The Church in India is witnessing remarkable growth, a sign of God’s work across the country, said Rev. Vijayesh Lal, General Secretary of the Evangelical Fellowship of India (EFI). But he cautioned that alongside the encouraging expansion there is a pressing need for greater depth in discipleship, leadership, and community engagement.
Our structures are our theologies embodied, revealing what our communities truly believe about God, the Church, authority, and one another. If our structures do not embrace true mutuality, they proclaim a theology that no amount of rhetoric about unity and partnership can conceal. For the well-being of the Church globally, it is appropriate to ask what kind of relationships are we committed to?
When we touch earth, we are touching something deeply ancient, deeply alive. It may seem solid and lifeless, but scoop up a handful of dirt and you have a living substance. And without gravity, nothing would stay in place. Let us not lose the wonder of the free gifts God has given to all the Earth.
Dominion theology has deep roots and it has led to some despicable actions in the name of Christian faith. In a similar way today, under the guise of Christian nationalism, too many Christians today call for domination without competence. As Christians, we have uniquely valuable spiritual and practical wisdom to offer, but we should not tarnish it by pretending to be experts in areas where we are not.
A question everyone should ask themselves when they open a retouching app: who decides what my face should look like? Increasingly, the answer is an algorithm, and that has consequences that go far beyond vanity. Artificial Intelligence-powered beauty filter apps have amassed staggering numbers of users, and that is a serious problem for humanity. The gospel presents us with a different image.
Marriage rates in New Zealand have reached historic lows, according to new government data, prompting the New Zealand Christian Network (NZCN) to affirm the value of strong marriages for families and society.
The question of who qualifies as an evangelical and how many evangelicals exist worldwide continues to puzzle scholars, church leaders and mission researchers alike. That was the central theme of a Sept. 2 webinar hosted by the World Evangelical Alliance and released publicly Sept. 5, featuring two leading voices in global religious demography.
Dolly Parton, the country singer and songwriter who carried the hymns of a small Tennessee mountain church into a career that ended with No. 1 hits on Christian radio, died Tuesday (Aug. 25) in Nashville, Tennessee. She was 80.
