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“Gandalf isn’t supposed to die.”

That text appeared on my phone yesterday from a New York City pastor who worked closely with Tim Keller. It made me smile and cry at the same time. So many of us called Tim “Gandalf,” in part as a tribute to his frequent J. R. R. Tolkien references, but also because he fit the image of the sage wizard guiding us hapless hobbits out of harm’s way.

In the ...

Sergei Karpenko’s Chicago church is now almost entirely made up of refugees from the Russian war against Ukraine.

Many of them aren’t from a church background, so the pastor of Bible Church of Ukraine-Chicago spends his mornings eating breakfast with the new arrivals and evenings hosting Bible studies in his apartment.

“It happens by the providence of God that I am here, and God sent new people from Ukraine,” Karpenko, who is Ukrainian himself, told CT. “I never prepared ...