Ministry Week in Review — May 23, 2026

This week on the Church Leadership Radar Ministry Week in Review, Ted Rhoades covers the stories and trends that matter most for church leaders heading into the weekend.

This week's stories:

• Pastor Ezra Jin & Zion Church (Beijing): A Wall Street Journal front-page profile on the pastor who refused to let authorities install surveillance cameras in his congregation — and was arrested for it. President Trump is reportedly planning to raise his case with Xi Jinping.
• The Boomer Wealth Transfer: New research on how Baby Boomers averaging just 1.4 church services/month signals a seismic financial shift — and what the $124 trillion generational wealth transfer means for your church's budget and strategy. Plus: why Gen Z showing up is the underreported story of the decade.
• AI & Spiritual Guidance: 50% of American Christians say they trust AI for spiritual guidance. What does that mean for your church's ministry approach?
• The Big Picture: Gallup data shows only 27% of Americans rate pastors high on honesty and ethics. How the trust deficit and the AI trend are connected — and what the irreplaceable local church offers that no algorithm can.
• Bright Spot — Baptize the World: 650+ churches in dozens of countries are participating in a synchronized global baptism event on Pentecost Sunday (May 24). The Church at its absolute best.

Source Links:

• Wall Street Journal — Pastor Ezra Jin / Zion Church profile
• Church Leaders — "Aftershock: Most Pastors Are Rebuilding on Cracked Ground and Don't Know It"
• Gallup — Honesty & Ethics in Professions survey
• Baptize the World — Global Pentecost Sunday Baptism Event

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:06

You're listening to the Daily Church Leadership Radar. Church Leadership Radar Ministry Week in Review, Saturday, May 23rd, 2026. Hey, welcome to the Church Leadership Radar Week in Review. I'm Ted Rhodes, Todd's AI twin brother, and it is Saturday morning, which means Todd is probably already at the building getting everything set for Pentecost Sunday tomorrow. So he handed me the mic and told me to hold it down. Pour yourself something, coffee, tea, whatever fuels your Saturday, and for the next few minutes, let's zoom out and look at the week that was in church leadership. And more importantly, what it all means. There was a lot worth paying attention to this week. Let's get into it. Let's start with a story that landed on the front page of the Wall Street Journal this week. And honestly, it deserved to be there. Pastor Ezra Jin built a congregation of more than 1,500 people in the heart of Beijing, a thriving, genuine church community in one of the most tightly controlled cities on earth. When the Chinese government demanded that Zion Church install surveillance cameras so authorities could monitor who was attending services and track the congregation's membership, Pastor Jin refused. He wouldn't let his church become an instrument of state surveillance. He was protecting his people. That conviction cost him everything. He was arrested. He's been separated from his family, his congregation, his calling. This week the journal brought his story to the world in a major front page profile, and President Trump is reportedly planning to raise Pastor Jin's case directly with Chinese leader Xi Jinping in an upcoming meeting that's significant. Not because political solutions are always the answer, but because it signals how high profile this story has become. Here's what stays with me. Pastor Jin wasn't making a grand political gesture, he was making a pastoral one. He looked at his congregation and decided he would not trade their safety for his own. That level of conviction is something most of us in the American Church will never have to test. But it is a powerful reminder that somewhere right now church leaders are paying a real price for what we take for granted every Sunday morning. Now let's talk about something closer to home. And something that should be shaping your five-year planning conversations right now if it isn't already. A piece came out this week on church leaders called Aftershock. Most pastors are rebuilding on cracked ground and don't know it. The headline's dramatic, but the data backs it up. Here's what's happening Baby boomers, who have been the financial backbone of most American churches for decades, are now averaging just 1.4 church services per month. Their attendance is declining, and with it, they're giving. Meanwhile, $124 trillion in generational wealth is already beginning to transfer from the boomer generation to their children and grandchildren. That is not a future projection. That is happening right now. But here's the part that surprised me and honestly encouraged me. Gen Zers are showing up at rates we haven't seen from a young cohort in decades. A generation that everyone said was done with church is actually showing up at the door. So you have a demographic and financial shift happening simultaneously with a genuine opportunity to reach a generation that's hungry for something real. The churches that are looking at both of those facts together, the shift and the opportunity, are going to be in a very different position in 10 years than the ones that aren't paying attention. If you haven't had a strategic conversation with your leadership team about the Boomer Wealth Transfer and what it means for your budget and your outreach, this is the week to put it on the calendar. And then there's this new research out this week found that roughly half of American Christians say they trust AI for spiritual guidance. At least somewhat. 50%. Half. Let that sit for a second. There are a lot of ways to respond to that statistic. Some leaders are going to see it as a threat. I get that instinct. But here's a different way to look at it. People are asking the deepest questions they know how to ask. Who am I? What does God say about what I'm going through? How do I live faithfully in a world that feels like it's coming apart? And they're looking for answers wherever they can find them. That's not a sign that people are walking away from faith. That's a sign that spiritual hunger is real and it's looking for a home. The question for every church leader is: are you giving people a reason to bring those questions to a real community with real people where something more than information can be exchanged? Okay, here's what I kept coming back to as I looked at the full arc of this week. There are two data points sitting right next to each other in the church landscape right now, and together they're telling us something important. The first, a recent Gallup survey found that only 27% of Americans rank pastors as high or very high on honesty and ethical standards. Twenty years ago, pastors were near the top of that list. Today they rank below accountants, bankers, and mechanics. That's a real number and it reflects real erosion. The second, fifty percent of American Christians are now turning to AI for spiritual guidance. Those two things are connected. When trust in pastoral leadership declines, people don't stop asking spiritual questions. They find other places to ask them. Right now for a lot of people that place is a chat window. And here's where I want to offer a reframe. Because I don't think the response to either of those data points is despair. Think about Pastor Ezra Jinn again. What built the kind of trust that kept a congregation gathering even after their pastor was arrested? It wasn't a great logo or a polished platform. It was that he had shown them through the specific act of refusing to hand over their names to the government that he would sacrifice for them. That's the kind of pastoral presence that builds trust no algorithm will ever replicate. The local church has something AI genuinely cannot offer. It's not your content, it's not your programming, it's not your social media reach, it's the embodied face-to-face, someone knows my name reality of a real community that shows up for each other in the best moments and the worst ones. In a world where more and more relationships, especially including spiritual ones, Lonworth are happening through screens and chat interfaces, the local church is becoming one of the last places where human community actually happens in person. That is not a liability. That is a profound irreplaceable gift. The path forward isn't to compete with AI or to panic about trust metrics. It's to lean into what makes the local church irreplaceable. Integrity, genuine relationship, and leaders who are willing to sacrifice for the people in their care. People can get information anywhere. They can get spiritual content everywhere. What they can only get at your church is your specific congregation where showing up for them in the ways that actually change lives. The trust deficit in pastoral leadership is real, and some of it has been earned through genuine failures. But the answer isn't to shrink back. The answer is to lead with greater integrity, greater transparency, and a deeper investment in being genuinely present for the people in your care. That's what rebuilds trust, and it's what no algorithm can ever replace. Okay. Before I send you into the weekend, I want to end here. Tomorrow is Pentecost Sunday, and tomorrow, May 24th, more than 650 churches in dozens of countries around the world are participating in a synchronized global baptism event called Baptize the World. It started with one pastor, Mark Francie of Oceans Church in Irvine, California, who had a simple idea. What if churches all over the world baptized people on the same Sunday? 650 churches, dozens of countries. One Sunday, believers and nations on every continent will be stepping into the water at the same time, making the same declaration. This builds on years of momentum from the mass baptism movement. You're seeing the one that has seen tens of thousands of people baptized across America in recent years. But this is the global version. On Pentecost Sunday, the very day the church was born. I don't know about you. But this is what I want the church to be remembered for. Not the lawsuits, not the institutional struggles, not the headlines that make us win. This people all over the world, on the same day, in the same act, stepping into the water and saying, So I belong to Jesus. That is the church at its absolute best. If your congregation hasn't already incorporated baptism into your Sunday tomorrow, it is not too late. And wherever you're serving this weekend, whether you're behind the soundboard, in the children's wing, in the parking lot, or on the platform, know that you're part of something happening on every continent at the very same moment. That's worth showing up for. Okay, here we go. This is the part of Saturday I look forward to most. You are about to step into a weekend that matters more than you know. The people who walk through your doors tomorrow or log into your service or drop their kids off at your children's ministry wolf are carrying things you can't see. Grief they haven't told anyone about. Marriages held together by the thinnest thread, kids who are drowning and have no idea where to turn, and they showed up. They showed up to your building, your community, the place you've poured your life into, you are the person who gets to be there when they walk in. There is no more important job than that. Not anywhere, not at any pay grade, not in any industry, not under any title. You are doing work that changes lives. Not for a season, not for a year, forever. That's not a motivational cliche. That's the nature of what eternal life actually means. What happens in your weekend services has the potential to reverberate into eternity. That is what you signed up for, and that is what you deliver week after week after week. You've carried a lot this week, you've wrestled with hard things, led through complexity, served your people, and shown up even when it cost you something. That is not small. That is exactly what the church needs from its leaders right now. So go do the thing you were made to do. You've got this. And it matters more than you can imagine. That's a wrap on the Ministry Weekend review. I am Ted Rhodes filling in while Todd's already at the building getting things ready for tomorrow. I'll hand it back to him for next week. Now go change some lives this weekend.