One of the challenges facing the Western church is that the percentage of young people with no faith (“nones”) is growing. In fact, it may be as high as 30% in the United States. For a variety of reasons, the trend is that fewer members of younger generations find organized religion compelling, and Christianity in…
Christians are rightly concerned with the decline of the church in North America and Western Europe. Is this a permanent trend? Can we reverse it? Are we in the postmodern West inevitably headed down the path toward secularism? I don’t believe that secularization is inevitable. That said, the church must reclaim her evangelistic mantle. How…
At a recent conference at Wheaton College, Fuller Theological Seminary president Mark Labberton addressed evangelical leaders on what he calls the “crisis of evangelicalism.” You can read the address here, and I commend it to your prayerful consideration. We face a haunting specter with a shadow that reaches back further than the 2016 election—a history…
How do we get more millennials into church? In the ecclesial world I live in, this seems to be the question of the day, and there is no shortage of answers. I’m not a millennial. Many have been my students. I count several as friends. There are even a couple of professors on my faculty who…
The beginning of this coming academic year represents the beginning of my thirtieth year at Perkins School of Theology. I am now in the last quarter of my academic career with prospects for overtime. It was a great decision to come to Southern Methodist University and to move to Texas. Coming to Southern Methodist University…