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Nov 15, 2024 | 
vitalbypoet.com | Ryan Welsh
“If you aren’t at the table, you’ll be on the menu.”This phrase, heard throughout the halls of Congress from legislators and lobbyists alike, describes the sometimes harsh reality of the political sphere and showcases the importance of being involved in our country’s legislative action. Few know this better than Lester Voegeli.
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Sep 10, 2024 | 
vitalbypoet.com | Ryan Welsh
Most people, not only baseball fans, know of the movie, "Field of Dreams" — a magical movie from the 1980s set in the beautiful landscape of the plush green corn fields of eastern Iowa. Most of the movie was filmed on the Lansing Family farm outside of Dyersville, IA. High-yielding corn is still growing there, and the house still stands in the same place it did 100 years ago.
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Aug 20, 2024 | 
thegospelcoalition.org | Nadya Williams |Kirsten Franze |Sarah Eekhoff Zylstra |Ryan Welsh
The year I turned 30, after a lifetime as a secular Jew, I experienced a crisis that led me to investigate in earnest the existence of God. As any card-carrying academic would do, I read a lot of books. I read such Christian apologetics as C. S. Lewis’s Mere Christianity (which was intriguing), Tim Keller’s The Reason for God (more powerful), and N. T. Wright’s majestic The Resurrection of the Son of God (most powerful of all).
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Aug 20, 2024 | 
thegospelcoalition.org | Doug Hankins |Kirsten Franze |Sarah Eekhoff Zylstra |Ryan Welsh
In his book The Rise of Christianity, Rodney Stark points to the clear contrast between Christian selflessness and pagan self-interest during the Plague of Cyprian in the third century. Whereas pagans retreated to their country villas to escape the plague, Christians stayed behind in the cities to provide medical care, community support, and God-centered conversation for sufferers. Pagans ran away from their neighbors. Christians moved near.
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Aug 19, 2024 | 
thegospelcoalition.org | Brett McCracken |Sarah Eekhoff Zylstra |Kirsten Franze |Ryan Welsh
I lived a satisfying life in my 20s as a single guy. I earned two college degrees, did internships in Hollywood and in the U.K., traveled abroad, settled into my first job, published my first book, helped plant a church, and developed deep spiritual friendships with a solid group. I’m grateful for all of it. But my life became so much richer when I became a husband. And it was further enriched when I became a father.
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Aug 19, 2024 | 
thegospelcoalition.org | Joe Carter |Sarah Eekhoff Zylstra |Kirsten Franze |Ryan Welsh
This week, the Democratic Party will formally adopt their platform at the Democratic National Convention. Last month, delegates for the Republican Party did the same at their convention. The platform is a document that outlines the statement of principles and policies the party has decided to support. Why should Christians care about a document that few non-politicians will ever read? Because of the influence the two major party platforms have on public policy.
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Aug 18, 2024 | 
thegospelcoalition.org | Mark Vroegop |Sarah Eekhoff Zylstra |Kirsten Franze |Ryan Welsh
Sometimes we don’t get waiting right because we’re not prepared for how hard it is. Underneath our disdain for waiting is often our longing for control. Let me be clear: that desire isn’t fundamentally sinful. Nor is it necessarily wrong if waiting is hard. Gaps in life are part of God’s design for the world. They’re a common element of our human experience for good reason. Imagine what you’d be like if you didn’t have to wait for anything.
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Aug 17, 2024 | 
thegospelcoalition.org | Brett McCracken |Sarah Eekhoff Zylstra |Kirsten Franze |Ryan Welsh
“Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more. And I saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband.” (Rev. 21:1–2)If to be exiled is to be separated, displaced from, or cut off from the place or people we most love, then the end of exile must mean, among other things, reunion: the coming back together of what has been kept apart through exile.
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Aug 16, 2024 | 
thegospelcoalition.org | Brett McCracken |Sarah Eekhoff Zylstra |Ryan Welsh |Kirsten Franze
I grew up loving movies and loving Jesus. But my filmgoing and churchgoing felt like separate worlds with little overlap. That changed one afternoon when I was a high school sophomore. I was in a movie theater in Shawnee, Kansas, and the movie was Terrence Malick’s WWII epic The Thin Red Line. It was the first time I watched a “secular” film that spoke to me directly as a Christian, engaged my head theologically, and stirred my heart to love God more.
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Aug 13, 2024 | 
thegospelcoalition.org | Ryan Welsh |Joe Carter |Sarah Eekhoff Zylstra |Justin Taylor
Earlier this year, Christian hip-hop artist Shai Linne released a new track titled “Farm Talk.” This modern parable uses farm animals to depict one of the West’s most passionately debated cultural phenomena—the body-mind identity confusion of today’s transgender movement. In the track, a hog claims to be a dog, a hen claims to be a rooster, and a horse supports their self-discoveries while a frog lovingly contends for the truth of their biological identities.
