Gospelbound

You will find many books on the biblical and practical importance of the local church. I wrote one myself a few years ago with Jonathan Leeman called Rediscover Church: Why the Body of Christ Is Essential. But few books can match the way Brad Edwards shows us the need for the church amid rampant anxiety, division, and individualism. Not only our churches but even whole societies would be transformed by implementing the wisdom found in this book, called The Reason for Church. 

Brad is the church planter of The Table Church in Lafayette, Colorado. His debut book has been justly acclaimed. He won the 2025 Christianity Today Book of the Year Award and also finished first in the Church and Pastoral Leadership category. He was the winner of The Gospel Coalition's award for First-Time Author that year as well. I’m grateful that he joins me now to talk about everything from authority and institutions to anxiety and whether unity should be the goal for a church.

In This Episode:

00:00 – Opening: power, trust, and the temptation toward conformity

00:26 – Introducing Brad Edwards and The Reason for Church

01:41 – Ranking the causes behind declining trust in church authority

04:05 – Accountability, social media, and the limits of online justice

08:25 – Churches, institutions, platforms, and marketplace logic

11:17 – What changes people’s minds about the need for church?

13:27 – Church planting in Boulder County and Colorado’s anti-institutional culture

17:01 – Therapy culture, spiritual abuse, and what the book could not fully address

22:19 – Institution building, movements, and building a remnant

26:30 – Technology, schedules, and the challenge of spiritual formation

29:09 – Individuality versus individualism

34:39 – Should unity be the goal of a church?

37:49 – What surprised Brad most about becoming a pastor

39:21 – AI, agency, and the future of formation

43:07 – Hartmut Rosa, resonance, gambling, and the desire for control

46:55 – AI, education, responsibility, and authorship

52:05 – The church as remnant and refuge in a changing world

53:19 – What pastors want their congregations to know

56:41 – Closing and Gospelbound outro

Resources Mentioned:

The Reason for Church by Brad Edwards

Rediscover Church by Collin Hansen and Jonathan Leeman

Bowling Alone by Robert D. Putnam

Yuval Levin’s work on institutions

Bully Pulpit by Michael J. Kruger

GIRLS® by Freya India

The Reason for God by Tim Keller

Center Church by Tim Keller

Dominion by Tom Holland

Habits of the Heart by Robert Bellah

The Uncontrollability of the World by Hartmut Rosa

PostEverything, Brad Edwards’s podcast with John Homsher

Harper’s Magazine article on young AI founders

 

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Tim Keller preached a series of sermons in the 1990s called “The Faces of Sin.” It did not go over well in New York. Angered by the liturgical confession of sin, one woman waited until after the sermon and yelled at Tim, “Neither I nor any of my children will ever confess to being sinners!” 

Naturally, Tim’s wife, Kathy, decided these would make good sermons to turn into a book! That’s what we have in the new book What Is Wrong with the World? The Surprising, Hopeful Answer to the Question We Cannot Avoid, published by Zondervan.

One quote I think captures the book’s argument: “When we realize we are not a victim of our circumstances but a sinner who can call on someone much greater than ourselves to care for us, we can begin to truly live.”

That’s the surprisingly hopeful message of the gospel: our sin is the problem with the world. But all of us can be saved by grace when we confess that sin, repent of that sin, and trust in Christ. Easy enough, right? Remember that woman in New York. It’s no small thing to confess your sin. And ALL of us must confess our sin. Here’s what Tim wrote: “No other religion says that the lowest person in the gutter and the most moral, upstanding citizen in the world are equally lost, equally need to be saved by grace, and can only be saved by grace alone.”

What an honor to be joined again on Gospelbound by Kathy Keller about sin, grace, and the gospel.

In This Episode:
00:00 – Cold open: “the sin beneath the sin”
00:39 – Introducing Tim Keller’s Faces of Sin sermons and the new book
02:25 – Idolatry, grief, and losing what feels like “everything”
04:15 – Blind spots, community, and uncovering hidden sins
07:14 – “What’s wrong with the world?” starting with ourselves
08:13 – G. K. Chesterton and the sins of omission
11:31 – The gospel is bitter at first bite and sweet within
15:55 – Missing Tim and resting in God’s grace
16:48 – “Nathans,” correction, and giving one another “hunting licenses”
18:30 – Parenting regrets and learning consequences the hard way
22:22 – Why the gospel gives hope in the face of failure
22:52 – How Tim Keller is misunderstood today
30:43 – The Hopewell years and learning mercy ministry
34:55 – Kathy’s favorite Tim Keller book: Jonah / The Prodigal Prophet
37:57 – The books Tim Keller hoped to write
40:25 – “Identity received or achieved” and unfinished work
41:35 – Closing reflections
42:02 – Outro

Resources Mentioned:

What Is Wrong with the World? by Tim Keller

The Faces of Sin (Sermon Series) by Tim Keller

The Prodigal Prophet by Tim Keller

Ministries of Mercy by Tim Keller

The Mortification of Sin by John Owen

Making Sense of Us by TGC and The Keller Center

The Keller Center for Cultural Apologetics

 

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🎧 Don’t miss an episode of Gospelbound with Collin Hansen

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Western culture today largely lacks a sense of consecration, of setting apart the ordinary as holy. Yet somehow we still have a strong impulse toward desecration, of turning the holy into the ordinary. Why have we lost the taste of the good while developing a taste for the bad? 

That’s a core question at the heart of Carl Trueman’s new book, The Desecration of Man: How the Rejection of God Degrades Our Humanity, published by Penguin Random House’s Sentinel imprint. Carl is a professor of biblical and theological studies at Grove City College and a fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center. He was a guest on Gospelbound in 2020 for his highly acclaimed, bestselling book The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self. 

In his new book Trueman writes, “Transgression of the sacred is exhilarating precisely because it makes us feel like gods, the creators of our own meanings and our own selves. All we need to do is cross lines previously enforced by the idea of God and we thereby assume the role of being gods.” Desecration is how we communicate authenticity, perhaps the most important value for the modern self. 

This entire project has backfired. Let’s hear from Carl about why.

In This Episode:
00:00 – Carl Trueman on desecration and the modern crisis of humanity
02:30 – Why write another book after The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self?
04:22 – Why the sexual revolution sits at the center of the story
06:11 – Cultural Christianity, conversion, and why truth still matters
10:30 – Nietzsche’s “madman” and the collapse of moral meaning
12:56 – Authenticity, evangelism, and the uphill battle against expressive individualism
18:23 – Do the revolutions of modernity actually deliver what they promise?
21:04 – Genetic selection, artificial wombs, and the moral vacuum of tech culture
27:29 – Social acceleration, anxiety, and the instability of modern life
30:23 – Technology, human limits, and the need for a normative view of humanity
35:58 – Assisted suicide, autonomy, and why stories matter more than abstractions
41:53 – The transgender movement, fairness, and transhumanism
45:44 – Why Christian nationalism is not the answer
49:40 – Creed, cult, code, congregational singing, and hospitality as a plan of consecration
55:53 – Outro

Resources Mentioned:

The Desecration of Man by Carl Trueman

The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self by Carl Trueman

The Gay Science by Friedrich Nietzsche

The Ethics of Authenticity by Charles Taylor

 

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🎁 Help The Gospel Coalition build up a renewed church for tomorrow. Let's Build Together: Donate Today at https://www.tgc.org/together

🎧 Don’t miss an episode of Gospelbound with Collin Hansen

▫ Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/gospelbound/id1499898207

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Join Collin Hansen, Michael Graham, and Sarah Zylstra as they continue to look back on the top theology stories from the last 25 years. In part 1, they counted down stories #10 to #6. Now in part 2, Graham and Zylstra walk with Hansen through his stories #5 down to #1.

In This Episode:

00:00:00 – Why homosexuality became a presenting issue dividing the church

00:00:41 – Sarah Zylstra introduces the second half of the top 10 list

00:01:34 – Recap of stories 10 through 6 from the previous episode

00:03:06 – Number 5: COVID-19 shuts the world down

00:04:57 – COVID, institutional mistrust, and the authority of scientists

00:06:25 – A decade of digital change compressed into one year

00:09:22 – What COVID did to church attendance and online ministry

00:11:38 – Rediscovering embodied worship after metaverse-era predictions

00:14:11 – Number 4: The Trump era and its theological consequences

00:15:41 – Supreme Court appointments, religious liberty, and legal change

00:18:50 – Dobbs, abortion, and evangelical disengagement from the pro-life cause

00:19:54 – Immigration as a leading social and theological issue

00:22:13 – Executive power, post-liberalism, and Christian nationalism

00:24:05 – Number 3: Obergefell and the moral transformation of marriage

00:25:20 – Sexuality, family, and the collapse of shared moral norms

00:27:48 – Don Carson’s 2005 warning about homosexuality as a presenting issue

00:29:22 – Mainline denominational splits and the global Methodist divide

00:32:11 – Why many evangelicals held to historic sexual ethics

00:33:17 – How race and sexuality became bundled in public discourse

00:36:56 – Rebecca McLaughlin and navigating race and sexuality faithfully

00:37:21 – Number 2: The iPhone and the shift to digital life

00:38:05 – Smartphones, fertility decline, and changing social habits

00:39:13 – Social contagion, gender identity, and online plausibility structures

00:40:08 – Podcasts, YouTube, AI, and the reshaping of knowledge

00:43:44 – Mike Graham on screens, AI, and the future of epistemology

00:48:00 – Individualized media diets, institutional decline, and gender divergence

00:50:06 – AI sycophancy, abuse scandals, and algorithm-shaped reality

00:53:51 – Why digital life felt like it could have been number one

00:54:26 – Number 1: Why 9/11 tops the list

00:56:23 – Christianity, Islam, and civilizational conflict

01:00:07 – 9/11, the new atheism, and the category of “fundamentalism”

01:02:01 – Theodicy, suffering, and major disasters after 9/11

01:03:12 – Mike Graham on why 9/11 is civilizationally decisive

01:06:17 – Middle Eastern Christians, Iraq, Syria, and migration into Europe

01:07:11 – Signs of God’s providence and good emerging from tragedy

01:09:18 – Tim Keller, New York church planting, and the young, restless, and Reformed movement

01:12:58 – Closing reflections on God’s providence over the last 25 years

Resources Mentioned:

Rediscover Church by Collin Hansen and Jonathan Leeman

The Secular Creed by Rebecca McLaughlin

The WEIRDest People in the World by Joseph Henrich

Generations by Jean M. Twenge

Timothy Keller by Collin Hansen

— — —

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🎁 Help The Gospel Coalition build up a renewed church for tomorrow. Let's Build Together: Donate Today at https://www.tgc.org/together

🎧 Don’t miss an episode of Gospelbound with Collin Hansen

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Join Collin Hansen, Michael Graham, and Sarah Zylstra as they look back on the top theology stories from the last 25 years. In part 1 of this two-part series, Graham and Zylstra walk with Hansen through his stories #10 down to #6.

Since the year 2000, religion in America has changed dramatically. As recently as the 1990s, religion in America was what Tim Keller called “thick”: In general, many clergy were held in high esteem, churches were respected, and people either belonged to a congregation or knew that would be a good idea.

Yet since 2000, the percent of religious Americans has dropped and the number of nones (no religion) has jumped up from 8 percent to 22 percent—and climbing.

So while social commentators lament how much time Americans spend on our screens, describe how views on sexuality have drastically changed, identify how our politics have become sharply polarized, and observe how mental health especially in Gen Z has declined, they often miss the biggest story of all, the one underneath all the others—the decline in attention and deference to God.

In This Episode:

00:00 — The Great Dechurching: belief vs. disaffiliation

00:32 — Sarah hosts: why a 30,000-foot view now

03:26 — “Factfulness” and why we overlook positive trends

05:00 — #10: Global church leadership moving south

09:02 — Theological education hasn’t moved south at the same pace

10:03 — #9: Rise of non-denominational congregations

14:49 — Data point: non-denominationalism grows from ~3% (1972) to ~14–15% today

17:27 — Why churches drop denominational labels; media amplification; scandal-by-association

20:00 — #8: China’s church growth—and crackdown

22:07 — India, Hindu nationalism, and persecution; Nigeria and the Africa frontier

25:41 — #7: The Dechurching of America

30:24 — Apologetics after dechurching: from hostility to apathy

34:25 — Are churches fewer but stronger?

36:39 — Retention vs. conversion: why evangelical identity declines less

39:09 — #6: The Great Awokening (Ferguson to Floyd)

47:20 — Four paradigms for navigating race in America

52:44 — Wrap-up: Part 2 teaser

53:10 — Outro + where to find the podcast/newsletter

Resources Mentioned:

Factfulness by Hans Rosling

The Reason for God by Timothy Keller

Making Sense of God by Timothy Keller

A Secular Age by Charles Taylor

Divided by Faith by Michael Emerson

The Color of Compromise by Jemar Tisby

We Have Never Been Woke by Musa al-Gharbi

— — —

📫 SIGN UP for my newsletter, Unseen Things:

https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/podcasts/gospelbound

🎁 Help The Gospel Coalition build up a renewed church for tomorrow. Let's Build Together: Donate Today at https://www.tgc.org/together

🎧 Don’t miss an episode of Gospelbound with Collin Hansen

▫ Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/gospelbound/id1499898207

▫ Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/0kRYr5FTKr5ru1N7MR65Br

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