You’ve probably noticed that the views toward and practices of marriage have changed. But how? And how do Christian views and practices differ?That’s what Mark Regnerus set out to discover in a global study of Christians from across denominations. You’ll find the results in his new book, The Future of Christian Marriage, published by Oxford University Press. Mark is a professor of sociology at the University of Texas at Austin and author of many important books, including Cheap Sex and the Transformation of Men, Marriage, and Monogamy and Forbidden Fruit: Sex and Religion in the Lives of American Teenagers.You might not read a lot of sociology. But if you’re a church leader, you need to read this book. He put into words what I’ve observed but did not understand. He gave me context for the trends and a sense of urgency about the consequences.Mark found that marriage is no longer something Christians pursue in order to meet life goals. It’s something they aspire to do someday if life works out in the meantime. The result is far fewer marriages, of course. But this shift means a lot more, not only for Christian marriage, but for Christian ministry. Mark describes the intrusion of the market mentality into our homes, marriages, and bedrooms. He writes, “Our most intimate relationships are being treated as a means, often discarded, to attain those ends and acquisitions that have been most effectively marketed to us.”And what is the result for Christian marriage? Nothing good, Mark warns: “Young adults are offered no guidance about maturation, mortgages, or marriage—save for words of caution, counsel to delay, and cost-benefit evaluation.”Mark joins me on Gospelbound to discuss the “monumental, consequential, and subtle” shift in Christian marriage and way too many questions than I have time to ask. This episode of Gospelbound is brought to you by the Sing! Global Conference from modern hymn writers, Keith & Kristyn Getty. This four-day online event will bring together an array of more than 100 Christian leaders and artists from around the world like John Piper, Trip Lee, Joni Eareckson Tada, and David Platt, to examine how the songs of Scripture build deep believers in the 21st century. Register here by Tuesday, August 25, and save 20% with the code GOSPELBOUND.

“No one can help or hurt a child like a parent can.” Do you doubt this observation? Try finding a memoir that isn’t an extended meditation on the author’s parents. And if you’ve read the memoirs I have, you don’t want your children to grow up and write one.The story of growing up with two parents who loved you and loved the Lord doesn’t make for good drama. But it can help set you up for a lifetime of faithfully serving God and neighbors. Matt Chandler aims to help parents toward this goal in his new book, Family Discipleship: Leading Your Home Through Time, Moments, and Milestones, co-authored with Adam Griffin and published by Crossway.Chandler, lead pastor of teaching at the Village Church in Dallas, Texas, has three children with his wife, Lauren. I’m thankful they’ve extended this glimpse into their home to learn what family discipleship can look like. Because what better time than a global pandemic lockdown to turn our attention toward this call to family discipleship. If you don’t think you have time now to make this a priority, then it’s time for new priorities. Chandler and Griffin write this:“Your child is not only your progeny; he or she is your protégé. Everything you have learned from and about following Christ is to be passed on to your children to the best of your ability.”Matt Chandler joins me on Gospelbound to discuss moments and milestones, models and mishaps in family discipleship. This episode of Gospelbound is brought to you by the Sing! Global Conference from modern hymn writers, Keith & Kristyn Getty. This four-day online event will bring together an array of more than 100 Christian leaders and artists from around the world like John Piper, Trip Lee, Joni Eareckson Tada, and David Platt, to examine how the songs of Scripture build deep believers in the 21st century. Register here by Tuesday, August 25, and save 20% with the code GOSPELBOUND.

“Nothing we expected, yet everything we need.”That’s what Michael and Lauren McAfee suggest you’ll find when you read the Bible for yourself. That’s their charge to the millennial generation in their new book, Not What You Think: Why the Bible Might Be Nothing We Expected Yet Everything We Need, published by Zondervan.Michael and Lauren write this book to millennials, those born between 1980 and 1995. Believe it or not, this is the largest generation in American history: 78 million, or one in three adults today. Within five years this generation will account for 75 percent of the U.S. workforce. Michael and Lauren write to their millennial peers, which includes me, born in 1981.In Not What You Think, Michael and Lauren are honest about themselves and Bible. Which is appropriate, since unpolished honesty is what you get in the Bible. They write:“The Bible is a unique source of comfort because, compared with all the other books on the market today, the Bible is the most honest about the failures of humankind. . . . You will not find a more authentic ancient religious text than the Bible.”You may think Job is about finding a job, as Michael’s friend did. Well, you’re in for a rude awakening. But the story of might be just what God intends to carry you through crisis.The McAfees join me on Gospelbound to discuss happiness, authority, suffering, and the surprises we find when we read the Bible for ourselves.

I don’t know that any religious conversion is more unlikely than another. After all, we’re only born again because a perfect man who is God died on a cross and rose from the dead on the third day. That’s not a likely story. We’re all equally dead in our transgressions before Jesus saves us.But I know what Randy Newman means in his new book, Unlikely Converts: Improbable Stories of Faith and What They Teach Us About Evangelism [Read TGC's review], published by Kregel. We all know someone who’d really surprise us if he or she professed faith in Jesus Christ. And his book draws lessons for our evangelism from those stories.Newman is a senior teaching fellow with The C. S. Lewis Institute in Washington, D.C., author of the bestselling Questioning Evangelism, and veteran of more than 30 years in campus ministry. He writes that coming to Christ takes time, that people tend to come to faith communally, that they come to faith variously, and that nothing is too difficult for God. And he joins me on Gospelbound to discuss more observations from these unlikely converts as we seek to share Christ in a contentious age. This episode of Gospelbound is brought to you by Southeastern Seminary. In a changing ministry landscape, Southeastern’s four-year master of divinity and master of business administration program was built on a foundation of rigorous theological training and practical vocational training. Learn more at sebts.edu.

It’s going to get worse before it gets better. We’re facing opposition far more intense than anything Christians in the United States have experienced in the last century.That’s the message from Luke Goodrich in his new book, Free to Believe: The Battle Over Religious History in America, published by Multnomah. Goodrich, the leading religious-freedom attorney at the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, has fought and won in the Supreme Court. But he’s concerned that we’re not prepared for the changes that now confront us.He writes: “We’ve long lived in a country where religious freedom was secure, and we didn’t need to give it much thought. Now we’re realizing the country is changing and we might not enjoy the same degree of religious freedom forever. If we don’t start thinking about it now, we’ll be unprepared.”Goodrich joins me on Gospelbound to help us get ready. We discuss how we can suffer with joy, what we can learn from the Quakers, why some courts seem so incredulous about Christians acting as Christians, and more. This episode of Gospelbound is brought to you by Southeastern Seminary. In a changing ministry landscape, Southeastern’s four-year master of divinity and master of business administration program was built on a foundation of rigorous theological training and practical vocational training. Learn more at sebts.edu.

Jerry Mitchell remembers what so many others want to forget. For more than three decades, he worked as an investigative reporter for The Clarion Ledger in Jackson, Mississippi. During that time, his dogged reporting helped put four Klansmen in jail after they had eluded justice year after year for their heinous crimes in the 1960s.Mitchell tells this story of justice delayed and finally done in his new book, Race Against Time: A Reporter Reopens the Unsolved Murder Cases of the Civil Rights Era, published by Simon & Schuster. Mitchell captures so many of the complexities and contradictions of the Deep South. For example, he writes this: "This was Mississippi, a place where some of the nation's poorest people live on some of the world's richest soil, a place with the nation's highest illiteracy and some of the world's greatest writers,” and I might add as a resident of Alabama next door, a place also known for being first in religion and last in just about everything else. A place like much of the South where the churches are full and where racism has so long flourished alongside.Mitchell joined me on Gospelbound to discuss what compelled him to seek justice, the Christian pretensions of the Ku Klux Klan, and whether the gospel can finally bring healing to this beautiful and broken land. This episode of Gospelbound is brought to you by Southeastern Seminary. In a changing ministry landscape, Southeastern’s four-year master of divinity and master of business administration program was built on a foundation of rigorous theological training and practical vocational training. Learn more at sebts.edu.

Everyone agrees that we’re drowning under a rising tide of atheism. Right? Actually that’s how author Alec Ryrie describes early 17th century Europe. We’re talking about the century following the Protestant Reformation, a century marked by wars of religion fought between Protestants and Catholics, and civil war in England. It’s the century that gave us these words: “What is the chief end of man? Man's chief end is to glorify God, and to enjoy him forever” from the Westminster Shorter Catechism. What seems to us as an era defined by religion seemed to many at the time to be marked instead by unbelief.Atheism and religious skepticism has a long history in the West, as Ryrie shows in his new book, Unbelievers: An Emotional History of Doubt, published by Harvard University Press. Ryrie is professor of the history of Christianity at Durham University and president of the Ecclesiastical History Society. He traces doubt from the blasphemous lips of gamblers to the poisonous pen of Nietzsche. He identifies anger and anxiety as the emotional hallmarks of doubt, through a massive transformation effected by World War II until our own day.Ryrie joins me on Gospelbound to discuss doubt, Reformation-induced incredulity, and how Hitler became the potent moral figure in Western culture and the swastika overtook the cross as packing the biggest emotional punch. This episode of Gospelbound is brought to you by Southeastern Seminary. In a changing ministry landscape, Southeastern’s four-year master of divinity and master of business administration program was built on a foundation of rigorous theological training and practical vocational training. Learn more at sebts.edu.

Tim Challies visited 25 different countries in his memorable year. And I think he may have even eaten McDonald’s in each of these countries. He attended worship services on every continent. He searched high and low for the artifacts that would help him tell the story of 2,000 years of Christian history. And he brings us along that journey in his new book, Epic: An Around-the-World Journey through Christian History, published by Zondervan.I loved following along on social media as he traveled north and south, east and west. I admire his zeal to introduce us to long-lost heroes of the faith, and even to warn us against some wrong turns in the journey. This book matches what we’re doing with Gospelbound, searching for firm faith in an anxious age. Because he looks back on God’s faithfulness even as he looks forward to what God might yet do before Jesus returns.Challies writes, “If I learned anything from my journey around the world, it’s the simple truth that the Lord is always at work.”Indeed, he is. Challies is the noted blogger of challies.com and author of several books, including Visual Theology and The Next Story. He joins me on Gospelbound to share more about this remarkable journey around the world and how we might grow in faith by learning from the past. This episode of Gospelbound is brought to you by Southeastern Seminary. In a changing ministry landscape, Southeastern’s four-year master of divinity and master of business administration program was built on a foundation of rigorous theological training and practical vocational training. Learn more at sebts.edu.

I don’t know how exactly to describe Jamie Smith’s new book, On the Road with Saint Augustine: A Real-World Spirituality for Restless Hearts, published by Brazos. I just know I recommend it.Smith himself describes the book as one last take at Christianity for someone tempted to leave the faith behind. Augustine is the guide—so ancient he’s strange, so common in his experiences that he feels contemporary.Smith is professor of philosophy at Calvin University and author of many thought-provoking books. And he is himself an excellent guide to Augustine. Yet in this book he goes beyond telling us about Augustine. Smith uses Augustine to help us answer our deepest questions and satisfy our deepest longings.“Humans are those strange creatures who can never be fully satisfied by anything created,” Smith writes. “Though that never stops us from trying.”Smith joins Gospelbound to discuss conversion as compass, authenticity as loneliness, and ambition as bottomless. This episode of Gospelbound is brought to you by Southeastern Seminary. In a changing ministry landscape, Southeastern’s four-year Master of Divinity and Master of Business Administration program was built on a foundation of rigorous theological training and practical vocational training. Learn more at sebts.edu.

Tim and Kathy Keller discuss the connection between decreasing rates of marriage and religiosity, addressing felt needs and the impact of COVID-19 on marriage rates, deepening your marriage through open communication, exploring the essence of masculinity and femininity, favorite books and recommendations, and exploring the presence of the Kingdom of God and theological reconciliation.