June 24, 2026

Today the church is asking whether spiritual effort and genuine transformation are actually the same thing — and the answer coming back is: often not. Relevant Magazine names the trap precisely: evangelicals doing all the right things — quiet times, small groups, serving, giving — and still feeling hollow. Rebekah Lyons, also in Relevant, says the problem isn't insufficient effort. It's that surrender looks like defeat to people formed by productivity culture. That question hasn't gone away — earlier this week we were watching it surface through desire and discernment. Now it's showing up in the mechanics of discipleship itself. Ligonier adds a historical edge: Baptists once understood catechesis as the backbone of formation, then quietly abandoned it. The Aquila Report's piece on Paul's three forms of knowledge makes the same point from a different angle — that what Paul prays for believers isn't more activity, but a deeper kind of knowing. The church, several writers seem to be saying, has mistaken motion for formation.

Mere Orthodoxy lands this week with something uncomfortable: AI-generated content isn't just aesthetically bad — it's displacing the human vocation of making meaning. A theological claim dressed as a tech critique. Chris Martin's piece on fatherhood sits nearby, asking what it actually means to be given children by God and to be responsible for their formation. Not a parenting tips piece. A vocation question. TGC takes up the anthropology underneath all of this — a new book on biblical humanity argues that recovering a thick doctrine of persons is exactly what the church needs right now. Christianity Today reopens the Lord's Table as a forward-facing act, not just memorial — which is also a claim about what humans are made for. And The Aquila Report's piece on repentance after catastrophic failure insists grace hasn't expired. The thread across all of it: what are we, and what are we for — and does the church have an answer it actually believes?