How long does the sermon at your church typically last?

First Nations Christians hope Pope Francis’s apology for “cultural destruction and forced assimilation” in Canada will help bring healing to indigenous people who were taught to hate the name of Jesus.

Seattle Pacific University is suing Washington’s attorney general over a probe into the Christian college’s hiring practices regarding LGBT employees.

Carey Latimore IV, a Baptist pastor and Trinity University professor who saw African American history as a “window into the essence of the gospel,” has died unexpectedly at 46.

How long does the sermon at your church typically last? The answer might depend on where you’re sitting.

The Reformers read pre-Reformation theology and so should you.

Behind the story

What’s the longest sermon you’ve ever heard? CT news editor Daniel Silliman is pretty sure he once sat through a four-hour sermon when he was growing up in a, shall we say, intense Pentecostal church.

He’s not as sure as he once was that the sermon was really that long, though, now that he’s dug into a Lifeway Research study that shows the experience of sermon time is relative. In the pews, people are six times more likely than their preachers to say a sermon went over an hour.

While the biblical model may be to preach until someone goes to sleep, falls out of a window and dies (before being resurrected, Acts 20: 7-11), Christians have been debating sermon length for a long time. At least it feels like a long time ...

In other news

In Arkansas, the evangelical camp meeting tradition carries on.

The first Aboriginal bishop of the Anglican Church in Australia has died. Bishop Arthur Malcom was 87.

The lawsuit against a Methodist foster care and adoption agency that refuses to serve non-Christians was dismissed for technical reasons.

At this point in the summer, we’d all rather be at the beach. A Catholic priest is under investigation for moving Mass into the ocean and using an inflatable float as an altar.