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Millennials used to be the group that churches and ministries were angling to evangelize. Now, all grown up and poised to overtake Baby Boomers as the largest generation, they’re the ones doing the evangelizing.

At least they should be.

But new research from Barna Group and the creators of the Alpha course offers some disappointing news regarding the 20-somethings and 30-somethings now on deck to carry on the faith: nearly half (47%) of practicing Christian millennials—churchgoers who consider religion an important part of their lives—believe that evangelism is wrong.

They’re more than twice as likely as their parents and grandparents—Boomers and Elders, respectively—to say that it’s “wrong to share one’s personal beliefs with someone of a different faith in hopes that they will one day share the same faith.”

While this statistic could easily bolster stereotypes of a lazy, distracted, and increasingly unaffiliated generation, the minority of millennials who have stayed active in their churches also show higher markers of commitment in other areas, as well as a savvier sense of the religious pluralism and diversity they were raised around.

The recent Barna release found that, despite the reticence around the practice, millennials consider themselves good evangelists and still see themselves as representatives for their faith.

Nearly all practicing Christian millennials (96%) said witnessing for Jesus is part of being a Christian, and they were more likely than any other generation to say they were gifted at sharing their faith (73%).

And Barna previously found that millennials who identify as born-again were the most likely age group to share their faith—and that their evangelism habits were growing while other generations’ were dropping. In 2013, two-thirds of millennials said they had presented the gospel to someone within the past year, compared to half of born-again Christians in general.

Additionally, practicing Christian millennials have the strongest beliefs in the Bible and read it more than any other generation: 87 percent do so multiple times a week, according to a 2016 Barna survey on behalf of the American Bible Society (ABS).

So what’s behind their beliefs that evangelism is “wrong”?

Barna president David Kinnaman points to the rising cultural expectation against judging personal choices. Practicing Christian millennials were twice as likely as Gen X and four times as likely as Boomers and Elders to agree with the statement, “If someone disagrees with you, it means they’re judging you.”

“Cultivating deep, steady, resilient Christian conviction is difficult in a world of ‘you do you’ and ‘don’t criticize anyone’s life choices’ and emotivism, the feelings-first priority that our culture makes a way of life,” Kinnaman said. “As much as ever, evangelism isn’t just about saving the unsaved, but reminding ourselves that this stuff matters, that the Bible is trustworthy, and that Jesus changes everything.”

Several evangelicals’ reactions to the Barna release pointed to the need for better Christian formation for younger churchgoers.

“I’m a Millennial, and this is pure evidence of the failure of the church to prepare youths to understand faith/speak out,” tweeted author Billy Hallowell. “Beyond that, it’s also a result of the cultural crisis of secularism bombarding us at every turn.”

“You can’t pin the belief that evangelism is wrong on Facebook, distraction, disenchantment, or recession,” wrote Samuel James, a writer at First Things, on Twitter. “The data here strongly suggests that Christian millennials are being catechized by their colleges, not churches.”

In her book Reciprocal Church, Sharon Galgay Ketcham, a practical theologian at Gordon College, challenged Christian elders to give younger generations a chance to actively engage their faith in the church context rather than receive the traditions “passed on” to them. Two-thirds of churchgoing Christians will stop attending at some point in the years after turning 18—some returning regularly, some occasionally, and some not at all.

The rise of the religiously unaffiliated “nones,” now roughly a quarter of the population, has taken away the expectation for younger generations to identify as Christian just for the sake of it. Without the pull of “cultural Christianity,” leaders see the millennials who do stay involved in their churches as particularly committed and faithful.

“Though the Christian population of this generation is likely no higher than 15 percent, these young people may well turn the world upside down with their commitments and causes,” wrote LifeWay Christian Resources CEO Thom S. Rainer and son Jess R. Rainer in their book, The Millennials. “Millennial Christians are not content with business-as-usual churches. To the contrary, they will connect with churches on if those churches are wiling to sell out for the sake of the gospel.”

Millennial leaders have begun assuming the mantle at major churches and ministries. More than two dozen millennials now hold senior pastor positions at congregations with more than 1,000 attendees, with some megachurch pastors as young as 32, according to Leadership Network.

But evangelism remains a sticking point among a 21st-century crowd which sees tent revivals and tracts as a thing of the past. “Evangelism is often presented as an old school, out-of-style idea with little value or relevance in our fast-paced, urban world,” wrote Hannah Gronowski, the founder and director of Generation Distinct, for The Exchange last year.

Younger folks are tempted to believe instead, “if we just live good enough lives, we can forgo the conversation entirely, and people around us will almost magically come to know Jesus through our good actions and selfless character,” she said. “This style of evangelism is becoming more and more prevalent in a culture constantly looking for the fast track and simple fix.”

Tom Werner / Getty Images

Evangelicals have lost a major partner and friend from the Jewish community, Rabbi Yechiel Eckstein, who died suddenly today at his home in Jerusalem. He was 67.

Inspired by God’s promise in Genesis 12:3 to bless those who bless Israel, Eckstein’s International Fellowship of Christians and Jews (IFCJ) worked for decades to improve relationships between the two faiths and raise more than .4 billion for projects in the Holy Land, mostly from evangelical donors.

“His impact on the state of Israel and on bringing Jews and Christians together will be felt for generations,” said John Hagee, founder of Christians United for Israel and one of the biggest voices for Christian Zionism in the US, in a statement to The Times of Israel. “I pray God brings comfort to the Rabbi’s family during this very difficult time, and I know that his memory will be a blessing to us all.”

Eckstein engaged more than 6,600 US churches, with more than a half-million people, around understanding and advocating for Israel and its people. Because of IFCJ, more than 730,000 Jews moved back to Israel, including Eckstein himself, who moved to Jerusalem in 2002.

“Undeniably through IFCJ, Eckstein has constructed a bridge linking evangelicals, Jews, and Israel,” CT wrote in a 2009 profile of Eckstein, nicknamed “The Ultimate Kibitzer.”

“He has been a trailblazer on an uncharted path of showing ways the two faiths can cooperate on behalf of shared biblical concerns. He has brought evangelical and Jewish politicians together in Washington, D.C. He has spoken out against religious persecution abroad and has traveled to China on behalf of imprisoned Christian pastors.”

Eckstein founded IFCJ in 1983 as a small organization with a mostly Jewish donor base. Thanks to his outreach, networking, and inroads with evangelical figures (including a particularly effective 1993 infomercial with Pat Boone), the organization ballooned into the largest source of Christian support for Israel and the Jewish people.

A decade ago, 98 percent of IFCJ’s 800,000-person giving list was Christian. In recent years, Eckstein has followed the growth of evangelical and Pentecostal Christianity abroad to develop partnerships with believers there; IFCJ now has offices in Seoul, South Korea, and Sao Paulo, Brazil, and boasts nearly 2 million supporters.

“Israel and the Jewish people have long played a key role in the religious imagination of many evangelical Protestants. Rabbi Yechiel Eckstein knew how to help us turn that into concrete action, channeling our affection for the Jewish people into resettlement efforts for Russian Jews and other philanthropic projects,” said David Neff, former CT editor-in-chief who convened an ongoing national dialogue between Jews and evangelicals.

“More than any other Jewish leader I have known, he had an intuitive sense for relating to evangelicals.”

While evangelicals have grown more supportive of Israel, politically and spiritually, some observant Jews have remained suspicious, concerned about their proselytization strategies and motives. Eckstein worked for decades to build trust and friendship between evangelicals and Jews, focusing on their shared concern for the Holy Land.

“Jews started to realize that they were friends of Israel, and then the Jewish community by and large became very myopic in their thinking,” Eckstein told The Washington Post last year, as the Trump administration’s pro-Jerusalem policies drew more attention to longstanding evangelical support. “They are good for Israel, they are giving them money for their projects…. For a lot of Jews it was, let’s call it utilitarian.”

The late philanthropist was slated to be honored by the US Congress this May for Jewish American Heritage Month, for his work bringing together Christians and Jews.

Popular American rabbi Shmuley Boteach remembered Eckstein, who had spoken at his son’s bar mitzvah two nights before, for having done “incalculable good.”

As one Israeli politician said in tribute, “A heart that gave and gave and gave stopped working…. May his memory be a source of blessing for all who knew him and were touched by him.”

CT’s 2009 profile explains more about why Eckstein was evangelicals’ favorite rabbi.

Yossi Zwecker

A landmark investigation into hundreds of cases of sexual abuse in Southern Baptist churches opened with a collage of pictures of the offenders, row after row of headshots and mugshots of men who had been accused of abusing a total of 700 victims over the past 20 years.

In Sunday’s report, the Houston Chronicle and San Antonio Express-News were able to do what victims say the nation’s largest Protestant denomination has failed to for years: provide a picture of the extent of the abuse within the Southern Baptist Convention and a database of those found guilty of their crimes.

With allegations against 380 church leaders in 20 states (a majority of whom were convicted or took plea deals), it’s believed to be the biggest report on sexual abuse among Southern Baptists in the movement’s history. The report confronts the longstanding defense that the organization can only do so much to monitor abuse since affiliated congregations operate autonomously.

Another set of pictures captures a sense of the impact of abusers in Southern Baptist congregations. In response to the investigation, Southern Baptist women and fellow Christians shared childhood photos on Twitter from the age when they first suffered abuse.

Dozens joined a thread started by Living Proof Ministries founder and popular Bible teacher Beth Moore, including advocate and abuse survivor Jules Woodson and other ministry leaders.

Over the past couple years, the #MeToo campaign has raised awareness about abuse within the SBC and galvanized official efforts to improve the denomination’s response. Last December, as the Fort Worth Star-Telegram rounded up more than 400 allegations among independent Baptists, the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission (ERLC) executive vice president Philip Bethancourt wrote, “it would not be surprising if journalists are working on a similar type of story focused on Southern Baptist churches as well.”

That day has come. The Houston Chronicle and San Antonio Express-News revealed in the first of a three-part series that more than 200 Southern Baptist abusers were convicted or took plea deals for their crimes since 1998, including 90 who remain in prison and 100 who are registered as sex offenders.

Even worse, “at least 35 church pastors, employees and volunteers who exhibited predatory behavior were still able to find jobs at churches during the past two decades,” the reporters found. “In some cases, church leaders apparently failed to alert law enforcement about complaints or to warn other congregations about allegations of misconduct.”

In response, Southern Baptist leaders and pastors have spoken even more frankly about the problem of abuse and reiterated their commitment to more rigorous, research-driven efforts launched last year to address the issue. SBC president J. D. Greear called the voices in the article “a warning sent from God, calling the church to repent.”

“The Baptist doctrine of church autonomy should never be a religious cover for passivity towards abuse. Church autonomy is about freeing the church to do the right thing—to obey Christ—in every situation. It is a heinous error to apply autonomy in a way that enables abuse,” he said in a statement to CT. “As a denomination, now is a time to mourn and repent. Changes are coming. They must.”

During the 2018 scandal involving Paige Patterson’s response to abuse claims, top leaders in the denomination had already begun to see the extent of the problem among their own. “When people said that evangelicals had a similar crisis coming, it didn’t seem plausible—even to me,” wrote Southern Baptist Theological Seminary president Al Mohler, comparing the situation within the SBC to the abuse crisis in the Catholic church. “I was wrong. The judgment of God has come.”

Last year’s annual meeting of the SBC came in the wake of Patterson’s departure and hosted prominent discussions of women and abuse. As incoming president, Greear formed a study group in partnership with the ERLC to examine sexual abuse in the denomination and improve resources for its leaders.

“Our approach is seeking to encourage policies and practices that protect children and the vulnerable from sexual abuse in autonomous but cooperating churches, all the while promoting compliance with laws and providing compassionate care for those who have survived trauma,” ERLC president Russell Moore wrote.

“True, we have no bishops. But we have a priesthood of believers. And a key task of that priesthood is maintaining the witness of Christ in the holiness and safety of his church. That means training churches to recognize sexual predation and how to deal with charges or suspicions when they emerge, and equipping churches to stop the pattern, in their church or from their church to others.”

In all, the SBC numbers 47,000 congregations and 15 million members.

Still, “it would be sorrow if it were 200 or 600” cases of abuse, Augie Boto, interim president of the SBC’s executive committee, told the Houston Chronicle. “What we're talking about is criminal. The fact that criminal activity occurs in a church context is always the basis of grief. But it’s going to happen. And that statement does not mean that we must be resigned to it.”

Individual churches and pastors have described the abuse within the SBC in stark terms and pledged to bring it to light.

“It is clear from the article that these weren’t isolated cases. Instead, it reveals a pattern of abuse and cover-up that extends to some of the highest levels of leadership inside the SBC,” wrote the Sojourn Collective, a church network based in Louisville. “Christians should be thankful for reporting like this that exposes systemic sin; it’s the only way it can be purged out of our institutions.”

Texas pastor Bart Barber, who previously proposed a resolution for the SBC to decry sexual misconduct and institutions that tolerate it, has lamented the instinct to cover up or downplay abuse to preserve the church’s reputation.

“Any church the @HoustonChron has identified as employing a pastor with a history of sexual misconduct, if still employing that pastor in June and haven’t already left the SBC by then, should be disfellowshipped at that meeting,” tweeted Barber, of First Baptist Church of Farmersville. “I’m willing to stand up and make that motion.”

The newspaper reported that the SBC executive committee had previously said it would be “justified” to cut ties with affiliated churches that employed known sex offenders. Greear told the Houston Chronicle that any congregation with a “pattern of sinful neglect—regarding abuse or any other matter” should be removed from the SBC.

Last year, the SBC’s International Mission Board also launched an independent investigation of how it handled a 2007 abuse allegation.

The Texas newspapers’ investigation comes less than a week after the Today show featured abuse allegations against New Tribes Mission. CT had previously reported on efforts to investigate misconduct among the missionary organization.

Houston Chronicle

In the midst of efforts to reconcile with longtime critics, Harvest Bible Chapel fired its founder and senior pastor James MacDonald for “engaging in conduct … contrary and harmful to the best interests of the church.”

Harvest elders announced this morning that they were forced to take “immediate action” on Tuesday to end his 30-year tenure.

“Following a lengthy season of review, reflection, and prayerful discussion, the Elders of Harvest Bible Chapel had determined that Pastor MacDonald should be removed from his role of Senior Pastor. That timeline accelerated, when on Tuesday morning highly inappropriate recorded comments made by Pastor MacDonald were given to media and reported,” they wrote.

“This decision was made with heavy hearts and much time spent in earnest prayer, followed by input from various trusted outside advisors.”

MacDonald took an “indefinite sabbatical” in January, following a tumultuous few months defending Harvest in a defamation lawsuit against its critics and in the aftermath of a World magazine investigation into mismanagement at the church.

The public scrutiny continued with pushback against MacDonald’s decision to preach at a Harvest affiliate in Florida during his sabbatical. Then, a famous friend of his, Chicago shock jock Mancow Muller, spoke out in a local newspaper against the manipulation and ego he observed around MacDonald’s “cult of personality” at Harvest. On his radio show, Muller later aired what sounded like clips of MacDonald making harsh comments toward media who had covered the story.

Now, the church has decided its longtime leader won’t be coming back.

Muller had prematurely announced the pastor’s departure on Friday morning on his show on WLS 890 AM, going on to declare on Twitter, “Conman Boss James Macdonald OUT of Harvest Church!”

The news came less than a week after another update from Julie Roys, a defendant in the lawsuit and the writer responsible for the World investigation, who has continued to release evidence against MacDonald and call for his resignation.

“While I am heartened that the elders finally removed MacDonald, he should have been fired five years ago. That’s when eight former elders sent a letter to the sitting elder board, warning them that MacDonald was disqualified for office,” she said in a response posted Wednesday.

Though MacDonald initially opted to step away from all preaching and leadership roles at the church’s Chicago-area locations, in his January 16 sabbatical announcement he suggested he might still preach at a Harvest congregation in Naples, Florida, which led to another saga.

The leader of that church, John Secrest, was blindsided by the news and asked Harvest elders to reconsider allowing MacDonald to preach there. He ultimately requested that Harvest Naples be released from its relationship with the megachurch. Then, he was fired, according to the Daily Herald, a suburban Chicago newspaper.

Secrest, who founded the church in 2016 and affiliated with Harvest last September, said he didn’t know at the time about the ongoing concerns raised about MacDonald’s leadership and the church’s financial status, which led to Harvest’s lawsuit last year. “The good intentions of our ministry partnership with Harvest Chicago have been overshadowed by these developments,” he said.

Even before the 58-year-old pastor’s sabbatical, MacDonald’s role at Harvest had shifted. At the start of the year, elders stated that his “primary focus has transitioned from building our ministries to securing a healthy succession that sets all our ministries up to flourish in the next generation.”

Two years ago, MacDonald moved away from overseeing the Harvest Bible Fellowship, a global network of churches, which eventually separated from Harvest completely to form the Great Commission Collective (GCC).

The former Harvest Bible Fellowship leaders now at GCC—which contains about 130 churches, more than half of which still have Harvest in their names—share concerns about the church’s leadership and are looking for transparency and repentance from MacDonald.

“In keeping with our past private statements to Harvest’s leadership and to our pastors—The primary issue is not reconciliation or peacemaking, it is repentance,” GCC elders said in a January 17 statement.

“A peacemaking process, while helpful for personal and relational reconciliation, is not the approach to address failed governance, biblical disqualification, and a toxic leadership environment.”

Muller, who has attended Harvest for five years and developed a friendship with MacDonald, wrote in a Daily Herald op-ed that he’d seen the best the church had to offer: MacDonald’s punchy sermons renewed Muller’s faith, brought his family back into Christian community, and taught him the truth of the gospel.

However, he ultimately agreed with the wave of backlash his pastor-friend now faced, condemning how MacDonald’s drama had overshadowed Harvest and threatening a class-action lawsuit yesterday if MacDonald remained its pastor for another week.

“Pray for those of us who donate 10 percent of our income and would like to know where the money really goes. Pray for those outside the faith who will never come to salvation because of how this appears to them,” Muller wrote in his op-ed. “For a great many, it's time for the cult of personality of James MacDonald at Harvest chapter to close and the actual Bible to be opened again.”

Today on his edgy radio show, Muller said while he felt MacDonald’s firing had to happen, he also had “wanted nothing to do with any of it” and now “my part is done.”

“I feel like God was using me in this,” he said. “I hope it doesn’t chase people away from their spiritual quest—away from God.”

“I take no joy in this announcement,” said Muller. “But I hope the healing can begin, and I hope the abuse will stop.”

Roys also lamented the fallout of today’s news.

“Lastly, we need to comfort hurting today,” she wrote. “I know many people who attend Harvest or who have been impacted by MacDonald’s preaching are crushed today. As one person whom MacDonald led to the Lord remarked to me, ‘It’s like finding out your wife is a serial killer.’ The disillusionment, betrayal, and loss can be excruciating. This is a very vulnerable time for a lot of people and I am sure God weeps for every single wounded soul.”

Harvest numbers 13,000 attendees across seven locations, and the church began affiliating with the Southern Baptist Convention in 2015. In addition to leading Harvest, MacDonald acquired a massive evangelical following through his books, Bible studies, and Walk in the Word radio program, with more than a million fans on Facebook.

In announcing MacDonald’s termination, Harvest elders stated they are “committed to fulfilling our fiduciary duty as the leadership of this congregation, knowing that at times the outcome may be misunderstood or emotionally painful. … We sincerely thank you for your prayers, your support, and your patience as we work together to restore a trust in leadership, a humility to surrender to biblical authority, and a firm resolve to move forward as a church family.”