The Church Transfer Portal Is Always Open

Luke Simmons

In an era of fluid church membership, pastoral wisdom can transform the challenge into opportunity. Here’s a practical guide for navigating this new reality.

Brett Carlsen / Getty Images

“In most families, you’re not supposed to talk about religion or politics. But in our family, you can’t bring up the transfer portal.”

My 18-year-old daughter made this comment about 40 minutes into a recent whole-extended-family argument. Around the table were eight former NCAA Division I athletes, so there was no shortage of opinions about a system that’s reshaping college sports.

For those who are less sports crazy than our family, the “transfer portal” is an online system that has revolutionized how college athletes change schools. What was once a cumbersome, high-cost decision to shift to a new university has become relatively painless and increasingly common.

Don’t get enough playing time? Transfer portal.

Coach is too demanding? Transfer portal.

Better sponsorship options elsewhere? Transfer portal.

Whether the transfer portal is good for college athletics is an argument I will save for our next family gathering; however, one thing’s for certain: The transfer portal is here to stay.

Introducing the church transfer portal

Just as the transfer portal has transformed college athletics, I’ve noticed a similar phenomenon in church life during my 16 years of pastoring in the same town. While there’s no official “church transfer portal,” the same instant-gratification dynamic in play with college athletes has become increasingly common among churchgoers.

Better youth program nearby? Transfer churches.

Pastor not fully on board with your politics? Transfer churches.

Dislike a change the leaders made? Transfer churches.

Like college coaches scrambling to adapt to this new reality, pastors can find themselves flat-footed by the continuous flow of people coming and going. It’s an area where a little intentional thought goes a long way. While challenging, this new normal doesn’t have to be overwhelming—thoughtful preparation can make a difference.

Navigate the church transfer portal era effectively with these eight practical strategies, both proactive and responsive.

Proactive pastoral strategies for strengthening member commitment

1. Cultivate meaningful church membership in order to mitigate the church transfer dynamic.

Though the New Testament encourages local church membership rather than explicitly mandating it, a robust church membership process raises the bar of commitment and covenant. When people go through a membership process—meeting with an elder, signing a membership covenant, getting involved with serving and giving, and participating in regular members’ meetings—they become more deeply knit into the fabric of the church. They consume less and contribute more, and when church life gets hard, they are more likely to stick it out.

2. Offer a compelling vision of servant-hearted discipleship.

Help people embrace that it’s “more blessed to give than to receive” (Acts 20:35). We are never more like Jesus than when we serve and give. These activities move us from mere consumers to imitators of Christ. Beyond merely encouraging service, we must cultivate true servant-heartedness—that humble spirit that is content with being treated like a servant. When people embrace this mindset, they naturally focus more on the Lord and his mission than church-shopping for better programs or experiences.

3. Instruct your people how to leave a church well.

Most people won’t spend their entire lives in the same local church. All kinds of legitimate reasons might require members to leave (life changes, job relocations, moving closer to family, etc.). Teach them to do it honorably. Our membership packet includes an appendix with guidance on how to leave the church well. We encourage them to:

Have a good reason for leaving
Communicate the decision to leave with the appropriate leader(s)
Tell these leaders the truth about why you’re leaving
Appropriately transition or conclude any ministry commitments
Leave graciously, without harboring or spreading ill-will.

Having this conversation proactively equips people to navigate this moment with greater maturity.

4. Build strong relationships with other local pastors.

Intentional relationships with other local pastors yield many benefits. As it relates to church transfers, these connections foster open communication and genuine affection—both of which are crucial elements for handling the responsive strategies that follow.

Responsive pastoral strategies for handling church transfers well

1. Express genuine affection for other pastors and churches.

When newcomers arrive badmouthing their previous church, speaking warmly about their former congregation and its pastor. This does more than take some of the wind out of their sails, diffusing any negativity. It also prevents bonding with new families based on a shared critique of other churches. Remember: You don’t want your relationship with new families to be rooted in your church’s supposed superiority.

2. Ask newcomers why and how they left.

It is completely appropriate to ask questions and inquire about which churches they previously attended, how they were involved there, what prompted their decision to leave, what drew them to your church, and whether or not they believe they departed honorably. Their responses offer valuable insights into their level of spiritual maturity and the shepherding they may need going forward.

If they left well, you’ll be more confident about weaving them into the life of your church. However, if unresolved conflict or bitter feelings surface, good shepherding means encouraging them to go back and heal any relational wounds that are still festering. These conversations will not only set the tone for future pastoral care. They will also establish healthy expectations for those who decide to continue at your church.

3. Connect with the newcomer’s previous pastor.

Reach out to their former pastor with a simple query: “This person is now attending our church. Is there anything you think we should know?” You can confirm whether or not the person did leave honorably and potentially get more important context (Prov. 18:17). This is why building intentional relationships with other local pastors is valuable. The stronger your existing connections, the more candid these discussions can be and the easier it will be to learn what you need to learn.

Some pastors avoid making these calls, worried about awkwardness or hurt feelings. They think, I don’t want to make the other pastor feel bad. Get over it. Remember, you have a flock to protect, so you need to know more about the people coming your way.

4. Be gracious to those leaving your church.

When members leave your church, extend grace. If they’re trying to leave well, support their effort. It’s okay to ask questions about their decision-making process, and don’t be afraid to acknowledge your sadness or disappointment. In fact, your honesty may honor them. You may disagree with their reasons for leaving or feel hurt that you were left out of the conversation until the decision had already been made. But by that point, it is what it is. Gracious acceptance will serve everyone best and help them leave well. Plus, I’ve learned an encouraging truth from my more than two decades in ministry: Sometimes those who leave eventually find their way back. Your posture in their departure might just pave the way for their return.

Shepherding souls, not managing rosters

Like the NCAA transfer portal, church-hopping is a cringeworthy fact of pastoral life. Sometimes it’s deeply discouraging, especially when someone dear to you decides to leave.

We can, like my extended family, waste time arguing or complaining about whether this new reality is good or bad for the church. But that’s missing the point. The real question isn’t whether we like it. It’s whether or not we’ve intentionally prepared to respond to it well.

Maybe this moment—the era of the church transfer portal—is an unexpected opportunity: to embody truth and grace in an age of casual commitment. When we handle transfers with wisdom and love, we bear witness to something greater: that the body of Christ is bigger than any one local church. After all, we’re not managing rosters—we’re shepherding souls toward Christlikeness wherever that journey might lead them.

The transfer culture isn’t going away anytime soon, but neither is God’s faithfulness to you and your church. Pastor, your calling remains the same: Shepherd the flock God has entrusted to you, whether they’re with you for a season or a lifetime. By implementing these strategies (both proactive and responsive), we can create stronger and healthier church cultures for those who are coming, those who are going, and those who are staying.

Luke Simmons is the lead pastor at Ironwood Church. He coaches leaders, church planters, and pastors, in addition to creating resources and experiences for pastors through FaithfulAndFruitful.com.

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News

How ICE Deleted International Students at Christian Colleges

Andy Olsen

The Trump administration terminated the legal status of students at eight evangelical schools, then reversed itself, then warned it may eliminate more.

International students at orientation at Campbellsville University in Kentucky

Courtesy of Campbellsville University

Peter Thomas, who oversees international education at Campbellsville University, got the text at 6:19 in the morning.

“Check your records.” It was from a colleague at the University of Louisville.

So before sunrise on Friday, April 25, Thomas rushed to his computer and logged in to the Student and Exchange Visitor Information System, or SEVIS, a government immigration database that records the visa status of international students in the United States. He scanned the list of names at Campbellsville, a Baptist school in central Kentucky.

Weeks earlier, authorities had “terminated” more than ten of his international students from the system with little explanation, ending their ability to study or remain in the country legally.

Friday morning, Thomas saw that at least three had been returned to active status. Over the course of the day, more names flipped back to legal standing, as if coming back from a sort of academic death. “Everybody’s being made whole,” Thomas thought at the time, though it was not quite so simple.

Campbellsville is one of more than 290 colleges and universities that have been swept up in the Trump administration’s crackdown on immigration, with thousands of international students unexpectedly losing their visa status, only to see it resurrected in the past week.

At least eight evangelical schools have reported student records being deleted from SEVIS: Oklahoma Christian University lost two; Baylor University, three; Concordia University Wisconsin, ten. More than 60 students at evangelical institutions have been impacted, according to data from the Council for Christian Colleges and Universities (CCCU), though many small private colleges did not disclose their cancellations.

The disappearances began in March as the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) embarked on a series of high-profile arrests of international students—some for expressing pro-Palestine views on campus and some for reasons unknown. At the same time, it began quietly canceling the legal status of at least 1,800 students. In some cases, the government now says, it was not revoking visas; it was only deleting the digital link between the students’ visas and their schools. The move erased student authorizations to study, effectively forcing them to stop and to consider leaving the country.

The deletions, however, seemed to have nothing to do with political activism. In some cases, students had previously committed crimes such as underage drinking. In others, they may have had minor traffic violations that had been dismissed. In many instances, the government offered no reasoning for the terminations. A federal judge called them “arbitrary and capricious.”

In court hearings this week, the government revealed that it had combed an FBI database for thousands of international student names without thoroughly vetting them. At Campbellsville, where roughly 30 percent of the student body comes from abroad, one student appeared to have had his SEVIS record terminated because he filed a police report after being robbed, according to Thomas. “It just doesn’t make sense,” he said.

In the ensuing chaos, affected students filed dozens of lawsuits to preserve their status—including a group of recent Indian graduates of Concordia University, St. Paul, whose terminations forced them to abandon internships at IT companies.

After a month, the mounting pile of court injunctions made the government blink: On April 25, the same morning Thomas was watching his students’ academic careers being returned to rights, a Justice Department lawyer in Washington, DC, explained to a federal judge that DHS was working on a new system for reviewing international students; it would reinstate deleted records until the work was finished.

“There was a sigh of relief,” CCCU president David Hoag told CT. “That sent a signal that maybe the government was still working through the process, and then they realized, wow, maybe they didn’t have everything together and they’re going to have to modify their approach on the issue.”

But Hoag said the sense of relief is temporary. The administration has warned that it may still terminate the status of students it has reinstated and that it may still target students for deportation. And not all students have been restored.

“Records are getting corrected, but not consistently,” Thomas said. Reversing the terminations is a tedious process for both the government and schools, and for some students, administrators must manually request corrections to the database.

That adds one more burden for Christian schools that do not have dedicated staff members watching SEVIS records and managing international students, Hoag said. Sudden changes may get overlooked and remedies delayed, especially as schools juggle end-of-semester grading and graduations.

The visa-status whiplash has upended life for many students. Some have reported leaving the country or going into hiding to avoid deportation. Others sat out classes during the busiest stretch of the academic year. One student at Campbellsville, a woman from a farming community in rural India, said her family took out a $3,000 loan to hire a lawyer to fight her termination.

“It was very painful for her,” said Thomas, who is proud of his school’s large international student population. He’s grateful that the terminations have stopped for now. But “there’s some harm that won’t be reversed. I sure hope that things can get better.”

The campaign against international students comes at a time of record-high international enrollments at US colleges and universities. Foreign students are a significant source of revenue for many small schools, in particular. Colleges worry that the government actions could keep those students away, as it did during the first Trump administration.

“We may have a blip on the screen on our international enrollments this next year,” Hoag said. “With all these changes, the US doesn’t look as friendly.”

Even on campuses where no one lost visa status, the uncertainty has left students and staff on edge. Multiple colleges and seminaries declined to comment for this story and asked that their international students not be interviewed. One university president told CT his school had not been impacted at all, then requested nonetheless that his school not be named.

No SEVIS records have been terminated at Asbury Theological Seminary, which enrolls roughly 80 international students at its campus in Wilmore, Kentucky, an hour and half from Campbellsville. But registrar Allan Varghese still checks the database nearly every day.

A couple of weeks ago, someone stopped Varghese in the dining hall and said, “I heard ICE is talking with somebody.” A faculty member also emailed Varghese, mentioning that ICE was questioning someone. Did Varghese know who? Varghese went straight to the database, confirmed that no students were missing, and told everyone it was probably just a rumor.

At least twice, he said, his international students received phone calls from scammers warning that they had violated the terms of their visas and offering to help resolve their immigration cases. Varghese reassured them with a little gallows humor. “If ICE needs to find somebody,” he joked, “they’ll come to your door.”

Still, the registrar, a native of India, said many of the seminary’s international students are unshaken by the administration’s antagonism toward immigrants. Some are doctoral students, further along in their careers. Some overcame impossible bureaucratic and financial hurdles to study in America. Some come from countries where Christians live under authoritarian governments; they feel they know how to avoid the scrutiny of strongman leaders.

“They are used to that kind of rhetoric,” Varghese said. “Some of them didn’t think this would happen here. But at the same time, they were like, ‘What do you expect?’”

Varghese meets regularly with international students, praying and putting on workshops to help them navigate the struggles of studying in a foreign land. He encourages them with the story of Ruth, the Moabite widow and immigrant. “Just to remind everybody that ultimately God is who brought you here, and for a reason and a task, and let’s not forget that,” he said.

Then Varghese interrupted himself. “We are not going to put that out as an official email or anything.” The wrong person could take even the mention of a biblical heroine and somehow use it against you, he said.

“That’s the risky part of these things.”

Andy Olsen is senior features writer at Christianity Today.

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Ideas

The Man Who Taught Us Orphan Care

Christina Ray Stanton

Charles Loring Brace revolutionized America’s understanding and treatment of poor children—and he did it all for Christ.

Illustration by Mallory Rentsch Tlapek / Source Images: New York Public Library, WikiMedia Commons

In October 1849, a young seminary student in New York City rowed across the East River to preach. Charles Loring Brace had been charged to speak to terminally ill young women who resided at a charity hospital on Blackwell’s Island, a two-mile strip of land nestled between Manhattan and Queens.

Now known as Roosevelt Island, it once housed “undesirables” in institutions including a lunatic asylum, two almshouses, a charity hospital with a children’s ward, and a penitentiary. Brace knew many of the women he preached to were dying from venereal diseases contracted after they were driven into prostitution and shunned by society. Weeping as he spoke of Jesus’ love, Brace visited others on the island after his sermon and ministered to them as well.

This visit and others like it deeply affected Brace, inspiring him to dedicate his ministry to helping New York City’s most vulnerable. And nearly 200 years later, systems he created to care for orphans and the poorest of the poor are still in use. Brace founded the still-operating Children’s Aid Society, which was the nation’s first home for runaways, and he helped pioneer the Orphan Train movement and America’s foster care system. A minister, journalist, abolitionist, and author of nine books, he was inspired by his devotion to Christ to pursue a lifelong work to uplift those struggling in a rapidly changing America.

To understand the significance of Brace’s life and legacy, it’s important to have some sense of 1850s America. At the beginning of the decade, the nation’s 23 million people were spread across 30 states, with most people still living on farms. Yet industrialization, rising immigration, and the slavery debate were reshaping the country.

Between 1815 and 1860, over 5 million immigrants arrived. New York City’s population surged from 60,000 in 1800 to over 1 million by 1860, sparking an unprecedented rise in poverty and crime. Overcrowded, unsafe housing and dangerous, unregulated jobs left tens of thousands living and working in inhumane conditions.

Life for poor children was especially harsh. Many were orphaned by illness, work, or the Civil War. Even poor children whose parents were alive often lived apart from them: Parents who became unemployed or otherwise unable to care for their children commonly “parked” them in orphanages or almshouses until they could afford to bring them back home. Child labor was also rampant, with one in eight children under 15 working in 1870, rising to one in five by 1900. Worst off were the 3,000 homeless children begging in New York City’s streets.

In his memoir, The Dangerous Classes of New York, Brace described the conditions faced by many children he encountered:

Parents drink, and abuse their little ones, and they float away on the currents of the street; step-mothers or step-fathers drive out, by neglect and ill-treatment, their sons from home. Thousands are the children of poor foreigners, who have permitted them to grow up without school, education, or religion.

The plight of New York’s poor children was a stark contrast to Brace’s own upbringing. Born in 1826 in Litchfield, Connecticut, he was the second of four children in a privileged family that included prominent ministers, abolitionists, judges, and lawyers. His mother was related to Harriet Beecher Stowe, author of Uncle Tom’s Cabin.

Brace’s father, a teacher at a prominent girls’ school, assigned essays on topics like “the difference between the natural and the moral sublime,” well afield from the era’s typical focus on domestic arts and elocution as suitable knowledge for girls. When Charles was seven, the family moved to Hartford, Connecticut, and attended North Congregational Church, led by theologian and civic leader Horace Bushnell, whose influence left a lasting mark on Brace.

After graduating at the top of his class from Yale Divinity School in 1848, Brace continued his studies at Union Theological Seminary in New York City. It was there that he committed his life to helping impoverished children. He created programs for “street Arabs”—as they were called at the time—and advocated for laws limiting child labor and keeping children out of almshouses for adults. He also won an award for his efforts to stop the exploitation of children brought from Italy in the infamous padrone system to work as beggars and street performers on the city’s streets.

In 1853, at 27, Brace cofounded the Children’s Aid Society (CAS). It would focus on improving children’s lives through initiatives like a summer home for girls, a sanitarium for sick babies, and CAS’s own probation department upon the founding of the first juvenile court. CAS laid the foundation for the US child welfare system, which was a revolutionary model for child protection in its day.

The next year, Brace opened the first runaway shelter, the Newsboys’ Lodging House, which also educated its residents. He went on to establish additional homes for boys and girls but became increasingly aware that he couldn’t pay enough employees or build enough group homes to care for all the vulnerable and needy children in the city. Instead, he began making plans to send children outside New York to give them a chance to flourish.

Brace’s Emigration Plan, now typically called the Orphan Train movement, began in 1854 and continued for 75 years. An estimated 105,000 children were routed to families outside of New York City in hopes of a better life—one shaped by farm work, small-town communities, family bonds, and Christian values. CAS required families to care for, educate, and treat the children as their own, though the agreement was informal and could be terminated at any time.

The program was hailed as a success in its era, credited not just with uplifting the circumstances of cast-off kids but even with reducing crime in New York City. Many of the children did thrive—even excelled. Some became state governors, and one was a Supreme Court justice. Today, an estimated 3 million people are descendants of Orphan Train children.

Many people view the Orphan Train more skeptically today, and for some, its shortcomings overshadow its successes. Receiving families weren’t adequately screened, and oversight was often lax. Some children were abused by their new families. Siblings were separated, and some children ended up in worse conditions than ones from which they were “rescued.” In hindsight, it’s clear that Brace placed far too much faith in strangers’ ability to care for the children he relocated.

From our vantage, the entire concept may seem appalling, but in the days of child labor and crowded tenements, this kind of uniform solution to child welfare seemed appropriate. In theory and sometimes in practice, it was a clear advance over the failures of institutional care for orphans Brace had seen in places like Blackwell’s Island. As scholar Stephen O’Connor speculates in his book on the Orphan Trains, Brace’s plan “may have succeeded as well as could reasonably be expected.”

But Brace’s legacy is bigger than any one program. When he began his work in New York, the prevailing attitude was that the poor deserved harsh treatment. Their conditions were typically seen as divine punishment for laziness or other sins. Almshouses and orphanages were strict yet poorly run, and they notoriously underfed their charges.

Inspired by Bushnell’s sermons on spiritual development, Brace argued that we should not judge the poor for their destitution but treat them with kindness, dignity, and respect:

As Christian men, we cannot look upon this great multitude of unhappy, deserted, and degraded boys and girls without feeling our responsibility to God for them. We remember that they have the same capacities, the same need of kind and good influences, and the same immortality as the little ones in our own homes. We bear in mind that One died for them, even as for the children of the rich and happy.

In fact, Brace called Jesus the “greatest reformer of all time” and criticized New York’s materialism and American “anemic” spirituality. As an abolitionist, he castigated the church for allowing slavery. Above all, Brace was a man of action. “Quite simply,” writes Karen M. Staller in her history of CAS, “Brace saw the life of Jesus Christ as a model for his vision of missionary work. He wanted to travel among the poor embodying Christian values and inspiring others through deeds rather than words.”

More than a century after his death, Brace’s influence continues. He changed how Americans, particularly American Christians, think about their duty to care for children in need, both theologically and practically in emphasizing family care over institutionalization. But more than anything, beyond all his policies and programs, Brace wanted the children he served to know Jesus as their Savior.

Don’t think Jesus would only “trouble himself” about the “very rich, or very learned,” he told them. “Your soul is just as much to Him, as the soul of the richest boy on Fifth Avenue. … He knows all the trials you have had, all your lonely times, all your troubles at home, all your hunger and cold and poverty: when your little brothers and sisters were crying for food and you could not get it, He heard it; when your father or your mother became worse in their habits every day and you could not stop it … He saw it all and felt it all.”

Christina Ray Stanton is a New York City–based writer and licensed NYC tour guide since 1995. She has written over 30 articles about 9/11, and her 2019 book about 9/11 won two prestigious awards.

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News

Measuring the Good Life

Brendan Case, Katelyn N. G. Long, Tyler J. VanderWeele, and Byron R. Johnson

New global data shows what makes for a flourishing life. It isn’t what we think.

Illustration by Ibrahim Rayintakath

Perhaps this sounds familiar: A church group spent a week in a developing country, building houses for people most Americans would consider desperately poor. Although proud of their work, some volunteers also voiced that, despite their many material needs, their hosts seemed to enjoy a deeper sense of happiness than many Americans living in affluent cities and comfortable suburbs. They were generous, with deep commitments to their faith, families, and communities.

What’s going on? Are the perceptions of greater happiness or generosity merely a tourist’s fantasy, or are these reflections of deeper realities? How do we compare to our neighbors, whether down the street or across the globe? And what is “happiness” anyway?

We might answer these questions by looking at gross domestic product (GDP) per capita, economic inequality, or health outcomes like life expectancy. We might rank countries based on responses to a single question about how an individual would rate her life, from ‘best’ to ‘worst possible.’

These are surely important factors, yet they only scratch the surface of what makes a flourishing life. Flourishing encompasses how humans live deeply and well—not only with mental and physical health or financial security but also with a sense of meaning and purpose; the cultivation of one’s character; close relationships and community; and, for many, the pursuit of sacred transcendent goods, such as salvation, peace, or union with God.

To better understand how flourishing is distributed globally and the key pathways of how individuals and communities attain it, we (alongside our funders and colleagues) launched the Global Flourishing Study (GFS), a groundbreaking five-year longitudinal study of over 200,000 adults across 22 countries, representing well over 40% of the world’s population.

Instead of conducting a one-time poll, the GFS follows the same participants across five years—a more robust way to study people’s lives. In our first wave of research, participants were surveyed about their lives—both now and how they saw themselves when they were 12—including their emotions (such as feelings of happiness, peace, or loneliness); their beliefs (about God, the government, and others); and their behaviors (charitable giving, religious service attendance, showing love to others).

The GFS is unprecedented in both its scope and its rigor, and on April 30, 2025, our team of over 40 researchers published the results in Nature, the world’s leading science journal.

The results of the first GFS wave are rich enough to transcend brief summary, but when considered as a whole, striking patterns emerge. First, we find that countries with higher GDP per capita often have lower “composite flourishing,” which is an average of scores on 12 questions covering six broad domains of flourishing (self-rated happiness, health, meaning, character, relationships, and financial security).

For instance, even after factoring in self-rated financial security, middle- and low-income countries such as Indonesia, Mexico, Kenya, and Tanzania (GDP per capita in 2023: $1,211) have higher average composite flourishing scores than affluent countries such as the US, Sweden, Germany, and Japan. Tanzanians, in one of the world’s poorest countries, report a greater sense of overall flourishing than do affluent and stable Swedes.

If we look beyond composite flourishing to specific aspects of a good life, we find economically developed countries have high average scores for self-rated financial well-being, access to education, and life evaluation. Yet poorer countries have higher scores for positive emotions, meaning and purpose, character and virtue, and social connection and relationships. In some middle-income countries, such as Indonesia, Mexico, or the Philippines, people even rate themselves as healthier than do Americans, Swedes, or Japanese.

The two countries with the highest and lowest mean scores for composite flourishing—Indonesia and Japan, respectively—are emblematic of this split between “humanistic” and “material” flourishing. It may seem more intuitive that Indonesia, with a GDP per capita of $4,876 and a life expectancy of 74 years, would lag well behind Japan, with a GDP per capita of $33,766 and a life expectancy of 85 years, on many self-reported aspects of flourishing. Yet the GFS tells a more complex story: Of the 22 countries, Indonesia had the highest national average and Japan the lowest for many facets of flourishing, ranging from positive emotions and meaning to character and financial security.

It’s possible that the Japanese, similar to East Asians more generally, might interpret some of these items or scale their responses differently than other populations. Yet Japanese participants also have the lowest scores on yes-no questions, such as whether they have a close or intimate friend.

On the whole, the pattern is striking. Some countries with the greatest wealth and longevity may have achieved these goods at the cost of a fulfilling life. This first wave of GFS data can’t yet establish these divergent causes, but there are clues: Countries such as Indonesia, Mexico, and Israel, with higher degrees of humanistic flourishing and the highest composite flourishing overall, also have higher than average rates of marriage, community participation, friendship, and religious belief and participation. This suggests that, for most people, flourishing is found above all in dense and overlapping networks of
loving relationships.

One of the most striking findings from the first wave of the GFS is the strong association between religious identity and flourishing. Across the 22 countries, there is a 0.81-point gap (on a 10-point scale) in composite flourishing between those who attend religious services at least weekly and those who never attend. Regular attenders are also significantly more likely to report volunteering, showing love and care to others, and having a higher sense of meaning and purpose, among other aspects of a good life.

This is consistent with previous research (mostly, though not exclusively, on Americans) that religious service attendance in particular is a powerful predictor of health, well-being, and subsequent flourishing. None of this evidence definitively proves church attendance causes better health and well-being. Yet the fact that similar associations arise when we compare attendance in childhood with subsequent adult well-being markers is a further clue that the link is causal, and future waves of GFS data may be able to strengthen the case.

Let’s take Indonesia as an example. Indonesia has the highest scores in the GFS for many aspects of flourishing; it is also highly religious, with 98% of the population identifying as either Muslim or Christian and 75% attending religious services at least weekly.

Israel is another unique example in the GFS as both a high-income country ($54,370 per capita GDP) and flourishing in a number of areas, with the third highest average scores for happiness and meaning and the lowest rate of loneliness in the GFS domains. It is also distinctly religious among wealthy GFS countries, with 32% of its population attending services at least weekly, a rate nearly 50% higher than America’s.

Sweden and the United Kingdom, by contrast, where only 4.5% and 15% of the GFS sample are regular service attenders, have the 19th and 20th lowest averages, respectively, for meaning and purpose. And in Japan, just over 3% of the GFS sample attends religious services at least weekly, while only 20% said they even believe in “God, gods, or spirits.” The more secular the country, either in religious adherence or participation, the more its population tends to report a lack of meaning, belonging, and good character.

Humans aren’t merely “religious” in a general sense; they belong to particular religions and particular religious communities. We will publish additional analyses of the GFS data examining how flourishing is distributed across each of the sample’s largest religious families: Christianity, Islam, Judaism, Hinduism, and Buddhism. For now, we can highlight points of interest.

Source: GFS, infographic by Christianity Today

The most obvious fact about the religious traditions represented in the GFS is their internal diversity: Turkey and Indonesia are both large, overwhelmingly Muslim countries, but the former has the second-lowest mean score for composite flourishing and the latter, the highest in the GFS. It would be difficult to generalize about “the Muslim world” from such diversity. Christians in the GFS reflect fascinating variety as well. In Tanzania, 73% of Christians (half of whom are Roman Catholic) said they have had “a life-changing religious experience,” whereas in deeply Catholic Poland, only 9% of Christians reported the same. Christianity generally and Roman Catholicism particularly have quite different textures in each of these countries.

Across the 22 GFS countries, young people reported the lowest levels of flourishing on average, while the oldest populations reported the highest levels of flourishing. This is striking: It differs from other studies, particularly those focused on life satisfaction, which have historically found age patterns to be U-shaped—higher at either end of life and lower in the middle. In contrast, the GFS found that flourishing is essentially flat from age 18 to 49 and then rises steadily through the oldest cohorts.

These patterns appear not only for happiness but also for meaning, character, relationships, and even self-rated health, as younger respondents now see themselves as doing as poorly as the middle-aged. While this pattern does not hold for all countries—the U curve still holds for most outcomes in India and Japan, and flourishing decreases with age in Poland and Tanzania—this new age pattern is widespread and concerning. It suggests young people are not doing as well as in previous generations.

It isn’t clear from this cross-sectional data whether this represents a new age-pattern—where we would expect today’s young people to see their flourishing increase over time—or instead a new cohort-pattern—where young people would be at the peak of their own U curve, with further depths of languishing to come.

GFS data about loneliness, religious identity, and community identification have far-reaching implications for the way we live. First, the stark divide between the prosperous but potentially more hollow lives of “developed” nations and the less wealthy but perhaps fuller lives of “developing” nations raises serious questions about whether or how to pursue much-needed public health improvements, political reforms, and economic growth in the latter countries without compromising meaning or fulfilling relationships.

This is a question not only for the International Monetary Fund and the World Economic Forum but equally for Christian organizations that work to alleviate global poverty, disease, and hunger. The challenge is to engage in genuinely holistic development, so that focusing too much on the material conditions of the world’s poor doesn’t undermine vibrant, loving communities.

The lessons this divide suggests for lower- and middle-income countries, however, are not necessarily the same ones it offers wealthier countries. In the US, UK, and Sweden, for instance, meaning and purpose actually increase with education. In the US in particular, this pattern might reflect how decades of deindustrialization have driven less-educated Americans out of the middle class and helped foster an “epidemic of loneliness and isolation.” These communities arguably need a revival of stable, socially valued work for a source of meaning and dignity as well as income, alongside other pathways to flourishing.

Second, the GFS further strengthens the case that religious participation can be a vital resource for many aspects of flourishing. While religion indisputably matters a great deal for the developing world, the strongest associations with flourishing from religious service attendance in the GFS are found in the most secular countries, where likely only the most faithful of believers attend. These findings should serve as a wake-up call for places such as the US, where weekly religious participation has declined by about a third from 2000 to the present. As two of us wrote previously for CT, falling service attendance represents not only a spiritual crisis but also a public health crisis, with profound effects on loneliness, isolation, depression, suicide, and addiction.

As Christians who are also researchers, we are heartened by the evidence that church attendance offers most people not only the hope of salvation but also a more “abundant” life (John 10:10)—a life of meaning, friendships, and virtue—now. Nonetheless, we would caution against citing this or other empirical research as evidence of God’s particular favor for one confession or communion over others. Religious service attendance was associated with greater flourishing across the vast majority of GFS countries, although in a few countries, the effects were indeterminate (and we do not have sufficient data to make claims about causality outside of North America).

From the scattered house churches of the apostolic period down to the present, Christians have been a communing people, heeding the biblical warning against “neglecting to meet together” (Heb. 10:25, ESV). Of course, corporate worship can be inconvenient (as anyone trying to get small children out the door on a Sunday can attest) or a source of hurt (as anyone who has attended church long enough can attest). Nonetheless, while some may see “going to church” as a relic of times past, empirical research serves as a reminder of what Scripture says: Gathering as believers is essential and powerful. This is true even—perhaps especially—in the most secular countries, where religious communities increasingly resemble the committed clusters of the early church, whose evident differences from their neighbors made them salt and light in a world that knew nothing of the gospel.

Finally, besides its implications for communal and religious life, the GFS highlights the struggles of young adults compared to their elders and to earlier generations. The GFS can’t yet tell us what is driving this shift, but our findings are certainly consistent with the important work done in recent years by Jean M. Twenge, Jonathan Haidt, Lenore Skenazy, and others who have sounded the alarm about the harmful effects of smartphones, social media, and video games on youth. These technologies increasingly crowd out healthy face-to-face friendships and edifying, enlivening activities in the natural world. The GFS findings should also encourage us to seek out the wisdom and instruction of the elders among us, as many of the oldest populations around the world report the highest levels of flourishing in the latter stages of life.

By the time you read this, our team will be analyzing the second wave of data in addition to completing further analyses on the first wave. As we follow these participants, we will be able to make increasingly precise observations about how particular aspects of people’s lives—like experiencing loneliness or gratitude, giving to charity, or feeling politically enfranchised—affect other aspects. We will be able to make more confident assertions about how particular aspects of religious life, such as service attendance, prayer, or forgiveness, impact longer-term flourishing.

We hope these insights contribute to more holistic public-health or policy prescriptions for individuals, communities, and nations. Along the way, we will continue to share updates with Christianity Today, helping unpack the findings and implications for Christian readers around the world.

For now, however, the data confronts us afresh with Jesus’ question: “What good will it be for someone to gain the whole world, yet forfeit their soul?” (Matt. 16:26) We in the West have many reasons to be grateful for all that our extraordinary prosperity has bought us, but it seems that flourishing, at least, is still not for sale.

A version of this article appeared in print in the May/June 2025 issue under the title, “Measuring the Good Life” on p. 84.

Brendan Case is the associate director for research at the Human Flourishing Program at Harvard University.

Katelyn N. G. Long is a researcher at the Human Flourishing Program and at the Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health.

Byron R. Johnson is Distinguished Professor of the Social Sciences at Baylor University and the codirector of the Global Flourishing Study.

Tyler J. VanderWeele is the John L. Loeb Professor of Epidemiology at the Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health and the codirector of the Global Flourishing Study.

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News

Presbyterian World Mission Closes, Lays Off Dozens of Missionaries

Megan Fowler

As declining giving and shifting stances bring the PC(USA)’s sending agency to an end, others find new ways to support and serve.

Pascal Deloche / Getty Images

Hundreds will meet near Pittsburgh in June as part of a 120-year tradition deemed the longest-running annual missions conference in the US.

This year’s New Wilmington Mission Conference, held at a lakeside pavilion on the campus of Westminster College, will welcome as special guests some of the 54 mission workers who lost their jobs when Presbyterian World Mission shut down in March.

The end of Presbyterian World Mission—founded in 1837 as the Presbyterian Church (USA)’s foreign mission board—represents the latest consequence of declining giving and shifting stances around overseas evangelism in the mainline denomination.

PC(USA) blamed the decision on financial strain and Christianity’s global shifts away from the West to the Global South. Officials said some missionaries—the denomination calls them “mission coworkers”—were offered severance packages or new positions in the denomination. Some will serve as liaisons to immigrant communities, churches in the US, and mission networks abroad.

“As a denomination and as individuals, the future is unclear, and the callings are developing,” PC(USA) stated clerk Jihyun Oh said during an online chapel service in March honoring the legacy of Presbyterian World Mission. “Standing on the shoulders of the communion of saints that have embodied nearly 200 years of Presbyterian mission, we step forward in the knowledge that our desire to please God does please God.”

The closure comes at a time when faith-based organizations and ministries abroad are struggling to make up for funding deficits after the US State Department cut funding for programs like PEPFAR and USAID.

“Between the decline of mainline denominational missions and foreign aid gutting, there’s a much greater need for other churches to step up their giving,” wrote Matthew Loftus, a Christian doctor in Kenya, on X.

Loftus works at a hospital associated with the Presbyterian Church of East Africa, but it receives financial support from the PC(USA)’s Medical Benevolence Foundation, separate from Presbyterian World Mission.

The decision to close Presbyterian World Mission, in part, results from the “theological loss of nerve in the mainline,” according to David Dawson, a missiologist and retired PC(USA) executive presbyter for Shenango Presbytery in Western Pennsylvania.

The shift away from international missions dates back to the mid-20th century. Denominations like the PC(USA) and the Episcopal Church have grappled with missionaries’ associations with colonialism and with a broader “uncertainty in mainline settings for how to talk about evangelism and how evangelism relates to mission more broadly and social justice specifically,” said Scott Hagley, who teaches world mission and evangelism at Pittsburgh Theological Seminary.

As recently as 2010, Presbyterian World Mission supported 200 mission coworkers. In 2025, that number was down to 60, with 54 laid off in February.

By comparison, the Presbyterian Church in America’s foreign mission agency says it trains and serves 509 long-term missionaries. World Outreach, the foreign mission organization associated with the Evangelical Presbyterian Church, had 141 missionaries and co-op partners in 2021. Unlike the missionaries with Presbyterian World Mission, who were paid by the PC(USA), missionaries with these organizations raise their own funds.

With a few exceptions, such as the Southern Baptist Convention’s International Mission Board—which supports around 3,500 missionaries—denominational missions agencies are working on a smaller scale, with many missionaries raising their own funds and partnering with parachurch missions agencies instead.

Several mainline missions agencies have restructured or made cuts, wrote Jeff Walton with the Institute on Religion and Democracy.

According to Walton, the PC(USA)’s annual giving toward supporting missionaries peaked at $16 million in 2000 and fell to about $6 million by 2023. Denominational leaders say financial considerations were part of the decision to close but not the only factor.

The changes are the result of “two decades of listening to global partners across varied settings and context,” they wrote, and “the reality that more and more global partners are sending missionaries to the U.S. and have diaspora communities in our midst.”

Since the early 2000s, Dawson and fellow Presbyterians suspected the denomination would get out of international missions.

Frontier Fellowship and The Outreach Foundation, two other Presbyterian missions organizations, teamed up in 2006 to launch The Antioch Partners; the venture was meant to create another avenue for supporting Presbyterians on the mission field, Dawson said, “when it became clear the denomination was going to send fewer and fewer missionaries.”

Individual PC(USA) churches have also developed their own relationships with missionaries. In Washington, Bellevue Presbyterian (BelPres) Church belongs to a group of evangelical PC(USA) churches called The Fellowship Community and supports 9 missionaries and 15 ministries across the Americas, Africa, and Asia.

Richard Leatherberry, mission pastor at BelPres, said Presbyterian World Mission hadn’t “been a good fit for the focus areas we believe God has been calling our church to.”

Presbyterian World Mission staff have not always shared the PC(USA)’s progressive social stances. When the denomination approved same-sex marriage in 2014, Hunter Farrell, then-director of Presbyterian World Mission, said to “expect a significant decrease in the number of its global mission partners.”

In response to the March layoffs, some former mission coworkers signed an open letter to PC(USA) leadership expressing concern that theologically conservative missionaries would take up the work that Presbyterian World Mission had abandoned.

“When progressive Christians, communions, and mission-sending organizations leave a mission field, their absences are inevitably and invariably filled with voices, personnel, and mission partners who view Jesus and his ministry differently, in less inclusive and liberating ways,” the letter states. “Specifically, this impacts work with women and the ordination of women, with people in the queer community, and with communities on the margins.”

Some theologians see Presbyterian World Mission’s closure as the logical conclusion when a denomination embraces liberalism. More than 100 years ago, Presbyterian theologian J. Gresham Machen warned that liberal Presbyterians were using the same terminology as conservatives but with different meanings.

“History has proven Machen a prophet,” wrote Nathan Finn, professor of faith and culture and director of the Institute for Faith and Culture at North Greenville University. He notes that in 1983, the PC(USA) had over 3.1 million members. Today, membership is less than 1.1 million.

“Theological liberalism is incompatible with authentic Christianity. When churches or denominations begin to adjust to the spirit of the age, they inevitably deny the faith that was once and for all delivered to the saints (Jude 3).”

At the New Wilmington Mission Conference, missionaries will regroup and ask where Lord might be pointing them next. Dawson believes “healthy missiology recognizes that foreign mission is always done by congregations. Denominations help to foster it.”

Though the PC(USA) has “abdicated that responsibility,” Dawson said, the ministry will not stop. Presbyterians will find new ways to commit to it.

- More from Megan Fowler

News

Southern Baptist Membership Lowest in 50 Years

Kate Shellnutt

Leaders celebrate a quarter-million baptisms in 2024, the most since before the pandemic.

Sophie Spree / Unsplash

The Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) continued its 18-year membership skid last year, while churches in the country’s largest denomination saw bigger crowds at Sunday services and small groups as well as more believers proclaim their faith through baptism.

Once again, SBC’s Annual Church Profile, released on Wednesday, brings mixed news. As people continue to leave the church and leaders clear their rolls of lapsed members, fewer Americans belonged to Southern Baptist congregations in 2024 than any time over the past half century.

Yet, denominational leaders are celebrating a solid year for their namesake measure: baptisms. SBC churches baptized over a quarter-million people last year, up 10 percent from the year before.

“I’m incredibly encouraged that baptisms across the SBC are at their highest point since before 2019,” said Vance Pitman, founding pastor of Hope Church in Las Vegas and president of the SBC’s Send Network, who cited a corresponding increase in North American church planting. “While membership numbers certainly matter, we’re seeing a meaningful shift as more churches engage their communities with the gospel.”

According to the report, it’s the first time since the late 1980s and early 1990s that the convention saw baptisms grow four years straight.

“Not only have baptisms climbed out of pandemic levels, but the 2024 numbers also topped the last pre-pandemic year—2019,” wrote Lifeway Research, which compiles the figures based on reports from around 70 percent of SBC churches. “Southern Baptist churches also added 173,156 other new members, which is similar to pre-pandemic numbers.”

Baptisms grew the most in states outside the South, spiking in Wyoming, Arizona, New York, and Indiana, in some places growing by over 50 percent between 2023 and 2024. The highest baptism totals came out of Southern Baptist strongholds: Georgia, Florida, and Texas each reported at least 25,000 baptisms at churches across the state, according to the report.

SBC churches averaged 4.3 million in weekly attendance and 2.5 million in small group Bible studies, both up around 6 percent last year—among the highest annual increases since the 1990s. The report said that much of the growth comes as churches participation rebounds after drops during the pandemic.

But the total membership numbers still are still ticking down, as they have every year since 2006.

Overall, the SBC fell to 12.7 million members in 2024, its lowest since 1974. The denomination has lost more members in the 4 years since the start of the pandemic—1.8 million—than the 13 years before that, down from its peak of 16.3 million.

“The largest portion of membership declines come from churches acknowledging that certain members are gone for good and removing their names. Other drops come from churches that close or leave the Convention,” said Scott McConnell, executive director of Lifeway Research. “Newcomers to the entrances of churches definitely help, but membership will continue to decline as long as the exits remain active.”

More Americans are leaving churches and opting not to affiliate with a religious tradition—causing declines across Protestant denominations and networks. Last year, religious nones reached 28 percent of the population, outnumbering evangelicals.

The latest national figures show that Christianity’s decline in the US has slowed and may level off, with many evangelists, apologists, and pastors—including in the SBC—hopefully claiming an opportunity for revival.

“As Southern Baptists stay focused on the gospel and are faithful to share it, I know we will see God work and these numbers will continue to rise,” said Kevin Ezell, president of the SBC’s North American Mission Board.

The report comes several weeks ahead of the SBC’s annual meeting, slated for June in Dallas, where Southern Baptists will grapple with the cost of its abuse investigation and consider restating its position on women in ministry.

The SBC includes 46,876 congregations, down 30 from 2023. The loss includes churches that closed or no longer affiliate with the convention. In 2024, the SBC deemed four churches not “in friendly cooperation” due to women in leadership, lapsed giving, and mishandling sexual abuse.

- More from Kate Shellnutt

Theology

Hellfire-and-Brimstone Empathy

Russell Moore

Columnist

How the demonization of empathy will lead to a church that neglects repentance and coddles sin.

King David being confronted by Nathan.

Illustration by Christianity Today / Source Images: Getty

This piece was adapted from Russell Moore’s newsletter. Subscribe he re.

If empathy is a sin, most of those saying so don’t seem to have been tempted beyond their ability to bear it.

That’s one reason I’m not too worried about the latest rhetoric of empathy as the great danger to the church and the world, mostly from those who previously told us that danger was yoga, or yoga pants, or Harry Potter, or hip-hop.

Plus, this rhetoric fails the Screwtape test. “I’m with the Devil and I’m here to recruit you” is not the kind of language that works except with those already committed to the bit. The really dangerous stuff tries to be a little subtler.

Even so, perhaps I should not be so dismissive. We live in crazy times, after all, and we cannot count on biblical literacy when discourse is shaped not by Athens or Jerusalem but by Silicon Valley. And the memes and vibes are definitely against empathy.

“The fundamental weakness of Western civilization is empathy,” Elon Musk told podcaster Joe Rogan. “The empathy exploit. They’re exploiting a bug in Western civilization, which is the empathy response.”

For a certain kind of very-online young man, this sort of language seems strong and aggressive and full of meaning—even if he doesn’t recognize that he is buying into the pagan critique of, well, Jesus Christ.

The problem is not with the aspiring theocrats who parrot this kind of thing but with those who empower them by minimizing what seems unfashionable in order to seem “strong” enough not to be called a liberal.

The ironic danger is that an anti-empathy religion becomes—and very quickly so—a sin-coddling religion the like of which the old religious liberals could only dream.

Empathy is not a biblical term. It refers specifically not just to compassion for others (though it certainly includes that) but to a specific aspect of that compassion: the process of seeking to understand a person through imagination.

What most people mean by empathy is not the compassion itself but the ability to see the need for compassion in the first place—to imagine not just the propositions a person holds or the actions they carry out but what it would be like to be in their situation.

Intimacy is not a biblical term either, but it aims at something the Bible does describe. When we call out sexual immorality and refer to it as “intimacy,” for example, we are not saying that intimacy itself is a sin. We are saying that sinning sexually is a fake intimacy—something altogether different from what Ephesians 5 or Song of Solomon describes.

Can some justify sin under the professed rubric of “empathy,” saying that to understand something is to excuse it? Of course—they do the same for explicitly biblical virtues like love and patience and mercy.

Flannery O’Connor warned that a certain kind of “tenderness” ends logically in terror, in “forced labor camps and in the fumes of the gas chamber.” When does this happen? “When tenderness is detached from the source of tenderness,” she wrote. This is precisely what Jesus warned the Pharisees: When obedience to Scripture is detached from the actual Scriptures, the end result is disobedience (Matt. 23:23–25).

Some Christians recognize that not everything that goes under the name of empathy is, in fact, empathetic. But the real problem is that some of them seek to ask the same question the lawyer once asked Jesus: “Who is my neighbor?” And they often ask for the same reason—to justify cruelty or neglect toward another (Luke 10:29, ESV throughout).

Behind the rejection of empathy is a problem with the mechanism of empathy: imagination. This is how the anti-empathy argument ends up not just coddling the sins of those who wish to justify themselves but also evaporating the very way the Bible teaches us to recognize sin at all, whether in others or in ourselves.

When David killed Uriah after taking Uriah’s wife into his bed, the prophet Nathan confronted the king with a story. The story—that of a rich man who took his poor neighbor’s only ewe lamb—put David empathetically into someone else’s story. He could imagine what it would be like to be the robbed peasant, even down to Nathan’s evocation of the way the lamb ate from the poor man’s cup and grew up with his children.

Nathan knew that accusing David straight-on with the facts of his sin would be impeded by the king’s intellectual self-justifications. To get David to see his sin, Nathan had to prompt David to feel it, to kindle the king’s anger against the injustice by having him identify with the one sinned against (2 Sam. 12:1–5).

Upon ascending to the throne, David’s son Solomon asked God for wisdom. This was not a request for algorithmic knowledge or algebraic expertise. Solomon specifically asked to be able “to govern your people, that I may discern between good and evil” (1 Kings 3:9).

Scripture describes Solomon displaying this wisdom in judging a dispute with empathy. Two women came before Solomon, with one accusing the other of having stolen her baby after she accidentally smothered her own child in the night. Wise Solomon suggested that the baby be cut in two.

Solomon knew human nature well enough, in his God-given wisdom, to be able to imagine the perspective of a grief-stricken mother—who would rather lose her child to another than to allow the baby to be killed (1 Kings 3:27).

A church severed from empathy is a church lacking the compassion of Jesus, but it is also a church unable to call people to repentance of sin.

The lawyer questioning Jesus believed himself to be in the right—loving God and his neighbor as himself—but only in the abstract. Jesus put aside the abstractions and put the man imaginatively in the flow of a story, where he had to visualize a specific scenario.

Jesus forced him to sense the callousness of the priest and the Levite who left the beaten man on the road, to feel the compassion with which the Samaritan saw the wounded man, to move mentally through the specific acts of generosity the Samaritan showed. Then Jesus asked him, “Which of these three, do you think, proved to be a neighbor to the man who fell among the robbers?” (Luke 10:36).

Jesus did this all the time with his parables. He evoked the sense of rejoicing one might feel when recovering a lost coin or a lost sheep or discovering a hidden treasure in a field. He prompted people’s imagination to feel the outrage of a worker finding out he is paid the same for working all day as one who came along at the end.

The parables were not just “illustrations” of abstractions. They required people to have “ears to hear and eyes to see” in order to understand them (Mark 4:10–13).

It is one thing for me to agree that I should forgive. It’s another for me to listen to a story where I feel the perturbation of the older brother who sees a party thrown for the one who wrecked the family—only to then see that that feeling, as justified as it seems, is the very problem the kingdom of God confronts (Luke 15:11–32).

Without empathy, the problem is not simply that we will deny the humanity and created goodness of other people (although that’s certainly a problem). It’s that we will have a superficial view of sin—seeing it in the cartoonish terms of a person who sets out to be a villain. Jesus, though, said that a time is coming when whoever kills his disciples “will think he is offering service to God” (John 16:2).

Anyone who has ever had to confront someone leaving a spouse for someone else knows that this requires empathy—not to excuse the sin, but just the opposite. It requires knowing human nature and the situation well enough to imagine all the stories the sinning spouse is telling themselves in order to believe that what they are doing is okay.

Preaching a call to repentance requires having the kind of empathy that can imagine all the strategies a person might use to evade the call to repentance—even if they are the opposite strategies the preacher himself might use. A preacher confronting drunkenness had better be able to imagine what it would feel like to say, “I deserve this bottle because I’ve worked hard this week,” as well as what it would feel like to say, “I am so terrible a person that I’ll never be anything other than a drunk.”

It’s hard to imagine a biblical figure less empathetic than John the Baptist, who cried out, “You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come!” But it’s precisely through empathy that he was able to do this. He had already imagined how these religious people would tell a story that exempted them from condemnation: “And do not presume to say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our father,’ for I tell you, God is able from these stones to raise up children for Abraham” (Matt. 3:9).

Without empathy, it’s easy to see people as categories, as types, as worldview-holding rationalists who can repent by trading in one set of propositions for another. It’s hard to get a more “progressive” and less biblical view of humanity than that.

Data doesn’t sin. People do. A religion without empathy doesn’t only lead to forgoing the sweetness and light of the gospel. It rids itself of the hellfire and brimstone too. People used to call that “liberal.”

Russell Moore is the editor in chief at Christianity Today and leads its Public Theology Project.

News

How Evangelicals in 7 Countries View Trump’s First 100 Days

Compiled by CT editors

Christian leaders who were initially hopeful about the US president are now feeling conflicted.

Illustration by Mallory Rentsch Tlapek / Source Images: Getty

Back in November, Christianity Today spoke with 26 evangelical leaders around the world to gauge their reactions to the US electing Donald Trump for a second presidential term. At the time, the responses ranged from jubilant to indifferent to despairing.

During Trump’s first 100 days in office, he has made monumental changes impacting not only American citizens but also people around the world, including cutting international aid, levying tariffs, ending refugee resettlement, and deporting undocumented immigrants.

To see how Trump’s policies have affected Christians globally and whether his first 100 days have changed Christians’ minds about him, CT reached out to seven Christian leaders from around the world—including Mexico, Nigeria, Russia, and Nepal—who initially felt hopeful about Trump. CT has edited responses for clarity and length.

Mexico

Rubén Enriquez Navarrete, secretary, Confraternidad Evangélica de Mexico

In Mexico, Christians have mixed feelings about Trump’s presidency. For the more conservative and the upper middle class, the sentiment has been positive because they believe he is sticking to biblical principles. For the middle and lower classes, it has been negative due to his actions against migrants. This has led to doubts over whether Trump is a Christian, as he seems more focused on nationalism than spirituality.

Kenya

Nelson Makanda, president, Africa International University

It’s been a mixed bag of fruits.

Positively, Christians in Kenya are relieved that the push to align our education, health, and cultural sectors with Western liberal thought and practices has greatly eased. There are no longer threats that groups would lose US funding or visas if they don’t support “inclusion.” Our governments have been liberated to be culturally African and Christian.

Negatively, the withdrawal of USAID funding has affected many health care, education, poverty alleviation, and governance programs that were helping our people. Most Christians remain hopeful the US will continue to support grassroots social programs so that the gospel is not maligned due to the negative impact created by the withdrawal of state funding. America’s president should remember the parable of the Good Samaritan.

Nigeria

James Akinyele, secretary general, Nigeria Evangelical Fellowship

Trump’s administration has had a mixed impact on Nigeria. His clear stance against LGBTQ ideology resonates well with many Christians, as it aligns with our cultural and biblical values at a time when there is international pressure on our nation to adopt pro-LGBTQ policies. His strict immigration policies, however, have created concerns among those with ties to the US, who are fearful that their family members might be deported. But others believe these policies may combat jihadists and are hopeful this pressure will extend to Nigeria and other African regions. The cuts to USAID, meanwhile, have caused many Christian employees to lose their jobs or suffer salary reductions.

Bangladesh

Philip Adhikary, chairman, National Christian Fellowship of Bangladesh

Trump’s presidency has had a positive impact on Christians in Bangladesh, as he has consistently emphasized the importance of religious freedom worldwide, encouraging Bangladesh to take greater steps toward acknowledging and respecting minority communities.

In April, the general secretary of the World Council of Churches (WCC) and several national Christian leaders (including me) met with Chief Adviser Muhammad Yunus to express the WCC’s support of Bangladesh’s interim government. The meeting affirmed the increasingly positive environment for Christians in Bangladesh.

Although Trump initially placed a 37 percent reciprocal tariff on Bangladesh in early April, he then granted a 90-day pause after Yunus appealed to the US president. This provided economic relief for Bangladesh’s garment industry, where many Christians are employed.

Nepal

Sher Bahadur A. C., general secretary, National Churches Fellowship of Nepal

At first, many Nepalese Christians were excited about Trump’s presidency, hoping he would support Christians worldwide. His election felt like a hopeful moment. However, his strict immigration policies, especially the deportation of undocumented people, created fear and disappointment even among those who weren’t directly affected.

His harsh handling of international issues, like the war in Ukraine and the Israel-Palestine conflict, caused many to feel that he only cared about America, not the global Christian community. Nepalese churches began praying for him to lead with wisdom and compassion. Some believe he should reflect Christ’s love more clearly in his leadership.

While people still respect him as a Christian, they feel he hasn’t spoken up for suffering Christians in countries like Nepal.

Sri Lanka

Noel Abelasan, national director, Every Home Crusade

Evangelicals in Sri Lanka are grateful for Trump’s bold stand on matters of faith and religious freedom. However, we are troubled by some recent policy decisions, particularly the imposition of new tariffs that directly affect the garment industry in Sri Lanka. These tariffs risk increasing unemployment among thousands of vulnerable women who depend on this industry for survival.

Despite being misunderstood or even ridiculed by some nonevangelical segments of the church, we continue to honor and thank God for President Trump’s leadership, especially his interest in protecting Christian values globally. At the same time, we appeal to the president and his advisers to consider the real impact of his policies on developing nations and to act with justice, mercy, and compassion—values at the heart of the gospel that he has often defended.

Russia

Vitaly Vlasenko, general secretary, Russian Evangelical Alliance

In terms of domestic policy, Russian Christians look positively on Trump’s decision to change the US’s gender policy and his desire to ban transgender people from the army. We also appreciate his attention to religious freedom issues, including appointing a former Southern Baptist pastor as ambassador-at-large and addressing anti-Christian bias in the State Department.

But we especially note his resumption of bilateral dialogue with Russia, which we hope will lead to a reduction of international tension and resolution of the military conflict in Ukraine. We pray that it will end soon. Trump commands significant power, but only God can unite people. What is impossible for people is possible with God.

Reporting by Angela Lu Fulton, Franco Iacomini, and Jayson Casper.

- More from CT editors

Inkwell

The Monastery of the Midwest

Young Woong Yi

Creative lifeblood from the heartlands

Hanging Ears of Corn by Alfred Montgomery

“Were they sent to hell?”
“Worse… Wisconsin. For the entire span of human history.” — Dogma (1999)

“I BELIEVE THE WORLD will be saved by beauty,” says Prince Lev in Fyodor Dostoevsky’s The Idiot. Though I believe this statement is true, I find myself implicitly asking the follow-up question: which kind of beauty?

Let’s face it—people enjoy dunking on the Midwest. While it’s known by some as “flyover country,” to others, it’s “the heartland of America.” Name your gripe, and I’ve probably heard it come from the mouth of a friend or family member—it’s too slow, too boring, the winters are too long, there are too many mosquitoes.

Between its paradoxical nicknames, it’s clear that people don’t quite know what to make of the Midwest. But I can’t help but argue that this land contains a unique kind of beauty, and I wonder what would happen if we worked to become a true creative heartland as well. While we literally exist in the middle, we often feel like we’re on the margins in a cultural and aesthetic sense. However, people on the edges see what those in the center cannot—margins can birth movements.

I’VE LIVED MY ENTIRE LIFE in the Midwest, specifically Michigan. Through the long years, I’ve come to learn that there is much art that has sparked massive creative energy which finds its origins here.

In the midst of Detroit’s racial segregation and economic hardship, Berry Gordy founded Motown Records in his humble home off of West Grand Boulevard. This centre of Motown music was pivotal to paving a way for artists like The Supremes, Stevie Wonder and Marvin Gaye. Their inspiration was local, and their aesthetic communal. Marvin Gaye, for example, reveals the harsh realities of his people as he sings in “Inner City Blues:”

“Rockets, moon shots; Spend it on the have-nots;
Money, we make it; Before we see it, you take it.”

Although he was expressing the raw frustration that African-Americans felt in the midst of economic disparity in 1970s Detroit, the lyrics transcend time and space. From the inner cities of Detroit or the plains of the Dakotas, the diverse landscapes we call home undeniably shape the stories we tell. It’s this rooted, reflective kind of art—well-curated, slowly made, rich with narrative—that has long emerged from the Midwest and continues to rise. And it’s this kind of art that quietly adds beauty to the world and offers a centre to hold, helping us to keep from becoming disfigured, malformed, and empty.

FOLLOWING THE DECLINE of Rome in the 5th century, and along with the steady growth of Christianity, the denizens of local monasteries found that small towns and settlements would eventually pop up nearby, leading to the progressive formation of full, bustling cities with the monastery smack dab in the centre. One of the most notable creative endeavors born out of monasticism was the architecture itself, with their buildings displaying the unique styles of specific traditions, the order they belonged to, and the era they were built in. Jean Sorabella from the MET Museum in New York writes:

“In the early twelfth century… the great Benedictine abbey at Cluny constructed a church of astonishing size with imposing exterior towers and lavish interior ornament; the tightly packed buildings that fill a fragmentary frieze suggest the richness of the structure and the way it complemented the spectacular liturgy celebrated there.”

Perhaps the same can be said for the Midwest creative—be it photographer, poet, writer, painter, or musical artist—our art complements “the spectacular liturgy” of our region. What may seem to initially be on the fringes, in the gaps, or deemed “flyover,” eventually becomes centralizing and catalyzing to an entire society.

Don’t get me wrong, I would love for there to be a future for the Midwest where our streets are lined with picturesque European-inspired architecture—I just don’t know how likely that will be. I wonder if what is birthed out of the “Midwest monastery” will not be ornate physical building projects, but rather, a profound and unique shaping of the human heart. As people read our writings, listen to our music, and become entrenched in the visuals of our paintings and artwork, perhaps the contents and posture of a country’s interior world will begin to change—moved over time by the unique spiritual vitality and aesthetic significance of our farmlands, inner cities, and maybe even our ‘burbs.

MY FAMILY IMMIGRATED from South Korea to Detroit in the late 80s, and my mother and I joined them in the early 90s. I grew up in the suburbs, went to college at Michigan State, and felt the urge to one day leave for the “promised land” for many Asian-Americans, otherwise known as California. Unlimited access to Asian restaurants, cheaper airline tickets to the “Motherland,” and 70-degree weather all the time? How could anyone say no to that? But as I finished up my degree, I found myself falling in love with the charm of mid-Michigan and ended up making the decision on my own volition to live in Lansing, Michigan, for eight more years.

If you don’t know mid-Michigan, it’s the perfect microcosm to describe the Midwest. There is a slightly thriving city-center (Lansing), a college town (East Lansing), a ton of cornfields, and small towns ending with “-ville”. Most places are a twenty-minute drive, and to reach anything exciting, you’ll likely pass several acres of farmland. Yet it’s here I spent my formative young adult years, drawn by its quiet, livable rhythms, four distinct seasons, and its underrated beauty.

Our bigger Midwestern cities—Chicago, Detroit, Minneapolis, Indianapolis—are not like New York or Los Angeles. They can never be, nor do they want to be. Why? Because the Midwest is an entirely different creature.

IN THE CHOPPY WATERS of instant-gratification riptides, the Midwest offers something starkly different: a steady, slow, and intentional tide of life. Much like the monasteries of old, where deliberate rhythms created space for devotion to the Lord, the Midwest’s unhurried pace shapes the artistry of its people. If the Midwest is a monastery, then “slow and steady” is our chanted prayer—and the clearly defined seasons our “rule of life.” They guide us towards a richer devotion to our craft and a patience to see our art come to fruition.

There is a rhythm to our creativity and art that tracks with the seasons in a unique way. Here in Michigan, spring attempts to emerge from winter’s grip. It’s mid-April now, but it snowed just a few days ago. The ghost of the Midwest winter haunts us for as long as it can. But even still, give it a week or two and we’ll begin to see flowers blossom. In a few months, the summer heat will blister our skin, enticing us to make weekend plans to cool off in Lake Michigan or Superior. In the latter half of the year, Midwest fashionistas will eagerly take out their capsule wardrobes and layer on the flannel shirts and workwear jackets, while sipping apple cider and eating donuts from their local mill. All to end the year with endless cups of hot chocolate and coffee while hibernating inside our homes, letting our imaginations marinate as we hide from the winter snow until spring arrives again.

THIS SEASONALITY is deeply significant to me. December 13th, 2025 will mark ten years of being in remission after receiving chemotherapy for leukemia back in June of 2013. One of my goals after remission was to write and self-publish a little book about suffering and the meaning of life as I reflect on my cancer journey, releasing it on the ten-year anniversary.

I owe much to the past wintery months—the pause to life that some might consider useless. They’ve given me the room to reflect and finally start writing something deeply personal. I’m not saying it could not have happened anywhere else—but there’s something almost magical about writing through your deepest longings in the middle of a Midwest snowstorm, with a freshly brewed cup of coffee. If you haven’t experienced that yet, you should.

In a culture sucked dry by speed and noise, the Midwest moves according to a natural, seasonal pulse. I believe the world needs what we have to offer—life and art that is slower, more intentional, stubbornly alive. Beauty in the Midwest has blossomed in the past, is currently blooming again, and has much fruit to yield. And I, for one, am proud to be part of this body at work. Who knows—one day the specific beauty that comes from the Midwest might actually save the world.

Young Woong Yi is a pastor, currently planting Kindred Church in Metro-Detroit. He holds a M.Div in Spiritual Formation and Discipleship from Moody Theological Seminary. You can read more of his work at becomingdust.com.

- More from Young Woong Yi

Books

Review

What Christians Hold in Common with ‘Aspirational’ Conservatives

Daniel Bennett

John Wilsey defends a “prepolitical” tradition that transcends today’s partisan divides.

Illustration by Christianity Today / Source Images: Unsplash

There are few terms more prone to misinterpretation today than religious freedom and conservative. Religious freedom could mean constitutional safeguards for practicing sincerely held religious beliefs, or it might mean a veiled justification for discriminating against those with whom you disagree. Similarly, conservative might refer to a centuries-long political project rooted in limited government, individual rights, and free markets, or it could be whatever the current president of the United States declares on his social media platform this morning.

Historian John Wilsey’s latest book, Religious Freedom: A Conservative Primer, is important for a couple of reasons. In close to 250 pages, Wilsey clarifies the meaning of both terms as we encounter them in today’s contested political environment. But more than this, Wilsey convincingly argues that the conservative tradition—one that predates today’s political debates and partisan squabbles—is best suited to sustain and support a robust conception of religious freedom.

Despite what the book’s title might suggest, this is not a book primarily about religious freedom. Instead, Wilsey spends the bulk of his time outlining and arguing in favor of conservatism. Religious freedom looms large over Wilsey’s book, however, mainly because he believes it best captures the fundamentals of the American experiment. On a popular level, the concept encompasses individual rights and practice. But more importantly, Wilsey argues, religious freedom is the end result of recognizing what he calls “America’s two spirits”—liberty and religion.

Following an introduction, Wilsey’s book is organized into three parts. The first, comprised of just one chapter, is a sweeping attempt to define and characterize conservatism. Wilsey is largely successful in this, setting the contours for the remainder of his book while also introducing characters central to his reading of this American political tradition. He usefully highlights diverse elements of the conservative tradition, ranging from libertarianism and Southern conservativism to fusionism (which stresses the compatibility of market liberties and traditional morals) and paleoconservatism (which promotes nationalism as a brake on global trade and foreign intervention). He also distinguishes between measured and extreme conservatism, the arguing that the latter is mainly responsible for motivating today’s Republican Party.

But instead of getting bogged down evaluating these different factions, Wilsey instead quickly outs himself as an aspirational conservative, committed to “conserving the harmony between the spirit of liberty and the spirit of religion for the long haul.” Aspirational conservatism is in line with measured conservatism, with its emphasis on “the true, the good, and the beautiful.” As Wilsey sees it, this mindset is driving “a new conservative inspiration among Americans, and especially young Americans.”

The second part of Religious Freedom is the most expansive, arguing for a robust conservatism rooted in various elements. Wilsey implores today’s conservatives to cultivate a “rousing imagination”—one that rejects the temporal pull of politics in favor of a larger and lasting framework. He calls conservatives to cultivate a love of nation over a strident nationalism, retaining an affection for American ideals even as the demographic composition of America changes. America’s two spirits can only coexist, he writes, “in a nation that is, first, at peace with itself, and second, grateful for the trust handed down to it by earlier generations.”

Wilsey ties conservatism to the concept of ordered liberty, which keeps individual rights within guardrails to keep people from the excesses of our sinful nature. Unfettered liberty leads to licentiousness, he writes, which breeds confusion about what the American story truly is. He also reflects on the relationships between conservatism and both history and religion. “Conservatives conserve tradition,” he reminds readers, and aspirational conservatives can look to history for beliefs and practices worth conserving. Moreover, drawing on the observations of Alexis de Tocqueville, Wilsey credits religion with informing and binding together the values—including those grounded in the conservative tradition—of the American people.

In the third and final part of Religious Freedom—which, like the first part, is just one chapter—Wilsey encourages readers to (re)discover the will to safeguard America’s two spirits. It is religion, he writes, that “serve[s] as democracy’s greatest advantage” because of its tendency to reorient people’s attention away from themselves and toward the lasting, the transcendent. Conservatives, Wilsey concludes, are positioned to do this well, given their belief that “we turn our backs on the past and on tradition at our peril.”

Wilsey is an effective messenger for this subject. Avoiding a polemic tone, he approaches his work with evenness and charity. It would have been easy for Wilsey to use this book as a cudgel against progressivism and its misunderstanding of the American story. Just as easily, he could have used it to attack the recent right-wing habit of embracing a conservative-flavored identity politics. And while Wilsey critiques these frameworks, he does so only to offer something better. His book seeks to build, not tear down.

Several key actors in the conservative tradition are integral to the case Wilsey builds for defending it. Not surprisingly, we get appearances from Russell Kirk, Edmund Burke, and Tocqueville, three men whose contributions to modern conservativism are well documented. But we also get appearances from lesser-known figures like Peter Viereck, portrayed in the book as a counterpoint to leading postwar figures like Kirk. Wilsey’s goal is twofold: introducing readers to a wide collection of conservative thinkers and then demonstrating the breadth and diversity this framework has to offer.

Wilsey is also an excellent writer, and this book will appeal widely to students, scholars, and ordinary readers. For me, his talent shines brightest when telling stories. His story of the death and multiple burials of Confederate officer A. P. Hill, told over just a few pages, is captivating. His account of the deaths of John Adams and Thomas Jefferson on the 50th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence emphasizes their influence on the past, present, and future of the American story. For Wilsey, today’s Americans are the inheritors of a grand experiment, which obliges its stewards to respectfully consider their history (without being stifled by it).

Still, Religious Freedom is not without its flaws. Most obviously, the book’s title is, at best, misleading. The book is not about religious freedom, per se. It does not make a positive argument for religious freedom in the manner of Andrew Walker in Liberty for All or Luke Goodrich in Free to Believe.Instead, Religious Freedom is an introduction to—and a vision for—conservatism, arguing that this tradition is best equipped to sustain the legacy and promise of America. Readers hoping for something else, therefore, could be disappointed.

Additionally, though Wilsey is a wordsmith, his penchant for storytelling sometimes takes readers down unexpected pathways. The book is more than a quarter complete before Wilsey moves beyond introductory content. One of his chapters spends far too many pages connecting the work of contemporary Christian nationalist Stephen Wolfe to the 19th-century German literary critic Georg Hegel. This book is at its best when explaining and defending the merits of the conservative tradition, which makes its occasional shifts in focus even more noticeable.

Wilsey is a conservative, but he is also (indeed, first) a Christian. It should come as no surprise that his defense of conservatism is therefore grounded—subtly at times and explicitly at others—in the Christian faith. Christians, Wilsey argues, are well suited to act in defense of the conservative tradition, due in large part to a shared commitment to the God-given dignity of every human being. Moreover, just as conservatives are prone to worry about the excesses of state power, Christians are called to resist putting our trust “in princes, in human beings, who cannot save” (Ps. 146:3). They respect the government but fear only God (1 Pet. 2:17).

Because of how Wilsey defines conservatism, he does not argue that Christians must defend today’s Republican Party to advance the broader conservative project. Indeed, readers might sense that Wilsey wrote this book precisely to protest how the GOP has co-opted and abused conservatism in recent years. Christians, he might say, have a chance to defend the conservative tradition from the impulses of the secular left—but also from the excesses of the post-Christian right.

Defending the conservative tradition does not make one a Christian. But for Wilsey, one of the most important things today’s Christians can do—outside of boldly claiming the gospel, of course—is to “stand athwart history” in support of a robust and rooted framework for our political and social lives. Christian faith, though adaptable to different cultures and social challenges, is grounded in tradition. Our doctrines, customs, and worship practices rest atop nearly two millennia of shared experience. Conservatism, as Wilsey defines it, is not the only framework through which Christians should see the world, but its reverence for the past runs parallel with basic Christian intuitions.

The conservative project in today’s America is at an important crossroads. The traits typically aligned with historical conservativism—traits Wilsey highlights—are not always greatly valued in our current political and cultural environment. Wilsey’s book is a call for readers to remember and rejuvenate a conservative tradition transcending and reforming contemporary politics.

Indeed, as Wilsey frames it, this tradition is prepolitical. In other words, it describes a temperament that stands outside any allegiance to this or that party or program. For Christians of any political stripe, it reminds us that what is worth conserving is not always popular, and what is popular is not always worth conserving. Our principal work, after all, is not of this world.

Daniel Bennett is a professor of political science at John Brown University, where he also directs the Center for Faith and Flourishing. He is the author of Uneasy Citizenship: Embracing the Tension in Faith and Politics.

- More from Daniel Bennett

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Introducing the church transfer portal

Proactive pastoral strategies for strengthening member commitment

1. Cultivate meaningful church membership in order to mitigate the church transfer dynamic.

2. Offer a compelling vision of servant-hearted discipleship.

3. Instruct your people how to leave a church well.

4. Build strong relationships with other local pastors.

Responsive pastoral strategies for handling church transfers well

1. Express genuine affection for other pastors and churches.

2. Ask newcomers why and how they left.

3. Connect with the newcomer’s previous pastor.

4. Be gracious to those leaving your church.

Shepherding souls, not managing rosters

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