Podcasts about keller center

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. 

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!

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!

Benedikt is a seasoned design executive with the heart of a maker and 20+ years of deep expertise in creating impactful products people love and leading the world-class teams that make them. His leadership has shaped how hundreds of millions of people interact with technology. Benedikt is the founder of 74West, a hands-on advisory practice where he partners closely 1:1 with CEOs and boards who are at pivotal moments with their business. Combining his proven, practical frameworks for transformational leadership with cutting-edge research, Benedikt helps company leaders forge exceptional teams, strategies, and tactics to deliver products that inspire customer love and thus create lasting business value. Benedikt also serves as an Entrepreneurship & Design Fellow at Princeton University, where he teaches aspiring entrepreneurs both during the academic year (“Creating value in the real world”) and the eLab summer program at the Keller Center. His research explores the convergence of entrepreneurship, humanistic design, and business leadership with a focus on AI and co-creativity, neuroaesthetics, and the socio-economic responsibility of design. As a board member of the Design Executive Council (DXC) Benedikt helps shape the standards of humanistic design and strategic leadership as AI transforms experience design and business strategy. Until January 2025, Benedikt was the Chief Design Officer at Stark tackling Digital Accessibility which he sees as “one of this century's biggest design problems that's affecting 2B+ people on the planet.” As Chief Design Officer of SAP, he led 1000+ designers, researchers, and engineers, reporting directly to SAP's Executive Board to transform the customer experience across the company's portfolio.  As a design executive at Microsoft, he directed key UX teams including Office and M365 Experiences while leading the evolution of the Fluent design system and aligning Microsoft's mobile apps across platforms. Benedikt joined Microsoft through the $150M+ acquisition of Wunderlist, where he was Chief Design Officer. He scaled the product team to 70 people and helped secure funding from Atomico and Sequoia Capital. Benedikt is also the author of Typoguide, an international keynote speaker and angel investor in design-driven startups. His award-winning work has been featured in publications worldwide. Born in Saarland, Germany to a family of craftspeople, Benedikt's appreciation for purposeful, well-crafted work runs deep. He divides his time between Princeton, NJ and Kingston, NY. You can follow Benedikt here: Web: www.benediktlehnert.com Linkedin: www.linkedin.com/in/benediktlehnert Newsletter: benediktlehnert.substack.com DXC Profile: https://www.designexecutivecouncil.com/articles/introducing-benedikt-lehnert-and-his-ideas-on-radical-self-inquiry-and-creative-leadership Thank you for listening to this episode of Nodes of Design. We hope you enjoy the Nodes of Design Podcast on your favorite podcast platforms- Apple Podcast, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Amazon Music, and many more. If this episode helped you understand and learn something new, please share and join the knowledge-sharing community Spreadknowledge. This podcast aims to make design education accessible to all. Nodes of Design is a non-profit and self-sponsored initiative by Tejj.

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

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.

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. 

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.⁠⁠⁠⁠

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 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.

Welcome to the Pinkleton Pull-Aside Podcast. On this podcast, let's step aside from our busy lives to have fun, fascinating life giving conversation with inspiring authors, pastors, sports personalities and other influencers, leaders and followers. Sit back, grab some coffee, or head down the road and let's get the good and the gold from today's guest. Our host is Jeff Pinkleton, Executive Director of the Gathering of the Miami Valley, where their mission is to connect men to men, and men to God. You can reach Jeff at GatheringMV.org or find him on Facebook at The Gathering of the Miami Valley.Michael Graham (MDiv, Reformed Theological Seminary, Orlando) is program director for The Keller Center. He is the executive producer and writer of As in Heaven and coauthor of The Great Dechurching. He is a member at Orlando Grace Church. He is married to Sara, and they have two kids.

This is the second interview we did with Professor John Mearsheimer on wars and great power politics. Watch the first one here: https://youtu.be/Yl7goPRw_eE In this second interview with American political scientist and international relations scholar John Mearsheimer, we discussed the current status of the war in Ukraine and prospects for resolution, moral issues around Israeli military campaigns in Gaza, deterrence and risks of conflict in the South China Sea, and whether ideology is declining in importance when it comes to international relations. #Endgame #GitaWirjawan #JohnMearsheimer ---------------------- About the host: Gita Wirjawan is an Indonesian entrepreneur, educator, and currently a visiting scholar at The Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center (APARC), Stanford University. Gita has also just been appointed as an Honorary Professor of Politics and International Relations in the School of Politics and International Relations, University of Nottingham, UK. ---------------------- Get “The Israel Lobby” on Periplus bookstore: https://www.periplus.com/p/9780374531508 ----------------------- This episode is shot at The Keller Center in Chicago, home to the future of policy. Learn more about the Harris School of Public Policy at the University of Chicago: https://harris.uchicago.edu/admissions ----------------------- Earn a Master of Public Policy degree and be Indonesia's future narrator. More info: admissions@sgpp.ac.id https://admissions.sgpp.ac.id https://wa.me/628111522504 Visit and subscribe: @SGPPIndonesia

The stats reveal trouble in evangelicalism, Bible reading is down, church attendance is down, and the none's are rising. What's going on? In The Great Dechurching, authors Michael Graham, Jim Davis, and Ryan P. Burge have done the work and come back with the stats. It's both better and worse than we could imagine. 40 million people have stopped going to church in the last 25 years and that's just the tip of the iceberg. However, amid such depressing news, there is hope. Because many of them are willing and ready to come back! Listen as Travis and Michael Graham discuss the book, the stats, and what we can do to help connect people to Jesus and His church. Referenced in this episode is Dechurching.com, The Keller Center.Sign up for the Apollos Watered newsletter.Help water-thirsty souls by partnering with Apollos Watered! #thegreatdechurching #Christianity #church #churchinnorthamerica #reformation #rechurching #Jesus #Christ #brideofchrist #hope #christisking #MichaelGraham #theKellerCenter #apolloswatered #wateringfaith #travismichaelfleming #evangelicalism #Christian #goodnews #churchattendance #americanevangelicalism

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.

How can we most effectively minister to those who have left the church? In this week's conversation on FrontStage BackStage, host Jason Daye is joined by Michael Graham. Michael is the program director at The Keller Center for Cultural Apologetics and served as the Executive Pastor at Orlando Grace Church. His most recent book is entitled The Great Dechurching. Together, Michael and Jason look at some of the revelations that come from a comprehensive research study into those who have left the church. Michael also shares some incredibly hopeful opportunities for every local church when it comes to reaching those who have left.Dig deeper into this conversation: Find the free Weekly Toolkit, including the Ministry Leaders Growth Guide, all resource links, and more, at http://PastorServe.org/networkSome key takeaways from this conversation:Michael Graham on the willingness of people to re-engage with evangelical churches despite potential differences in their stated beliefs: "Over half the people who left evangelical churches are willing to return right now. Even people who really don't look like they're Christians in terms of their beliefs on paper."Michael Graham on the importance of constructing local churches that prioritize and emphasize three key aspects: the truth, goodness, and beauty of the gospel of Jesus Christ: "We need to be building local churches that emphasize the truth, goodness, and beauty of the gospel of Jesus Christ, all at the same time."Michael Graham on the acceptance to decentralize power, moving away from a top-down approach where a few individuals or entities hold significant influence: "It's okay to lose top-down power in culture and society."----------------Looking to dig more deeply into this topic and conversation? FrontStage BackStage is much more than another church leadership show, it is a complete resource to help you and your ministry leaders grow. Every week we go the extra mile and create a free toolkit so you and your ministry team can dive deeper into the topic that is discussed.Visit http://PastorServe.org/network to find the Weekly Toolkit, including the Ministry Leaders Growth Guide. Our team pulls key insights and quotes from every conversation with our guests. We also create engaging questions for you and your team to consider and process, providing space for you to reflect on how each episode's topic relates to your unique church context. Use these questions in your staff meetings, or other settings, to guide your conversation as you invest in the growth of your ministry leaders. Love well, live well, & lead well Complimentary Coaching Session for Pastors http://PastorServe.org/freesession Follow PastorServe LinkedIn | Twitter | Instagram | FacebookConnect with Jason Daye LinkedIn | Instagram...

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

In this episode, Martha Tatarnic talks with Michael Graham, co-author of The Great De-Churching about his journey from a fundamentalist upbringing to a more gospel-centered faith. Graham shares his transition from a focus on end times and culture wars to a tradition that emphasizes the core of the gospel and its implications for life. He discusses the importance of Bible study, healthy discipleship, and interdenominational cooperation, reflecting on his own spiritual practices and the vitality of engaging with non-believers. The conversation also explores the unique religious landscape of the United States, the church's role in society, and the effects of online worship. Michael Graham is program director for The Keller Center. He is also the executive producer and writer of As In Heaven and has written a forthcoming book entitled 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.   Presenting Sponsor: Phillips Seminary Join conversations that expose you to new ideas, deepen your commitment and give insights to how we can minister in a changing world.    Supporting Sponsors: I Help Pastors Get Jobs: Use code 'futurechristian' Torn Curtain Arts is a non-profit ministry that works with worship leaders, creatives, and churches to help avoid burnout, love their work, and realize their full creative potential.

“We had this hunch that we could be in the largest and fastest religious shift in the history of our country.” Co-authors Jim Davis and Michael Graham join the podcast to discuss their book, “The Great Dechurching: Who's Leaving, Why Are They Going, and What Will It Take to Bring Them Back?” Jim is teaching pastor of Orlando Grace Church and host of the As in Heaven podcast. Michael is the program director for the Keller Center for Cultural Apologetics (https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/thekellercenter/). A book study of “The Great Dechurching” is coming through the NAFWB Growing Together Initiative beginning in January. Find more at https://nafwb.org/grow/. #NAFWB #BetterTogether #TheGreatDechurching #Church #Religion

What's special about church? For this final episode, Glen Scrivener and Andrew Wilson are joined by Rebecca McLaughlin, author of Confronting Christianity and The Secular Creed.They discuss the unique nature of the in-person church as the place where the vertical dimension of worship meets the horizontal dimension of embodied community. Reflecting on the long history of Christianity, they acknowledge that the church simply 'doing its thing' has a transformative leavening impact on the world.McLaughlin offers a critique of some of our attitudes towards church and personal evangelism, and some encouragements to keep proclaiming Christ even when it feels fruitless. Scrivener examines how our fear of being labeled 'bigots' can sometimes lead us to disqualify ourselves from sharing the gospel, even though our friends might be more receptive than we imagine.The podcast ends on a hopeful note: we are actually living in pre-Christian times—Jesus is Lord, he is returning, and summer is coming.Credits:Post-Christianity? is a podcast from The Gospel Coalition and The Keller Center for Cultural Apologetics. Learn more about The Keller Center here.The Good Book Company is the publisher of The Air We Breathe by Glen Scrivener. For 25% off books on Christianity and culture, go to thegoodbook.com/postpodcast.

How can Christians offer grace, freedom, and truth in this current cultural moment? In this episode, Glen Scrivener and Andrew Wilson get practical.If their books are correct in diagnosing the 21st-century West as post-Christian, what impact can this have on our approach to everyday evangelism, preaching, and parenting? They return to the observation that it is refreshing to be able to say to people, "Here's why you're right," rather than, "Here's why you're wrong."They tease out the unique challenges of our current context and the need for Christians to offer counter-catechesis. Scrivener shares some examples of fruitful conversations he has had with friends and strangers, and Wilson reflects on how to engage with casual visitors in our churches—people who might not call themselves Christians but are recognizing the radical and foundational nature of Biblical teaching.Credits:Post-Christianity? is a podcast from The Gospel Coalition and The Keller Center for Cultural Apologetics. Learn more about The Keller Center here.The Good Book Company is the publisher of The Air We Breathe by Glen Scrivener. For 25% off books on Christianity and culture, go to thegoodbook.com/postpodcast.

“Be true to yourself” is a dominant refrain in the Western world, but how has individualism come to be such a prominent feature of Western thought? To what extent is that individualism Christian?Glen Scrivener and Andrew Wilson are joined by Carl Trueman, author of The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self and Strange New World, to answer those questions and continue their discussion of our post-Christian world.Beginning with Rousseau, they trace the ways in which our idea of the modern self has transformed and shaped our understanding of anthropology. Particularly touching on the transformations which have happened in our understanding of marriage, divorce and sex, they ask in what ways the church has become complicit in these changes and to what extent these individualistic assumptions have come to shape both the church and the world.Credits:Post-Christianity? is a podcast from The Gospel Coalition and The Keller Center for Cultural Apologetics. Learn more about The Keller Center here.The Good Book Company is the publisher of The Air We Breathe by Glen Scrivener. For 25% off books on Christianity and culture, go to thegoodbook.com/postpodcast.

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.

Make a one-time or recurring donation on our ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Donor Box profile here⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. Join us in the mission of introducing Reformed Theology across the world! Interested in further study of the Bible? Join us at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Logos Bible Software⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. Are you interested in a rigorous and Reformed seminary education? Call Westminster Seminary California at 888-480-8474 or visit ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠www.wscal.edu⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠! Please help support the show on our ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Patreon Page⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠!   WELCOME TO BOOK CLUB! Jim Davis (MDiv., Reformed Theological Seminary) is teaching pastor at Orlando Grace Church (Acts 29). He is the host of the As in Heaven podcast on The Gospel Coalition podcast network and serves as a writer for The Dechurched Initiative. Jim writes frequently for The Gospel Coalition, Acts 29, and Family Life. He and his wife, Angela, speak for Family Life's Weekend to Remember marriage getaways. Michael Graham (MDiv., Reformed Theological Seminary) is Program Director at The Keller Center for Cultural Apologetics. He is also the executive producer and writer for the As In Heaven podcast. 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. Ryan Burge (PhD., Southern Illinois University) is an associate professor of political science at Eastern Illinois University, where also serves as the graduate coordinator. He has authored over thirty peer-reviewed articles and book chapters alongside four books about religion and politics in the United States. He written for the New York Times, and the Wall Street Journal. He has also appeared in an NBC Documentary, on Full Frontal with Samantha Bee, as well as 60 Minutes which called him, "one of the country's leading data analysts on religion and politics." He has served as a pastor in the American Baptist Church for over twenty years and has been married to his wife Jacqueline for over fifteen years. They have two boys. Find more information on Dechurching in America here: https://dechurching.com/ Find more information about statistical models for Religious affiliation here: https://www.graphsaboutreligion.com/ We want to thank ⁠Zondervan Academic for their help in setting up this interview and providing us with the necessary materials for this interview with Rev. Davis, Rev. Graham, and Dr. Burge!   Purchase the book(s) here: The Great Dechurching: Who's Leaving, Where Are They Going, and What Will It Take to Bring Them Back?   Have Feedback or Questions? Email us at: guiltgracepod@gmail.com Find us on Instagram: ⁠⁠⁠⁠@guiltgracepod⁠⁠⁠⁠ Follow us on Twitter: ⁠⁠⁠⁠@guiltgracepod⁠⁠⁠⁠ Find us on YouTube: ⁠⁠⁠⁠Guilt Grace Gratitude Podcast⁠⁠⁠⁠ Please rate and subscribe to the podcast on whatever platform you use! Looking for a Reformed Church? ⁠⁠⁠⁠North American Presbyterian & Reformed Churches --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/gggpodcast/support

How did the founding of America contribute to the post-Christian world we find ourselves in today? Is there something inherently post-Christian baked into the pie from the founding of the nation?In this episode, Andrew Wilson and Glen Scrivener continue their discussion of how the year 1776 has shaped our world. They trace the story forward to today, as they discuss slavery, human rights, the civil rights movement, and the sexual revolution. They talk about the apparent inevitability of progress in the 19th century and how those hopes were dashed by two world wars.Wilson and Scrivener also consider how these huge cultural and societal changes interact with the gospel, and conclude by discussing the extent to which Christianity cannot be forced into the neat political categories of right and left, liberal and conservative.Credits:Post-Christianity? is a podcast from The Gospel Coalition and The Keller Center for Cultural Apologetics. Learn more about The Keller Center here.The Good Book Company is the publisher of The Air We Breathe by Glen Scrivener. For 25% off books on Christianity and culture, go to thegoodbook.com/postpodcast.

Nearly a millennium before the swinging '60s, a revolution in attitudes toward sex and sexuality transformed how we consider marriage, family, the sexes, equality, consent, and even concepts like free will and human dignity.In this episode of Post-Christianity?, Andrew Wilson and Glen Scrivener interview Kyle Harper, a University of Oklahoma historian of the classical and author of From Shame to Sin: The Christian Transformation of Sexual Morality in Late Antiquity. Harper unpacks that first revolution, how it shaped the traditional Western understanding of sex, and how it has been challenged and in some ways rejected in the past 60 years.Credits:Post-Christianity? is a podcast from The Gospel Coalition and The Keller Center for Cultural Apologetics. Learn more about The Keller Center here.The Good Book Company is the publisher of The Air We Breathe by Glen Scrivener. For 25% off books on Christianity and culture, go to thegoodbook.com/postpodcast.

The Beatles might have claimed to be bigger than Jesus, but when they said “Love is all you need,” they were just riffing on Jesus' words. In this episode, Glen Scrivener and Andrew Wilson discuss how today's slogans—Black Lives Matter, Women's Rights are Human Rights, No Human is Illegal, Science is Real, Love Is Love, Kindness Is Everything—flow from a worldview thoroughly shaped by Christianity.They compare and contrast ancient, Christian, and secular virtues to explore the inherent inconsistencies of today's culture, question how relativistic our society really is, and describe how we've arrived at a new pharisaism where those who don't get on board with the modern program are the new heretics of our secular age.Credits:Post-Christianity? is a podcast from The Gospel Coalition and The Keller Center for Cultural Apologetics. Learn more about The Keller Center here.The Good Book Company is the publisher of The Air We Breathe by Glen Scrivener. For 25% off books on Christianity and culture, go to thegoodbook.com/postpodcast.

How did Christianity come to shape Western culture? History is often told as the story of great men and events. But did Christianity come to shape Western culture simply as a “great idea” that carried the day?In this episode, Glen Scrivener and Andrew Wilson explore the role of geography, technology, and coincidence in the spread of Christianity, which has fundamentally shaped our assumptions about the world. Geography, geology, ecology, and economics are not the topics you would usually consider in a Christian podcast, but Glen and Andrew observe how those factors—along with the fundamental goodness of the gospel—combine to create an environment in which the worldview of the West was formed.Credits:Post-Christianity? is a podcast from The Gospel Coalition and The Keller Center for Cultural Apologetics. Learn more about The Keller Center here.The Good Book Company is the publisher of The Air We Breathe by Glen Scrivener. For 25% off books on Christianity and culture, go to thegoodbook.com/postpodcast.

This week, Keaton and Seth discuss the role of a pastor as a leader in a changing culture through the lens of some past leaders of the church who have done this well.For further reading:Augustine's City of God: https://www.amazon.com/City-Translated-Introduction-Marcus-Dods/dp/1420956892/ref=sr_1_1_sspa?crid=37KLO1GEQDIWS&keywords=city+of+god&qid=1698007302&sprefix=city+of+god%2Caps%2C101&sr=8-1-spons&sp_csd=d2lkZ2V0TmFtZT1zcF9hdGY&psc=1Augustine's Confessions: https://www.amazon.com/Confessions-Penguin-Classics-Saint-Augustine/dp/014044114X/ref=sr_1_4?crid=361BTCNSRBLL8&keywords=confessions&qid=1698007320&sprefix=confessions%2Caps%2C99&sr=8-4Making Faith Magnetic by Daniel Strange: https://www.amazon.com/Making-Faith-Magnetic-Culture-Talking/dp/178498650X/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1698007118&sr=8-1Biblical Critical Theory by Christopher Watkin: https://www.amazon.com/Biblical-Critical-Theory-Unfolding-Culture/dp/0310128722/ref=tmm_hrd_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1698007523&sr=8-1Mark Sayers: https://marksayers.co/The Keller Center for Cultural Apologetics: https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/thekellercenter/Zion Presbyterian Church — www.zioncolumbia.org

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal,” says the Declaration of Independence. But is it really self-evident? What is the basis of equality? How have we come to think the way we do about the world?In this episode of the Post-Christianity? podcast, Glen Scrivener and Andrew Wilson discuss the making of the Western Mind and how we became WEIRD (Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, Democratic) as they trace the history of the West up to 1776.They make the case that far from being neutral, or self-evident, the values which many hold dear in the West today can be traced back through figures like Luther, Augustine, Paul, and ultimately to Jesus. They show that in spite of its secular pretensions the West remains a place thoroughly shaped and marked by a Christian worldview.So are we really post-Christian? Or is Christianity the only framework that can really make sense of the things we value most?Credits:Post-Christianity? is a podcast from The Gospel Coalition and The Keller Center for Cultural Apologetics. Learn more about The Keller Center here.The Good Book Company is the publisher of The Air We Breathe by Glen Scrivener. For 25% off books on Christianity and culture, go to thegoodbook.com/postpodcast.

Dr. N. Gray Sutanto helped plant Covenant City Church in Jakarta, Indonesia, through a theology study group. Gray now serves as the assistant professor of systematic theology at Reformed Theological Seminary, Washington D.C. campus. Gray focused his PhD work on the 19thcentury Dutch Reformed theologian, Herman Bavinck and you will discover in this interview that his research interests are broad. Gray's article we discuss from The Keller Center can be found HERE (https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/article/jakarta-western-judgments/) and a more full Bio can be found HERE (https://rts.edu/people/dr-n-gray-sutanto/), including a list of his publications. You will be inspired by this episode!

On this week's podcast, Mike's guest is journalist, podcaster, and author Collin Hanson, who recently published a book on one of the 21st century's most influential church leaders--Tim Keller.  Collin is vice president for content and editor in chief of The Gospel Coalition, as well as executive director of The Keller Center for Cultural Apologetics.  Listen to Mike and Collin go behind-the-scenes on the life of Tim Keller and also discuss our need for an even more intentional voice of reason and hope in the midst of the cultural milieu of the moment.

How did Christianity come to shape Western culture? History is often told as the story of great men and events. But did Christianity come to shape Western culture simply as a “great idea” that carried the day?In this episode, Glen Scrivener and Andrew Wilson explore the role of geography, technology, and coincidence in the spread of Christianity, which has fundamentally shaped our assumptions about the world. Geography, geology, ecology, and economics are not the topics you would usually consider in a Christian podcast, but Glen and Andrew observe how those factors—along with the fundamental goodness of the gospel—combine to create an environment in which the worldview of the West was formed.Post-Christianity? is a podcast from The Gospel Coalition and The Keller Center for Cultural Apologetics. Learn more about The Keller Center here.The Good Book Company is the publisher of The Air We Breathe by Glen Scrivener. For 25% off books on Christianity and culture, go to thegoodbook.com/postpodcast.

“In the United States, we are currently experiencing the largest and fastest religious shift in the history of our country, as tens of millions of formerly regular Christian worshipers nationwide have decided they no longer desire to attend church at all.” So write Jim Davis and Michael Graham in their new book, The Great Dechurching. In this episode of the Influence Podcast, I'm talking with Davis and Graham about what dechurching is, why it's happening, and how churches can respond effectively. I'm George P. Wood, executive editor of Influence magazine and your host.  Jim Davis is teaching pastor at Orlando Grace Church and host of the As In Heaven podcast. Michael Graham is program director for the Keller Center for Cultural Apologetics, executive producer of As In Heaven, and a member at Orlando Grace Church. ––––– This episode of the Influence podcast is brought to you by My Healthy Church, distributors of MEGA Sports Camp. MEGA Sports Camp is a unique VBS that makes it easy to reach new families, engage new volunteers, and reach unchurched kids in your community. This year kids at your MEGA Sports Camp VBS will learn how to live an adventurous life that points people to Jesus. For more information about MEGA Sports Camp VBS, visit MEGASportsCamp.com.

Michael Graham, Program Director for The Keller Center for Cultural Apologetics, reveals the number one reason people leave church: moving. Michael has just co-authored a book called The Great Dechurching: Who's Leaving, Why Are They Going, and What Will It Take to Bring Them Back?, and says that life events that disrupt schedules--like marital changes, kids, or pandemics--are actually the biggest congregation-stealers... and present the greatest opportunity for ministry. Then, Brian and Aubrey interview enneagram expert Jackie Brewster, and chat about what Jesus meant by encouraging Christians to be a city on the hill--vs. what politicians mean when they use the same phrase. Follow The Common Good on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram Hosted by Aubrey Sampson and Brian From Produced by Laura Finch and Keith ConradSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

We are currently experiencing the largest and fastest religious shift in U.S. History. It's called dechurching and it impacts more people than the First and Second Great Awakening and every revival in our country combined...but in the opposite direction. Very little study had been done on dechurching until Jim Davis and Michael Graham commissioned the largest and most comprehensive study of dechurching in America by renowned sociologists Dr. Ryan Burge and Dr. Paul Djupe. Together, they share their findings in their new book The Great Dechurching: Who's Leaving, Why They are Going, and What Will it Take to Bring Them Back? – released today!This week, Jonathan welcomes Michael Graham to Candid Conversations to discuss the dechurching shift. What you will hear is shocking, but also encouraging – because there are tangible steps you can take to help stem the tide.Michael Graham is Program Director at The Keller Center for Cultural Apologetics. He is also the executive producer and writer for the As In Heaven podcast. He received his MDiv at Reformed Theological Seminary in Orlando. He is a member at Orlando Grace Church and he is married to Sara, and they have two kids. To ask Jonathan a question or connect with the Candid community, visit https://LTW.org/CandidFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/candidpodInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/candidpodTwitter: https://twitter.com/thecandidpod

In this episode, I am joined by Dr. Daniel Strange to talk about the new edition of J.H Bavinck's classic work The Church Between Temple and Mosque from Westminster Seminary Press. Today, we discuss missiology and cultural engagement in our secular age. Meet Dr. StrangeDaniel Strange is director of Crosslands Forum and the vice president of the Southgate Fellowship. He is a fellow of The Keller Center for Cultural Apologetics and is the author of Their Rock Is Not Like Our Rock: A Theology of Religions, Plugged In, and Making Faith Magnetic. He is a contributing editor for Themelios and an elder of Hope Community Church, Gateshead, U.K.Resources:The Church Between Temple and Mosque by Daniel StrangeThe J.H. Bavinck Reader by John BoltonAn Introduction to the Science of Missions by J.H. BavinckThe Riddle of Life by J.H. BavinckPersonality and Worldview by J.H Bavinck, edited by James EglintonDigital Public Square: A conversation with Dr. James Eglinton on Herman Bavinck, theology, and ethics——The Digital Public Square is a production of the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission and is produced and hosted by Jason Thacker. Production assistance is provided by Kadin Christian. Technical production provided by Owens Productions. It is edited and mixed by Mark Owens.

Are people even asking questions? If so, are those questions dramatically different from what they used to be? How should we respond to our rapidly changing culture? Collin Hansen, executive director of the The Keller Center for Cultural Apologetics, looks at some important questions around cultural apologetics and draws on the wisdom of Tim Keller (1950-2023). For Collin Hansen and The Keller Center for Cultural Apologetics: https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/profile/collin-hansen/ • Subscribe to the Unapologetic podcast: https://pod.link/1622170986 • More podcasts, free ebook & newsletter: https://premierunbelievable.com • Watch Unapologetic YouTube playlist: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PL2Ds_nyh5gM_0OQDM3me0ZjLcNg2345GX • For conference & live events: http://www.unbelievable.live • For our apologetics courses: https://www.premierunbelievable.com/training • Support us in the USA: http://www.premierinsight.org/unbelievableshow • Support us in the rest of the world: https://www.premierunbelievable.com/donate

We're not talking about real porches; we're talking about metaphorical ones. Abraham Kuyper once spoke of Christendom as a "forecourt" that prepared people to enter into the church. In one of the last articles he wrote before his death, Tim Keller observed that since the forecourt of Christendom has mostly disappeared, Christians need to be intentional about building porches. In Keller's opinion, hospitality, apologetics, and forgiveness provide three good starting points. In this episode, we discuss a yet-to-be-published article from Keller Center fellow James Eglinton that explores these ideas.

It's been called “a marvel” and “the Protestant magnum opus on sexual ethics we've been waiting for.” It's also been called “Sacred Pornography,” a “Protestant bowdlerization” of Theology of the Body,4 and “a rhapsody over a very male-centered experience of sexual intercourse.” If you haven't heard of it by now, welcome to the Twitterstorm. Josh Butler's newly released book Beautiful Union, and the excerpt from chapter one titled “Sex Won't Save You (But It Points to the One Who Will),” edited and posted by The Gospel Coalition (TGC), faced enormous backlash from evangelicals online — resulting in Butler's resignation as a fellow for the newly formed Keller Center for Cultural Apologetics, but more recently from his role as a lead pastor at Redemption Church in Tempe, Arizona. In Beautiful Union, Butler argues that marital sex is an icon we can look through to greater things, like a stained-glass window in a cathedral. The beautiful union of husband and wife, particularly as it's enacted in fruitful and faithful marital sex, is meant to give us a vision of the transcendent mystery of God's love, of Christ's union with the church. Because Protestantism has by and large incorporated contraception as a normal aspect of family planning, many are accustomed to thinking of sex as something that's solely for bonding and pleasure. Only if and when you want to, you can opt in and upgrade your sex plan to include the “child bonus pack,” otherwise your default fertility setting is off. With the unitive and procreative aspects of sex experientially severed most of the time for most couples, that changes the way we hear euphemisms about sex in the manner Butler uses them.Butler opens the book with a brief introduction to the idea of seeing iconically is very brief. That's all we get when it comes to iconography and its place in Christianity. A religious practice that has obtained for nearly two thousand years in the Eastern church, a practice that lies at the very heart of Eastern Orthodox liturgy and theology, so central to their faith and to the dogma of the Incarnation that many have been martyred in its defense — this iconic worldview is detached from its complex meaning and history, and is borrowed as a premise for a book written within and for a Reformed evangelical subculture that is iconoclastic. Iconic thought and practice is largely alien to evangelicalism and to the Reformed tradition, and yet Butler brings it in the front door without commenting on the oddity (or the implications) of such a pairing.Everything about Christian traditions (Protestant and Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox) that focuses on liturgy and church tradition — from the architecture of the church to the icons on the walls, from the sacraments and prayers to the liturgy and hymns, from the Scripture readings and the incense to the kneeling, bowing, genuflecting, and processing — is structured like a microcosm of reality that is anything but arbitrary. It is designed not merely to point you to heaven but to transport you there. This podblast is a conversation with Journal author Alisa Ruddell about her new article, "Beautiful Union by Joshua Ryan Butler and the Trouble with Borrowing Icons".

Travis and Daniel continue their conversation about the magnetic points that are in every person and every culture that act as a bridge to the Gospel. They also talk about J.H. Bavinck, and how we all need to look at the methods of missiologists so that we might learn how to reach our friends and neighbors with the Gospel. Daniel Strange is 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. 1Check out the NLT.Sign up for the Apollos Watered newsletter.Help water-thirsty souls by partnering with Apollos Watered!

What do dogs and cultural apologetics have in common? Absolutely nothing, except for this podcast episode. Bob recently spent some time in New York City with the Keller Center; he explains the work of cultural apologetics and talks about some of the projects the Fellows are working on. Also, Chris tells us how he got another dog.

Alasdair Groves speaks with Collin Hansen about his new book, Timothy Keller: His Spiritual and Intellectual Formation, and the influences on Tim Keller, which included CCEF and David Powlison. Collin Hansen is the vice president for content and editor in chief of The Gospel Coalition, as well as executive director of The Keller Center for Cultural Apologetics.   Mentioned in the podcast: "Idols of the Heart and 'Vanity Fair'" | Journal article by David Powlison. Read it here for free: https://www.ccef.org/idols-heart-and-vanity-fair/

On Wednesday, the recently announced Keller Center for Cultural Apologetics at The Gospel Coalition published a book excerpt authored by Pastor Josh Butler. Almost immediately, Twitterverse erupted, decrying the article as “icky,” “cringe,” and “dangerous.”

“When it comes to theologians that contemporary church leaders should be reading, I don't know of a more important one than Herman Bavinck.” So says Timothy Keller in his endorsement of James Eglinton's 2020 book Bavinck: A Critical Biography. Keller first read Bavinck some 50 years ago in class with Roger Nicole at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary. But not much of Bavinck's voluminous work has been translated until recent years. So, we live in a renaissance of appreciation for this Dutch theologian who died in 1921.Probably no one is more responsible for this renaissance than Eglinton, the Meldrum senior lecturer in Reformed theology at the University of Edinburgh. He also serves as a fellow for The Keller Center for Cultural Apologetics. In this special season of Gospelbound, we're exploring in depth several key influences that appear in my book Timothy Keller: His Spiritual and Intellectual Formation. James Eglinton and I discussed neo-Calvinism, whether he disagrees with Bavinck about anything, a beginner's reading list, and Eglinton's upcoming projects. You'll find few high-level academics who can match Eglinton's gift for clear thinking and teaching, as you'll hear in this interview.

Jon surveys the big stories in evangelical Christianity. Become a Patron: https://www.patreon.com/worldviewconversationSupport this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/conversations-that-matter8971/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

In their booklet “Gospel-Centered Ministry,” TGC cofounders Don Carson and Tim Keller describe how the redemptive story of Scripture, or biblical theology, culminates in Jesus Christ and his gospel. And from Christ, that gospel then guides us in how we live every aspect of our lives.I've never seen a book do this work more effectively than Christopher Watkin's Biblical Critical Theory: How the Bible's Unfolding Story Makes Sense of Modern Life. It's simply one of the best books I've ever read. Not that the book is simple, at nearly 700 pages. It's profound in its depth of insight drawn from observation of culture as well as close reading of Scripture. Watkin does not try to explain and defend the Bible to the culture. Instead, he seeks to analyze and critique the culture through the Bible. He writes, “There is nothing quite so radically subversive today as sound doctrine and godly living.”Tim Keller wrote the foreword for Biblical Critical Theory. And in this special season of Gospelbound, we're exploring, in depth, several key influences that appear in my book Timothy Keller: His Spiritual and Intellectual Formation (Zondervan Reflective). Watkin teaches at Monash University in Melbourne, Australia, and Hansen asks him about the philosopher Charles Taylor and social criticism, which have played such a key role in Keller's intellectual formation especially since the mid-2000s. Watkin is an inaugural Fellow for The Keller Center for Cultural Apologetics, and he'll be leading an interactive, 8-session online cohort on Biblical Critical Theory that starts on May 10.