“It’s amazing how often a higher calling is buried by problems, smallness, and self-interest. It is the leader’s job to lift the sights of an organization to a higher place. People want to be part of something great, and they will rise to the occasion if given the chance. And it’s the leader’s job to help lift them to that place.”  That’s from a recent talk delivered by Steve Preston, president and CEO of Goodwill Industries International, the largest nonprofit workforce developer in North America. I met him and his wife, Molly, while working on my book about Tim Keller. The Prestons were ..read more

If you’ve been a Christian for long, chances are you’ve been asked to support a missionary. A letter comes in the mail. A text to your phone. Or maybe a message over Facebook. Your friends—or people who used to be your friends—let you know they plan to serve for the summer or move overseas. They need financial help. So they ask for your support. Many Christians respond positively. Over the years, I’ve been overwhelmed by the generosity of God’s people toward missionaries, including myself. If able, believers are willing to give, especially to the global cause of Christ. But what happens when i ..read more

“Two years to save the world.” That’s how Simon Stiell, executive secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, opened his remarks on April 10, 2024. His high-level policy speech at Chatham House in London was intended to inspire “bold new national climate plans” at the governmental level and action from “every person on this planet” to take advantage of the tiny time window we have to save ourselves and the world as we know it. The hyperbolic rhetoric of environmentalism is nothing new. Paul and Anne Ehrlich’s best-selling book The Population Bomb was published in 1968 to warn r ..read more

This month saw the publication of “the largest review ever undertaken in the field of transgender health.” Led by Dr. Hilary Cass, a former president of the UK’s Royal College of Paediatrics, it was commissioned by Britain’s National Health Service (NHS) with the stated goal of figuring out “how best to help the growing number of children and young people who are looking for support from the NHS in relation to their gender identity.” The findings of this four-year review were written up in a 388-page report which is, as The Economist puts it, “damning of practices that were commonplace in Engl ..read more

If you see a woman in green or blue scrubs with a stethoscope around her neck, you know who she is and what she does. If a man comes into your house to fix something and he’s got a hammer, a saw, a chisel, and a measuring tape on his tool belt hanging around his waist, then you know he’s not there to repair your laptop. Who he is and what he does are evident from what he holds. Psalm 23 teaches us who the Lord Jesus is and what he does by what he holds. He’s heavily armed. This is the further beautiful amplification of why we need not fear the darkest of valleys: “Your rod and your staff, they ..read more

The central protagonist in Civil War—a dystopian tale of a near-future America at war with itself—is a veteran combat photographer for Reuters named Lee (Kirsten Dunst). The film follows Lee and a small group of other photojournalists seeking to chronicle a climactic Washington, D.C., battle in the film’s hypothetical war. At one point, a young colleague, Jesse (Cailee Spaeny) asks Lee about what’s going on in the bloody chaos they’re capturing in photographs. Jesse is a proxy for the audience because we too are naturally curious about the “why,” “what,” and “who” questions surrounding this co ..read more

In AD 410, barbarian Visigoths sacked the great city of Rome. By that point, Rome had been substantially Christianized, so many people, pagan and Christian alike, saw its fall as a shaking of Christianity’s foundations. If the “heavenly city” of Rome had been defeated, was God defeated? Were the barbarian gods stronger? Similarly, American political history is intertwined with its Christian history. As America struggles to navigate its place in a world with rising and competing geopolitical powers—one where the church feels the attacks of secularism—many sense that “the barbarians are at the g ..read more

“The tape doesn’t lie.” It’s an axiom with which athletes are all too familiar. The reference to tapes is dated, but the concept endures: we can always go back to game film for the truth of what transpired on any given play. My seminary preaching classes employed the same philosophy. We’d prepare 15-minute sermonettes and preach them in front of our peers. The professor stood in a soundproof booth in the back, commenting into a microphone, while a video camera captured the whole thing. After preaching, we’d sit down and receive feedback from our classmates. Then the professor would hand each a ..read more

For months a room may have looked fine. Everything seemed sufficiently neat and tidy until, dust cloth in hand, spring-cleaning begins. Suddenly, the dirt accumulated over winter seems unending. The more I look for dirt, the more I find. That’s what makes deep cleaning so exhausting. (And why it’s easier just to put it off.) The pursuit of ideal mental health can be the same. Every fleeting disappointment, frustrating moment, or sad feeling becomes a possible symptom of underlying dysfunction. Efforts to discover the roots of that dysfunction reveal more blemishes that need resolution. In Bad ..read more

At 28 years old, Massimo Gei was a wreck. He’d been using drugs since high school. In college, he began helping friends find drugs too. Around the same time, he met a girl. They dated for six years before getting married, but seven months later, she left him to date other men. Massimo’s employer also let him go—probably because he was hooked on meth. “I was depressive and suicidal,” Massimo said. “I thought everyone was conspiring against me. I was just surviving day by day.” One night, he and a Christian friend named Dawn were driving around Kuala Lumpur, where they both lived. Massimo asked ..read more