August 16, 2026

The church is asking today what it actually means to be formed — and whether the forces shaping Christians right now are doing damage we haven't named yet. Carey Nieuwhof put it starkly: AI is coming for the pastor's soul before it comes for his sermon prep. The real test isn't efficiency. It's whether a minister who outsources thinking can still be said to know anything worth teaching. First Things is asking the same thing from a different angle — Christianity keeps getting picked up as a lifestyle brand, a set of aesthetics and values, and set back down again. The instrument replaces the encounter. O. Alan Noble adds a psychological layer: catastrophizing is its own kind of formation failure, a habit of mind that evacuates the present in favor of worst-case futures. That question hasn't gone away — on March 30 we were watching it surface through desire and discernment, and it's still here.

The Gospel Coalition is watching teenage friendship collapse in real time and arguing the church has something to offer. Relevant flags that betting apps are deliberately targeting young men before the law catches up. Both pieces are about the same thing: a generation being shaped by systems that have no interest in their flourishing. Bethel McGrew's farewell to Ross Douthat at the Times reads like a eulogy for a public square that once had room for serious religious argument. And Christianity Today ran a piece on body surveillance culture and Christian women's health that belongs in the same folder — the outside world is discipling people faster than the church is. Lisa Bevere told Relevant that biblical womanhood has been so flattened by culture it barely resembles the thing it's named after. Meanwhile, an American missionary held nine months in Niger is finally free. The Aquila Report reminds parents their kids can smell the gap between what they profess and how they live. Formation is happening. The only question is who's doing it.