Sunday, January 4, 2026
CAC faculty member Brian McLaren introduces the 2026 Daily Meditationstheme: “Good News for a Fractured World.”
Our world is deeply fractured. We see the symptoms all around us. We see it in politics. We see it in social media. We see it in our families and denominations. Those fractures couldn’t come at a worse time. We need to come together as never before to address our environmental and climate crises, to resist authoritarian movements that have the power of billionaires, the power of social media and AI, at their disposal to divide us further and further. We need to come together to explore better ways of living with ourselves, with one another, and with this sacred beautiful earth.
But just when we need to come together, we see ourselves fracturing and retreating into our opposite corners of isolation, our little echo chambers, where we only hear what we want to hear, which often is the opposite of what we need to hear. These fractures make us feel afraid and sometimes depressed, reactive, and paralyzed, and soon we feel ourselves being sucked into being part of the disease instead of part of the healing.
For spiritually alive people, for people of deep and genuine faith, we don’t want to surrender to despair and cynicism, reactivity and fragmentation. We want to be healed and empowered, so we can participate in healing and empowering other people. [1]
Many people today feel disillusioned by the divisions that Christianity has helped create. Yet even amid this fracturing, faithful people are reimagining what it means to follow Jesus with compassion and courage.
Across every traditional Christian denomination, there are widespread calls for change. Imaginative scholars, liturgists, organizers, networkers, and pastors are creating resources and spaces for beautiful new things to be born….
These redeemers of Christianity are out there, by the hundreds, thousands, and tens of thousands. Catholic and Protestant, Pentecostal and Mainline, Eastern Orthodox and other … I know them. Some are heads of communions, bishops, seminary presidents, and professors, with well-known names, with best-selling books and big platforms. Some are pastors and church planters, leading and forming faith communities of all shapes, sizes, and denominations. Some are nuns, friars, Catholic workers, organizing for the common good. Some are podcasters, publishers, bloggers, producing creative content to help in the transition process. Some are artists, integrating needed truth with arresting beauty. Most are quiet people, living ordinary lives of extraordinary love and grace. When they’re attacked, they keep moving forward with humble, gracious confidence. When they’re discouraged, they find new inner strength. When they think about leaving Christianity, which probably happens quite often, they say, “Not today. Not me.” You know this is true, because there’s a good chance that you’re one of them….
It will never be perfect. Of course. It’s a human enterprise, and we humans complicate everything. But at least this emerging Christianity could become humble and teachable, curious and self-critical, creative and humane, diverse and harmonious.
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Finding Good News in the Bible
Monday, January 5, 2026
The good news or the living “Word of God” is personified in Jesus but is communicated throughout Scripture.
—Richard Rohr, The Great Themes of Scripture: Old Testament
For many of us, the Bible has been both a source of wisdom and a source of wounding. It has inspired liberation and love, just as it has also been used to justify domination and division. In 2026, we’ll return to this ancient text with open hearts and new eyes, exploring how it might again speak good news to a fractured world. Brian McLaren shares:
One of the weapons we see people use in our hostilities and fragmentation is the Bible. Many of us have been wounded by the Bible wielded as a weapon. Many of us have wielded the Bible as a weapon ourselves and wounded others. Many of us have just stayed away from the Bible entirely because it feels like something dangerous—a sharpened sword, a loaded gun, a ticking time bomb, a toxic recipe…. But if we learn to read the Bible in conversation with our honest experience and in light of our living traditions, we can learn and model a better way.
Throughout the 2026 Daily Meditations, we will be looking at the Bible in new and fresh ways—as good news for a fractured world. Let me mention three of those new and fresh ways. First, we won’t read the Bible as if it were a divinely dictated book that descended out of heaven on a parachute. Instead, we will be reading the Bible as a set of precious literary artifacts that emerge in the unfolding story of humanity. We will take seriously the historical, social, ecological, economic, and political context of the Bible, and we will dig deep for needed ancient wisdom to help us today.
Second, we won’t read the Bible as if it were a manual to help people dominate and exploit the earth and other people. It certainly has been and is being used in that way, but we will instead explore the Bible for inspiration—for creative and nonviolent resistance to that kind of domination and exploitation.
And third, we won’t read the Bible as if it were an evacuation plan, preparing us to give up on the earth and be beamed up to heaven. Instead, we will explore the Bible as a prompt for both deep contemplation and for deep, loving action.
We will approach the Bible contemplatively, quieting our kneejerk reactions, exposing our deep-seated biases, challenging our untested assumptions, and leading us to see the divine in creation, in our own hearts, and in one another. And, especially in the life and teaching of Jesus, we will see a call to special kind of action in the world—nonviolent action, creative action, Christlike action where leadership looks like service and where the power of love outlasts and overcomes the love of power.
Discussion Questions for CoFew:
1. McLaren describes people who, when tempted to leave Christianity, say “Not today. Not me.” What keeps you showing up, even when the fractures feel overwhelming? When have you most needed to say those words?
2. The devotionals talk about reading the Bible with “open hearts and new eyes” – not as a weapon but as inspiration for nonviolent resistance. Where have you experienced the Bible being wielded as a weapon? How might we model that “better way” McLaren describes?
