Gospelbound

Andy Crouch and his colleagues at The Praxis Journal wrote an article titled, “ Leading Beyond the Blizzard ” on March 20, 2020, just one week after the national COVID-19 shutdown began in the United States. Crouch and his team warned us that this crisis would not be a blizzard that rages for a few weeks or a winter that lasted a few months, but an “ice age” of 12 to 18 months that would change ou...

You know an author is worth reading if he can make stones interesting. But after reading Andrew Wilson’s  God of All Things: Rediscovering the Sacred in an Everyday World (Zondervan), you’ll be seeing stones everywhere in the Bible, and you’ll understand their significance in ways you never imagined before. Andrew Wilson is teaching pastor at King’s Church London and has theology degrees from Camb...

Veneetha Rendall Risner has dealt with more than her share of trials, which she recounts in her new book, " Walking Through Fire: A Memoir of Loss and Redemption ", published by Nelson Books. She opens up her thought process for a raw look at the emotional and spiritual wrestling of suffering, anger toward God, and the reason for suffering. This episode of Gospelbound is sponsored by The Good Book...

At some point, Christians were viewed by many in the West as annoying, perhaps prudish, even self-righteous. Sometimes Christians set themselves as an example of holiness that the world could not or did not want to attain. To be called “holier than thou” was common. But those days are long gone, says Stephen McAlpine, author of the new book Being the Bad Guys: How to Live for Jesus in a World That...

Solomon prayed for wisdom, and the Lord granted his request. Oh, how we need more Solomons in our day! At least the early Solomon, before all the foreign wives. Brett McCracken is here to help with his new book, The Wisdom Pyramid: Feeding Your Soul in a Post-Truth World , published by Crossway. Brett works as director of communications and senior editor for arts and culture with The Gospel Coalit...

By this point I don’t think I’m going out on a limb by saying the debate over social justice in the church will not progress through Twitter accounts and YouTube rants. Events and face-to-face conversations have been hindered by COVID-19. But at least we have books. We’d be in much better shape inside the church if the debate were informed by books like Confronting Justice Without Compromising Tru...

If I want to read anyone’s reflections on recent years, it’s Russell Moore. The president of the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission of the SBC hasn’t been as visible or vocal as he was before 2017, at least until the last week following the attack on the U.S. Capitol. But his newest book, The Courage to Stand: Facing Your Fear Without Losing Your Soul , published by B&H, is even better than a...

As 2020 finally ends, it feels appropriate to look back on what we've learned and ultimately celebrate what God has done, even in the midst of one of the most difficult years ever collectively experienced. In this special bonus episode of Gospelbound, host Collin Hansen is joined by TGC colleague Melissa Kruger, who co-hosts the Let's Talk podcast. They discuss big trends and stories from 2020, sh...

A recent article in New York Magazine included this bombshell, "Roughly 30% of American women under 25 identify as LGBT. For women over 60, that figure is less than 5%." Now, I can't find anyone who believes this number can really be that high. To acknowledge such a dramatic shift in such a short period of time would be nothing short of a world changing revolution. But, we know about rapid onset g...

Why would anyone think a preacher from 2,000 years ago would be relevant today? Assume for a second you don’t believe in the resurrection. What did his age know of nuclear weapons, space exploration, and microchip computers? Many would say that if that preacher wants to speak for today, his followers will need to translate and update. But that’s not Becky Pippert’s view. Her new book, Stay Salt ,...

On Gospelbound I typically interview authors whose ideas intrigue and encourage me. And today is no different with my guest Brad Vermurlen, author of the new book Reformed Resurgence: The New Calvinist Movement and the Battle Over American Evangelicalism , published by Oxford University Press. Vermurlen works as a research associate in the sociology department at the University of Texas at Austin....

The year 1976 marked a turning point in American and evangelical history. It was the year of the evangelical, with a born-again Southern Baptist, Jimmy Carter, capturing the Democratic nomination and narrowly defeating the Republican incumbent, Gerald Ford. And it was the end of the New Deal elections, when factions had been divided along class and regional lines. From then until now, American ele...

Imagine you spent countless hours studying scientific and philosophical objections to Christianity. You enrolled in the classes. You read the books. You practiced the arguments. And you found out that no one really cared. That’s the post-Christian world described by Sam Chan in his new book, How to Talk About Jesus (Without Being That Guy): Personal Evangelism in a Skeptical World , published by Z...

“Time for another Reformation” has been a rallying cry of many Protestants since, well, the original Protestant Reformation. And in the last 20 years you’ve heard this cry from a particular group that wants a new kind of Christianity more attuned to our times. Alisa Childers wants another Reformation, too. But not one that leaves behind historic Christianity. As she writes in her new book, Another...

It’s not that Africa needs a different kind of Christianity. But many common challenges for ministry in Africa simply don’t arise in books published in the West. That’s why Conrad Mbewe wrote God’s Design for the Church: A Guide for African Pastors and Ministry Leaders , published by TGC and 9Marks with Crossway. The need for such a resource is tremendous: while about 9 million Christians lived in...

Elections have consequences, but not nearly as much as we probably think. That's what I concluded after reading David Platt's new book, Before You Vote: Seven Questions Every Christian Should Ask , published by Radical.  Here's a sober dose of biblical reality from Platt in the book:  "Even if we lose every freedom and protection we have as followers of Jesus in the United States, and even if our...

It happened before. Can it happen again? I’m talking about secession. That’s the question that animates David French’s new book, Divided We Fall: America’s Secession Threat and How to Restore Our Nation , published by St. Martin’s Press. I’m pretty skeptical about books that seem to oversell such catastrophic outcomes. It seems like scare tactics to sell books. But the way French sets up the book...

Before the coronavirus pandemic, American religiosity had been in steady decline. When American religiosity peaked in 1960, one in two adults in the United States attended any religious service in a given week. Now it’s a little more than one in three. Membership in religious bodies has declined from more than 75 percent to 62 percent. And the number that gets all the attention is the “nones,” the...

A number of years ago, I grew distressed with the number of friends and colleagues who had left ministry amid controversy and scandal. I tried to learn what had gone wrong and how to keep it from repeating. From that study came several books devoted to helping pastors endure, especially as they learn from historical and present-day mentors who have fought the good fight. I’m grateful for Paul Trip...

What's most important about humanity never changes. We're made in the image of God and separated from our creator by our sin. We need a savior lest we fall under God's judgment. It doesn't matter where you travel or what time period you study, this story doesn't change. But every culture around the world and across the ages highlights some aspects of this story and ignores others. It's the work of...

Everyone loves a good story. Especially in these hard times. Or maybe not. Should we be swapping yarns while the world burns? Maybe we need less levity, more solemnity, when we see so much wrong in the world. As a professional storyteller, Sean Dietrich brings together the levity and solemnity in his new book, Will the Circle Be Unbroken? published by Zondervan. Also known as Sean of the South, Di...

You’ve probably noticed that the views toward and practices of marriage have changed. But how? And how do Christian views and practices differ? That’s what Mark Regnerus set out to discover in a global study of Christians from across denominations. You’ll find the results in his new book, The Future of Christian Marriage , published by Oxford University Press. Mark is a professor of sociology at t...

“No one can help or hurt a child like a parent can.” Do you doubt this observation? Try finding a memoir that isn’t an extended meditation on the author’s parents. And if you’ve read the memoirs I have, you don’t want your children to grow up and write one. The story of growing up with two parents who loved you and loved the Lord doesn’t make for good drama. But it can help set you up for a lifeti...

“Nothing we expected, yet everything we need.” That’s what Michael and Lauren McAfee suggest you’ll find when you read the Bible for yourself. That’s their charge to the millennial generation in their new book, Not What You Think: Why the Bible Might Be Nothing We Expected Yet Everything We Need , published by Zondervan. Michael and Lauren write this book to millennials, those born between 1980 an...

I don’t know that any religious conversion is more unlikely than another. After all, we’re only born again because a perfect man who is God died on a cross and rose from the dead on the third day. That’s not a likely story. We’re all equally dead in our transgressions before Jesus saves us. But I know what Randy Newman means in his new book, Unlikely Converts: Improbable Stories of Faith and What...