series as we look at what it means to believe in the Christian faith, with a great reminder that belief is something we hold to, but it is also God holding on to us. Listen to this and more episodes on our Digging Deeper podcast, available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts and other podcast streaming platforms. Timestamps to help you follow along: (3:18) What is dechurching and who is doing it and why did you choose that title? (4:56) Who is leaving the Church? Four profiles of who is leaving evangelical churches: (5:32) Cultural Christians (6:05) Mainstream Evangelicals (7:44) “Ex”vangelicals (10:15) Black & Indigenous Persons of Color (BIPOC) (12:04) How can you relate to each profile? (13:41) What do you mean when you refer to the dechurching issue in America as a discipleship issue? (17:26) What did you learn with the large group of people who just need an invitation? Additional Resources: - Get Michael’s book, The Great Dechurching: Who’s Leaving, Why Are They Going, and What Will It Take to Bring Them Back? - For more on this topic, check out The Gospel Coalition’s As in Heaven podcast - Subscribe to our YouTube channel and hit the notification bell to get notified of new episodes.
Scripture Referenced1 Peter 3:15; Colossians 4:2-6;Links ReferencedThe Rivendell Institute https://www.rivendellinstitute.org/about/Jesse Furey, What is Culture? Haus Journal. Online at https://www.bonhoefferhaus.com/hausjournal/whatiscultureThe Daily Liturgy https://dailyliturgy.comThree Body Problem https://www.netflix.com/title/81024821
American Christians, we're not in Kansas anymore. The mood has shifted decisively and Christianity is now widely recognized by our most influential cultural voices as harmful for the individual and society. The list of accusations is as long as it is inaccurate: racist, homophobic, xenophobic, sexist, misogynist, fascist, among others. How do we engage a cultural context this hostile? Join us as we dive in on this vexed topic.
Where does Christianity stand between Islam, Judaism, Hinduism, and the like? How do we build a relationship with those of other religions without losing ourselves in the process? What are the bridges that need to be crossed to lead them to Jesus? What is the mission of the church today? What role does the cultural mandate play? And how can the 20th-century Dutch missiologist, J.H. Bavinck help us understand the mission today so that we can do it both faithfully and fruitfully? What role does contextualization play in communicating that mission? That's what we discussed on today's show!Daniel Strange is the director of Crosslands Forum and the vice president of The Southgate Fellowship. He is one of the inaugural fellows of The Keller Center for Cultural Apologetics and is the author of Their Rock Is Not Like Our Rock: A Theology of Religions (Zondervan, 2015), Plugged In (The Good Book Company, 2019), and Making Faith Magnetic (The Good Book Company, 2021) (the book we are talking about today!) He is a contributing editor for Themelios and an elder of Hope Community Church, Gateshead, U.K., which is part of the Fellowship of Evangelical Churches (FIEC).It's a fantastic, fun, and faith-filled conversation that can help you build a bridge with unbelievers so that they too can know Jesus. This is a must-listen!Check out #177 Daniel Strange, Pt. 1 and #178 Daniel Strange, Pt. 2Sign up for the Apollos Watered newsletter.Help water-thirsty souls by partnering with Apollos Watered!
Rebecca McLaughlin is joined by Gavin Ortlund to answer the question; why doesn't God make Himself more obvious?Questions Covered in This Episode:Why doesn't God make Himself more obvious?What is divine transcendence?How does the incarnation affect this conversation?How is Jesus the image of the invisible God?Why would God use sinful humans to reveal Himself to others instead of something more obvious?What does the Bible say about sin and why is it so offensive?What about the people who have never had the opportunity to hear about Jesus?How should I pray?Helpful Definitions:Divine Transcendence: God is high and lofty and beyond our ability to fully understand. We shouldn't expect that we will fully understand everything about God based on our moment-by-moment intuitions. Incarnation: God becoming a man in Christ. Guest Bio:Dr. Gavin Ortlund is a pastor, author, speaker, and apologist for the Christian faith. He runs the YouTube channel Truth Unites, which seeks to promote gospel assurance through theological depth. Gavin has a Ph.D. from Fuller Theological Seminary in historical theology, and an M.Div from Covenant Theological Seminary. He is the author of eight books as well as numerous academic and popular articles. Gavin is a fellow of The Keller Center for Cultural Apologetics, a fellow of The Center for Baptist Renewal, a fellow of Credo, a member of St. Basil Fellowship of The Center for Pastor Theologians, and a Visiting Scholar at Reasons to Believe.Resources Mentioned:Colossians 1, Romans 10:15, Jeremiah 29:13, Matthew 7:7Truth Unites Follow Us:Instagram | TwitterOur Sister Shows:Knowing Faith | The Family Discipleship Podcast | Starting Place | Tiny TheologiansConfronting Christianity is a podcast of Training the Church. For ad-free episodes and more content check out our Patreon.
Guest Bios Show Transcript America is experiencing the largest and fastest religious shift in its history—greater than the First and the Second Great Awakening and every revival in the U.S. combined. But instead of a massive shift into the church, what we're seeing is a mass exodus. In this edition of The Roys Report, you'll hear from Michael Graham, co-author of The Great DeChurching: Who's Leaving, Why Are They Going, and What Will It Take to Bring Them Back. Based on the most comprehensive study of people leaving the church in America, the book gives keen insights into this phenomenon. You'll learn why people are leaving the church, which demographic groups are leaving in the greatest numbers, and what can be done to stop the bleed. And the results may surprise followers of this podcast. Though much of our reporting focuses on corruption and abuse in the church, these issues were not the greatest factors people cited for leaving. The reasons cited were much more mundane than you might think. We are living in a unique moment—what research says is the greatest “dechurching” in nearly 250 years of this nation. This exodus doesn't just affect society or public expressions of faith; it impacts family relationships and how people relate to each other. Tune in for a highly informative conversation that examines the state of the church and why restoring her matters. Guests Michael Graham Michael Graham is program director for The Keller Center for Cultural Apologetics. He is also the executive producer and writer of As In Heaven and co-author of The Great Dechurching. He received his MDiv at Reformed Theological Seminary in Orlando. He is a member at Orlando Grace Church. He is married to Sara, and they have two kids Show Transcript SPEAKERSMICHAEL GRAHAM, Julie Roys Julie Roys 00:04America is experiencing the largest and fastest religious shift in its history greater than the first and the second Great Awakening and every revival in the US combined. But instead of a massive shift into the church, what we’re seeing is a mass exodus, and the greatest de churching in nearly 250 years. Welcome to The Roys Report, a podcast dedicated to reporting the truth and restoring the church. I’m Julie Roys, and on this podcast you’ll hear from Michael Grant, co- author of the new book The Great Dechurching. Based on the most comprehensive study of people leaving the church in America, the book gives keen insights into this phenomenon. You’ll learn why people are leaving the church, which demographics are leaving in the greatest numbers, and what can be done to stop the bleed. And the results may surprise followers of this podcast. Though much of our reporting focuses on corruption and abuse in the church, these issues were not the greatest factors people cited for leaving. The reasons were much more mundane than you might think. And we’ll dig into those in just a minute. Julie Roys 01:05 But first, I’d like to thank the sponsors of this podcast, Judson University, and Marquardt of Barrington. If you’re looking for a top-ranked Christian University, providing a caring community and an excellent college experience, Judson University is for you. Judson is located on 90 acres, just 40 miles west of Chicago in Elgin, Illinois. The school offers more than 60 majors, great leadership opportunities and strong financial aid. Plus, you can take classes online as well as in person. Judson University is shaping lives that shaped the world. For more information, just go to JUDSONU.EDU. Also, if you’re looking for a quality new or used car, I highly recommend my friends at Marquardt of Barrington. Marquardt is a Buick GMC dealership where you can expect honesty, integrity, and transparency. That’s because the owners there Dan and Kurt Marquardt are men of integrity. To check them out just go to BUYACAR123.COM. Julie Roys 02:09 Well, again, joining me is Michael Grant, Program Director at the Keller Center for Cultural apologetics. He’s also the executive producer and writer for the As In Heaven podcast. And he’s also a member at Orlando Grace Church where Jim Davis, who’s the co-author for his latest book, The Great Dechurching. He is also a teaching pastor. So, Michael, welcome. It’s a pleasure to have you join me. MICHAEL GRAHAM 02:31 So good to be here with you, Julie. Julie Roys 02:32 So, Michael, your book is based on an extensive study that sought to prove or disprove this thesis that America’s in the middle of the largest and greatest religious shift in its history. And what you discovered is pretty sobering. Would you tell me about that? MICHAEL GRAHAM 02:47 Yeah. So, I mean, the Cliff’s Notes version is that 40 million adult Americans have left houses of worship, across all religious traditions. And by and large, almost all of that has occurred in the last 30 years. So, from the moment of Nirvana’s Smells Like Teen Spirit to today, 40 million people have gone from, you know, the various pews of all religious traditions. Now, most of those are out of what you’d call Christian traditions, about 15 million of that out of evangelical traditions, and then about another 20 million out of Roman Catholic and mainline traditions, the other traditions are a lot smaller. So, we weren’t really sure what we would be looking at in terms of why there were two prevailing storylines, depending on what your kind of media diet looked like. If your media diet looked a little bit left leaning, then the story was basically that people had been leaving houses of worship primarily because of mistakes made by those institutions themselves. So, this would be things like racism, misogyny, abuse, political syncretism, clergy scandal. If your media diet leaned a little bit to the right, the prevailing story was basically a story of secularism, or sexual revolution, progressivism, people are leaving houses of worship, because they’re no longer worshipping the Triune God, they’re worshipping some other, you know, forms of non-Christian things. The reality is that you can find several million people who would fit both that first story or that second story. However, most of the people might have elements of either of those two stories in there, but most of them left for really, really boring reasons. So, the challenge is like not necessarily saying that story A or story B is wrong. There’s actually a story C that is not as interesting. That’s also there and is kind of the water that we’re all kind of in is the number one reason why people you know, left houses of worship, and stop going on at least a monthly basis. So that’s how we defined the charging somebody who used to go to church, or house of worship at least monthly, consistently, and now less than once per year. So even if you go to church on Christmas Eve, or Christmas, or Easter or Christmas and Easter, we still counted you in our study as being churched. So, if you think the 40 million number sounds scary, you know, if you take all the Christmas and Easter people out. Julie Roys 05:32 That is like a really, really low bar. MICHAEL GRAHAM 05:35 There’s many, many more people. But basically, the number one reason I moved, right after that is, attendance was inconvenient. After that is some kind of marriage, divorce, new child, or some other significant family change. After you kind of get past some of those reasons, you start to get into some of the reasons where people experience some more pain or some more friction, either at the individual level, or at the institutional level. But it really kind of looks like of the 40 million people who left, 30 million left, what we called casually, and about 10 million left as casualties. And so, 10 million people is a lot of people, okay, I don’t want to downplay at all the people who have significant church hurt at the individual, institutional or both levels. But there’s also just kind of 30 million people where it just kind of looks like, okay, well, just the inertia of American life and their rhythms and habits just kind of had them floating on. MICHAEL GRAHAM 06:45 Now, the interesting thing about really, across the board, both the people who left casually and unintentionally, as well as the people who left as casualties and left highly intentionally, most of them are willing to return today to a house of worship of some sort. Some of them were willing to go back to exactly what they left and some of them are not willing to go back to exactly what they left, but willing to go to something that we would all consider as being part of the historic Christian tradition. Julie Roys 07:18 Yeah, I was surprised when I read it, how many people just dropped out because well, even COVID. Like, they just got out of the habit. And I guess we’re seeing that. I mean, I know that’s a phenomenon. But it’s stunning in some ways that something that you would expect to be so central to a person’s life, that they would give it up just because it’s inconvenient, or they get out of the habit of going. And yet, maybe that speaks to where the spiritual state before that happened. But that was surprising, I thought finding of the study. Julie Roys 07:48 I thought too just thinking through what’s at stake, which you do kind of in that first section relationally, what’s happening, you know, between parents and their kids, and you had this one line which struck me because I’m over 50. And it says, anecdotally, we know, of almost no parents over the age of 50, who don’t have at least one child who is dechurched. And I’ve got three kids. I guess I read that, and I just was very grateful, because none of my kids are dechurched. But I mean, certainly, wow, we felt like we have been in a war for their soul at different times within their lives. And just, by the grace of God, I think, have seen them embrace faith. But there are a lot of things in here that remind me of the situation that we’re in. I mean, this between parents and their children. And of course, I have so many friends, I mean, that are just beautiful parents and probably did a 10 times better job than I did. And they’re dealing with just such heartache over their kids leaving their faith leaving the church. But even you know, it’s culturally how fractured we are mentally. I mean, talk about some of these impacts on who we are as communities and as Americans that are really going to be impacted as we see this begin to play out. MICHAEL GRAHAM 09:15 Let’s start at the purely secular level. Why would I care about this if even I was an atheist or agnostic or a nothing in particular? The first thing I would say is you should care about this phenomenon, because it’s going to at least sociologically reorder many aspects of American culture and society. How many different trends can you think about that impact one in six adult Americans? There aren’t many. And so, the implications of this will have implications in terms of politics and political voting groups. It will have an impact on the social safety net in our country. There are certain studies that have shown that as much as 40% of America’s social safety net, the social safety net being the kinds of things that are there for people, when they’re, at their hardest or most challenging moments, that 40% of the social safety net in this country is basically coming from religious nonprofits. And so, when you see one in six adult Americans, you know, opt out of those kinds of ties, thicker ties, and local ties to local religious institutions, that’s going to have an impact for sure, on the social safety net. And I don’t think that that’s in the interest of either common good or human flourishing. MICHAEL GRAHAM 10:41 We estimate in the book that that’s probably about $25 billion that just exited out of the religious nonprofit world. I mean, you’re talking about $1.4 trillion dollars, in terms of the total income of the people who have disconnected from local churches. A lot of implications for institutions, certainly, you’re going to see churches and houses of worship that are going to struggle, perhaps even close. You’ll have others where the trend of decline will continue. And that will put additional strain on those institutions. There will probably be consolidation that takes place that’s there. But if you’re listening to this, and maybe you yourself are dechurched, is it’s like, what, I miss you, okay? Because I go to church, and if you’re not there, I’m worse off because of your absence. At the local church level, it’s like, well, dechurching is impoverishing our churches, because you have all these people who are amazing image bearers, and then who liked I want to know, and love and experience. And I think about like the 59 one another's in the New Testament. At least over half of those require, we have to be embodied in order to even get to do those things. And so, I’m just worse off when there’s people who aren’t there anymore, and they’re missed. And so, and then zooming all the way down to, like, the familial level, there’s tremendous pain and hurt there. We’re not talking about just a number on a spreadsheet, you’re talking about real people’s lives, and real things in their story, and real pains, and real hard sometimes. Sometimes for very good reasons people disconnect themselves from these things. Anybody familiar with you and your ministry, knows these stories, and they know them well.. And so, I think on that front, there’s just tremendous things at stake. What’s the Thanksgiving or the Christmas dinner table look like? And what pieces of sadness are there?, or these places where people land different from their family members in terms of how they process really big conversations. Those can be really hard and lonely and isolating things when you find yourself in a very different place. MICHAEL GRAHAM 13:25 But you know, one of the things that we advocate in the book is a posture of quiet, calm curiosity for everybody. You can only find yourself in that, in that place of being quiet, calm, and curious with other people, when you have a sense of security in yourself. And I think that security is best found when we’re confident in our identity as image bearers made in the image of God, redeemed by the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ, and confident of our future, our eschatological future in the kingdom of God. And so, when we have that, that gives us the freedom to not feel like we need to be defensive, we can just listen to other people and hear what they have to say and believe people when they’re telling us about the wins and losses, particularly the wins and losses and their experiences with people who claim Christ or institutions that claim to be Christian. And so, I think there’s a lot of implications for these things. There’s just a lot that’s at stake. I think that there’s much work to be done, both on the individual front, and there’s a lot of work to be done on the institutional front. Julie Roys 14:43 How we lead as institutions, I think, is probably an area that energizes me because I have found so much dysfunction within those institutions. And I did like that you said, we don’t have to go back to the church we left and I’m in a house church now, I love it. And I find myself questioning a lot of the stuff that I just took on face value. I was having discussion recently, I’m like, I don’t know, like preaching is that really the best way for us to study the Bible? We get together and we open the Bible, and we study it together. And I found that incredibly rich, richer than a lot of times when I have somebody giving me basically a lecture for 30 or 40 minutes on their opinion of what it says. And I find it just much richer to go right in and dig in ourselves. So, I find myself at least among the people that I’m in contact with, are all asking these questions. What is it really have to offer look like? I am just in contact with so many people where it hasn’t felt safe. And so, I just have such a degree of empathy for those who have trouble and I say, even my own children, I watched them try to find a church. And it is unbelievably hard, unbelievably, and that just breaks my heart because I feel like so many of the vibrant churches that I knew when I was their age, don’t exist anymore, or they’ve been just the ministries that I think of that were so vibrant on campuses, and so forth just aren’t there. And so, we do have an unbelievable amount of work to do. And I thought it was interesting, you also found, like, when we’re talking about leaving the church, like, who’s dechurching?, this isn’t any particular group. This like everybody across the board, right? MICHAEL GRAHAM 16:27 It’s unilateral across the board,. In certain places, it’s maybe a little bit more prominent or pronounced than others. And the timing of which various different groupings may have kind of floated on looks different. But by and large, yeah there’s no group that’s immune. Julie Roys 16:48 Well, let’s dig into some of the groups because that’s what I do find really fascinating, but also, I think, really educational, because if we’re going to be relating to these folks in hopefully a winsome way, it’s helpful to know who they are. And I think there are some misconceptions of who they are. So, you basically found there’s five groups of dechurched individuals, cultural Christians, dechurched mainstream evangelicalism, exvangelicals, dechurched, BIPOC. So Black, Indigenous and People of Color, and dechurched mainline Protestants. Let’s dig into each one of those groups. Let’s start with the cultural Christians who, I’m guessing these are the people that grew up went to church on Christmas and Easter, and maybe a few times in between, but basically a little bit of church background, but not really a saving faith, probably. MICHAEL GRAHAM 17:46 Yeah, so every one of those groups we mentioned had one thing in common, they all went to a house of worship, at least consistently on a monthly basis, but now less than once per year. So, the culture in terms of size, the 15 million people who left evangelical traditions, and that’s the first four profiles that you just read off: cultural Christians, dechurched mainstream evangelicals, exvangelical, and then the BIPOC dechurched. The cultural Christians are about eight of those 15 million people. And then the next three groups are between two and two and a half million each. So, the cultural Christians, they look like people who are upwardly mobile, who did not have a deep understanding of the gospel, or the Bible, and the inertia of just their rhythms and habits basically has them out of the habit of going to church anymore. They’ve been gone from church for about 12 years now. They’re in their early 40s, on average. They’re overwhelmingly white, 98% white, and they’re doing well from an education and income standpoint. Interestingly enough, about half of them are willing to return to an evangelical church today. The top reasons why they left attendance was inconvenient, their friends weren’t worshiping at church anymore, they moved. More casual reasons than casualty and painful and the reasons why they said that they wouldn’t be willing to return were largely things that were relational in nature; new friends, lonely and want to make new friends, they miss church, a friend invites them, a spouse wants to go, they move and want to make new friends in a good community. So those were the reasons why about 4 million of them were willing to return to an evangelical church right now. Julie Roys 19:36 Throughout these profiles, you often talk about their relationship to their parents, because again, they were brought up a certain way and obviously they’re doing life differently now than their parents did. And there were a couple things with their parents, one turned off by their parents commitment to culture wars and refusal to listen. And then the second one, they’re not seeing the fruit of the Spirit in their parents. It’s tough to hear that. I think it’s a reminder that you know, as parents wow, I mean, what a responsibility. I’m curious if those relationships, and I don’t know how much you dug into it, but do they just remain fractured? MICHAEL GRAHAM 20:21 We don’t know yet. The hard scientist in me would say we need to ask the same people the same question years later. And to drill down to get at the heart of those things. Probably in the three-to-five-year timeframe, we want to ask a lot of the same questions and see what looks similar, see what looks different. The stuff with the parents is really hard. And it’s challenging, and it’s sad. I don’t know if it’s necessarily surprising. Obviously, for most of us, that’s one of the most formative relationships, if not the most formative relationship, at least in certain times of our life. And so, I think, also the last decade, in American public life, and I think particularly with the advent of social media, and the ways in which social media, you know, you have the like button, I think that was introduced, I want to say in 2009. Every platform has their dopamine-inducing reward structure for creating content that some people find interesting. The challenging thing about all of that is now, when you have a reward mechanism built into social platforms, people are more self-revelatory than what they would have been before. And so, I think, in terms of public communication and discourse, there is the freedom for people to communicate more about their perspectives than probably what there was before this dynamic of American public life existed. And so, I don’t think that’s necessarily all good or all bad. It’s just, there are implications that are downstream from that. And now, it’s where everybody is at, is far more clear than what it was 10 plus years ago. And there’s going to be implications from that, particularly as people have divergent perspectives, and sometimes strongly divergent perspectives. And again, all of these things are algorithmically incentivized. And in some ways, the stronger you feel about those things, sometimes that reward mechanism rewards you even further. And so, I think over time, there aren’t many impulses that are there baked into these things that create people finding as much common ground. And oftentimes, our digital interactions become power over persuasion. MICHAEL GRAHAM 22:56 And so those are challenging dynamics. And what do you do if your parents are behaving poorly on the internet, and are getting cheered on from those things? You can flip that script in the other way, as well. So those things are going to have implications at the dinner table. And I’m sure that many people have experienced some challenges during looking back at their Thanksgiving and their Christmas. And I think that some of these things are just downstream from these particular dynamics of how technology has inserted itself into our lives and revealed things about people that we loved that have maybe changed our perspectives about how we view them and have altered maybe the amount of relational intimacy that we feel comfortable with. Those are hard and sad things. Julie Roys 23:44 And one thing I found really interesting about this group, I mean, obviously, there’s the family fracture, well, that’s going to leave you more lonely, maybe depressed. But then there’s the relational fracture, like most of us, I mean, I know for me, my closest friends are my church friends, right? And without that community people are, and you even found, like more depressed, higher anxiety, I mean, all those things. And so, the reverse then, is that, and we often think, how do we invite people back to the church?, and I thought it was insightful that you’re like, these people need a dinner-table invite. In other words, they’re looking for a relationship, right? That’s most likely what’s going to bring them back to the church. MICHAEL GRAHAM 24:26 What we talked about in the book is there’s three levels of relationship that different broadly speaking profiles probably need. The second profile that you’ve mentioned, the dechurched mainstream evangelicals, these folks left on average about three or four years ago. They’re about the same age as that first group, early 40s. But this group is whereas the cultural Christians only 1% of them said that Jesus is the Son of God, 98% of this second group said Jesus is the Son of God.. These people have a very deep understanding of the Gospel, the Bible, and the kinds of things that you want to see from Nicene-creed level of Christianity. And 100% of that group are willing to return to an evangelical church today. MICHAEL GRAHAM 25:08 And so, the three levels of kind of relational need that’s there, that group really they just need a nudge. A nudge is something like a text, a phone call a water cooler moment, talking out on the porch, or in the cul de sac, hey, I got this really cool thing going on at church, or I’m speaking up this thing, or I think you’d really like our pastor, would you be willing to come to church with me? Let’s go grab lunch after at such and such place, that’s a nudge. I think when there is more pain, or church hurt, or these different kinds of things. And this should be obvious, when you think about it, it’s just people need the kind of intimacy that occurs around breaking bread together in a home at the dinner table. Literally, or figuratively and metaphorically, I think that when people need to be able to have an avenue, when there’s either interpersonal or institutional or both friction, then they need to be able to have a place that is where they can experience somebody who’s going to be willing to quietly, calmly and with curiosity, engage them in their story in a way that they would want to be treated. So, we have a third category of people who are just, they’re probably just never going to return to a house of worship. Julie Roys 26:26 The exvangelicals. No? MICHAEL GRAHAM 26:28 The exvangelicals are done with the evangelical expression of the faith. Okay. 79% of them were willing to return to some form of Christian tradition. That was something that was very surprising. Julie Roys 26:44 So just 100%, they will not go back to the church they came from, which may be a good thing, in a lot of ways. MICHAEL GRAHAM 26:51 Well, I mean, certainly there are many different institutions I could think of where it would be very unhealthy to return to. So, and that’s the good news about all of this stuff, you don’t have to return to what you left if there was something unhealthy. I always think about these things in terms of truth, goodness, and beauty. Well, what’s a healthy church? Where you can see the truth of the gospel, the goodness of the gospel, and the beauty of the gospel, all in the same place. Julie Roys 27:21 The exvangelicals, I just want to camp there just a little bit, because these are folks that I mean, honestly, I have a lot of empathy for and understanding. I mean, they’ve been through some things that were pretty toxic in the church. In fact, you found they scored 74% higher on experiencing a lack of love from their congregation than the other four groups combined. And that’s heartbreaking, like the place where you should most experience love, they experience a complete lack of love. And I’d be curious how many of them come from a fundamentalist background as well because I mean, there just seems to be a correlation there between just a rigid adherence to rules and so forth, and even the culture wars and all of that, and just a lack of caring for the soul and caring for the human being, whether they agree with you or not. But these folks, where they look for answers; talk about that a little bit. MICHAEL GRAHAM 28:26 We ended up calling this group exvangelicals because none of them are willing to return to an evangelical church. But what was really surprising was that 79% of them said that Jesus is the Son of God, and they had the second highest view of the Bible, as well as Nicene Creed-level Christianity. And so that would be things like the Trinity, the seamlessness of Jesus, these kinds of things. But what was interesting is this group was overwhelmingly female, two thirds female. And they were middle aged, average age 53. And they left a little bit after 9/11, on average, in terms of the bell curve. And what does seem to be occurring there is they had the lowest income and the lowest education of any of the groups, and their relationship towards institutions in general, was very strained. And so that was really interesting to see. It’s not just that the church isn’t working for this particular group, particularly the evangelical church. But American institutions in general aren’t working well for this group. Much lower rates of marriage, much higher rates of divorce, the rates of depression, anxiety, loneliness, and suicidal thoughts were also elevated across the board, but particularly suicidal thoughts were very bad. I think I made a note of this in the book, describe how you’re doing with respect to suicidal thoughts. And we’re basically 100 is I have no suicidal thoughts; everything is rainbows and Skittles. And where zero is deeply, deeply struggling with suicidal thoughts, the average score among this group of people, the exvangelical group, was 16. I just started crying, these are real people. And there’s several thousand people that we surveyed here. Are some of these people no longer with us?, is some of these people? So, I don’t know, given the number of people we surveyed probably. So, I’m looking at that., and it just can’t not impact you at a deep level, when you have any measure of empathy to think, oh, my gosh, these are image bearers. And this is a group of people that are clearly there’s a lot of pain that’s here. And there’s a lot of things that just aren’t working. And I don’t know how many institutions there are, depending on where you’re located, and how many options you have. I think many people might have to go a long distance to find a place where they’d find a church that would have that kind of empathy and understanding, given whatever is there in the story. Julie Roys 31:07 Well, it becomes almost cyclical, because if you’re divorced, I mean, I hear this from so many of my divorced friends, that you go into a church and you feel judged right away, or you feel like you don’t fit in, and so it can become very self-perpetuating, makes it very hard to go to any place. So, wow, let’s move to the dechurched/BIPOC because this one was surprising to me, too. I was not expecting the profile that you found of this group. So, describe the black indigenous persons of color who have dropped out of their church. What kind of person are we talking about here? MICHAEL GRAHAM 31:43 Yeah, so this group was fascinating too. Over two thirds of this group was male. Yeah. And the average age there was early 50s. And this group on average left in the late 1990s. Okay. Now, something that’s really fascinating, when the machine learning algorithm that we used to sort the dataset into these different profiles, we didn’t let it see ethnicity or race in the dataset, and sort based on that. Now, what’s interesting, though, is that you have profiles like cultural Christians that are 98% white, and you have profiles like this one that are 0% white. And note, so while race is a biological fiction, it is a sociological reality. And so, you can see that race and ethnicity has a significant impact in terms of the ways that you’re experiencing America and American institutions, and it has an influence on those things. So that was interesting. Another thing that was interesting was that this group, and you’re talking two to two and a half million people, had the highest income and the highest education of any of the different groups. Now, bear in mind, this is a group of people who aren’t white, who probably largely willfully chose to connect themselves to evangelical institutions, which we all know trend from a sociological and demographic standpoint, most evangelical churches trend in the Anglo direction of things. And so, it wouldn’t be wise to take the particular perspectives of this particular group and assume that everybody who’s BIPOC in America would share the same perspectives: very high incomes, very high education, head and shoulders above any of the other groups. And the cultural Christians are the next to that. And the BIPOC groups just stands head and shoulders above them. Julie Roys 33:39 So, this is a group that generally, I mean, those that have dropped out, at least the profile you gave was of somebody who’s BIPOC that lives in a pretty white space. And so, I mean, I’m looking at that thinking, Is it easier to disconnect from that church community? Because the black church is such a cohesive community that, I mean, almost, it’s so strong in the community. I think it is even stronger than most white churches. Is it easier to disconnect from church once you kind of moved out of that space? And then you’re in really, almost an alien space in some ways. MICHAEL GRAHAM 34:26 Yeah. In terms of black Protestantism, the black churches in American US history, have played more of a role in the local community life than say their predominantly Anglo counterparts. And I think a lot of that has to do with the amount of pressure that was placed on those communities over time. The BIPOC group was 76% African American and 13% Latino. So, when you combine the predominantly male with predominantly African American means over half of this group was extremely upwardly mobile black men. So, you’re talking to at least a million black men of the 15 million people who left evangelical churches. The most pain in church hurt comes from the exvangelical group and the BIPOC group. By far, the exvangelical group, they’re all the church casualties. The BIPOC group is a mixture of casual and casualty. The dechurched, mainstream evangelicals are all casual. And then most of the cultural Christians you’d characterize as casual. Julie Roys 35:35 The last group we don’t have much time to spend on because I do want to talk a little bit about some of the messages and the things that we need to say to all five of these groups. But the dechurched, mainline Protestants and Catholics, not a lot of surprises there I thought. That they’re really concerned about the church doing some good when maybe the church they grew up in and I know the profile, you get profiles for all these different groups, but the profile was a man who grew up Catholic and the clergy sex scandal just rocked his world because it impacted his brother. And those people are kind of done with church if it doesn’t make a difference in a positive way for the community, right? MICHAEL GRAHAM 36:16 Yeah. And in the dechurching that occurred among mainline and Roman Catholic occurred earlier than the dechurching that we’re seeing among evangelicals. Dechurching among mainline Protestants is more starting in the mid-80s. and extending into the late 90s. And then you can kind of shift that up about five years, for those who are leaving Roman Catholicism from the early 90s to like early aughts. And then you know, dechurching among evangelicals kind of looks like the Apple stock chart, just a little bit later, going hockey stick. Julie Roys 36:54 Yeah. Well, the last segment of your book does talk about those who had dechurched from evangelical churches, how we might be able to bring them back. And, you know, I really appreciated that you talked about not just beliefs, because that’s what we hear so much about. In fact, when you were talking in the beginning you’re saying, you know, we think of people who don’t believe in the Bible anymore, don’t believe in God. And that’s not what we’re finding, by and large with a lot of these groups. But where we’re not looking is the sense of belonging and the behavior. So, would you talk just a little bit about that? and why this is important? MICHAEL GRAHAM 37:30 Yeah. In sociology of religion, Jim and I learned from our conversations with Ryan, that they have these three categories of belief, behavior and belonging. I think in the 20th century, most of the ways in which we communicated the gospel to people was belief centric. And when you look at like, apologetic literature from that century, most of it is focusing on, oh, the claims of the Bible, or the claims of Jesus, or the Gospels are true. And it’s okay, that’s good. But I think the kinds of questions that we’ve seen more frequently, in the last decade or two, have been questions about whether is Jesus good? Or Is he beautiful? And what does that mean for me in terms of how I relate to other people and to community? And so those are more of belonging-type questions than truth questions. And so, I think that it is important for us that we be building healthier institutions. And like I said before, we want to have churches that emphasize the truth of the gospel, the goodness of the gospel, and the beauty of the gospel. Is the Jesus way a path towards to human flourishing to me?, will I find people who treat me with the fruit of the Spirit, with love, joy, patience, peace, all of these kinds of things? The good news about all of that is those are things that are within our control. We can walk and keep in step with the Spirit. And we can bring the kinds of change needed at the institutional level, to try to really bring our churches in line and instep with the Holy Spirit and inline and in step with what God has revealed in his word. And as we do those things, we can be building beautiful places for people. Will those things ever be perfect or whatever? No. But I think that impulse to be always reforming. It needs to be there. And we need to be willing to have hard conversations with ourselves calmly. But we need to be willing to hold up mirrors to ourselves and ask ourselves, How can we do better? Julie Roys 39:48 A question that you asked in the book that I think is powerful, is does your church operate more like an event or a family? And I have found it just in so many churches, it is an event where you can come, and you can go, and nobody even knows you. And it’s no wonder if that’s what people think of the church that they’re leaving. So, if there’s not that family component, yeah, they’re just not going to stay. I think it was interesting, too, that you found that online church is basically a back door. Like people might go there for a while. But if they’re not connecting relationally, which how can you, you're a virtual church?, they ended up leaving, and I thought, on the behavior side, where you talked about that the church talk about hypocrisy, if they don’t see our beliefs and our actions lining up, they’re not going to stay. And so, we can only touch the surface, really, in a podcast, but the book, I would just highly, highly recommend. There’s so many good things in there, I think, instructive for us, and how we can do better how we can reach out, but how we need to be something different, I think, before we can even invite people to what we have, because if we’re not really functioning healthy as a church, then we can’t invite people to it. But before you go, I just want to give you an opportunity to any last thoughts that you’d like to say, to those, and especially those right now who are listening, who, they’re still dechurched, they’ve had it. MICHAEL GRAHAM 41:21 What I want to say is that, regardless of how people, humans, and human institutions have hurt and harmed or failed you, I have never been hurt or harmed by Jesus. And I continue to fall more in love with just the goodness of his gospel. And look, I’ve been before, in my current role I’ve been a pastor for some 15 years. And I should probably be dechurched based on the things that I’ve seen over the years. There’s nothing that’s in the book, aside from the parental pain, I don’t have that there. But pretty much any other category that you can talk about, I’ve seen it, and I should be at risk. But I just know at the end of the day, if anybody else had the words of life, I would go and I would go there, but nobody else has the words of life but Christ, and he has died for his church. Is she a mess? Yeah. Is some of her parts way more messed up than others? Yes. Some to a fatal extent? Yes. Should there be some institutions that don’t exist? Yes. However, and sometimes for certain people, it’s going to be more proximate than others. But there are still good places where you can find that, where the body of Christ functions like a family. So, I’d encourage you to go back to God’s Word and look at all those one another's that are there in the text and find a place where you see those one another’s embodied, and where you can see that the truth, goodness, and beauty of the gospel all in one place. There’s just such tremendous hope in Jesus. It is the treasure in a field that is worth selling, metaphorically speaking, all that you have to go and pursue. Only Christ as the words of life. And only in Him can we find redemption, and the hope of a future where re-creation is happening, and redemption is happening as far as the curse is found. Julie Roys 43:46 So good. And I think what we’re finding is that people are open to Jesus. It’s just the church. So, I do pray. I know for me; I feel just extraordinarily grateful that I found a body of believers and it’s been a lifeline for me. So, I just pray for that for other people. But I thank you, Michael, for helping us understand these different groups of people and also understanding what maybe we’re doing wrong that we can fix. Appreciate that, love your book. So, thank you again, so much for taking the time. MICHAEL GRAHAM 44:17 Thank you, Julie. Appreciate it. Julie Roys 44:19 And thanks so much for listening to The Roys Report, a podcast dedicated to reporting the truth and restoring the church. I’m Julie Roys. And just a quick reminder, if you’d like a copy of Michael’s book, The Great Dechurching, we’d be happy to send you one for gift of $30 or more to The Roys Report this month. Again, we don’t have any large donors or advertising we simply have you the people who care about reporting the truth and restoring the church. So, if you’d like to support our work and get The Great Dechurching, just go to JULIEROYS.COM/DONATE. Also, just a quick reminder to subscribe to The Roys Report on Apple podcasts, Google podcasts or Spotify. That way you’ll never miss an episode. And while you’re at it, I’d really appreciate it if you’d help us spread the word about the podcast by leaving a review. And then please share the podcast on social media so more people can hear about this great content. Again, thanks for joining me today. Hope you are blessed and encouraged. Read more
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Sam Allberry debunks some of the myths of singleness, talks about writing a book that teaches kids how marriage points us to God's love, and shares ways couples and families can include their single friends in their holiday plans. Plus, he gives advice for those of us who will be seeing and celebrating with loved ones during the holidays who identify as LGBTQ+ or who have different views on sexuality than we do. RESOURCES: 7 Myths about Singleness Is God Anti-Gay? God's Go-Togethers God's Signposts MARKED is a podcast from Lifeway Women: https://women.lifeway.com/blog/podcasts/. Hosted by Kelly King and Elizabeth Hyndman. RECOMMENDED: Hear the powerful story of Laura Perry and her mother Francine as they share the story of Transgender to Transformed. ABOUT SAM ALLBERRY Sam Allberry is a pastor, preacher and apologist. He is the author of various books, the most recent of which is What God Has to Say About Our Bodies and the cohost of the podcast You're Not Crazy: Gospel Sanity for Young Pastors. He is the Associate Pastor at Immanuel Nashville and a Fellow at the Keller Center for Cultural Apologetics.
John Stonestreet talks to Greg Koukl, the author of the new book Street Smarts, about effective ways to engage an increasingly hostile culture. This month, for a gift of any amount to the Colson Center, we will send you a copy of Greg Koukl's book Street Smarts. To receive a copy of Street Smarts: Using Questions to Answer Christianity's Toughest Challenges, visit colsoncenter.org/September.
For over 30 years, my friend Greg Koukl has taught Christians how to engage with people across worldview lines by asking questions. His first book Tactics has equipped thousands of Christians to communicate with wisdom and passion. This month, Koukl is releasing a follow-up to that book, entitled Street Smarts: Using Questions to Answer Christianity's Toughest Challenges. Among the goals of the book is to make evangelism a less intimidating and more successful endeavor: "There are few things that cause more nagging guilt for Christians than sharing their faith. They feel guilt because they don't witness enough. They don't witness enough because they're scared. And they're scared for good reason. Sharing the gospel and defending it—apologetics—often feels like navigating a minefield these days. For most of us, engaging others on spiritual matters does not come easy, especially when people are hostile." Koukl helpfully distinguishes what he calls “harvesting,” and “gardening.” Because God brings the harvest, our goal is simply faithfulness to what is true about the world and about people. According to John's Gospel, some Christians harvest and others sow, so “that sower and reaper may rejoice together.” A singular focus only on “harvesting,” Koukl argues, leads to a number of problems. For example, the very important “gardeners” are encouraged to sit out the evangelism process, in favor of the “harvesters.” This is often the case when Christians fail to understand the power of the cultural forces shaping the worldview of non-believers, one reason our Gospel seeds seem to only bounce off “hard soil.” Christians, therefore, must also commit to “spadework,” or digging up the faulty preconceptions about life, God, and humanity that people hold, often unknowingly. One great way to do this “spadework” is by asking questions. "Ask questions. Lots of them. Your first step in any encounter should be to gather as much information as possible. It's hard to know how to proceed—or even if to proceed—unless you first get the lay of the land. You need intel, and friendly queries get it for you. When you need to buy some time to catch your wits, ask a question. When you face a challenge you're not sure how to deal with, ask a question. When the conversation bogs down and you think it best to move in a new direction, ask a question. Whenever you're in doubt about how to move forward, ask a question." In Street Smarts, Koukl teaches the kinds of questions that are most effective while also providing sample conversations on the most common topics, which is another very important contribution of this book. In addition to answering the misconceptions about faith that people often have—from God's existence to the divinity of Jesus—Street Smarts helps believers engage others on the moral and social issues at the center of our cultural discourse, such as abortion and gender and the many topics related to human sexuality. Koukl provides the questions, the talking points, and the examples that can open up significant conversations, invite skeptics in, and challenge presuppositions. In the process, Christians will develop confidence in what is true. Our job is to jump in. The results are up to God. "You may be serving quietly, in the dark, often not knowing the true extent of your impact—going out in obedience, doing what is right, speaking what is true, laboring faithfully. The course of history is often changed by small things done by ordinary people at opportune times, even though they never realize it. We take what we have—our skills, our gifts, our capabilities, our opportunities—then place everything in the hands of the Savior. … A person may rebel at what you share, but if you're thoughtful in what you say and gracious in how you say it, chances are good you'll give him something to think about." This month, for a gift of any amount to the Colson Center, we will send you a copy of Greg Koukl's book Street Smarts. As Koukl writes, both knowledge and action “breed courage.” His book cultivates both. To receive a copy of Street Smarts: Using Questions to Answer Christianity's Toughest Challenges, visit colsoncenter.org/September. As Koukl writes, "Now is not the time for fear of any kind. It's not the time to circle the wagons or to pull up the drawbridge. It's the time for ambassadors equipped with knowledge, tactical wisdom, and character to seize the moment as agents of change for the kingdom of heaven when the world needs them most."  For more resources to live like a Christian in this cultural moment, go to breakpoint.org.
When I was a college student in eastern Tennessee, classmates who felt called to teach in inner-city schools would take on student teaching practicums in the small town of Graysville. On the surface, a big city like Detroit could not seem more different than the tiny mountain town that was racially not diverse and overwhelmingly white. However, the issues that afflicted both were largely the same: a lack of upward mobility, extraordinary rates of fatherless homes, poorly performing schools, high rates of addiction, health problems, and an outsized dependence on welfare. These issues, as conservative pundits are often quick to note when talking about inner cities, are a culture-wide problem. It's not just the economics and politics that keep people down. Individual choices matter, as does the way people perceive their situation. Social scientists have long noted how what they call a strong “locus of control,” or the view that your choices have a real impact on your life, tends to predict socioeconomic success. The opposite is also true: When someone views themselves as mainly a victim of things beyond their control, it often becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. All of this came to mind last month when a country-folk song from out of nowhere became an anthem for populist outrage. In “Rich Men North of Richmond,” previously obscure Virginia songwriter Oliver Anthony rails against Washington elites for creating a world in which hardworking Americans can barely make ends meet and are dying of despair. The song really struck a chord online, particularly with listeners on the political right, and shot to number one on the Billboard Singles chart. Days later, it was used as an opener at the first Republican presidential debate—a move Anthony himself slammed, saying “I wrote this song about those people.” For many listeners, the song's message reinforced the belief held by many: that elites of both parties have ruined America and are keeping ordinary working people down, and outrage is an appropriate response. Because of Anthony's roots and the song's lyrics, listeners linked it with the plight of rural Appalachian communities, places like Graysville. In these mostly white regions, poverty, drug use, and dependence on welfare have become the subject of documentaries and books like J. D. Vance's Hillbilly Elegy. However, as Mark Antonio Wright pointed out at National Review, Hillbilly Elegy also identified and addressed subtler, cultural factors at work in the Coal Belt, such as opioid abuse, “young men immune to hard work,” and “a lack of agency—a feeling that you have little control over your life and a willingness to blame everyone but yourself.” While “Rich Men North of Richmond” laments real problems that can rightly be laid at the feet of corrupt politicians and government overreach, such as inflation, unemployment, and “deaths of despair,” fans of the song seem determined to blame these problems only on outsiders. There are, as Wright points out, reasons to doubt that framing. For instance, there are millions more job openings in the U.S. right now than there are unemployed workers, though the same opportunities are not available everywhere. And many of those jobs, contrary to the song, are well-paid blue-collar positions. Yet labor force participation is low even after Covid. When you consider also the personal agency involved in drug addiction and obesity—two scourges on rural America—the simple victim narrative gets even more complicated. Wright's National Review article provoked quite a social media backlash. That's because a lot of Americans are angry. “Rich Men North of Richmond” gave them an outlet to express that anger. However, outrage anthems can only express so much and often obscure complex truths, including some that conservatives are happy to point out. Perhaps the most important of those complex truths is that cultures themselves can become toxic when built upon bad ideas and thus can create victims. In many cases, the problem is not as much the “rich men” in a faraway town but the lack of dads in ours. As Wright suggests, “We the People” have adopted plenty of self-destructive beliefs and habits. None of this absolves politicians of what's been done to make Americans' lives worse. Ronald Reagan's adage that government is usually the problem rather than the solution is even more true than when he said it. However, I also believe that outrage is not a strategy, nor are outrage anthems. Blaming our country's issues on shadowy oppressors “out there,” which political parties do whenever they assure their voters that they are victims, encourages the mindset that only perpetuates poverty, relational brokenness, and addictions. It's based on an impoverished worldview that replaces agency with anger and treats people as less than fully human, refusing them the dignity of being responsible moral actors whose fate and whose communities are at least partially within their purview and control. In fact, the victim worldview is the thing most likely to empower those “rich men north of Richmond” at the expense of everyone else. This Breakpoint was co-authored by Shane Morris. For more resources to live like a Christian in this cultural moment, go to breakpoint.org.
As a thank-you for a gift of any amount to the Colson Center this month, we'll send you a copy of Street Smarts: Using Questions to Answer Christianity's Toughest Challenges. The book is a guide through the hot-button issues with wise responses to arguments against Christianity. Give today at colsoncenter.org/September. __ It can be intimidating to engage our neighbors on cultural issues these days. It seems that every conversation is a potential minefield where the slightest wrong word can get you banished from polite society as a bigot or “hater.” This is where we can take a lesson from two of the greatest teachers of all time, Jesus and Socrates. Both were masters of their craft, and both used questions to lead their listeners to the answers they sought. Here are six questions I've found extremely helpful to create the sort of dialogue we should desire about issues of faith and culture. First: What do you mean by that? The battle of ideas is always tied up in the battle over the definition of words. Thus, it's vital in any conversation to clarify the terms being used. For example, the most important thing to clarify about “same-sex marriage” is the definition of marriage. When the topic comes up, it's best to say, “Hold on, before we go too far into what kind of unions should be considered marriage, what do you mean by marriage?” Often, when it comes to these crucial issues, we're all using the same vocabulary, but rarely the same dictionary. Here's a second question: How do you know that is true? Too often, assertions are mistaken for arguments, and there's a vast difference between the two. An assertion is a definitive statement made about the nature of reality. An argument is presented to back up an assertion. By asking “how do you know that's true?” we'll move the conversation beyond dueling assertions to why those assertions should be taken seriously. For example, it's a common assertion that the Church has always been an obstacle to education and science, but this is just a legend. In reality, not only did schools pop up everywhere churches went, but a host of scientists, past and present, have been devout believers. Here's a third question: Where did you get this information? Once arguments are offered, it's important to ensure the arguments are valid. For example, news reports love to shout headlines about some study that shows same-sex couples are better parents than straight couples. However, this quickly repeated talking point is based on limited studies that are flawed. More and broader-based studies suggest the exact opposite. The fourth question: How did you come to this conclusion? Behind the individuals you are talking with and their convictions, is a story ... a personal story. If you know that story, it may make more sense why they don't find your views plausible. Plus, it will help you remember that the person you're talking with is a real, image-of-God bearing person. The final two questions: What if you're wrong? and What if you're right? It's easy to sit back and make claims about the world, but what happens when those claims get out into that world? Ideas have consequences that are always worth considering. For example, what happens if marijuana isn't as harmless as people say it is, or what if we tell kids that they're born in the wrong body? That's a big risk to play with the next generation. A new book by Greg Koukl was written to equip Christians to dialogue from a confident and informed faith. As a thank-you for a gift of any amount to the Colson Center this month, we'll send you a copy of Street Smarts: Using Questions to Answer Christianity's Toughest Challenges. The book is a guide through the hot-button issues with wise responses to arguments against Christianity. Give today at colsoncenter.org/September. For more resources to live like a Christian in this cultural moment, go to breakpoint.org. This Breakpoint was revised from one originally published on May 17, 2016.
Kids born in our morally turbulent age, and the parents committed to guiding them through it, have precious few resources that can help them sift through the chaos. A few years ago, WORLD Magazine, a longtime Christian worldview partner of the Colson Center, added a daily news program for kids to their already impressive lineup of print and digital resources. The tagline for WORLD Watch with host Brian Basham reads: “We can't keep your kids from growing up too quickly, but we can help them grow into humans equipped with news literacy and Biblical discernment. And make it fun, too.” It's tempting and often appropriate to shield our kids from what's going on. But even if that were possible all the time, we need to help them face now what they will face when they are no longer in our homes. Rather than hide them, let's guide our children to think well in this time and place where God has called them to serve Him.
John and Maria discuss the high and low points in the GOP presidential debate. A growing number of states are telling Christians they can't be foster parents and reaction to the song "Rich Men North of Richmond." — Recommendations — The Making of Another Major Motion Picture Masterpiece by Tom Hanks Get your copy of Live Your Truth & Other Lies Section 1 - Worldview takeaways from the GOP Debate "Mike Pence, Nikki Haley Spar Over Federal Abortion Ban at RNC Debate" "GOP Candidates Clash Over National Abortion Ban" "Conservatives Praise Ramaswamy's Mention of Fatherless Epidemic" "Trump-Less Debate Draws Better-than-Expected 12.8 Million Viewers" "People forgot how to act in public" Section 2 - The War on Christians "Denver Archdiocese sues Colorado over right to deny preschool to LGBTQ families" "California Public Library Silences Female Athlete" "Librarian shuts down event after speaker refers to ‘transgender' athletes as male" "Christian mother sues state for denying adoption over her gender beliefs" "Federal lawsuit alleges religious exemption denial for Buena Vista preschool unconstitutional" Section 3 - Rich Men North of Richmond "It's Not Condescending to Speak the Truth" "The rise of Oliver Anthony and ‘Rich Men North of Richmond'"
In her book Live Your Truth and Other Lies: Exposing Popular Deceptions That Make Us Anxious, Exhausted, and Self-Obsessed, apologist Alisa Childers breaks down widespread mantras of culture and their consequences. One of these is a misunderstanding of Jesus' words so common that, for many, it may be the eleventh commandment that supplants the other ten: “You shouldn't judge.” Over the last 60 years, studies have confirmed that Americans have become more tolerant of alternative sexual lifestyles, non-traditional beliefs about God, and certain political identifications, such as Communism. According to the most recent State of Theology report from Ligonier Ministries and LifeWay Research, some 56% of self-described evangelicals believe that “God accepts the worship of all religions, including Christianity, Judaism, and Islam.” Upon closer examination, this shift has far more to do with losing convictions in these areas than about gaining tolerance. In fact, accepting the “do not judge ethos” has been a primary corrosive agent to those convictions, and this is what Childers addresses in her new book. In addition to identifying the obvious contradiction in saying “it is wrong to judge,” which is itself a judgment, she reminds Christians what Jesus' words mean in context. [J]ust after saying, “Judge not,” Jesus lets his audience know that when they judge, they should be very careful to make sure their judgment isn't hypocritical. “First take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your brother's eye,” Jesus instructs in verse 5. In other words, don't point out a sin in your brother's or sister's life before you confront the bigger sin in your own. But the whole point is to help your brother or sister take the speck out of their own eye, which requires you to judge that it's there. … If there is still any confusion, just a few verses later, Jesus tells us to recognize wolves, or false teachers, by their fruit (verses 15-16). Again, this requires us to judge whether these teachers are speaking truth or deception. Then, in John 7:24, Jesus couldn't say it more plainly. He directs his listeners to “not judge by appearances, but judge with right judgment.” The point of these verses, she concludes, is not to prevent moral discernment, but to help believers instead judge “carefully, rightly, humbly, and without hypocrisy.” Childers then offers a powerful illustration from her time with ZOEgirl, when her struggle with body image eventually led to a secret eating disorder of binging and purging. On some tour in some town somewhere, I shared a hotel room with one of my bandmates. She is a sweetheart—gentle, deeply intelligent, and thoughtful. … She was also a natural peacemaker, and confrontation did not come easily to her. So when she worked up every last bit of courage to ask me what I was doing in the bathroom, it surprised me. And it also made me angry. To put it lightly, the conversation didn't go well. I not so politely invited her to stop “judging” me and back all the way off. That didn't stop her. … Looking back, am I thankful that my bandmate “judged” me? That she dared confront me about the self-harm I was guilty of? Absolutely! She was the catalyst that first brought the darkness into the light. To this day my eyes mist with tears when I think about how much she loved me to do such a difficult thing. Childers' example not only calls Christians to do similarly difficult but right things, it reveals the consequences of relativism when lived in the real world. What begins as a desire to not judge others turns into the narcissistic demand that no one, under any circumstances, judge us. But that also renders healing and forgiveness impossible. After all, with no way to say that we've been wronged, neither is there means or reason to forgive those who harm us. Any culture that rejects objective morality lacks any way to counter evil. Alisa Childers' book reclaims truth from the empty slogans that dominate our culture and our thinking. This August, for a gift of any amount to the Colson Center, we'll send you a copy of Live Your Truth and Other Lies. Just go to breakpoint.org/give to learn more. This Breakpoint was co-authored by Kasey Leander. For more resources to live like a Christian in this cultural moment, go to breakpoint.org.
This month, for a gift of any amount to the Colson Center, request a copy of Live Your Truth and Other Lies by Alisa Childers. Visit colsoncenter.org/august to learn more. ___ In her new book, author and apologist Alisa Childers targets the lies that often masquerade as cultural proverbs today. In Live Your Truth and Other Lies: Exposing Popular Deceptions That Make Us Anxious, Exhausted, and Self-Obsessed, Childers offers just what the title promises. She exposes the bad ideas at the center of slogans we hear all the time. You can receive a copy of the book with a gift of any amount to the Colson Center this month. Just go to colsoncenter.org/august. Though the mantras that dominate our world can seem harmless, they are not. “Our culture,” Childers writes, is brimming with slogans that promise peace, fulfillment, freedom, empowerment, and hope. These messages have become such an integral component of our American consciousness that many people don't even think to question them. … The problem? They are lies. In fact, Childers argues, slogans like “You are enough,” “authenticity is everything,” “Put yourself first,” “It's all about love,” or “God just wants you to be happy,” commonly redefine words like love and hate and happy. What's left is a modern-day “tower of Babel” (or “Babble”) situation where those with the most social media followers are granted authority and assumed to have expertise on life and how to live it. At the root of these destructive slogans is a view of the self. For example, Childers cites Glennon Doyle, whose New York Times No. 1 best seller Untamed centers around her decision to leave her husband for a woman she saw at a local zoo, all while quoting Carl Jung: “There is no greater burden on a child than the unlived life of a parent.” Alisa compares Doyle's story with that of Elisabeth Elliot, the missionary famous for bringing the Gospel back to the same Waodani people who killed her husband, Jim. With a toddler in tow, Elliot lived in the Waodani village for two years before returning to the United States to speak, write, and appear publicly with some of her husband's killers who had become dedicated followers of Jesus: Elisabeth Elliot laid hold of deeper strength. … She rejected the urge to defy God's Word or redefine his holiness. … How did she do it? She once wrote, “The secret is Christ in me, not me in a different set of circumstances.” Childers openly admits to struggling with these ideas, including what it means to be truly authentic, during her time as a popular and successful Christian musician: [A] therapist I began seeing toward the end of ZOEgirl's run (who had the wisdom of Solomon and the patience of Job) looked at me intently and gently asked, “What if you got throat cancer and could never sing again?” I was dumbstruck. She had stumped me. After all, I was made to sing, and if I couldn't sing, who was I? That question pushed Alisa away from the shallow definition of authenticity that is widely embraced today, and toward a deeper grounding in the truth of who we are made in the image of God, and yet fallen. This makes all the difference in how we think about ourselves and how we choose to live life: Today I write. Maybe tomorrow I will wash feet, clean toilets, or start a food blog. God knows. He is trustworthy. My identity is grounded in him. True biblical authenticity is glorifying Christ with whatever gifts and talents he has given me. As my friend Teasi says, this is my calling whether I find myself in a palace or in a prison. Another commonly repeated, highly consequential lie is that there's such a thing as “your truth” and “my truth”: Christian, your truth doesn't exist. Your truth won't bring hope or save anyone... The Cross is the answer to every lie that tells me I can find everything I need inside myself. … The Cross is not just a symbol of salvation. It's a place of rest. This month, for a gift of any amount to the Colson Center, request a copy of Live Your Truth and Other Lies by Alisa Childers. Visit colsoncenter.org/august to learn more.
The Barbie Movie is setting attendance records. What messages is it sending? LGTBQ+ students are flocking to Ivy League universities. What's driving the trend? And Russell Brand shares some insightful views about God and worship. — Recommendations — Focus on the Family's Radio Theatre How to Avoid Falling in Love with a Jerk: The Foolproof Way to Follow Your Heart Without Losing Your Mind by John Van App Section 1 - Barbie Check Breakpoint.org on Monday, July 31, for our official Barbie review. "'Barbie' Box Office to the World: The Pandemic is Officially Over" The New York Times "Mattel Needs Barbie's Movie Magic to Lift Toy Sales" The Wall Street Journal ‘Barbie' and ‘Oppenheimer' Set Post-Pandemic Box Office High - The New York Times Section 2 - Ivy League Students Leaning LGBTQ "Ivy League LGBTQ+ numbers soar and students point to identity politics" New York Post "U.S. LGBT Identification Steady at 7.2%" Gallup Section 3 - Russell Brand on Worship Russell Brand on Worship "Jesus's plea to Russell Brand" Christianity Today "‘I Need God': Actor Russell Brand Delivers Candid Admission About the Lord, ‘Spirituality'" Faithwire
Please join us for the Great Lakes Symposium on Christian Worldview on Thursday, July 27. Sign up to attend live or to join the livestream at ColsonCenter.org/GreatLakes. _____ When I was growing up, Christians had to wrestle with whether or not our convictions could withstand the threat of ridicule. We'd be asked, “Are you willing to be mocked and made fun of by a professor who doesn't believe in God or a friend trying to tempt you into doing something you know is wrong?” About the worst thing to expect from this was what a friend has called “cocktail party pressure” or getting kicked out of the cool kids' clique. To be clear, cocktail party pressure was quite effective, though those days seem quaintly in the past. Increasingly, Christians are hated, fired, or otherwise harassed on account of their principles. Particularly bewildering is that the loudest complaints against believers today are for things considered mainstream until just a few years ago. Just this week, the Alliance Defending Freedom came to the defense of a man in Vermont who was fired after 10 years as a successful snowboarding coach. His crime, as one of ADF's lawyers put it, was “merely expressing his views that males and females are biologically different and questioning the appropriateness of a teenage male competing against teenage females in an athletic competition.” For that, “school district officials unconstitutionally fired him.” Clearly, the district violated coach David Bloch's First Amendment rights and likely, given the legal track record of the Alliance Defending Freedom, he will be vindicated in the end. Still, this is another example of what feels like a new cultural moment in which the question of Christian courage is in the context of even more tangible pressures. This context is at the center of a conversation I will be hosting Thursday, July 27 at the fourth annual Great Lakes Symposium on Christian Worldview in Bay Harbor, Michigan. If you happen to be in the area, there's limited space available to join us in person, or you can sign up to join us via livestream. Either way, there is no charge for this conversation featuring two Christians leading the way into this brave new moment: Kristen Waggoner is CEO, president, and general counsel of the Alliance Defending Freedom, and Jim Daly is president and CEO of Focus on the Family. Both are witness to these increased pressures. For years, Kristen has successfully advanced legal protections and religious liberty by representing courageous Christians such as Jack Phillips and Barronelle Stutzman. Most recently, she represented Lorie Smith of 303 Creative in a landmark victory for free speech at the Supreme Court. However, for her efforts, Kristen has been unfairly attacked and lied about by media outlets, fellow lawyers, and even the Attorney General of Colorado. Last fall, Focus on the Family's grounds were vandalized by activists. Though not the first time, there was something different about this attack. The perpetrators falsely and unfairly blamed Focus for the then-recent murders at a local Colorado Springs gay club. These accusations have been repeated by media outlets and critics as recently as last week. This brave new world of hostility is familiar for our brothers and sisters elsewhere, in places like Nigeria, India, and China. Ours are more experiences of a series of horrible moments, such as earlier this year in Nashville. Christians in the West do not fear for their lives. Even so, something has clearly shifted. Calls to tolerate the views of others are about as 1990s these days as talking about abortion being “safe, legal, and rare.” As we've seen in Nashville, it's a perilously small step from the rhetorical games of wanting to punch “literal Nazis” to literally punching those who dare stray from the cultural narrative. The only way forward for the Christ follower is to commit again to knowing what is true, to commit again to saying and living what is true even if there is a cost, and to say and live what is true in a way that is pleasing to Christ. In other words, faithfulness will involve both the what we believe and the how we'll live it out. I don't know anyone I'd rather have in this conversation than Kristin Waggoner and Jim Daly. Please join us for the Great Lakes Symposium on Christian Worldview on Thursday, July 27. Sign up to attend live or to join the livestream at ColsonCenter.org/GreatLakes. This Breakpoint was co-authored by Dr. Timothy D. Padgett. For more resources to live like a Christian in this cultural moment, go to breakpoint.org.
On this day, in the year 64, the Great Fire of Rome broke out, for which Emperor Nero would blame a new religious sect, the Christians. The first Epistle of the Apostle Peter was written to those who experienced the persecution unleashed by Nero. I Peter is best summarized as “the Book of Hope,” but the hope he described is counter cultural. It does not anticipate a “good outcome,” at least not in the here and now. Instead, Peter understands true hope as rooted in the certainty of something that has already happened: the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, which defines all of history. Christ, the risen, sovereign ruler of the world, promises to make all things new (Revelation 21:5), and He is working in every time and place through His people. He has placed us in this cultural moment according to His redemptive plan. So, as Peter encouraged the first Christians who faced cultural hostility, take hope in the risen Lord Jesus.
Several years ago, Max McLean and the Fellowship for Performing Arts staged The Most Reluctant Convert, a play about the life of C.S. Lewis up to his conversion. During the Covid shutdowns, that production was made into a film that received strong reviews. Now, McLean and FPA are offering a follow-up stage production dealing with Lewis's life post-conversion. Although Further Up and Further In includes some biographical information, such as the writing of The Problem of Pain and the recording of the BBC talks that were later published in Mere Christianity, this new production takes the much more challenging route of exploring the different aspects of Lewis's ministry. Not surprisingly, much of the production is focused on his apologetics. In his day, the great challenge to Christianity was materialism, the idea that everything is just matter and energy. Lewis responded to this by tracing out the implications of that view and showing its utter implausibility. He notes that scientists “observe the behavior of things within the universe. They cannot make statements about things beyond the universe.” Any time a scientist does that, for example by proclaiming that matter and energy are all that exist, he is no longer doing science. Even more, Lewis says, if materialism is true, there is no reason to trust the scientist doing science. After all, he rightly observed, If the materialist view is true, our minds must in reality be merely chance arrangements of atoms in skulls. We never think a thought because it is true, only because blind Nature forces us to think it. We never do an act because it is right, only because blind Nature forces us to do it. This argument, which can also be found in slightly different form in the work of Christian philosopher Alvin Plantinga, is a powerful response to atheism. If atheism is true, any foundation for trusting science or human reason is undermined. Rather than defend a particular denomination of Christianity, Lewis believed that “the only service [he] could do for [his] unbelieving neighbors was to explain and defend the belief that has been common to nearly all Christians and at all times.” This led him to write The Problem of Pain and from there to do his broadcast talks for the BBC. As a result, he began receiving massive numbers of letters. Though he dismissed some, he felt obligated to respond to any serious inquiries received. Some evenings after work, Lewis wrote up to 35 letters. Much of Further Up and Further In is adapted from volume two of Lewis' collected letters, a 1,152-page tome. Through an adaptation of some of these letters, we see his work as an evangelist. For example, in the play, a young atheist contacts Lewis with questions, and Lewis responds. After a series of exchanges, the young atheist decides to take the step of committing himself to Christ. Lewis responds with advice on how to grow in faith and hang on to it through doubts. In the end, Lewis argues, “It all hinges on Jesus. If His statements are false, Christianity is of no importance. If true, it is of infinite importance. The one thing it cannot be is moderately important.” As a literary scholar, Lewis anticipated the argument that the Gospels cannot be trusted, pointing out that the Gospels include statements that would hardly be expected if they were made up by people trying to prove the divinity of Jesus. Rather, the difficulties that they pose are solid evidence for the truthfulness of the Gospels' accounts of Jesus's teaching. Toward the end of Further Up and Further In, the character of Lewis turns his focus to Christians, offering advice on temptation (something he had discussed in The Screwtape Letters), the crucial importance of prayer, the Second Coming and the end of the world, and heaven. Much of this advice remains as helpful today as when he first offered it. Once again, Max McLean and the Fellowship for Performing Arts shows why Lewis's popularity and value have endured. Further Up and Further In is currently on tour. How Lewis engaged the materialists of his time is a model for engaging people today who, though coming from a different worldview, seem just as unable to acknowledge the reality that God has made known in His world. This Breakpoint was co-authored by Dr. Glenn Sunshine. For more resources to live like a Christian in this cultural moment, go to breakpoint.org.
Recently, a school district near Salt Lake City, Utah removed the Bible from elementary and middle school libraries. Though it quickly reversed course and returned it to the library shelves, the original decision was made in response to a complaint that the Bible contains pornographic content, and that certain parts are too “violent or vulgar” for young children. Meanwhile, school districts across the country require LGBT content, much of it grossly explicit, in elementary school classrooms as well as libraries. Some even refuse to allow parents to excuse their children from such content. It is, to put it mildly, upside down to silence the Bible in order to “protect” children while forcing radical ideas about identity and sexuality on them. Though the Bible speaks plainly about the violence and barbarity of fallen humanity (see the final three chapters of the book of Judges, for example), it is not gratuitous. More importantly, the Bible portrays evil as evil, rather than celebrating the brokenness under the guise of “authenticity,” “autonomy,” and “diversity.” Eliminating the Bible from education also ignores the crucial impact the Bible has had on the world, especially in shaping Western culture. On one hand, this is simply part of the wholesale condemnation of Western culture so common today. However, even if the Western heritage in the sciences, technology, human rights, freedom, and the arts are downplayed or ignored, at least some knowledge of the Bible is basic to knowing human history at all. Put differently, to assume that the Bible is no longer relevant to the modern world is to misunderstand both the Bible and the modern world. The latest episode of the Colson Center's What Would You Say? video series offers a response to the claim that “the modern world has moved beyond the Bible.” Here's a sample: The Bible's positive influence on the world as we know it has been so profound and so thorough that it's easy to forget just how much it has shaped our understanding of science, morality, politics, literature, music, language and so many other aspects of life and culture. Every video in the What Would You Say? series offers thoughtful, reasoned, and reliable answers to common cultural questions. This video explains how the Bible shaped Western culture, how the Bible's description of reality provided the grounding for modern science, and why there will be a growing demand for the Bible as more and more people come to faith around the world. For example, there is a reason that the scientific revolution did not emerge out of other cultures. Despite the common narrative that Christianity is anti-science, science requires a consistent natural order, something described from the very beginning of the Bible: The Bible describes a world that was made by God to be intelligible and orderly. Philosopher of science Stephen Meyer says, “Because we have an intelligence that has, as its source, the intelligence that built the world, we can understand the world….” This is why we expect consistency and order in nature. And why we expect, as humans, to be able to study and comprehend that consistency and order. In fact, the biblical description of reality provided the impetus for most arenas of learning and academic study, including history, medicine, math, and sociology. After all, learning requires that humans are knowers, that they are able to learn, and that the world is knowable. Most worldviews simply cannot ground these assumptions. Other videos in the What Would You Say? video series, which has now garnered over two million views, address questions about science, apologetics, sexuality, race, politics, and more. These videos are for parents to watch with their kids, teachers to use in class with students, and in small groups and Sunday School classes, too. New videos, each addressing a different question, will be added every couple of weeks. Please visit whatwouldyousay.org, or search for and subscribe to the What Would You Say? channel on YouTube. And please share these videos with friends, family, and on social media. This Breakpoint was co-authored by Michaela Estruth. For more resources to live like a Christian in this cultural moment, go to breakpoint.org.
The Colson Fellows program is a lasting legacy of Chuck Colson following God's voice. It's been one year since the Dobbs decision that overturned Roe v Wade. What's the result? — Recommendations — Colson Center National Conference Online Megan Phelps-Roper on Armchair Expert Section 1 - Chuck Colson's Legacy “Christianity Does Not Stop With Salvation: That's Only the Beginning …” Breakpoint Section 2 - The One-Year Anniversary of Dobbs "Fewer Abortions Post-Dobbs" Breakpoint Section 3 - Archeological Findings in the Middle East "Archeology Continues to Confirm Biblical Record" Breakpoint
Sir Isaac Newton, in a letter written in 1675 to fellow scientist Robert Hooke, wrote, “If I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.” Chuck Colson was one of those giants for many of us, and it is our privilege to steward his legacy at the Colson Center. In fact, Chuck believed that his most important legacy, more than any of the organizations he founded or the many books he authored, would be people. That's why he started what he called the Centurions Program, something that continues today under a different name, the Colson Fellows program. Here's Chuck Colson on the important vision he had for this program: "I have a burning passion—it's the first item on my prayer list every day—and that's to see a movement of Christians raised up from the churches to defend truth in the marketplace of ideas and to live out the Gospel. Nothing less than this kind of an awakening can possibly save our quickly deteriorating culture. That's why I'm now spending all of my time working at Breakpoint and the Colson Center. One of my major projects is developing Christian leaders who can understand and defend a biblical view of all of life. We call this the Centurions Program. For the past six years we have brought 100 of the best and brightest into this year-long teaching effort, to study under some of the best minds in the Christian world. It's demanding: We read books together, view movies and critique them, do a lot of teaching online, and have three residencies during the year in Lansdowne, Virginia, near our offices. Our Centurion graduates are like the Marines or the Navy Seals who are on the front lines of the next wave of leaders. Can this work? Just two weeks ago I was in Albuquerque, New Mexico, for a rally on behalf of the Manhattan Declaration. It was organized by the Catholic Archbishop of New Mexico, Michael Sheehan, and a former congressman named Bill Redmond, who is a Centurion graduate. You can imagine my thrill when I walked into the convention center to see 1,600 participants. And they were on fire! They were there to learn biblical worldview, to learn how to defend the sanctity of human life, traditional marriage, and religious liberty, to learn how to become activists! There were representatives from across the denominational spectrum: Southern Baptists, Nazarenes, Assemblies of God, Methodists, Presbyterians, Catholics. The Church had come together. And all of this was organized by one gutsy archbishop and one Centurion graduate. They in fact have built a powerful network across the state of New Mexico. So yes, it can be done. And our Centurions are doing a whole variety of important tasks across the spectrum. Like Jon Blankmeyer, who founded a safe home for girls rescued from forced prostitution. Josue Delgado, a hospital chaplain who teaches emergency medical technicians on how to build stronger marriages. Kathy Peele, who founded a group to help mothers under distress, and so many more. By the time they are certified, Centurions know how to write, discuss, and teach Christian worldview in all sorts of settings. They know how to create God-honoring culture through the arts, media, literature, and business. They're able to debate ethical challenges with medical professionals, advocate human rights, and develop tomorrow's leaders by raising children grounded in biblical values. In short, they learn to defend truth in an age in which many believe such a thing does not exist. Look, folks, the reason the Church today is having so little impact is too many Christians view their faith only in terms of a personal relationship with Jesus. But Christianity does not stop with salvation: That's only the beginning. We've got to learn how to present our worldview in a winsome way. And if we don't do this, it simply dooms our churches to isolation and irrelevance—just when our culture desperately needs the hope of the Gospel more than ever." After Chuck's death in 2012, the program he started as the Centurions Program was renamed the Colson Fellows program. I think Chuck would be ecstatic to know that this past year, over 1,300 Christians from across the country and around the world studied worldview, theology, and culture as part of the Colson Fellows program. He'd be even more excited to know all the ways the fellows are currently planning to apply what they've learned in the time and place God has called them. If you desire to make a similar impact in your community for Christ, consider studying with the Colson Fellows program next year. With over 60 regional cohorts around the country, there is likely a cohort in your region. If not, there are online cohorts offered as well. Either way, you'll find a deeper understanding of truth and be better equipped to live out your faith in this cultural moment in whatever calling and vocation God has put before you. For more information, visit www.colsonfellows.org. For more resources to live like a Christian in this cultural moment, go to breakpoint.org. This Breakpoint was revised from one aired March 16, 2022.
John and Maria discuss the new documentary on the Duggar family, Oklahoma approves a Catholic charter school, and a Jeopardy! panel shows its ignorance of the Bible. — Recommendations — Dad, How Do I? YouTube channel The River by Peter Heller
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