Author: Chris Boyd

I had never heard of him, but here he was convincing me to pray for a country I couldn’t even find on a map.

It was October 1959.

I was a sophomore at Wheaton College, majoring in history and planning to attend law school after graduation. One Friday night, four friends convinced me to drive with them into Chicago to attend an all-night prayer meeting.

The leader of the prayer gathering was one George Verwer, a 20-year-old student at Moody Bible Institute whom I had never met before. The focus of our evening was to pray for unreached Muslims in Muslim-majority countries. No one in my group of friends had ever thought about Muslims, much less about doing anything on their behalf.

I had become a Christian a couple of years before this meeting, and was deeply in love with Jesus. I knew about missionaries and was even attending the same school as Jim Elliot and Nate Saint, who had died in the South American rainforest while evangelizing to the Huaorani people a few years earlier. But “missions” still felt like something for other believers to embark on. I didn’t even have a desire to leave the US on holiday.

Nevertheless, my friends persuaded me into spending my Friday night in a room that I soon found out was devoid of coffee, alcohol, or food. Instead, the space was full of people who were hovering over maps of the Middle East, the Indian subcontinent, and Southeast Asia, praying for the Lord to send laborers in obedience to his mandate in Matthew 9:36–38.

I walked towards the skinny young man I assumed was George, intending to shake his hand. Instead, he poked his finger into my chest and growled, “What country are you praying for?”

“What’s left?” I said, barely above a whisper.

“YOU’VE GOT LIBYA!” he thundered and sent me to join one of the prayer groups.

I had no idea …

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The founder of Operation Mobilisation moved untold numbers to proclaim God’s love around the globe.

George Verwer had a question.

When the 18-year-old and his friend finished praying in a dorm room in Maryville, Tennessee, Verwer looked at his college buddy and asked, “Well? Are you ready to go?”

Dale Rhoton was startled. He had only just heard Verwer’s idea that they should sell what they owned and use the money to buy a truck that summer, fill it with Spanish-language editions of the Gospel of John, and drive it to Mexico, where 70 percent of people didn’t have access to Scriptures. They had only just prayed about it.

“George,” he said, “it takes longer than that.”

Verwer didn’t see why it should. The future founder of Operation Mobilisation (OM) saw a spiritual need. They could meet that need. The rest didn’t matter to him.

“His one all-consuming passion in life has been to be a channel, whereby people would become long-term friends of Jesus,” Rhoton later wrote. “His comfort zone is breaking out of his comfort zone. He only really feels secure when he’s risking it all.”

That lifelong “Verwer fervor” for missions moved untold numbers of Christians to cross borders, cultures, and continents to proclaim the good news of God’s love. OM became one of the largest mission organizations of the 20th century, sending out thousands every year on short- and long-term trips. OM currently has 3,300 adult workers from 134 countries working in 147 countries. An estimated 300 other mission agencies were also started as a result of contact with OM or launched by former OMers.

Verwer died Friday at the age of 84.

Lindsay Brown, who led the International Fellowship …

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How God rescued me from a life of getting whacked.

You’re probably familiar with the popular arcade game called Whac-A-Mole, where mechanical moles randomly pop out of their holes while you try whacking them with a mallet before they retreat. I grew up in a “reverse Whac-A-Mole” world, feeling like the only mole in a family of mallets.

All the men in my family had significant issues. When I was 12, my dad left our family for a married woman with three kids. While some divorced fathers become “Disneyland dads”—showering their kids with gifts and fun events to make up for their physical absence—mine didn’t. He withheld both financial and emotional support, and he rejected or mocked conventional displays of affection, even to the point of withholding birthday or Christmas gifts.

He was also verbally abusive. According to my mom, as he was exiting our family, he only came home to eat, sleep, and berate my brother and me. He especially relished picking on me, nicknaming me “Idiot Child” (as well as something worse that is crude and unprintable). In Matthew 7:9, Jesus asks, “Which of you, if your son asks for bread, will give him a stone?” Well, I have someone I can nominate.

But my dad wasn’t the only disaster in our family. His father was a sullen man who apparently had a mean streak. I’m told that when my dad was about five years old, the two of them were having a conversation about electricity. My grandfather handed my dad a paper clip and told him to stick it into an electrical outlet to see what would happen. Such displays of malice may help explain why my dad ended up such a mess.

When my grandfather was in his 60s, he decided he had cancer, so one day he jumped in front of a speeding train …

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During Songkran, Christians find parallels in honoring their elders but point to the living water.

This is the third article in the Engaging Buddhism series, which explores different facets of Buddhism and how Christians can engage with and minister to Buddhists.

For the first time since the pandemic began, the massive water fights of Songkran have returned to Thailand’s streets. Taking place during the hottest week of the year, children and adults spray each other with colorful plastic water guns. People stand in the back of truck beds and use buckets to fling water and ice at neighboring trucks. Motorcycle drivers squint to see through the deluge—which often comes at them from multiple directions—while their passengers soak as many people as can as they pass.

Water—and lots of it—replaces fireworks in Songkran, Thailand’s new year celebration, held April 13–15. The holiday is also celebrated in Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, Sri Lanka, and several other regions that follow the Buddhist calendar. According to Buddhist tradition, water symbolizes ritual cleansing, righting last year’s wrongs, and welcoming the clean slate of a new year.

Beyond the raucous water fights on the streets, Thai Buddhists visit temples during Songkran to pour water over statues of Buddha and the hands of monks. This symbolic act is believed to atone for sins, bring purification, and make merit (gain good karma by performing good deeds). Worshipers also bring food for monks to make merit.

Spending time with family is also integral to Songkran. During the holiday, Thais travel across the nation to visit their family and strengthen familial bonds as they move toward the new year. They also pay respect to their elders and seek their blessing by pouring water over their hands. People exchange floral garlands …

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“If you have ever felt like most worship music sounds the same, it may be because the worship music … is written by just a handful of songwriters.”

On Easter Sunday, the worship band at Bethel Community Church in Redding, California, opened the service with “This Is Amazing Grace,” a 2012 hit that has remained one of the most popular worship songs of the past decade.

Chances are thousands of other churches around the country also sang that song—or one very similar to it.

A new study found that Bethel and a handful of other megachurches have cornered the market on worship music in recent years, churning out hit after hit and dominating the worship charts.

The study looked at 38 songs that made the Top 25 lists for CCLI and PraiseCharts—which track what songs are played in churches—and found that almost all had originated from one of four megachurches.

All the songs in the study—which ranged from “Our God” and “God Is Able” to “The Blessing”— debuted on those charts between 2010 and 2020.

Of the songs in the study, 36 had ties to a group of four churches: Bethel; Hillsong; Passion City Church in Atlanta; and Elevation in North Carolina.

“If you have ever felt like most worship music sounds the same,” the study’s authors wrote, “it may be because the worship music you are most likely to hear in many churches is written by just a handful of songwriters from a handful of churches.”

The research team, made up of two worship leaders and three academics who study worship music, made some initial findings public Tuesday. More details from the study will likely be released in the coming weeks.

Elias Dummer, a worship leader and recording artist, said he and his colleagues have been watching changes in worship music over the past decade. They wanted to know how worship songs become …

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Today’s groups are becoming more integrated with the rest of the church.

In the 1990s and early 2000s, youth group culture relied on delivering fun and entertainment by any means possible: gross-out games, Christian rock concerts, hip hangout rooms, and pizza-party blowouts.

The activities were seen as vehicles to get kids in the door before sharing the gospel or offering Bible lessons.

Things have changed a lot since Jeremy Engbers grow up “playing games, getting dirty, and drinking blended Happy Meals” in church youth ministry.

Engbers, the 31-year-old director of worship, youth, and family at Olympia Christian Reformed Church, is trying to be the youth pastor he needed back then.

Like other pastors working in youth ministry today, Engbers focuses on relationship-building, intergenerational discipleship, and partnership with parents. His studies at Fuller Theological Seminary and access to resources at Fuller Youth Institute were helpful in building his current approach. Engbers also noted books like Sticky Faith and Growing Young as influential for him.

Prior to the past five or ten years, youth groups generally operated on their own schedule and programming within the church. In some churches, that even meant separate meetings during the church service on Sundays.

The siloed activities often isolated youth from the larger congregation, making it harder for them to integrate into grown-up ministry as a college student or adult. Engbers called it a kind of “spiritual daycare.”

Churches across denominations have seen young people stepping away from faith, and researchers at the Fuller Youth Institute say they don’t need a pastor in skinny jeans or a hip meeting space to make them stay. They need practices to root them in faith and community in a way that sticks.

Heather …

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How to find freedom from cycles of navel-gazing and self-loathing.

Jasmine L. Holmes is not a licensed counselor or psychologist. But she is a Christian woman who actively struggles with shame. In her newest book, Never Cast Out: How the Gospel Puts an End to the Story of Shame, she shares candid accounts of dealing with shame spirals and turning to the Bible for hope. Author Abbey Wedgeworth spoke with Holmes about discerning the causes of shame and responding in spiritually profitable ways.

How would you define shame, and what makes it such an important topic?

My earliest memory is a memory of shame. I must have been two and a half years old. My mom told me “no” to something I had asked for. She said it gently, with a tone of No, we’re not going to do that right now. But I felt so terrible and wrong. And I remember thinking I shouldn’t have asked in the first place.

I had no idea, at that moment, that for the rest of my life I would experience that feeling in numerous ways. So when I talk about shame, I’m talking about that negative feeling, that feeling associated with being wrong, being bad, being not enough. It’s that feeling of wanting to hide.

Shame affects so many people, in ways big and small. And for this book, I wanted to be careful to admit that my experiences of shame are small compared to what, say, abuse victims and survivors endure day to day. So I’m talking, if you will, about my little shame that follows me around every day, and I’m not trying to make light of the big shame others suffer.

Why is it so important to attend to even our “little” experiences of shame?

If we fail to recognize them, they compound—they grow. As a mom, for instance, you might have a moment, like I did this morning, of looking around and …

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Jesus, when he rose from the grave, was mistaken for a gardener. It is my favorite story.

It is often when conditions seem the most damp and dark, when the rain has poured and patience runs thin, that green shoots of new life will begin to emerge. The seed that has died and been buried is the one that will emerge on the other side of decay in a multiplication of life.

I held the desiccated bundle of plant matter in my hand and looked up at my friend who had just given it to me. “What is it?” I asked, while turning it over to see bits of dirt still dried onto tendrils that seemed to have once been roots. Lyndon Penner, my dear friend who has written books about gardening in the harsh extremes of the Canadian prairies, looked down at the crispy mass and smiled. “It holds a secret,” he said, “it’s alive, and it’s my gift to you.” It sure didn’t look alive. I gave the stems a squeeze, and though it felt dead, no leaves crumbled—a hint that not all was as it seemed.

The False Rose of Jericho is neither a rose nor from Jericho. It’s a type of clubmoss which, when faced with worsening conditions, will dry out, shrink down, detach from the soil, and roll up into a baseball-sized bale of brittle waste. It’s not green, and to my untrained eye, it is perfectly dead. While some call it a “stone plant” with good reason (it is sold in our local gem store), it’s also called “resurrection moss” because even after several years, it will reveal a secret. We gathered our girls around a little dish with water and set the brown tumbleweed inside. “Pour some water on top, too. Let it know it’s safe to wake up,” Lyndon suggested. Within hours it unfurled like a baby stretching for first breaths and turned a deep vibrant …

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Popular portrayals of the God-Man can draw admiring crowds, but they can’t create imitating disciples.

In the past couple of weeks, people have been talking once again about Jesus Christ Superstar.

Not only did a recent Ted Lasso episode feature a song from the 1970s musical, but the original film is airing on BBC—prompting countless reactions, including many from first-time viewers. It is also celebrating a 50th anniversary tour in both the UK and the US.

Taking place during Holy Week and ending just before the Easter resurrection, the production “casts a skeptical, and at times flamboyantly irreverent, light on the story of Jesus.” It reflects society’s fascination with the Jesus movement of the ’70s, just as Jesus Revolution and The Chosen reveal a growing resurgence of interest in the person of Jesus.

As believers, it is satisfying to see Christ brought to the forefront of the public’s consciousness. And as author Luke Burgis explains, these popular portrayals of Jesus can make us want to conform our desires to his. But memorializing any version of Jesus that appeals to a mass audience, whether in church or in culture, also comes with the risk that we might do the exact opposite and model Christ after our own desires.

That is, we’re in danger of casting Christ as whatever kind of superstar or superhero we value at any given time—a temptation faced by even Jesus’ earliest first-century followers.

The script for Jesus Christ Superstar is told from the viewpoint of Judas, “who thinks highly of Jesus as a political revolutionary figure but is disturbed by the idea of Jesus’ divinity.” In the play, the Judas character sings the famous song lyric, “Jesus Christ, Superstar, do you think you’re what they say you are?”—referencing …

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A Christian who wants to see God’s will done “on earth as it is in heaven” is piloting the first lunar flight in more than 50 years.

Victor Glover will pray his way to the moon.

When the Artemis 2 takes off sometime late next year, four astronauts will strap into a gumdrop-shaped capsule atop a tower of rockets taller than the Statue of Liberty. Mission control will count down—10, 9, 8, …—and a controlled explosion with 8.8 million pounds of force will fire, throwing the four astronauts from the coast of Florida into high-earth orbit, where another engine, setting spark to a mixture of liquid hydrogen and oxygen, will thrust them beyond the bonds of Earth for the first time in more than half a century.

And Glover, the pilot of the spacecraft, will say a few words to God.

He told CT he will listen to God, too, attending to the quiet stillness in his mind where he can lay down his own personal interests and desires and truly say, “Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.”

“I know that God can use us for his purposes,” Glover said. “When Jesus was teaching the disciples to pray, he used that very specific prayer that we all know, ‘Our father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name …’ So, listen, I am a messenger of his kingdom; his will be done.”

Glover was named Monday as one of the four people who will lead humanity’s return to the moon more than 50 years after we stopped going. The other members of the crew are Reid Wiseman, Jeremy Hansen, and Christina Koch, who will be the first woman to go to the moon.

Glover, 46, is a Navy captain who flew combat missions in Iraq before becoming a test pilot, a NASA astronaut, and a crew member of the International Space Station. He will become the first Black man to go to the moon, breaking a racial barrier the American …

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