The podcast, brought to you by Premier, which takes you deeper into the stories impacting Christians around the world. Each week, we’ll dig into a particular issue, hearing from those directly involved or with a vested interest to make sense of the story and why it matters.
A new survey of more than a thousand churches has concluded weekly attendance has dropped by about 22% on average since before the pandemic. Intriguingly, the research also suggested a large part of this decline was because churches had cut the numbe...
Last month, staff at BBC local radio stations went on strike in protest at major cuts heading their way. Among locally-produced shows due to be scrapped to make millions of pounds of savings are Sunday services and religious broadcasting, mostly to b...
Denominations are much quicker to close down churches based in poorer areas than those serving the rich. That’s the headline finding a report from the charity Church Action on Poverty, which scrutinised five denominations in Greater Manchester to exa...
It’s hard to spend any time in the church these days without constantly coming up against so-called Christian celebrities. Whether it’s worship leaders, authors or big-name pastors and speakers, it seems the entire infrastructure of the church relies...
Almost exactly ten years ago, on 13 March 2013, Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio became Pope Francis. In the subsequent decade, this previously obscure Argentinian cleric has revolutionised the papacy while steering the Catholic Church through sweeping refor...
In January, Pakistan’s parliament passed through tough new blasphemy laws. Already boasting some of the strictest prohibitions in the world which include the death penalty for insulting the Prophet Muhammad, the new laws extend protections to the pro...
It all started on an ordinary Wednesday evening chapel service on 8 February, at a tiny Christian college in Kentucky called Asbury University. After the chapel service ended, a small number of students decided to carry on praying and worshipping, an...
Kate Forbes was a relatively little known figure outside of Scotland until last week, when she announced she would run to succeed the resigning Nicola Sturgeon as head of the Scottish National Party, and therefore also become the First Minister of Sc...
There’s only really one church news story to talk about today – the Church of England voting through radical new plans to offer blessings to gay couples for the first time. We dug into the history of the LGBT debate in the Church and where these prop...
They’re known by lots of different names. A social supermarket. The community larder. Your local pantry. But the fundamental idea is the same, and it’s spreading fast. More and more churches and Christian charities are opening these projects to feed...
Starting in 2018, a number of English councils have begun using anti-social behaviour legislation to create buffer zones around abortion clinics. These zones ban anyone from protesting, singing, holding placards, expressing an opinion or even praying...
Next month, the Church of England will finally begin to grasp the nettle of what to do about same-sex relationships. At a meeting of the church’s General Synod in London, vicars, bishops and ordinary churchgoers will debate new proposals from the chu...
This week we’re looking back at the stories which have fired our imagination and caught our attention over the past 12 months. When it comes to the church world, there has been no shortage of headline-grabbing stories to keep us occupied, from pastor...
In the first weeks of September, two people died. The first was Chris Kaba, a 24-year-old unarmed black man who was shot and killed by the police in South London. Just three days later, Queen Elizabeth II also died. As a result, Kaba’s death and the...
This week we’re considering the fate of the church in a small Gulf state few had even heard of just a few years ago – Qatar. Before the tiny Arab nation controversially won the right to host the football World Cup, Qatar was fairly unheard-of in the...
