The "Disciple Now" event hosted by New Hope Baptist Church of Fayetteville's north campus in Georgia saw approximately 1,300 youth in attendance, with many making commitments to Christ. The praise and worship event, which ran March 24-26, was geared toward students in grades seven through 12. New Hope Senior Pastor Rhys Stenner told CP that attendees had "an anticipation and a preparedness for what God was going to do." The event featured large group gatherings led by nationally acclaimed speakers and worship bands, as well as small group Bible studies led by college students. Stenner says there has been a steady increase in participation in Disciple Now since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, adding that approximately 300 students attended Sunday morning worship where there were 12 "unexpected baptisms." He hopes the event will foster long-term "unity amongst the students" and that they will be "a witness to others about what God has done in their lives." Read more.

Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin signed House Bill 2171 into law on Sunday. The legislation prohibits the state government from unfairly imposing restrictions on houses of worship that are more severe than secular entities during public emergencies. The bill was one of several bills signed by Youngkin on a variety of issues that received bipartisan support. The law is set to take effect on July 1. Several states have passed laws aimed at ensuring houses of worship don't face more stringent regulations than secular businesses during times of emergency after multiple states faced litigation because Christians and other religious communities believed they were being treated unfairly during the COVID-19 pandemic. Some state restrictions allowed secular businesses more in-person capacity than church buildings and less strident social distancing. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled 5-4 in Nov. 2020 that houses of worship could not be singled out for "especially harsh treatment" by government emergency provisions. Read more.

Kentucky has become the latest state to ban puberty-blocking drugs and body-mutilating sex-change surgeries for children after the Republican-led Legislature overwhelmingly voted to override Democratic Gov. Andy Beshear's veto on Senate Bill 150 Wednesday. Nineteen protesters who were in the House gallery during the proceedings were arrested by Kentucky state police after they refused to stop shouting and chanting when they had been told to keep quiet. The American Principles Project celebrated the bill's passage, noting that Kentucky is the 13th state to pass such measures. APP President Terry Schilling said in a statement on Wednesday that many children "have been indoctrinated with the spurious idea that they can be 'born in the wrong body' and encouraged to respond to any discomfort with their identity by pursuing life-altering, dangerous drugs and medical procedures." Schilling added, "As we've seen this week, this ideological assault on our society has the potential to produce deadly consequences. Lawmakers are not only right to respond; they have an obligation to do so." Read more.

The UMC North Carolina Conference announced the closure of Fifth Avenue United Methodist Church of Wilmington on Sunday—a surprise move that came as the historic congregation planned to hold a vote to possibly disaffiliate from the United Methodist Church. The regional body claimed the closing of the approximately 170-year-old church was due to declining attendance. Church members at the Sunday evening meeting expected to discuss their plans to potentially disaffiliate from the UMC and were shocked by the closure. The congregation's leadership voted in February to begin the process of disaffiliation, following the route that over 240 congregations in the conference took last year. Fifth Avenue member Justin Williams Pope emailed CP a statement from the congregation, saying they were "led to believe the informational session Sunday evening had been scheduled by the District Superintendent as part of an authorized disaffiliation process. Instead, the members were informed that the local church was closed, effectively ending Fifth Avenue's opportunity to disaffiliate. Fifth Avenue never asked for, agreed to or wanted the closure, nor were its members ever given a chance to participate in the decision to close the church down." The congregation called on local district superintendent and Bishop Connie Mitchell Shelton to reconsider the decision, adding, "We are playing by the conference's own rules, but now appear to have been completely shut down. It's sad and it breaks our heart to be treated this way." Read more.

Church Answers CEO Thom Rainer offers seven considerations to mull over before leaving your church. Among his recommendations: make certain you have prayed about the decision, consider your motives for wanting to leave, and understand that your decision may hurt others. Read the full list here.

The state of higher education in the U.S. is not good, and Christian institutions are no exception, write John Stonestreet and Timothy Padget. In this op-ed, the authors discuss long-established Christian institutions announcing cutbacks, budget crises, and restructuring and how the pandemic and the push for online education have played into their struggles. Despite these challenges, the authors contend there are also opportunities for improvement, asserting that the time to "build better schools and great colleges" is now. Read more.

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Two women who survived a Chinese "reeducation" camp for Uyghurs and other ethnic minorities provided harrowing accounts of torture, gang rapes, and brainwashing when testifying before a special United States House of Representatives committee focused on how to handle the threat of China. "The Chinese Communist Party's Ongoing Uyghur Genocide" hearing focused on the Chinese government's treatment of Uyghurs, a predominantly Muslim ethnic group in the far-western province of Xinjiang. The U.S. has accused China of genocide for imprisoning over 1 million Uyghur and other ethnic minority Muslims in concentration camps since 2017. Gulbahar Haitiwaji, a former concentration camp prisoner and co-author of How I Survived a Chinese 'Reeducation' Camp: A Uyghur Woman's Story, described through a translator how prisoners caught speaking their native Uyghur language would be locked in a "tiger chair" contraption for up to 3 days, with the metal seat preventing the occupant from moving. She also recounted being chained to a bed for 20 days and explained that prisoners were forced to study Chinese history and law for 11 hours per day. Qelbinur Sidik, a member of China's ethnic Uzbek minority, described how Chinese prison guards used four types of torture: "electric baton, electric helmet, electric glove and a tiger chair." Women were also subject to gang rape, where guards would insert their private parts into the electric batons to rape and torture the prisoners. Both women managed to flee Communist China and now reside in Europe. Read more.

Carl Lentz and his wife, Laura, are gearing up to tell their story more than two years after a sex and leadership scandal led to his firing from Hillsong Church NYC. The couple will give their first public interview in a new FX docuseries that is set to premiere in May. "The Secrets of Hillsong" comes from Scout Productions, an Emmy and Academy Award-winning multimedia company known for creating content such as "Queer Eye" for Netflix and an LGBT documentary called "Equal." Variety reports that the project is being created in partnership with Vanity Fair Studios and will be based on Vanity Fair's reporting on Hillsong. "Along with unprecedented access to Carl and Laura Lentz, 'The Secrets of Hillsong' offers new insights into how decades of scandal and corruption went unchecked within the church, and more importantly, … what it meant for the community left in their rubble," Joel Chiodi, an executive producer of the docuseries told Variety. "The Secrets of Hillsong" will premiere on FX on May 19 at 10 p.m. ET. Read more.