Part of our series Stop Trying to Stop Worrying. Psalm 55:22 and 1 Peter 5:6–7.

The worry that isn't about you

Some of the heaviest worry I carry isn't about me at all. It's about them.

The friend who stopped replying to my texts. The couple I love, whose marriage is quietly coming apart. A parent whose memory slips a little more with each visit. A kid making choices that scare me half to death. I love these people. And because I love them, I carry their situations with me. At two in the morning, running scenarios on the ceiling.

If you told me to stop worrying about them, it would almost feel like betrayal. Isn't worrying what love does? I don't think the Bible says "just stop." But it does say something better, and harder. It says some of what you're carrying isn't yours to carry.

A song from a broken friendship

Psalm 55 is David writing about the anguish in his heart. Fear and trembling have come over him. And the worst part isn't an enemy. It's a friend. Someone he used to walk with. Someone he worshipped beside in the Temple. They shared a faith, a history, a life. And now that friendship has turned into deceit and betrayal. Right in the middle of all that pain, David writes a line that sounds almost too simple:


Not because you're giving up. Not a shrug and a "Whatever, God will figure it out." You hand it over because it matters too much to carry alone. And look at the promise. He will sustain you. That's not God watching from a distance. It's God carrying the weight, holding it up, and supplying the strength to keep going. It frees us to keep showing up for people without carrying a weight that was never ours.

Humility first, then throwing

Centuries later, Peter picks up the same thread. He's writing to churches scattered across what's now Turkey. These are mostly Gentiles who have given their lives to Christ. He calls them exiles. They aren't the majority, and they aren't safe. Some are losing their reputations, and some their lives, for following Jesus. If anyone had a right to worry, it was these new believers. Here's what Peter tells them:

Humble yourselves, therefore, under God's mighty hand, that he may lift you up in due time. Cast all your anxiety on him because he cares for you. (1 Peter 5:6–7)

"Cast" sounds gentle to us. Almost poetic, like casting a fishing line. But Peter's word means to throw. The only other time it shows up in the New Testament is when the disciples throw their coats onto the colt Jesus rides into Jerusalem.

That's the picture. You take the thing off your back and throw it onto something else. You don't set it down politely and keep one hand on it. Peter is saying throw all of it. Not just the big, respectable anxieties. The 2 a.m. stuff. The stuff you're embarrassed you still worry about.

But notice the order. Humility first. Then you throw. That's not an accident. In Greek, the casting is tied grammatically to being humble. It isn't two assignments. Peter is saying this is how you humble yourself. Letting go of the worry is the humility. Which seems so strange, doesn't it? Worry doesn't feel proud. Worry feels like love. Especially when it's worry for someone else.

When worry plays savior

Here's the uncomfortable part. A lot of our worry for other people rests on an assumption we'd never say out loud…If I just plan well enough, if I say the right thing at the right time, I can fix this.
 
Worry can be a quiet way of putting myself in God's role. We like control. We want to be in charge of the outcome. And worry lets us feel like we're doing something, even when there's nothing left to do. It feels like caring. But I'd argue it shows a lack of foresight. And it can be dangerous in at least three ways.

It's dangerous to the people we love. When I'm the one holding their life together, they stop being a person and start becoming my project. People can feel that. Nobody wants to be somebody's project. No human being was built to carry another human being's whole life. That weight crushes you slowly, over years.

It's dangerous to our faith. If I'm the savior in this story, I've quietly stopped trusting that there's another one. And the lack of foresight? I can't see the whole story. I don't know what God is doing in my son's life that I'll only understand ten years from now. I don't know what my friend has to walk through to come out the other side. Peter says God lifts us up "in due time." Not my timeline.
 
Worry assumes I know how the story should go and when it should get there. Humility admits I don't.

Because he cares for you

So humility says something like this…I am not their savior.

I love them. I'll pray. I'll make the phone call, sit in the waiting room, and say the hard thing when it needs saying. But I can't hold their whole life in my hands. And here's the good news hiding in that. Neither do I have to.

This isn't checking out. Right after these verses, Peter tells his readers to be alert, stay awake, resist. Throwing your anxiety on God doesn't mean you stop caring. It means you show up without a weight you were never meant to carry. Honestly, you're more present for people when you're not drowning in fear for them.
 
Then Peter gives the reason in five words: because he cares for you.

That's the whole argument. Not "because it's the right thing to do." Not "because worry is a sin." Because he cares for you. Take it one step further. If God cares for you, God cares even more for the people you love. You love your daughter; God loves her more. You've known your friend for twenty years; God has known him longer. Whatever love is driving your worry, a bigger, steadier, wiser love is already holding the person you're worried about.

For this week

Think of one person you are worried about. Just one. Say their name, out loud if you can. Then pray something like this…

God, I love them. You love them more. I can't hold their whole life, but you can. I'm putting them in your hands. Show me the one thing you want me to do for them today and help me let the rest go.

Then listen. Maybe the one thing is a text. Maybe it's nothing at all except trust. And if you pick them back up an hour from now, that's okay. Set them down again. Casting isn't something you do once. It's something you learn to do over and over.

All Saints is a community for all who believe, doubt, and seek. Listen to this episode on the All Saints Podcast, and find groups and more at believedoubtseek.org.

Most mornings I check the news before my feet hit the floor. I'm not proud of it. By the time the coffee is ready, I've taken in a market dip, a new casualty count from a war on the other side of the world, and a handful of people I respect talking past each other about politics. Nothing in my kitchen has changed. But my shoulders have.

If that sounds familiar, this one's for you.

The trouble usually isn't today

Here's something I've noticed about my own worry. Almost none of it is about right now. Right now, I'm usually fine. I'm walking the dog or watching a game. It's tomorrow that gets me. Next month. Next year. Some scenario that will probably never happen. Worry is a kind of time travel. It drops you into a future you haven't reached, shows you the worst version, and sends you back exhausted.

The news makes that trip easy to take. Grocery prices, layoff rumors, interest rates, wars, a country that can't seem to talk to itself. These are real troubles affecting real people. But what I actually carry around all day is mostly the rehearsal of them.

What Jesus did with worried people

In Matthew 6:25–34, Jesus addresses a group facing far greater worries than most of us—farmers and fishermen living under occupation and heavy taxes, uncertain about where next week's bread would come from. What stands out is that he doesn't scold them; instead, he points out something. He invites them and us to observe the birds and lilies, reminding us that God feeds and clothes them. Then he asks, in essence, aren't you just as important to God? This passage challenges us to trust in God's care and encourages confidence over fear. Worry tells us everything depends on us. Jesus invites us to look up and notice that the world is already being held.

So, what does that look like on a Tuesday? Here are three practices I'm trying.

• Hand it over, out loud: Worrying feels productive. Refreshing the headlines feels like staying informed. Running the budget again at midnight feels responsible. But Jesus asks a fair question. Has worrying ever added a single hour to your life? Paul offers something better in Philippians 4:6: bring your requests to God, with thanksgiving. Prayer isn't a way of ignoring problems. It's a way of putting them where they belong. 
  • What this looks like for me lately:
    • Headlines into prayers. When a story unsettles me, I pray one sentence before I scroll on. For the families in that war zone. For the neighbor who lost a job. For leaders I didn't vote for.
    • A news window. I pick when I'll check the news, and I stick to it. Informed is good. Saturated isn't.
    • One thank-you. Before I finish praying, I name one thing God has already provided today.
• Ask for today's bread, not next year's: Jesus ends the passage with this: "Each day has enough trouble of its own." That's not a promise that today will be easy. It's a reminder that today's trouble comes with today's grace, and tomorrow will come with its own. It's why he taught us to pray for daily bread. When Israel tried to stockpile manna in the wilderness, it spoiled. Grace doesn't keep well in the pantry.
  • None of this means skipping the budget or the retirement account. Plan wisely. But savings make a good tool and a poor god. A few things that help me keep them in their place:
    1. Keep a provision list. Write down the ways God has come through. Looking back makes it easier to trust looking forward.
    2. Give something away. Nothing loosens worry's grip on money like generosity.
    3. Tell someone. God often provides through people. Let your church family know when things are tight.
• Look for the kingdom on purpose: "Seek first the kingdom of God," Jesus says, "and all these things will be given to you as well." 
  • The kingdom manifests when God's good intentions for the world are realized, the hungry are fed, enemies are reconciled, immigrants are warmly welcomed, and the overlooked are given a seat at the table. 
  • As N. T. Wright frequently emphasizes, Christian hope isn't about God abandoning this world but about renewing and restoring it. Here's why that matters right now. The news is a highlight reel of what's breaking. Seeking the kingdom means training your eyes to notice what God is repairing, and then joining in.
    • In a shaky economy, that might mean asking not only "Will I be okay?" but "Who near me is struggling?"
    • With wars abroad, we can't fix them from our easy chair, but we can pray, give to those caring for refugees, and welcome those who arrive in our communities.
    • With political division at home, it might mean staying at the table with a relative or friend who votes differently and remembering that our deepest allegiance isn't to a party.

Quick note: none of these is easy, and sometimes they don’t have the effect we hope for. One habit I'd recommend at the end of the day. Ask, where did I see God bringing life today? It's usually small. It's always there.

One question to carry: Next time you catch yourself spiraling, ask yourself is this today's trouble or tomorrow's? If it's today's, do what you can, then let it go. If it's tomorrow's, say, "That belongs to tomorrow." Then look out the window and find something God is caring for without your help. You don't need tomorrow's grace today. Today has enough.

Your turn. Where have you noticed God mending something this week?

Please share it in the comments.

This post is adapted from Episode 2 of a 5 part series on All Saints podcast: Stop Trying to Stop Worrying. Listen to "Today Has Enough" wherever you get your podcasts or watch on YouTube: 

We received a question in the doubter’s mailbox this week that required some serious study and research. It is honest, raw, and well written. It was given to us by a 16-year-old. I had to take a long while to come up with an intelligent response that matched the intelligent inquiry. I hope this generates more questions and hopefully some insight.

The Question:
 
‘I am 16 years old and a junior in high school. I am currently embarking on my personal spiritual journey and reading the bible. I asked my mom a question that she did not have the answer to, and she told me to submit it here. My question is: Why does God command the Israelites to kill the Canaanites, purposely drown people in floods, and much else, when the sixth commandment states, "Thou shalt not kill." My main concern is why God commands the Israelites to kill the Canaanites when they were innocent people of God who simply resided on part of the promised land. While the promised land was promised to the Israelites (hence the name), why did it need to be so violent and contradict God's OWN commandment? In addition, the story of Rahab, who was a prostitute and Canaanite woman, is told, seemingly, to almost cover up the fact that they killed everyone else. The Israelites promised not to kill Rahab and her family because she aided the spies. It just seems like they were trying to send a message that the Israelites and God did not judge her for her sinful occupation, and that everyone is made new in God. God's universal grace and love for his people, except he proceeds to convict the Israelites to kill everyone else. Why couldn't they simply coexist or force them to a different area? Every answer I've come across is that the translation in Hebrew for the sixth commandment says murder, not kill. To me, this seems like a bit of a cop-out, no offense. To conclude, I have been wrestling with various different versions of this question relating to the violence and contradiction of the Old Testament for multiple weeks and still am struggling to find peace. Hopefully you can give me some sort of perspective, if not a direct answer to my admittedly annoying and overwhelming question. Another question I just came up with: When thousands of cultural groups and ethnicities have been displaced or forced out of their homeland, why did god pick the Israelites to center around? I guess I'm saying that the Israelites are not exactly at the core of the world's issues, especially back then. Did god just randomly choose the Israelites to help? Is this only the answer because the Old Testament is told from the perspective of the Israelites? Isn't everyone Gods chosen one?’

The Answer(s):

Hello, these are really good questions, and they aren't annoying or overwhelming. In fact, you are asking questions that Christians, Jewish thinkers, historians, and biblical scholars have wrestled with for a very long time. You also don't have to force yourself to feel satisfied with an answer just because someone tells you, "That's what the Bible says."

I would like to approach your questions in a few pieces.

1. "Why does God command killing if the commandment says not to kill?"

The Hebrew word in the sixth commandment is often translated as "murder" rather than simply "kill." That distinction is important, but I agree with you that it doesn't solve the whole problem.

The Bible itself contains different kinds of killing. Some are described as murder, some as warfare, some as punishment, and some as acts of God. So, the commandment isn't really saying that every taking of human life is forbidden. But that creates the harder question you are asking:

Even if the Israelites weren't technically violating the commandment, why would a loving God command them to kill people at all?

There isn't a simple answer to that. A traditional Christian answer is that the Canaanites were being judged for serious evil and that God was using Israel as an instrument of judgment. Some biblical passages describe the Canaanites as practicing things such as child sacrifice and other forms of violence. From that perspective, the story isn't supposed to be "Israel wanted their land, so God gave them permission to kill innocent people." It is presented as God's judgment.

And again, there is a problem with that explanation.

The people who died weren't just the people committing those practices. The stories sometimes describe entire populations being destroyed, including women and children. That's why your question doesn't disappear simply by saying "they were wicked."
Something else is worth noticing. The Bible itself doesn't always portray Israel as completely comfortable with this idea. Later biblical writers repeatedly criticize Israel for its own violence, injustice, and failure to live differently from the nations around it.

So, I I am not saying at all, "Don't worry about it. The answer is simply that God commanded it." It's more honest to say that Christians disagree about how literally and historically we should understand these accounts, what the biblical authors meant by "destroy everyone," and how God's character should be understood in light of Jesus.

2. Rahab actually makes your question more interesting.

I don't think Rahab is included to "cover up" what happened. In fact, Rahab creates an interesting complication. She is a Canaanite. She is also a woman with, by Jewish culture at that time, a socially disreputable occupation. Yet she becomes one of the people Israel protects.

That means the story doesn't simply say, Israel good. Canaanites bad.
Rahab is a Canaanite who recognises what God is doing and acts courageously. And the Bible later gives Rahab an even bigger role. She appears in Jesus' genealogy in Matthew 1. The message seems to be that being a Canaanite wasn't automatically a sentence of condemnation. Rahab could become part of God's story. And that connects directly to your question about whether God's grace is universal.

3. "Why couldn't Israel just coexist with the Canaanites?"

This is probably one of the most difficult questions. The Old Testament includes passages where Israel does coexist with Canaanite peoples. The conquest stories are not as simple as "Israel entered the land and every Canaanite disappeared." For example, Judges begins by describing Canaanite peoples who remained in the land. Different biblical accounts don't always fit neatly together. Some passages describe complete destruction, while others describe Israel living among the remaining peoples. Because of that, some biblical scholars argue that the language of "destroy everyone" should be understood partly as ancient warfare language, where victory was described in exaggerated or absolute terms. Others believe the accounts describe actual divinely commanded destruction. Christians and scholars don't agree on this. And honestly, I think that's important for you to know. I don't pretend there is a perfect answer when there isn't one.

4. Your question about the Israelites is even bigger

You asked "Why did God pick the Israelites?"

I think the Bible gives a surprisingly different answer than "Israel was better than everybody else." Deuteronomy actually says something pretty important about this.
Israel isn't chosen because they are the biggest, strongest, smartest, or most deserving nation. God's relationship with Israel is presented as something God initiates.

But here's the part I think is easy to miss. Israel isn't chosen simply for Israel's sake.
From the beginning, God's promise to Abraham includes: "In you all the families of the earth shall be blessed." The biblical story doesn’t end with God loving Israel.
It moves toward God choosing Israel to bless the nations.
That's a very different idea.

5. "Isn't everyone God's chosen one?"

This is where the Bible becomes really interesting. In the Old Testament, Israel has a particular role. But that doesn't necessarily mean God loves Israelites more than everyone else. The Old Testament also hints that God's concern is much bigger than Israel. There is Jonah who doesn't want God to forgive Nineveh because Nineveh is Israel's enemy. And God's response is essentially, "Why wouldn't I care about these people too?"

Then we get to Jesus, who continually crosses boundaries between Jews and outsiders. Samaritans. Romans. Women. Lepers. Gentiles. People considered sinners.

And eventually the apostle Paul says something that completely changes the way Christians understand God's people: "There is neither Jew nor Greek... for you are all one in Christ Jesus." If we're asking whether Christianity ultimately teaches that God's love is limited to one ethnic group, the answer is no. The biblical story moves toward God's blessing extending beyond Israel to everyone.

6. And finally, we get to Jesus

This is where I think your question becomes especially important if you're exploring Christianity. Jesus doesn't say violence is good in certain situations. Instead, he says things like "love your enemies And Bless those who persecute you." When one of his disciples uses violence against someone coming to arrest Jesus, Jesus stops him. I believe Christians must wrestle with a significant question. How should we understand the violent passages of the Old Testament considering Jesus' person and teaching?

There are different Christian answers. Some say God's judgment in the Old Testament was real and necessary, while Jesus reveals God's character more fully.  I am comfortable saying, "I don't know." I actually think that last answer can be the most faithful one.

7. You don't have to "solve" this before you can have faith

This might be the most important thing I'd say to you as a 16-year-old who is beginning to explore faith. You don't owe God intellectual certainty before you're allowed to believe. You can say: "I believe in God, but I don't understand this." You can say, "I believe Jesus is worth following, but some things in the Bible disturb me."
You can say, "I'm not sure what I believe yet."

Those are honest and truthful. The Bible itself contains people arguing with God, questioning God, complaining to God, and asking God why terrible things happen.

So questioning isn't necessarily the opposite of faith. Sometimes questioning is part of faith. And honestly, I wouldn't want you to find "peace" by convincing yourself that a difficult passage isn't difficult.

A better goal might be to become comfortable saying "I don't know yet, but I'm going to keep asking." That's a pretty good place to begin a spiritual journey. 

I hope this gives another lens through which to read the story of God.

I have people very close to me undergoing serious health issues. The kind that are scary and filled with the unknown. I am reminded of my own health issue when I was forty years old, when I suffered a brain bleed.

There was no warning, no family history, no slow build of symptoms I'd been ignoring. All of a sudden, a pain in my head hit like a ton of bricks. A 15 on a scale of 10. I had never felt anything like that ever. I was nauseated, dizzy, and couldn’t stand the lights being on. Within hours, I was lying in a hospital bed, hearing words I'd never expected to hear about myself.
I was lying in the ICU, not knowing what was going to happen. And I remember the question that came up in me before any prayer did: Will I be ok?

Nobody could tell me. Not the doctors, not my family, not me. Recovery from something like this doesn't come with a timeline. You don't know what will return, when, or whether life challenges will be radically different than I previously understood. In Psalm 46, it says:

"God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble. Therefore we will not fear, though the earth give way, though the mountains be moved into the heart of the sea."

I had read that psalm many times. I had preached it. But in that hospital room I understood something about it I'd missed…it doesn't promise the mountains won't move. It assumes they will. It's written by someone standing in the middle of the chaos.

That was honest enough for me to consider. Because my life had moved. The things I assumed were permanent (my health, my mind, my future, my ability to care for my family) were suddenly uncertain. If faith meant pretending otherwise, I didn't have any.

Here's what I want to tell you, and I want to say it carefully, because I know some of you reading this are skeptical of tidy little stories about God showing up.

God didn't tell me I'd be fine. I didn't get a vision or a voice or a guarantee. What I got was stranger than that, and harder to explain. I had a strange but certain sense of peace. Before the answers. Before the prognosis was clear. Before I knew what my recovery would look like.

The fear didn't disappear. At first I had a hard time talking. And talking was part of my livelihood. But underneath the fear, something else was running, like a river under the surface. A steadiness I didn't manufacture. My wife and kids were feeling there own sense of fear, but there was something we all felt. People we loved were praying for us when we couldn't find words to pray for ourselves.

The apostle Paul, writing from a prison cell, described it this way:

"The peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus." (Philippians 4:7)

Surpasses all understanding. That's exactly right. I couldn't explain it then, and I can't fully explain it now. My circumstances hadn't changed. The scans were still the scans. But something was keeping watch over my heart and mind that wasn't me. For the first time in my life, I didn't have to hold everything together.

What I learned about control

I had spent forty years believing, without quite saying it, that I was in control of my life. That if I worked hard enough, planned well enough, prayed faithfully enough, things would hold.
A bleed inside my own head took that illusion away in a second.

What I discovered is that losing control isn't the same as losing everything. Psalm 46 ends with a line that is powerful and difficult to live: "Be still, and know that I am God." The Hebrew carries the sense of letting go, of a clenched fist slowly opening. That's what I had to learn in the hospital, to open my hands. To stop gripping an outcome I couldn't produce anyway and let God be in control.

It took many months to fully recover. I remember the doctor saying to me in a follow-up, ‘I can’t explain why the bleed stopped on its own; I suppose in my profession I would call it a miracle.’ I smiled and said, ‘My profession would call it the same.’

Maybe you're not in a hospital bed. Maybe your mountain is a marriage, a layoff, a diagnosis for someone you love, or just a slow pile-up of pressure you can't seem to get out from under.

I don't want to hand you a formula. But I'll tell you what helped me, and what Paul recommends, and I realize how simplistic that is going to sound… bring it to God. All of it, specifically, even the parts that feel too small or too scary to say out loud. If you can, remember a time you were carried before. And then, as much as you can, open your hands.

You don't have to believe all of it to try. If you're doubting, bring the doubt too. The psalm was written for people standing on shaking ground, not for people who have it all figured out.

I can't promise you the outcome you want. Nobody could promise me mine. But I can tell you that peace doesn't wait for the scan results. It met me in the not-knowing.
 
This week on the podcast, I go deeper into Psalm 46 and Philippians 4 in "Stop Trying to Stop Worrying," including a simple practice for moving anxiety into prayer.

Here's something I've been sitting with. We don't just need the Holy Spirit for church gatherings. We need the Holy Spirit for our politics. We need the Holy Spirit for how we talk to the neighbor who votes differently than us. We need the Holy Spirit for our marriages, our friendships, the family group chat that goes sideways every holiday. Life doesn't hand any of us a manual for that. It hands us noise the news, the feeds, everybody thinking they are certain, everybody a little angrier than they were last year. What we need in the middle of that noise isn't another hot take. It's wisdom. And real wisdom comes from the Spirit of God.

So who is this Spirit, actually?

After Jesus rose from the dead, he told his disciples to wait in Jerusalem just wait for the outpouring of the Holy Spirit.

Think about that. If all the disciples needed was to know Christ and proclaim Christ, they were ready. They'd been trained by the best teacher who ever lived. They'd watched him die and watched him walk out of a tomb. They had a front-row-seat to experience what nobody else in history will ever have. What more did they need?

They needed the Holy Spirit!

The Holy Spirit continues the ministry of Jesus on the earth

What does the Spirit do? In a word, everything! Everything God is doing on earth right now; he's doing it by His Holy Spirit. When a miracle happens, that's the Holy Spirit. When someone turns to Christ, that's the Holy Spirit rescuing them. A church without the Holy Spirit is a church without God. It might have the building and the budget and still be empty inside.


That word "another" means another of the same kind. The Spirit isn't some lesser, different helper than Jesus he's another Jesus-shaped helper, carrying on the very ministry Jesus had. Which gives us a simple test for discerning what's really from God in any moment, including the hard moments in our politics and our relationships. We ask, is this something Jesus did, or would do?

Two ditches we keep driving into

One is sensationalizing the Holy Spirit, chasing feelings and spectacle over Scripture and truth, staging a show of God's power that leaves people impressed but leaves the kingdom no further along. Jesus never did that. Every miracle he performed pointed toward healing, hope, and restoration, not toward himself.

The other ditch, the one I personally lean toward, is institutionalizing the Spirit. That shrinks faith down to what we can organize, manage, and control. And look, Christianity does have essential beliefs and a real call to respond. But Scripture is clear; we need more than a system. We need the gospel, but more than the gospel. We need the Bible, but more than the Bible. We need to live out our faith, but more than our own effort at living it out. We need the Holy Spirit himself to guide us.

Wind, not walls

Here's the picture I keep coming back to. Most of what we build our churches, our platforms, our politics works like a standing army. There is a headquarters, a chain of command and territory to defend. You always know where to find it and who's in charge. The Holy Spirit doesn't work that way. He moves more like wind than walls, showing up where he wasn't scheduled, moving through the cracks in our tidy systems instead of walking in the front door. He doesn't ask our institutions for permission, and he doesn't wait for our politics to sort themselves out first.

That's not bad news. That's good news! It means the Holy Spirit isn't owned by your political tribe or mine, isn't captured by the loudest voice or the best-funded church. When you're worn out from a culture that keeps demanding you pick a side and despise the other one, remember that the Holy Spirit moves through the middle of that whole fight, carrying a wisdom that doesn't start on either side of the aisle. In the hard conversation with your spouse, your kid, or the neighbor who sees the world completely differently than you do, the Holy Spirit is the one who can break through where your best argument runs out of road.

Where that leaves us

We can build plans and detailed strategies, but without depending on God's Spirit, we're just building on our own willpower. We can shine the light of the gospel, but only the Holy Spirit opens blind eyes to see the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. With the right skills, someone can draw a crowd; only the Holy Spirit can draw a people and make them the church.

So wherever you're coming from All Saints family, longtime believer, honest doubter, or someone just seeking and not sure yet come to God's word with an open heart and hear what he actually says about his Holy Spirit.

Let's expect, in faith, to see the Holy Spirit's work in our homes, our friendships, our politics, our life.

Let's ask God for fresh ideas to be good neighbors to everyone those who believe, doubt, and seek.

And let's commit to the harder, honest thing…altering our experience to fit scripture, rather than bending scripture to fit our experience.

There's a sentence buried in the middle of this passage that I can't get away from.

"Christ in you, the hope of glory." Colossians 1:27

Paul calls this a mystery. Not a puzzle to solve. A truth so large it had to be revealed to us rather than figured out. God's plan, hidden for generations, was never just "forgiveness available." It was this. Christ, actually in you. Not Christ as an idea you nod along to on Sunday. Christ as a resident reality inside an ordinary, unfinished person. Inside you.

That's the whole engine of this passage. Everything else, the suffering, the teaching, the maturing, the warning against getting talked out of the truth, only makes sense once you take that sentence seriously.

Here's the fuller passage, so we can sit with what Paul actually said instead of my summary of it:


Two things jump out once you slow down here.

First, Paul's sufferings and the church's maturity are intentionally tangled together. He isn't gritting his teeth through hardship in spite of his calling. He says he's filling something up for the body's sake. Second, the goal of all that suffering, all that teaching, all that struggling on the church's behalf, isn't correct information. Its people knit together in love. The target is a woven community, not a well-informed one.

Knowledge was never the finish line

It's worth noticing what Paul is arguing against here. Colossae was being courted by teachers offering a more advanced, more exclusive kind of spiritual knowledge. Secrets for the truly serious. Paul's counter isn't "ignore that, just have faith." It's stranger than that. All the treasures of wisdom and knowledge are already hidden in Christ (2.3). You're not missing a secret. You already have access to the deepest one there is.

That lands close to home right now, in a moment when a lot of people, inside the church and drifting out of it, are worn down by competing claims to the truth. Everyone is selling a political framework or a deconstructed theology. A curated worldview that promises to finally make sense of things if you'll just go deep enough with them. Paul isn't naive about that. He names it straight out. "No one may delude you with persuasiveness of speech" (2.4). Persuasive speech was never the thing Paul was worried about avoiding. It was mistaking persuasiveness for truth.

The steadying word here isn't "don't think." It's "you already have the center." Maturity in Christ doesn't mean out-arguing everyone else. It means becoming so rooted in him that clever arguments stop being able to move you, not because you've stopped listening, but because you're no longer looking for your foundation in the argument at all.

Paul makes almost the same case somewhere else.


Rooted. Grounded. That's not static language. Roots are alive, always spreading, always drawing up what the plant needs to keep growing. But they're also invisible. Most of what actually holds a tree upright in a storm, you can't see from the surface. I've spent years studying how church communities actually grow this way. Not from one visible center holding everything up by force, but from connection running underground, sideways, unseen, between ordinary people who keep showing up for each other. Colossians 1.27 is that, in a sentence. The life that holds a whole community together isn't always the part anyone can point to.

Suffering as evidence, not exception

The other place this passage is easy to soften is verse 24. Paul says he rejoices in his sufferings, and that his sufferings are somehow "filling up what is lacking" in Christ's afflictions.

Let's be clear about what this isn't. It isn't Paul saying the cross was insufficient. Christ's atoning work is finished, once for all (Hebrews 10:10, 14). What's lacking is the ongoing, physical presence of Christ's afflictions being lived out in the world through his body, the church. When Paul suffers for the sake of the Colossians, he isn't adding to salvation. He's making Christ's love visible in flesh and blood, just as Christ made the Father visible in his own flesh and blood.

Paul says almost the same thing to the Corinthians.


This is not a theology of avoidance. It's a theology of carrying. Of letting hard things be the very place where Christ becomes visible, instead of treating hardship as proof God has failed us or stepped away.

That reframes a lot of what wears people out right now. The friend estranged over politics. The diagnosis nobody wanted. The doubt that showed up uninvited at 2am and hasn't left. None of that is evidence that faith has failed. It might be exactly the terrain where Christ intends to become visible, through you, to somebody watching.

Knit together, not merely informed

Paul's stated goal for the Colossians is that their hearts would be "comforted, being knit together in love" (2.2). The Greek word behind "knit together" is used elsewhere for a body's joints and ligaments being fitted together so it can function as one (see Ephesians 4.16). It's not a soft, sentimental word. It's structural. It's the difference between a pile of parts and a working body.

That's a high bar for a church. Higher than "we have good teaching" or "we have the right doctrine." Paul wants people so woven into each other's lives that the whole thing holds together under weight.

Which raises an honest question for us. Is that true of us? Do we know each other well enough, do we let ourselves be known well enough, that we could actually be described as knit together? Or are we, more often, a room full of individuals who happen to believe similar things and see each other on Sundays?

Application

This week, take one deliberate step toward being knit, not just informed.

1. Name one place you've quietly disengaged. Somewhere Jesus has been asking something of you and you've said, without saying it out loud, "not that." Bring it into the light with him this week. In prayer, in journaling, or out loud with a trusted friend.
2. Reach across one divide. Think of a specific person you've drifted from, over politics, over doubt, over an old hurt, and take one small, concrete step back toward relationship. A text. A coffee. Not a debate. A reconnection.
3. Let your suffering be seen, not just survived. Tell one person, honestly, what you're carrying right now. Not to be fixed. To be known, so that Christ's presence in it has somewhere to become visible.
4. Ask, don't assume. Ask someone who loves you what they see in your life that needs Christ's reordering. Then actually listen, before you explain or defend.

Christ in you is the hope of glory. Not someday, not once you've got it figured out, but now, in the unfinished middle of your actual life. Let yourself be knit into something that can hold weight.

If you haven't already, listen to episode 210 of All Saints Podcast: "Knitted Together in Love"

There are six words that have outlasted empires, pandemics, wars, and every anxious news cycle in between: "Be still, and know that I am God." (Psalm 46:10)

We've seen this verse so many times on coffee mugs, on canvas wall art in someone's hallway that it's easy to let it slide right past us without ever really stopping to ask what it's asking of us.

Let’s stop and do some soul work.

Here's what's easy to miss about Psalm 46: it wasn't written in a peaceful season. It was written against a backdrop of upheaval. Nations were in turmoil, mountains "shaking in the heart of the sea"; it may have felt like the earth itself was giving way. The psalmist isn't writing from a mountaintop retreat where he is feeling all the feels. He's writing from the middle of chaos. And in the middle of that chaos, God says: Stop! Be still! Know!

Know what?

I don't think we've ever needed that instruction more than we do right now. We carry a phone that delivers global headlines in real time, notifications every few minutes, algorithms built to keep us scrolling and anxious. Our culture rewards constant motion and quietly treats rest as weakness, or worse, as wasted time. Add the ordinary weight so many of us are already carrying: a diagnosis, a strained relationship, money that doesn't stretch as far as it used to, and stillness starts to feel less like a spiritual discipline and more like an impossibility.

Being still starts with trusting who God is, not just what we feel. Left unchecked, our minds spiral into the unknown, and that spiral leaves us hollow the kind of hollow that doomscrolling only deepens, never heals. (I loved what my co-worker posted this week: “Stop doomscrolling and read this.” Check our Instagram to see what I mean @believedoubtseek).
 
Stillness begins with remembering what we actually know to be true about God, not what the headlines suggest. The book of 1 John reminds us that God hears us and is attentive to our requests and worries. That doesn't mean God's a vending machine, dispensing what we ask for on our timeline. It means He is not distant or distracted. He is listening. Trusting His character doesn't require answers. It requires a person you can run toward for help and comfort.

Being still means releasing the "if onlys." You know what those sound like, “If only I'd taken that other job. If only I'd said something sooner.” Each one is a small weight, and together they become a blanket of regret we can't shake off. Here's an uncomfortable truth… the "if only" mindset can coexist with genuine faith in who God is while still revealing a struggle to trust what God can do. Often what's underneath it is control, and we live in a culture that hands us a tool for everything, promising to manage the unmanageable. Surrender starts to feel irresponsible. An Old Testament story tells of the Israelites, trapped between Pharaoh's army and the sea, with no clever way out. God didn't ask them to fight harder. He asked them to stop fighting and let Him. Perhaps He wanted them to ‘know.’

Being still means making peace with what you can't yet see. Suffering has a way of casting a shadow long enough to blot out the blessings still standing right in front of us. Isaiah tells us God's ways are higher than ours, not God being evasive, but God being honest about the gap between our vantage point and His. Peace isn't the reward for having it all figured out. It's available before the clarity comes. The Holy Spirit always acts on our behalf even when we can’t see it yet.

And being still means resting in the depth of God’s love, not the love we perform for, but the love that's simply there, waiting for us to sit still long enough to receive it.

And hey, I know this isn't easy. I believe God knows that. That's why He teaches us patiently, day by day, what it looks like to actually live this out. To practice it and begin to really know it.
So here's an invitation for this week: set a timer for five minutes. No phone, no agenda. Just sit, breathe, and repeat quietly, "Be still, and know that I am God." Let the sentence get shorter each time…be still and know… be still… know. Until finally,  it's less a phrase you're saying and more a posture you're resting in.

Go ahead and know.



Listen to Episode 209 of All Saints Podcast: "Be Still and Know"

At All Saints, we say we're a place for the curious, the burned out, the exhausted, and the pushed-aside. People who believe, people who doubt, people who are still seeking. That's not a slogan. It's just who shows up. But I want to name something that shows up too, and it's a little harder to talk about: how easily faith turns into a behavior plan.

Here's what I mean. Somewhere along the way, a lot of us start measuring our closeness to God by how well we're keeping it together. Did I read my Bible this week? Did I lose my temper with my kids? Did I say the right thing, avoid the wrong thing, show up where I was supposed to? Those aren't bad questions. But if they become the whole question, we've quietly swapped something out. We've traded relationship for management.

It's not because we're bad people trying to earn our way to God. Usually it's the opposite: we care, and we want proof that the caring is working. Rules give us that. You can tell whether you kept them. You can point to a chart, a streak, a track record. Love doesn't work like that. Loving someone well, patiently, without controlling the outcome is slow, and it's uncertain, and half the time you can't tell if it's working at all. So, we reach for what we can measure. Not because we've stopped believing in grace, but because grace is hard to hold onto when you can't see the results. Rules are just easier to hold.

The apostle Paul gets at something like this in Romans 1. His argument isn't that people need convincing God exists; it's that we already know, underneath everything, and we spend a lot of energy managing that knowledge instead of responding to it. I think the same thing happens with how we relate to God once we're already in the pews. We know we're loved. That knowledge is unsettling, because it means we're not in control of it. So, we build something we can control instead.

Here's the cost: when rule-keeping becomes the main event, we don't end up with people who are closer to God. We end up with people who are good at behaving for us. Those aren't the same thing, and the difference matters more than it sounds.

A kid who behaves because he's afraid of getting caught is not the same as a kid who's learned to trust his parents. A church full of people who've learned to perform is not the same as a church full of people who've met God. One produces compliance. The other produces communion. They can look identical from the outside for a while. But only one of them is alive.

None of this means grace is a license to stop caring how we live. It means the order matters. Love comes first. Behavior follows not as a performance we're managing, but as the natural shape of a life that's being led by something outside itself.

Practically, that might mean asking a different question this week. Instead of "did I do enough," try: "where have I been trying to manage my own growth instead of letting God actually lead?" Instead of holding someone else to a standard, ask what it would look like to walk with them toward God instead of just watching to see if they measure up. That's a harder move. It doesn't come with a checklist. But it's the one that gets you somewhere.
Believe what's true. Doubt what needs doubting. Keep seeking not a better set of rules, but Jesus.

You don't need a title, a stage, or anyone's permission to be part of what God is doing next.

This week we looked at the church as a rhizome instead of a tree. A tree has one visible trunk, and everything traces back to it. A rhizome think ginger root, or a whole grove of aspens that's actually one root system spreads underground and sends up new life wherever it finds an opening, with no center controlling where it breaks the surface.

The book of Acts is filled with this imagery. Persecution scatters the believers in Jerusalem, and it's not the apostles who carry the gospel out; it's ordinary people Luke doesn't even bother naming. The Spirit falls on Cornelius's household before Peter finishes his sermon, before anyone's worked out the theology of who's allowed in. A few believers from Cyprus and Cyrene start talking to people outside their usual circle in Antioch, and that becomes one of the most important churches in the New Testament. None of it started at headquarters.

Here's what that means for you this week. You're not waiting for permission. You already have what you need.

Discipleship isn't a program you finish or a title you earn. It's letting the same Spirit that fell on Cornelius's house move through your kitchen table, your group text, the coworker you've been avoiding a real conversation with, the neighbor whose name you still don't know.

The people who started the church in Antioch weren't specialists. Nobody sent them a memo. They just paid attention to what God was already doing around them and said yes to it, in ordinary conversations, with people outside their usual circle. No guarantee they'd get any credit, and they didn't. We only know them as "men from Cyprus and Cyrene."

So the invitation isn't "go start a ministry." It's smaller and harder than that: notice where the Spirit might already be moving in your life, and stop waiting for someone to authorize your part in it. Sometimes that door opens through disruption a move, a loss, something you didn't choose. Sometimes it's a Cornelius: someone outside your circle you'd written off before giving the Spirit room to work.

You'll probably never get credit for it. That's how it's always worked.

Questions to sit with this week:

• Where has disruption in my life actually been the Holy Spirit sending me somewhere, not just something happening to me?
• Who is the "Cornelius" in my life (someone outside my circle the Holy Spirit may already be moving toward)?
• Am I waiting for a title, a stage, or a program before I do something the Holy Spirit has already equipped me to do?
• What would it cost me to open my home or my time to someone this week with no guarantee I'll get to see how it turns out?
• Do I believe the same Holy Spirit that started a fire in Antioch through people whose history forgot their names is alive in me, right now, wherever I'm standing?

You don't need the whole root system visible to trust it's real. You just need to realize that you are part of the plan. 

I like to think of myself as a realist. Which mostly means I teeter on the edge of optimism and pessimism, depending on the news cycle.

The realist in me is alarmed. Wars, violence, political division, loneliness, greed, cynicism they've carved a chasm between people wide enough that civil discourse doesn't even seem welcome anymore. And when the chasm gets that wide, we tend to do one of two things. We withdraw, because living inside this much tension is exhausting and agonizing. Or we fight make sure the right people get elected, the right laws get passed, the right party wins the next round.

Here's the part I don't think we say out loud enough: millions of evangelical Christians have quietly come to see America itself as a land set apart a people uniquely blessed, in a special covenant with God. Tim Alberta names this directly in The Kingdom, the Power, and the Glory: "This love of country has given way to a right-wing nationalist fervor, a reckless blood and soil idolatry that trivializes the kingdom of Jesus Christ."

That's a blunt sentence. I know. But I don't think it's wrong, and I don't think we get anywhere by flinching from it.

The American church is exactly as divided and polarized as the rest of American society. Which means it's worth asking some uncomfortable questions out loud. What should the church do with itself right now? What is the church even for? And underneath both of those why the church at all? Why not just be a good, decent, private person and skip the institution entirely?

I don't think these are rhetorical questions. I think they're urgent ones, and I think the honest way to sit with them is prayer before opinion. That's what I want to spend the next several podcasts doing: wrestling with these questions, out loud, in public, with some of my own thinking and some borrowed from others who are asking the same things. I'd genuinely love for you to join that conversation and bring your own questions, doubts, and pushback. You can find us at believedoubtseek.org.

Here's where I land, though, as an optimist and not just a realist: I don't think the fate of the church hinges on which direction American politics tips next. It hinges on who's leading it.

The Pharisees once grilled Jesus on when the kingdom of God would finally show up expecting, I'd guess, some kind of political or military answer. He didn't give them one.

"The kingdom of God doesn't come by counting the days on the calendar. Nor when someone says, 'Look here!' or, 'There it is!' And why? Because God's kingdom is already among you." (Luke 17:20–21, MSG)

No visible sign. No conquest. No regime change. The kingdom was already there, in the room, in the person standing in front of them because Jesus himself was the kingdom breaking in. Not a strategy. Not a platform. A presence.

That's the thing I keep coming back to. My prayer genuinely is that people who follow Jesus would embody that presence right now, in a country this exhausted and this divided. Not with better arguments. With listening. Serving. Forgiving. Plain, unglamorous kindness. That's not a lesser calling than political engagement. In a moment like this one, I think it might be the harder and more radical one.

Which is exactly where this weekend's episode picks up.

We're in Colossians 4, where Paul tells a small, scattered, politically powerless group of Christ followers to do one thing before anything else: pray. Not "pray as a last resort after strategy fails." Pray as the actual starting point because if you can engineer the outcome yourself, you were never really depending on God to begin with. A lot of us, if we're honest, have quietly swapped prayer for technique. Better tactics, messaging, and maybe Sunday turnout. And in doing that, we've made God smaller and the world's problems, somehow, both scarier and easier to manage, which is its own kind of idolatry, just a subtler one than the Alberta quote above.

We're also unpacking something we're calling Movement 6: an honest look at where All Saints is headed, and an invitation, not a blueprint. (reference) I'll tell you plainly: I don't have this figured out top to bottom, and I'm not interested in pretending I do. What I do believe is that the way forward isn't a sharper political strategy or a louder culture-war voice. It's ordinary people, formed by prayer, paying attention to what breaks their hearts because what breaks your heart is very often exactly what breaks the heart of God. That ache is usually the Spirit, showing you where your life is supposed to meet his mission. Not a talking point. Not a slogan for a sign. A person in front of you.

If the last few years have left you exhausted, cynical, or just done with the version of Christianity that looks more like a voting bloc than a kingdom, connect with us this week. Bring your doubts. Bring your questions. Bring your suspicion, even. That's the whole point of the name.

Join us at All Saints, a community of all who believe, doubt, and seek. Comment below, fill out a contact card, engage through the All Saints app... or, remain anonymous and share your thoughts through the Doubters Mailbox.

And finally, listen to this week's podcast, "What Breaks Your Heart?" (Movement 6 of All Saints Vision)

Yesterday (August 9), we gathered in our former sanctuary—a space newly revitalized by the Wim W'Him dance company—to reflect on where All Saints has been and where the Spirit is leading us next.

Summary and Key Takeaways: 

The cultural landscape around us has shifted dramatically. Pew Research Center studies show that adult Americans identifying as Christian dropped from 78% in 2007 to 62% today, while adults under 30 are virtually split between those who identify as Christian (45%) and those with no religious affiliation at all (44%). Rather than forcing outdated models onto a changing culture or retreating in fear, we are called to ask: What is God doing now?

The Rhizome: A Root System of Faith In the Book of Acts – 

The church wasn't driven by top-down institutional control; it was driven by the Holy Spirit moving through ordinary believers across homes, neighborhoods, and cities. Instead of picturing a tree with a single visible trunk, think of a rhizome—a root system spreading sideways beneath the surface, popping up vibrant new growth in unexpected places.

All Saints is evolving into a hybrid movement where Jesus is the center—not a building, a Sunday morning schedule, or a single leader. Whether we gather around a table, in a pub, through service teams embedded in the city, or online across time zones, faith is meant to be lived out wherever we land.

Where Do You Fit In? We aren't handing down a rigid, pre-packaged blueprint. We are inviting you to help shape this shared journey. All Saints will always be a refuge for those who believe, doubt, and seek—a place where your hardest questions are welcomed.

What's the Spirit inviting you into? 

1. Listen, watch, and revisit the message by checking out our full recording on YouTube (embedded above) or listen wherever you get your podcasts.
2. Engage with the Questionnaire, here or on the handout you received on Sunday. It's also available in the All Saints App under the "Listen In" tab. Process the six movements on your own time. Sit with it and reflect. 
3. When you're ready, submit your response to participate in whichever way that you feel compelled. Let us know if you'd like to host a small meet-up, serve in your community, or participate in some other way that's less obvious. Fill out our Response Card to let us know how you'd like to be part of this. (available below as well)

Transcripts from the recording (if you prefer to read):

00:18 - 02:46 | Opening Remarks & Recent Growth

• All right. There you go. Getting ready to get started here, so thanks for being with us.
• Thank you for being here in the summertime. Most of my family's here, which is typical, and great guests and OGs. It's just awesome. What I want to do today is really simple: talk about where this thing is going and where it's headed.
• First, I want to give you some updates on how our digital presence has grown. I want to thank Brittani so much for all that she does to help us look good because I can only do so much.
• Our digital presence has exploded this year: YouTube views are up 1,000%, Instagram reach increased by 879%, and we've nearly doubled our Instagram followers along with a 75% increase in podcast listeners.
• Our "Believe, Doubt, Seek" message is our biggest driver. It proves that people are genuinely hungry for a space where they can wrestle honestly with faith. I have handouts for everyone here, and if you're listening live, you can get the handout on our app and website. I want this to be a journal for you to participate in.

02:46 - 05:03 | Movement 1: Our Landscape

• I've put this into six movements. Movement 1 I'm calling "Our Landscape." Let me start with a question: What are we actually doing? We are in our former building—it's beautiful, and Wim W'him has given us free gratis to meet here. It's been quite a change over the past three years going purely virtual.
• The other question is, why are we doing it this way? All of us in here have worshipped together, prayed, taken communion, and sat with each other through seasons of doubt. We've tried, imperfectly but honestly, to make room for people who weren't sure if church was for them. Nothing I say today is meant to erase that or serve as a gimmick.
• But the ground underneath us—as a culture, a nation, and in the world—has shifted. If we don't talk about that honestly, we'll end up building on sand without knowing it.
• Recent research from Pew Research Center shows that American adults identifying as Christian dropped to 62%, down from 78% in 2007. In less than two decades, that's a 16-point drop. Meanwhile, 29% identify as atheist, agnostic, or "nothing in particular." Among adults under 30, 45% identify as Christian, while 44% claim no religious affiliation at all. They are nearly tied. That is a different religious landscape than the one most of us grew up in.

05:03 - 07:10 | Attendance Shifts & Cultural Challenges

• Attendance tells a similar story: only about a third of American adults say they attend a religious service even once a month. Even back when we met every week traditionally, the average person wasn't here every Sunday. Twice a month was a strong showing; once a month was closer to the truth for many.
• That doesn't mean faith faded—more often, life became more complicated as people transitioned from young adults to married couples, parents, and grandparents. Schedules, sports, and relationships shifted how people belong to things.
• There is also a harder piece: for many younger folks, evangelical Christianity has become tangled up with partisan power and Christian Nationalism—the belief that America has a special covenant with God, that real Americans are Christians, and that political power should be used to protect Christian identity. When that takes hold, the Kingdom of God gets confused with the face of a nation. Winning looks like faithfulness, and those who disagree look like enemies. I don't recognize that as the way of Jesus.
• PRRI 2024 research found 10% of Americans hold to Christian Nationalism outright, with another 20% sympathetic to it. Sharing these stats isn't a call to "rise up"—it's to acknowledge reality.

07:10 - 08:59 | Hope in Ancient Traditions & The Hinge Point

• Weekly worship doesn't inherently produce Christian Nationalism, but we can't pretend this happens only outside our walls. Many people haven't rejected Jesus; they've rejected what they watched done in his name, and I understand why.
• What gives me hope is that some younger adults are drawn to ancient liturgy, sacraments, and the mystery of older traditions—Catholic, Lutheran, or high-church experiences. They are hungry for real roots and encounters with God that don't feel manufactured or produced.
• We are at a hinge point in a country whose relationship with faith has changed. The question isn't whether to notice it, but what to do about it. Accepting it passively or forcing old methods on people are both cop-outs.

08:59 - 11:34 | Movement 2: The Rhizome & The Early Church

• Movement 2 centers on my research over the past eight years, which keeps pulling me back to the Book of Acts and how the early church actually moved. We tend to read Acts as an institution getting bigger and more organized, but what actually drove the story was the Holy Spirit.
• The Spirit moved through ordinary people across boundaries, homes, and cities that leaders in Jerusalem couldn't plan or control. It just happened.
• The word I keep coming back to is rhizome or rhizomatic. Think of a tree: it grows from a visible trunk top-down and out through visible branches. Now picture a root system spreading sideways beneath the surface—sending up new growth in unpredictable places (like mushrooms or grass). It retains coherence and one life, but doesn't depend on a single visible center controlling it.
• That image reshapes how we read Acts. The church started in Jerusalem, but persecution scattered everyone. What looked like disaster became the opening of something brand new.

11:34 - 15:31 | Movements Over Locations

• In Acts 8, ordinary believers—not the apostles—spread the message wherever they landed. In Acts 10, the Spirit fell on Cornelius (a Gentile/agnostic God-fearer) before leaders in Jerusalem worked out the theology. God moved first; the church had to catch up.
• When All Saints started, "Believe, Doubt, Seek" was our new approach. Over time, we fell into traditional church settings. But real movement happens when regular people take risks, open homes, share meals, and include unexpected people—just like Peter staying at the house of Cornelius.
• All Saints can become a movement rather than just a location. If Jesus is the center, the building isn't the center, Sunday morning isn't the center, and I am not the center. Leaders equip people; they don't do the following of Jesus for them.
• The church can gather in a sanctuary, around a table, on a screen, in a pub, or while serving a block. Life was never meant to be confined to one address. Gathering is necessary, but faithfulness isn't measured by occupying the same room at the same hour every week.

15:31 - 16:28 | Movement 3: Center

• Movement 3 is "Center." What won't change: All Saints will keep being a place for the curious, the burned out, the exhausted, and the pushed aside—a community for all who believe, doubt, and seek.
• Jesus promised that those who seek will find and those who knock will have the door opened. It doesn't happen overnight, so we let the Spirit work.

16:28 - 18:00 | Movement 4: Shape & Service Teams

• Movement 4 is "Shape." What changes is the shape of our shared life together. Imagine small groups functioning as service teams embedded with agencies around the city—places of real pastoral care where people know what's going on in each other's lives.
• Once a month, we gather as a wider body for teaching, breaking bread, and sharing. We hold onto core practices: scripture, prayer, meals, generosity, hospitality, communion, justice, and mission. No single group has to do all of that in every meeting, but those practices should shape how we live.

18:00 - 19:33 | Hybrid Community & National Reach

• In a transient city like Seattle, friendships stretch across commutes and time zones. A community tied strictly to a building loses people whenever their zip code changes.
• A hybrid model lets people stay rooted wherever they move. People across the country and internationally (UK, Europe) already participate via our podcast and virtual community. We can equip them with discussion guides and prayer practices to gather two or three people wherever they are.

19:33 - 23:33 | Movement 5: Participation

• Movement 5 is "Participation." Participating starts with listening to the podcast, downloading the app, or attending monthly gatherings. But true participation moves us deeper into relationships, practicing the way of Jesus, and serving others.
• Options include hosting a monthly meal, leading a service partnership, facilitating pub discussions, creating teaching materials, caring for kids, mentoring young adults, or organizing prayer relays.
• Belonging doesn't require a formal membership form or financial obligation. People belong by stepping into a shared journey toward Christlikeness with room for belief, doubt, and seeking.

23:33 - 25:08 | Movement 6: Invitation

• Movement 6 is "Invitation." I'm not presenting a finished blueprint for approval; I'm inviting you to build something that belongs to all of us. Sue and Brittany have been hugely helpful in this process.
• One person's vision is just one person's vision, but a rhizome has no single center—it just grows.

25:08 - 28:30 | Re-imagining Church & Biblical Promises

• We must find new ways to gather. The traditional Protestant model (building, weekly service, professional pastor up front) has served for centuries, but it isn't the only faithful form, and it isn't reaching large parts of our culture anymore.
• Isaiah 43 says God is doing a new thing; Revelation promises God is making all things new. "New" doesn't mean discarding history—it means letting new life grow out of ancient promises centered on Jesus.

28:30 - 30:29 | Final Call to Action & Conclusion

• My ask of you: Pray about where the Spirit is at work in and around you. Stay connected through teaching, prayer, communion, and gatherings. Offer whatever gifts or burdens you have without waiting for an official title.
• In three years, I don't want our headline to be a larger audience; I want to hear about people finding their way back to faith, strangers becoming friends, improved neighborhoods, and young leaders discovering their gifts.
• Acts is the story of ordinary people filled with the Spirit becoming a source of hope in a divided world.

30:29 - 31:30 | Closing Prayer

• "Jesus, thank you so much for who you are, what you do, how you heal and connect people. Thank you, Lord, for your goodness, grace, and mercy. Thank you for community and friends. Lord, I ask that you have your way and be the rhizome that we can follow. In Jesus' name, Amen."

Estimated Reading Time: 4-5 minutes

Church closures outpaced new church openings in America for the first time on record this year. About forty million Americans who used to go to church no longer do. Christian affiliation has dropped from ninety percent of the population to sixty-five percent over the past fifty years. That's the decline story, and it's real.

But it's only part of the picture. Barna's 2025 research found Gen Z churchgoers now attend more often than any other living generation, close to two Sundays a month. Gallup found rising attendance and rising religious interest specifically among young men. PRRI found the opposite happening among young women, who are leaving faster than any group they track, opening the widest gender gap in church attendance Barna has recorded in twenty-five years.

Then there's the exvangelical movement: the memoirs, the deconstruction accounts on TikTok, the hashtag #churchhurt, a wave of women in particular naming spiritual abuse, purity culture, and a church tangled up in partisan politics as their reasons for leaving. More than one religion reporter covering this exodus has reached for a specific word to describe it: Reformation. A rejection of Christianity built around power, with no clear picture yet of what comes next.

I want to take that word seriously. Growth in one place, collapse in another, revival among young men, exodus among young women. None of it fits on a single line on a graph, going up or down. I don't think it's supposed to. We keep trying to read this moment with a grammar built for straight lines and simple verdicts. The moment itself won't sit still for that. That's not just a data problem. It's a question about what shape we even think church is supposed to have.

I've been spending time in the book of Acts lately and the past 8 years, reading the early church less as an institution still finding its final form and more as something the philosopher Gilles Deleuze had a word for: a rhizome. Think of ginger root, or crabgrass, spreading underground with no central trunk, sending up new shoots wherever conditions are right. Deleuze's own definition is simple enough to hold onto: any point in a rhizome can be connected to any other point and must be.

Most of the ways we argue about church, conservative or progressive, come from the same source: a hierarchical, either/or way of picturing structure that we rarely notice we're using. We picture “church” as a tree, with one trunk everything else has to answer to. Practical theologian Geoff Holsclaw has made the point well: because we already live in a connected, global world, we're already living inside rhizomatic processes whether we've named them or not, and ecclesiology especially needs a new way of thinking about itself. I think he's right, and I think Acts already knew it.

We argue about whether a church is too big or too small, as if size were the thing that mattered theologically. We swing between the megachurch with its polished worship, what a friend calls “the Jesus show,” and the house church that quietly comes apart under the weight of its own ordinariness. Both are still trees. One just has a bigger trunk.

What almost never comes up is the question Deleuze and his co-author Félix Guattari actually cared about: not size, but reach. The lines a movement travels along, where it disconnects, where it reconnects, whether it keeps going. A rhizome doesn't ask whether it's big enough or small enough. It asks whether it's still connecting to something.

What Is a Rhizome Church?

I use the term “rhizome church” for a network that keeps going and growing, connecting and disconnecting, moving into new territory and out of old territory, in Deleuze's language. It's incarnational in the fullest sense, letting the presence of Christ take root in whatever relational soil it lands in, rather than requiring everyone everywhere to replicate the same slate of “Christian” activities to count as real church. “Where two or three are gathered together” starts to sound different read this way: not a consolation prize for people who can't manage a real church, but the actual building block the whole network runs on.

A rhizome church doesn't need a flagship campus to be legitimate, and it doesn't need to survive alone in someone's living room to be legitimate either. What it needs is live connection, to Christ, to other parts of the network, to the culture it's taking root in. Cut off one part and the rhizome doesn't die. It sends up a shoot somewhere else.

Read Acts looking for an org chart and you won't find one. Read it looking for a rhizome instead, and the missing org chart starts to look less like an oversight and more like the point.

At Pentecost, the Spirit doesn't hand the church one shared language to unify around. It produces the opposite: people from a dozen nations hearing in their own tongue, no linguistic center imposed from the top. When persecution scatters the Jerusalem believers into Judea and Samaria in Acts 8, the church doesn't merely survive being broken apart. It spreads because it was broken apart, the way seed spreads when it's sown. Peter's vision and his visit to Cornelius's household in Acts 10 strip away the purity categories that had defined who counted as “in,” and the gospel takes root in a Gentile household on that household's own terms. And when real conflict follows in Acts 15 over what Gentile believers have to adopt to belong, the answer isn't one uniform practice forced on every group. It's a minimal, negotiated center that leaves room for real difference to continue. A tree can't do that. A rhizome can, because it was never built around uniformity to begin with.

Nearly every grievance behind the exvangelical exodus is, underneath it, a complaint about the tree: power collecting at a single trunk and getting enforced downward. Celebrity pastors whose failures took whole congregations down with them. Purity culture handed out as one script for everybody. Faith fused so tightly to a political party that leaving the politics has meant leaving the church too. A rhizome church can't be captured by a single political machine, because it has no one trunk for the machine to grab hold of.

Gen Z's data fits this better than either the “revival” headline or the “decline” headline on its own. The generation most at home in fragmented digital life is also the generation craving in-person, embodied gathering the most, while being the most willing to walk away from institutions that feel performative or coercive. That's not a contradiction. It's a rhizome-shaped generation looking for rhizome-shaped soil and mostly finding tree-shaped institutions instead. Where it finds something closer to a rhizome, a small, honest, locally rooted gathering of “two or three,” it tends to stay.

Gen Alpha inherits this landscape before they've made a single choice about it. They'll grow up assuming fragmentation and networked belonging the way earlier generations assumed institutional stability. A church that can only offer them a trunk to climb, or nothing at all, won't register as an option worth considering. A church that can offer them a living network they can enter at any point, leave and return to without shame, and root into their own relational world, has a real shot.

If this moment is going to become church, and not just an ex-church diaspora, it will need an ecclesiology that can hold what's happening instead of forcing it back into a shape it's already outgrown. That means asking less often whether a church is big enough or small enough, and asking instead whether it's still connecting to Christ, to its own context, to other parts of the network it can learn from.

The early church never had a trunk. It had roots running underground, connections that could reach any other point, and shoots coming up in unplanned places right when it looked, from above, like the whole thing was being destroyed. If American Christianity really is entering something like a second Reformation, that might be the most useful picture we have for it: not a tree waiting to be pruned back to health, but a rhizome that was never meant to have only one trunk to begin with.

A podcast listener recently sent me a question about the resurrection:
“How can we know the resurrection actually happened? I’ve done so much research and am trying to convince myself. I just can’t seem to fully get there.”

I kept thinking about the way they asked the question. They weren’t dismissing Christianity or looking for an argument. They wanted to believe. They had read the books, listened to the podcasts, studied the evidence, and still couldn’t get all the way there.

Maybe you know that feeling.

We have more information available to us than at any other time in history. We can look up almost anything within seconds. We can listen to experts, compare interpretations, read reviews, watch debates, and ask AI to explain the whole thing in five bullet points.

You would think all of that access would make us more certain.

It hasn’t.

For every argument, there is a counterargument. For every expert, there is another expert who says the first one has it wrong. We check the source, then check the source behind the source, and eventually wonder whether any of it can be trusted. Is it ‘fake news?’
 
Artificial intelligence has made this even more complicated. It can give us an answer that sounds clear and confident, but we’re still not sure where the answer came from or whether it is true. According to Pew Research, Americans are almost evenly divided over whether the country can responsibly regulate AI. Forty-four percent have at least some trust, while 47 percent have little or no trust.

We are fascinated by this technology and suspicious of it at the same time.

Our suspicion goes well beyond AI. We question the government, the media, universities, corporations, and churches. Some of that skepticism is probably healthy. We have learned that the person speaking with the most confidence is not always the person telling the truth.

Churches have not always handled this well.

For a long time, many churches treated certainty as proof of faith. If you asked too many questions, people became concerned about you. Doubt meant something was wrong. A good Christian accepted what they were taught and didn’t make everyone uncomfortable by bringing up the complicated parts.

That approach no longer works. I’m not convinced it ever did.

People can now check what a pastor says before the sermon is finished. They can hear from biblical scholars outside their denomination or tradition. They can read about church history, the development of doctrine, biblical interpretation, abuse within religious institutions, and the political compromises made by Christian leaders.

Then they start asking questions.

What else didn’t the church tell me? Why did everything sound so simple when I was growing up? Why were my questions treated as a threat?

The research shows that something significant is happening. Pew reports that 29 percent of American adults now identify as religiously unaffiliated. According to PRRI, that number is approximately 34 percent among Gen Z and 25 percent among Gen X. Pew also found that 35 percent of American adults have changed their religious identity since childhood.

We need to be careful with those numbers. The story is not simply that young people no longer care about faith. Barna has reported increased church attendance among some Gen Z and millennial Christians, along with signs of renewed interest in Jesus.

So, something more complicated is going on.

Many people are still interested in God, Jesus, spirituality, meaning, and purpose. They just aren’t sure the church is a safe or honest place to explore those questions.

Gen X, my generation, is an important part of this story. We often talk as though leaving church began with millennials and Gen Z. It didn’t. Many in Gen X were already becoming suspicious of celebrity pastors, highly produced worship experiences, church growth formulas, and leaders who seemed to have a certain answer for everything.

Some didn’t stop believing in Jesus. They stopped attending church.

That distinction matters.

What if people are not leaving because they are unwilling to believe? What if they are tired of pretending to be more certain than they are? What if they have questions the church never gave them permission to ask?

That brings me back to the listener’s question about the resurrection.

We sometimes think faith will arrive once we gather enough information. If we can read one more book, listen to one more sermon, or go to a conference, all uncertainty will disappear.

But that is not how most of life works.

You can research a career move, talk to trusted friends, make a list of advantages and disadvantages, and still not know how it will turn out. You can know someone for years and still take a risk when you decide to marry them. You can study leadership and still face situations where there is no obvious decision.

We make important decisions without complete certainty all the time.

That doesn’t mean evidence is unimportant. The resurrection is a claim about something that happened in history. We should examine the Gospel accounts, consider the early Christian testimony, listen to scholars who believe and scholars who don’t, and take the alternatives seriously.

I believe there are compelling reasons to believe Jesus rose from the dead. I also know that I cannot give someone an argument that makes doubt impossible.

Maybe that is where the church needs to become more honest.

There is a difference between conviction and pretending to know more than we do. Conviction allows us to say, “This is what I believe, and these are the reasons I believe it.” It also allows us to say, “I still have questions.”

People can usually tell when a leader is giving them a rehearsed answer instead of an honest one. They may not expect us to know everything. They do expect us to tell the truth.

When Jesus appeared to his disciples after the crucifixion, they were frightened and confused. Some doubted what they were seeing. Jesus didn’t criticize them or tell them to come back when their theology was settled. He stayed with them. He spoke peace. He allowed them to take in what was happening.

I think the church can learn something from that.

People need communities where they can be honest about what they believe, what they doubt, and what they are still trying to understand. They need pastors and leaders who are not afraid of difficult questions. They need room to seek without feeling as though they are disappointing God or making everyone nervous.

We have access to plenty of answers. What we don’t always have are people and places where we can work through them honestly.

Faith doesn’t begin when every question has been answered. Sometimes it begins with the willingness to remain open.

Maybe the most honest prayer is not, “God, I have no doubts.”

Maybe it is simply, “God, I want to believe. Meet me here.”

Listen to episode 204 of the All Saints Podcast: "I Want to Believe—But How Can I Know?"

We live in an age obsessed with accomplishment.
Our culture measures success by influence and visibility. We count followers, promotions, degrees, achievements, and accomplishments. Social media has trained us to curate impressive lives, and even our conversations often begin with the question, "What do you do?"

The church hasn't escaped this mindset.

We celebrate successful churches and influential leaders. None of those things are inherently wrong. In fact, many are genuine gifts from God. But somewhere along the way, we've become tempted to believe that visible success is the same thing as spiritual maturity.

The Apostle Paul dismantles that assumption in one of the most familiar passages in Scripture 1 Corinthians 13. Ironically, the chapter most often read at weddings wasn't written to celebrate romance. It was written to confront a church that had become captivated by status and spiritual performance.

The believers in Corinth were remarkably gifted. They possessed spiritual gifts, theological knowledge, and great fame throughout the province. Yet beneath all of that activity, something essential was missing.

Love.

The Apostle Paul's words grab your attention right away: "If I speak in the tongues of men or of angels, but do not have love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal." Then he goes for the throat. ‘You can have prophetic insight. Faith that moves mountains. Extraordinary generosity. Even heroic sacrifice. And still miss the very heart of God!’ Yikes! 

Why?

Because gifts are not the same as character. Achievement has nothing to do with transformation. That may be one of the most important statements for Christians living in today's culture. The author, Dallas Willard, often reminded readers that God's primary concern isn't just behavior modification but transformation. Christianity isn't about learning how to appear more patient, generous, or forgiving. It is about becoming the kind of person that exemplifies patience, generosity, and forgiveness because Christ has transformed the heart.

Behaviors change what people see. Spiritual formation changes who we are when no one is watching. That's exactly what Paul is describing. Notice what love looks like in verses 4 through 7. Paul doesn't describe dramatic spiritual experiences or impressive accomplishments. Instead, he talks about patience, kindness, humility, forgiveness, and refusing to keep a record of wrongs. Those qualities never make headlines. But they reveal the condition of the soul.

Public reputation is built on what people think about us. Character is revealed by the people who know us best. They know whether we're gracious when we're criticized; we're forgiving when we're wounded.

Those ordinary moments reveal extraordinary truths about who we're becoming.
Tim Keller frequently observed that the gospel doesn't simply command us to love; it announces that we are already loved beyond anything we could ever deserve. Until that truth settles into our hearts, we'll spend our lives trying to earn our worth, success or morality. Beneath each pursuit can be the same question:

Am I enough?

The gospel answers that question before we ever accomplish anything. Jesus fully knows and loves us. Only then are we free to love others without needing anything in return. That's why genuine Christian love isn't merely being nice or moral. Here’s why:

Niceness avoids conflict. Love tells the truth with grace. Niceness protects appearances.
Love pursues healing. Niceness keeps everyone comfortable. Love seeks transformation.
Perhaps that's one reason so many people outside the church struggle to believe what Christians proclaim.

Jesus emphasized that the defining mark of His followers is not political influence or cultural dominance, but love. He stated, "They will know you are my disciples by your love." When our lives are driven more by outrage than compassion, certainty rather than humility, our faith's credibility diminishes. The world doesn't need Christians who are simply louder; it needs Christians who truly resemble Jesus.

Maybe the most important question we can ask ourselves isn't, "What have I accomplished this year?" Maybe it's this:

Who am I becoming?

Am I becoming more patient? More generous? More forgiving? More joyful? More difficult to offend? More willing to listen? More like Jesus?
Those questions matter because they are the questions God seems most interested in asking.

Our greatest accomplishments won't last forever. But the person we are becoming that has eternal significance. God is far more interested in the kind of person you're becoming than the things you're accomplishing. Because it means His greatest work isn't happening through our performance. It's happening in our hearts. And when Christ transforms our hearts, love stops being something we occasionally do. It becomes who we are.

Listen to companion podcast, Episode 203: Love Isn't Nice, It's Transforming. 

Every few months, a headline reminds us this argument isn't going away.

In April, the White House's new Religious Liberty Commission all but declared war on a phrase most of us learned in grade school. Its chairman, Dan Patrick (not the former ESPN dude; the Lieutenant Governor of Texas dude), called the separation of church and state "the biggest lie that's been told in America since our founding." Depending on your feed, that sounded like either long-overdue courage or a five-alarm fire.

Then in May, thousands gathered on the National Mall for a "Rededicate 250" prayer event, tying America's 250th birthday to a specific vision of the country as fundamentally Christian. Watching it unfold, evangelical writer Russell Moore responded: "America deserves a better gospel than this" and confessed he was repenting of his own past associations with Christian nationalism.

Two Christians. Two headlines. Two completely different instincts about what it means to be faithful in a country like ours. I don't think either side has cornered Jesus. And I don't think Jesus is nearly as interested in this fight as we are.

Here's what I keep coming back to. In Mark 12, some religious leaders try to trap Jesus with a loaded political question: should we pay taxes to Caesar or not? Say yes, and he's a Roman sellout. Say no, and Rome executes him for treason. Jesus asks for a coin, points to Caesar's face stamped on it, and says: "Give back to Caesar what is Caesar's, and to God what is God's." He doesn't dodge the question. He reframes it. The coin belongs to the empire. You don't. Your soul, your conscience, your worship were never Caesar's to claim no matter which Caesar happens to be in office.

Later, standing in front of Pilate with his life on the line, Jesus says it even more plainly: "My kingdom is not of this world." Not "I have no kingdom." Just: it doesn't run on the rules we're used to. It doesn't spread through legislation, campaigns, or force. Every time a crowd tried to hand him political power even the time they tried to crown him king by force after he fed five thousand people he walked away.

That pattern is why I don't think Dan Patrick's vision or a purely secular one fully captures what Jesus was doing. A faith that needs the state's power to survive has already traded away something essential. So has a faith that's forgotten it has anything to say to the state at all.

Peter, writing to Christians who had far more reason to fight back than we do, gave this instruction instead: "Live such good lives among the people that... they may see your good deeds and glorify God." Not: win the argument. Just: live in a way that makes its own case.
I don't have a clever conclusion here, and I'm suspicious of anyone who does. But I think the real question isn't "which side is right." It's the one Pilate actually asked Jesus: what kind of king are you?

A few questions worth sitting with:

1. Where have I let a political identity quietly become my primary identity, ahead of following Jesus?
2. When I hear "Christian nation" or "separation of church and state," what am I actually reacting to — Scripture, or the last thing I scrolled past?
3. What would it look like this week to let my life, not my opinions, make the argument for me?

For more on this topic, listen to episode 202 of the All Saints Podcast... 

The question before us isn't "how do we get people back to church?" It's something far more demanding: how do we form resilient, truthful, non-anxious disciples in a fragmented world?

We are worried about attendance numbers, cultural influence, institutional trust, the next generation, and the rising tide of the religiously unaffiliated. We debate strategy, rebrand our ministries, launch new series, and study demographic trends with the urgency of a struggling startup. And underneath all of it runs a quiet fear: that we are losing.
What if we are asking the wrong questions?

My heritage is Persian. I am keenly interested in what is happening in Iran. I have good friends who are intimately involved in the church in Iran. Christians, especially Muslim-background converts, often gather through house churches, online discipleship, and quiet networks. USCIRF reports at least 143 Christians arrested across 24 Iranian cities in 2025, and Open Doors says converts face severe pressure from government, society, and family.
I am sure somewhere in Tehran, a young woman is memorizing Scripture in a house church that has no name, and no website. That same woman is worshipping in secret, knowing that the wrong conversation could cost her everything.

These brothers and sisters are not anxious about relevance. They are learning to be faithful. They have something to teach us. Before we can learn what that is, we have to see clearly. In my research, it is becoming apparent that Christianity is not simply declining. It is relocating.

Pew Research tells us that Christians remain the world's largest religious group—but from 2010 to 2020, Christianity grew more slowly than the global population, dropping from roughly 31% to 29% of humanity. Meanwhile, Gordon-Conwell and the World Christian Database report that the Global South now accounts for approximately 69% of the world's Christians, a share that may reach 78% by 2050. The Lausanne Movement's State of the Great Commission report confirms the pattern: the vitality, growth, and missionary energy of global Christianity is increasingly outside the West.

In other words, the center of gravity has shifted—not because the faith is dying, but because it is alive in places we rarely look.

The Western church, particularly in the United States of America, faces a different reality: deepening distrust of religious institutions and accelerating secularisation. Barna Group's research shows genuine spiritual hunger, especially among younger generations, but notes that fundamental practices like prayer, church attendance, and bible study remain weak.

Gen Z reports anxiety, loneliness, identity confusion, and emotional pain at alarming rates.
Here is the uncomfortable truth the American church must confront: we have built our faith on a foundation of freedom and privilege that most of the global church has never known, and we have often confused that privilege with the building itself.

We have assumed that the church requires buildings, brands, political protection, and cultural respectability. We have measured health in attendance metrics and square footage. We have outsourced discipleship to programs and platforms. We have, in many cases, built institutions that depend heavily on cultural comfort to function freely and without any disruption from the government.

The persecuted church in Iran, China, Saudi Arabia, Nigeria, North Korea never had that option. And so they developed something different: prayer that is not performative, discipleship that happens organically, community that bonds together under threat, and courage that doesn't require a congregation.

The question for anyone in the American Church is not whether we are grateful for religious freedom. We should be! The question is: have we used freedom to build resilience, or to build comfort?

My Iranian pastor friend said this to me in a conversation: ‘Freedom, he said, can make the church soft. And the persecuted church is holding up a mirror.’ I argue the central issue is not primarily a numerical problem. It is a formation problem.

How do we form disciples who are resilient enough to hold their faith when the [church] culture stops rewarding it? Can we be truthful enough to resist the seductive lure of political tribalism and online outrage? And be people who are non-anxious enough to be a calming, healing presence in a fragmented, fearful world?

The persecuted church has been working on this problem for centuries, by necessity. I propose several lessons that can create the calming and healing presence.

1. Faith travels inward when it cannot be external. When there are no public gatherings, no social rewards for being a Christian, no institutional buildings to gather in, faith has nowhere to live except in the heart and the community. This is actually formation at its most demanding and most durable. The American church needs to ask what it would look like to form people whose faith does not depend on the comforts we have grown accustomed to.
2. Prayer becomes essential, not performative. In contexts of persecution, prayer is not a warm-up to the real program. It is the program. It is the infrastructure. The Western church has largely inverted this: prayer is often the least attractive, least attended, most abbreviated element of church life. The global church offers something wholly different: communities that pray together, desperately and regularly, develop a kind of spiritual resilience that any Sunday service or church programming cannot manufacture.
3. The small gathering is not a lesser church. The house church and table groups are not lesser forms of church waiting to grow up into something real. They are, in many contexts, the most vital expressions of the body of Christ on earth. I contend that the American Church’s obsession with large gatherings and impressive campuses should be interrogated in light of what God is clearly doing in smaller, more vulnerable, and more intimate forms of community. This is not to say that larger churches are doing something wrong. It is healthy to interrogate the why of any church’s mission and being.
4. Discipleship happens in relationship, not in pews or rows. Persecuted believers disciple each other in kitchens and living rooms, over shared meals and whispered prayers. They cannot outsource formation to a professional pastor delivering content to a less interested audience. They have to do it themselves, which means they actually do it! I realise this next sentence may raise some eyebrows. This is a rebuke to the consumer model of church that has dominated Western Christianity for decades. As I study the early church, there was nothing consumer-oriented about it. They shared, prayed, ate, and listened to teaching and preaching. That was the structure. 

The American church also faces a distinctly Western formation crisis: we are saturated with information and starving for truth.

Barna emphasizes that Christian media wields significant influence over its audience, yet it can also foster division. In an era marked by unprecedented distrust in institutions, media, and expertise, the church has not been spared from the damaging effects of misinformation, outrage, and political tribalism. Christians are increasingly drawn to conspiracy theories, which heighten anxiety and breed contempt.

The persecuted church cannot afford this. When faith costs something, there is greater care and consideration for what is actually believed and why. A casual relationship with truth is dangerous when untruth can get you killed.

The American church must urgently renew its unwavering commitment to truthfulness, moving beyond merely dismissing falsehoods as ‘fake news’ and instead fostering a deeply rooted, theologically informed dedication to honesty, discernment, humility, and intellectual courage. Jesus proclaimed that the truth will set us free, a principle that remains vital today. However, contemporary culture has warped the concept of freedom into the right to believe whatever aligns with and alleviates personal anxieties and biases. It is a moral imperative for the church to recognize this distortion and to assume its leadership role in guiding society back toward genuine integrity, authenticity, and moral clarity.

None of this means the American church should romanticize suffering or go overboard with spiritual self-punishment about our freedoms. Religious liberty is a real gift, worth defending and sharing with others around the world. But freedom is a resource. The question is what we build with it.

The persecuted church builds resilience, because it has no other choice. We, as the American church, have the extraordinary opportunity to build resilience by choosing the disciplines of prayer, the intimacy of small communities, the rigours of genuine discipleship, and the humility of learning from brothers and sisters who have far less and often know far more about what it means to follow Jesus. The days of platforming the successful pastor who has a sizeable church need to be limited. Let us hear from those who understand suffering and can teach us resilience. Again, this is not to minimize anyone who has suffered heartbreak, setback, and challenges.
 
Humble servants are not formed by comfort. They are formed by encounters with the living God, with those with whom they have differences, and with the global body of Christ in all its suffering, beauty, and stubborn, joyful faithfulness.

The church in Iran gathers in secret and grows. I am reminded of Bishop Haik Hovsepian-Mehr, who served as a pastor and Superintendent of the Assemblies of God in Iran. He was killed in 1993 for his faith. In a letter he wrote a day before he vanished, he expressed his mission in Iran:
“The reason for writing these things is that if those enemies of the Cross continue their new strategy of persecution, we may lose all our converts…I know it is playing with fire but I am ready to die for the cause of the church so that others will be able to worship their Lord peacefully and without so much fear”.

The American church has resources, freedom, and opportunity. What we often lack is the formation that makes those resources spiritually dangerous in the best possible sense. The global church is not asking us to suffer. It is asking us to grow up.

The research is clear on what the church needs to address: belonging and mental health, trust and truthfulness, discipleship that actually forms people, engagement with a world that is spiritually hungry but institutionally skeptical. These are not marketing problems. They are formation problems.

And the good news is that the global church has been working on formation under pressure for two thousand years. The Spirit has not abandoned the places where the church grows without privilege. The wisdom is available to us, if we are humble enough to receive it.

This begins with listening. Not to the next leadership conference or ministry growth strategy, but to the voices of those who have learned to follow Jesus when following Jesus costs something, if not everything. It begins with prayer, not as a prelude to ministry but as the centre of it. It begins with choosing the small and vulnerable forms of community that the persecuted church knows by necessity and has largely been abandoned by the American Church because it may not get us noticed.

The question before the American church is not how to regain cultural influence. It is about becoming the kind of people who don't need it. That is a more demanding question. And I believe it is also a more hopeful one.

For many people, the hardest part of faith isn't believing in God. It's figuring out what to do when the version of Christianity you've inherited no longer makes sense.

Perhaps you've found yourself asking questions you were once afraid to ask. Why does the church seem so divided? Why does politics so often ignore the teachings of Jesus? Why do some churches seem more interested in protecting their traditions than loving their neighbors? Why do I feel closer to God outside the institution than inside it? If you've asked questions like these, you're not alone.

Millions of people are reexamining the beliefs, assumptions, and structures they inherited. Some call it deconstruction. For some, the word sounds hopeful. For others, it sounds threatening. But what if we've misunderstood what's happening?

Ecclesiastes tells us there is ‘a time to plant and a time to uproot.’ We usually celebrate the planting. We don’t like the uprooting or pruning. Yet anyone who has ever tended a garden knows that healthy growth sometimes requires pulling things up and pruning so something stronger can emerge.

The same is true of faith. The apostle Paul understood this better than anyone. Before encountering Jesus, Paul's entire world was neatly organized. He knew who belonged to God's people and who didn't. There were insiders and outsiders. Then Christ confronted him, and everything changed.

Writing from prison in Ephesians 3, Paul describes this transformation as a mystery. Not a puzzle to solve, but a truth God had been revealing all along. Gentiles were no longer outsiders. They were full participants in God's family.

That may not sound revolutionary to us today, but in Paul's world it shattered centuries of assumptions. God wasn't simply expanding an existing religious system. He was creating a new kind of community where old divisions no longer defined who belonged.

That raises an important question for us. What if God is still dismantling walls that we've rebuilt? Many churches today continue to organize themselves around boundaries—political boundaries, theological boundaries, cultural boundaries, and denominational boundaries. We often begin by asking, "Who is in?" and "Who is out?" Paul begins somewhere else. He begins with Christ, who breaks down the dividing walls and creates one new humanity.

Perhaps that is why so many people are discovering authentic Christian community in unexpected places. Around dinner tables. In neighborhood gatherings. In online conversations. Among people who don't agree on everything but are committed to seeking Jesus together.

The church has always been at its healthiest when relationships mattered more than institutions and when hospitality mattered more than uniformity.

My own research into the early church has only reinforced this conviction. The movement described in Acts spread less like an organization expanding its brand and more like roots spreading beneath the surface. It grew through relationships, shared meals, acts of generosity, courageous conversations, and the surprising work of the Holy Spirit. It was decentralized, adaptable, and constantly crossing boundaries that others thought should remain in place.

Maybe that's what we need today. A different imagination of the church. One that measures success less by attendance and more by transformation. Not trying to be a key influence and focusing more on faithfulness. Not trying to make everyone the same, but more by love.

If you're in a season of questioning, don't assume you've wandered beyond the reach of God. Sometimes the questions are not the end of faith. Sometimes they are where deeper faith begins.

After all, the mystery Paul described wasn't that God abandoned His people. It was that God was doing something far bigger than they had imagined. Maybe He still is. Let’s find out!

For more on this topic, Listen to episode 200 of the All Saints Podcast: An Honest Conversation About Institutional Religion. 

If you pay attention to the world around you, it feels as though everyone is trying to win.

Politicians have a relentless drive to win elections, nations strive fiercely to emerge victorious in wars, influencers compete vigorously for attention, and corporations battle tirelessly for market share. Even our social media feeds have transformed into arenas where individuals vie for likes, followers, and the final say.
 
The language of our culture is fundamentally about victory—defeating opponents, dominating the other side, building powerful platforms. Underlying all of this is a simple assumption: that accumulating enough power, influence, and control will ultimately lead to security and fulfillment. But what if that assumption is fundamentally flawed?

What if the problem is not that we don't have enough power but that we have misunderstood what power is for? Jesus lived in a world obsessed with power. Rome dominated the known world through military strength. Religious leaders competed for status and influence. Political rulers protected their positions through fear and violence. Sound familiar?

In that world, Jesus offered a profoundly different vision. He did not create a political movement, command armies, seek political office, or try to dominate societal systems. Instead, He brought ordinary people together around tables, listened to outsiders, welcomed children, and forgave enemies—demonstrating a transformative approach rooted in compassion and humility.

He taught that greatness looked like service and that leadership looked like sacrifice. The remarkable thing is that two thousand years later we still struggle to believe Him. When we look at the problems facing our world—political polarization, immigration debates, economic inequality, racial tension, environmental crises, endless culture wars—our instinct is often to ask, "Who can fix this?"

Jesus asks a different question: "What kind of people are we becoming?" That question is harder because it shifts the focus from them to us. It is easy to point at corrupt politicians, greedy corporations, biased media outlets, or ideological extremists. It is much harder to examine our own hearts. Am I becoming more compassionate? Am I becoming more patient? Am I learning to love people who disagree with me?

The older I get, the more convinced I become that many of our biggest problems are not merely political or economic. They are spiritual. We are drowning in information but starving for wisdom. We are more connected digitally and more isolated relationally. We have endless opportunities to express our opinions but fewer opportunities to practice empathy.

We know how to react. We are forgetting how to listen. This is one reason I find the early church so compelling. The first Christians did not transform the Roman world by outmuscling Rome. They created communities that embodied a different story. Rich and poor shared meals together. Jews and Gentiles became family. Enemies became neighbors. They demonstrated that another way of being human was possible. Their power was not coercive. It was relational. Their influence did not come from controlling society. It came from serving it.

Perhaps this is exactly what our moment calls for. Not louder voices or more outrage, but the radical act of humility. What if the most courageous thing Christians can do today is to listen before speaking, seek understanding before judgment, and choose love over fear? The world is full of those eager to win. What it truly needs are followers of Jesus willing to step into his way, even if it means going against the grain. These are not always the same.

If you've spent any time around American Christianity in recent years, you've probably felt the tension.

On one hand, we read about Jesus—the one who blessed the poor, loved his enemies, welcomed outsiders, and refused to seize political power. On the other hand, we see forms of Christianity that seem obsessed with influence, domination, and cultural control. Many people, both inside and outside the church, look at this disconnect and ask a simple question: How did we get here?

Recently, I had a conversation with biblical scholar Ron Herms about apocalyptic literature, empire, Christian nationalism, and the church's relationship to power. One of the most important insights from our discussion was that the Bible gives us answers and clues to these subjects.

The biblical writers understood empire as more than a political system. Empire was the relentless expansion of power—the desire to control, dominate, and impose one's vision on others. Ancient Israel lived under the shadow of Egypt, Assyria, Babylon, Persia, Greece, and Rome. The prophets and apocalyptic writers recognized that these empires often justified themselves with stories, myths, and promises that sounded noble while masking deeper realities.

That is where apocalyptic literature enters the picture.

The word apocalypse does not mean "the end of the world." It means an unveiling. A revealing. Pulling back the curtain to expose what is really happening beneath the surface. Books like Daniel and Revelation were written as resistance literature for communities trying to remain faithful while living under the pressures of empire.

What struck me most was that the biblical response to empire is rarely about seizing power. Instead, apocalyptic writers redefine what faithfulness, victory, and leadership look like.
Victory is not domination. It is faithful witness. Leadership is not control. It is service.

This is where the teachings of Jesus become so important. The Sermon on the Mount does not provide a strategy for conquering enemies. It calls us to love them. The cross is not a symbol of worldly success. It is the ultimate act of self-giving love. That raises an uncomfortable question for many of us: What happens when the church begins to mirror the very systems of power that Jesus challenged?

Throughout American history there have been Christians who modeled another way. The Black church, leaders in the Civil Rights Movement, and many voices from liberation traditions demonstrated that it is possible to resist injustice without embracing violence. They exposed evil, confronted systems of oppression, and remained committed to the way of Jesus.
Perhaps the church's task today is not to gain more power but to recover a different imagination. An apocalyptic imagination.

One that pulls back the curtain on the idols of our age. One that refuses to confuse political influence with faithfulness. One that remembers that the kingdom of God advances not through domination but through love, sacrifice, truth, and hope. In a culture obsessed with winning, Jesus invites us to a different kind of victory.

The issue of doubt shouldn’t be something to avoid; in fact, it should be something we embrace. Think about it, how do we know…anything? A branch of philosophy that is concerned with the nature and limits of knowledge is epistemology. Often referred to as the theory of knowledge, it investigates what distinguishes justified belief from mere opinion and explores how we acquire and validate the things we claim to know.

The concept of truth is fundamental because it reflects statements, beliefs, or propositions that accurately align with objective reality, empirical facts, or what genuinely exists. In today’s culture, truth is a debated concept that ends up being reduced to your opinion of it and mine, and both can exist at the same time. The idea of an objective truth, some say, is something that is reserved for religious people.

So, what is truth? This is a question that has been debated for centuries.

Here are a few famous quotes:

• Aristotle: truth means ‘to say of what is that it is, and of what is not that is not.'
• William James: ‘truth happens to an idea.’ In other words, if an idea is practically useful and beneficial for human action, it is functionally true. 
• Nietzsche: argued that there is no objective, universal truth. Truth is simply the will to power.

It becomes apparent that our culture has adopted many forms of truth. In a postmodern, post-Christian society, truth is whatever works for you. Objective truth is seen as limiting freedom.

Famously, in the New Testament, in John 18:38, Pontius Pilate, the Roman governor in Judea, who was in conversation with Jesus during his arrest, asked, ‘What is truth?’ Responding to Jesus declaring what he had come to do: ‘testify to the truth.’

Today, the question remains: What is truth? Perhaps you are pondering that now. What is your answer?

I have learned that many people are curious about truth, and yet doubts are always close by. At All Saints, we encourage this wrestling. We say we are a community for all who believe, doubt, and seek. Doubt is part of belief and Jesus understands that.

There is a story in the book of Mark where a desperate Dad asks Jesus to help his very sick son. Jesus says, ‘anything is possible for those who believe….in the truth (emphasis mine),’ you would think the man or any parent for that matter would be saying, ‘Yes, I believe. Just help my child.’ But this parent responds in the most honest way possible, ‘I want to believe, help me with my unbelief.’ This response emphasizes that faith, truth, and doubt can coexist. Jesus chose to heal the boy, perhaps recognizing genuine honesty in the man’s response.

It is this kind of sincerity within ourselves that guides us toward the truth. Goethe said,
‘If we do not have the doubts, where then would be joyful certainty?’

What are your doubts? Take these questions and spend some time with them.

1. Which specific part of your faith are you wrestling with right now? (e.g., God's love, the reliability of scripture, or the problem of suffering)
2. Are you struggling with the faith itself, or are you struggling with the actions of people/institutions in the faith?
3. Do you believe it is possible for faith and doubt to exist at the same time?
4. What is one thing about your faith that is still encouraging to you, even in a small way?

I am convinced God isn’t put off by our doubts and questions. The journey isn’t about reaching certainty or perfection. It’s about walking with Christ and learning his rhythms of love and joy in your life. My favorite verse in the Bible is found in Jude 1:22, ‘Have mercy on those who doubt.’
 
Maybe the opposite of faith isn't doubt. Maybe the opposite of faith is pretending. Pretending we have all the answers. Pretending our questions don't exist. Pretending certainty is the same thing as trust. The people Jesus seemed most patient with were the doubters and the seekers; the skeptics and the honest. Faith is not the absence of uncertainty—it is the decision to keep moving toward truth even when the path is unclear. So bring your questions. Bring your disappointments. Bring your doubts. God is not threatened by them. In fact, they may be the very place where a deeper and more authentic faith begins.

Listen to episode 197 of the All Saints Podcast: The Problem Isn't Doubt. It's Certainty.

It feels almost impossible to escape politics right now.

Whether it's social media, cable news, podcasts, family gatherings, or conversations after church, politics has become one of the dominant forces shaping how people see the world—and increasingly, how they see one another.

I've noticed something happening among Christians in particular. Conversations about faith often become conversations about politics. Questions about discipleship quickly turn into questions about parties, candidates, policies, and culture wars. For many people, political identity has become so intertwined with spiritual identity that it's difficult to tell where one ends and the other begins. I've also noticed the exhaustion.

Some followers of Jesus feel pressured to publicly comment on every issue. Others feel silenced because they don't fully align with their side's expectations. Many feel caught in the middle—unable to embrace the certainty of either side yet unwilling to disengage altogether.

Political ads have replaced regular commercials (I miss knowing what's happening at Burger King, Did I get wind of something to do with the Mandalorian and Grogu?).

As a follower of Jesus, I'm keenly aware of the ongoing conversation among people of faith. To be honest, the rhetoric and tone aren't any different from what's seen in other media outlets, social media platforms, and coffee shop debates. I ponder this often. Sometimes I feel angry and embarrassed by what I hear from people in my faith community. Other times, I feel the need to speak up, despite the risks involved.

Recently, I came across an older article by the late Tim Keller published in the New York Times that raised an important question: Is withdrawing from political engagement actually a political act in itself?

‘Those who avoid all political discussions and engagement are essentially casting a vote for the social status quo. American churches in the early 19th century that did not speak out against slavery because that was what we would now call ‘getting political’ were actually supporting slavery by doing so. To not be political is to be political … Nevertheless, while believers can register under a party affiliation and be active in politics, they should not identify the Christian church or faith with a political party as the only Christian one.’ – Timothy Keller

I believe Keller presents a compelling argument for why Christians should refrain from conflating their faith with their political affiliations. His first point highlights the potential danger of misrepresenting Christianity to those who are exploring the faith. By linking Christianity with a specific political party, there's a risk of creating the misconception that complete agreement with the party's platform is a requirement for following Jesus. Keller's second point delves into the complexity of political issues, emphasizing that many of them lack clear guidance in the Bible. This opens the door for sincere and faithful Christians to hold differing views on how to approach these matters, without compromising their faith. Yet I think we face a different danger.

The greatest threat may not be political involvement itself. The greatest threat may be confusing allegiance to Christ with allegiance to a political movement. When Christianity becomes attached to a party, ideology, nation, or candidate, the gospel inevitably becomes smaller than it was intended to be. We begin filtering Jesus through politics instead of filtering politics through Jesus. And that's where things become dangerous.

Jesus consistently refuses the categories that people try to place upon him. He is too compassionate for some and too demanding for others. Too concerned with justice for some and too concerned with personal transformation for others. He challenges every ideology because his kingdom transcends them all.

In our current political climate, many Christians feel pressure to choose between partisan loyalty and faithfulness to Jesus. But perhaps that is a false choice. The church is called to be politically engaged without being politically captured.

We should care about justice, poverty, immigration, racial reconciliation, religious liberty, peacemaking, and human flourishing. These are not partisan issues; they are deeply human issues that matter to God. At the same time, we should be wary whenever a political movement demands the kind of loyalty, trust, hope, or devotion that belongs to Christ alone.

No political party can save us. No election can usher in the Kingdom of God. No candidate can heal what is ultimately broken in the human heart. That doesn't mean politics are unimportant. It means politics are not ultimate.

The early Christians lived under Rome, one of the most powerful political systems in history. Yet their hope was not in Caesar. Their confidence was not in political victory. Their witness came through communities marked by love, generosity, service, reconciliation, and allegiance to another King.
 
Perhaps that's what we need most today. Not less engagement, but deeper discernment. Not withdrawal, but wisdom. Not partisan certainty, but Christ-centered faithfulness. The question isn't whether Christians should care about politics. The question is whether our political commitments are being shaped by Jesus—or whether Jesus is being reshaped by our political commitments.

Question: How are you navigating the tension between faith and politics in this cultural moment?

For more on this topic, listen to Episode 196 of All Saints Podcast: "Stop Asking Jesus to Pick Your Side"

How should Christians think about nationalism, immigration, and power?

Christians face a profound tension: we are citizens of earthly nations, yet our ultimate allegiance lies with the kingdom of God. The real danger emerges when political identity, nationalism, fear, or power overshadow Jesus as our true source of hope. It's striking how many Christians prefer quoting Paul over Jesus; however, it is Jesus’ words that should guide our lives. Jesus addressed concerns related to others, as seen in the Sermon on the Mount. This is the vital area where the line between the Cross and Empire becomes blurred.

Jesus refused a political position.

John 18:36 - “My kingdom is not of this world.” Jesus was clear that his purpose on earth was not to overthrow governments. Yet, the crowds desired a revolution—a figure of power, dominance, and a warrior king. Instead, Jesus entered Jerusalem humbly on a donkey, defying both an oppressive empire and fierce nationalist sentiments. He did not conform to any political label. In modern culture, there is immense pressure on Christians to align strictly with ideological camps—whether left or right, progressive or nationalist, activist or isolationist, liberal or conservative. Yet, Jesus consistently challenges every tribe and ideology, inviting a deeper reflection beyond simple labels.

Christ followers are told to love the other.

Ephesians 2:19 “You are no longer foreigners and strangers…” Throughout Scripture, Israel is reminded that they were once foreigners in Egypt. God consistently urges care for strangers, refugees, and outsiders. While legitimate concerns about borders and social stability are understandable, many Christians have permitted fear to overshadow the inherent dignity of all people. Recognizing this biblical call challenges us to prioritize compassion over apprehension.

Here’s the tension–

As followers of Christ, we must unite our response around essential principles: compassion paired with wisdom, justice alongside mercy, truth complemented by love, and strength balanced with humility. The Christian church has a duty to stand against both the dehumanization of immigrants and naive idealism that overlooks complex realities. While these challenges are not simple to solve, our response must emulate the example set by Jesus. Consider his encounter with the woman caught in adultery in John 8:1-11 as a powerful model for compassionate care and mercy.

Christ followers must understand Power.

Jesus demonstrates how vigilant we must be against unchecked political power. In Luke 4:5-6, Satan tempts Jesus by claiming dominion over all the worldly kingdoms. Revelation 13 further uses vivid symbolism to portray worldly political systems that abuse their authority. Why should Christians heed this warning? Because power often corrupts, fosters fear, demands loyalty, sows division, and turns people into enemies. Does any of this sound familiar? When Christians pursue dominance rather than sacrificial witness, they cease to resemble Jesus. Jesus transformed the world—not through force or political influence, but through sacrifice, love, truth, humility, and unwavering faith.

Christ followers are called to be peacemakers.

Matthew 5:9-16 “Blessed are the peacemakers…salt of the earth” ... Peacemaking is not an act of passivity but a bold, courageous stance in divided spaces. Christians must be distinguished by their refusal to sow hatred, their resistance to propaganda through truth-telling, and their commitment to preserving human dignity and loving enemies. While no nation is the kingdom of God, they should also not claim to be its protector or promoter. The early Christians, living under far more violent empires than many modern democracies, changed the world without confusing Caesar with Christ. When the church becomes enslaved to political power, it loses its prophetic voice. A crucial question arises: “Can Christians love their nation without worshipping it?” Once political loyalty becomes ultimate, Jesus inevitably takes a back seat.

Learn more about what it means to examine ourselves and cultivate "the fruit of the Spirit" in Episode 195 of the All Saints Podcast: "Jesus Didn't Come to Earth to Make People Religious."


If you're interested in diving deeper into this topic, these are some books that I recommend...  

Separation of Church and Hate by, John Fugelsang
Fugelsang critiques the alliance between American Christianity and right-wing political power, arguing that many public expressions of modern Christianity contradict the teachings of Jesus. Through humor, cultural commentary, and biblical references, he contrasts the compassion-centered ethic of Christ with fear-based nationalism, exclusion, and culture-war politics. The book calls readers to recover a faith rooted in mercy, humility, justice, and love rather than ideology and tribalism.

The Violent Take it by Force – Matthew Taylor
This book explores the growing influence of charismatic Christian nationalism and prophetic movements within American evangelicalism, especially those connected to politics, conspiracy culture, and spiritual warfare rhetoric. Taylor traces how segments of independent charismatic Christianity became deeply intertwined with populism, January 6, and apocalyptic political imagination. He argues that these movements are reshaping American religion and democracy by framing political conflict as a cosmic battle between God and evil.

The Kingdom, the Power, and the Glory – Tim Alberta
Part memoir, part investigative journalism, this book examines how white evangelicalism in America became increasingly fused with political identity, especially during the Trump era. Alberta writes both as an outsider journalist and as someone raised within evangelical culture, giving the book a deeply personal tone as he documents churches fractured by fear, anger, and partisan loyalty. He argues that many Christian communities traded spiritual integrity for political power, creating a crisis of witness that now threatens the future credibility of the American church.

"I doubt that hell is real. Is it just some construct created to scare people into good behavior and convert them to Christianity? I believe in heaven and hope for it, but just can't muster the same belief (or fear) of hell." - Anonymous

We recently launched The Doubter's Mailbox on our website and in the All Saints App, where anyone can anonymously submit doubts like the one above, that hinder their faith or ability to believe.

Few ideas provoke more fear, skepticism, or confusion than the idea of hell.

For some, hell represents everything they struggle with in Christianity: “How could a loving God send people to eternal punishment?” Others wonder whether hell is even real at all—or whether ancient images of fire and torment were symbolic ways of describing something deeper.

The truth is, throughout Christian history there has never been just one view of hell. Thoughtful Christians, theologians, and philosophers have wrestled with these questions for centuries, all attempting to hold together two convictions:

• God is just.
• God is merciful.

The tension between those two ideas shapes every theological view of hell.

The traditional view, held by much of historic Christianity, teaches that hell is an eternal state of conscious separation from God. In this understanding, human freedom matters deeply. God does not force people into relationship with Him; hell becomes the tragic outcome of rejecting the source of life itself. Supporters of this view argue that evil and injustice must ultimately be answered with judgment.

Others hold to what is called annihilationism or conditional immortality. This perspective teaches that those who reject God are not eternally tormented, but ultimately cease to exist. Judgment is real, but suffering is not endless. Many see this as a way of taking both justice and mercy seriously.

A third perspective, universal reconciliation, argues that God’s love ultimately restores all people. Hell may exist, but not as eternal punishment. Instead, it is understood as a refining or purifying process that eventually leads to healing and reconciliation. Critics question whether this diminishes human freedom or the seriousness of evil, while supporters believe God’s mercy ultimately triumphs over all rebellion.

Still others see hell less as a physical place and more as existential separation from God—a condition of isolation, emptiness, and self-chosen distance from divine life and love.
What becomes clear is that the real debate is not simply whether hell exists, but what judgment means, what God’s justice looks like, and how mercy operates in the face of evil.

At the center of this conversation is a deeper human question: Can love exist without freedom? And if freedom is real, what happens when people reject goodness, truth, and God Himself?

These are not abstract theological puzzles alone. They touch our fears, our hopes, and our understanding of who God is.

Perhaps the deeper question is not merely, “Is there a hell?” But: “What kind of God do we believe stands behind judgment?”

And maybe even more personally: Would we want a universe where evil, cruelty, abuse, and injustice are never ultimately confronted at all?

If you'd like to discuss this topic more in depth, feel free to join me in the Theology Q&A discussion group in the All Saints Community app. Don't have the app yet, download it here. 

We live in a world that is loud, hurried, and opinionated. Voices compete for our attention—on screens, in conversations, and even in our own heads. Yet the Bible consistently calls us to a countercultural posture: the sacred art of listening. Listening is not passive; it is an intentional act that shapes our wisdom, relationships, and faith. It is paramount in obtaining the guidance we need for wise decision making.

Here are five ways the Scripture highlights why listening matters so deeply:

1. Listening leads to wisdom. Proverbs 1:5 tells us, “Let the wise listen and add to their learning, and let the discerning get guidance.” The path to wisdom begins not with speaking, but with listening—listening to God, to mentors, and to those whose life experiences can guide us. When we pause to truly hear, we position ourselves to gain understanding.
2. Listening deepens our relationship with God. Jesus said in John 10:27, “My sheep hear my voice; I know them, and they follow me.” The Christian life is built on recognizing and responding to the voice of the Shepherd. Listening to God through prayer, Scripture, and the prompting of the Spirit is essential for knowing His will and walking closely with Him.
3. Listening honors others. James 1:19 urges us: “Everyone should be quick to listen, slow to speak and slow to become angry.” Listening is an act of love. It shows others that their stories, struggles, and perspectives matter. In a divided world, few things are as powerful—or as healing—as offering someone your full attention.
4. Listening helps us avoid foolishness. Proverbs 18:13 cautions, “To answer before listening—that is folly and shame.” How often do misunderstandings and conflicts arise because we speak before we’ve truly heard? Careful listening prevents hasty words, fosters wise decision-making, and protects us from unnecessary strife.
5. Listening fuels growth and faith. Romans 10:17 reminds us, “Faith comes from hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ.” Our spiritual growth is rooted in listening—listening to God’s Word preached, taught, and shared in community. Every time we hear and receive truth, our faith deepens and matures.

And finally, listening as peacemaking. 

At its heart, listening is about more than acquiring wisdom or avoiding conflict. It is about becoming people of peace. In our fractured society, listening creates space for reconciliation and understanding. As followers of Jesus, we are called to listen not only to God but also to one another—even, and perhaps especially, to those who see the world differently than we do.

Listening is both our joy and our responsibility. When we listen, we imitate Christ, who leaned in to hear the cries of the broken, the questions of the curious, and the prayers of the desperate.

So this week, slow down. Put away distractions. Be quick to listen. You may just find that in listening—really listening—you encounter not only others but also the voice of God Himself.

We’ve been taught to fear anger. Some of us were raised to suppress it—told that good people don’t get angry. Others were taught to express it freely—to vent, to react to “keep it real.” But both approaches miss something deeper, something more unsettling: Anger isn’t the opposite of love. Indifference is.

If you never get angry, it may not be because you’re peaceful—it may be because you’ve
stopped caring.

At its core, anger is not a defect in your humanity. It’s a signal. Anger is what happens when
something you love is threatened. Think about it, we get angry when someone we love is
mistreated. We get angry when injustice prevails.

The real question isn’t “Why am I angry?” It’s “What am I defending?” If we follow our anger
far enough, it will always lead us to our sacred loves. Our deepest attachments. Our most
guarded values. And sometimes—that’s where things get uncomfortable. Because not
everything we defend is worth defending.

Anger can expose beauty—but it can also expose distortion. We may think we’re defending
truth…But we’re defending ego. We may believe we’re standing for justice, but we’re most
likely protecting an image. This is why anger is so powerful—and so dangerous. It reveals what we love. But it doesn’t guarantee that what we love is rightly ordered.

This is where following Christ cuts against both modern instincts. On one side, our culture
often celebrates anger: “Speak your truth,” “Let it out,” “Don’t hold it in. On the other side,
more traditional cultures suppress it: “Stay composed,” “Don’t make a scene, ” “Anger is
weakness.” But Scripture refuses both extremes. It doesn’t say: “Express all anger,” and it
doesn’t say: “Eliminate all anger” It says something far more demanding: “Be angry—but do not sin.”

In other words: Don’t suppress it. Don’t unleash it. Transform it!

Jesus is perfect love, real anger. If we want to understand anger rightly, look at Jesus.
He is described as perfect—yet He gets angry. He overturns tables in the temple when worship is corrupted (John 2), He confronts religious leaders when they weaponize truth (Mark 3), He stands at Lazarus’ tomb and burns with anger at death itself (John 11), Why? Because He loves perfectly. His anger is never about protecting himself. It is always about
restoring others. That’s the difference.

So here’s the paradox: Anger is both a sign of love and a source of destruction. Therefore, it
can reveal what matters most and/or ruin what matters most. That’s why wisdom doesn’t
eliminate anger—it slows it down. Because when anger is rushed, it becomes reactive.

When anger is slowed, it becomes discerning.

Finally, instead of asking: “Is anger good or bad?” Ask this: “Is my anger aligned with love—or
distorted by self?” Because anger is never neutral. It is always moving in one of two directions: Toward restoration or toward destruction.

The goal is not to become a person without anger. The goal is to become a person whose anger has been healed, examined, and rightly ordered by love. Because in the end, the most dangerous person is not the angry one… It’s the one who no longer cares at all.

For more on this topic and a deeper look into how the Bible looks at anger, listen to All Saints Podcast episode 192 – "What Do I Do With Anger?"