Author: Chris Boyd

Cutting off “toxic” people is social media’s go-to mental health advice. But Jesus commands us to seek conversation and reconciliation.

Toxic. Abusive. Oppressive. Unhealthy.

I’d never heard those words used so often as I have in the last four years. At times, it has seemed like everyone I know is deciding to handle conflict with friends, colleagues, and churches by deciding to leave.

Maybe some of this is a generational shift as younger generations embrace the idea of “breaking the cycle,” or perhaps some of it stems from how the COVID-19 pandemic led many of us to reassess our lives. And nowhere has the pattern been clearer than on social media, where people have filmed themselves leaving their jobs, written posts torching the churches they’re exiting, and shared video diaries explaining how a breakup would help them heal.

For many, leaving has become the gold standard of mental health—and staying has become suspect, maybe even delusional.

Leaving and staying, though, are neutral terms. Leaving isn’t inherently good, and staying isn’t inherently bad. We need to better examine the ways in which we’re doing both. Instead of leaving (or staying) by default, we need to learn to pursue healing, accountability, repentance, forgiveness, and endurance.

Let me start with a necessary caveat: If you’re in a church, organization, or relationship that is hurting you, leaving may well be the right choice. It’s impossible to give universal advice here, but I am not suggesting that anyone live under abuse. In a large organization, if a domineering leader isn’t even available to talk, let alone repent if needed, it likely makes sense to leave outright.

My concern here is the more ambiguous situations, the situations where we too often make decisions based on our imagination and assumptions …

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Rob Reiner’s documentary makes a strong case against political extremism in the name of Christ—for those who already agree.

Heave an egg out a Pullman window,” social critic H. L. Mencken famously said in 1925, “and you will hit a fundamentalist anywhere in the United States.” I often think about Mencken’s line when I read the coverage of evangelical Christianity at left-leaning websites such as Salon, Rolling Stone, Mother Jones, and MSNBC—drop an egg out of a Boeing 737 at 30,000 feet above red America, and you will hit a “Christian nationalist.”

Discussion of Christian nationalism has exploded in the last three years. The phenomenon has been blamed for the Trump presidency, the January 6th insurrection, the overturning of Roe v. Wade, and the possibility of another win for former president Donald Trump on Election Day. The latest offering in this vein is God & Country, a documentary film that arrives in theaters this month.

Directed by Dan Partland and produced by Rob Reiner, God & Country astutely includes interviews with high-profile Christian intellectuals, activists, and authors including Jemar Tisby, David French, Kristin Kobes Du Mez, Phil Vischer, Skye Jethani, Doug Pagitt, Rob Schenck, and CT editor-in-chief Russell Moore. Yes, the selection communicates, even these people think Christian nationalism is dangerous.

In one sense, God & Country is a brilliant piece of documentary filmmaking. It succeeds in warning against political extremism in the name of Christ and makes a significant and necessary contribution to our understanding of American religion and politics in the Trump era.

Many scenes are hard to forget: There are Seven Mountain dominionists in a packed arena reciting the “Watchman’s Decree,” a prayer to “take back and permanently control positions of …

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After an accident on a radio tower, Federico Magbanua went on to inspire a generation of pastors in the Philippines.

When the late Federico “Fred” Mission Magbanua Jr. preached a radio sermon on offering one’s body as a living sacrifice, he probably didn’t imagine he’d one day hear these words again as a 10,000-watt radio frequency current surged through him in a near-death accident.

It happened one night in early 1961, while Magbanua was working at the Far East Broadcasting Company (FEBC) gospel radio ministry. He was mulling over a job offer in the United States with a salary far greater than what he currently made as an FEBC engineer and as a pastor of a small Baptist church.

Suddenly, the warning lights on the 308-foot radio tower went out. Magbanua loaded some new bulbs into a bag and began climbing the structure. From his home nearby, his daughters and his wife, Aliw, watched him scale the tower.

What Magbanua didn’t realize was that the grounding system—which diverts energy to the ground to prevent surges—wasn’t working. A radio frequency current “hit his head using his body as a lightning rod,” his friend Harold Sala later told God Reports. “Literally, he was being executed by the tremendous surge of electrical power.”

The program that was airing at that moment was one that Magbanua himself had hosted on Romans 12:1–2. “Through the sparking, he heard his own voice in his head saying, ‘Therefore, I urge you, brothers, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice,’” recounted former FEBC head Dan Andrew Cura.

Miraculously, Magbanua was released by the current and fell to a step that was several feet from the top of the tower instead of falling 300 feet to the ground. He managed to climb down the ladder …

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Self-help books are wildly popular, including among Christians. But can they keep their promise to improve us?

Heaven helps those who help themselves.” So opens Samuel Smiles’ 1859 book Self-Help; with Illustrations of Character and Conduct—an appropriately self-published work that birthed the modern genre.

Today, more than 10 million self-help books are sold annually, with topics ranging from time management to pop psychology to discovering one’s true calling. While some focus on how to navigate career or relationships (think Dale Carnegie’s 1936 How to Win Friends and Influence People), others guide readers to success through reformation or reassessment of their unique interior worlds (such as Brené Brown’s 2010 The Gifts of Imperfection). What unifies the genre is a message of self-improvement delivered in a personal way by a confident figure who inspires readers to pursue their “best life now.”

But if heaven helps those who help themselves, what exactly is the role of “heaven”? And how should citizens of heaven read these books—if we should read them at all?

Despite its current popularity, improvement literature is not new. Ancient Egypt produced conduct books like The Maxims of Ptahhotep, while Rome left us Cicero’s On Duties. The Bible contains its own form of “self-help” in the genre of Wisdom Literature: Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and even Job help readers make sense of the world and their roles within it. And in the Middle Ages, “courtesy books” taught courtiers how to navigate the social norms of the palace.

For much of history, such writings were limited to the upper classes, intended to train and develop future leaders. (Ptahhotep, for example, was a vizier, a high-ranking official analogous to a prime minister.) But today’s …

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Even Gary Chapman clarifies it’s not about picking just one.

When Katie Frugé and her husband, Lafayette, decided to get married in 2007, they were 21 and did not know what they did not know.

“We were too young to get married and too young really to care,” said Frugé, who is now director of the Center for Cultural Engagement for the Baptist General Convention of Texas.

For guidance, the young couple turned to The Five Love Languages, a popular book by North Carolina author and pastor Gary Chapman. First published in 1992, the book explores different ways people express love—words of affirmation, physical touch, quality time, acts of service and giving gifts—in hopes of helping couples find happiness.

The book claims understanding each other’s love language can help create healthy marriages. Frugé recalls thinking the book held the key to a bright future.

“We thought, we’ll just learn each other’s love languages and everything’s going be hunky-dory,” she said. “We’re not going to ever have any fights and we’re both going to feel fully satisfied all the time.”

Married life proved more complicated.

Frugé said she and her husband are still happily married 17 years later but there were a lot of bumps, including several health crises—“We had the sickness and health part,” she said. And they needed more love along the way than a formula could provide.

“When I’m diagnosed with cancer, I don’t need my husband to go out and buy me a gift at that moment,” she said.

Once popular mostly in evangelical Christian circles, the Five Love Languages have exploded into a pop culture phenomenon. The dating app Bumble offers a Five Love Languages quiz, the concept …

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Brad Wilcox’s Get Married debunks misguided conventional wisdom and offers both challenge and hope to Christian singles.

Marriage and family are much discussed today, and not only among Christians. Marriage rates are going down, the meaning of marriage is contested, and dropping fertility is raising worries of a lonely and childless future, even in the church. Meanwhile, many Christian singles are left hoping their local church will somehow help them get married—or that our growing numbers will finally convince congregations to stop making us feel like second-class Christians.

The latest contribution to this conversation is Get Married: Why Americans Must Defy the Elites, Forge Strong Families, and Save Civilization, a new book from Brad Wilcox, a Christian professor of sociology and director of the National Marriage Project at the University of Virginia. Wilcox is experienced, widely published, and respected in his field. He’s pulling off an admirable feat: leading a secular institution without compromising his Christian values or reducing his work to a “fringe” project only valued inside the church.

Get Married is a popular-level distillation of that academic work. Wilcox argues that while most culture shapers in our society—from journalists to celebrities, artists to influencers—promote a cynical idea of marriage, data shows that perspective is wrong. And we need to understand the good of marriage, he contends, because the alternatives to a society where most people get married are worrisome: either fewer children (which means a less dynamic economy and declining family and community life) or more out-of-wedlock births (which means more child poverty and more crime).

The book follows a consistent pattern: Each chapter introduces a popular negative idea about marriage, then presents …

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The author, musician, and husband of podcaster Jamie Ivey showed “a very clear pattern of predatory manipulation” in messages to multiple males, according to church elders.

The Austin Stone Community Church, a multicampus evangelical church in Austin, Texas, announced on Sunday that it had dismissed its head worship pastor after discovering he had engaged in “inappropriate and explicit ongoing text messages with an adult male,” according to a statement from the church’s elders.

Aaron Ivey, the pastor of worship and creativity and an elder at the megachurch, was fired last Monday for what the statement called a “disqualifying situation,” which the elders said they became aware of the previous day.

“Several elders were made aware of this situation on the evening of Sunday, February 4th and after reviewing the explicit nature of these messages, it was clear that termination of Aaron’s eldership and employment was necessary in accordance with the clear biblical standards outlined in 1 Timothy 3:1-7 and 1 Timothy 5:19-20,” according to the statement. The first passage, from the Apostle Paul’s Letter to Timothy, urges church leaders to be faithful in marriage; the second says church elders “who are sinning” should be reproved before everyone.

After firing Ivey, the elders said, they then discovered that Ivey, the husband of bestselling author and popular podcaster Jamie Ivey, had a history of texting with men, including one who had been underage at the time of the explicit texts, according to the statement.

“Since then, we have uncovered multiple similar instances with different individuals dating back to 2011 that show a very clear pattern of predatory manipulation, sexual exploitation, and abuse of influence,” the statement said.

The elders detailed a timeline of texts they had discovered, alleging that they began in 2011 …

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A surge in betting on the Vegas-based game between Kansas City and San Francisco has not pushed church leaders to speak about the issue.

With the Super Bowl this weekend, don’t expect many pastors to place a bet on Kansas City or San Francisco to win the game, but a few may have more than a rooting interest riding on the game.

Despite its legalization across many states, US Protestant pastors remain opposed to sports gambling, but they’re not doing much about it, according to a Lifeway Research study. Few pastors (13%) favor legalizing sports betting nationwide and most (55%) say the practice is morally wrong.

“Anything can happen in sports, and many Americans want the same allure of an unexpected win in sports to translate into an unexpected financial windfall,” said Scott McConnell, executive director of Lifeway Research. “Most pastors see moral hazards in sports betting and believe American society would be better off without it.”

Pastoral opposition

A majority of pastors (55%) believe betting on sports is morally wrong, including 33% who strongly agree. Around a third (35%) disagree, while 10% aren’t sure.

“While the Bible does not explicitly say, ‘Thou shall not gamble,’ biblical principles regarding work and wealth indicate that gambling is unwise,” said Miles Mullin, Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission vice president and chief of staff. “The Bible teaches that sin has a ripple effect that harms not only the participant but those around him. This seems particularly true for addictive behaviors, and gambling is no different.”

Evangelical pastors (62%) are more likely than mainline pastors (50%) to see sports gambling as morally wrong. Baptist (65%) and non-denominational pastors (63%) are more likely than those at Lutheran (42%) or Presbyterian/Reformed …

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Believers are learning how to celebrate and evangelize amid Tsagaan Sar’s Buddhism-infused rituals.

Before college students travel home to celebrate Tsagaan Sar, Mongolia’s Lunar New Year, Dagdansengee Delgersaikhan, the general secretary of the student ministry IFES in Mongolia, discusses with the students how to approach the country’s biggest holiday with their new Christian faith.

It’s good to respect your parents, Delgersaikhan tells them, but there are certain rituals steeped in Buddhism and shamanism that they can no longer take part in, such as bowing to family idols or walking in a certain direction for good luck. She guides them on how to keep good relationships with their family while kindly explaining that, because they are Christians, they can no longer join in on some of the traditions.

Delgersaikhan speaks from experience. She remembers 20 years ago when she approached her father nervously on the morning of Tsagaan Sar and told him that she wouldn’t be joining the rest of the family as they went out to perform prayers. Instead, she would stay home and make them a hot pot of milk tea for when they returned home. He agreed.

For Christians in the majority Buddhist country, celebrating Tsagaan Sar—which begins Saturday—looks different from before they came to faith. Some Christians do not engage in the holiday at all because of its spiritual roots, while others find ways to embrace the positive aspects of spending time with family and respecting elders while refraining from practices that conflict with their faith.

The gathering of so many people also makes it “a good time to testify about Jesus,” Delgersaikhan said. Conversations about faith can pop up over preparing buuz, steamed meat dumplings, or during visits to the homes of relatives.

“We encourage them that …

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The Kansas City–based prayer ministry extended an apology and called for repentance after another victim came forward.

In the wake of additional allegations against its founder Mike Bickle, the International House of Prayer Kansas City (IHOPKC) cut off the livestream feed for the 24-7 prayer room that has defined its movement.

On Thursday night, the display read, “IHOPKC is entering a season of prayer and repentance.” The day before, the Kansas City Star ran a story on a woman who said Bickle abused her as a 14-year-old in the ’80s, when she was his family’s babysitter and he was a pastor in St. Louis.

IHOPKC released a statement condemning Bickle’s “predatory and abusive” actions, standing by his victims, and apologizing for its initial response of allowing him to defend himself when accusations surfaced last fall.

The ministry cut ties with Bickle in December, but that hasn’t stopped further revelations and concerns from emerging around IHOPKC and its leadership.

In a seven-page report released last week, the investigative firm hired by IHOPKC to look into the abuse allegations against Bickle concluded:

Based on all the credible evidence, including his own acknowledgements of contact with the two Jane Does over twenty years ago, it is more likely than not that [Bickle] engaged in inappropriate behavior including sexual contact and clergy misconduct, in an abuse of power for a person in a position of trust and leadership.

The two cases that Bickle acknowledges—one with “inappropriate behavior” including two instances of kissing and another he describes as a “consensual sexual contact that involved her touching me but not me touching her”—took place in 1999 and 2002–2003.

The report is …

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