August 1, 2025

Today’s Briefing

While Russia attacks, a Ukrainian youth group learns to pray through the stress and fear.

Many American Christians blow shofars, circumcise babies, and celebrate Seder meals. The apostles advised against it.

A Native American Christian turns to prayer after watching Sugarcane, the Oscar-nominated documentary on the traumatic legacy of the residential school system.

Few things can humble a young pastor quite like a letter from a seasoned church member.

Behind the Story

Some of us doodle while our pastors preach on Sunday. Illustrator John Hendrix’s sermon drawings turned into a whole feature in CT magazine years ago. Hendrix’s work has continued to appear in CT, including on the cover of our July/August issue on artificial intelligence.

Hendrix shares his inspiration: My images begin with drawing (read: doodles). After many incomprehensible scribbles, I settled on five concepts that I was really interested in drawing—the key to any illustration is to make sure that the concepts you submit to the art directors are actually images you would like to make!

The concept we ended up using for the cover was a version of the old idiom “building the plane while flying it.” It was great fun to take this rather tired phrase and turn it into a visual puzzle where the plane was somehow self-assembling while the passenger was almost totally unaware.

What started as a great thumbnail idea became very challenging once I realized I would have to build all these machines and robotic parts for this plane. I got some visual references to help. The plane itself is a modified Spitfire (I love drawing those planes), and I found some auto-assembly robot parts for some of the various automatic arms.

Once I make the final sketch, then I draw the original art with pen on paper. I color them with a combination of fluid acrylics (which work like watercolor), and I finish them with digital coloring in Adobe Photoshop.

In Other News

Southern Baptist pastors urge the Trump administration to crack down on abortion pills sent by mail.
Spurgeon’s College, one of the oldest theological schools in the UK, is closing. There are about 30 Bible schools in the UK, and some predict half will shut down in a year or two.
The US Army celebrates 250 years of its Chaplain Corps, which began providing spiritual support to soldiers around the start of the Revolutionary War.

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Today in Christian History

August 4, 1792: By order of revolutionaries, all houses of worship close in France.

ERLC President Steps Down Amid Southern Baptist Discord

Pamphlets with a photo of Brent Leatherwood alongside House Speaker Mike Johnson dotted thousands of gray chairs in the Dallas meeting hall where the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) gathered in…

With Student Visas in Limbo, Chinese Ministries Soldier On

Eugene Ooi was driving toward Pittsburgh’s university district at dusk in June 2009 when a dazzling sunset brought about an epiphany. “I started imagining how many [Chinese] students and scholars…

As Nigerian Health Care Crumbles, Patients Seek Alternatives

When a friend pointed out a white spot in Onjefu Agbo’s eye, he knew he’d have to pay for treatment himself. Barely able to see out of his left eye,…

The Book of Psalms Is the Bible’s ‘Little Bible’

Late in the fourth century, a man named Palladius of Galatia left his home (somewhere in present-day Turkey) and journeyed into the Egyptian desert, intent on meeting the ancient monks…

in the magazine

As developments in artificial intelligence change daily, we’re increasingly asking what makes humanity different from the machines we use. In this issue, Emily Belz introduces us to tech workers on the frontlines of AI development, Harvest Prude explains how algorithms affect Christian courtship, and Miroslav Volf writes on the transhumanist question. Several writers call our attention to the gifts of being human: Haejin and Makoto Fujimura point us to beauty and justice, Kelly Kapic reminds us God’s highest purpose isn’t efficiency, and Jen Pollock Michel writes on the effects of Alzheimer’s . We bring together futurists, theologians, artists, practitioners, and professors to consider how technology shapes us even as we use it.

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