Christgiving
Missions
How a Kidnapping Shaped a Missionary Couple’s Ministry
Sitting alone in a tepee-like shelter made from sticks collected by a dry African riverbed in 1974, 24-year-old Debbie Dortzbach stitched the words of Psalm 34:4 onto a white bandage from her captors’ helicopter first aid kit. The phrase “I sought the Lord and he heard me” altern...
How Evangelicals Reacted to 9/11
Liberty University students who got up for an early class on September 11, 2001, may have skimmed a copy of the Liberty Champion at breakfast in the dining hall. If they did, they may have read about the university’s Spiritual Emphasis Week, or about renovations to the major acad...
The Post-9/11 ‘Age of Liberty’ Never Came. What Now?
“We inherited two worlds—one of hope to which we were bred; one of a certain disillusion which we had discovered for ourselves.” F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote those words of the 1920s, speaking to a generation that had served in World War I and often followed it with hedonistic exces...
It’s Not Loving to Withhold Truth from an Apathetic Church
Growing up, I often heard one statement in my church youth group: “The most loving thing you can do is tell someone the truth.” The statement became especially potent whenever we gathered for a weekend at the Youth Evangelism Conference in my home state of Oklahoma to be reminded...
Give Your Life for Lasting Gain
What gain is worth risking your whole life for? John Piper opens Psalm 25 to show why joy in God frees us for sacrificial love.Watch Now
The Subversive Gospel in a Polarized World (Part 1)
Does the gospel have the power to bridge the chasms within our polarized society? In the first of this two-part episode, recorded at TGC25, David W. Pao introduces the concept that biblical authors intentionally subverted the ideologies of their time. In part 2, Bill Riedel gives...
Should the Bible Be Taught in Public Schools? Yes.
The state of Texas, where I live, is making the news for its updated mandatory reading list for public schools, which includes passages from the King James Bible. One think tank describes the guidelines issued by the Texas Education Agency: The . . . reading list . . . includes j...
Should the Bible Be Taught in Public Schools? No.
Earlier this summer, the Texas State Board of Education approved a list of mandated texts, making it the first state in the nation to have a statewide required reading list. Out of the roughly 200 mandated works, about a dozen are Bible passages. The selections are spread from se...
Israeli youth deepen their faith through summer discipleship
Israel (MNN) — Israeli youth grew in their relationships with Jesus Christ through Beit Hallel Congregation's ministry this summer. This took place through youth camps and a month-long program called the Summer for God Discipleship Program. Teenagers in the Summer for God Discipl...
25 years after 9/11, Gospel takes root near bin Laden’s hideout
Pakistan (MNN) – Today, on the 25th anniversary of the 9/11 terror attacks, we're highlighting how one of the darkest hideouts for evil is now an epicenter for Gospel operation. Osama bin Laden's compound before it was destroyed. (Photo courtesy of Sajjad Ali Qureshi, CC BY-SA 2....
Collin Hansen: I Don’t Understand 9/11. But I Praise God Anyway.
One of comedian Nate Bargatze’s most famous bits recalls his days as a water-meter reader for Wilson County, Tennessee, outside Nashville. After the 9/11 attacks, his employer asked him and the other meter readers to guard the city’s water tanks. Apparently, town officials feared...
When Nazi Prisoners Worshiped with Iowa Farmers
On April 9, 1944, a line of cars carrying members of a church choir passed by a guard station and through a break in a fence capped with barbed wire. The choir, along with a church organist and a minister from Trinity Lutheran Church, had agreed to lead a worship service for inma...
Christians Debate Polygamy After Netflix Show Hits No. 1
This summer, a new South African Netflix drama called The Polygamist resurrected the debate over multiple-partner marriages across the continent, dividing even some Christians. The 22-episode Zulu-language series chronicles the double life of a Johannesburg-based businessman with...
The Barrier to Doctrinal Maturity
Is the Bible accessible only to readers with a high IQ? Pastor John reframes biblical maturity as a moral issue centered on our obedience, not our intellect.Listen Now...
Miraculous dreams, a surprise box of Bibles, and how Jesus is still reaching Iran
Iran (MNN) – You can shutter churches. You can restrict Bibles. Yet, Iranians are still encountering Jesus — even through miraculous means. Tehran, Iran (Photo courtesy of Khashayar Kouchpeydeh/Unsplash) Peter Smith, a Gospel worker serving the Persian-speaking world, recently he...
Iran’s proxies return to the fight, but ordinary people bear the cost
Iran (MNN) — Iran has once again turned to its proxies in its war with the United States and Israel. Tuesday’s Houthi attacks on cities in Saudi Arabia left dozens wounded and led to tit-for-tat strikes between the U.S. and Iran on Iranian oil carriers and a U.S. base in Jordan. ...
C. S. Lewis on Why God Seems Silent
Many love C. S. Lewis because of the heartwarming world of Narnia and the logical precision of Mere Christianity. But Lewis considered his true masterpiece to be Till We Have Faces, his dark retelling of an ancient pagan myth. The book presents the Greek myth of Cupid and Psyche ...
Review: ‘The Uprising’
“I wish to be Providence myself,” proclaims the titular hero of Alexandre Dumas’s Count of Monte Cristo, “for I feel that the finest, noblest, most sublime thing in the world, is to recompense and punish.” I’m reading Monte Cristo right now, and that chilling quote has been stuck...
How to Be Friends With God in a Distracted World
Our world is profoundly distracted, disordered, and scattered. It would be tempting to attribute this to a non-Christian society—to multiplied desires and endless consumer options, to secularized pursuits of shallow pleasure. But Christians fare little better here, bombarded with...
The Spirit Who Opens Eyes
How can rebels come to call Jesus Lord? John Piper shows from 1 Corinthians 12:3 how the Spirit’s power opens eyes to the beauty of Christ.Watch Now
AI Can Assist Your Work. But Should It?
For years, we’ve lived with algorithmic AI tools without much noticing them. They’re just bits of technology scattered through daily life. Their ordinary, unremarkable presence seldom invites ethical reflection. I feel little moral weight when I reheat leftovers in the microwave ...
4 Misconceptions About the 4 Senses
In recent years, evangelicals have shown renewed interest in the hermeneutics of the Church Fathers. Current scholarship has devoted considerable attention to premodern approaches to reading Scripture, but fewer works describe the method behind their practice. This is surprising ...
Let’s Reclaim ‘Evangelical’ for the Sake of the Global Church
The Christian narrative is a global story composed of a “cloud of witnesses” (Heb. 12:1) from “every nation, tribe, people, and language” (Rev. 7:9, CSB). A striking feature of John’s kingdom vision is its multiethnic composition unified in worship to the risen Lamb. In the 20th ...
Rejecting Evangelicalism Is Not How We Restore Democracy
Donald Trump is the American equivalent of Adolf Hitler, Robert P. Jones argues in Backslide: Reclaiming a Faith and a Nation After the Christian Turn Against Democracy. He will destroy American democracy if his reign of power is not stopped. And as for Christians who support Tru...