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Some of the stories we publish at Christianity Today are “clicky.” They’re news reports about well-known people or organizations. They’re opinion pieces with provocative titles. They’re movie reviews of the year’s biggest films.

But some of our most compelling, important, and inspiring stories are not clicky. They are reported from lesser-known places—lesser-known, at least, for a segment of our Western audience. They make nuanced arguments that aren’t easily captured in headlines. They have wonderful details and sharp sentences. But you won’t know that until after you click.

Here are 15 of those kinds of stories from this year. You’ll find Kenyan Christians eating fish and playing hymns and learning Chinese to evangelize their neighbors. You’ll learn about the ministries trying to stop exploitative cyberscamming around the world. You’ll be encouraged by an important birthday call from the International Space Station.

You’ll read reflections on doubt and scarcity and fracture and repair. And you’ll encounter some of those sharp sentences. Some of my favorites, from the final essay on this list: “I reached for my Bible and ran my fingers over the puckered pages. To whom else could I go? The Lord has the words of eternal life, and I’m a complete sucker for him.”

Thanks for reading Christianity Today in 2024. If you’re not already a subscriber, check out our membership options here.

The post Christianity Today Stories You May Have Missed in 2024 appeared first on Christianity Today.

There’s something unmistakable about cracking open the spine of a new book or getting a whiff of that library-stack smell. Sitting with printed words invites readers to slow down—to savor and delight in ideas, reporting, arguments, and well-wrought turns of phrase. While digital information snowballs, the printed page invites us into a curated conversation through both content and form.

In our print pieces at Christianity Today, we’re always on the lookout for fantastic writing that is full of rich theological content, in-depth reporting, and carefully argued ideas—all in service to Christ and his kingdom.

The 10 pieces below (presented in order of publication) are ones our editors labored over and lingered over. We hope these articles will delight you anew—whether you thumb through your stack of CT print magazines or revisit each online.

We’d love for you to read more thoughtful CT articles this coming year. Subscribe now to Christianity Today.

The post CT’s Most Memorable Print Pieces from 2024 appeared first on Christianity Today.

How do you sum up an entire year? Here at CT, we’re taking a stab at it by revisiting our most-read pieces from 2024.

Readership, of course, is only one measure of an article’s import, success, and value. If you browse our other end-of-year listicles, you’ll find we’re also curating stories by genre (like book reviews), medium (like essays from our print magazine), topic (like archeological discoveries, a perennial favorite), location (like stories from Asia and Latin America), and other criteria.

But readership is telling, too, particularly when the readers in question are those of Christianity Today: Our most-trafficked articles each year offer a snapshot of the interests, hopes, and fears of evangelicals in America and around the world. Below, presented in order of publication, find ten of our most-read articles of 2024. 

Thanks for reading Christianity Today in 2024. If you’re not already a subscriber, check out our membership options here.

The post Big CT Stories of 2024 appeared first on Christianity Today.

For many writers, putting hundreds or thousands of words on the page is not the most difficult part of writing. It is rather the ideation phase, the task of coming up with what we call the pitch, the angle, or the take and then determining whether the idea we’ve gotten is worth anything: if it holds together, if it tells the truth, if it might possibly edify the church.

On some blessed occasions, the idea may simply appear, like Gabriel to Mary, an unlooked-for mental gift. Perhaps more often, ideation can be a slog. It recalls less the first chapter of Luke than that of Ecclesiastes: “Is there anything of which one can say, ‘Look! This is something new’?” (v. 10)

However they came about, the 15 articles below (presented in order of publication), are ideas-driven pieces that stuck with CT editors this year. They present fresh insights alongside timeless truths and bring surprising perspectives to both familiar and novel debates. We hope you find them as intriguing, delightful, and thought-provoking as we did.

Thanks for reading Christianity Today in 2024. If you’re not already a subscriber, check out our membership options here.

The post CT’s Best Ideas of 2024 appeared first on Christianity Today.

Selected by CT editors, below is our coverage of significant developments and cultural challenges for Christians in the Greater Middle East and Africa, arranged in chronological order of publication:

Thank you for reading stories by Christianity Today’s global team in 2024. We regularly translate our work into more than half a dozen languages. Learn more here.

The post 13 Stories from the Greater Middle East and Africa From 2024 appeared first on Christianity Today.

Sixty percent of the world population lives in Asia, including a growing and active Christian community. This year, the top ten Asia stories on CT’s website focused on India, China, Thailand, Indonesia, and the Philippines. Read these stories (arranged with the most-read story first) below:

Thank you for reading stories by Christianity Today’s global team in 2024. We regularly translate our work into more than half a dozen languages. Learn more here.

The post Christianity Today’s 10 Most Read Asia Stories of 2024 appeared first on Christianity Today.

Earlier this year, videos of Fijian rugby players singing hymns from the Olympic Village in Paris began to circulate on social media. As their voices traveled through the commune, curious athletes took out their phones and shared the music and its messages with the rest of the world. 

These enchanting expressions of faith prompted a CT story (you’ll find a link below) and also a reminder of the myriad ways the global body of Christ seeks to make him known. For some, it’s through opening a school for special-needs members in their community or helping spread a political vision and infrastructure to Christians in another country. For others, it’s teaching breathing exercises to traumatized refugees or trying to seek church unity with fellow believing citizens. 

For all of us, however, these stories are opportunities to reflect on what it means to live out our faith. What does that look like in the Pacific? 

“When I would walk through the village in the mornings or evenings, I would hear singing coming from the homes,” said Jerusha Matsen Neal, who spent three years on the Fijian island of Viti Levu. “You’d hear singing in four-part harmony, with children.”

Thank you for reading stories by Christianity Today’s global team in 2024. We regularly translate our work into more than half a dozen languages. Learn more here.

The post 20 Stories About a Vibrant Global Church appeared first on Christianity Today.

Browse our lists of 2024’s big stories, book reviews, podcasts, obituaries, testimonies, and more. You can also read this year’s top ten discoveries in biblical archaeology, along with our most-read stories of the global church.

This year, CT Global also produced more than 5,000 translations—including these most-read articles in Spanish, Portuguese, French, Indonesian, Arabic, Russian, Korean, and Chinese (Simplified and Traditional)—and expanded our non-English newsletter offerings to our readers around the globe.

Thanks for reading Christianity Today in 2024. If you’re not already a subscriber, check out our membership options here, and subscribe to our newsletters here.

The post Christianity Today in 2024 appeared first on Christianity Today.

In 2024, The Bulletin—Christianity Today’s flagship news podcast—hosted thought-provoking conversations with dynamic guests. Each episode explores the people, events, and issues shaping our world, with an eye to how Christians can respond with wise and measured discourse. These conversations on headlining topics feature engaging discussion, incisive analysis, and gospel-grounded hope in a polarized season.

Thanks for reading Christianity Today in 2024. If you’re not already a subscriber, check out our membership options here.

The post The Bulletin’s Favorite Conversations of 2024 appeared first on Christianity Today.

Four months after becoming an interim bishop for a new Methodist denomination, John Pena Auta is heading home to Nigeria with an overwhelming assignment. He has to find the words to stop the spiral of violence that has left three people dead and nearly a dozen homes burned.

Two groups of Methodists clashed in the eastern village of Munga Dosso on Sunday, December 15, according to local news reports. Members of the Global Methodist Church (GMC) attempted to reopen one of three local church buildings that had been shuttered by the Taraba State Government during the schism that has divided Methodists around the world. Members of the United Methodist Church (UMC), who claim that the building is rightly theirs, tried to stop them.

In the ensuing conflict, 27-year-old Elisha Masoyi was shot dead. He has been identified as the brother of a UMC lay leader. Fire consumed 11 houses. One was the home of Abraham Kefas, director of a UMC school. Two of his children, ages 2 and 4, died in the fire.

Authorities detained 23 people but did not immediately file criminal charges, according to Nigerian news reports. Local UMC leaders said there was no question of who to blame. 

“We are outraged,” UMC bishop John Schol wrote on Facebook. “We warned the GMC bishops of Nigeria that tensions were escalating because of the split within The United Methodist Church in Nigeria and to call GMC members in the midst of our differences to be peaceful and responsible. Yet it fell on deaf ears.”

Micah Dopah, director of the UMC’s connectional ministries in the region, called for Johnwesley Yohanna, a former bishop, and Auta, who was made bishop during the GMC’s first general conference in September, to be arrested.

“These leaders should be brought to book,” Dopah told The Daily Champion. “Let them be ready to face the wrath of the law, for their ungodly act in munga Dosso.”

Auta, who is originally from a rural area in Taraba and previously served as provost of the Methodist seminary about 20 miles from Munga Dosso, was in the US when the attack happened. He was speaking to Global Methodist churches in Georgia and Alabama about the work in Africa, his vision for the new denomination, and the importance of Christian unity. 

“We are all called children of God, we’re called to love one another, and we are called to be one in Christ,” Auta told two ministers at Clearbranch Methodist in Trussville, Alabama, on their weekly podcast. “The Bible I read is the Bible you read. … The Bible unites us across the land, across the globe.”

Auta did not immediately respond to emails from Christianity Today but did issue a brief statement condemning the violence.

“Violence is not the best option of mitigating misunderstanding,” the statement said. “I pray God to heal those that are maimed and comfort those grieving with the everlasting peace of Jesus Christ our Savior.”

Some GMC leaders say the violence is really rooted not in Methodist divisions but in local conflicts that predate the church split. Nigerian ministers Simon Jatutu and Yayuba Baziel Yoila cited an ongoing “chieftaincy dispute.” Chris Ritter, a GMC pastor and blogger, reported that the fight can be traced to a rice harvest. GMC bishop Scott Jones mentioned a multigenerational feud.

“There is great uncertainty about the facts of what happened this past Sunday in Nigeria, and we are cautioning individuals to hold lightly the various versions and accusations that are being shared on social media,” Jones said in an email sent to church members. “What we do know is that this conflict is based in a long-standing family feud of over seven decades that has been heightened by the process of disaffiliation in Nigeria.”

Whatever the original source, the Methodist division in Nigeria has stirred up great animosity. The two sides disagree over the legitimacy of the division, who really broke from whom, and the numbers that are part of the new Methodist denominations. GMC leaders say they have 600,000 to 700,000 people, with more joining every day. UMC leaders claim that only 60,000 to 200,000 left in July and that many of them were deceived and returned to the UMC as soon as they realized what was happening. 

The sides disagree over the Nigerian UMC’s relationship to homosexuality, which remains a criminal offense in the West African country. A UMC regional conference recondemned homosexuality in December, despite the approval of same-sex marriage and out LGBTQ clergy at the UMC’s general conference held in the US in May. African UMC leaders say GMC leaders are spreading “disinformation” and slandering the UMC as a “gay church.”

Nigerian Methodists are also fighting over property. The dispute includes individual church buildings, denominational assets including the Taraba Methodist headquarters, and a government license to operate in Nigeria. Property ownership is complicated by layers of legal rules, including colonial-era laws, common law, case law, and the Land Use Act of 1978, passed by the legislature, assigning states the responsibility to hold all land in trust for the people.

Some of the property disputes are going to court. Some have led to physical clashes. Police intervened in an altercation in the capital of Abuja after a pastor said his church would remain with the UMC.

“I have never seen such a thing before in my life,” one church member told local reporters. “The fight was so serious that when the police came they did not stop until they fired tear gas.”

There have been other physical conflicts as well. Absalom Nuhu, a Global Methodist minister in Abuja, said he has evidence of two GMC ministers and five GMC buildings being attacked, as well as several ministers’ homes and district meetings. Nuhu blames local UMC leaders. 

“They instigate violence more than anyone else,” he wrote. “They are aggrieved, very angry at us. So they fight and accuse us of fighting them.”

The Taraba government closed all Methodist churches in August, citing the need to “prevent a breakdown of law and order.” An official ordered all church signs removed until the dispute was settled. 

Both UMC and GMC leaders have been pushing the government to settle it so the churches could reopen by Christmas.

The conflict escalated to violence before that could happen. Now Auta, the newly minted bishop, is returning to Nigeria to try to intervene before any more people die.

“We urge the Church to pray fervently,” the GMC bishops said in a joint statement, “for those suffering unspeakable loss, for justice to be brought to those responsible for such violence, and for peace to be restored.”

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