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This edition is sponsored by Love Justice International |
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Sadie Maples grew up flipping through The Action Bible and perusing the wacky pens inside Kolas Christian Bookstore in Highland, Indiana. Her family attended church with the bookstore's owners, Sherri and Dale Vandersteen, who inherited the store from Sherri's father, Roy Kolas.
Recently, Maples found herself back at Kolas. This time, she wasn't checking out the toys or the Scripture verse bracelets, but the young adults group hosted at the shop.
"Kolas doesn’t just sell books," writes Maples at CT. "It also offers a place for this small suburb’s Christians to gather, from parishioners at St. James the Less Catholic Church one neighborhood over to members of Redeemer Lutheran several blocks away. That’s the secret to its success. The Vandersteens host what can’t be replicated online."
While many independent bookstores have hit hard times in the internet age, their number has increased by 70 percent between 2025 and 2026. Perhaps, Maples considers, this is for similar reasons to what she's experienced—a place to be and to belong.
May we consider what the common spaces are in our communities—whether a Christian bookstore, a coffee shop, or a park—both allowing ourselves to be welcomed by them and welcoming others into them. |
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Each day around the world, children and their families have their lives and their futures stolen from them by human traffickers. Love Justice International’s mission is to help the most vulnerable families through a unique strategy: transit monitoring. Transit monitoring has successfully kept over 115,000 people free from trafficking by intercepting them at key transit hubs and border crossings all over the world. |
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It only costs $112 to fund one intercept–to keep one more person free from slavery. When you give a gift to Love Justice International, it puts you on the front lines of prevention—training monitors, intercepting children before they disappear, and reuniting them with their families. Motivated by the gospel of Jesus Christ, LJI seeks to help the "least of these" and stop slavery before it begins. |
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As a group of boys played marbles in the dust of a Puerto Rican street corner, a woman approached, inviting them to join Sunday School at the Lutheran church. These…
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For our 70th anniversary issue, we’re studying the past. Excerpts from our archives show evangelicals in Billy Graham’s day and our own grappling with our place in public life. A new book offers a fascinating history of Christian womanhood—but makes a misleading argument, according to our reviewer. We’re also peering into the future. Artificial intelligence, GLP-1 drugs, anti-aging surgeries, next steps for the pro-life movement: These are some of the issues likely to occupy Christians for the next seven decades. But mostly, we’re spending time in the present: With a Honduran man who found himself pastoring in a Massachusetts jail while detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement. With the evangelical owners of a traditional Korean spa engaged in a religious freedom showdown. With faithful believers doing good work—a chef, an architect, a ball boy, a teacher (who, at age 91, is older than CT!). And with the writers of our newly expanded testimony section, who found God’s faithfulness in the midst of alien conspiracies, after a bad accident, and via an envelope in a refrigerator. Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever. Amid our own era’s change, conflict, and uncertainty, we hope this issue declares that reassuring truth. |
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