Even the most seasoned believers find their daily devotion occasionally in a slump. While it’s hard to snap out of dimness on our own, thankfully, God’s Word gives us hope and help today.

Philip Hunt came to Christ in Maine but learned his theology in Africa. “The first book a missionary handed me when I got to Kenya was J. I. Packer’s little book Evangelism and the Sovereignty of God,” said Hunt, who flew to Mombasa when he was 25 to do mission work. “It really startled me. Those concepts answered questions I had, and that book became a doorway for me to continue to study and read.” Hunt kept reading as he worked in a church in Kenya and then as he moved to Zambia to plant Faith Baptist Church of Riverside (and later Kitwe Church). “During those years of church planting and pastoring, it became really evident to me that if we were going to see healthy, reproducing churches, then we needed a place where we could intentionally prepare leaders,” he said. In 2006, the Central Africa Baptist University (CABU) opened with 12 students. (Ken Mbugua was one of them.) Over the next 18 years, the school grew to about 200 students learning expository preaching, missions and church planting, counseling, sign language, and chaplaincy. CABU faculty began training teachers and launched an MA in Christian studies, and they’re planning to add an MDiv. They added 15 remote training classes—where a teacher spends a week with a group of pastors closer to their homes—and have taught more than 2,000 pastors that way. “I can’t think of anywhere around the world where I have been more encouraged by the gospel work than in Kitwe, Zambia, around the Central Africa Baptist University,” 9Marks founder Mark Dever, who doesn’t often use superlatives, told a group of pastors a few weeks ago. CABU has nearly 920 graduates serving in 14 countries, property with classrooms and a student center, and government accreditation. But what it doesn’t have is a library. Yet. Christianity in Africa Zambia is full of pastors, but many of them preach the prosperity gospel. “Almost all you hear is this message about how God in Christ wants us to be physically healthy and materially prosperous,” said pastor and TGC Africa Council member Conrad Mbewe. “You hardly ever hear sermons about sin and repentance. So salvation has now become deliverance from sickness and poverty.” Over the last 10 years, the prevalence of the prosperity gospel has been “getting worse,” Mbewe said. “One reason is that there is very little antidote for it. There is little for people to hear concerning the truth, so the noise is what is capturing their attention. And by far, the greatest noise is from the prosperity gospel preachers.” Prosperity theology has become almost the definitive position of Christianity in Africa, especially south of the Sahara, he said. Historic and projected regional distribution of Christianity / Courtesy of World Christian Encyclopedia That’s a problem for Africa’s Christians, and increasingly, it’s a problem for Christianity’s witness worldwide. By 2050, Africa will have both the highest percentage of Christians and the youngest Christians in the world. “The future of world Christianity,” wrote historian Philip Jenkins, “is African.” That means Africa’s theological education right now is critical. Part of that is good websites, which can disperse information quickly and cheaply, said Mbewe. But research shows your reading comprehension is six to eight times better if you’re flipping the pages of a physical book. Plus, books can be accessed without an internet connection, never have broken links, and let you make notes in the margins, Mbewe said. In Zambia, “the reading of print media is still exceptionally low,” reported a study from the University of Zambia in 2021. “At least among conservative Bible-believing ministers, that must change—and is changing,” Hunt said. “You cannot educate men without them becoming readers. . . . We need to recognize that Christianity did not begin when we came to faith, but there is a whole history that stretches out.” He can’t think of a better place to encourage an appetite for reading than at CABU. “You literally can mandate it,” he said. “And then you’re discipling students, showing them the value of it. Part of your coursework is helping them think critically, to interact with the literature, to encourage writing.” “Libraries are handmaids to lectures,” Mbewe said. “As a lecturer, you can point in a particular direction and then send your students to do their reading. When you bring them back into a common room, where you give them space to interact intellectually, their minds are being sharpened a bit. They are becoming real thinkers and researchers.” But that’s hard to do without books. And Zambia—along with other sub-Saharan countries—doesn’t have a lot of those. In 2018, Zambia had just 45 libraries, or one for every 400,000 people. For comparison, the United States had a library for every 3,000 people that year. “If you went into a public library here in Zambia, you would just shake your head,” Hunt said. “It’s just this little place with ancient, broken books. It’s sad.” If CABU wanted a library, they were going to have to build their own. If You Build It In March, CABU opened a publishing house. They’ve already printed 8 titles, including Mark Dever’s How to Build a Healthy Church, Conrad Mbewe’s God’s Design for the Church, and Greg Gilbert’s What Is the Gospel? The first batch of How to Build a Healthy Church copies mid-print in April 2024 / Courtesy of Ryan Curia But 8 books isn’t enough. So in March, CABU broke ground on a theological library. The 9,200-square-foot building, which should be finished in August, will have enough shelf space for 50,000 volumes. “We anticipate that thousands of students will be able to do research with healthy resources they otherwise wouldn’t have had access to,” Hunt said. “If we could pull this off, it would be unique in our area of Zambia, to have a library of this breadth.” “If it were available,” Mbewe said, “there’s no doubt that it would be real solid gold.” The only problem is, Hunt doesn’t have 50,000 books. He only has 16,000. They Will Come A few weeks ago, Craig Stoll at Christianbook International Outreach got wind of CABU’s project. “Hey, I’ve got a 20-foot container we could ship to you from America for free,” he told Hunt. “It will fit 30,000 books. All you have to do is fill it up. You want it? If not, I can find somebody else.” Hunt’s heart jumped. “No, no, no, no, no, no—don’t give it to anybody else,” he said. “Give me a couple of weeks. I don’t know how we’re going to do it, but this is the opportunity.” He was already on his way to Washington, DC, for a 9Marks intensive when he started making a list of titles and publishers like Banner of Truth, P&R, and Crossway. But 30,000 is a lot of books. The Ask Hunt thought about the American pastors in the Reformed Resurgence, some with gospel-centered commentaries, biographies, church history books, or systematic theologies they no longer needed. Maybe they’d be interested in helping to shape Africa’s theology? If that’s you, here’s your chance. “We don’t want pastors to just grab everything on their shelves and throw them in boxes, thinking, Let me get rid of them. I’ll send them to Africa,” Hunt said. “That’s not what we’re looking to do. We want to be intentional about what goes into that space. We really want to fill it with good books, from Augustine’s City of God to The gods of Africa by Leonard Nyirongo to John Owen’s Mortification of Sin.” Phil Hunt (middle) shows Mark Dever and Rick Denham around the library construction project in April 2024 / Courtesy of Ryan Curia You can send those gently used books to Massachusetts to join the shipping container or you can donate financially online. See the Reaching Africa website for details and a list of helpful book topics—such as preaching, education, Christian living, and pastoral care and counseling. When the container ships in August, it should arrive in time for the books to be sorted and shelved before CABU’s leadership conference at the end of November. “The invention of the printing press was arguably one of the key features that fueled the Protestant Reformation,” Hunt said. “I think it’s safe to say we need an African reformation. And we cannot devalue the role that access to quality books plays in the shaping of the theology and thinking, and in the direction, of a nation and a continent.” He thinks CABU’s library could be part of that—if he can get it. “God is at work,” Hunt said. “If God can provide such a wonderful gift as this shipping container, he can provide the books.”

Jonathan Haidt’s recently published The Anxious Generation (read TGC’s review) is the latest book sounding the alarm about the deteriorating mental health of teens and children today. There’s consensus that youth mental health is in crisis—record numbers of children suffer from anxiety and depression. But opinions differ as to the causes and solutions. One way Christianity can offer real help and true hope to this “anxious generation” is by pointing them to Jesus—the Good Shepherd, the One who offers rest to the weary, the One who calms the stormiest seas. And Christian music is a great way to center ourselves on this hope. This is the heart behind the latest hymn from Keith and Kristyn Getty: “Jesus Calms the Storm (Hymn for Anxious Little Hearts).” The new recording (embedded below) features Keith and Kristyn along with their four daughters (Eliza, Charlotte, Grace, and Tahlia), Sandra McCracken, and Joni Eareckson Tada. Written by parents who are part of the Getty Music songwriting team—including Matt Papa, Matt Boswell, Sandra McCracken, Bryan Fowler, and Kristyn Getty—the new hymn is not only for children but for anyone who needs a reminder of the gospel’s hope in a world of anxiety. “The title and subtitle convey the lyrical intention,” said Kristyn. “The fears and brokenness of the world weigh so heavily on our children’s shoulders. We see it more and more. But we know there is one voice who can calm the storm and breathe courage into a fearful heart.” In the Q&A below, I asked Kristyn, Sandra, and Joni to reflect on the themes of “Jesus Calms the Storm,” other hymns and songs that bring calming hope, and how Christians can be a nonanxious presence in the world. I also created a new playlist—Calming Worship for an Anxious Age—that includes “Jesus Calms the Storm” as well as a few other songs suggested by Kristyn, Sandra, and Joni. Enjoy it on Spotify or Apple Music.  In your own life, where have you seen the gospel speak directly into anxiety and fear? Kristyn: Our fears always help us understand what our greatest loves are. It can waken us to see the places in life where love for the Lord and his gospel is no longer first. When I had my first baby I was almost frozen by fear. Some of that was just the shock of something so big turning our lives completely upside down! But it also shook up my faith in such a way that I had to really relearn what it meant to be a Christian and trust in the Lord. Trust his sovereignty, trust his grace, trust him for the future. A lesson I’m still learning! Joni: Less than two decades ago, I was gripped with fear, thinking I would have to live the rest of my life with increasing chronic pain. But I was helped tremendously by Ephesians 1:17–19. I found refuge and strength in “the hope to which he has called [us], the riches of his glorious inheritance in his holy people, and his incomparably great power for us who believe.” The gospel gives hope, a resource of rich grace, and incomparably great power. If this mighty strength raised Christ from the dead, then it certainly could raise me up out of my fear and anxiety about a future full of pain. Sandra: Fear keeps us alive in so many risky situations we may face, but then that fear can take over and run on overdrive in our hearts and minds. With the world we live in—news feeds and how many people and situations we hear about each and every day—it just means that we need to hear the good news of the peace of Christ more than ever! Joni, was there a particular Christian song or hymn that ministered to you in a painful stretch of your life when you were young, in the way ‘Jesus Calms the Storm’ might minister to a young person today? Joni: Two hymns from childhood stuck with me all the way through my long hospitalization after I broke my neck: “Be Still My Soul” was one. The title says volumes to the anxious heart. And also “Abide with Me.” It was that line “Help of the helpless, O abide with me.” I think these are two wonderful hymns for children today who are fretful. In a world of anxiety, what does it look like for Christians to be a nonanxious presence? What habits or disciplines can help Christian churches and households cultivate a peaceful, calm presence in a storm-tossed culture? Kristyn: I think singing to remember his truth is so critical—and singing regularly of eternity and the hope we have. The psalms are helpful here because they carry all the waves of human emotion, but they settle on the shores of his truth. They keep us honest and grounded and hopeful. Joni: I will speak from my experience with pain. When I am in excruciating pain, I do not reflect on or comment about anxiety. I do not say, “Oh, no! What if my pain doesn’t get better?!” Such fear-filled language only makes things worse. Fretting over anxiety only acquiesces control to these negative emotions. If I’m going to react to chronic pain, I will abide by my long-term habit of finding relief in God’s Word. And I will talk about that! Sandra: Gospel faith is not just the power of positive thinking, but Christians in community have the power from Christ to speak encouragement and courage to one another in real time, in our real lives—when we’re late to school, or when someone loses their job unexpectedly, or when we receive a diagnosis of illness. Even in our small mistakes or on days when the storms come and we have to face the consequences, we trust that God is working these hard things for our good and his glory. We can make habits of worry, or we can learn to be people who pray and encourage one another in the middle of it. We can expect that sometimes it takes our fearful hearts time to catch up to the truth.

Remembering people who have sacrificed to save others is essential to our dignity as human beings.

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