Over the last few decades, church music has shifted. Congregations sing fewer hymns and more praise songs. We hear fewer organ chords and more guitar riffs. We read lyrics that are less theological and more generic.

The move toward quicker and more casual songwriting means new music hits our Spotify—and CCLI—lists more quickly. But it also means Christians are sometimes singing repetitive choruses, nonsensical lyrics, or wrong theology.

That matters, because we sing those songs so often that we memorize them. We hum them in the car. We play them while we’re making dinner. We lean on them when hard times hit.

About 10 years ago, a church in Australia noticed these problems. They tried a different songwriting process. It was slow and clunky and never should have worked—and yet it did.

Odds are, you’ve sung their good theology in your church, in your car, or in your kitchen.

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Registration fees. Weekend tournaments. Travel teams.

Youth sports in America has shifted over the last several decades. Instead of playing ball in the backyard with friends after school or on Saturday mornings, our kids climb into the minivan so we can drive them to practice, pay for uniforms and court fees, and pick up dinner from the concession stand.

Youth sports, it seems, is a merry-go-round of time and money that we can’t get off, because we know it would never slow down enough for us to get back on.

At TGC, youth sports is one of the top concerns we hear from pastors and youth leaders: they can’t preach to, disciple, or encourage people who miss Sunday after Sunday for basketball or soccer or baseball.

But we know sports is a good gift from God. He created our kids to run and jump and throw, and to delight in doing that with friends. Done well, those things honor him.

So how can we do them well?

Sarah Eekhoff Zylstra talked to parents, coaches, and pastors to find out.

• Help The Gospel Coalition build up a renewed church for tomorrow.
  Let's Build Together: Donate Today at tgc.org/together

Join Collin Hansen and Melissa Kruger for their annual recap discussion on the biggest stories affecting the church around the world in the last year. This conversation was originally featured on TGC's Gospelbound podcast.

Nearly all American teenage boys—97 percent of them—play video games. On average, they spend more than two hours a day maneuvering in digital worlds. 

For two out of five teen boys, that feels like too much time.

They’re probably right. Though  it’s impossible to draw a direct link, it’s hard not to notice that as gaming grows, males are falling farther behind girls in school, in joining the work force, and in starting families. 

As Reformed Christians, we aren’t ready to give up on video games yet. In this episode of Recorded, Sarah Eekhoff Zylstra examines why boys are more likely than girls to be addicted to video games, why playing with people online doesn’t mean you have more friends, and what it looks like to bring video games under the lordship of Jesus Christ.

Learn more about The Defender Way mentioned in this episode. 

When Sinclair Ferguson was growing up in Scotland in the 1950s, the culture was not only Christian but also Reformed. Ferguson memorized Bible passages at his public school, learned nighttime prayers from parents who weren’t believers, and attended church for years before converting to Christianity.

In the years since, Ferguson has written more than 50 books, spoken at virtually every Reformed conference, and taught at nearly all the Reformed seminaries.

Meanwhile, the Church of Scotland membership has plummeted from 1.3 million to less than 300,000—that’s a million people lost in a single lifetime. The denomination has cut pastoral positions and discontinued ministries. Many of her massive granite church buildings are now restaurants and apartments and bars with names like Soul.

Ferguson retired a few years ago. After the career he’s had, he could speak anywhere and write for any publisher. But you won’t find him based in an influential American city or church or ministry. Instead, he’s in a small city in Scotland, writing sermons and preaching the evening services at a church of only 200.

This is a story about why he’s doing that, about why it matters. This is a story about the gospel, about hope, and about coming home.

In 2009, about a quarter of American high school students said they had “persistent feelings of sadness or hopelessness.” By last year it was up to 44 percent, the highest level of teenage sadness ever recorded.

For girls, the rate rose to 57 percent. That means more than half of teenage girls feel persistently sad or hopeless. If you stood a teen from 2009 next to a teen from 2022, what would be the most noticeable difference between them? One of them would be on her phone.

In this episode of Recorded, Sarah Eekhoff Zylstra shares the stories of young women who are being shaped by social media and explores what Gen Z thinks, feels, and believes.

When Joe Biden announced last April that all American troops would be leaving Afghanistan, those familiar with the country knew it would eventually fall to the Taliban. But nobody predicted it would collapse before the Americans had even left the country.

Caught off guard, Afghans began to run, especially those who feared for their lives—former government employees, American interpreters, and Christians.

The Christians were especially interesting, because while conversion was illegal even under the Afghan government, the number of believers had been steadily growing, from an estimated 2,000 in 2013 to about 10,000 in 2021.

How were so many hearing about Jesus? With everybody keeping their faith a secret, how were they connecting with each other? And how on earth were they going to get out?

This is their story.

“It’s time for American troops to come home. We’ll do it responsibly; deliberately and safely and responsibly,” announced President Biden last summer.

Instead, we watched panicked Afghans swarming the tarmac of the Kabul airport and hanging off the fuselages of departing jets. 

In August 2021, before American soldiers had even cleared the airport, Taliban troops overran the entire country. You know that story, but we want to tell you another one of what God was doing—and what he’s still doing—in Afghanistan.

“Escape from Kabul” is the latest episode from Recorded, The Gospel Coalition’s storytelling podcast. Tune in to hear the whole story on Friday, April 29.

Last month, Mark Dever and Ligon Duncan announced that the T4G conference planned for April 2022 in Louisville would be the last. The successful pastors' conference spanned 16 years, gathering Reformed pastors from a range of denominations. The last in-person conference, in 2018, drew more than 12,000. Attendees loved the preaching, the music, the books, and the fellowship. So it was a surprise to hear it was coming to an end.

Sarah Zylstra explains how T4G got started, why it was a risk, and what has changed since then.

In this episode:

• 2:42 How Ligon Duncan met Mark Dever
• 6:23 Meeting Al Mohler and C.J. Mahaney
• 9:55 The birth of T4G
• 12:04 Designing the conference
• 13:32 The first T4G
• 14:33 Growing T4G and becoming T3G
• 18:41 The growth of the Reformed resurgence
• 20:36 The splintering of unity in America and the Reformed fellowship
• 23:58 Memories
• 26:00 What T4G’s end means for the Reformed resurgence
• 26:46 T4G’s legacy
• 28:28 Looking ahead

Resources:

• T4G site
• T4G playlists
• The Reason for God by Tim Keller
• *Young, Restless, and* Reformed by Collin Hansen

On September 11, 2001, Christina and Brian Stanton were blown back into their apartment and knocked unconscious by the impact of the second plane hitting the south World Trade Center tower.

Four miles north, the staff of Redeemer Presbyterian Church climbed out a window onto a balcony. From there, they saw both towers collapse. Four hours south, the staff of Capitol Hill Baptist Church could feel the reverberations of the plane slamming into the Pentagon.

Half a country away, John Piper looked at the staff of his Bethlehem Baptist Church and told them, “This changes everything.”

In these stories of loss, trauma, redemption, and eternal hope, we see that God was, and is, and always will be at work—even in the darkest moments.

Resources and references from this episode: 

• "Truth, Tears, Anger, and Grace" (Tim Keller's sermon delivered to his congregation of Redeemer Presbyterian Church on September 16, 2001)
• "A Service of Sorrow, Self-Humbling, and Steady Hope in Our Savior and King, Jesus Christ" (John Piper's sermon response on September 16, 2001)
• "Terrorism, Justice, and Loving Our Enemies" (article by John Piper on September 12, 2001)
• "21 Ways to Comfort Those Who Are Suffering" (article by John Piper on September 12, 2001)
• "Boatlift, An Untold Tale of 9/11 Resilience" (video documentary on the boat rescue evacuation September 11, 2001)