"I would never ask the couple struggling with infertility, 'Why can’t you just be thankful?' We need to be just as sensitive with children navigating adoption and foster care; otherwise, we risk blocking them from such restoration."

Read the full article "Adopted Children Have Already Been 'Re-Homed'" 👦 https://bit.ly/31Tfv4u

"In the darker and more difficult world that we now face—one marked by economic insecurity, ongoing disease, and governmental impotence... husbands and wives will come to see how little they can depend upon the government and the market and how much they have to lean on one another... they will re-learn all the ways that marriage is about much more than the fluctuating feelings between two people."

Read the second story in CT Magazine's cover story package "COVID-19 Is Killing the Soulmate Model of Marriage. Good." 💍 https://bit.ly/2ZRr2yH

J. I. Packer, "Knowing God" Author, Dies at 93
The influential evangelical theologian leaves a final lesson for the church: Glorify Christ in every way.

https://www.christianitytoday.com/news/2020/july/j-i-packer-died-evangelical-theologian-knowing-god.html

Our latest featured article, in seven languages:

N. T. Wright: The Pandemic Should Make Us Humble—and Relentlessly Practical
We can’t know for sure why it’s happening or how to stop it. But Scripture calls us to grieve with God’s Spirit and get to work serving others.

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Exodus is still essential for the African American church today.

Abilene Christian University professor Jerry Taylor closes our 6-part series on the "First Testament."

https://bit.ly/3lX0TbR

"I follow Jesus across ethnic boundaries because he introduces me to those he loves.

I experience friendship, inspiration, laughter, partnership, delicious food—in a word, love—but not without suffering too.

Because when we love, we suffer with and for those we love."

https://bit.ly/2Fr8yOO

As satellites beam their Christian programming to waiting rooftop dishes in the Middle East, they cross boundaries—geographical, political, cultural, and legal.

Then the satellite ministries sometimes find themselves defending their right to exist.

https://bit.ly/2Fwpu6P

Christianity as practiced by the faithful could use a reboot—a computer term analogous to theological words such as restoration and reformation.

We need to reground ourselves in core distinctives to shake salt and shine light in these viral, vitriolic, and violent times.

From our editor in chief: https://bit.ly/32xCWjA

☀️ It’s Monday morning. You’re awake and out of bed. And if that seems like it’s a great sacrifice, CT columnist Derek Rishmawy says you’re not wrong. If we look at Scripture, though, we see that when it comes to sacrifice, God doesn’t play fair. bit.ly/2HdYXvI

🇲🇱 Islamic extremists in Mali executed a Swiss missionary held captive for nearly five years, just weeks before releasing her fellow hostages. bit.ly/2T9YP2W

🎤 Last week, James MacDonald retained the rights to his Walk in the Word teaching ministry—including millions in property, equipment, and funds—as the result of a settlement with Harvest Bible Chapel. We reported how even after arbitration, the fired Chicago megachurch pastor blames his former church for a “hostile takeover.” bit.ly/2T7qZvx

📚 Bible teacher Jen Wilkin thinks it’s a problem that devotionals are outranking actual Bibles on Amazon. bit.ly/3jgHAHL

🔵 It’s two weeks to Election Day, and we’re bringing you CT’s second profile of a Christian running for Congress. Democrat Hillary Scholten has deep Dutch Reformed roots. But does she have the faith to turn Western Michigan blue? https://bit.ly/3kj8znI

🌎 A year after World Relief Atlanta shut down, Christians in Clarkston, Georgia—nicknamed the most diverse square mile in the nation—are bracing for further cuts to the refugee resettlement program. https://bit.ly/3jnTG2d

📕 Thomas Howard has died at 85. The prominent evangelical author (and brother of Elisabeth Elliot) wrote spiritual memoirs tracing his conversion to Catholicism. https://bit.ly/2ThtLOJ

🏛 With the Supreme Court slated to hear a legal challenge to the Affordable Care Act after the election, our November cover story—up now—focuses on Christians' relationship with the US healthcare system. From pioneering early forms of low-cost coverage nearly a century ago to carving out flexible cost-sharing alternatives today, believers continue efforts to care for the sick in a complicated medical system. Christians invented health insurance. Can they make something better? bit.ly/2ISDA3Z

🇦🇿 Eight evangelical churches and a Bible society in Azerbaijan say Azerbaijan’s conflict with Armenia is not religious war, reports Jayson Casper, a CT foreign correspondents. bit.ly/3dJvpCe

🇦🇲 Christians in Armenia, meanwhile, say their experience with Turkish believers shows international truth and reconciliation is possible. bit.ly/3m7X1UB

🎧 The conflict involves a lot of complicated history, as CT editors Morgan Lee and Ted Olsen discuss with Felix Corley, editor of Forum 18 and expert on the region, on this week’s Quick to Listen podcast. bit.ly/34jELSm

💬 Belmont University in Nashville is hosting tonight’s third and final presidential debate. The head of the political science department at the Christian college described how the state of political discourse has shifted in his own classroom since the school last hosted a debate in 2008. bit.ly/3jldJOF

🇺🇸 For CT’s third profile of a Christian candidate running for congress, we have a story about how US Rep. Cathy McMorris Rogers got booed off stage, and it made her want to work and pray for unity. bit.ly/3kpus4O

🌺 Research shows multiethnic churches and ministries are growing, but they still tend to be mostly white and white-led. CT’s global media manager Morgan Lee, herself a mixed-race Christian, describes how she came to see the importance of gatherings exclusively for people of color. bit.ly/37ylKxA

⚖️ If you read the cover story up yesterday about Christians and health insurance, you might have wondered, “What about the legal pushback over some of those health care sharing ministries?” We’ve got a piece about that too: Health Care Sharing Ministries Fight for Legitimacy Amid Lawsuits. bit.ly/2TjqL4I

💸 Three evangelical colleges have dropped tuition prices—by 25 percent, 33 percent, and 53 percent! But what the reduction means for future enrollment numbers and prospective students’ finances is a bit complicated bit.ly/2HjCcHf

💫 Luci Swindoll has died of COVID-19 at age 88. The popular Woman of Faith speaker and older sister of preacher Chuck Swindoll was known for her celebration of life and singleness. bit.ly/31ACO1M

🏫 In CT’s “Race Set Before Us” series, Nicole Baker Fulgham writes about how Christian thinking about school discipline can lead to racial equity and restoration. bit.ly/31RZH1d

🗳 The Democratic Party took Tennessee state legislator and Memphis pastor John DeBerry off the ticket when he refused to give up his pro-life position. After more than 25 years in office with a “D” behind his name, DeBerry’s running for re-election as an Independent. bit.ly/31P244y

🙏 The US election is only a week away and there are a lot of concerns about voting, counting votes, and what happens after. CT columnist Bonnie Kristian says one way to prepare is to think about how you’re going to pray for the president. bit.ly/3juv1Jj

🧠 Less than half of the Americans who struggle with mental illness get help. Among African Americans, the percentage is even lower. Meet the ministers helping black Christians see that it’s okay not to be okay. bit.ly/31P2dF8

🇨🇷 Juan Stam, a missionary to Latin America, has died at 92. The “radical evangelical” taught Christians to apply the Bible to politics—and once explained the book of Revelation to Communist leader Fidel Castro. bit.ly/3jw01bS

🗳 Chinese American Christians used to be largely apolitical, but pastors say that’s changing. Going into the 2020 election, the largest and most undecided Asian American demographic is more engaged but divided on issues like US-China relations, racial justice, and immigration. bit.ly/3ozFV49

⛪️ Across the US church, more pastors are making political endorsements in 2020, just not from the pulpit. bit.ly/2HI5yyR

✝️ Donald Trump made headlines last week when he revealed he now identifies as a nondenominational Christian rather than a Presbyterian. Turns out, he’s the first president since Dwight Eisenhower to change his faith affiliation in office. bit.ly/37PCYqk

⚰️ News editor Daniel Silliman noticed a real coffin (!!) among his neighbor’s Halloween decorations. Even if your neighbors’ haunts are less disturbing, the holiday raises questions about whether it’s appropriate to joke about the dead in the midst of a pandemic. On Quick to Listen, Tish Harrison Warren talks about secular and sacred ways to confront death and darkness in 2020. bit.ly/3e2Gwq0

🗳 If you know a Christian who is voting differently than you are in this year’s presidential election, you probably think they’re wrong. But is their vote a sin? We asked a range of Christian leaders to think about when casting a ballot crosses a moral line. https://bit.ly/31Pet8P

🇺🇸 Nearly half of eligible voters in the US don’t turn out at all, and minority say that’s a matter of principle. CT caught up with convicted evangelical nonvoters, who believe that Christian citizenship calls for a different kind of engagement. bit.ly/2HBKsCB

🏞 As the COVID-19 pandemic drags on and pastors are getting ready to grind out another Sunday service, a reminder to those preparing sermons: Your preaching is not God’s work. You are God’s work. bit.ly/35NWMr8

⛪️ Speaking of preaching: Who preaches politics from the pulpit? Almost everybody, it turns out. A major study of American preaching found that while elections were only mentioned in 1 percent of sermons, 70 percent of ministers spoke about political issues bit.ly/35OSUWY

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🇺🇸 Heightened tensions around the election have some Americans—typically proud of our peaceful transfers of power—worried about a breakdown in the democratic process. But, by the standard of the Sermon of the Mount, we already have a civil war in our hearts.

⚖️ CT reviews the And Campaign release Compassion (&) Conviction, which offers encouragement to “the politically ambivalent Christian” and advice that “will surely prove valuable well beyond this fractious election season.”

😇 Sunday is All Saints’ Day. Many evangelical churches don’t have a service to remember those who’ve died, but maybe they should. Charlotte Donlon writes about how the theology of All Saints’ Day sustained her after her father died of COVID-19.

🇫🇷 French churches are ramping up security and praying for peace after three people were fatally stabbed at basilica in Nice on Thursday.