August 26, 2026

Today the church is asking whether it actually knows what it's offering people — and whether what it's offering is the gospel or something that just feels like it. The Gospel Coalition is blunt about the stakes: therapy culture hasn't just influenced the church, it's begun replacing the gospel inside it. Felt needs crowd out actual grace. Mike Todd told Relevant Magazine something that cuts in the other direction — the church has been too quick to spiritualize trauma, too slow to sit with it. Both things are happening. The church is handing out theology where it should offer presence, and therapy where it should offer Christ. The Lindsay Clancy case at First Things pushes harder: a woman convicted of killing her children, and Christians disagree sharply over what mercy even looks like here. That's not a culture-war spat. It's a question about whether the church has a coherent account of guilt, compassion, and judgment — all at once.

Christianity Today is worried about AI pastoral chatbots, and the Pew data backs the concern — most Americans think chatbots make loneliness and depression worse, not better. The deeper issue isn't the technology. It's that the church is tempted by it because real presence is costly and scalable presence is not. Mere Orthodoxy's piece on union with Christ sits quietly beside all of this: the well doesn't run dry, but you still have to go to it. That requires someone who shows up. Chris Martin's piece on self-criticism and the Challies piece on recovering Bible reading both circle the same ordinary problem — formation that depends on discipline keeps breaking down, and grace has to be re-learned, not just announced. We were watching a version of this tension earlier this week when the conversation was about desire and whether our minds are even capable of wanting the right things. That question is still live. The church keeps reaching for programs and techniques. The pieces today suggest what it actually needs is slower, older, and harder to measure.