“The intuitive moral structure of our modern social imaginary prioritizes victimhood, sees selfhood in psychological terms, regards traditional sexual codes as oppressive and life denying, and places a premium on the individual’s right to define his or her own existence. All these things play into legitimizing and strengthening those groups that can define themselves in such terms. They capture, one might say, the spirit of the age.”―Carl R. Trueman, The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self: Cultural Amnesia, Expressive Individualism, and the Road to Sexual Revolution

Celebrating 2024

Church Ambassador Network 

• Grew from 2,200 churches to over 4,500 churches. 

• Joined over 800 people in prayer at our Prayer at the Statehouse events.

• Saw over 650 attendees at The Essential Summit.

• Developed a biblical cultural engagement fellowship, the Minnery Fellowship, to serve as an ongoing professional development resource for church leaders.

Ohio Christian Education Network

• Oversaw the EdChoice expansion that allowed every student in Ohio to become eligible for an EdChoice scholarship to attend a school of his or her choice.

• Distributed nearly $5 million in scholarships to students attending member schools.

• Opened our second school-in-a-church and made it possible for more churches to join this movement.

Christian Business Partnership

• Brought in 300 total members

• Made it possible for over 1,000 employees to be covered by values-based health insurance

• Opened four chapters across the state of Ohio

Center for Christian Virtue Policy Team

• Saw over 9,000 messages from Ohio voters sent to lawmakers.

• Provided expert testimony in multiple committee hearings for 12 separate bills.

• Supported five priority bills that the Ohio General Assembly ultimately passed into law.

Anticipating 2025

Church Ambassador Network 

• Successfully launching our three Minnery Fellowship Cohorts with over 50 participants.

• Planning our 2025 Essential Summit with Rosaria Butterfield, Carl Trueman, George Barna, and others.

• Announcing a new initiative to partner with churches to proactively engage their communities with a vision for what healthy marriages and families means for a thriving society. 

Ohio Christian Education Network

• Supporting the launch of eight new Christian schools in Ohio.

• Establishing the United States Christian Education Network and opening state-level networks in up to six states.

• Raising $5 million through OCEN SGO for student scholarships for the 2025-26 school year.

• Continuing to expand school choice opportunities through legislative action in the General Assembly.

Christian Business Partnership

• Focusing on opening new regional councils in various locations around Ohio.

• Extending values-based insurance coverage to assist more businesses in offering insurance that matches their values.

• Rolling out new health and wellness benefits through Storehouse Wellness.

Center for Christian Virtue Policy Team

• Launching Hope and a Future, a groundbreaking report from Center for Christian Virtue and the Institute for Family Studies, to address the collapse of families in Ohio, which is the true root cause of many of the problems we see around us—including abortion, violent crime, addiction, and plummeting academic performance.

• Advocating for policies in the General Assembly that promote biblical marriage and family formation.

Ohio Prayer Guide

We have partnered with Pray For Ohio to bring you a monthly topical prayer guide that can be shared with your church. The Prayer Guide for February will help us unite and focus our prayers as we pray for Ohio in 2025. 

Resources

• Season 3 of Reconstructing Faith podcast with Trevin Wax is now live. In these, Trevin takes a closer look at an indispensable element that will contribute to the rebuilding of the church today: personal spiritual growth and development. Discover the church's challenges for spiritual formation. Glean how this generation can grow in faith, hope, and love—offering the fragrance of faithfulness to the world. 

• In this article for the National Review, Leah Sargeant and Dan Darling argue for a Pro-Family Policy from the new administration.

• The temporal relevance and eternal perspective of The Pour Over continue to be a blessing. Each email is an easy 5-minute overview of news and events through a biblical lens. You can subscribe here.

• Be on the lookout for more information from Storehouse Wellness in the coming months. Thanks to a partnership agreement with Center for Christian Virtue, we are able to offer new wellness resources at a steep discount to the churches in our network. 

If you believe other pastors in your network would benefit from receiving The Times, please forward this to them and encourage them to subscribe!

Upcoming Events

• Join us for an important livestream with Michael Graham (MDiv, Reformed Theological Seminary), program director for The Keller Center. He is the executive producer and writer of As in Heaven and coauthor of The Great Dechurching. This webinar, the Rechurching Toolkit, will be held on Thursday, February 27, at 12:00 pm. You can register here.

• Interested in our monthly Lunch and Learn Livestreams? Watch for your invitation to attend each month. We're looking forward to hearing from these speakers in 2025: 

  February - Rechurching Toolkit with Michael Graham

  March - Learning from Sweden with Per Ewert, Director of The Clapham Institute

  April - Instilling a Biblical Worldview Into Future Generations with Jeff Myers, Director of Summit Ministries

  May - Applying Augustine’s City of God to Western Society Today with Christopher Watkin, Author of Biblical Critical Theory.

Pastor Testimony

“As an evangelical pastor, I so appreciate the good work CCV is doing to promote godly values in the public arena.  I’ve been impressed with their passionate, grounded leadership and their gospel-centered philosophy, and I hope and pray that their work continues to flourish for decades to come!”―Pastor Steve Benninger, Lead Pastor at New Life Church

Closing Thoughts

“Pride is the beginning of sin. And what is pride but the craving for undue exaltation? And this is undue exaltation - when the soul abandons Him to whom it ought to cleave as its end, and becomes a kind of end to itself.”―Augustine of Hippo, City of God

A number of churches have decided to support CCV and the Church Ambassador Network financially through their budget. To set up a recurring monthly donation to CCV, please visit CCV.org/Donate and make sure to click the check box at the end of the form, above the comments field, before submitting your gift. 

 We would be honored if you chose to invest a portion of God’s resources into our effort to serve and support churches in Ohio with resources to help them carry out the Great Commission in the spirit of The Greatest Commandments in our current cultural context.