Young, evangelical, and African American churchgoers ask the most.

When churchgoers show up to their church’s worship service, they’re often hoping to have a guest with them.

A Lifeway Research study of US Protestant churchgoers finds 3 in 5 (60%) say they have extended at least one invitation in the past six months for someone to attend their church, including 19 percent who have made one invitation, 21 percent with two invitations and 20 percent with three or more invitations.

A third of churchgoers say they haven’t invited anyone to a worship service at their church in the past six months, while 7 percent say they aren’t sure how many invitations they’ve made.

“Churchgoers were not asked the typical net promoter score question of whether they recommend their church. They were asked if they’ve actually invited someone in the last six months,” said Scott McConnell, executive director of Lifeway Research. “For most churchgoers, invitations are not just an aspiration but a current practice.”

Extending invites

Compared to a similar Lifeway Research study six years ago, a similar percentage of churchgoers say they haven’t invited anyone recently—33 percent now versus 29 percent in 2017. Fewer churchgoers, however, are making three or more invitations. In 2017, 1 in 4 said they’d extended at least three invitations for someone to visit their church in the previous six months. Currently, 20 percent say the same.

“It’s not surprising the proportion of churchgoers extending invites is not growing, since the proactive nature of inviting people to church is counter-cultural,” said McConnell. “People in America are not being more relational, but an invitation to church is an invitation to join you in activities ...

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UPDATE: The chair of the board of trustees, Kevin Smith, has resigned.

The Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission (ERLC) announced Monday evening that its president Brent Leatherwood suddenly lost his job—only to retract the statement the next morning.

The board of trustees stated on Tuesday that the decision had been made without an authorized meeting or vote and that Leatherwood “remains the President of the ERLC and has our support moving forward.”

The chair of the ERLC board of trustees, Kevin Smith, took responsibility for the unilateral move and has resigned.

In remarks to Baptist Press on Tuesday, Smith said he believed there was consensus to remove Leatherwood, and “in an effort to deal with it expeditiously, I acted in good faith but without a formal vote of the Executive Committee.”

“This was an error on my part, and I accept full responsibility,” he said.

The initial statement from the ERLC had given no reasoning for Leatherwood’s termination but came a day after he issued remarks applauding President Joe Biden’s decision to withdraw from the 2024 race.

“I deeply appreciate everyone who has reached out, especially our trustees who were absolutely bewildered at what took place yesterday and jumped in to set the record straight,” Leatherwood wrote on X on Tuesday. “More to come.”

Leatherwood has been on staff with the ERLC—the public policy and advocacy arm for Southern Baptists—for the past seven years and has been president of the entity since 2021. Just a few hours before his termination was announced Monday evening, Leatherwood was still working and sharing ERLC resources on social media.

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It’s not migrants. Christian shelters are seeing more single moms who can’t shoulder the cost of living.

It was 2:45 p.m., and people were lined up around the block in Tribeca, Manhattan, for the 3 p.m. intake at the emergency shelter of the Bowery Mission, a Christian nonprofit that has served New Yorkers since 1879.

“Am I on the list?” one woman called out to Lea Burrell, the Bowery manager. The woman had to get in a standby line. Just inside the doorway, a security guard, new to the job, started to cry when she saw the people lined up—she felt like she could have been in that line too.

Even though the shelter had a standby list, this was a light day. In January, the mission saw a 40 percent surge in people seeking shelter and food. Busloads of migrants were being dropped off on its doorsteps over the winter, and the organization had to pivot quickly.

It found a way to squeeze 16 more beds into its shelter, and now has a total of 148 beds for men and women. It has separate recovery programs and transitional housing. But staff have seen the migrant arrivals level off, while the heightened demand for shelter remains.

Other homeless ministries around the country said the same in interviews with CT: They are seeing big increases in those seeking shelter, but not from migrant arrivals.

“Nationally, what we’re seeing is that the highest area of homelessness is single moms and children,” said Tom De Vries, the CEO of Citygate Network, which represents more than 300 faith-based shelters across the country.

Asylum seekers are not as much of a factor in the increases, he added. He attributes the rise in single moms seeking shelter to inflation—and to a lack of thick community support a mom could lean on when she needs to work more or take care of her kids. He said more missions in the Citygate Network ...

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In a country known for loving Western praise music—Hillsong’s second-biggest market—a grassroots movement is singing new tunes.

Arnel Cadeliña, a pastor and worship leader in Manila, remembers when his parents called their only “born again” relative for help. It was 1983, Cadeliña was 12, and his family was convinced that his teenage sister was possessed by a demon.

“He showed up with two guitars and two singers,” Cadeliña recalled. “Then he said, ‘Let’s not mind her, let’s mind the name above all names,’ and they led us in worship songs.”

Cadeliña remembers singing simple praise choruses like “This Is the Day” and praying. He says he witnessed two miracles that day: the deliverance of his sister and the conversion of his family.

“We didn’t know the Bible, we didn’t understand God, but he showed up in the power of our music, in the power of our worship.”

Contemporary praise and worship music from the United States, Australia, and the UK has been a part of Cadeliña’s faith journey since its beginning.

Like many Protestant Christians in the Philippines, he grew as a believer while singing songs from direct-to-consumer cassette tapes by Integrity’s Hosanna! Music in the ’80s and ’90s, passed along by missionaries and within grassroots networks of churches. (“This is the Day,” the song Cadeliña remembers singing, was administered and distributed by Integrity.)

With the influence of Western worship music, Filipino leaders like Cadeliña are trying to balance local music with popular hits coming from the US-dominated worship music industry.

Cadeliña now leads FIJ (Faith in Jesus) City Church in Manila with his wife, Jessica, the church’s worship leader. The church is an ...

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International undergraduates were part of many schools’ plans for sustainability. A new government rule changes that.

It seemed like a door had opened.

Providence University College and Theological Seminary in Manitoba started an associate’s degree program that could be marketed to international students. To president Kenton Anderson’s delight, the two-year degree attracted a significant number of applicants eager to study in Canada. Several hundred students enrolled.

For the private evangelical school, that generated significant revenue and helped further fulfill the mission of spreading the gospel around the world.

Providence made plans to grow the program—could they attract 500 international students? 600? 700?—and bought an apartment building in nearby Winnipeg to provide increased student housing.

Then, a single government decision closed that door.

Canada’s federal government announced new restrictions on undergraduate international students in January 2024. When the rules take effect this fall, the total number will be reduced by about 35 percent.

Providence was anticipating several hundred new international students. Now, when the semester starts the first week of September, the school will only greet about 20.

“It’s many millions of dollars of revenue just gone,” Anderson told CT. “And, of course, as a private tuition-funded Christian school, it’s not like we have a lot of that money lying around.”

According to the Canadian government, there are several reasons to reduce the number of international students at Canadian colleges and universities. Officials said they were concerned that lax admissions were diminishing the quality of the country’s education.

“We want to ensure that international students are successful and to tackle the issues that make students ...

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The 134-year-old landmark, now a nearby secondary meeting space for the church, went up in flames in downtown Dallas.

The historic sanctuary at First Baptist Church Dallas burned Friday evening, July 19. The cause of the blaze is not yet known. The Victorian-style, red brick sanctuary building was erected 1890 and is a recognized Texas Historic Landmark.

According to media reports, Dallas Fire and Rescue received a call at 6:05 p.m., Friday evening regarding a building on fire in downtown Dallas.

Firefighters responded and within 15 minutes of the first call, a second alarm was requested. Then around 7:30 p.m., the scene was upgraded to a three-alarm fire. A fourth alarm was called in around 8:15 p.m. The Dallas Morning News reported that “more than 60 units were dispatched to respond to the structure fire.”

The church released a statement on X at 9:34 p.m. saying the primary fire was extinguished but firefighters were still working at the scene.

First Baptist Church Dallas has an indelible history within the Southern Baptist Convention having been pastored by former SBC presidents George W. Truett and W. A. Criswell. Currently led by Robert Jeffress, First Baptist Dallas reported a membership of nearly 16,000 in 2023.

The church currently worships in a state-of-the-art facility, which opened in 2013, adjacent to the historic sanctuary.

Jeffress posted on X Friday night asking for prayers for the church, saying, “We have experienced a fire in the Historic Sanctuary. To our knowledge, no one is hurt or injured, and we thank God for His protection. He is sovereign even in the most difficult times.”

The historic sanctuary was home to First Baptist Dallas’s contemporary service each week, called the Band-Led Service. There was a special VBS service scheduled for this Sunday, June 21. The church hosted its annual Vacation ...

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Communities surrounding Trump’s rally site feel the shock of the tragic shooting.

Corey Comperatore loved reading Romans.

His pastor at Cabot Methodist Church, Jonathan Fehl, recalled how much Comperatore drew strength from the book. It was the first thing he’d recommend to new believers.

But it may be that Comperatore is remembered by another portion of Scripture, John 15:13: “Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.”

Comperatore was the kind of church member who showed up every Sunday, took part in small groups, became a member of the congregation’s board of trustees, and helped with building projects. He was an Army veteran, volunteer firefighter, and proud “girl dad”—a guy who did everything with “a heart of service to the Lord,” Fehl wrote.

His final act of love and sacrifice came on Saturday, when he yelled, “Get down!” before diving in front of his wife and daughters to protect them from a bullet intended for former president Donald Trump.

The 50-year-old died on the scene from a gunshot wound to the head.

Comperatore was thrust into national news, the single fatality of a shooting that has left his community in Western Pennsylvania in grief, shock, and trauma.

“There’s just a lot of sadness,” Brandon Lenhart, senior pastor at North Main Street Church of God in Butler, told CT. “That somebody lost their life in the event, that that happened in the small town of Butler. It’s not a way we wanted to be put on the map, quite frankly.”

His church is on the other side of town from the Butler Farm Show, where Trump’s rally was held. It’s a conservative area—“you see pro-Trump signs everywhere,” Lenhart said—and ...

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Poll: Black Protestants are among the only groups who remain confident in the president’s mental capacities.

With mounting scrutiny over President Joe Biden’s fitness for the 2024 election, most evangelical Protestants believe that Biden should drop out of the race, though a sizable number of Black Protestants continue to back him.

A new poll from AP-NORC found that evangelicals agree with the rest of the country: 67 percent of evangelicals and 70 percent of Americans overall want Biden to withdraw.

Among both groups, fewer than one in five (18%) see him as capable of winning the election. Less than 2 percent of Republicans say Biden can win.

Concerns around Biden’s abilities accelerated after his performance in a debate with former president Donald Trump in June, and a growing list of Democratic politicians and supporters have come forward asking him to step aside.

In one interview, he said he’d only drop out if “the Lord Almighty” asked him to.

Black Protestants are more likely than the average American to want Biden to stay in; 45 percent say the president should continue running, but just 32 percent of evangelicals and 28 percent of Americans say the same.

Earlier this month, Biden, who is Catholic, talked about his faith while visiting a Black church in Philadelphia, where supporters came to his defense.

Just under half of Black Protestants say Biden can win in 2024.

Both evangelicals (74%) and Americans (70%) overall say they aren’t confident that the 81-year-old president has the mental capacity for office, far more than those who say the same about his opponent. Fewer than a third of Black Protestants say they doubt Biden’s mental capacity.

“The fact that our elderly leaders—one struggling to put sentences together, the other ranting with insanities and ...

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The Catholic convert brings a fighter persona and outsider’s view to politics.

Donald Trump’s first running mate, Mike Pence, appealed to conservative evangelical voters by offering what Trump lacked: political experience, a pro-life record, a steady demeanor, and outspoken Christian faith.

Two presidential elections later, Trump’s 2024 pick for vice president, J. D. Vance, appeals to conservatives by being like the former president: a fellow political newcomer, a populist, and a fighter unafraid of shaking up the system.

He’s “somebody who can carry on the core of what President Trump did in his first administration for a while to come,” said Aaron Baer, president of Center for Christian Virtue, based in Vance’s home state of Ohio.

Vance rose to national prominence through his 2016 bestseller Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis, which drew attention to the lives and faith of working-class rural Americans.

Since then, he’s converted from evangelicalism to Roman Catholicism and from a Never Trump conservative to a faithful “Make America Great Again” Republican, successfully running for US Senate with Trump’s endorsement in 2022.

Political commentators are already talking about how a victory for the Republican ticket in November would put Vance in a strong position to contend for the nomination come 2028—under a national conservative or America First style of politics that comes as a departure from the old guard conservatism that someone like Pence represented.

“He appeals to the kind of younger, religious, political evangelical,” said author Hannah Anderson, who has written about rural life and ministry and reviewed Vance’s book for CT. “There’s a lot of questions ...

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Christian organizations are struggling to reach prisoners in a country where 1 in 56 people is in jail.

In just over two years, El Salvador’s government has sent 80,000 people to prison. With over 111,000 people incarcerated, the country has the world’s highest proportion of people behind bars—one inmate for every 56 people.

The current situation stems from a zero-tolerance policy toward the gangs that once proliferated in the country. Salvadoran gangs are considered transnational crime organizations responsible for taking murder rates to levels only seen during the 1979–1992 civil war.

In March 2022, President Nayib Bukele decreed a régimen de excepción (state of exception), which suspends a significant number of civil rights and makes it easier to arrest and prosecute suspected gang members. Though the administration initially promised the decree would last for a month, it has since been renewed 27 times by the Salvadoran congress, lasting nearly two and a half years.

El Salvador has never had a significant prison ministry presence. But for those few that have worked in prisons, the régimen de excepción has both presented an opportunity and revealed a set of problems.

On one hand, leaders say, there’s a real chance for a substantial number of inmates to turn their lives around through the gospel. “Most of them know they need a physical transformation. Evangelism may show them they need a spiritual transformation too,” said Raúl Orellana, a regional ministry leader who has served in El Salvador’s prisons since 2008.

On the other hand, for a variety of reasons, few Christians have shown interest in prison ministry, work that has only become more difficult as the government has increased restrictions on civilian visits in prison.

All of El Salvador’s ...

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