CT’s Top 20 Stories of 2021

This year, Christians engaged with church abuse scandals, political concerns, global events, and more.

In a year that has been difficult for so many people around the world, Christianity Today’s readers came to the site wondering about the downfall of influential Christian leaders of our day, looking for advice on navigating political controversies and social tensions, and wanting to understand the unprecedented division in many churches today.

The most-viewed CT article of 2021 was our in-depth investigative report about Ravi Zacharias’s sex abuse scandal, which was translated into seven different languages and read by about two million people around the world.

CT reported on the independent investigation after RZIM’s staff pushed its leaders to take responsibility and cautioned our readers not to diminish Zacharias’s abuse by saying “We’re All Sinners.” We also covered the fallout—when RZIM declared it would no longer do apologetics, when the CMA denomination revoked Zacharias’s ordination, and when his books were pulled by HarperCollins publishing.

Our 20 most-read stories of the year are listed below in descending order, starting with No. 20 and ending with No. 1. You can find these and other top CT stories of the year here, a number of which are also offered in hundreds of CT Global translations.

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13 CT News Stories That Made Us Happy in 2021

It was another hard year on many fronts, but it wasn’t all bad news.

2021 brought more headlines about COVID-19, religious persecution, division, and spiritual abuse. Amid the heaviness, we saw God at work through his people in big ways and small, from signs of hope for Christians in the Middle East to a surprise worship leader at a church in California.

Here are 13 of our favorite good-news stories covered by CT this year, listed in chronological order.

Read all of our year-end lists here.

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CT’s 2021 Cover Stories, Ranked

Our online readers’ favorite cover stories from last year.

Christianity Today’s print magazine cover stories represented many themes of the past year—topics that are not new but reached a fresh urgency or climactic moment in 2021. From Christians in Afghanistan to multiethnic churches to empty pews, we hoped to remind readers of gospel hope in the midst of difficult times. Here are CT’s cover stories ranked in reverse order of popularity online.

9. December
8. January/February
7. July/August

6. October

5. April

4. May/June

3. November

2. March

1. September

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CT’s Top 10 Articles for Pastors in 2021

2021 was a hard year to be a pastor. Here’s what conversations were happening.

2021 was a hard year to be a pastor. In fact, a recent study shows that a number of them are considering leaving the pulpit due to the countless difficulties of doing church ministry today.

Many of our top CT Pastors articles were concerned with what it means for clergy to navigate the COVID-19 pandemic, social justice issues, the deconstruction movement, and church abuse scandals.

Can the church and its congregants continue to set themselves apart from the culture of this world? How can pastors maintain their hope for the future after the deaths of mentors and the downfall of so many influencial church leaders? What can we learn from past abuse scandals and stories, like the rise and fall of Mars Hill Church? How can we listen to and love the skeptics and exvangelicals among us?

Mike Cosper’s Mars Hill podcast was one of the top trending topics among pastors, but there were also a few reminders of some good examples set for us in leaders like Gary Chapman, John Stott, and Thomas McKenzie.

These and the rest of our top 10 stories of 2021 are listed below in descending order, ending with the most read.

You can find these and other top CT stories of the year here, a number of which are also offered in hundreds of CT Global translations.

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Study: Church Outreach Expands to Meet Pandemic Needs

Even with lower attendance, congregations are adapting their ministries and launching new ones.

More than half of Christian congregations say they have started a new ministry or expanded an existing one during the COVID-19 pandemic, according to a new survey.

On average, in fact, these Christian houses of worship began or broadened more than three of their outreach activities in response to the pandemic.

“The level of new and intensified social outreach and community ministry undertaken by the nation’s churches is monumental,” reads the report by the Hartford Institute for Religion Research.

The second installment in a five-year project that began earlier this year called “Exploring the Pandemic Impact on Congregations,” it is based on a collaboration among 13 denominations from the Faith Communities Today cooperative partnership and institute staffers.

If their findings are representative of the roughly 320,000 Christian congregations in the country, the institute said, the researchers estimate that nearly 175,000 churches launched or expanded ministries, funds and supplies in response to the pandemic over the past two years.

Overall, almost three-quarters (74%) of churches have offered social support during the pandemic and close to two-thirds of congregations say they have been involved in new ministries.

The new findings, a November survey drawn from 820 responses from representatives of 38 Christian denominational groups, showed significant changes in congregations’ attitudes toward change, particularly increasing diversity.

Less than three-quarters (73%) agreed in 2020 that their congregations were willing to change to meet new challenges. That increased to 86 percent in November.

There also seemed to be greater interest in striving to be diverse, with 38 percent describing themselves …

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Communing with Christ at His Christmas Feast

The story of our salvation starts with forbidden fruit and ends with bread and wine at the Lord’s Table.

On a snowy day in downtown Chicago, as the first day of Advent drew near, I sat with my upper-class systematic theology students to discuss the meaning of the sacraments.

I opened my lecture with a simple question: “If forbidden fruit brought sin, can bread and wine bring redemption?”

At first, some of my students sat and scratched their heads. But over the course of our conversation, the class soon began to understand the theological dimensions of what we eat and drink in this life—and some of these insights are especially relevant to the season of Advent.

Advent, perhaps more poignantly than any other time in the liturgical calendar, reminds the church that it is in a pregnant pause. That is, we find ourselves suspended between the first and second Advents: Christ has died, Christ has risen—and Christ is yet to come again.

In the meantime, while we watch and wait for Christ’s return, we have been charged to partake in the Eucharist, or the sacrament of Communion. So during the Christmas season, we should eat and drink not only in remembrance of Christ’s birth but also in anticipation of his promised bodily return.

But not just any meal nor any table will do.

Whether your church uses bread or wafers, wine or juice—and whether you gather weekly, monthly, or quarterly—the Lord has called us all to gather at his table: the table he himself has set, where we might be fed by him and on him alone. For “whenever you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes” (1 Cor. 11:26).

And yet there is more to this story.

In Ritualized Faith, Terence Cuneo evocatively states that “it is no accident that the Eucharistic prayers are replete …

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In a Mad Mad World, God Welcomes Our Merrymaking

Christmas calls us to be like children and bring our joy to Jesus, even in the midst of upheaval.

I’ve always had mixed feelings about Christmas. As I sifted through memories of the season while writing my memoir, Where the Light Fell, I better understood why.

In my elementary school, Christmas called for a major event in the auditorium, complete with a concert by the school band and chorus. For some reason I volunteered to represent the first grade by singing a solo rather than playing “Song of the Volga Boatmen” on the piano. I chose “O Little Town of Bethlehem,” and my mother wrote out the words on a card in case I forgot them. Foolishly, I also volunteered for the role of Peter Cottontail in our class skit.

My mother fashioned a fine set of rabbit ears around coat hanger frames, fixed them on my head, and pinned a fluffy cotton tail to the seat of my pants. I had the good sense to remove the rabbit ears before attempting my solo but overlooked my cotton tail.

The upper classes laughed out loud as I walked to the microphone, which rattled me so much that I forgot the words to the Christmas carol. I was too ashamed to look at my notes, because then everyone would know I had forgotten them, so I hummed an entire verse, trying to make my mistake seem intentional. No one was fooled. My first public performance—and last solo—was a lesson in humility.

Flash forward seven years. Like most siblings, my older brother, Marshall, and I had an uneasy alliance. We argued, we competed, we sometimes snitched on each other. At Christmas we would agree in advance how much to spend on our gifts to one another, often buying exactly the same present just to make sure.

Mother would beam as we each opened, say, a fold-out box of Life Saver candies, with both of us feigning surprise that we had thought …

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These Christmas Carols Bring Joy to the Whole World

Christian leaders and musicians in nine countries and territories share their favorite Western and local holiday tunes.

Christmas songs featuring Jesus don’t top the global charts, as a recent CT piece noted. Of those that have gained popularity, many are translations of Western carols. Though they may not be indigenous to that country, they’re beloved for their theological truths and their retelling of the Christmas story.

We asked Christian leaders and musicians representing nine countries and territories to share their favorite songs, both those originally from the West and ones closer to home.

Argentina
Mariel Deluca Voth, theological education consultant for Latin America and the Caribbean, reSource Leadership International:

“La Navidad de Luis,” written by León Gieco, is one of my favorite Christmas songs because it reflects on the values of empathy and solidarity. The song mentions that Luis does not accept the wine and the panettone given by his boss because he understands that charity or pity do not mitigate poverty and oppression. Instead, he chooses to accept words spoken by his own father, words that give him life: Jesus is like me.

My favorite Western Christmas song is “Gloria in Excelsis Deo (Angels We Have Heard on High).” As a child, I always lived in an urban setting, but my home had a huge terrace where I could swing for hours, seeing shapes in the clouds and imagining stories. So during the Christmas season I would open my eyes wide to see the multitude of angels singing “Gloria in excelsis Deo!” I love this carol even today because I can accept the invitation to adore Jesus and do so in tune with angels, mountains, and shepherds.

China
Xiaofei Wang, director, Xiamen Pastors’ Wives Fellowship:

My favorite Chinese Christmas song is “The Starlit Blessing.” …

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The Alpha and the Omicron: COVID-19 Disrupts Christmas Worship Again

From London to DC, a new variant has shifted plans for big holiday services and celebrations in 2021.

“Join us for Christmas Eve!” read the homepage for the District Church in Washington, DC, as the congregation planned to gather for the holiday for the first time since 2019.

The District Church, a multiethnic, nondenominational church in the Columbia Heights neighborhood, had scheduled three in-person services for Friday. But last Sunday, lead pastor Aaron Graham announced that due to the spread of the omicron variant of COVID-19, Christmas Eve would be filmed and shared online instead.

“We had not planned this, but we just didn’t really know who was going to be in town [Christmas] week, and we just had a lot of people gone,” said Graham. The District Church had already made plans to briefly go virtual online for the two Sundays following Christmas to give their 20-member staff time to unwind for the Christmas and New Year season.

“With cases increasing in DC—the last two days have been higher, we just said, ‘You know what? Let’s just pivot online. We can go online and not lose momentum in the church overall.’ The pandemic taught us that.”

Fellow church leaders, especially in major cities where coronavirus cases are taking off, have made similar announcements, while others are weighing the risks as public health officials project record-high cases levels coinciding with holiday travel and gatherings.

This isn’t the scenario pastors expected. Months ago, nearly all US churches had finally returned to in-person worship, and countries had lifted church lockdowns. Even as Advent began just four weeks back, the rapid availability of COVID-19 vaccinations and booster shots made it seem like this Christmas would be different than last year and churches would be able …

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My Work Almost Crushed Her Family. Now I’m Welcomed at Her Table.

The former spokesperson for Ravi Zacharias reflects on a Christmas miracle that demonstrates the great hope—and great cost—of restoration.

The dining table was set for a fine yet intimate family dinner, accented by festive holiday decor and aglow with candlelight.

The aroma of food filled the cozy Canadian home, along with family chatter after a Saturday out braving cold temperatures and Christmas crowds in the city.

I asked the hostess if I could help with anything. “No, you’re our guest,” she warmly replied. “We’re almost ready.”

As I wandered into the dining room and saw the picture-perfect place settings, tears filled my eyes. “To be given a seat at the table—any table—is one of life’s greatest gifts,” I thought to myself. “To be given a place at this table? A miracle.”

On the surface, this looked like a scene from a Hallmark movie or a holiday commercial. In the shadow of an elegant Christmas tree, the host couple prepared dinner together while the laughter of their children mingled with Christmas carols in the background.

The backstory, however, was far from picture perfect. And the hospitality being extended to me—perhaps the unlikeliest of invitations I’d ever received—had not come without a significant cost.

The hostess was Lori Anne Thompson—a woman who was groomed and sexually abused in 2014–2016 by my then-boss, Ravi Zacharias, who had been a world-renowned Christian apologist. The guest was yours truly—I had been the spokesperson for Thompson’s abuser throughout the abuse crisis. Indeed, for years I was part of the machine that nearly crushed her family.

It is hard to overstate how brutally the Thompson family had been treated by Zacharias and the ministry he led—or how far reaching the consequences of this injustice inflicted …

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