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David King

Date posted: 12 Dec 2024

When my youth leader invited me on a trip to Taizé, I had never heard of the place. But, it was France. It would be my first time abroad, and I was excited, thinking I would see the Eiffel Tower.

The one dampener was that we were going by coach and ferry (for £35, an amazing price even then!), but the unfortunate Zeebrugge ferry disaster had taken place months earlier, causing ferry travel to experience heightened public scrutiny. But I and other young people went with the youth leader, other church leaders from the area, and some of their young people.

Ziggy Rogoff

Date posted: 16 Dec 2024

When sharing the gospel, we seek to contextualise without compromising, so that people can better understand concepts of sin, salvation and Messiah without being waylaid in unfamiliar ‘Christianese’. But we also remember that it is God who works through these interactions, and only He can save.

People bring their own attitudes into gospel interactions, ranging from hostile to friendly, and while their response is beyond our control, our commitment to godliness remains unwavering as we strive to make Jesus known. In fact, when people get mad with us it means something in their heart is moving.

letter from America

Russell Moore

Date posted: 17 Aug 2024

'I don’t know how to say, "I’m lonely," without sounding like I’m saying, "I’m a loser,"' a middle-aged man said to me not long ago. 'And I don’t know how to say it without sounding like I’m an ungrateful Christian.'

After all, this man said, he’s at church every week—not just there, but active. His life is a blur of activities. But he feels alone. In that, at least, he’s not alone.

Repeatedly, almost all of the data show us the same thing: that the so-called 'loneliness epidemic' experts warned about is real. We all know it’s bad, and we sometimes have a vague sense of why it’s happening. The answers that some come up with are often too big to actually affect any individual person’s life. Smartphones aren’t going away. We aren’t all moving back to our hometowns. We see a kind of resigned powerlessness to change society’s lonely condition. So why can’t the church fix this?

Robert Putnam: Bowling Alone

The answer lies partly in a book published a near quarter-century ago: political scientist Robert Putnam’s famous Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community. Earlier this summer, The New York Times interviewed Putnam, asking him whether, since he saw the loneliness crisis coming, he saw any hope of it ending.

Putnam reiterated that the answer is what he calls 'social capital,' those networks of relationships needed to keep people together. Social capital comes in two forms, Putnam insists, and both are necessary. Bonding social capital is made up of the ties that link people to other people like themselves. Bridging social capital consists of the ties that link people to those unlike themselves.

The first time I was on set with a television talk-show host who, like me, grew up Southern Baptist, he turned to me before we went on the air and said, 'Pop quiz: What should always be the first song in a hymnal?' I immediately responded with the right answer ('Holy, Holy, Holy'), and we high-fived. No one else on that set knew what we were talking about. The secularist in the producer’s chair might have thought, 'What’s "Holy, Holy, Holy"?' The churchgoing evangelical behind the camera might well have thought, 'What’s a hymnal?'

That little detail of shared tribal memory, though, represented more than trivia. It was a way of recognizing one another—the same sort of church background, from the same sort of time period, the same sort of shared experience. We knew in that moment that, even if no one else in New York City knew the names of Lottie Moon and Annie Armstrong, we did, and, even if no one in that television network building could say what words would follow 'I pledge allegiance to the Christian flag,' we would. All of us experience equivalent moments of bonding social capital.

Putnam makes it clear that one form of social capital is not 'good' and the other 'bad.' When you’re sick and need to be taken care of, usually that comes from relationships made with bonding capital. That’s good, but—when taken too far—really dangerous. Putnam notes that the Ku Klux Klan is 'pure social capital' of the bonding sort. Bridging capital, Putnam argues, is much harder, but both are needed for a person or a society to escape isolation.

George Crowder

Date posted: 8 Oct 2024

For evangelicals in the Church of England there is one key question in the current crisis about blessings for same sex couples: How do I stay faithful to God in mission and ministry in the local parish church as the majority of the House of Bishops continues to reject the Bible’s teaching, contradict the foundational doctrine of the denomination and abuse power?

We are united on the importance of that question, but we not united on the answer. That is not a criticism, because there are a variety of answers depending on context, calling and conscience.

Emily Lucas

Date posted: 16 Jun 2025

What do you celebrate in life? What milestones and anniversaries make their way onto your family and social calendars?

These tend to be the moments that mark our lives, that testify to the special moments we long to recall and remember; for others to reflect on after our time on Earth is done. The anniversaries and moments that form our life’s legacy in this world.

John-Edward Funnell

Date posted: 1 May 2025

I have just returned home from a missions conference in Constanta on the Black Sea, where I was invited to speak on “Gen Z and the exclusivity of Jesus.” 

Hundreds of people attended from across Europe, Asia, Africa and even South America, yet we met together as one, to worship the same Father in Heaven. We had a beautiful time together.

Wien Fung

Date posted: 29 Mar 2025

The recent news about the tragic deaths of actor Gene Hackman and his wife, Betsy Arakawa, has deeply affected me.

Arakawa died from hantavirus, probably one week before Hackman, whose Alzheimer's meant he probably didn't even realise his wife had passed away. The thought of this elderly couple spending their final days alone, unknown, undiscovered deeply troubled me - echoing my own experiences of grief. Last year, my father passed away, and I wasn't able to be there with him at the end. Since then, I've wondered many times what those final moments were like for him. Did he feel alone? Was he afraid? Did he know how much he was loved? It's a pain that never really leaves you — the questions, the regrets, and the longing to have done things differently.

Ryan Burton King

Date posted: 30 May 2025

The lad in the middle of the photo accompanying this article is me. The boy on the bicycle to my right is Moti. The boy on my left is Zami.

I last saw them when I was 11 years old after moving house from Stamford Hill in London, still home to a significant Jewish population. Though a brief friendship in the scheme of things, these Jewish boys played an important role in my formation, life and mission as a Christian. Seldom a day has passed since our first meeting that I have not thought of or prayed for Moti and Zami - and Asher, Joshua, Samuel, Yitzahk and many others whose names sadly now escape me.

Leonardo De Chirico

Date posted: 21 Apr 2025

A leading evangelical in Rome, Leonardo De Chirico, offers his personal reflections on the direction of the Roman Catholic Church globally under Francis over the last 12 years.

bridging cultural divides

Jason Roach

Date posted: 16 May 2025

I still remember the weight of that brown envelope in my hands. My entire future seemed contained within those folded A-level results. With trembling fingers, I opened it, and my heart sank. The grades weren't enough for medical school.

In that moment, I hadn't broken any moral code. There were even mitigating circumstances that had affected my performance. Yet what overwhelmed me wasn't guilt - it was shame.

Dan Steel

Date posted: 16 May 2025

I came across an interesting statistic the other day: only about 2.5% of any given population are considered true “innovators.”

These are the folks who instinctively think outside the box - the pioneers, the ones who approach problems from unexpected angles and aren’t afraid to take risks on ideas others might dismiss. They're the trailblazers.

John Brand

Date posted: 28 Mar 2025

Over the years, I have become more and more convinced that, from a human perspective at least, the most important factor in determining the growth and fruitfulness of the local church is leadership.

I have studied and analysed a large number of churches that have split, closed or gone into maintenance mode, and almost without exception the problem can be traced back to a leadership issue – either a lack of leadership, the wrong people in leadership, the wrong exercising of leadership or the wrong attitude towards leaders on the part of the congregation as a whole.

Jonny Woodbridge

Date posted: 13 Apr 2025

There has lately been a big push back in youth and children's ministry against leaving the job of discipling young people just to the "professional", the church youth and children's worker.

Instead there has been more of a return to the Biblical idea that God has given the responsibility of bringing children up to love the Lord primarily to their parents. This shift has encouraged churches to work with families and help them to do this discipling work, rather than just employing a youth and children's worker to do it instead.

Andy Corley

Date posted: 19 Mar 2025

Every movement has a moment when momentum becomes unstoppable. It doesn’t happen overnight — it’s a gradual process that eventually shifts everything. At Prison Fellowship International, that moment is unfolding right now within prisons around the world.

These pivotal shifts are what we call tipping points. A tipping point is a moment when the power of a few reaches a critical mass, when a small percentage of individuals within a system are so deeply transformed that they catalyse broader change. In prison systems, that means when just 20% of prisoners experience a true transformation, the other 80% are affected, ultimately leading to culture and behaviour shifts.

Ryan Burton King

Date posted: 28 Feb 2025

On 24 February 2025, thousands of Ukrainians and their families and friends crowded into London’s Trafalgar Square for an evening of prayers and protest, speeches and music, marking three years since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

Particular excitement was caused by the appearance of the 'Iron General', the popular former commander of the Ukrainian Armed Forces Valery Zaluzhnyi, who took up a new post as ambassador to the United Kingdom last year. But the mood was inescapably sober, and reflected a new sentiment absent from previous gatherings: betrayal.

Rebecca Chapman

Date posted: 13 Nov 2024

Just over 12 years ago, on 9 November 2012, I walked down the wooden stairs from the Archbishop's flat, towards Lambeth Palace’s largest function room, the wood-panelled Guard Room, which was heaving with journalists. We were about to announce who would be the 105th Archbishop of Canterbury.

With me walked Justin and Caroline Welby. Justin made his oft-repeated joke, that he felt like the eyes of the figures in the paintings on the Palace walls were somehow watching him. He was full of energy, enthusiastic, almost tigger-ish at the task ahead of him. And he was evangelical.

David Shepherd

Date posted: 12 Dec 2024

In the four years of writing for Evangelicals Now, the published responses to my articles have been few and far between. The responses sent by post to me (c/o Beacon Church Camberley) have been even rarer.

That’s why the letter I received in response to my last article (How do Christian legal principles help us navigate scandals?) caught my attention.

Ryan Burton King

Date posted: 21 Oct 2024

Black History Month originally sprang out of African American joint celebrations of Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglass’s February birthdays. 'Negro History Week' began in February 1926 to recognise African American contributions to society and raise awareness to the prejudices they had and continued to face.

This week for designated learning emphasis was well established by 1976, when the United States celebrated its bicentennial, and the week expanded to a month. To mark the inaugural Black History Month, President Gerald R. Ford said, 'We can seize the opportunity to honour the too-often neglected accomplishments of black Americans in every area of endeavour throughout our history. I urge my fellow citizens to join me in tribute to Black History Month and the message of courage and perseverance it brings to all of us.'

Ian Paul

Date posted: 14 Nov 2024

Justin Welby’s resignation as Archbishop of Canterbury is truly unprecedented. No archbishop has ever, in the history of the Church of England, resigned - not even in 1621 when the primate of all England shot and killed a gamekeeper with a crossbow while hunting.

Some are still defending him, either praising the good aspects of his ministry, or even (like Charles Moore in the Spectator) saying that he should not have resigned.