This edition is sponsored by The Pour Over
Today’s Briefing
Even as the Majority World goes from a mission field to a mission force, Westerners risk overstepping in cross-cultural partnerships.
What pastors and public servants can learn from the prophet Ezekiel.
The black evangelical leader Bill Pannell, who pushed white evangelicals to confront their cultural captivity to racism, has died at 95.
The Bulletin is launching a new miniseries looking at how Christians vote. On the first episode, lawyer and legal ethics professor Matt Martens explains why he’s casting his ballot for the American Solidarity Party.
Behind the Story
From Kate Shellnutt: I sometimes hear people refer to “secular Europe” or “godless Europe.” Though the declining levels of belief and church membership show no signs of slowing, especially in the UK and Western Europe, the broad characterization can flatten our understanding of the continent.
Even in places where evangelicals are a shrinking minority, the landscape can look very different from one country to the next. It’s not just the religious climate but also politics, population, and economics that can shape missions in European nations.
Take religion scholar and journalist Ken Chitwood’s recent series for CT. Ken lives in Germany and serves as our European correspondent. His latest articles cover a range of projects, “from a jazz church in Berlin to a struggling satellite in the world’s richest country.”
“Where some see ambition as key to evangelism, others experiment with subtler ways of connecting to people who don’t think they need God. This is my long-form story from Liechtenstein, Switzerland, Austria and right in my own backyard in Eisenach,” he wrote on X. “And then to Berlin, where an Australian couple is trying out a jazz church in one of the city’s cosmopolitan, working-class neighborhoods. For Donald Miller fans out there, I call this one ‘Berlin Like Jazz.’
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This article appears in the November/December issue of Christianity Today. Journey with us to Mbili, Tanzania, where a single solar-powered pump is turning scarcity into abundance. You can be part…
In Other News
- Debate over pastoral succession at a historic Black church in Harlem continues, now with a lawsuit.
- The US Supreme Court justices did not seem to have a clear position in arguments about the execution of Oklahoman Richard Glossip. The case has changed some conservative evangelical minds in Oklahoma on the death penalty.
- The University of Nottingham in the UK added a trigger warning for a class reading Geoffrey Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales, citing incidences of violence, mental illness, and “expressions of Christian faith.”
Today in Christian History
October 16, 1311: The Council of Vienne opens to decide if the Templars, a military order sworn to protect Christian pilgrims, are heretical and too wealthy. Pope Clement V decided to suppress the order. Its leader was burned and members’ possessions taken by the church. That decision was adamantly derided by the poet Dante and by later historians (see issue 40: The Crusades).
in case you missed it
The needle moves quickly, back and forth and back again, making a pattern I find almost intelligible. It’s an Instagram video in the genre that has come to fascinate me:…
As the sirens wailed on October 1, Nirit Bar-David took refuge in her familiar safe room. Iran had just launched another 180 missiles at Israel, and she had about a…
I first met the late William Pannell in 1993 in a hallway of Christianity Today. I was in my early 20s, just a year removed from graduating college. Dr. Pannell…
The goal is audacious. But as far as James Davis, founder of the Global Church Network, is concerned, Christians need deadlines. Otherwise, they will never do what they need to…
in the magazine
Our September/October issue explores themes in spiritual formation and uncovers what’s really discipling us. Bonnie Kristian argues that the biblical vision for the institutions that form us is renewal, not replacement—even when they fail us. Mike Cosper examines what fuels political fervor around Donald Trump and assesses the ways people have understood and misunderstood the movement. Harvest Prude reports on how partisan distrust has turned the electoral process into a minefield and how those on the frontlines—election officials and volunteers—are motivated by their faith as they work. Read about Christian renewal in intellectual spaces and the “yearners”—those who find themselves in the borderlands between faith and disbelief. And find out how God is moving among his kingdom in Europe, as well as what our advice columnists say about budget-conscious fellowship meals, a kid in Sunday school who hits, and a dating app dilemma.
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