Our Top Stories

Darkness.

Evil.

As Christians, Seth Terrell, Jessica Knapp and Britt Farmer all believe the world is broken and in desperate need of Jesus’ healing power.

Beyond that, each — with deeply personal experience with deadly shootings — grapples with how disciples of Christ should respond to the ongoing gun violence in America.

Bobby Ross Jr. reports.

Related: After yet another mass shooting, Tulsa church grieves, reflects: Is there a solution?

Related: As Uvalde mourns 21 school shooting victims, church members show ‘the love that Christ put in all of us.’

Related: Buffalo church members help save lives during grocery store shooting

People of faith debate solutions to America’s string of mass shootings.

Read Bobby Ross Jr.’s Weekend Plug-in column, highlighting the week’s top religion news.

Gary Dodd, a member of the Concord Road Church of Christ in Brentwood, Tenn., works as a nurse practitioner at Cedar Recovery, a medical practice seeking to solve the opioid crisis and repair communities.

Dodd offers tips for helping addicts.

Border crossings bother me.

It all started in 2004 when I was traveling from Guatemala to El Salvador. The border guard grilled me repeatedly, in Spanish, about where I was going. “A preacher’s house in San Miguel” wasn’t cutting it. Somehow I got in.

So I was a bit on edge as our van weaved past the miles-long cue of transport trucks at the Ukrainian border. When we came to a stop I saw no fewer than seven uniformed gentlemen standing behind us. I imagined them spending hours going through every single bag and all the supplies we were taking to our Ukrainian brethren — including, ahem, adult disposable undergarments.

Read Erik Tryggestad’s Insight column from Siret, Romania.

In their 29 years of marriage, Troy and Rebecca Allen have devoted themselves to caring for children.

Through birth, adoption and foster care, they’ve raised — or helped raise — more than 40 boys and girls.

They’ve spent the past six years as houseparents at Mount Dora Children’s Home, founded in 1945 in a picturesque town of 14,000 about 35 miles northwest of Orlando.

Bobby Ross Jr. tells the Allens’ story as he reports on trends causing staffing shortages for Christian children’s homes.