A growing number of young Americans appear to be attending religious services regularly, raising questions about whether the United States could be witnessing the early signs of a religious revival.
However, new research from Pew Research Center suggests that while there are encouraging signs of religious engagement among younger adults, the evidence of a broader resurgence remains inconclusive.
Preparing for Christmas Eve Guests: More Unchurched Guests Than Any Other Day of the Year [Webinar- Thursday, November 12, 2026, 1:00 PM Eastern]
Christmas Eve is one of the greatest opportunities your church has to reach unchurched people. In fact, our consulting and coaching work consistently shows that churches welcome more unchurched guests on Christmas Eve than on any other day of the year.
Is your church ready to make the most of this opportunity?
Join Thom Rainer and Sam Rainer as they share 12 practical ways to prepare your church for Christmas Eve guests. You’ll discover often-overlooked details that can make a lasting impression, common mistakes churches should avoid, and simple ways to turn a first-time visit into a meaningful connection.
Don’t miss this opportunity to prepare your church for one of the most important outreach days of the year! Reserve your spot for this free webinar!
West Virginia Supreme Court blocks lawsuit by 33 churches seeking to leave UMC
The Supreme Court of Appeals of West Virginia has blocked a lawsuit from 33 congregations trying to leave the United Methodist Church.
The West Virginia high court issued its decision on Wednesday in State of West Virginia ex rel. Trustees of the West Virginia Conference of the United Methodist Church, et al. v. the Honorable Mark Wills, Judge of the Circuit Court of Mercer County, Trustees of Madison United Methodist Church, et al.
Also See: State supreme court blocks church-property suitGeorge W. Bush sides with Texas megachurch that voted to leave UMC: report
Former President George W. Bush and former first lady Laura Bush have reportedly sided with their longtime Texas church after it recently voted to leave the United Methodist Church amid a legal dispute with the denomination, with a spokesperson saying the couple participated in the vote.
George Bush, 80, and Laura Bush, 80, who have been members and frequent attendees of Highland Park Methodist Church of Dallas since the 1980s, have recently voiced support for lead pastor the Rev. Matt Tuggle.
Pastors react after Calvary Chapel Costa Mesa says it ordains women pastors
Pastors in the Calvary Chapel movement reacted with public statements opposing Char Brodersen’s announcement that Calvary Chapel Costa Mesa, once the movement's flagship church, ordains women as pastors.
The Calvary Chapel Association (CCA) said through its Heartland Regional Team, which oversees affiliated churches in its region, that it sees no sound biblical basis for ordaining women to serve as elders and pastors and that the practice conflicts with the association’s distinctives.
Supporting families who are raising relatives’ children
When relatives take care of their family’s children, that arrangement is called “kinship care.” Kinship care describes a foster care arrangement that is not always recognized by state systems. Many family members provide care without assistance from child welfare programs. A December 2025 Government Accountability Office report found that for every child in state-supported kinship care, about 18 were outside it.
A Christian presence in every community?
The Church of England has relaunched its website, and it looks good (fortunately with a bit less of that wishy-washy purple). But one thing has not changed: a phrase sitting just under the logo: A Christian presence in every community (or a slight variation of it). It appears in Church Commissioners’ reports, in Synod papers, in press releases, and in almost every argument currently being had about the future of the parish. It sounds unarguable. Who could be against Christian presence?
Bu the phrase is doing a great deal of work, and it is worth asking a few questions of it. Where did it come from? What has it been taken to mean? Does it have any theological content at all—and if so, does that content cohere with what the Church of England actually says about itself in its formularies and its ordinal? And, most importantly, does it point us towards a strategy that might reverse decline—or one that might manage it gracefully?
My contention is that the phrase is a good one, but only if we recover the New Testament answer to the question: what is the presence of God in a community? The answer is not, in the first place, a building, or a PCC (!) or a vicar. It is a people.
I visited the relaunched Church of England website and found it far more difficult to navigate than it had been previously. Personally I also do not think the appearance of the website is an improvement.Christianity Under the Progressive Gaze
It was a dramatic week. Politically speaking, there was a blue tidal wave that swept across the country, returning control of Congress to the Democratic Party. Elections are complicated, and it may be naive to think the wave indicates the public made its decision based on ideology. Rising costs, political dissatisfaction, an extremely unpopular war, and any number of other considerations likely had a lot to do with the outcome. I’m not convinced those elected have been given a mandate to implement Woke 2.0 — but I’m not sure that will stop them from trying to!
What interests me more than politics is the apparent cultural strength and growing respectability of progressive Christianity. In fact, a headline in The Guardian boldly declared: “A progressive understanding of Christianity won in the US elections.” In a society where historic Christian convictions — and I don’t just mean Reformed confessionalism but basic creedal Christianity — is often treated with suspicion, if not hostility, some expressions of “Christianity” seem to be enjoying a rather warm reception.
When God’s Gifts Become Things We Think He Owes Us (Warnings and Solutions)
A theology of gratitude makes room for suffering, loss, disappointment, and the very real limitations of human life. It teaches us to recognize God’s goodness without denying the brokenness of the world around us. Most importantly, it reminds us that our worship is not dependent on our circumstances but on the character of the God who remains faithful amid them.
Counterfeit Providence: Why Christians Must Reject the Conspiratorial Mind
According to Lifeway Research, up to half of US Protestant pastors say they “frequently hear members of their congregation repeating conspiracy theories they have heard.” It is tempting to minimize this problem by dismissing it as a simple intellectual error, which is perhaps concerning, but not anything more significant. In reality, however, conspiratorial thinking pushed to its extremes acts as a spiritual counterfeit to Christianity. It becomes a rival theology, carrying its own doctrine of providence, its own form of gnosis, and a rejection of genuine reason and truth-seeking. The Christian who adopts the conspiratorial mind has not simply gotten some facts wrong, but has begun to worship at a different altar, a broken cistern that can’t hold any water.
An Advanced Case of Syncretism
Lesslie Newbigin (1908–1998), a missionary in India and one of the first bishops of the Church of South India, was one of the most profound theologians of mission during the 20th century. His analysis of the challenges of initiating an authentic encounter between the gospel and late modernity remain prophetic and prescient. In his book The Other Side of 1984, he diagnosed the Western and especially English theology of his day as a “case of advanced syncretism.” His background as a missionary in India made him sensitive to the problem of intellectual and cultural syncretism. In an effort to be relevant to the culture being missionized, the missionary runs the risk of syncretism.
Syncretism is an uncritical assimilation of the gospel to the culture to such a degree that distinctive core Christian claims are relinquished and the gospel presented is not the biblical gospel but the endorsement of a worldview that is in opposition to the gospel. Voodoo, a religious tradition that emerged in Haiti in the 16th century and blended animism and ancestor worship from West Africa with Roman Catholicism, is a classic example. The opposite of syncretism is irrelevancy, that is, the presentation of the gospel in such a way that it cannot reach the culture. One of the clearest examples is using a language that people being evangelized do not understand. However, Newbigin recognized that as the established churches of the West attempted to re-evangelize an increasingly secular culture, their missionary efforts were thwarted by the longstanding capitulation of those churches to the presuppositions of the late-modern West about the character of truth and human nature. The churches of the West were failing in their attempt to create an authentic encounter between the modern world and the gospel because of the advanced syncretism of the churches. The goal of the missionary should be to avoid both irrelevancy and syncretism and instead aim for an appropriate inculturation that seeks points of contact but does not relinquish the distinctive claims of Christ, which are foolishness to the Greeks and a stumbling block to the Jews.
7 Christian Habits Necessary for Pastoral Longevity
The habits necessary for a lifetime of faithful pastoral ministry aren’t that different from those necessary for a faithful Christian life.
Preaching in Paragraphs
Every preacher knows the terror of a blank screen. It is Tuesday morning—or even worse, Saturday afternoon—and the preacher sits and stares at his laptop. He has opened a new document in his word processor, and now the cursor stands idling on the page, patiently blinking. And the words aren’t coming.
Let us assume that the preacher has a text. Let’s also assume the preacher has done the work of exegeting his text. He has read it in the original language, looked up key words and topics, and took apart the text’s structure. He has crafted an outline and a theme statement. He went for a brisk walk so that he could meditate on how to preach the gospel from this text, and how to exhort his congregation. Useful work has been done, a few notes have been jotted down on a legal pad, but still the page sits blank, the cursor waiting.
My counsel to the uneasy preacher is to begin writing, one paragraph at a time. Before you dismiss this as unhelpfully obvious, allow me to explain.
What If Your Church Sings Hillsong and You Wish It Wouldn’t?
Afew weeks ago, I explained why my church does not sing songs by Hillsong, and, by the same convictions, songs by Bethel and Elevation. I tried to be clear that I do not understand this to be a matter of clear right or wrong, but rather a matter of wisdom and conscience. While this is a decision we have made for our church, I would not look down on churches that choose differently.
I wish I had addressed a related matter at that time: what should you do if you see this issue in the way I do, but the leaders of your church do not? In other words, what should you do if your church sings Hillsong, but you wish it wouldn’t? I want to offer just a few thoughts on that.
From Him, Through Him, To Him: Why We Worship a God Who Needs Nothing
Most of us half-believe that God needs our worship. We rarely say it explicitly, but it shows in how we talk. From the pulpit, in the middle of a worship set, or in our own prayers, we often say that God "wants" our praise. It sounds devout, and we usually mean something right by it, as the Father does seek true worshipers (John 4:23). But the word "want" carries more than we intend. Long before it meant desire, it carried the sense of lack. English inherited the word from the Old Norse vanta, meaning “to be missing,” and the older sense survives in the opening line of Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice: "a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife." We want what we do not have. Taken at its word, "God wants our worship" says that something is missing in God and that our worship supplies it.
Lectio Divina (Devotional Reading)
When was the last time you read the Word of God to drink deeply of his presence rather than prepare a sermon or a Bible study? Lectio Divina is one way you can read Scripture to abide in God’s presence and to experience His living Word for you today.
"Lectio Divina” (pronounced LEX-ee-oh dih-VEE-nuh) is a Latin phrase that means “divine reading” or “sacred reading.” It is an ancient practice used throughout early church history for those who were illiterate or didn’t have Bibles to read.
When Morningness Is Confused with Godliness
If you’ve found it fruitful to rise early to devote alone time to God, continue doing so with discipline and joy. But beware of imposing your own daily spiritual practices on others with a prideful narrow-mindedness that Scripture lacks.
Excessive sleeping can be a sign of sinful sloth (Prov. 19:15). But biblically, the godly Christian can please God just as much staying up late to worship as rising early. Both routes are biblical and blessed.
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