This is a really different Advent season for me this year. For the first time in nearly a decade, I am not the one planning the worship, not the one crafting the flow of anticipation, not the one handing the candle to the wide-eyed child on the third Sunday. This year, the sanctuary will hold a different kind of silence for me, not the quiet of holy preparation, but the quiet of absence.

What if a sign of hope for the modern church was also a symptom of a deeper cultural sickness? This is the unsettling tension I found myself wrestling with, sitting in the dim light of a church in the Greater Seattle Area. The voice of researcher Ed Stetzer cut through the usual talk of decline and disaffiliation with a counter-intuitive claim: young men are “heading to church.” My initial reaction was disbelief.

I had the opportunity to chat with a missiologist and cultural anthropologist who tracks trends among young men in the United States. While discussing the topic, he offered a poignant, half-serious remark: “Nothing’s worse than a society of young men who think they don’t have a future.”

Are Young Men Having Less Sex? The Data Says Yes. You might find this surprising: In 2008, 19% of men aged 18-24 reported no sex in the past year. A decade later, that number jumped to over 28%. For those aged 18-30, inactivity rose from 14% to 23%.

Redeeming Wounds is back after a hiatus to manage our growing platforms. For the month of October, we'll delve into questions emerging among young adult men in the United States. While research indicates they're becoming “more spiritual,” this isn't the simple win it appears to be.

Over the last two months, the learning curve of myself has been steep, like, Everest steep. It’s been one of those seasons where God doesn’t just knock gently on the door of your heart, but kicks it wide open and says, “ Let’s deal with this mess .” And honestly, I didn’t see it coming. I started going to Spiritual Direction, which is basically like therapy, but with more Jesus and less couches. It helped me pause, breathe, and take a hard look at my soul. I re-examined what

Studying to be a therapist has brought a lot of things to the surface for me, things I’ve always felt deep down when it comes to the church and trauma. I’m seeing now, more clearly than ever, how many church leaders have no idea about the damage they’re doing, simply because they don’t understand how trauma impacts the human mind and how deeply pastoral care shapes the human soul.

In 2022, I was so excited to start my journey as a pastor in the Christian Reformed Church in North America (CRC). To be fair, I didn’t wake up one morning dreaming about the CRC; I came because a friend, a CRC pastor, invited me, and the church calling me happened to be a CRC congregation. Still, I decided if I was going to be here, I would be here, mind, body, and soul. I would embrace this denomination as my own, and they would embrace me as theirs.

It’s hard to give the Brits much credit when you pause and consider the devastating role they played in the Transatlantic slave trade. The impact of that history, centuries of stolen lives, cultural erasure, and racial trauma, still echoes loudly today. And yet, somewhere in the complex mess of imperialism, colonization, and global conflict, there was a Brit, one among many, who stood out in the 20th century for his bold stand against injustice and tyranny. That Brit was none