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Responses to our May issue.

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A Border Runs Through It

Encouraging to see believers who understand immigration and border issues are not black and white and are doing God’s work in the middle of it!

@EdTechSandyK

“Every teenager I’ve ever walked with is navigating the fallout of this broken world” . . . that is a concept worth some serious consideration.

Annette Johnson

Refocusing on the Great Commission

There may be some problems with the idea of using terms like unreached or unengaged. But the concepts and the actual research to identify those who have not had an opportunity to hear the gospel or who do not have a viable witness has been immensely helpful.

Dave Hyatt

Repenting of Identity Politics

Agree professing Christians should repent of their Christian nationalism. But I don’t fully equate identity politics with Christian nationalism. Just white identity politics. Civil rights aren’t GIVEN to minorities. Minorities demand them. That happens through some form of identity politics.

@socofthesacred

As one brought up in the evangelical tradition who has been utterly baffled and saddened by the severe nationalistic and anti-immigration positions of others who claim to follow after Christ, “Repenting of Identity Politics” clearly states what in my view is wholly consistent with Holy Scripture and the kingdom-building our Lord Jesus taught and modeled. Thanks for your boldness, unmistakable conviction, and the call for repentance. Indeed, God forgive us.

Patricia Long Canton, OH

Christian nationalism is a non-sequitur. There is no such thing. Anyone who joins Christianity with nationalism has already abandoned the former in favor of the latter.

Christopher Adams

Small Groups Anonymous

I require every student in my high school leadership class to attend an AA meeting. While extremely hesitant at first, they come back and proclaim how much they loved attending and why can’t every interaction they have be that genuine and authentic. As technology-addicted young people, they yearn for this type of openness and transparency. Dunnington presents the key aspects of AA in a pragmatic, practical, and concise manner. I too have always yearned to be part of a small group that mimics the environment of an AA meeting, while at the same time I appreciated the honest self-reflection as he ends the article. Once the church reflects the intentionality of AA, its buildings will be standing-room only, just what Jesus wanted.

Rafe Vecere Columbus, NJ

John Wesley’s small “bands” in the early days of the Methodist movement filled this role. In today’s society, the kind of interpersonal trust necessary for such groups to survive in the local church has been lost. People do not want to share deep things in these groups for fear it will end up on the church grapevine or as a sermon illustration.

Mike Stidham

This article shows disturbingly deep insight into the reasons that our home groups generally fail to be radically transformative. This bears much examination and discussion among Christians who are serious about seeing their own lives and the lives of others demonstrably transformed by God’s grace. I will never think about home groups the same way again.

Alan House Spring, TX

As a member of Celebrate Recovery, I can personally attest to the rigorous honesty and true fellowship that occurs in 12-step meetings. People are free to be real and flawed without judgment.

Rich Rodriguez

We Set Off to Reach a Remote Amazon Tribe

I loved how the story shows the missionaries’ obedience was met with God’s providing for them and blessing the people they came to serve by allowing them to serve the missionaries. He knows what we need. All of us—if we just trust him.

Carol Rollo Pensacola, FL

Telling the Wrong Poverty Story

As a worker in an inner-city church, is my job to help lift people out of poverty and help them have money or is it to do life together with them and lead them to abundant life in relationship with Jesus? I was challenged that I have been measuring ministry success by the economic gains that people make, when maybe that should never have been the goal in the first place.

Pauline Dillman Benner

Also in this issue

Seattle business professors Bruce Baker and Tom Parks make the case for a larger dream: that gleaning can not only create space for society's economically marginalized groups but, in doing so, it can also transform the lives of those with economic and cultural power.

Cover Story

The Book of Ruth Can Transform the Way We Do Business Today

Is the World’s Next Missions Movement in Ethiopia?

News

Why Muslims Love Mary

News

The Key to This Church Planting Network’s Success? Start Big, Stay Big

News

Gleanings: July/August 2019

When Christians Don’t Get a Second Chance

I Befriended Bart Ehrman by Debating Him

Faith Like an Olive Tree

What Billy Graham Taught Me

Our July/August Issue: No Shadow Unlit

Editorial

True Doctrine Doesn’t Wait

Sometimes, God Wants You to Go with Your Gut

Testimony

Meeting Jesus as a Black Woman in a White City

Paul Says to ‘Be Filled with the Spirit.’ How Do We Obey a Passive Verb?

Proving That God Exists Without Opening a Bible

A New Recipe for Ending Hunger

Review

The Nazis Persecuted Him. The Soviets Killed Him. Today He’s Barely Known.

Review

Celibate Gay Christians: Neither Shockingly Conservative nor Worryingly Liberal

New & Noteworthy Books

Excerpt

The Apostles Never ‘Shared’ the Gospel, and Neither Should We

Excerpt

Praising God with Our Testimonies

News

Who Needs Those TPS Reports? Venezuelan Christians

News

Are Christians Too Confident in Their Churches’ Response to Abuse?

View issue

Our Latest

News

Black Clergy and Christians Grapple with Charlie Kirk’s Legacy

Many say the activist’s inflammatory statements on race should inform how we remember his life.

News

A Sudden Death: Voddie Baucham, Who Warned the Church of Fault Lines

Known for confronting critical theory, moral relativism, and secular ideologies, Baucham died a month into leading a new seminary in Florida.

Why Many Black Christians Reject the Evangelical and Mainline Labels

The history of a prominent church pastored by MLK in Alabama shows the reason African Americans often don’t embrace either term.

News

Pastor Abducted in Nigeria Amid Escalating Kidnapping Crisis

Armed gang continues to hold him after family paid the ransom.

Review

The Liturgy of American Charisma

Historian Molly Worthen studies dynamic leaders, eager followers, and their shared efforts to “consecrate a new reality.”

Inside the Ministry

The Next Gen Initiative

Casting a captivating vision of following Jesus for the next generation.

The Just Life with Benjamin Watson

Bruce Deel: Mercy With A Spine

Creating real pathways to stability so families can flourish through housing, work, and dignity.

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