Not paying one marketing firm is an issue. Not paying four over a dozen years is a pattern. Also a lot of marketing for a prosperity preacher? Here are the receipts: roysreport.com/judge-freeze...

A trail of lawsuits, with records in state and federal courts in New York, California, and Texas, show Benny Hinn Ministries has routinely failed to pay marketing firms.

Sometimes it's like people ready @kkdumez.bsky.social Jesus and John Wayne as a "how to"

Wonder what made it worth that much

Land of milk and honey they said.

Poem for Sunday

Sometimes writing journalism is like writing horror with the mounting dread, the urge to yell "don't go in there."

The Bill Hybels-started Global Leadership Network shut down in the UK and Ireland without explanation. But the tax records tell a story.

If nondisclosure agreements are good actually, I don't see why orgs would work so hard to hide them

ProPublica with a notable update to journalistic code of ethics

Things you see in East Tennessee

The story is nugget after nugget of quintessential megachurch culture, leadership, and governance. And that the bad joke is a decade old and they needed a third witness to finally get pastor to admit he had a problem is just the starting point.

The sixth-largest megachurch in America has suspended its senior pastor for one month, after an investigation confirmed he touched a man’s crotch with a riding crop as a joke.

The ongoing Methodist fight over property in the church split has maybe turned up an interesting legal question in Florida: religionclause.blogspot.com/2026/04/flor...

Christian software engineer Cameron Pak has developed criteria for faith-based AI. Like, it must be clearly IDed as AI and “must not fabricate or misrepresent Scripture.” One interesting idea: AI *can't* pray for you.

Today in the life of my Appalachian church, the building and grounds committee gave a report at the board meeting and a bunch of it was about changing lightbulbs. After it went on for a while, one of the ministers said, See it sounds like it took a lot of people.

How a big Baptist church in Texas decided to abandon democracy:

Secrecy always seems like a bad sign

Crescent earth, as seen from the Artemis II mission.

Today in my email newsletter:

The boulder once dust, will be dust again but today, so filled with its own heaviness, it can't hear the grunts of the men who push and roll it to the mouth of the tomb, and it can't yet conceive how else it might be moved. Before, by Marie Howe

A Florida sheriff called him “the worst of the worst.” But according to an SBC pastor, this is a spiritual battle. roysreport.com/sbc-pastor-s...

From the 400s or 500s, dug up in Egypt: O cross, hope of the Christians O cross, resurrection of the dead O cross, guide of the blind O cross, way of those who have gone astray O cross, consolation of the poor O cross, bridle of the rich ... O cross, light to those sitting in darkness ...

When I transcribed the interviews I recorded in reporting this story, it came out to about 70,000 words, not including notes from books, articles, and podcasts. So I guess that's what I mean by "deep dive"

Ché Ahn's account of how he became an apostle includes a prophecy from Shawn Bolz that sure looks fake. My reporting:

When NASA launches four astronauts to loop around the moon, hopefully tomorrow, the pilot will be praying "on earth as it is in heaven."

A Kentucky megachurch w/ 5,000 weekly attendance shut down after a second sex scandal in 10 years

Charismatic apostle Ché Ahn is running for governor of California, except the part about being on the ballot.

Poem of the day, Hymn of Our Jesus & the Holy Tow Truck, by Ashley M. Jones

What happens when you cross @paulputz.bsky.social and Banksy

The thin hope of people reporting abuse in church to law enforcement

Christian publications started in the U.S. in the 1820s, 30s, and 40s Christian Messenger Christian Review Christian Preacher Christian Publisher Christian Panopolist The Christian Christian Age Heretic Detector

One of the things about spring is I can go outside and do interviews in my porch.

Great reporting from @danielsilliman.bsky.social - including body cam footage (released w permission of the parents) that is a useful and heartbreaking window into the process of trying to report abuse - roysreport.com/former-ligon...

Fact of the day: One of the oldest known poems in German was actually written for bees.

Cool to see a new hymnal doing so well today

What it sounds like when a Reformed professor and his wife can't get a sheriff's office, a state child welfare agency, or his church to seriously investigate the suspected abuse of a child www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Ala...

The Ligonier Ministries executive who was recently excommunicated by St. Andrew’s Chapel in Sanford, Florida, has revealed the real reason behind his exit: He accused the church’s former youth minister of sexually abusing his daughter.

Always wild to go and look at what a minister preached right before going and doing something horrific

Meanwhile in local East TN news: “Over 1,000 people live within a one-mile radius of the facility …. BWXT has a history of violating federal nuclear regulations, and the state is permitting the company to release hundreds of pounds of radioactive dust annually.”

A fun thing about Psalty is if you try to explain him to people who are unfamiliar, you sound completely unhinged.

Major turmoil between the successors of R. C. Sproul at the three institutions trying to carry on his legacy. Last week, unannounced, Ligonier removed a prominent teacher from the website.

Eighteen months later, still hard to believe the damage done by Helene here in East Tennessee

If this is an honest mistake, how would he get this wrong? If it's not honest, why would he lie about it?

Jürgen Habermas rewired my brain a bit in grad school. I’m incredibly grateful for his work on the rationality inherent in communication, the structure of communities through discourse, and the sturdiness of universalist-democratic ideals. I’m better for it. Rest in peace.

The fruit of the light is found in all that is good and right and true. Try to find out what is pleasing to the Lord.

A little stretch of the Appalachian Trail today

Civil rights veteran and evangelical hero John Perkins has died.

I don't know how much I thought Sean Feucht's capital worship rallies cost? Of if they really cost this much, given the allegations.