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Three members of a Church of Christ in Belgrade, Serbia, are recovering from stab wounds inflicted by a fellow church member just before Sunday worship.

But damage to the Central European congregation goes far beyond the bloodshed.

“The physical and emotional trauma is real, but it’s just the beginning,” said Gary Jackson, who helped plant the church along with Croatian minister Mladen Jovanovic in the mid-1980s.

Most of the 6.9 million people who live in Serbia identify as Eastern Orthodox, and Churches of Christ are classified as a “sect,” Jackson said.

The congregation has lost its meeting place since the attack, and Serbian media have characterized the church as a “new religious organization” that is “gathering sick people in order to manipulate them,” said Goran Zarubica, a church elder who was injured in the attack.

Read the full story by Erik Tryggestad.

“The Queen is dead. Long live the King.”

That’s how Patrick Boyns began his weekly video address after the death of his country’s longest-serving monarch, Queen Elizabeth II.

For Boyns, principal of the British Bible School in Peterborough, England, and for fellow members of Churches of Christ across the British Isles, those words have multiple shades of meaning. While they claim fealty to the newly named King Charles III, their true allegiance belongs to the King of Kings.

Read the full story by Erik Tryggestad.

During the pandemic lockdown, I rediscovered “The Waltons” and watched all 221 episodes.

Somewhere along the way, I learned that the classic TV show about a Depression-era family in rural Virginia made its prime-time debut on Sept. 14, 1972.

That’s 50 years ago.

I started emailing myself notes about religion references in specific episodes — those with titles such as “The Sinner,” “The Sermon” and “The Baptism” — and marked the anniversary date on my calendar. Journalists are always looking for a story, don’t you know?

Read the full column by Bobby Ross Jr.

The one-time farm town of Marysville, Ohio, about 30 miles northwest of Columbus, is booming.

The century-old Marysville Church of Christ is not.

Even before the pandemic, the congregation in central Ohio struggled to increase its flock, much less match the area’s rapid growth.

The past few years only exacerbated the numerical concerns as the congregation — like many Churches of Christ — grappled with COVID-19 restrictions, George Floyd’s murder and the nation’s political polarization.

Read the full story by Bobby Ross Jr.

Related: Why are some Christians so angry?

Fifty years after preaching his first sermon, Ron Edwards jokes that he knows the secret to ministry.

Change churches every three years.

Actually, Edwards — who is retiring from full-time preaching — spent the past 37 years serving the Roosevelt Drive Church of Christ in Jacksonville, N.C., a military community about 120 miles southeast of Raleigh.

Given the transitory nature of Marines and Navy sailors, it just seemed like his home church kept changing.

“I’m the only guy that the congregation moves, and I stay,” Edwards, who will turn 81 in October, said with a laugh.

Within a few years of moving to Jacksonville in 1985, Edwards said he came to recognize — and embrace — Roosevelt Drive’s role as a “training congregation.”

Read the full story by Bobby Ross Jr.