CT’s Chinese Translations Are Filling A Gap

How CT’s Chinese coordinator, Yiting Tsai, is using translated articles to spark deeper discussions on theology, current events, and global missions in Taiwan and China.

Hannah Glad

Mani Xu

Yiting Tsai read her first Christianity Today article while she was in the United States, working on her master of divinity degree at Moody Theological Seminary. The article was about a church scandal. It shocked her. Not the scandal, but the way a Christian news outlet was reporting in depth on a scandal in the church.

Back home in Taiwan, church scandals might be acknowledged, but an investigation like that would be taboo. For Yiting, it was refreshing.

Not long after that, Sean Cheng, former CT Chinese managing editor, was asking friends who were pastors if they knew anyone who was interested in translation work. Jiang Shaolong, founder of Living Water Tea House, connected Cheng with Yiting, who started doing translations for CT in the summer of 2022 after she graduated. Yiting’s translations were so good that Cheng asked her to become CT’s Chinese coordinator to help proofread and edit translated articles.

On the process of translating Christianity Today articles from English to Chinese, she said, “It’s really not about how much you understand English. It’s about how good your Chinese is so you can write beautifully.” Yiting first translates in Traditional Chinese and then, with the help of the Traditional/Simplified Chinese Conversion feature in Word, she adjusts vocabulary as necessary for Simplified Chinese readers.

There are two reasons why Yiting says it’s necessary to provide both Traditional and Simplified Chinese translations: “First, people who are accustomed to reading Traditional Chinese often find it quite difficult to read Simplified Chinese, and vice versa. Secondly, there is a significant political factor involved—many readers who are used to Traditional Chinese may resist reading articles in Simplified Chinese, as they associate it with China as a nation. Traditional Chinese readers from Taiwan may identify themselves as Taiwanese rather than Chinese, and may view Simplified Chinese as being for ‘Chinese citizens of China.'”

As the Chinese coordinator, Yiting finds articles on CT’s website that she believes would resonate with the Chinese-speaking world and either translates them herself or assigns them to another translator. “This is like a dream job,” Yiting said. “I was so in love with all of CT’s articles, [this role] uses all the things I learned from school, and I get to share about CT with a lot more people.” And share she did.

About a year into this role, Yiting felt called to return to Taiwan. “I decided it was time for me to go back and just go home so I can serve the church in Taiwan,” she said. While at home, Yiting has been sharing CT articles with the students in the public theology class she teaches at Logos Evangelical Seminary, through her work with WE Initiative, a mission mobilization organization, and with the adults at her church when she teaches Sunday school.

Yiting uses CT’s articles in her seminary class because she sees a lack of important, nuanced content in Chinese Christian publications. CT’s translations fill that gap.

“I really need to use CT’s articles to start a conversation with my class each week,” Yiting said. “We have Christian magazines, and some magazines have good theological content about things around culture, but we don’t have a magazine that talks about a Christian perspective on current things in the world—the principles of Christians being in this world, loving your neighbor, being a good witness, and just being a church. We have zero resources about that kind of theology and perspective, and there are a lot of issues that Taiwanese or Chinese don’t ever talk about, like divorce and abuse in marriage. It feels like most Christian websites that talk about things like this are either too deep or too simple—there’s just no good theology.”

During her time in the States, Yiting learned about the blind spots of the American church, but her experience also helped her see a blind spot in the way Christians in Taiwan still embrace some of Confucius’s teachings. One of those teachings is respect for elders. While inherently that’s not a bad thing, Yiting said, “in Asian churches, whatever our pastor says, we agree with. We don’t think for ourselves.”

This also hinders reporting on spiritual abuse and church scandals related to pastors. “Asians really hate talking about church scandals. It’s such a taboo in our culture. If it’s something just happening inside a church, then it’s kind of fine, but if it’s from a pastor, then it’s no, it’s a total no.”

Also rooted in Confucianism, Yiting said, is a feeling of “We really like people to tell us what is right and wrong. There’s always definitely right and definitely wrong, there’s not something in between. So when they become Christians, the Bible is just about salvation. That’s it. If you don’t do this right, then you go to hell.”

Yiting uses content from CT’s articles to push back on her students’ black-and-white thinking, wanting them to reason for themselves and consider different perspectives. “Sometimes when I read CT articles, they say, ‘Hey, teacher, which [position] do you choose?’” And she tells them, “It doesn’t matter, because these things I show you, it’s not about definite right and wrong.”

In her class each week, Yiting says, “I have a topic I want to talk about, like two kingdoms, Augustinian, Reformation or liberation theology, and I will use CT’s related articles to make [my students] do their own critical thinking. CT’s articles also present all different kinds of voices. I would encourage my students that you don’t have to agree with the author, but give me a good argument. CT articles really make them think.”

Beyond that, the articles that Yiting shares with her students have impacted their own spiritual lives. “Some of my students will say, ‘Oh my gosh! This article changed my life, and I’m going to share this with everyone in my church.’”

One topic in particular drew her students’ interest, especially the ones joining her class virtually from China: the argument for divorce in abusive marriages. “My students said, ‘I never heard about that. I never learned about this kind of theology.’ In our churches, it’s always a no. It doesn’t matter what happened. Divorce is always a no.”

Yiting also shared an article with her students about Palestinian Christians and Messianic Jews coming together to learn how to disagree well. “I remember that article really touched their hearts,” she said. She felt like the tensions described in the piece applied to the tensions between Taiwan and China, where her students are from. “There’s hope in our conflict,” she said. “Yeah, our countries are enemies, but we are first of all Christians; we are secondly Taiwanese, secondly Chinese.”

Yiting’s students have noticed how the articles put to words things they might have already been thinking and feeling. “They feel something is off in the church, but they’re not sure how to counter that feeling,” she said. “They don’t know how to point it out. I think the articles help them to think through things.”

And because the articles often use biblical references, they can go look at those verses themselves and make connections. “The Bible is so relevant to our life. It’s not just about salvation and right and wrong,” she added.

So much of what has encouraged Yiting’s students has encouraged her also. Thinking back on the first article that she read, Yiting said she has appreciated the faithful investigations CT has done on church and ministry scandals. “It rebuilds my faith,” she explained.

Some of those reported scandals have included leaders like Ravi Zacharias and Mike Bickle. The one about Mike Bickle has consistently ranked among the top five most-read Chinese translations. “We are the only website with a Chinese translation or Chinese news reporting on this, so we got a ton of clicks about that. Current events about church scandals and spiritual abuse—we can’t find resources about that.”

Another type of content Yiting says is difficult to find is information on global missions, which is why she has started to share CT’s missions-related articles on WE Initiative’s Facebook page to inspire and equip the group’s followers with a heart for missions. “No organization in Asia has the resources to do reporting about missions—missions to us or from us,” she said. “CT Global really helps. … Sometimes my coworkers will say, ‘Wow! This article is amazing. How do they do that?’”

One of those articles was about a Kenyan man and woman who were called to minister to Chinese people in Kenya. Yiting recalled, “Sean’s friend told Sean about this, and Sean told CT, and CT literally sent a reporter to write about that. Those are the kinds of things we don’t have the resources for.”

CT has broadened Yiting’s knowledge of the world. “In general, [the coordinator position] is like learning about this world, because CT has so much reporting from all over the world.” And that’s likely also the case for CT’s Chinese audience. “All the firsthand Christian news in the Middle East—CT’s the only resource that has Chinese translation.”

When Yiting first started working at CT, the Chinese translation team were only doing two to three translations a week. Now, they do four or five. “And the number of clicks has also gone up a lot.”

Looking to the future of CT’s Chinese content, Yiting said, “I’m hoping to see more than five articles [translated a week]. I definitely wish we could have more articles, because there’s so much I want people to read. I also want more original authors [from the Chinese-speaking world]…I think CT has already found several really good authors, and my hope is they can have more, because culture-related, news-related articles get a lot of attention if we have more from our own place. More from East Asia would be really helpful.”

More content would mean more for Yiting to share and more opportunities for CT to make an impact on the Chinese-speaking world.

Ideas

We’re Asking the Wrong Tech Question

Mitchell East

The consideration is not “How can we use this technology redemptively?” but rather “Should we use this technology at all?”

Illustration by Simone Noronha

The age of artificial intelligence has arrived, and we were not ready for it. As AI infiltrates more and more of our digital tools and experiences, it is quickly becoming apparent that we aren’t quite sure how to approach this technology. Some are enamored with the wonders of its computing speed, unthinkingly eager for new conveniences and savings. Others engage with AI apparently forgetting that it’s a computer at all, responding with love or fear just as they might with another human.

And what about the church? What about evangelical pastors? We’ll see the same split there, with a few thoughtful resisters but, if I had to guess, more taking the path of eager adoption. Some will jump in with reckless abandon. Others might caution congregants about AI, but I worry that after raising the customary yield sign to a little-understood new technology, many will give AI the green light.

There are risks, they’ll say. But we have a responsibility to use this tech for good. Just as Paul tells the church to redeem the time (Eph. 5:16, KJV), I expect many Christian leaders will tell the church to “redeem the tech.”

Yet redemption does not mean hesitant engagement. It does not mean doing what everyone else does, only on a slight delay. With AI—and other as-yet-unknown technological revolutions—I want to challenge my fellow pastors and Christians more broadly to ask a more fundamental question. Not necessarily, or at least not at first, “How can we use it?” but rather, “Should we use this technology at all?”

In his encyclical “Veritatis Splendor,” Pope Saint John Paul II argued that some actions are intrinsically evil, no matter the context. Protestants can and should agree. For example, there are no circumstances, cultures, or conditions that could permit a Christian to commit blasphemy, rape, or murder. He put it this way:

The negative moral precepts, those prohibiting certain concrete actions or kinds of behaviour as intrinsically evil, do not allow for any legitimate exception. They do not leave room, in any morally acceptable way, for the “creativity” of any contrary determination whatsoever. Once the moral species of an action prohibited by a universal rule is concretely recognized, the only morally good act is that of obeying the moral law and of refraining from the action which it forbids.

Just as we can identify inherently evil actions, we must recognize intrinsically evil technologies and inventions. Contrary to the popular notion that all technology is neutral and all that matters is how you use it, some technologies cannot be used for any moral purpose.

Sex robots are an easy and obvious example. The church would never speak of “redeeming” this tech. There is no way for a pastor to encourage folks in the pews to use sex robots with prudence. The intrinsic morality of other examples that come to mind for me—nuclear weapons, cocaine, euthanasia pods—are more widely debated. But that there is such a thing as irredeemable technology should not be a controversial idea for Christians of any stripe.

We should learn to ask the question “Is this inherently immoral?” about any new technologies because they will continue to appear at a rapid pace. Current debate about AI is not the end of this discussion but its continuation.

Consider future possibilities like babies grown in artificial wombs or even something like severance. We are repulsed by immoral technologies in science fiction, but will we shrug when the real thing arrives? I remember my revulsion when I watched the scene in The Matrix showing fields of babies grown in artificial wombs. Will Christians find that technology “redemptive” if it’s offered, with friendlier aesthetics, in this century or the next?

Without asking that question, many American Christians, including pastors, barrel forward, asserting that AI is merely “a tool that can be used for good or bad.” Already there’s a Christian AI app and pastors preaching that AI is an important career path for young Christians. And maybe that will prove true, but we can’t assume new technologies are neutral, inevitable, or worth exploring. If most Christians use a new technology without thinking about morality, the church should not celebrate but groan in prayer. We must ask if before we ask how.

In this we have a model in the Amish. The world has long rolled its eyes at these Christians, but they’re still here—growing, in fact. Maybe artificial intelligence will prompt a greater breadth of Christians to think about technology more like the Amish do, to see its adoption as a choice subject to real review by the tenets of our faith rather than an inevitability. Why not abstain from AI for a while rather than rush into uncharted territory? Many of us were early adopters of smartphones, and look where that got us.

A tech optimist may argue that using new tech is analogous to Israel “plundering the Egyptians.” This image from Exodus 12:36 was used by Augustine to justify the integration of Platonic philosophy into Christian theology. And yes, it’s true that the Israelites used some of the Egyptian gold to build the tabernacle. But they also used the same gold to make the golden calf, and God did not encourage the Israelites to engage with idolatry responsibly and prudently.

In other words, you can plunder gold from the Egyptians to build a sanctuary, but you can’t use it to make an idol—and idols are far easier to fabricate than we like to think.

My argument here is not that AI is intrinsically evil. I don’t and can’t know that at this stage. Moreover, any techno-pessimist worth his salt must admit that Christians can and do take up innovations from the world and redeem them for good. Sometimes we do build the tabernacle instead of the golden calf. Some technology is neutral or even better than neutral.

But other technology is bad for a Christian’s soul whenever she uses it, regardless of how cautious she is. The world would be better if some technologies had never been invented, and some technologies that are not quite intrinsically evil may yet be intrinsically dangerous and prone to create opportunities for temptation.

For the foreseeable future, these are categories Christians must have in mind, approaching each new technology with the understanding that it may well be good, useful, or at least redeemable—or it may be intrinsically evil or dangerous. In the latter case, redemption attempts are a category error, and redemption instead requires the stubborn refusal to use that tech at all. Pastoral green lights are mistakes we will come to regret.

Christ’s redeeming word in the story of the woman caught in the act of adultery was “Go, and sin no more” (John 8:11, KJV). In the 21st century, we will sometimes have to say, “Go, and use this tech no more.”

Mitchell East is the adult education and small groups minister at Memorial Road Church of Christ in Edmond, Oklahoma. He writes about the Bible and theology at his Substack, East of Eden.

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Ideas

Come to Me, All You Networking Techies

Natalie Mead

Silicon Valley might be drawn to Jesus in the hopes of wealth and power. He can work with that.

Illustration by Abigail Erickson / Source Images: Getty

It’s not easy to be a Christian in the Bay Area.

I’ve lived in San Francisco for 12 years. But it’s often impractical, even impossible, for Christians to put down roots here. Pastors and ministry workers have trouble keeping up with the skyrocketing cost of living; many churches can’t afford to buy permanent locations. Young Christian families that aren’t forced out by the affordability crisis are drawn to more faith-friendly school systems in other parts of the country, opportunities to be closer to family, and the ability to raise their kids in environments more aligned with their personal convictions.

Our political moment has only worsened the situation. Ever since Donald Trump’s first presidency and the prominence of his much-discussed evangelical voting bloc, telling people I’m a Christian in San Francisco has usually also involved telling them a long list of things I’m not. No, I’m not a racist. No, I’m not a xenophobe. No, I don’t hate gay people. (If I did, I would have left San Francisco a long time ago.) But even if I were to disown Trump’s entire political platform, the suspicions would remain. After all, am I not one of the Christians under the protection of the newly minted Task Force to Eradicate Anti-Christian Bias?

And then there’s the tech industry. For six of my years here, I worked as a software engineer for the company now known as Meta, and found its ethos largely opposed to Christian belief. I know many techies whose faith didn’t survive the pressure to succeed, the money, and the cultural indoctrination. Mine did only by God’s grace.

So when a friend on the East Coast shared a recent New York Times story about a Christian “revival” occurring in Silicon Valley, I groaned—not because I’m against revival in the Bay Area! I was just skeptical of its supposed locus: the tech industry.

The Times story, published earlier this year, describes how Christianity is coming into vogue among tech executives, artificial intelligence evangelists, and venture capitalists. Thanks to a growing contingent of tech elites who have “come out” as Christians, plus recent political shifts, a religion once anathema to this secular region is now being not only promoted but also celebrated as the next big thing. The reporting focuses on swanky San Francisco events—featuring high-profile Christians and focusing on topics like how science relates to the Bible—that have an arguably evangelistic bent.

A few months later, Vanity Fair also reported on this development, calling it “business networking for the spiritually curious” and multiple times mentioning Peter Thiel, a prominent venture capitalist and Christian who publicly discusses his faith. The article also quoted an anonymous Christian entrepreneur: “I guarantee you, there are people that are leveraging Christianity to get closer to Peter Thiel.”

Hence my groaning. Bay Area Christianity barely exists as it is. I worried this affiliation with another ultrawealthy, controversial figure, even if overblown, wouldn’t do the faith any favors.

It’s no wonder that The Atlantic’s Christian staff writer Elizabeth Bruenig, reacting to events that simultaneously introduce people to Jesus (however indirectly) and offer opportunities for professional and economic success, thought of the story of the rich young ruler in Matthew 19.

I, however, found myself thinking about the Feeding of the Five Thousand.

Or more specifically, the day after the bread and fish multiplied, when the crowd that Jesus had miraculously fed found him on the other side of the Sea of Galilee. (Jesus had walked there, though not on land, during the night.) This was the same crowd that had listened to Jesus teach about the kingdom of God for hours, so it is somewhat surprising that Jesus told them, “You are looking for me, not because you saw the signs I performed but because you ate the loaves and had your fill” (John 6:26). In other words, these folks were coming to Christ for his material benefits, not for Christ himself.

Some of Jesus’ closest followers did the same thing. The disciples James and John once outright approached Jesus to ask if they could one day have positions of honor at his right and left hand. They were likewise seeking the Messiah in part for the earthly rewards they expected him to offer.

As I did.

For the past few years, I’ve been working on a memoir. At the time I first read the revival reporting, I just so happened to be writing about the moment I decided to go back to church. I was in college, and it was many years after I’d completely run away from my faith. The decision to return was motivated by my desperate situation: I was about to buckle beneath the academic hazing of my university’s computer science program, I had very few friends, and I was thousands of miles away from home. I needed some sort of divine assistance, and my childhood experiences in church made Christianity seem like a good place to start.

Back then, I was not interested in who Jesus actually is. I wanted a “cosmic vending machine” to meet my academic, social, and emotional needs. Just like the crowd that Jesus miraculously fed, I wasn’t coming to Jesus because I wanted Jesus. (Also like the crowd, I overvalued free food to the point that I would shamelessly help myself to anything left out in the computer science building.)

I’m sure that if I’d known what the take-up-your-cross-and-follow-me part of discipleship would mean for me personally—namely, becoming disabled and unable to hold my tech job at the age of 27, and not making use of that fancy degree ever since—I would have bailed on the whole Jesus thing.

But I didn’t bail. Not because I realized how selfish I was being but because Jesus humbled himself to my self-serving views for a season in an act of grace. Then he began to teach me—slowly, gently—that he is God and I am not.

It’s a lesson I’m still learning.

This is not to say that what I did, or what James and John did, or what the crowd did, was right or good. Jesus didn’t condone the impure motives of those who sought him for the wrong reasons. But neither did Jesus outright reject them for their selfish ambitions.

In the case of James and John, Jesus still allowed them to follow him all the way to the cross, then to the tomb, then into his resurrection life. He also announced his plans for them to suffer greatly for the sake of the gospel: “You will drink the cup I drink and be baptized with the baptism I am baptized with” (Mark 10:39). Clearly, at the moment they quibbled over their future job titles, they weren’t ready for that. But no matter. Jesus sanctified them in spite of themselves.

After rebuking the crowd for their selfish motives in coming to him for earthly instead of spiritual provision, Jesus extended an invitation to be similarly sanctified: “Do not work for food that spoils, but for food that endures to eternal life, which the Son of Man will give you” (John 6:27).

And this is similar to an invitation Jesus extended to the rich young ruler: “Go, sell your possessions … Then come, follow me” (Matt. 19:21).

In all these examples, Jesus had patience and grace for people who came to him for the wrong reasons. And not only that—he also opened to each of them a door to the kingdom of God, giving them opportunities to be transformed over time by his saving grace.

Do I have my reservations about mixing business networking with evangelism? Yes. Do I think everyone attending Christian events is genuinely seeking the Savior? No. Do I think of the Silicon Valley “revival” as an actual revival? Not yet. (Unless it has brought about much more conviction of sin and work of the Spirit than my outsider’s view of it has so far led me to believe.)

But do I think God can be glorified through all this? Yes. Yes, I do.

Even if all of the Bay Area acolytes are coming to Jesus with the wrong idea, wanting him only insofar as he enables them to obtain earthly treasures of money or fame that will spoil and fade, what Jesus said to the five thousand makes me think that coming to him for exactly the right reasons is not strictly required. Jesus can work with our selfishness and, eventually, work out our selfishness to his glory.

He certainly did with me. I pray he does the same for Silicon Valley.

Natalie Mead is currently pursuing an MFA while writing a memoir about chronic pain, relationships, and faith. Read more of her writing at nataliemead.com.

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Church Life

Phylicia Masonheimer on How Erotic Fiction Harms Women

Interview by Clarissa Moll

The author and theologian spoke with CT about women’s porn use and her path to freedom from addiction.

Illustration by Elizabeth Kaye / Source Images: Pexels

Phylicia Masonheimer is an author, theologian, and the founder of Every Woman a Theologian. She recently sat down with The Bulletin podcast’s Clarissa Moll for a transparent conversation about the rise in women’s erotica and her path to freedom from addiction.

This transcript has been edited for clarity and brevity. Listen to the full conversation here.

Most Americans don’t consider full or partial nudity as porn. Coming to this question as a woman, a mother, a wife, a theologian—what is porn?

I can see why people struggle a bit with definitions of pornography, because seeing partial nakedness or nudity isn’t always meant to cause sexual arousal. Examples of this might be Renaissance art or a picture in National Geographic. We know innately that these images are not designed to cause sexual arousal.

Pope John Paul II made a distinction between nudity, whose purpose is to cause sexual arousal, and nakedness without shame. Much of the sexually explicit writing and images we see in American culture has a goal, and that goal is sexual arousal or exploration. Or just that subtle attitude of something slightly naughty or bad about this.

The erotic audiobook market has exploded over the last few years. A common site for erotic audio had 5.4 million listeners in 2022. The New York Times has reported on the rise of romance bookstores. Why do you think women would rather hear or read porn than see it?

My husband and I both have a history of pornography addiction, mine in the form of erotica and his in the form of visual pornography. And both of us now work with people, men and women respectively, who are breaking free from those addictions.

In our experience, women tend to be drawn to pornographic content that allows them to imagine being the main character in the story. When the setting and the conversation and the relationship and the desire of a man toward a woman is being framed in story, it’s much easier to put yourself as the center. You can imagine it in your mind, and you can even customize what’s written to yourself.

It’s a difference in how desire is processed. Men are often going to pornography out of a childhood wound, and pornography helps them to take back a form of control. Oftentimes, men are not looking at pornography as the main character in a story. They’re looking at the woman’s face and feeling like this person desires me.

In both cases, it’s heartbreaking because men and women are both seeking to fill a wound or a void when they go to this material and they don’t even realize that’s what’s happening. Women want to feel loved and desired, and this storyline allows them to do that. Men want to feel loved and desired, and this visual allows them to do that.

Rebecca Yarros, the author of Onyx Storm and a number of other romantic novels, said that she liked to insert her husband into the story because this was a way of celebrating their relationship. But what I’m hearing is what she perceives as a celebration of her relationship can actually be meeting a place of deep longing and woundedness for women who desire that kind of attention or care or love.

Exactly. Oftentimes, women will push back and say, “Well, it’s not erotica, it’s romantic.”

In a traditional erotic book, like a Harlequin novel, the plot is weaker than you would get in a romance novel. It’s mainly just a vehicle for the sexual content. I had an erotica addiction for almost a decade, so I’ve read a lot of these books, and they stick with you.

Unfortunately, in these modern books—this “romance” that’s not labeled as erotica—the scenes are more extreme than what I was reading in Harlequin novels years ago. It’s the same kind of content but with a more appealing storyline.

Yarros, in the Fourth Wing series, has essentially built a Harry Potter world for dragon riders. Think about it. The primary market is millennial women who grew up reading Harry Potter and Twilight. It’s like the best of both worlds. It’s genius writing on her part in terms of the plot.

What’s unfortunate is that it’s appealing to these women and ushering them into what could be, and often is, the beginnings of an addiction. That’s the part of this that I think women need to be aware of—the impact that these scenes inevitably have on your view of yourself, your view of sexuality, your view of men, your view of marriage, and how your brain is processing the dopamine that is achieved from these scenes.

Talk to me a little bit about how your relationship with pornographic literature developed.

My exposure to erotic fiction was not in my home. It was not with my relatives. That is actually a very common path for many Christian women: Mothers, aunts, older sisters, and even pastors’ wives will recommend books to them. That’s their entry point into erotic addiction and then, later on, sometimes into visual pornography.

I was 12 years old, I was at a garage sale, and I found a book that didn’t have a cover. I thought it was a Boxcar Children book, you know, in my naiveté, my innocence. I started reading and was totally shocked. But what’s wild about these scenes is that there is a physical response. Your brain responds to what it’s reading. It also brought about a shame response, because again, the nakedness that’s being presented here is not without shame. And so I kept it a secret.

And when you keep things a secret, they fester, right? I started seeking out information. Where can I find more books like this? The culture in which I was growing up was not a culture where you could be vulnerable about failures or struggles in regard to sexuality, so that played a role too.

By the time I was in college, I was a believer and felt like I was living a double life. I knew this was affecting how I saw men. It was affecting my dating life, because the men in these books are often very aggressive, very dominant, kind of patriarchal; and the way it’s presented is as strength and virility. I was being drawn to men who were emotionally unavailable, who were avoidant attachment, who were sexually pushing boundaries, and I thought that was attractive because that’s what I had consumed for years.

When I met my husband, who is the most humble, kind, gentle, loving, and strong man, it was actually difficult for me at first to be drawn to him, because the way I perceived masculinity had been so twisted by this content. We don’t often talk about how it unconsciously, over time, impacts how we perceive our husbands or our dating lives. Are we being fair when we allow erotic novels to shape us if we wouldn’t want a man to be shaped by the content that he’s watching on a triple-X site?

Common Sense Media lists Rebecca Yarros’s books, and it was interesting to see how the reviews shook out. Children literally said there are page numbers to skip so you can read the story and avoid the porn, as though our kids are thinking you can eat the mac and cheese but pick the peas out if there’s something you don’t like.

In one sense, it sounds like good discernment. But at some point, we have to ask ourselves: Is putting these books in front of our children the wisest thing? Is their discernment muscle strong enough? This is a question that adults need to ask too.

Christians today often tend to look for the lowest common denominator. But the real question isn’t “How far can I go?” but “How holy can I be?” One of the signs that you have an addiction is if you get bored reading. When you pick up The Hobbit or a Brandon Sanderson novel and you find yourself checking out and getting bored, I guarantee you that you have become dependent on the dopamine from those sexual scenes.

Are you able to discern and skip over content? Probably some people can. Is it the wisest choice? Not always.

Fifty-six percent of women under the age of 25 seek out porn, and a third of them are regularly seeking it out every month. It’s everywhere: in hotels, in airport bookstores. It must be very hard for a person who says, “I want something different for my life.” What did those first steps toward freedom look like for you? I imagine it wasn’t easy.

No, it wasn’t. There will be people in your life who tell you that it’s not that big of a deal. Partially, perhaps, because they feel convicted by your recognition and your trying to find freedom from it. When I talk about this online, there are women who get very angry and defensive. “It’s just a book. People are doing worse,” they’ll say—which is never the measurement of what is good for us.

For me, it started with eliminating the areas that I knew were the greatest temptation. I stopped reading romance entirely. Part of the reason I didn’t just switch to “closed-door” romance was because, for me, the entire romantic plot line was creating discontent for me as a single woman. I was still finding myself searching in the plot line for those scenes while I was reading. My brain was actually hunting for them.

I switched to nonfiction and children’s literature, not young adult—kids’ chapter books, which isn’t for everybody!—theology and memoir, genres where I knew I was safe. I also stopped going to the movie theater because I couldn’t anticipate what scenes would be in a movie, and I knew I needed a period to detox.

Josh, my husband, works with a program for pornography recovery called Revive Your Life. They intensively detox the men from pornography, but also from the otherthings they go to for dopamine hits, like junk food or impulse shopping, because often you will transfer your addiction to something else. You have to rewire your brain by completely breaking from the thing that your brain has become dependent on.

It became months, and then years, where I was like, “I can’t read that. I can’t watch that.” Then slowly I was able to reintroduce clean romance, starting with old classical romance like Pride and Prejudice. The purpose of this is to get you to the point where you appreciate a good story for a good story without needing to have that edge to it, and then, once you are in that place, reintroducing fiction that honors what is true and good and beautiful. That helps you to continue on that path.

This is an aspect of the rise in women’s porn that is especially dehumanizing. It is escapist, but it’s also corrupting a genre of literature that can be so beautiful. C. S. Lewis says, “Let there be wicked kings and beheadings, battles and dungeons, giants and dragons, and let villains be soundly killed at the end of the book.” This genre in particular can be such a precious vehicle for good and true and beautiful words to be spoken and truths to be conveyed, so it feels like a particularly insidious way for untruth to worm its way into women’s hearts.

J. R. R. Tolkien, C. S. Lewis, G. K. Chesterton, they all said this: There is an innate desire in the human heart for that story arc of good and evil and the reconciliation of all things and of me being a part of that reconciliation, that desire to be part of something bigger than ourselves.

I think there’s a reason we’re drawn to stories like Fourth Wing—there’s adventure and teamwork and dragons, right? But then there’s this intertwining of good and evil—the subtle presentation of a worldview that is very gray. We don’t realize the effect it’s having on us when we’re sitting in a book club and women around us are saying, “This is our next book,” or “I think you’ll love it. It’s so good.”

This is a millstone around the necks of younger believers. If you saw the emails from the women I’ve worked with over a decade, you’d see the grief and the anguish and the agony of trying to find freedom from an addiction that began with a trusted woman in their life handing them a book when they were 13, 14, 15, 25—someone they trusted to be a spiritual adviser. Somebody they knew they could follow into spiritual maturity. This is where a lot of this is happening.

We think that shameful things need to remain in darkness, but this conversation is a reminder of the power that exists for us, that is available to us, when we bring things into the light. It’s both the power to reconcile relationships, as you’ve talked about, and the power to renew our minds as we interact with the very real longings that we have for intimacy and community.

- More from Clarissa Moll

News

As Nigeria Grapples with Crime, ‘One-Chance’ Robbers Grab Wallets and Phones

Emiene Erameh

How one Christian woman found peace after trauma.

Samuel Alabi / Contributor / Getty

Peculiar Chinedu thought October 10, 2024, would end like any other day—taking the bus home from her administrative job at a law firm in Federal Capital Territory (FCT), Nigeria’s capital region. The skies darkened and threatened rain, people crowded the bus station, and Chinedu decided to take a taxi home.

A crowded taxi had one seat left, three of the four back seats taken by two women and a man. A few minutes later, Chinedu heard the male passenger shout, “Down!” She looked up from her phone and into the barrel of a gun. Chinedu remembers him bellowing, “Down!” again and forcing her head down as her stomach dropped with fear.

Chinedu had fallen victim to criminals called “one-chance robbers.”

One-chance robbers fill a vehicle with their own members, then lure in unsuspecting passengers. Robbers often leave one seat vacant and shout, “One chance, one chance,” at bus stops where passengers are too hurried to wait for a bus or licensed taxi. They then rob the passengers of phones and other valuables. Some gangs let passengers exit the car on their own. Others throw them out of the car, often causing injuries to the victims.

Criminal gangs use one-chance robbers to steal money from busy workers who need easy rides when the public transportation system fails. These robberies contribute to rampant crime that gives Nigeria the third-highest crime rate in Africa. Violent crimes, fatalities, and abductions in FCT rose in 2023 but began declining again in 2024.

Though Nigeria faces threats of violent extremism from Islamist groups such as Boko Haram, the European Union Agency for Asylum reports criminality as the primary source of violence. The agency also listed cult- and election-related violence, banditry, and kidnappings as security concerns for Nigerians. A 2023 study also identified Nigerian highways as high-risk zones for robbery and murder.

Many Nigerians do not own personal vehicles, leaving them open to one-chance robberies. Inadequate transportation and overwhelmed police forces—especially in urban areas—make preventing and prosecuting these crimes difficult. The prevalence of kidnappings and armed robberies in the cities is forcing the Nigerian government to address these complex security challenges. Still, robbers exploit gaps in transportation and policing.

In January 2024, the government launched a Special Intervention Squad to fight kidnapping and other criminal activities. In May, the Nigerian Police Trust Fund commissioned a new Divisional Police Headquarters to improve security. But research suggests that corruption, poor oversight, and inadequate training leave police under-resourced for the task.

A December 2024 survey by Nigeria’s National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) claimed that more than one in five Nigerians had been victims of crime and that crime incidents between May 2023 and April 2024 totaled almost 52 million. The NBS removed the survey documentation from its website after the State Security Service questioned its CEO, Adeyemi Adeniran. The survey suggests a staggering increase in crimes from the nearly 135,000 cases reported by the same bureau in 2017.

For Chinedu and other FCT residents, a poor public transport system means they need to take rideshares to make it to work. One transportation company based in Nigeria’s capital, Abuja, has only 241 buses and taxis and 231 staffers to serve more than 3 million FCT residents. The shortage of taxis means many car owners use their own vehicles to provide rideshare services. This makes it hard to distinguish between legitimate rideshares and ones run by robbers.

While robbers shook down the rideshare passengers for valuables, Chinedu prayed silently for the robbers to spare her life and let her return home in one piece. The two other female passengers screamed, only for the robbers to retaliate.

“They kept hitting my head,” said Chisom Okere, one of the passengers who bore the brunt of the attack. “And it was after the whole incident I realized that one of the robbers was hitting my head with a gun.”

The robbers let Chinedu go about 20 minutes after the robbery began, returning her phone after finding no bank apps they could use to withdraw money from her account. They dropped off Okere and the third woman four hours later in a district on the outskirts of FCT—62 kilometers from their starting point. The women tried to flag down motorists but found most were reluctant to stop.

“My clothes were torn, and I looked like a madwoman,” Okere said. Eventually the women found strangers willing to help them.

“It could have been much worse,” Okere said. “What if they pushed me out of the car while it was in motion, like some of them do? Would I have survived?”

Chinedu said recovering from the trauma of the robbery took time. For months after the robbery, she scrutinized cars and people at bus stops. She feared some might be members of one-chance-robbery rings or kidnapping gangs.

She hesitated to enter private vehicles, though finding available public vehicles—such as buses with empty seats—proved difficult. Sometimes Chinedu’s search for reliable private transportation made her late for work, but an understanding boss overlooked her lateness. Her parents—pastors at a local church—provided counseling and prayers as she healed.

But looking back, Chinedu said her experience during the robbery helped reinforce her faith in God.

“My belief in God and knowing he would never abandon me helped me overcome my fear.”

- More from Emiene Erameh

Books

Excerpt

Bearing One Another’s Burdens Means More Than Therapy Referrals

Shaunti Feldhahn and James N. Sells

An excerpt from When Hurting People Come to Church on how lay ministry can supplement and support professional mental health care.

Illustration by Elizabeth Kaye / Source Images: Getty, Unsplash

The 2023 warning from Thomas Insel, the former director of the National Institute of Mental Health, was pretty stark:

Our nation is facing a new public health threat. … Feelings of anxiety and depression have grown to levels where virtually no one can ignore what is happening. … 90% of Americans feel we are in a mental health crisis.

They are right. The evidence from both clinical research and government assessment indicates a rapid increase in prevalence, need, and cost of mental health services in virtually every category (e.g., suicide, addiction, and trauma) and virtually every demographic and age group.

There are many reasons for this crisis, both within the church and in society at large. Countless studies have looked at factors as diverse as marital breakdown, the prevalence of racial injustice, and the use of smartphones at key stages of emotional development.

It’s likely that any number of factors may be contributing. But we propose that underneath all of that is a well-intended but ultimately harmful tendency to devalue the help the church can offer to many people in crisis.

Indeed, it is not too much to say that mental health care is the evangelism, church-growth, discipleship, and church-engagement method of the 21st century. Rather than funneling people out of the church, we can view mental health as an opportunity to draw people in.

For 50 years, society has created a professionalized mental health culture as the primary means of caring for those in distress. Initially, in order to access insurance coverage, the counseling profession began redefining most psychological needs as having a medical pathology. But over time, this resulted in licensed counseling becoming the standard of care for all life stressors.

Now, just to be clear: Much about the rise of skilled professionals has been extremely helpful. Sophisticated, empirically validated research has uncovered key ways to address mental health disorders and challenging life issues. Specialists apply precision and clarity to complex problems. And state licensing standards ensure that therapists have a high level of training, skill, and ethical adherence.

To speak directly to the clinician: You have made a significant difference in the lives of untold numbers because of your expertise and care.

The downside of this trend, however, is that vast numbers of people—those with diagnosable disorders and those with significant life pain—flood therapists’ offices. With therapy as the treatment path for all levels of pain, the capacity for care is overwhelmed.

Imagine the panic of a parent whose eighth grader deeply struggles with academic anxiety and needs a counselor but must wait three months for an appointment. Three months! By that time, the child may have failed the eighth grade and internalized the idea that nothing is ever going to change.

Meanwhile, in the church, we have become increasingly uncomfortable with addressing mental health concerns. Like their secular counterparts in medicine, business, and education, most church leaders see “referring out” as the thing to do.

We often hear the rhyme that one pastor used on our survey, “When in doubt, refer out.”

Thus, when help seekers come to the church, they may talk to a pastor, but much of the time they are also referred to a mental health professional. On our national survey, 67 percent of pastors and church leaders fully agreed with this statement: “If a person’s presenting issue is primarily psychological rather than spiritual, the church’s primary mental health service should be to refer to a mental health professional.” Only 12 percent disagreed with that statement.

It’s our perspective that referrals are indeed often needed. Yet there’s an unintended consequence to this overall pattern of referring out: People are being funneled out and away from the church at a time when people need the church most!

Of course, there are times when people need more help than a pastor or a ministry can provide. But in many cases, churches are letting professionals do what the church was intended to do. It is time to stop thinking of “mental health care” as essentially synonymous with “professional counseling,” and instead see it as just one more everyday example of Galatians 6:2: carrying each other’s burdens to fulfill the law of Christ.

Our book, When Hurting People Come to Church, explores in far greater detail than we can offer here what this looks like, practically speaking, for local congregations with varying size and resources. The key is that laypeople within the church can be trained to listen and walk alongside those with basic needs.

This is not therapy, but presence, and is important even when we also refer to clinicians. For example, a new mom with postpartum depression might be referred to a counselor and connected with a woman in the congregation who went through the same thing 20 years ago. They talk, pray, share experiences, and get together for regular lunches—something a licensed counselor is not permitted to do.

Imagine how this approach would shift the way we think of church outreach, human care, discipleship, and evangelism!

The church has a historic opportunity to reclaim its central role in attending to human suffering. Our vision is for the church to step into this original design: to be the primary place where the love of God, redemption through Jesus, and the power of the Holy Spirit are experienced by the culture.

Jesus’ metaphors of salt and light suggest that we are to bring life to the world. He entered into the culture by healing the leprous outcasts, giving sight to the blind, and restoring the woman at the well. In our day, we can bring comfort and healing to the isolated and lonely, help people see their great worth in God’s eyes, and support the transformation of those in recovery.

For years, we have tended to think of mental health ministry as only being about helping people with specific, defined, and diagnosed disorders such as depression, anxiety, and personality disorders. Let’s think bigger. Think of the church as the on-ramp through which people address their life pain.

After all, much of the culture already does. According to a 2020 British study, “In America, as many as 40% seek support from clergy for mental health concerns, with studies identifying that individuals with … mental health diagnoses were more likely to seek support from clergy alone, than psychiatrists and psychologists combined.”

Let’s pause with that for a moment: These researchers, seeking ways to improve mental health services in the United Kingdom, looked “across the pond” and noted that for many in the US, the first step to obtaining mental health services is through the church.

The church doesn’t need to become the center of the solution; it already is. We just haven’t always realized or accepted this role. So we have the need, we have a culture with a near-desperate cry for aid, and we have a church capable of delivering the needed care as part of the Great Commission.

We are in the midst of a massive human crisis—people are experiencing distress and isolation in proportions never seen. And Christians are uniquely positioned to address it: We have churches in every community, each composed of ordinary people who are willing to care for others, many of whom want to be taught how to come alongside someone in pain.

Mental health care is not only an option for the church. It is a duty to God and our neighbors in need.

Shaunti Feldhahn is a best-selling author, popular speaker, and social researcher whose work helps people flourish in life, faith, leadership, and relationships. Her books have sold more than 3 million copies in 25 languages.

James (Jim) N. Sells is the Hughes Endowed Chair of Christian Thought in Mental Health Practice, a licensed psychologist, an author, and a professor of counseling at Regent University, Virginia Beach, Virginia.

Adapted from When Hurting People Come to Church: How People of Faith Can Help Solve the Mental Health Crisis by Shaunti Feldhahn and James N. Sells, releasing in September 2025.

- More from Shaunti Feldhahn and James N. Sells

Pastors

Pastoring Parents of Prodigals

Chad Bird

As more young adults walk away from church, your role isn’t to fix their families but to faithfully walk with them in hope.

Source images: Iknuitsin Studio; Pakin Songmor / Getty

The semi bounced along moonlit ruts in the backcountry of the Texas Panhandle as my hand danced among the gears. My mind, as it does most nights, replayed the downward spiral of my once-happy life. I had gone from lecturing in a seminary classroom to hauling wastewater through the oil fields. From polished dress shoes to steel-toed boots. From living my dreams to a life unraveled—one I had chosen, one I now regretted.

There I sat, a son raised in the Father’s house, who had foolishly followed the trail blazed by the prodigal into a far-off country, to live—or rather, merely to exist—in a self-imposed exile from the church. The stench of diesel and failure followed me.

“Midway in our life’s journey, I went astray from the straight road and woke to find myself alone in a dark wood.” I could have tattooed these opening words from Dante’s Inferno across my chest. But unlike Dante, I had no Virgil to guide me, no Beatrice awaiting me. Just the shades of shame and the ghosts of guilt to dog my steps as I stumbled forward.

What I didn’t see then—what I see now—was the Father’s unseen hand zigging and zagging me forward in a slow but steady path, stubbornly pulling me toward hope.

How I went astray is as boringly unoriginal as sin always is. Evil mimics good with a grim twist. I didn’t fall; I dove—I had willfully chosen to eat forbidden fruit, plucked from the tree of infidelity. I bulldozed my little Eden of an intact marriage and family, ideal teaching job, rising career, close circle of students and colleagues, and my place in the church.

There I sat, bitter and broken, hauling waste by day and self-loathing by night.

Even now, 20 years later, I remember the predictable pattern of my weeks. Mondays would find me angry at God and bitter at the world. On Wednesdays, I was choking on disgrace and guilt. Fridays I would pray through whiskeyed breath for mercy—that the Lord would make me right with him and then divinely end my dismal life. Every Sunday was the same: a day I wouldn’t dare show up to church. I imagined every eye judging me. I wasn’t sure if God was for me, against me, or, worse—indifferent.

We who stray from the church all have our stories. This is mine.

It’s a painful story, but not an unfamiliar one. My parents lived it. Maybe you’re living it. More likely, there are parents in your congregation living it.

As a pastor, I don’t need to tell you how common this story is among the parents in your pews. You’ve sat with parents whose hearts are heavy with silence from their sons. You’ve prayed with mothers who carry the weight of spiritual longing for their daughters. You’ve watched in confusion as grandparents grieve their beloved grandson or granddaughter who has walked away from the community of believers. You’ve heard the questions behind the tears: Where did we go wrong? Did we push too hard—or not enough? What could we have done differently? What can we do now?

Some of those questions come laced with guilt. Others drip with helplessness. But behind them all is a parent who once rocked a child to sleep, prayed over their baptism, and imagined a future where they’d worship side-by-side in the same pew. That dream feels impossibly far now. And as their pastor, you’re called not to resolve that ache but to faithfully walk with them through it.

Parents who wrestle with these questions and heartaches are not a shrinking minority. Quite the opposite. As Jim Davis, Michael Graham, and Ryan P. Burge make clear in The Great Dechurching, we are in the midst of a broad and unprecedented exodus of people from the church. We are talking 40 million people broad. They call it the “largest and fastest religious shift in US history.” But for parents, that number isn’t a statistic. It’s the face of their son or daughter.

I dechurched before “dechurching” entered our vocabulary. My reasons were numerous and emotionally complex. But topping the list was disillusionment with church leadership. I remember a denominational leader sending an email to “warn” regional pastors that I was living in their area, as if my attending a service, seeking help and forgiveness, was somehow a threat.

My experience, echoed by many dechurching today, is this: The church too often looks less like a place that welcomes sinful failures into a community of grace, and far more like a tribunal ranking where some sins are deemed “worse” than their own. As if the Bible read, “For all have sinned…but you more than me.”

You have likely heard similar frustrations from the parents in your congregation. Some of their children no longer believe. Some still believe but don’t attend church. Others are cautious, wounded, and reluctant to re-engage in congregational life again. Their reasons range from the church cozying up with political tribes to disillusionment over issues like the church’s teaching on sexuality. No single narrative fits all.

And yet, this isn’t a matter of one side bearing all the blame. Can parents shoulder part of the blame? Yes, especially if they modeled a legalistic, gospel-less approach to the faith that portrayed Jesus more as a taskmasker than a Savior, as if he said “Come to me, all you who are weary and heavy laden, and I will shoulder you with more to do.” Can pastors be to blame? Yes, if they chose to speak the truth but not in love, or to love but not speak the truth—creating either a compassionless Christianity or a superficial spirituality.

Can the dechurching children be to blame? Of course, whatever their reason or excuse, understandable or not, there is never a justifiable cause for turning one’s back on Christ and his church. When Paul wrote to that scandal-ridden church in Corinth, he never advised abandoning the congregation. Jesus, in his dictated letters to the seven churches in Revelation, rebuked but never counseled departure. Church dysfunction is hardly a 21st-first-century invention.

It took me years to see this clearly. In my spiritual autobiography, Night Driving: Notes from a Prodigal Soul, I describe how the Spirit finally re-churched me when I “came to terms with a humbling, sobering fact: the church finds me just as unattractive as I find her.” Does the church have problems? Oh, yes. Do I? You bet I do, in spades. Are there loads of unappealing weaknesses in the lives of congregations and their pastors? We know there are. And all that ugliness, pettiness, egotism, and posturing is mirrored in my own vice-stained soul.

The church is wall-to-wall sinners. For that reason, by the grace of Christ alone, I belong.

My father, Carson, relocated from here to heaven in 2022, but I rejoice that he lived to see me return, step by reluctant step, to the worshiping and praying people of Christ. My mother, Jeanette, was there too. If they could visit with other struggling parents of dechurched children, I’m sure they would nod through the tears. They’ve been there.

If you’re pastoring someone who is now “there,” in that unwelcome place of anxiety and guilt, uncertainty how to pray or what to say, remind them: the Lord has neither left them unguided nor without a place to get their hands on some hope.

First and of primary importance, if they feel accountable for their child’s estrangement, they must hear this beautiful truth: Jesus has already paid for that failure in full. They cannot atone by carrying shame. The gospel is not for flawless parents—as if they existed!—but for all of us who flounder our way along as imperfect parents who are perfectly loved by our Heavenly Father.

Encourage them, too, that their quiet faithfulness matters. My parents didn’t argue me back to church. They were not preachy or judgmental. They didn’t guilt or pressure me. They just kept walking with God. They kept going to church. And they kept loving me and praying for me. Their steady, unspoken witness was a sermon of grace planting seeds in the soil of my heart.

Many parents will feel, at times, more godforsaken than God-loved. This is both painful and normal. The Psalms give voice to this anguish:

How long, Lord? Will you forget me forever?
    How long will you hide your face from me?
How long must I wrestle with my thoughts
    and day after day have sorrow in my heart?
    How long will my enemy triumph over me?
(Psalm 13:1–2)

Four times he cries, “How long?” And yet, even in what feels like silence, God is fully present, holding them and loving their children.

Remind them that our Father in heaven loves our sons and daughters more than we do. As the Lord declares in Isaiah 49, even if a mother forgets her child, he will not. Their children are not forgotten. Not by Jesus. He does not forget, cannot forget, those for whom he, in love, shed his blood.

Jesus does not go about hunting bruised reeds to break and smoldering wicks to dump a bucket of water on. He tends to them. He pursues the lost. As the Hebrew verb used in Psalm 23:6 expresses it, “Surely goodness and mercy shall pursue [radaf] me all the days of my life.” It’s not that easy to get away from Jesus. Even if your child has but a tiny faith, even that tiny faith holds the full Christ. Salvation doesn’t come in fractions.

If their child was baptized, remind them: That water still speaks. “We were therefore buried with him through baptism into death in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life” (Rom. 6:4).

Walking in newness of life. That’s my story. God met me while I was still a long way off. He saw me and felt compassion, ran and embraced me, and brought me home. He restored my soul and, adding grace to grace, several years later, he gave me a new purpose in ministry by connecting me to the Christian nonprofit, 1517, where I now serve as scholar in residence. And even in the cruelest seasons of life—the death of our 21-year-old son Luke, my wife’s two cancer battles—we still walk in newness of life because we walk in the ever-new, undying life of Jesus.

This is life in the church, the body of Christ. Parents encouraging parents who await the return of their children. Pastors shepherding those who wait. All of us sustained by the same unshakeable hope: Jesus will never let us, or our children, go.

Chad Bird is a scholar in residence at 1517 and the cohost of the podcast 40 Minutes in the Old Testament. He is also the author of numerous books, including Hitchhiking with Prophets: A Ride through the Salvation Story of the Old Testament.

- More from Chad Bird

Pastors

Mobilizing Your Church to Be a Force for Foster Care

Jessica Mathisen

What pastors need to know to turn ordinary faith into extraordinary care for the children God hasn’t forgotten.

Editor’s note: As Foster Care Month ends, Jessica Mathisen urges pastors to see foster care not as a burden to their congregations but as a meaningful way to live out the gospel.

Foster care. The phrase alone can stir up anxiety, confusion, or even guilt. Some churches want to lean in. Others want to look away. The call seems too difficult, too big, and too complicated. The easier thing to do when you’re overwhelmed is to hide. But God hasn’t called us to hide from hard things. He has called us to step toward them.

For many, foster care is still a mystery. It’s often lumped together with adoption, but the two are not the same. Adoption seeks permanence. Foster care, when possible, seeks reunification—helping birth families heal so children can return home to a place of health and stability. It’s about restoration.

So why step into the mess of hurt and pain and turmoil? Why open your life to hurt that isn’t yours? Because God cares for the vulnerable. The thread of caring for orphans is woven throughout Scripture. We ourselves were spiritual orphans, separated from God our Father and offered the gift of adoption in his Son—by grace, through faith. God defends the fatherless. In Deuteronomy 24:19, he instructed his people not to harvest every last sheaf, but to leave some behind “for the sojourner, the fatherless, and the widow.” It would have been easy for the Israelites to hoard all of their extras to themselves. But God’s economy is always completely different from our own, and he asks us to give from the storehouses of abundance He’s given to us.

Still, many believers hesitate and steer clear of foster care. Why? Not because they don’t care—they often do—but because they don’t quite know where they fit. They don’t understand how they can use the time, talent, and treasures God has given them to serve “the least of these.” This is where the church comes in. Not everyone is called to become foster parents and welcome children into their home, but everyone can certainly play a meaningful part. While one family opens their home, another delivers meals to them, and another mows the lawn, runs errands, or babysits for a few hours. Together, the body of Christ becomes a lifeline to the foster child as each member uses their different gifts to build one another up and point a hurting world to the love of Jesus.

God designed each of us to flourish within a family. But the enemy works to shatter that design, chipping away at the stability and love that families are meant to provide. When a child loses their home, God grieves. His heart breaks for the fatherless. He enters their sorrow. But that’s not the end of the story. He also has a plan for them—a perfect, ultimate plan to right every wrong, because he is a God of both justice and lovingkindness.

If someone in your church is sensing a call to become a foster parent, there are many faith-based organizations and local child welfare offices that can help them get started. When my husband and I stepped into foster care, we were not alone. Several families in our church—including a pastor on staff—were already involved. This culture of caring for the vulnerable permeated our church body, and soon it became impossible to not know someone who was involved in foster care. When a church leader chooses to enter into foster care, the congregation begins to pay attention. People begin to see that the life of a Christian is always one of service, and that service is not to be contained within the four walls of the church.

As a pastor, your plate is always full. There are sermons to write, committees to meet with, and people to lead. While being a pastor is often a more-than-full-time job, developing a culture of care doesn’t have to be a burden. It only takes a few small steps to grow a culture of care within your church body.

Start by asking: Is there anyone in my church who is currently fostering? If so, make it a point to connect with them and learn their story. Once you put a name to the statistics, the call to care becomes more feasible.

The task of mobilizing volunteers to serve foster families may feel daunting, but it is not impossible. It simply takes knowing the gifts and talents of your flock. Are there retired women without grandchildren who might love an opportunity to babysit? College students with free afternoons could provide transportation for school or sports practices. Each person within your church body has a unique gift or service that can benefit another. One of the sweetest gifts we received while fostering came from a local landscaper who cut our grass and serviced our lawn free of charge. He did this for several foster families in the area. It wasn’t flashy—it was simple, but it meant a lot.

Before my husband and I began training to become foster parents, we started by serving a foster family in our church. Each month, we brought them a meal. Over time, they invited us to stay and dine with them. Watching them parent both their children and the children in their care made foster care feel less intimidating. It showed us you don’t have to be a “super Christian” to step in and care for the vulnerable.

If no one in your church is currently fostering, consider how you can begin to encourage and educate your people to respond. You don’t have to manufacture a sense of conviction—the Holy Spirit alone can do this. However, when people have an awareness of a need, they are much more likely to do something to meet it. Look for ways your church can partner with local organizations and highlight opportunities to serve vulnerable children and families in your community. Calendar events like Orphan Sunday (the second Sunday in November), Foster Care Awareness Month (May), or Adoption Awareness Month (November) that can help shine a light on the need and point your congregation toward meaningful next steps.

Psalm 68:6 says, “God places the lonely in families; he sets the prisoners free and gives them joy” (NLT). He hasn’t forgotten the child waiting for a safe place. He hasn’t turned a blind eye to the teenager who keeps moving from home to home. He sees. He cares. He knows the pain, the fear, and the heartache, and he has made a way out from it. And he invites his people to join him.

So what about your church?

Will you lead the way in caring for the vulnerable in your community? Will you ask God to reveal how you can play a part in loving the children he hasn’t forgotten?

Let’s start now.

Resources to help you begin:

Christian Alliance for Orphans

Promise 686

Lifeline Children’s Services

Jessica Mathisen is a writer, Bible teacher, and foster mom. She hosts the podcast The Fullness of Joy and is the author of Fostering Prayer: A 40 Day Guide for Foster Parents and No Matter Where I Go, a children’s book about foster care.

- More from Jessica Mathisen

News

Franklin Graham Prays for Peace with Volodymyr Zelensky

Ken Chitwood in Berlin

Christian leaders at European Congress on Evangelism applaud Ukrainian flag and join in plea for changed hearts.

Billy Graham Evangelistic Association

With helicopters humming overhead and traffic restricted south of Berlin’s Tiergarten, Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky’s visit to the German capital transformed the city’s central district into a high-security zone on Wednesday.

Just around the corner, across the street from Germany’s defense ministry, the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association (BGEA) was holding its European Congress on Evangelism, with more than 1,000 pastors and evangelists from 55 countries.

And Franklin Graham, president of the BGEA and the nonprofit Samaritan’s Purse, had a surprise announcement.

“Today I had the privilege to meet with President Zelensky and have prayer with him,” he said. “I prayed for President Putin, I prayed for [Zelensky], and I prayed for President Trump—that God would give them wisdom and that God would give them a path forward for peace.”

The ministers applauded and some shouted, “Amen!”

Graham acknowledged the path to that peace is far from straightforward, reiterating the need for transformed hearts.

“The complications in Ukraine and Russia, these are very difficult, and I believe only God can solve this,” he said.

The evangelist then invited the gathered crowd to stand and pray out loud in their own “heart language.” The Christian leaders all got on their feet, lifting their voices in prayers for peace.

The meeting comes as the Russian military has re-escalated attacks on Ukraine with intensifying air raids and increased use of drones. Russia’s TASS state news agency also reported this week that nearly 175,000 people have signed Russian army contracts since the beginning of the year, signaling the possibility of a renewed push on the ground.

Zelensky, meanwhile, was in Berlin to seek additional aid from Germany and made a joint announcement with Chancellor Friedrich Merz that Germany plans to assist with long-range missiles to strengthen the defense of Ukraine.

Across the Atlantic, United States president Donald Trump expressed deepening frustration with Russian president Vladimir Putin’s resistance to cease-fire proposals. He warned Putin that he was “playing with fire.”

Graham has a relationship with Trump, which he described in a press conference before the congress as “very friendly.” He said he supports the president’s efforts “trying to help” end the war in Ukraine, “trying to get them started at least talking to one another, and that’s so important.”

Graham has also tried to help. In Berlin, he said he has written to Putin, encouraging him to push for peace. The evangelist met the Russian leader in person ten years ago. He said he was impressed with Putin’s determination: “When he says he’ll do something, he’ll do it.

This spring, Graham connected with Zelensky, speaking to him on the phone following the Ukrainian president’s disastrous Oval Office meeting with Trump and Vice President JD Vance. The Ukrainian president shared his hopes for steps “toward a just and lasting peace” and his commitment to a US-proposed cease-fire.

After the conversation, Graham said in a social media post he urged Zelensky “to call for a national day of prayer” in Ukraine.

“So many lives have been lost,” Graham posted on X at the time. “We need God’s help.”

Graham’s organization Samaritan Purse has also been active in Ukraine, working through a network of local churches to distribute aid to people in need.

Despite the previous conversations between Graham and Zelensky, their meeting in Berlin was not planned in advance. When the congress was organized, Zelensky’s visit had not yet been scheduled.

Christian leaders at the congress were surprised and excited to learn of the meeting. Evangelists from countries impacted by the war said they deeply appreciated the opportunity to join with Christians from across Europe—and across geopolitical divides—to pray for peace.

The congress has drawn leaders from around the continent, including nations that are more closely allied with Russia and countries that are supporting Ukraine. During the opening session, however, when the Ukraine flag was presented as part of a parade of nations, the country was met with a roar of applause.

Graham encouraged the “church of Jesus Christ” in Ukraine, in Russia, and around the world to “stand together in prayer.”

Mariusz Muszczyński, a pastor in the southern Polish city of Opole said his church has a special time to pray for Ukraine and Russia every Sunday, with prayers being offered in Ukrainian and Russian by people from the respective countries.

“Behind them is a screen with pictures of different soldiers who are related to our refugees,” said Muszczyński. “It’s very moving and brings tears to our eyes.”

Amid the fears and sorrow, Muszczyński said, there is also joy and reconciliation.

“In this tragedy, we find joy. We find friendships. We find growth. We find community together,” he said. “We suffer together as well. We love together. We cry together. We pray together.”

Armenian pastor Gor Mekhakyan, who leads a congregation of about 1,000 in Moscow, said he has noted an increased anxiety as the war has dragged on over the past three years. Many, he said, have been coming to churches looking for solace and support amid the fear of continued escalation and conflict.

He was happy to join Graham and other evangelicals from across Europe in prayers for peace.

Ukrainian evangelist Adriy Alekseyev was also encouraged. He said the public recognition of concern from Graham and the meeting with Zelensky mean a lot to Ukrainians who are weary of war.

“It’s been a long time,” Alekseyev said. “We want peace for our country. And for Russians too.”

David Karcha, another evangelist and pastor from the war-torn country, told the Christians gathered at the congress that thousands of people are professing faith in Christ and getting baptized in Ukraine—more than anyone has seen in 15 years.

“In a time of peace, the gospel is powerful, but in a time of war, it is unstoppable,” he said in Berlin. “God is igniting a desperate search for hope. No politician … can offer what Christ can give.”

- More from Ken Chitwood

Ideas

Duane Rollins’s Life Testified to the Cost of Abuse

Chris Davis

When will churches step up to help carry the weight too many survivors bear alone?

Jae C. Hong / AP

Duane Rollins died on Friday, May 23. I never met him, but his story met me when I needed to know I wasn’t crazy and I wasn’t alone.

While washing dishes on a December evening in 2017, I listened to a podcast in which one of Harvey Weinstein’s victims told her story of how the Hollywood producer, using his established reputation and influence, ended up naked with her in a hotel room. Those details recalled a memory of my own from 15 years earlier, when I traveled with Paul Pressler.

Judge Pressler was a legend in the “conservative resurgence” of the Southern Baptist Convention, in which I was raised, ordained, and serving. I was starstruck not only to meet the judge but also, within an hour, to be invited to assist him on a speaking tour. On the first morning of that tour, following Pressler’s explanation of how he took a “locker room” approach to showers, we both stood naked in a hotel room.

The parallels between the Weinstein survivor’s story and mine sent me reeling. I reached out to a friend who also knew Pressler and was a safe person to tell.

After listening, he sent me a link: Earlier that very day, The Texas Tribune had reported on a lawsuit brought against Paul Pressler by Duane Rollins. It shared many of the marks of my story—a hotel room, undesired nudity, verbal grooming—plus horrendous details farther down the dark path, with Rollins alleging that Pressler raped him repeatedly.

For years, I had searched the internet for “Paul Pressler … abuse … young men” every few months. And then, on the day when the wretchedness of how Pressler had abused his power hit me with visceral force, there was Rollins saying, “You’re not the only one.”

That initial article presaged the cost of abuse carried not only by Rollins but also by so many survivors who shared their stories in the wake of his revelation, both in the Houston Chronicle’s landmark “Abuse of Faith” exposé and in the coverage that followed.

Pressler’s legal team and colleagues called Rollins’s lawsuit “a bizarre and frivolous case” not even worth a news report. They denied the charges in the strongest terms and planned a countersuit for Rollins’s “harassing.”

Time would tell that this was all legal brinksmanship. Six years later, the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) and the other parties named in the lawsuit settled out of court with Rollins. During the appeals process, the SBC’s attorney wrote an email opposing broad discovery because the denomination’s leaders feared it would make it impossible to deny that Pressler was an abuser.

A few months earlier, I was on the list of character witnesses ready to testify under oath to the veracity of the account I had shared with World magazine. The trial was postponed because Rollins’s poor health prevented him from being present.

His lawyer told me their case was given significant weight by the fact that a Southern Baptist pastor—whose integrity had been endorsed by the president of the SBC—was willing to testify to the predation of a Southern Baptist luminary. I’d like to think that telling the truth on the stand was the least I could do for the person who went first in exposing a wolf in sheep’s clothing.

The cost of abuse was articulated over 3,000 years ago by Tamar, who pleaded with her lecherous half brother Amnon, “Do not do this outrageous thing. As for me, where could I carry my shame?” (2 Sam. 13:12–13, ESV).

But Amnon did not listen. He violated Tamar. And when her father, King David, and her brother Absalom refused to give her justice at the time, the weight of Amnon’s heinous act fell on her. “So Tamar lived, a desolate woman, in her brother Absalom’s house” (v. 20, ESV).

As evangelicals, we love the good news that the weight of our sin was borne by Jesus on the cross. It is one of the most precious and vital truths to our faith. But the power of that gospel reality is in its honesty.

We look at Christ hanging in shame, beaten and humiliated for all to see, and we say, “This is the truth of what our sin deserves.” God does not minimize the cost of abuse. The price was paid by his own Son, whose abuse at the hand of Roman soldiers and Sanhedrin accusers killed him.

Predators want to strip the gospel for parts, keep the piece about forgiveness, and discard naming the weight of sin. In doing so, forgiveness is deformed and repurposed to deny the criminal and communal consequences of our sins. This faux forgiveness blasphemes the holiness and righteousness of God, refusing to honestly assess the cost of the harm we have caused.

Pressler did not confess his criminal, sinful actions against Rollins. Rather, he leveraged his spiritual influence to reframe the abuse as a special, sanctioned act. He put all the weight of the shame on his victims.

When I held a towel in front of me for modesty in that hotel room, he said, “Chris, you seem uncomfortable being naked in front of me.” He wanted me to bear the shame of what was entirely inappropriate for two men who had been around each other in person for no more than six hours.

The part of the gospel the church must reckon with is whether we will allow the sin of predation to be weighty. The cost of abuse is nearly always carried by those who are abused, because far too many local churches are not willing to bear the brunt of what happened when their flocks turned into hunting grounds for predators.

At the national level, following the horrific stories of abuse that Rollins and other survivors told, messengers to the Southern Baptist Convention voted in 2022 to create a database to track credibly accused predators. And the Executive Committee has told them no.

What kind of Jesus are we proclaiming when our refusal to hold predators accountable tells survivors they must carry the weight of both their sin and the sin of those who did shameful things to them? Pressler claimed to be bringing the Bible and the gospel it tells back to the SBC. Yet his actions preached a false gospel to those he abused, a message that now rings to the world more loudly than any sermon he preached.

Rollins’s life testified to the cost of abuse. A direct line from the trauma of his abuse to addictions and incarceration led to the health issues that eventually took his life before he reached 60.

I'll have much more to say about Duane and what he meant to me later this week. But I need folks to understand that, without his decision to come forward – and facing seemingly insurmountable odds – the SBC abuse crisis would have never been brought to light. He changed so much.
— Robert Downen (@RobertDownen_) May 26, 2025

After Pressler died last summer, Rollins told journalist Robert Downen—with whom he had entrusted his story—that for the first time in decades he felt hope. So severe was his trauma that the mere existence of a living, breathing Pressler on earth was enough to steal his peace.

If the church wants to preach a message of a Savior who bears the weight of our sin, we must show through our practices of care and accountability that we feel the cost as well.

Chris Davis is pastor of Groveton Baptist Church in Alexandria, Virginia, and author of Bright Hope for Tomorrow: How Anticipating Jesus’ Return Gives Strength for Today.

- More from Chris Davis

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