Sauls’ standing as a pastor will also be reviewed at an upcoming meeting of the Nashville Presbytery. According to the denomination’s rules, he is considered a “teaching elder” whose status as a minister is overseen by that local presbytery. That presbytery will have the final say over the length and conditions of Sauls’ leave. 

(RNS) — The Rev. Scott Sauls, an influential evangelical Christian pastor and author, has been placed on an indefinite leave of absence from the Nashville church he has pastored since 2012.
His leave was announced Sunday (May 7) during a member meeting at Christ Presbyterian, a prominent Presbyterian Church in America congregation.
In a video message to the congregation, Sauls apologized for an unhealthy leadership style that harmed the people who worked for him and the church.
“I verbalized insensitive and verbal criticism of others’ work,” he said, according to a recording of the meeting shared with Religion News Service. “I’ve used social media and the pulpit to quiet dissenting viewpoints. I’ve manipulated facts to support paths that I desire.”
Sauls made clear he had not been involved in any sexual sin or substance abuse. He said that he would seek counseling and repentance during his leave and that he hoped to someday reconcile with the people he had harmed.
“I am grieved to say that I have hurt people,” he said. “I want to say to all of you that I am sorry.”
The leave comes after an investigation by Christ Presbyterian itself and by the Nashville Presbytery of the Presbyterian Church in America.  That investigation was prompted by a letter sent from a number of former Christ Presbyterian staffers who raised concerns about Sauls’ conduct as a leader.
During Sunday’s Christ Presbyterian meeting, members also heard from the church’s elders, who said they hoped the leave would to healing and reconciliation.  The elders also admitted their own shortcomings in allowing an unhealthy culture on the church’s staff.
Sauls’ standing as a pastor will also be reviewed at an upcoming meeting of the Nashville Presbytery. According to the denomination’s rules, he is considered a “teaching elder” whose status as a minister is overseen by that local presbytery. That presbytery will have the final say over the length and conditions of Sauls’ leave.
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“People see religion as a personal matter. They think it’s about feeling and experience more than it is about dogma or doctrine or ritual. They don’t think it takes place inside institutions. They think it takes place in the human heart. How does that idea make its way into contemporary American consciousness? I think one big way is through the books that were published by Exman.”

(RNS)—Boston University religion professor Stephen Prothero doesn’t believe in fate. Or in divine providence.
But about a decade ago, the universe tapped him on the shoulder and gave him a job to do.
Prothero, who lives on Cape Cod, was at a Labor Day party when Judy Kaess, who lived nearby, asked him a favor. She’d inherited some old religion books from her father and wondered if he’d come by and look at them. By the time he’d arrived at Kaess’ house a few months later, she’d passed away of cancer. But her husband welcomed Prothero and led him to the family’s library.
Prothero thought he spend an hour looking at the books.
Ten years, later he’s still at it.
Those books—from legendary authors like Harry Emerson Fosdick, Dorothy Day, Howard Thurman, Albert Schweitzer, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr and Bill Wilson, one of the co-founders of Alcoholics Anonymous—traced a history of American religion from the heyday of mainline Protestantism to the rise of the spiritual but not religious. The man who connected them all together was Eugene Exman, Kaess’ father and the longtime religion editor for Harper & Row, who had published them all.
Prothero knew he was on to something when he opened up a copy of “Strive Toward Freedom,” King’s 1958 account of the Montgomery bus boycott, and found a handwritten note from King’s wife, Coretta Scott King, thanking Exman for his help with the book. Then he found a similar note in a first edition of the Big Book of AA, this time from Wilson to Exman.
“Who is this guy that I’ve never heard of,” Prothero recalled thinking at the time.
That question sent Prothero on a search for Exman’s story and how the editor’s spiritual quest and knack for finding big ideas helped reshape religious publishing and American spirituality. He found the answers in a treasure trove of the Exman’s papers—stored in the family’s barn and file cabinets—including Christmas cards from Wilson and ethicist H. Richard Niebuhr, which Prothero rescued from a trash bag bound for the dump.
Those documents detailed Exman’s publishing career and his spiritual quests—which ranged from a boyhood encounter with God that haunted his life, to founding an ill-fated spiritual commune, to traveling to Africa to visit Schweitzer, to dropping LSD. Prothero tells that story in “God: The Bestseller,” due out March 14 from Harper One.
Prothero spoke with Religion News Service recently about the new book. This interview has been edited for clarity and length.
The book opens with the story of visiting the home of a neighbor and discovering what her father had left behind. When did you realize there was a book here?
When I first visited the house, I didn’t know why I was there. Usually, in a case like this, people want me to tell them what a collection of books like this is worth—and how to get rid of it. But Walter said, ‘No, no, no, we don’t want to sell the books. We want to give the books away.’ He said, ‘My wife has passed away recently. I’m worried that if I die, this stuff’s just going to end up in a yard sale.’
I started cataloging the books, and as I’m doing that, Walter keeps showing up with boxes, and I keep going through them. I got really curious.
It didn’t take long before I thought somebody’s got to write a book. And obviously, it was me. This was too perfect. I’m not really a providential or even a synchronicity person, but it felt kind of uncanny.
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Bethel and a handful of other megachurches have cornered the market on worship music in recent years, churning out hit after hit and dominating the worship charts…“If you have ever felt like most worship music sounds the same,” the study’s authors wrote, “it may be because the worship music you are most likely to hear in many churches is written by just a handful of songwriters from a handful of churches.” 

(RNS)—On Easter Sunday, the worship band at Bethel Community Church in Redding, California, opened the service with “This Is Amazing Grace,” a 2012 hit that has remained one of the most popular worship songs of the past decade.
Chances are thousands of other churches around the country also sang that song—or one very similar to it.
A new study found that Bethel and a handful of other megachurches have cornered the market on worship music in recent years, churning out hit after hit and dominating the worship charts.
The study looked at 38 songs that made the Top 25 lists for CCLI and PraiseCharts—which track what songs are played in churches—and found that almost all had originated from one of four megachurches.
All the songs in the study—which ranged from “Our God” and “God Is Able” to “The Blessing”—debuted on those charts between 2010 and 2020.
Of the songs in the study, 36 had ties to a group of four churches: Bethel; Hillsong, a megachurch headquartered in Australia; Passion City Church in Atlanta, which runs a popular youth conference that fills stadiums; and Elevation, a North Carolina congregation with ties to the Southern Baptist Convention.
“If you have ever felt like most worship music sounds the same,” the study’s authors wrote, “it may be because the worship music you are most likely to hear in many churches is written by just a handful of songwriters from a handful of churches.”
The research team, made up of two worship leaders and three academics who study worship music, made some initial findings public Tuesday (April 11). More details from the study will likely be released in the coming weeks.
Elias Dummer, a worship leader and recording artist, said he and his colleagues have been watching changes in worship music over the past decade. They wanted to know how worship songs become popular among churches, he said. They also wanted to know how the business of producing and marketing songs is shaping the worship life of local churches.
Dummer said many worship leaders believe the best songs become the most popular in churches. They also believe those songs become popular because they work—people respond to them during worship services and want to sing them over and over. But that’s not exactly true. Dummer and his colleagues found many of the more recent hits songs were released as singles on Spotify and other streaming services, which helps fuel their popularity.
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Founded in 2008 as South Bay Church, Echo now has four campuses and draws about 3,000 people to weekly services. Like Saddleback, Echo has ties to the Southern Baptist Convention, though neither church uses the word Baptist in its name. A graduate of Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, Andy Wood has also worked with church planters through the SBC’s North American Mission Board.

After more than four decades, the pastor of one of the nation’s largest and most influential churches is ready to step down.
And he has named a young couple to take his place.
“This afternoon, at our all-staff meeting held at the Lake Forest campus, I was finally able to publicly announce that we have found God’s couple to lead our congregation, and that they have agreed to come!” Saddleback Church pastor Rick Warren told his Orange County, California, congregation in an email on Thursday (June 2).
The email included a link to a video featuring Warren and his wife, Kay, along with Andy and Stacie Wood of Echo Church in San Jose, California. Andy Wood, 40, is currently Echo’s lead pastor, while Stacie Wood is a teaching pastor. They will have the same roles at Saddleback.
Founded in 2008 as South Bay Church, Echo now has four campuses and draws about 3,000 people to weekly services. Like Saddleback, Echo has ties to the Southern Baptist Convention, though neither church uses the word Baptist in its name. A graduate of Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, Andy Wood has also worked with church planters through the SBC’s North American Mission Board.
“Kay and I believe so much in this couple,” Warren said in a statement announcing the transition. “We love them so much, and we are confident that God has prepared and chosen them to take up the baton and run the next leg of the Saddleback marathon.”
The search for a new pastor began last summer, in part because of ongoing health problems for Warren. He told the church last year that he has spinal myoclonus, which causes tremors and blurred vision, and that it has worsened in recent years.
Saddleback leaders spoke with about 100 potential candidates before settling on Wood, who preached at the church earlier this year.
Wood plans to step down as pastor of Echo Church at the end of June and will move to Orange County to begin the transition. The first step will be a conversation between the Warrens and the Woods during services over Father’s Day weekend. In August, the couple will begin attending Saddleback.
The church will celebrate Warren’s ministry during the first few weekends in September. Wood’s first official day as pastor will be Sept. 12.
“For decades, we have admired and respected Pastor Rick and Kay Warren and their work through the Purpose Driven Church model has been critical,” Wood said in a statement. ”We’ve been so blessed by their friendship, and after months of prayer and seeking counsel from others, we believe that God has called us together to step into serving at Saddleback Church.”
In the email to the Saddleback congregation, Warren said he and Kay were filled with love and gratitude for the church and quoted a New Testament verse about fighting the good fight and finishing the race.
“Now it is time for us to pass the torch on to a new generation who will love, lead, and pastor our church family in the decades ahead,” he wrote.
In May 2021, Saddleback made headlines after ordaining three female staffers as pastors—a controversial step for Southern Baptists. The SBC’s statement of faith limits the office of pastor “to men as qualified by Scripture.” But Southern Baptists disagree over whether that applies only to the church’s senior pastor or whether it bars any women from having the title of pastor. They also disagree over whether women can preach in a Sunday service.
At the SBC’s annual meeting, Saddleback was reported to the Credentials Committee, which is charged with deciding whether or not a church is in “friendly cooperation” with the denomination. Though some churches have left the SBC after naming women as pastor, the denomination has never officially removed any church for having a woman pastor.
Filling Warren’s shoes will be a challenging task, as the current Saddleback pastor has long been one of the most influential Christian leaders in the country, shaping everything from how pastors dress to how they organize and start new churches.
Scott Thumma, director of the Hartford Institute for Religion Research at Hartford International University, said megachurch transitions are often a challenge. The higher a megachurch pastor’s profile, the more difficult it is to replace that person.
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“I’m not going to be ashamed for being queer,” Sweda, who ultimately quit her job in order to speak openly about her wedding, said in the Chimes interview. “I’m not going to be ashamed for being married to Annica.” The events reveal the dilemma facing many Christian schools, who want to welcome a diverse range of students to their campus while upholding their beliefs that marriage is for one man and one woman and that sex outside marriage is sinful.

For years, Calvin University, a leading evangelical school in Grand Rapids, Michigan, has tried to walk a fine line of being welcoming to students who identify as LGBTQ while still enforcing traditional Christian Reformed Church views on sexuality.
The school sponsors a support group for gay students, gave an alumni award to an LGBTQ graduate, and last year saw a gay undergrad elected as student body president.
But after a Calvin professor officiated a wedding last fall for an LGBTQ staffer at a campus-based research center, putting both employees in violation of school policy, school leaders tried to resolve the matter quietly. The Center for Social Research, part of the school since the 1970s, was allowed to spin off and the staffer was able to stay.
Things changed this last week when Chimes, the Calvin student newspaper, broke news about the reason for the split. Chimes later interviewed Nicole Sweda, the Calvin staffer whose marriage led the CRS to leave Calvin.
“I’m not going to be ashamed for being queer,” Sweda, who ultimately quit her job in order to speak openly about her wedding, said in the Chimes interview. “I’m not going to be ashamed for being married to Annica.”
The events reveal the dilemma facing many Christian schools, who want to welcome a diverse range of students to their campus while upholding their beliefs that marriage is for one man and one woman and that sex outside marriage is sinful.
Striking that balance has become increasingly difficult in recent years as more and more young Americans, including students at Christian schools, identify as LGBTQ—a recent Gallup survey found that 1 in 5 Americans born between 1997 and 2003 say they are LGBT. Most younger Americans also see LGBT inclusion as a nonnegotiable, which puts them at odds with conservative older Christian leaders and evangelical institutions.
“I want Calvin to be honest,” said Sweda. “If they are going to cut ties with staff members, faculty and an entire center over this, then just say that. And stop promoting things that make Calvin look more welcoming.”
When Sweda and Annica Steen decided to marry in the fall of 2021, they wanted to find someone to officiate who could capture the range of emotions they were feeling. Because the wedding would be a civil ceremony, the couple was not looking for a clergyperson, but still someone they admired.
“Right away Joe came to mind,” said Sweda, referring to Joseph Kuilema, an assistant professor of sociology and social work at Calvin who had been a friend and mentor to Sweda.
Last Oct. 15, Kuilema stood with the couple in front of a gathering of family and friends and pronounced them legally married.
Things began to unravel in January when Sweda was summoned to a meeting at the provost’s office, where, according to Chimes, Sweda was told her marriage violated university policy and she could no longer stay at Calvin.
She told Chimes, “If they had fired me that day, that would have been fine by me.” Sweda told Religion News Service that fellow staff and supervisors were aware of the marriage.
But instead of firing Sweda, the school told her it was working on an alternative solution: to spin off the Center for Social Research, which is largely self-sufficient. In February, the center, which performs surveys and other research projects for nonprofits, businesses and churches, announced plans to become independent by the end of April 2022.
Neil Carlson, director of the CRS, told Chimes the split between the school and the center was amicable. “We still have a desire to stay in social and economic proximity with the community; it’s not a bad breakup, more of a ‘let’s just be friends,’” he said in February.
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