Top Theology Stories of 2025

The following is an uncorrected transcript generated by a transcription service. Before quoting in print, please check the corresponding audio for accuracy.

0:00:00 – (Collin Hansen): I saw, I think it was a New Yorker column that said, I’m so glad to be done working with screens all day so that I can rest by sitting in front of screens all night. We are getting better and better and better at finding new ways to not need each other.

0:00:19 – (Collin Hansen): We always have to consider when using that technology, what is it we know, what it’s adding, what is it taking away at the same time?

0:00:40 – (Collin Hansen): Welcome to a special edition of Gospel Bound. I’m Colin Hanson, your host and I’m joined by my good friend and colleague Melissa Krueger. Surely you know her from the Deep dish podcast from TGC’s National Events, our women’s conference, our national conference which she runs and leads a team to be able to pull off. Now you are listening to something we always look forward to every year, our bonus season, end, year end episode, something we began doing in 2020, which is always auspicious. Anything that happened in 2020, you just want to keep repeating it over and over again. Well, there was a lot going on 2020 we had to dive into.

0:01:21 – (Melissa Kruger): There’s actually a lot not going on in 2020, which is why we started. Right.

0:01:24 – (Collin Hansen): That was the irony of 2020. There was too much and not enough all at the same time. Well, what we we take you behind the scenes, we look at the big stories and trends of this last year, 2025, and thank you for listening, watching and all the different ways that you encourage us in this work.

0:01:43 – (Melissa Kruger): Well, thanks for having me, Colin. This is always one of my favorite episodes because honestly, it’s like we get to record a little bit of our real life conversations, which is always me asking you what is going on in the evangelical world a lot of the time. And I thought this year I was really intrigued by how you started your top 10 list. You said this was a year of commas, not periods. What did you mean by that?

0:02:08 – (Collin Hansen): Well, doing this going back all the way to 2007, you start to see some bigger trends emerge and you also are able to size up different years. Mentioned 2020, that was one of the most consequential news years of modern memory. Last year had a lot of really major news. It’s presidential election year, in part this year.

0:02:34 – (Collin Hansen): There’s always going to be top 10 stories, there’s always going to be news, but it was not quite as newsworthy as other years. But what’s interesting at the same time, Melissa, is that the top stories, some of them might be more consequential than things that have happened in other years, but that’s the point. It’s a comma. And now what’s going to happen next? So many things I kept looking at thinking, well, this isn’t decided at all.

0:03:01 – (Collin Hansen): This is an event that happened, a debate that was convened. This is a, you know, this is positive or this is encouraging or this is a major transition. But we just are too early to be able to understand what the implications of that are. So that’s what I meant by it being the year of the comma and not the period.

0:03:21 – (Melissa Kruger): One thing I always enjoy is that you are really good about looking at the worldwide church. It’s not just theological stories that are happening in our own backyard. And one thing that you, one story you highlighted was the largest crackdown on urban church houses in China in 40 years. And honestly I was unaware of this. I was reading your story. What has been happening and why do you think this type of persecution is increasing in China right now?

0:03:50 – (Melissa Kruger): What’s going on to kind of fuel this persecution?

0:03:55 – (Collin Hansen): This story might, instead of being a comma, it might be an ellipses. It’s really a continuation of what’s been going on going all the way back to 2017, 2018. Back in those days, we heard a lot about the growth of the church in China, fastest growing or one of the fastest growing churches in the world. We heard about these really massive megachurches, including church building constructions. Well, a lot of the persecution coming. And you also used to hear a lot, Melissa, about how well politics and policies and persecution in China are very local.

0:04:32 – (Collin Hansen): That’s what you used to hear all the time. To a certain extent, of course, that’s still true, but to a lesser extent, and you’ve had a couple things happen. First, it predated Covid, it predated 2019 and 2020. There was already a major national level crackdown on church buildings and then also on some of the leading house church networks. So that with Early Rain, Covenant Church, Wang Yi a number of years ago, but Zion Church, it really stands out, Melissa, because of the audaciousness and the planning of this, because this is a crackdown that was executed at a number of different major cities around the world. So that’s part of around China. That’s one of the challenges. Or what are the changes that happened with the shutdown via Covid?

0:05:22 – (Collin Hansen): They have more churches that are going local, they’re networking, they’re meeting, of course online just like anybody else is. They’re having to work around some different restrictions there. So you see a church that the Holy Spirit is not squelched The Holy Spirit is not daunted by what happens with the premier and the Chinese Communist Party. And so the church is having to pivot, they’re having to adjust.

0:05:47 – (Collin Hansen): But what we’re seeing is after a pretty extended period of very encouraging openness, this is a continuation of the lack thereof. And we can clearly see, Melissa, this is part of a broader trend between a more confrontational China with the west or different entities, including Christianity, that they regard to be connected to the West.

0:06:12 – (Melissa Kruger): Yeah. And I was so glad you started with this, because it’s such a good reminder, I mean, even right now, if you’re listening, to take a moment to pray for our brothers and sisters across the world who are facing persecution. I think we take that for granted a lot of times. But just to meet in church is an act of defiance in a lot of ways for them. And so it’s a good reminder as we start off to just remember our brothers and sisters around the world.

0:06:39 – (Collin Hansen): And a political act. It’s always a political act as well.

0:06:42 – (Melissa Kruger): Yeah, that’s true. That’s true. Another thing that you mentioned was the death of two highly influential pastors, John MacArthur and Vodi Bacham, as well as Bible teacher Kay Arthur and Focus on the Family founder James Dobson. So these were kind of huge.

0:07:02 – (Melissa Kruger): Influencers before the word influencer was a word on Christian culture, evangelical culture. What commonalities do you see in their legacies and what do you foresee as their continuing influence on the church today? I mean, these men and women wrote numerous books. I mean, their works have been all around the world. I mean, they’ve had tremendous influence on evangelical culture. So do you see that continuing? What has their legacy been? I’d love to hear your thoughts on that.

0:07:37 – (Collin Hansen): I think one of the transition points here, and this actually points back to something in presidential politics. We still have never had a president in the United States of America.

0:07:50 – (Collin Hansen): Who became famous.

0:07:53 – (Collin Hansen): After the Internet. Barack Obama is about as close as you get to that, but that’s still early. Internet, when he becomes well known, 2004, then 2006 especially, and into 2008. When you think about people like Joe Biden, you think about Hillary Clinton, you think about Donald Trump. Of course, all these people are well known before the Internet. Well, part of what you’re seeing is the fragmentation of the culture because of the Internet.

0:08:22 – (Collin Hansen): Well, one thing about John MacArthur, Kay Arthur and James Dobson is that their influence was nearly ubiquitous.

0:08:32 – (Collin Hansen): I didn’t grow up in a super high information evangelical household, but still, those would have been people that I would have encountered on the radio or a Kay Arthur studies would have showed up.

0:08:46 – (Collin Hansen): In different settings. People in my family would have had James Dobson books about parenting, things like that. That era of.

0:08:58 – (Collin Hansen): That level of influence that comes primarily from publishing books connected to people listening to talk radio. That really has passed. So somebody can be tremendously influential now, but not reach a wide spectrum of evangelicalism. They can still sell a lot of books, they can still be really popular. They can still exert tremendous influence, but not in the same way. Now, Voddy Bakam was a little bit different because his primary, I mean, similar to Dobson, became well known because of his writing on parenting.

0:09:32 – (Collin Hansen): But dissimilarly, he was decades younger than these others when he died. His prominence was primarily tied to YouTube and so kind of a transitional figure there in Gen X from this older generation, primarily books and then Internet, then into the way YouTube would come to be dominant and still and is right now and presumably will be for quite a bit of time. Melissa, you’re the one who wrote the article for us about Kay Arthur. I would love to hear specifically about the influence that she had. And this is a list of top theology stories.

0:10:09 – (Collin Hansen): What difference did Kay Arthur make in terms of women especially, but churches and how they approach the Bible and how they put it together theologically?

0:10:18 – (Melissa Kruger): Yeah, I’m just putting together something from what you just said. You know, I’ve thought about this a lot when it comes to kind of like a common story we have culturally, even with our entertainment. You know, growing up, everyone on Thursday night watched the Cosby show and Family Ties and we all talked about it at school and you had to wait. I’ve thought about it a lot in terms of entertainment that my kids grew up with a completely different story than a lot of kids maybe at different schools would have grown up because we could, you know, really watch what they were seeing on tv and we could pick that in different ways that wasn’t available. I hadn’t thought about it in how it’s shaping modern evangelical thought.

0:11:03 – (Melissa Kruger): And you really can kind of like Netflix your picks and just listen to certain people. And I. Whereas what I even wrote about in the story about K. Arthur, I found K. Arthur. I went to sign of the Fish Bookstore in Raleigh, North Carolina. That’s what it was called. It wasn’t a big Lifeway store. It was just a little Christian bookstore back in the day. And her works were there. And I can say without a doubt, she’s the woman who taught me how to study, study the Bible, just line by line, precept by precept.

0:11:34 – (Melissa Kruger): And it made a huge impact on my life. I. I was learning as I was doing, and I didn’t even realize what I was learning. The basic hermeneutical principles that she’s teaching. As you go along, just doing your homework day by day changed my life. And what I wasn’t aware of, I knew it changed my life, but through that article, I realized, oh, wow, just what you were saying. Her influence was all over the world.

0:11:59 – (Melissa Kruger): So many women came up to me and said, in my real life and online life, yeah, no, she changed my life too. I never learned to study the Bible until I did a Kay Arthur study. And so I think what we see is in some of these older authors.

0:12:16 – (Melissa Kruger): Their influence was deep and wide, you know, and it’s just really different now because now it’s kind of like popularity is the driving force course in publishing, which is a little different. It used to be you had to have substance to get published. And then. Yeah, so we’re seeing some changes in that. It’s kind of interesting to see where that’s going to go. That is definitely a comma.

0:12:41 – (Collin Hansen): It was different before as well. So there was a certain period when there was still more of a monoculture than total fragmentation. You still had more of a mass culture, but you also had mass literacy. You also had mass groups of people that were listening to the same radio stations and things like that. So before that, you still would have had. You would not have had those dynamics as well. So this is an example where it’s not like there’s just declension over time, but there are these ups and downs of, okay, now it’s easier for anybody to have access to an audience, but harder than it’s been since before that era of mass media to be able to reach the same audience for everyone.

0:13:29 – (Collin Hansen): And so you really think about that period from Billy Graham, who’s a good bit old, who was a good bit older than this group from Billy Graham, that television radio era all the way through to really about the Internet in 2000, again mentioning that that’s. We haven’t had any of those masses figures. And so now the only kind of mass culture we have is the NFL and presidential politics. And in the church.

0:13:58 – (Collin Hansen): Yeah, that has very significant theological implications. If instead of all of us learning from either the same local leader in our context is local or the same national leaders, because we’re reading the same books from the same bookstores and listening to the same radio stations, now it’s definitely choose your own adventure. So you know the same congregation, and especially in a non denominational era, people can have chosen very different paths. I just had a friend come up to me asking about a media group and he said, what do you think of this group?

0:14:33 – (Collin Hansen): And he had every reason to assume that I knew what he was talking about, given the work that we do professionally, and I did not.

0:14:42 – (Melissa Kruger): He stumped you, Colin?

0:14:43 – (Collin Hansen): Yeah, I said, it sounds great. I just can’t quite place Colin.

0:14:49 – (Melissa Kruger): That might be the first sign that you’re aging. You’re getting a little out of touch. I’m so excited about it, actually.

0:14:57 – (Collin Hansen): If it had been a 20 year old who was talking about a YouTube channel or TikTok, that would have been one thing I would have said. Of course, I don’t know what I’m talking about there, but yeah, I just. It was pretty embarrassing.

0:15:10 – (Melissa Kruger): Now you know how I feel like all of the time, Colin. Like that’s what most of us walk around feeling like every day when we go on Twitter. I’m like, what’s happening?

0:15:18 – (Collin Hansen): But it can show you that for better or worse, this member of my church, this wonderful, wonderful guy, is being very edified by this podcast. This YouTube channel has made a huge difference in his life. And I don’t know if anybody in our church of thousands of people also uses it. So, yeah, it is a best and worst. You can see the positives, you can see the negatives, but no doubt it’s a major theology story.

0:15:49 – (Melissa Kruger): Yeah, yeah. I was just this weekend really encouraged. A friend had sent me this podcast. It was some Australian podcasters. And now that you’re saying this, ijraz, I would have never listened to. I would have never known who these people were. I mean, without the medium that we have today of being able to listen to a Christian around the world who could actually encourage me as I’m wrapping Christmas gifts in my house, you know, this weekend. And so it’s. It’s amazing. And yet it’s also a call to root ourselves in God’s Word all the more. I just have to say this because.

0:16:24 – (Melissa Kruger): There’S a right correction that can happen by having many voices. But there’s also the reality that we can be led astray by many voices. I mean, there’s a lot of bad theology out there with a lot of good theology out there. And so it’s a good reminder to us all we have to first be in God’s word and really monitor what we’re listening to. Not that we can’t listen critically to people we disagree with. We should do that.

0:16:47 – (Melissa Kruger): But we have to just be aware that not everyone out there who claims to be upholding the truth is actually doing so.

0:16:54 – (Collin Hansen): And so it’s wheat and the Tares. It’s the Wheaton Wheat and Tares era media for sure.

0:17:00 – (Melissa Kruger): Yeah, yeah. Speaking of that, not only have there been changes in our evangelical leadership, there have been two massive changes between the Archbishop of Canterbury and a new Pope. So what are you seeing in these changes? Any thoughts on these two new leaders that we see emerging?

0:17:19 – (Collin Hansen): So maybe there, Melissa, and ellipses and then a comma. So the ellipses there. I don’t know how much has really changed in the Anglican Communion with this regard. There was definitely, and we wrote about this three or four different times at tgc, there was a definite assertiveness from especially African and majority world leadership within their different Anglican dioceses saying that’s it. I mean, we do with this new Archbishop of Canterbury, we do not recognize any primacy of Canterbury.

0:17:58 – (Collin Hansen): Now, that had already been the place that had really been the case because of the changes that had come with not disciplining gay bishops in different areas and still recognizing them, then blessing same sex unions, then moving toward that in the Church of England in recent years. And then the new Archbishop of Canterbury, she also supports those same sex unions. So there was some talk about how maybe this is because she’s a woman.

0:18:28 – (Collin Hansen): I don’t think that was really a decisive factor, though it is a noteworthy factor that you’ve not had a woman before in that position. Most people probably just know the Archbishop of Canterbury because of thinking of coronations and royal weddings. And that function, of course, is still significant and important, but not really when it comes to theological direction for the rest of the Anglican Communion.

0:18:51 – (Collin Hansen): This definitely fits Melissa within the list that I’m currently compiling in my head of the top 10 theology stories of the 21st century so far these last 25 years. Because the shift of Christian leadership, continuing shift away from Europe and North America toward Africa is most clearly indicated in what’s happening with the Anglican Communion. And probably a lot of people watching and listening to us have picked up in the last couple decades that there are vastly more Anglicans worshiping in Africa alone, let alone, I mean, than compared to North America and England.

0:19:29 – (Collin Hansen): So in that sense it’s a continuation. But the assertiveness coming out of gafcon, that’s the majority world conservative leadership, coordinated leadership of the Anglican Union, which, which also includes North American conservatives, that was again more assertive this time. But really continuation, the comma comes with the New Pope, you get a new pope. Except for the last situation, which was not quite unprecedented, but not precedented very often of a resignation of a pope.

0:20:02 – (Collin Hansen): But in this case, we had the death of Pope Francis, who was a pope. Confusing figure, I think we can say. There’s endless debates there. The current Pope, the most significant fact is simply that he’s an American. But we don’t really know what that means at this point. We don’t know. Is it significant of a switch more toward an Augustinian away from a Jesuit? Well, historically, that’s been really significant, so that could play a role.

0:20:37 – (Collin Hansen): We haven’t seen major political fights. We haven’t seen major shifts. We haven’t seen major rollbacks or accelerations yet. He hasn’t been there for that long. And also the part of the new pope being American is a little bit confusing because let’s go back to the mass culture again. We don’t have a mass religious culture, especially when it comes to the Catholic Church. So of course we have to be able to translate the significance of the Pope into the terms that we understand, which is sports.

0:21:14 – (Collin Hansen): So all the talk is about, wait, he was at the World Series. We found him in the stands when the Chicago White Sox won the World Series. And people are giving him shout outs and jerseys and he’s responding. I don’t know that any of that is theologically important except to remind us that even popes are humans as well, with humans.

0:21:37 – (Melissa Kruger): Or maybe our biggest religion in this country might be sports, but I don’t know.

0:21:40 – (Collin Hansen): I think that’s safe to say. The fact that we probably used to have to translate sports into religion to be able to understand it. Things like the Hail Mary pass, maybe, perhaps we’re having to translate religion now into sports to be able to understand any of it, to be able to say nothing about what does it mean that he grew up in Chicago, what’s his agenda? But wait, Cubs are socks.

0:22:07 – (Collin Hansen): What side did he choose?

0:22:09 – (Melissa Kruger): These are the important theological things we need him to weigh in on, it sounds like.

0:22:13 – (Collin Hansen): Right, right. But being Catholic from the south side pretty clearly and then a legitimate Sox fan there. So we don’t know. This is. The change with a pope is almost always significant, especially coming off a longer tenure like Francis had. But yeah, we just, we don’t know. Remains to be seen. On the new first American Pope in history, again, consequential in and of itself. First female Archbishop of Canterbury, first American United States, you know, first from the United States Pope. That’s a pretty big deal.

0:22:47 – (Melissa Kruger): What’s Interesting with that shift in the Archbishop of Canterbury. On a positive note, the Bible Society found substantial increases in church attendance in England and Wales, particularly men between the ages of 18 and 24. And you know, you and I have talked about this in past years, that church attendance is actually one of the maybe biggest or most significant data points when it comes to faith impacting the life, particularly of mental health, it seems, you know, making changes in their life.

0:23:25 – (Melissa Kruger): So I find this number really encouraging that more 18 to 24 year old men are going to church. But this seems really surprising because the trajectory typically is once you slide down this kind of slope of liberal theology, lack of church, church attendance, it doesn’t seem like we go back. And so is this a comma, is this, you know, I don’t know, an exclamation point? I don’t know what are you seeing with this? Or what are your thoughts on this? And I’m encouraged from what I’m seeing in. I mean, we talked about this offline a lot in the college campus world, things going on even in our own country.

0:24:08 – (Melissa Kruger): But I found this really surprising coming from England and Wales.

0:24:11 – (Collin Hansen): Yeah, well, one of the things we’ve been looking at for years would be London specifically as the world’s first post secular city. So at the Keller center here at tgc, we talk often about post Christendom and of course, what follows Christendom but secularism, but then what follows secularism? So London is one of the most interesting examples because.

0:24:42 – (Collin Hansen): The church attendance in London bottomed out a long time ago. It bottomed out around 1980.

0:24:49 – (Collin Hansen): And what changed? It was primarily immigration and especially immigration from Africa connected back to the previous story, as you said. So London, for a whole bunch of different reasons is regarded as the first post secular city.

0:25:06 – (Collin Hansen): Yet still this information was very surprising. But we’re looking at it at this trend a number of different ways. We have this survey from the Bible Society. We have anecdotal evidence that’s coming from church leaders all over the country. And you don’t always have that.

0:25:24 – (Collin Hansen): It’s fairly difficult for church leaders to just manufacture or fake that. There’s a lot of interest, especially something like church attendance that’s not really common to be able to do now. It could still be anecdotal and overall things could still be done in different ways. But then we have this survey and you also have these high profile conversions that we’ve talked about in past years, which includes some really significant figures in the uk.

0:25:49 – (Collin Hansen): You also have a national mood shift in some ways that would be evidenced from things like Tom Holland’s podcast, the Rest is History, just named the number one podcast of the year by Apple. Well, I mean, Tom is one of the most significant figures in cultural apologetics and also is now one of the most significant figures in podcasting and probably the most popular history teacher alive today. All of that is really significant.

0:26:20 – (Collin Hansen): So there are some people who have pushed back and said, whether in the UK or more broadly in the United States. No, no, no. There’s no actual evidence of this when you look at the numbers. But I’m trying to just point out it’s not coming from nowhere. This is not just a few people who are trying to hype something mentioned. The Bible Society here. The reports all over the place have been Bible sales increasing, certainly in the United States, but also in the uk, at least if I’m remembering correctly there.

0:26:50 – (Collin Hansen): So there’s something happening. But the comma strikes again. Because if we did this survey again, would it show? Oh, maybe we were just kind of hoping and it was an outlier. But if you continue to run the same survey with the right methodology and it reports something back and people are continuing to cite the same statistic and people saying the same anecdotes, then I think we are seeing more of a reversal. But simply to point out we really have been shifting away from secularism and especially in the London area for a while.

0:27:27 – (Collin Hansen): Even as the country remains very low observance overall of religion.

0:27:33 – (Melissa Kruger): Yeah, I was really struck as I was thinking about this and thinking about Louise Perry, who came out this year as a Christian. We’ve talked about her work before in the case against the sexual revolution. She wrote a great book. And she was not a Christian when she wrote that. She was just a secular sociologist, I guess, is what she was. She was just studying trends. And I was fascinated by her research because she came to the conclusion monogamy is definitely the best for women.

0:28:02 – (Melissa Kruger): And then really it’s the best for men too, because in some ways it makes men settle down, there are less wars, it’s better for culture in general, all these things. And what I was fascinated about is kind of how she talked about it. And she came around to, well, if all of these things that the Christian religion keeps saying are true, keep being shown to be true, maybe it is true. And one beauty of the secular experiment running its course is it’s false.

0:28:36 – (Melissa Kruger): And so at some point, you will get that going for us by their fruits. I mean, you know, and what’s true is what’s true. And so sometimes I keep thinking, you know, if you dig in to truth, it just gets truer and more beautiful. And when you study scripture, you start saying, wow, this is more true than I even knew it to be true the first time I read it. Like, going deeper actually helps you believe more.

0:29:01 – (Melissa Kruger): Whereas, you know, I think the, the reality about what’s false is it will show itself. And so I find that imminently hopeful. Across the generations, we’re always going to find ourselves in different points on that timeline and what people are believing and what people are buying. But the good news is true is true and it will show forth eventually.

0:29:26 – (Collin Hansen): How many times, Melissa, as a parent, have you had to simply allow your children to be able to explore the alternatives? I mean, you want to be able to tell them, don’t do that. And sometimes, especially when they’re younger, you can tell them not to do that and you can prevent them from doing that. The older they get, the harder that gets. You move into that advise and consent role as a parent. But sometimes it is exploring the alternatives that helps you to realize what the truth was and that truth might be.

0:30:01 – (Collin Hansen): My parents are not idiots and they love me. Well, that could be what we’re seeing. The experiment with secularism does not seem to, as you just pointed out, be bearing wonderful fruit for people. So the primary shift appears to be into what Tara Isabella Burton and others have written about as remixed religion. Kind of a conglomeration. I’ll grab from this and grab from that, and it often includes forms of Christianity.

0:30:32 – (Collin Hansen): But as you said, it is also leading toward actual Christianity, from which church attendance would be one of the, if not the strongest, indicators of that. So, yeah, part of what we’re seeing is the truth is experienced by exploring the other options.

0:30:48 – (Melissa Kruger): Yeah. Although, you know, you said that about your kids. And I’m realizing I let my son go to school in shorts on 32 degree days and I’m not sure he learned any lessons.

0:30:59 – (Melissa Kruger): I’m thinking he’s still doing that, but I’ll just keep trying.

0:31:02 – (Collin Hansen): Boys and shorts to school is a problem no one will ever be able to solve.

0:31:08 – (Melissa Kruger): Yeah, it’s like they have internal combustion engines within them keeping them warm somehow. And hormones. Think you’re maybe wrong about everything else in life, but we’ll continue. We’ll continue. Okay, light topic. Penal substitutionary atonement. Okay, what is it? Why is it a hot topic this year? And I mean, I called you about this, I was like, what are the other options, Colin? What are people talking about?

0:31:38 – (Melissa Kruger): That’s the only option Scripture puts Forth. So I was. But.

0:31:42 – (Collin Hansen): But.

0:31:42 – (Melissa Kruger): So tell us a little bit more about why this discussion is hot right now in our culture.

0:31:49 – (Collin Hansen): Let’s just. Let’s just talk about what penal substitutionary atonement is. You have a basic idea of substitution, and I think Christians widely agree on this across communions, across denominations. Christ died in our place. We deserve the death that he died for us, for our sins. Okay, so far, so good. Now you do get into a little bit more dispute when you talk about the penal element of it. And that is the.

0:32:20 – (Collin Hansen): Basically, the terminology here is propitiation. You see this in places like Romans 3. You see this in John, you see this in Hebrews, and then you especially see it going back to the atoning sacrifice in Leviticus. The idea there is that a penalty has to be paid. I mean, there’s a law. And what you see in Romans 3, 21, 26, is this amazing juxtaposition that somehow we have been set free, we’ve been justified, we have been that. Well, just go back to the atoning sacrifice. There are two animals.

0:32:58 – (Collin Hansen): One animal is sent away. That is the expiation. Our sin is cast out. But another animal is sacrificed, is killed. He pays the price. Okay, so that then seems pretty clearly the term in Greek is hilastarion. That seems to be pretty clear evidence from Leviticus through to Romans, in Hebrews, in John, that Jesus is our atoning sacrifice. He pays the penalty for our sin.

0:33:32 – (Collin Hansen): Now you get into all sorts of confusion about, okay, wait, who is he paying the penalty to? How do the Father and son relate? That’s where a lot of the disagreements will come in there. Well, where this came into view this year specifically was a very 21st century, 2025 kind of story. John Mark Comer is one of the most significant Christian writers today, one of the most popular, a lot of good things in spiritual formation and discipleship happening through his work, Gen Z especially, are really big John Mark Comer fans in general.

0:34:11 – (Collin Hansen): And I think you often see, generationally, when one generation older generation, which in this case would be Gen X and the millennials, have rediscovered a priority on good, robust biblical doctrine, the next generation seems to follow and say, yeah, but I want to feel it. Yeah, but I want to really experience it. Not that the previous generation didn’t, but sometimes there’s just more of an emphasis there.

0:34:37 – (Collin Hansen): And then I want to live it. I want it to really make a difference in my life, especially in this secular life with smartphones and everything we’ve been talking about in here. These high anxiety Levels and everything. So Comers really struck a nerve there. Well, he just happens on an Instagram story to say, I just read this book about Leviticus and it’s the final nail in the coffin of penal substitutionary atonement.

0:35:01 – (Collin Hansen): Well, it’s like somebody just hit the emergency button at the Gospel Coalition, like, okay, here we go. It’s game time. Because we do think this is a really important thing. I mean, I learned all this stuff from our president and co founder Don Carson drilled me over and over and over again on Romans 3, 21, 26. I had to do word studies on Hilastarion, let’s say, Leon Morris in Australia and all this sort of stuff.

0:35:31 – (Collin Hansen): Tim Keller. This is pretty much the climax of Tim Keller’s preaching was always the penalty that Christ paid his substitution. And this is very common in reform circles. So for somebody to say, all right, all the debates have been settled by this new book.

0:35:49 – (Collin Hansen): Well, of course you’re going to get a lot of responses and a lot of reviews at TGC and elsewhere about that book. I think it’s safe to say it did not put the final nail in the coffin of penal substitutionary atonement. But as you mentioned and asked about Melissa, it does raise the question of what are the alternatives? And the person who explained this most effectively to me was Ji Packer.

0:36:16 – (Collin Hansen): Dr. Packer and I used to work together at Christianity Today. We’d have a lot of meetings and talks together over meals and things like that, not to mention just reading his books. And I remember even the exact restaurant, the exact booth where I talked to him as a young editor about this question. And he said, you know, of course the other functions or purposes or models we might say about the atonement are also valid.

0:36:42 – (Collin Hansen): That Christ, I mean, or just of the what did Christ accomplish for us? Well, he set an example for us. Okay. That goes back to Peter Labillard and others. There’s biblical examples of this. And this is where John Mark Comer focuses on what Christ, how he sets an example that we are intended to follow. Then you can look at things like Christus, Victor Gustav Allen and others. He triumphed over the principalities and powers, the evil spirits.

0:37:07 – (Collin Hansen): Also important. That’s in the Bible too. But people often want to pit them against penal substitution as alternatives or as alternatives that are better or more important or just making penal substitution invalid. But the way Packer talked about it was, this is really the pinnacle. Every other function of the atonement makes sense when you have the penal substitutionary element locked in place. What did Christ accomplish on the cross? What did he do?

0:37:39 – (Collin Hansen): What happened? What difference? Why did he have to die? That’s a question that is especially not answered very well by the exemplary theory of the atonement. Well, now the example could be, well, he just sacrifices himself by.

0:37:54 – (Collin Hansen): Not taking up arms and things like that. That’s why pacifists are often drawn to that approach. But once you have that in place, and it’s just theologically, it connects the covenants, connects Old and New Testament, connects the different writers of scripture together. It answers all these questions, why did he have to die? Why did he die in this place? What was happening in the temple? Why did the temple curtain be torn into? I mean, why is he the Lamb of God who was slain?

0:38:24 – (Collin Hansen): Why is he introduced by his cousin John as the Lamb of God? I mean, all these questions only make sense or can only be answered through penal substitution. That’s why it’s a big deal.

0:38:35 – (Collin Hansen): But it’s not to dismiss any other dimensions to it. But yes, I think, Melissa, we could probably rotate over the years between biblical inerrancy, justification by faith alone, penal substitutionary atonement. We’ll be doing this years in the future and we’ll be probably having the same conversations because they tend to come back around and this was the year with atonement.

0:38:59 – (Melissa Kruger): Yeah. And maybe, I mean, because I do think what you’re seeing is true. What I see in some college students right now is a high value of priority practice of faith. But you’re right, they’re not having the same doctrinal conversations I was having in college. Like I remember late night conversations on the sovereignty of God. Are we all robots? And, you know, all these things that I’m not sure they’re having quite as much, but they are talking a lot about the practice of faith and that we, you know, we think both, like what Paul said to Timothy, watch your life and doctrine closely.

0:39:35 – (Melissa Kruger): Both are close and we’re always correcting. So in some ways, these debates coming up, I think can be really good things to make people think. Because in my head, what keeps coming to mind is without the shedding of blood, there’s no forgiveness of sins. Like, so how do you answer that question? And so hopefully it will drive young people back to the Bible and make them say, hold on, what is this about? And that’s the goal of these conversations. Right? To get us.

0:40:04 – (Collin Hansen): Yeah.

0:40:05 – (Melissa Kruger): Back into God’s word.

0:40:07 – (Collin Hansen): Well, let me ask you a question about the challenges of reading the Bible. Primarily for what should I do about this? What do you do with Leviticus?

0:40:17 – (Melissa Kruger): Yeah, that makes sense.

0:40:18 – (Collin Hansen): You’ve got to read it covenantally. You need to understand what has been accomplished and how the covenants fit together, how they develop over time, and then ultimately how they lead to and point toward the finished work of Christ. Not what we do in imitation of him, or in thankfulness or in obedience to him, but what he has done for us that we could never do for ourselves.

0:40:41 – (Melissa Kruger): And it’s a declaration at some point, because I was reading Leviticus one time in my Bible in the year, and I was preparing for a talk in John, and so I’m in Leviticus, and man, everything makes you unclean, and I’m feeling exhausted by it. You’re unclean, you’re unclean. I’m like, I got it already. And then I’m reading John and Jesus says the words, you’re already clean because of the word I’ve spoken to you.

0:41:04 – (Melissa Kruger): It’s this declaration to his disciples. And you’re sitting there thinking, oh, wow, now this takes on a whole new light bulb moment. Because I’ve been rooted in Leviticus and I’ve been sitting here hearing how many ways I can be unclean. And now Jesus can declare you clean. Yet how’s he gonna be able to do that? Oh, because he’s gonna pay the penalty and be able to make us clean. You know, all the things that are later gonna be shown in the Gospel.

0:41:30 – (Collin Hansen): Power for us to obey.

0:41:31 – (Melissa Kruger): Exactly.

0:41:32 – (Collin Hansen): United with Christ, sealed by the Spirit in grateful obedience for what he’s done for us. That’s how you obey him.

0:41:39 – (Melissa Kruger): Yeah. And it’s the root of humility. Right. I mean, if all the exemplar is like, well, I could say to you, Colin, I’m a better example of following Jesus than you. Right. Whereas with this, it’s no, it’s just a gift. And so you really do get into the most humbling aspect of this is you can’t do it for yourself. It’s a gift of faith, not by work. So no one can boast. And so that’s why it’s good news. But anyway.

0:42:07 – (Melissa Kruger): These discussions have real impact in our lives as we live them. Okay. Another thing that is sneaking into our lives on a daily basis is this thing called AI, which, you know, has some really good points. I told you. You know, my mom was sick recently and we were in the hospital a lot, and my brother was putting all of the doctor’s notes daily through ChatGPT saying, what questions should we ask? So there we acknowledge there are good things about AI, tell us a little bit about the influence on how it’s, how it’s affecting the church spirituality. Why is this a theological story and not just a news story?

0:42:51 – (Collin Hansen): This is one Melissa, that when we look back on this probably will be the most significant thing that happened this year and might be one of the most significant things that happened at all in the last 25 years or even longer ago. It does seem like this was the year when generative AI really came to the forefront in popular usage.

0:43:16 – (Collin Hansen): It also became more difficult to avoid if you were trying to avoid it. Well, good luck with that on Google now. This is how, I mean most people are accessing information through that search platform and it’s transforming the way people are therefore accessing theological information, including places like the Gospel Coalitions website. So one way that it’s simply theologically significant is in things like, well, can we trust, can we rely on AI to give us good biblical, orthodox, historical answers to theological questions?

0:43:51 – (Collin Hansen): That’s why Mike Graham for TGC and the Keller center this year did the AI Christian benchmark and we found.

0:43:59 – (Collin Hansen): Not so good. Now people are learning, prompting with AI that the more information you give AI, the better answers it gives you back. So you could say, I subscribe to the Gospel Coalition’s foundation documents. Tell me what is the significance of penal substitutionary atonement. You’ll actually get a pretty good answer from that. But if you said something like just imagine a 16 year old out there who hasn’t grown up in the church and you say something like why did Jesus have to die?

0:44:33 – (Collin Hansen): Well, not very reliable answers. But in part what we’re seeing is alignment from especially American based AI to be able to say, hey, that’s not something we get into. And keep in mind AI does this on lots of different things. Human programmers, ethicists need to be able to say, okay, if I type in how to build a bomb to destroy my local school, AI is not supposed to give you an answer to be able to do that, okay, that’s alignment.

0:45:06 – (Collin Hansen): We don’t want it to do that. We don’t want it to give you advice on the best way to commit suicide. These are real things that have happened. We don’t want that. That’s alignment. Well, that alignment then comes to questions of how do we answer these questions? Because of course different denominations might disagree, certain different religions might disagree about these things. So how do you align it? Well, what a lot of the different groups, especially in the United States, places like Meta, that’s Facebook and X, which includes formerly Twitter, Their grok system, they’ll just sort of plead the fifth.

0:45:44 – (Collin Hansen): They’ll just sort of say, ah, you know, that’s not really my terrain in there. What the theological consequences there are related to epistemology. In the Enlightenment, we’ve had this problem all along of the fact value distinction that religion belongs to values. There are things that you feel, but not facts, things that are objectively true. That’s created this idea that religion is something that happens inside your heart, but it’s not something that has public consequences, not something in the realm of history.

0:46:17 – (Collin Hansen): Well, the major concern we have is what if AI pushes religion further into that category? It’s a value. Who can know these things really, because people disagree about them. That’s what we’re trying to avoid. The other question, though, Melissa, and I wonder where you see this playing out, is the theological question of anthropology. Why do we exist?

0:46:42 – (Collin Hansen): I saw somebody comment recently that the computers have gotten really good at programming the humans. We talk about this all the time. We’re the ones who are programming. But really, the more use we do of compute, the more use we see, the bigger role that computers play in our lives.

0:47:02 – (Collin Hansen): Are we making them more human or are they making us more like computers? Yeah, that’s a big question. What is distinctive about us as humans that we are not inferior operating systems?

0:47:20 – (Melissa Kruger): Well, and information, when I think about this, information used to always come through the conduit of relationship. You learned through a teacher, you learned from a pastor, you learned even a recipe from your mother. I mean, you were passing down things from generation to generation. And now.

0:47:43 – (Melissa Kruger): That’S being broken in a lot of ways because it’s a lot faster to go to ChatGPT or whatever you’re using. That’s probably archaic by now and probably old, way older people still use it.

0:47:54 – (Collin Hansen): OpenAI is still going.

0:47:56 – (Melissa Kruger): It is just interesting. You know, you used to have to call a friend who was a doctor and say, hey, what questions should I be asking? So look, I mean, there’s some efficiencies here that are helpful in the moment, but I do think we have to slow down and say, what’s being lost? We always look at what’s being gained. And it is really different to learn your theology from someone who you can watch their life rather than just somebody you’re typing something into.

0:48:25 – (Melissa Kruger): Even. Even, well.

0:48:28 – (Melissa Kruger): Nuanced. You know, if you said, oh, I’d like the reform perspective on this topic, you’re going to get a pretty good answer. But maybe it would be better over coffee with an older gentleman in Your church, who’s walked a lot of life and might be able to push into things you don’t even know you need pushing in on. Because we believe the Spirit’s alive and working in these conversations and where two or more gathered, that the Spirit’s with them, you know, and so I think there are things being lost maybe in our EAs to get information, because I think we societally maybe sometimes think too much. What we need is knowledge, whereas we’ve lost the pursuit of wisdom, perhaps.

0:49:07 – (Melissa Kruger): I don’t know. Yeah, I mean, it’s a question. AI can give knowledge, but I’m not sure it can give wisdom.

0:49:13 – (Collin Hansen): Yeah. Or at least wisdom is embodied certainly in Christ himself, but also in his body and then through the Spirit. It’s not that the Spirit can’t work through AI to give you some of that direction, but we understand what categories we ought to be searching for that wisdom. I saw, I think it was a New Yorker column that said, I’m so glad to be done working with screens all day so that I can rest by sitting in front of screens all night.

0:49:50 – (Melissa Kruger): So true.

0:49:51 – (Collin Hansen): Yeah, it’s very true. We are getting better and better and better at finding new ways to not need each other.

0:50:02 – (Collin Hansen): And to a certain extent, that is just the way technology functions. It’s the way the world has functioned. We’re always looking for efficiencies that goes all the way back to the wheel. I mean, there are lots of examples here. And so it would be foolish to say that we shouldn’t continue to look for those things. But you really hit the wisdom or you brought the wisdom there, Melissa, to say we always have to consider when using that technology, what is it we know, what it’s adding, what is it taking away at the same time?

0:50:40 – (Collin Hansen): And if you’re in a situation thinking, I could call my mother to be able to ask for her help on this, or I could just punch it into ChatGPT.

0:50:54 – (Collin Hansen): I mean, we’ll just make a very practical example. My dad is probably the handiest person you will ever meet, and I am his son. Somehow.

0:51:14 – (Collin Hansen): I can. He is very helpful in talking me through things. He’s also very helpful when he shows up and he does them himself or guides me through them. And that’s a primary way that I have a relationship with him and that I appreciate him and that I experience him as a father who. The things that I’m good at, he’s not that good at, and vice versa. So we have that relationship, however, between YouTube and ChatGPT.

0:51:48 – (Collin Hansen): I mean, probably have A lot more efficient ways of finding these things out myself. So you kind of got to go out of your way to do that. But that goes back to the anthropology question. Are we designed to not need other people? Yeah, I mean, that seems to be an illusion because at some point we all do whether we want to or not. So that actually seems to be leading us in some ways potentially away from truth and wisdom to say, yeah, my life is about creating efficiencies so I can.

0:52:25 – (Collin Hansen): And then the question becomes, so I can what?

0:52:31 – (Collin Hansen): So I can spend more time watching screens. Hey, Melissa, what if we increase the efficiency of AI just making all the stuff that we put on our screens too? So it’s perfect. AI will do our work so we’ll have more time so we can watch AI movies and listen to AI music.

0:52:49 – (Melissa Kruger): Exactly.

0:52:50 – (Collin Hansen): Some point this doesn’t make sense, right?

0:52:53 – (Melissa Kruger): Yeah.

0:52:53 – (Collin Hansen): What’s the point of living? Why are we here? That’s why they answer apology questions.

0:52:58 – (Melissa Kruger): Well, and this is where at times, I mean, this is where if technology is neutral, if we’ll give it that it can be used for great ill in entertaining us so that we never have to think about the big questions of life. Or it can be used, you know, to help me. Like today as I was driving, I was listening. Jackie Hill Perry was reading to me first Timothy from the Crossway app, you know, so there are some really good uses of these technologies. I think the reality is, and here’s what I always want to say, because true is true, which is what we said before the good news of what the Bible tells us to do.

0:53:33 – (Melissa Kruger): If we just continually walk in its statutes, it means we’re in church. Because the Bible tells us, don’t give up the habit of meeting with one another. So what I always say is we can’t know what the new thing will be like AI or whatever technology, but always know what the answer is. The answer is to walk in the wisdom that’s been given. Because revealed wisdom, it’s not from a person, it’s through the spirit. It’s God breathed wisdom given to us.

0:54:01 – (Melissa Kruger): And I can say, yeah, walked with the Lord. Now, oh, goodness, I don’t know how many years what’s true has been proven true, you know, And I more believe it today that I can like all these things that come at us that maybe seem like threats. I do think the Bible walking in that way is always the protectant to the emergent threat that’s coming. And we can hold fast to that and be hopeful in that. And I say that a lot about parenting, but I think it’s true about all things in life because we get back to what’s true is true.

0:54:39 – (Melissa Kruger): Well, we are, as always, taking much too long, so I’m sorry about that, but we can’t not talk about. One of your biggest theological story of this year was just Charlie Kirk. I remember we were on a pub committee call when you mentioned the first that he had been shot. He was still alive at that point, I guess. But afterwards we all heard the shocking news that he had been.

0:55:04 – (Melissa Kruger): Killed tragically. And we saw Erica Kirk at the funeral. Forgive the man who killed her husband in such a display of faith and grace in a lot of ways. And there have been so many discussions. I can’t quite follow everything that’s happening with what’s going on as this takes shape. It’s definitely a comma in your, in your world. But what are some of the theological discussions and debates that have been sparked by his death?

0:55:42 – (Melissa Kruger): You know, what have you seen happening? And you’ve been part of some of those, for sure.

0:55:47 – (Collin Hansen): Yeah. I think the biggest conversation that really surprised me because.

0:55:55 – (Collin Hansen): It wasn’t prompted in any obvious way was this question of now is the third way dead? So I assume at this point everybody knows who Charlie Kirk was and they didn’t. Not everybody did know that at the time.

0:56:14 – (Melissa Kruger): No, I didn’t. I mean, this is where I felt, like, old and out of touch. I was like, I was googling as you were saying this on our call. I was like, I don’t know who this person is.

0:56:25 – (Collin Hansen): I think the basic argument has been that some evangelical leaders told us that we shouldn’t engage in partisan political activism, especially from the pulpit, because that might drive people away from the church. And the response was, well, look at Charlie Kirk. He was out there doing apologetics, he was out there doing evangelism, and he was also out there campaigning very overtly and directly in massive ways for President Trump and for his Republican Party.

0:57:05 – (Collin Hansen): And he seems to be very popular among young people. And in fact, a lot of young people, especially young men who might not otherwise be in the church, seem to be showing an interest in church as a result of that. So that was the overall question, and that was the response that seemed to come in that wake. But it did seem to also misunderstand a lot of different dynamics about the nature of calling, how a pastor’s calling could be different from Charlie Kirk’s calling.

0:57:39 – (Collin Hansen): I think one of the challenges we have is that a lot of pastors would prefer to be political pundits. Than to be pastors, because it does seem like there’s a lot more action when it comes to politics there. So that was one of the overall debates and that was one that I engaged in because it seemed that for whatever reason, the person who was often invoked was Tim Keller as the foil to Charlie Kirk. And my simple thought was, well, Tim has been dead for a couple years now as a different generation, different.

0:58:16 – (Collin Hansen): I mean, as a pastor, it’s a different calling. Also different circumstances at the time. So I don’t really think that these are fruitful comparisons. But it did then bring a lot of good theological discussion about, can we just say what is true as far as we understand it, do we always have to be so concerned about how people are going to receive that truth? Do we always have to nuance it in such a way that would seem to be designed to favor one group’s anticipated rejection of that truth?

0:58:53 – (Collin Hansen): Okay, these are perfectly legitimate theological conversations to be able to, to have. And you might be able to look at an issue like, say, one that’s been really prominent in previous years, especially last years, you might look at like trans ideology or something like that, and say, I mean, I don’t think J.K. rowling, I don’t think she really coddled people in the way she aggressively denounced these things.

0:59:19 – (Collin Hansen): She wasn’t overly worried about how people were going to perceive her. She didn’t seem to be looking to carve a. Well, actually, I think to correct myself, she did in some ways carve a third way, which was non trans, pro feminist at the same time, which, you know, because clearly she’s not coming from these issues as some sort of right wing conservative per se and not coming from explicitly Christian perspective either.

0:59:46 – (Collin Hansen): So that would be an example of a third way. And others, especially Glenn Scrivener, who’s one of our fellows at the Keller center, have done a great job of showing how virtually everybody just, they almost always have people that they disagree with on multiple sides.

1:00:05 – (Collin Hansen): Setting yourself up to have no enemies to your left or your right is a really, really devious way or kind of a guaranteed way for you to go to places that you don’t want to go or that you shouldn’t go. So the other theological question that came out of this was, how are we going to look back on Charlie Kirk? Because there was a good bit of feedback from people who saw certain clips, who had certain experiences and thought, no, I don’t like this guy at all.

1:00:40 – (Collin Hansen): He seems to be insensitive. At least he seems to be offensive at Worst, especially perhaps to some minority groups. Plenty of people had that reaction as well. When somebody’s been in the spotlight that much in their twenties, it’s not surprise. All sorts of different things that they’re going to say. You could also come back and say, also, those people sometimes change. I don’t know. I’m not going to adjudicate that whole record there. But when we look back on it, will we say, yeah, Kirk was an example of the real problems that we have on the right that people need to push back against.

1:01:13 – (Collin Hansen): Or will we say, wow, I didn’t know how much Charlie Kirk was holding back on the right that he was pushing back against. And of course, Melissa, that would be a third way, again, of saying, no, I don’t agree with Candace Owens or Tucker Carlson or Nick Fuentes or any number of these voices out there. Fuentes was the one primarily that he argued with a lot, especially on racial issues, and who came out very emphatically afterward saying, I’m going to hijack your entire organization.

1:01:48 – (Collin Hansen): Your crowd follows me. Forget it, you’re done and gone. So that’s why it’s a comma. Because I certainly cannot dictate right now or analyze right now how that’s going to be remembered. That’s still a story in progress.

1:02:05 – (Melissa Kruger): Yeah. And I think maybe a good lesson that we can all take is it’s. It’s always good to be bold with the gospel. I mean, like, we can. We can all take that on. And Paul asks to pray for boldness with the gospel. So, you know, some of us may need a little, like, you know, hey, be bold. This is what the line I keep saying in this. In this podcast is, what’s true is true. You can be bold with the truth.

1:02:32 – (Melissa Kruger): And then yet at the same time, Main Cure remain curious about other people’s views. Not in a way that we have to believe what they’re saying is true, but just to seek to understand the person behind the thought we maybe disagree with. Because what I always say, if what we believe is that the Spirit is the only thing that can open our eyes to understand the gospel, well, it makes sense that people don’t believe unless the Spirit opens their eyes. So we can sit and listen to someone’s maybe very mistaken view, but to seek so that we might have inroads with the gospel.

1:03:11 – (Melissa Kruger): I did a Deep Dish episode with Becky Pippert on this, and she’s just a master at it. I mean, every time she gets on an airplane with someone, she’s just go, you know, and it’s amazing how the Lord can use her boldness but her listening ear to really allow the Spirit to do his work in the lives of people. And so I think it’s. It’s good for us to not be so complacent that we just kind of rest on our laurels.

1:03:40 – (Melissa Kruger): You know, I think it’s maybe been a good push in some of those directions. And also at the same time, though, to remember, you know, it’s not an argument to win a person, though, to try to share the gospel with. And that’s a tough balance to hold a lot of times in our evangelism.

1:03:59 – (Melissa Kruger): So we have discussed a lot in your top 10 theology. We’re an hour in. And you’ve interviewed 23 people this year on Gospel Bound. I’ll probably be your longest interview.

1:04:12 – (Melissa Kruger): Any ones that stood out to you this year? Any upcoming ones maybe that you’re really looking forward to?

1:04:17 – (Collin Hansen): Yeah, I got a few of those. Melissa.

1:04:21 – (Collin Hansen): I mean, I think people are probably sick of hearing me talk about my friend Alan Levi in his book A Theo of golden, but conversation with Alan was definitely a highlight. We had Alan at our 25 national conference this last year was exciting. The big news lately is that he debuted at number seven on the fiction New York Times bestseller list for that book. Now, that could be confusing to people because that book’s been out for a while. How can it just debut on the New York Times bestseller list? It’s because that book was independently published.

1:04:56 – (Collin Hansen): I know we’ve had phenomena like this in the past. Some of the biggest bestsellers last 25 years have actually been independent, but it is rare. And think about this, Melissa. And you’ve read the book.

1:05:12 – (Collin Hansen): There was no audiobook version of it until Simon and Schuster picked it up.

1:05:19 – (Melissa Kruger): I’d love to hear him reading it. I bet it’s excellent.

1:05:23 – (Collin Hansen): Yeah, Alan’s not the one reading it, but.

1:05:26 – (Collin Hansen): They’Ve got a bona fide Hollywood star reading it, as you’d expect from Simon Schuster. But Alan would be great reading it. That would have been. I think the story was that his friends encouraged him to do it, but he just said he didn’t have experience doing it. But especially he’s such a good folk teller, folk storyteller, singer, songwriter. It would have been perfect. But again, going with the big famous name makes a lot of sense, but, yeah.

1:05:56 – (Collin Hansen): And we should be expecting another novel in that golden universe from Alan in the future.

1:06:02 – (Melissa Kruger): Oh, good.

1:06:04 – (Collin Hansen): Yeah. So my family went down to visit Alan at the coffee shop that he talks about in the book. And just spend some time with him. He was wrestling with that decision and at the time. But I’m going to be, as we’re recording this, I’m going to be doing two events with him tomorrow. So that’s pretty. That’s pretty fun. And I didn’t know him at all through this until reading the book, so it’s been a fun process of getting to know him through that, through that excitement. So a couple of interviews that I did.

1:06:35 – (Collin Hansen): Ross Douth, that also hit the New York Times bestseller list for the first time ever with his apologetics book, Believe. Nicholas Carr’s book on the shallows was a really important one this year. Really going along with a lot of the things that we’ve discussed here related to AI and wisdom and discernment with technology.

1:06:56 – (Collin Hansen): That was a fun interview. And then Bobby Jamison’s Everything Is Never Enough, his book on Ecclesiastes, that really stood out to me. Bobby is both a dynamic writer and also dynamic interview and preacher. So that’s really fun as a combination of someone there. But coming up for next year, Carl Truman has a major new book coming out. Alister McGrath I’ll be talking to. And then also we’ll have Kathy Keller on the show. So those are a few that we’ve got scheduled there. So now bring us up to speed on Deep Dish. You guys just wrapped up your 26th episode.

1:07:37 – (Collin Hansen): The listeners have been great. It’s just been very enthusiastically received. Tell us a little bit about what you’re excited about. Looking back and looking ahead.

1:07:46 – (Melissa Kruger): Yeah, Courtney and I have had a lot of fun. It’s been great to get to have so many interesting interviews. I think one of our most popular was with Jen Wilken about aging and that being a discipleship issue, I mean, that’s. That’s a topic women definitely seem to want to talk about, you know, and is very.

1:08:11 – (Collin Hansen): Why is that, Melissa?

1:08:13 – (Melissa Kruger): It’s very in your face. Because I think. I think it’s the Instagram culture. I mean, look. I mean, I look back at pictures of myself in college. I’m like, we didn’t know how to stand. We didn’t. I mean, we had film cameras. You know, we weren’t. We weren’t living for a picture. And now people are looking at the picture.

1:08:32 – (Collin Hansen): Yeah.

1:08:33 – (Melissa Kruger): Yeah. I mean, it’s a totally different world. And so therefore, when you hear, oh, I’m getting an injection. Yeah. I mean, just changes how you view aging. And in some ways, it becomes the pursuit rather than aging well. And that it really is a discipleship issue. Because, to be honest, it takes a lot of time to look halfway decent that you get. And when you’re like. When I think about, like, my grandmother, for instance, she looked old the whole time I remember her, and she wasn’t that old.

1:09:06 – (Melissa Kruger): So what used to be appropriate aging seems very, very different now. So, anyway, those are some of the good discussions we’re having, and it’s really fun. We’ve talked about mentoring. We had Jackie Hill Perry on to talk about coveting, which was another thing I think.

1:09:23 – (Melissa Kruger): Has just only grown in the culture we’re in with Instagram, you know, it’s so easy to see. Yeah, I wrote Envy of Eve before Instagram was a thing.

1:09:34 – (Collin Hansen): Your friends are always on vacation. Always. Friends are always on vacation in great locations.

1:09:41 – (Melissa Kruger): Yeah, I know, I know. It’s pretty. Anyway, so those are just. Those are the things we’re talking about. It’s been really fun to be able to laugh a lot and yet at the same time be talking about deep, deep theological truths. And I think what we’re trying to do and hoping to do is spark conversations that then will happen around real tables in real local churches. We don’t want people just listening to us. We hope they’re having those conversations. In fact, we write questions for every episode, and we hear from women who are doing them in small groups, and they’re having those conversations.

1:10:18 – (Melissa Kruger): And that’s been one of the most fun things to see happen, because what we want is not more isolation, but more community in your real community. And so that’s what we’re hoping to do.

1:10:30 – (Collin Hansen): That’s really meaningful, Melissa, to be able to say, we don’t want you to have vicarious friendships through us, listening to us, but to translate this into your relationships there, that’s very thoughtful of you guys. My Editor’s Choice list, The best of 2025 at TGC has your episode with Jackie in it. And I just thought it’s a good sign for a podcast when one of your most popular episodes is about a sin.

1:11:04 – (Collin Hansen): I think that’s a general sign of spiritual health.

1:11:08 – (Melissa Kruger): I think that’s also my proclivity. I’m like, let’s talk about how bad we are, Colin. I’m just, you know, I’m like, tell.

1:11:17 – (Collin Hansen): Me you’re reformed without telling me. Reformed.

1:11:19 – (Melissa Kruger): Exactly. Let’s just talk about the darkness in your heart. And, yeah, that’s. I’m a lot of fun to be around. Yeah, it’s great.

1:11:28 – (Collin Hansen): That’s why these take so long.

1:11:30 – (Melissa Kruger): Yeah, exactly.

1:11:31 – (Collin Hansen): Exactly.

1:11:31 – (Melissa Kruger): Okay, well, books, this is. We have to we always. We already had a mid year book conversation.

1:11:36 – (Collin Hansen): We did. I only have one. What? I only have one. I mean, I could give a lot more.

1:11:43 – (Melissa Kruger): People, do we need to get you in counseling? What’s going on? Okay, you have one. Okay. What’s a book you want to talk about?

1:11:50 – (Collin Hansen): Well.

1:11:52 – (Collin Hansen): Sometimes you go through good and bad streaks of book reading. Sometimes you’re like, man, that was amazing. And then that was amazing. And then sometimes you just get a drag in yourself at the books on your nightstand. But I read this book just recently. It is, and this is special for you, Melissa. Blaise Pascal, the Man who Made the Modern World by Graham Tomlin, UK author, former bishop in the Church of England, UK publisher.

1:12:25 – (Collin Hansen): So that’s pretty rare. I mean, we know some good UK publishers and publish with them, but it’s not that common for me to read one from this publisher in particular. Just they don’t tend to market as well and distribute as well in the United States. But this was just exemplary of all sorts of different things, Melissa, because I’m not trained as a mathematics instructor like you are, I don’t think I could have told you what.

1:12:55 – (Collin Hansen): I mean, I could have told you Pascal was a big deal and I could have guessed at some of the reasons why, especially related to air pressure or something like that. So the book gave me a much better sense of, oh, this guy has a real claim to be the most significant.

1:13:13 – (Collin Hansen): Inventor and figure of the Enlightenment. Maybe he isn’t, but he definitely has a claim to be able to do that. And the list of inventions from things like barometric pressure tested with altitude, things like that. I mean, not to mention basically inventing the calculator and the computer and all sorts of crazy stuff like that. Probability theory. I mean, it really blew me away. But primarily the book is about his apologetics and especially about his extremely dynamic encounter, emotional, personal, mystical encounter with the Lord, his night of fire that completely transformed his life.

1:13:57 – (Collin Hansen): So imagine getting a book about this Augustinian flamed piety combined with all of the stuff of this is maybe the most significant inventor of the Enlightenment combined with also probably the second most accomplished cultural apologist of all time after Augustine, who was his inspiration. And it got to the point, Melissa, where I was so excited about it that I sat my whole family down and they learned.

1:14:38 – (Collin Hansen): Pascal’s Apologetic for the existence of God from his hiddenness in a very Augustinian kind of sense.

1:14:48 – (Melissa Kruger): But remind the audience of the ages of your children, Colin.

1:14:52 – (Collin Hansen): 10 and 7 and 4.

1:14:55 – (Melissa Kruger): Okay. Just wanted everyone to know they’re not like Mine.

1:15:01 – (Collin Hansen): Who knows what they remember? But I was pretty excited about it. But I don’t know, if you just. If you thought. Think about all the ways. I guess what I come back to so often is.

1:15:13 – (Collin Hansen): Jesus Christ. His family did not believe in him as the Son of God before the cross. I mean, we’re talking about his brothers and sisters here. He appears to thousands of people who do not believe in him. After the resurrection. I go back to the story of Lazarus and, you know, I mean, going to. I mean, being in hell and like, go warn my brothers. Even if they knew a man was raised from the dead, they would not believe.

1:15:43 – (Collin Hansen): And then you look at all the messianic secret of the Gospels, Jesus telling everybody, don’t tell anybody about me. You look back on the prophets and you see the. Which is then manifest, especially from Isaiah. But it’s manifest in the parables. I’m sharing these parables with you so that you will not believe. Not to make it easier to believe, but so you will not believe. You realize that belief is not directly connected to evidence.

1:16:12 – (Collin Hansen): And that is the central insight, kind of challenge of the Enlightenment, is that if God’s real, he’d leave proof. Well, first of all, what we’ve seen, and this is Ross Douthit’s book, what we’ve seen in all of our study of the cosmos is more evidence of God. The Big Bang theory, I mean, all this sort of stuff, we’re only seeing more evidence of it. And so you keep coming back saying, well, but it’s not enough.

1:16:38 – (Collin Hansen): And Pascal’s argument is, of course it’s not because you don’t want it to be enough, because belief is about your heart. It’s a moral issue, it’s not an evidence issue. And all of a sudden, all these things were just locking into place. Like, of course, you can see a man raised from the dead who is perfectly sinless. And you don’t believe in him because you don’t want to follow. You don’t want to believe.

1:17:06 – (Collin Hansen): Anyway, great book.

1:17:09 – (Melissa Kruger): What’s it called again?

1:17:10 – (Collin Hansen): Blaise Pascal. Man who Made the Modern World by Graham Tomlin. Excellent book.

1:17:16 – (Melissa Kruger): I have to read that one.

1:17:18 – (Collin Hansen): We also put him in context. I always heard about. What does it mean that he’s a Jansenist. Jansenists sound a lot like Calvinists, but they’re Catholics. Well, Tomlin does a really great job of explaining. Pascal was very adamant that he was not a Calvinist, yet at the same time, because he was so robustly Augustinian, there are a lot of commonalities There.

1:17:39 – (Melissa Kruger): So interesting.

1:17:40 – (Collin Hansen): Anyway, well, you give us some other examples in here for people who might not be excited about Blaise Pascal. Let’s give us some other alternatives. What stood out to you you’re reading this year, Melissa?

1:17:50 – (Melissa Kruger): Well, what I’m reading right now actually is a book I found and our family, we’re a little bit of a bookish family. So after we go to dinner together, we always head to Barnes and Noble and just spend 30 minutes perusing the titles together. And I stumbled across this book called I’m Looking for a Kind Person. And it was an advertisement that was put in British newspapers for after, after the Nazi regime moved into Austria and Vienna was overtaken.

1:18:23 – (Melissa Kruger): Some of these families put adverts in British papers basically trying to get their kids out of Nazi controlled Vienna. Which can you imagine putting an advertisement for someone to take your child? And that’s what these were. And there were six. And so the author of the book, his father was one of them, but there were six on the page he found in the newspaper. And so he traces all six. And so I’ve been reading it. It’s pretty, I mean, so it’s amazing where these kids ended up. Some did end up in the UK somewhere in Shanghai. I didn’t even know that part of the story.

1:19:01 – (Melissa Kruger): Some ended up in concentration camps and amazingly lived. And so it’s been, it’s, it’s just been an interesting way to look at six stories that were all in this advertisement in line together. And the reality of that, you know, is very sobering. Anyway, so it’s been, it’s, it’s well done. It’s really interesting where it goes. And it’s so linked to him because it was his dad. And so you’re hearing kind of through the eyes of a son who didn’t know this about his father. His father ended up committing suicide later in life and he never actually had the conversations with his dad, so he did all this work afterwards.

1:19:39 – (Collin Hansen): Wow.

1:19:40 – (Melissa Kruger): But I have to say I have been reading a lot of old books and C.S.

1:19:46 – (Collin Hansen): Lewis would be proud of.

1:19:48 – (Melissa Kruger): If I could give.

1:19:51 – (Melissa Kruger): An exhortation to writers in our age, it is to not just take the time to write what is true, but to make it beautiful when you write it. I have to say I’ve been reading this book. It’s called Future Tenses of the Blessed Life by FB Meyer. Someone gave it to an old, it’s an old copy of the book. Someone gave it to me and I just slowly read it. And it’s good for my soul. And I’m trying to figure out what some of these older writers do so well, because they, yes, they’re always speaking truth, but they’re doing it in such a way that’s an old truth and it feels fresh.

1:20:33 – (Melissa Kruger): And I don’t know that we’re mass producing everything these days. And there’s a lot of true stuff, but it doesn’t sing.

1:20:41 – (Melissa Kruger): And I’d love some more. More books that sing. If I could. If I could ask.

1:20:48 – (Collin Hansen): You’ve got the poet in you.

1:20:50 – (Melissa Kruger): Yeah, I like to feel something. People, I wanna, you know, be convinced, but with the beauty of something. And some writers, and I mean, the Puritans, I just think, yeah, they’re looking at nature all the time, and so they’re drawing from what is out there and making it so that you resonate with the truth of something differently. Like, I mean, every time I think about sin, I’m like, Satan, he, you know, he hides. He shows the bait and he hides the hook.

1:21:21 – (Melissa Kruger): I’m thinking it every time, I’m like. And it, it helps.

1:21:25 – (Collin Hansen): Yeah.

1:21:25 – (Melissa Kruger): You know, it helps you understand the odiousness of sin in a beautiful way. Like, he’s just trying to trap you. Like. And anyway, it resonates. And so rather than just be like, sin is bad, so stop. That’s how I feel like some of our modern day writing is real bad. Don’t do it.

1:21:45 – (Collin Hansen): It does help me as a modern writer who doesn’t always. Whose writing does not always sing, to realize it’s not that all books in the past were good, it’s that we’ve chucked the bad ones. And so there must be all sorts of libraries that were full of bad Puritan writings.

1:22:06 – (Melissa Kruger): You’re right. You’re right.

1:22:08 – (Collin Hansen): If you bring it down to like the 10 best got pretty good list there.

1:22:13 – (Melissa Kruger): That’s right.

1:22:14 – (Collin Hansen): I think that’s why so much in the digital life is curation. And that’s a lot of the work that you and I do, including in our podcasts, is try to tell people, hey, I know it’s hard. You’re busy. You don’t have time to read 50 books so that you can find one book. That’s why we do things like TGC Book Awards and do podcasts like this. To say, this book by Graham Tomlin was not the only book I read this year, but it was one that was most memorable to me.

1:22:42 – (Melissa Kruger): Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, that’s good.

1:22:45 – (Collin Hansen): Any other books that stand out from.

1:22:46 – (Melissa Kruger): What are you. What are you. I am excited about what you’re working on. What are you working on? And I’m very excited about what you’re working on. So tell everyone.

1:22:53 – (Collin Hansen): Yeah. Lord willing, in 2026, I’ll finish the first draft of a book tentatively titled Churchill and Lewis for the Salvation of the World.

1:23:07 – (Collin Hansen): For some reason that I’ve not been able to quite understand yet, Churchill and Lewis are two of the most popular and gifted and still read writers in the history of the English language. They were also writing at their peak at the same time through the same events. And those, of course, will be the events of the Second World War. And yet, for some reason, they’re never mentioned in the same conversations.

1:23:38 – (Collin Hansen): One person put it to me as we always think of C.S. lewis in black and white. He’s a historical figure. Whereas we always think of. When you think about Churchill as a historical figure, we think about CS Lewis as a figure of any era. In part, that’s because he’s a fantasy writer. In part, it’s because he’s so good as a writer.

1:24:00 – (Melissa Kruger): His works aren’t linked to history like Churchill’s. I mean, Churchill’s so linked to historical moments. Lewis, you wouldn’t. You know, Narnia, you’re not. We don’t attach to a moment.

1:24:13 – (Collin Hansen): We don’t. But of course it does start with a historical event.

1:24:17 – (Melissa Kruger): Yes, that’s right.

1:24:17 – (Collin Hansen): At least the Lion, Witch and the Wardrobe does. So I guess that is part of what I’m trying to contribute to is an understanding of the chronology of Lewis’s writings and their significance.

1:24:32 – (Collin Hansen): And I have written a little bit about this for TGC already. But if somebody told you that the first of his space trilogies came out on basically the same time as the Munich Agreement, 1938. And then the last one is 1945, the same month the atomic bomb is dropped, that would seem to be pretty significant information for somebody who’s writing about whether we should be invading foreign planets, for example, and whether science should be trusted to be able to tell us everything.

1:25:07 – (Collin Hansen): I mean, that’s the context of Space Trilogy. I’m not the first person to point.

1:25:10 – (Melissa Kruger): Out that I need a cohort on that Space trilogy. I just finished it this year and, like, I’m just putting it out there. Can we have a TGC cohort working through Lewis’s books?

1:25:20 – (Collin Hansen): Yeah, it’s a good idea, because I.

1:25:23 – (Melissa Kruger): Left that Space Trilogy. Like, what on earth is happening here? The Bear, just. You know what I mean?

1:25:31 – (Collin Hansen): There’s a lot of stuff. There’s a lot. Merlin and the Bear. I’m sorry, I don’t know what to do with either of those.

1:25:37 – (Melissa Kruger): It’s like Sienna showing up in Narnia. Lewis just does these things.

1:25:40 – (Collin Hansen): This is why Tolkien didn’t like it. So he didn’t like it at all. In terms of world building, I think we can say that Tolkien is pretty better than Louis in my take, at least. Hot takes. That’ll get me in trouble, maybe from some viewers and listeners. But I do think, Melissa, that third book, just as an example, if somebody tells you, yeah, it’s basically a storyfied version of the Abolition of Man and the Inner Ring, well, doesn’t that make a little bit more sense then?

1:26:09 – (Collin Hansen): Like, the entire thing, just go back and read the Abolition of Man, read the Inner Ring, smash them together with the conclusion to what he started with in 38, with the same main character, same three people, primarily. That makes a little bit of sense. And then there’s a bear, and then there’s Merlin.

1:26:29 – (Melissa Kruger): And Venus. Venus is in there, too. I mean, there’s a lot going on.

1:26:33 – (Collin Hansen): I mean, you’re talking about the second book in there. Yeah. I mean, it admittedly gets very confusing. I think people know in general that mere Christianity were talks during the Second World War. Okay, I think they know that, but do they understand all of the other things that he wrote during that war? The Great Divorce, the Abolition of man, the Inner Ring, I mean, on and on and on through there.

1:27:02 – (Collin Hansen): In fact, that clearly was the pinnacle of his apologetic work and the pinnacle of his literary output. Then you add on things there that are among the most moving things I’ve ever read. Learning in wartime. Learning in wartime is, of course, at the beginning of the war, which makes a lot more sense when you’ve understood where he was coming from in the First World War. It’s basically autobiographical.

1:27:26 – (Collin Hansen): But also he’s drawing from Tolstoy. Isn’t it interesting? Tolstoy is there. Tolstoy comes up later for him in the Inner Ring as well. Well, Tolstoy was one of the greatest, the greatest writers of all time about war and what it meant and what it did not mean. So that’s very formative for him. And then he comes back later on, living in the atomic age. Similar approach there. So the basic takeaway is intended to be when we think about our own sense of civilizational decline or even collapse.

1:28:01 – (Collin Hansen): Christianity, you know, we’re in a post Christendom era, but we’re in a post Enlightenment. You know, we’re not in Pascal’s Age in either sense anymore. We’re searching for what’s next. So we have historical Analogs. The thing about Churchill and Lewis is that they didn’t have any tangible, imminent reasons to think that their civilization, Western Christian civilization, would survive a conflict that was pretty much certainly in 1941, when they’re going gangbusters with all their writing and speeches and everything was really about a contest between communism and fascism.

1:28:40 – (Collin Hansen): So they didn’t have any sense. I mean, imagine Lewis’s writings if he had actually ended up like Bonhoeffer. You never get Narnia as an example, but Oxford was the city that Churchill planned to make his capital if he had taken England. Imagine England without Churchill. Of course, you can’t but imagine Churchill’s speeches if he loses. Well, they don’t sound so great anymore. But he didn’t know that they were going to be Churchill’s famous war speeches.

1:29:07 – (Collin Hansen): He didn’t know that. He just knew that.

1:29:12 – (Collin Hansen): The odds were not good.

1:29:14 – (Collin Hansen): And so I’m trying to derive a lot of lessons from these things. I find it interesting that Churchill was the most pessimistic about Hitler, but the most optimistic about Britain. He got a lot of things wrong, but he was dead right on those two things. And it’s amazing what that can cover for and everything else. So you don’t look back on these guys and think they’re right about everything. And they’re very different from each other in one clear sense.

1:29:40 – (Collin Hansen): Churchill’s focused on this world and Lewis is focused on the next world. And that’s an interesting path that we have to choose. And I don’t say that lightly, because without Churchill, does Lewis survive? Yeah, but what Churchill fought for, especially the British Empire, dissolved. And what Lewis fought for was, of course, an eternal kingdom. So a lot to work through there. I’ve got a few more months to be working on it.

1:30:05 – (Collin Hansen): Listen, I mean, you always have a lot of books yourself in the works. Of course, you’re overseeing our events. We’ve got a big one coming up this year, as we always do. Give us a little preview.

1:30:13 – (Melissa Kruger): Yeah, we’ve got TGCW 26. It’s our national women’s conference coming up, and it’s on psalms. And turning our eyes to the different genres of psalms, how they help us turn in faith to Christ and to God and, you know, with all of our emotions, whether it’s lament, whether it’s wisdom, there are psalms of wisdom, there are, you know, psalms of praise, there are psalms of joy. But then, you know, it’s helpful to see the range of emotions offered in the psalms. So we’re looking forward to that.

1:30:48 – (Melissa Kruger): The Thing I’m probably most excited about, Mike and I have worked together on a family devotional and I’m really excited about it because I think it’s pretty, I think it’s unique in that the devotionals are actually for the parent. And I worked on. Mike wrote those on Mark. So what we hear the most about why we don’t do family devotions, I think a lot of people don’t feel equipped to do them. And so we wanted to.

1:31:15 – (Melissa Kruger): Deuteronomy 6 says, you know, you love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul and strength. These words that I command you are to be on your heart. Then it’s teach them to your children. And so the goal with what we’ve done is to allow the parent to be learning through the Gospel of Mark so that they’re equipped well to ask good family devotional questions. And then I wrote all the questions for younger children, for older children because we were a family who had a six year spread.

1:31:42 – (Melissa Kruger): So I often had an elementary, middle school and high schooler at family devotions in the morning. How do you do this? And you know, I mean my heart is education and.

1:31:52 – (Melissa Kruger): Helping people learn and writing curriculum. So it’s, I’m really excited about it because I, I heard Mike teach through all these the Gospel of Mark over two years at an RTS Women’s Bible study. And man, I was not a big fan of Mark. I mean it’s the gospel, I love it. I’ve always been a fan of John.

1:32:11 – (Collin Hansen): But Marcus, there’s no fanfare, there’s no frills. You know, it’s just kind of straight.

1:32:16 – (Melissa Kruger): Up and now, man, I love it. Just after studying in depth, I was like, oh wow, this is a great place to start with your kids. This is a great. I’ve just, you know, the thought of, man, what can happen around the family dinner table. If I could just say to parents, don’t worry that your kid’s gonna play sports, worry that they know the Gospel of Mark, worry that they know the scriptures, know and, and it takes time.

1:32:43 – (Melissa Kruger): Yeah. Have the right concerns. And so I look back as all of my kids have launched and if I could say I would the things I would do again, it would be those morning time conversations about God’s word. Don’t you know, I don’t neglect it with your kids. That’s my, my, my big cheerleader advice as a big sister in the, in the church to say those are some of the most valuable conversations you’ll have as a family. And they form the basis for everything else. So as you can tell, I’m excited about it and hope it will just be a springboard to get more families talking about God’s word together.

1:33:21 – (Collin Hansen): Amen, Mark, is what our family reads through together. It’s a great one. Feeding of the 4,000.

1:33:28 – (Melissa Kruger): Yeah.

1:33:28 – (Collin Hansen): Just was one of our last ones in there. Well, I mean, tell us a little bit about. I mean, I think, Melissa.

1:33:39 – (Collin Hansen): If folks are still watching and they’re listening now.

1:33:43 – (Collin Hansen): I just want to say thank you and I also want to say you’re probably already donating to TGC in some way or another.

1:33:51 – (Melissa Kruger): You’ve hung on this long.

1:33:53 – (Collin Hansen): Exactly, exactly. If you’ve stuck with us through all these things, then you probably are also already a generous and grateful donor to tgc. So we want to say thank you for you if that’s the case. Or at least you’re somebody who. You’re excited to come to our women’s conference. You’re coming back to our national conference in 27. Or you’re signing up for those cohorts. Melissa’s already planned one right here. Melissa’s got great ideas, in case you guys didn’t know. So already got one about studying Lewis’s works. We actually do have a cohort that we’re planning on, the Cultural Apologists Through History, which will include Lewis, but not a. That’s necessarily on all that, but we should do one of that on the Lou. I mean, I think those reading cohorts are really good, but yeah, I think.

1:34:40 – (Collin Hansen): Well, let’s just maybe tell them a little bit about other ways they can support TGC and some of the other things maybe that we’re doing that they don’t know anything about.

1:34:49 – (Melissa Kruger): Yeah. Yeah. Well, I think, I mean, what we’re so grateful for, I mean, TGC really does run on the gifts of our donors. I mean, people probably don’t know that it’s a huge way we get to do the work we do. And as Colin will say all the time, our, our hope and desire is not that you come to TGC to, to find your community or your life, but our goal is to help the local church help the local church pastor in particular.

1:35:17 – (Melissa Kruger): You know that other leaders in the church flourish and just have encouragement on it on a daily basis. So that’s what we’re trying to do through the different things we do, whether it’s podcasts, all those things. Ways you can help. You can support the TGC with a one time gift. You can become a monthly donor. TGC.org backslash give you can go check out there, but you can also just support by leaving reviews on podcasts. Sharing our work, like, that’s a huge way, you know, pass on articles that are helping you to other people.

1:35:52 – (Melissa Kruger): It really supports the work that we’re doing. And we’re so appreciative. We really are it. We’re. We’re thankful that we get to do what we do. It’s a joy.

1:36:00 – (Collin Hansen): Yeah. If you care about what’s happening in Gen Z that they come to know Christ, then supporting TGC is a way to do that. One of our biggest major. We’ve been talking about this, but one of the biggest undertakings we’ve ever done at the Gospel Coalition, certainly at the Keller center, their upcoming Making Sense of Us group study curriculum. This is evangelism. This is discipleship. It’s aimed especially at Gen Z. Filmed with Keller center fellows around different locations in New York City, helping people to understand the stories that are shaping us, but also how those stories fall short compared to the story of all stories in the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

1:36:41 – (Collin Hansen): So that’s one way you care about Gen Z. Another way that your support at TGC directly benefits us is if you want to see the next generation discipled in good and bad ways to use AI, ethical ways that we should implement, or unethical ways that we should avoid. Not only that, but even shaping the very products themselves. The regulations, the efforts, the conversations that we’re having at the highest levels right now related to AI are both encouraging to know that we have a seat at the table, but also a little bit scary to know that there’s a lot that’s still up for grabs, but that’s when you’re contributing to tgc. That’s something that you help us to be able to do.

1:37:27 – (Collin Hansen): Melissa mentioned. I mean, it’s about half of the money that we bring in is coming from donations. So again, it’s what really makes all this stuff possible. If you want to support or continue to see, especially in the AI era, flourishing full Bible commentary available for anybody who reads and studies the Bible, whether they’re teaching in some country where they don’t have a lot of access to books, which is very common.

1:37:52 – (Collin Hansen): Access to Internet, but not books, especially through mobile devices. That’s one of the. I mean, free Bible commentary is one of the best places to be able to help people like that. Not to mention any student group that’s getting together and saying, hey, let’s study Romans together. Wonderful. The Gospel Coalition has a trusted free commentary available online to be able to use in your preparation for that, or you’re a small group, or you’re a Sunday school, you’re teaching, or anything like that. And then, Melissa, as you mentioned there, I mean, as a digital ministry, we’re always convictionally trying to point people back to those relationships and back to the church.

1:38:25 – (Collin Hansen): One of my favorite ways that we do that is through our church directory. Our church directory is the largest one that I’m aware of, but we’re overhauling it to make it even more helpful to people. We expect that to debut in 2026. But that’s one way you support. I just love it, Melissa, because it’s so practical. It’s just, hey, a friend of mine is moving to another town. Do you know of a good church that you can recommend?

1:38:51 – (Collin Hansen): Of course. And we also know based on some surveys and data that we’ve run and we’ve published that that’s the main reason people fall away from the church, is because they just move. They don’t find a new church. So if you want to help push back and evangelize and disciple, one of the best ways to do it is simply have a good functioning church directory that people know about. So that’s one thing that you’re.

1:39:12 – (Collin Hansen): Your finances support there as well. So, Melissa, before we go, do you have a favorite thing this year?

1:39:19 – (Melissa Kruger): Well, maybe the favorite thing should be we just end this episode because people are gonna.

1:39:23 – (Collin Hansen): That’s fair enough. That’s fair enough. That’s fair enough. I’ll stick with my Graham Tomlin recommendation on Pascal. That was clearly my favorite thing. That was fun. Well, anyway.

1:39:37 – (Collin Hansen): You gotta give me something. Something food preparation. Anything in here. Gift to recommend.

1:39:44 – (Melissa Kruger): Ugh, I don’t know.

1:39:47 – (Collin Hansen): How about. Okay, let’s be a shill about this. Your own. You have a Christmas book.

1:39:52 – (Melissa Kruger): Oh, thanks. No, I do love my. I do. And I can say this in honest truth. I give my kids a new Christmas book every year, so. It’s called the Gift of All Gifts. It talks about why we give gifts at Christmas because that is one of those things that Christmas can become all about the gifts. And I wanted a book that actually teaches kids why we do this. So that’s what it’s about. And it’s in rhyming. It’s fun to read.

1:40:17 – (Collin Hansen): This is very gifted. Very gifted at that. Thanks for sharing that gift, Melissa, with the rest of us. Well, thanks for persevering everybody out there. You’re watching on YouTube or wherever and listening to Gospel Bound and the Deep Dish. Your comments. When I run into people or you send an email or you come up to us at church or anything like that is really encouraging. It actually helps shape things because then we know, okay, that’s working or that’s not working. That’s helping people. That’s not helping people really appreciate that.

1:40:49 – (Collin Hansen): Must already mention you can help by rating, reviewing, recommending our podcast. If you go to tgc.org give that’s the best way you can be able to support one time gift, monthly gift, even $25 a month. It’s extremely helpful to us. So thank you for your generous support there.

1:41:08 – (Collin Hansen): We’ll just end and say Merry Christmas, Happy New Year. Lord willing, we’ll do this next year. We’re gonna hope it’s also not a super newsworthy year. Those are the better years.

1:41:20 – (Melissa Kruger): We still spend an hour and 40 minutes on a non news year. Like just prepare.

1:41:26 – (Collin Hansen): Prepare.

1:41:29 – (Collin Hansen): I am justly rebuked for that, Melissa. Thank you. All right, you guys are commuting, you’re washing dishes, you’re working out all the ways you join us. We don’t take it for granted. We really appreciate it. Merry Christmas. Happy New Year.

1:41:52 – (Collin Hansen): Thanks for listening to this episode of Gospel Bound. For more interviews and to sign up for my newsletter, head over to tgc.org gospelbound. Rate and review Gospelbound on your favorite podcast platform so others can join the conversation. Until next time, Remember, when we’re bound to the gospel, we abound in hope.