Breakpoint
Author: John Stonestreet and Michael Craven
“I have good news and bad news,” Chuck Colson said many years ago. “The good news is there are more Christians than ever before. The bad news is, it doesn’tseem to make any difference.” Though churches remain active, Christian language still fills public discourse, and millions continue to identify with the faith, the moral and spiritual influence of Christianity continues to diminish. Why?
Perhaps the most important reason is that too many Christians are content with a version of faith that is sincere but thin, orthodox in confession but shallow in discipleship. Many Christians affirm basic biblical truths but are more shaped by the assumptions of the surrounding culture than by the Gospel. When Christianity functions more as a label of private identity than a comprehensive way of life, the faith that should define us is reduced to an addition to life rather than the lens through which all of life is understood.
The confusion that results helps explain why the Church’s public witness is often so weak. A faith reduced to private spirituality cannot sustain a public vision. A gospel confined to personal salvation has little to say about how we live in the world now. A Church that does not intentionally form people will see them formed instead by the ambient pressures of secular culture.
At root, the issue is theological. We speak of Jesus as Savior but rarely as King. Yet the full Gospel is of the Kingdom of God, the announcement that Christ reigns over all creation and that His authority extends to every sphere of life. When saved, our lives are situated within the grand biblical story of Creation, Fall, Redemption, and Restoration. We are called to live from this Story, as citizens of that Kingdom, under Christ’s reign, for His purposes. We are to be formed in that kind of faith.
Scripture consistently assumes that God’s people are not merely to know truth but to be shaped by it. Through worship, repentance, prayer, community, obedience, and the ordinary disciplines of Christian life, God reshapes hearts and minds, orders our loves, disciplines our desires, and teaches us how to live faithfully in a disordered world. Whenever that kind of formation is absent, our faith becomes fragile, irrelevant, and even indistinguishable from the culture surrounding us.
In late eighteenth-century Britain, Christianity had lost much of its moral power. Social decay and injustice flourished alongside showy religious observance. William Wilberforce observed that the problem was not the absence of Christianity, but of what he called “real Christianity”—a faith capable of shaping character and compelling sacrificial action.
What followed was not first a political strategy, but a spiritual renewal. Through the evangelical revival, men and women were deeply re-formed by the gospel. Wilberforce’s costly fight against the slave trade emerged from that deeper formation. His perseverance rested not on confidence in political success but on obedience to Christ. The eventual transformation of British society—the abolition movement, social reform, and renewed concern for human dignity—was the fruit of a people formed by the truth they professed.
The Church today faces a similar challenge. The answer to our present crisis will not come through louder rhetoric, political power, or nostalgia for a bygone era. It will come through the recovery of a robust Christian worldview and formative discipleship that shapes the whole person under the reign of Christ. This kind of formation doesn’t just happen. It requires commitment, Christian community, disciplined engagement with Scripture, theology, culture, and spiritual practice. And it requires patience, because formation is slow work—the steady shaping of hearts and minds over time.
The Colson Fellows Program cultivates that kind of formation so that Christians can recover the whole biblical story and learn to live faithfully within it. Through worldview training, spiritual disciplines, Christian community, and practical application, Colson Fellows are equipped to respond to this cultural moment with clarity, confidence, and courage.
The Church doesn’t need more informed Christians. It needs more formed Christians; believers whose faith is not merely an accessory but an allegiance to the reality that Christ reigns. That kind of faith has changed the world before. By God’s grace, it may yet do so again.
Applications are now open for the Colson Fellows Class of 2027, which begins August 1. If you long to deepen your faith, recover the coherence of the Christian Worldview, and learn to live with greater clarity, conviction, and purpose in this cultural moment, we invite you to apply and join a growing community of Christians committed to faithful obedience in the world.