As Zach Williams started writing a book about his life, he realized “there’s a lot in here” that can offer people hope. Now the Christian artist is preparing for the Feb. 27 release of his memoir, “Rescue Story.”

Williams grew up in the church but fell into a rock band lifestyle of drugs and addiction as a young adult. After hearing a life-changing song on Christian radio in 2012, he gave his life to Jesus at age 33.

The Grammy and Dove Award-winning singer and songwriter, now 45, broke into Christian music with the hit song “Chain Breaker.” Since then, Williams has topped charts and collaborated with artists including Dolly Parton.

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Earlier this month, Williams spoke to Tré Goins-Phillips of CBN News about his life, his new book, and his prayers for fans and readers.

Zach Williams Share ‘Incredible Story’ of God at Work

The memoir tells the “pretty incredible story…of what God’s done in my life,” Zach Williams said. His goal is to offer people hope because “if God can do it for me, he can do it for any one of us.”

Though Williams had a Christian upbringing, he “turned my back and ran” from God during high school and college. After a “downward spiral,” he discovered the guitar and songwriting. When Williams joined a rock band, he assumed he needed to embrace “a certain lifestyle,” filled with drugs and alcohol.

After 10 or 15 years of that, the musician was “at the end of my rope” and “sick of what I was doing.” While on tour in Europe in 2012, Williams challenged God, saying, “If you’re real, prove it.” Shortly afterward, he heard Big Daddy Weave’s song “Redeemed” while in the band’s van.

“It just hit me,” Williams said. From his hotel, he called his wife and said, “I’m done. I’m out of here.” Back home, Williams surrendered his life to Jesus while kneeling in a closet. Instead of feeling uncool, he said, that was “the most macho cool thing I could ever do.”

After asking God to save him, Williams felt like a weight had been lifted. He quit the band and found a church. Soon he began serving as a worship leader and writing Christian songs, traveling back and forth from his home in Arkansas to Nashville.

Zach Williams: From Mess to Message

Zach Williams described the steadfastness of his parents, who never stopped praying for and supporting him. They attended his rock shows at “smoky bars…sitting there praying that God was going to take all of this mess and turn it into some message.”

His parents often prayed Jeremiah 29:11 over him, Williams said, and a pastor once told them their son would be “a voice for my generation.”

“The Chosen” creator Dallas Jenkins took to social media this week to voice support for the He Gets Us ad campaign amid a swirl of criticism surrounding a Super Bowl commercial depicting apparent culture war enemies washing each other’s feet.

“Jesus didn’t teach hate,” the commercial declares. “He washed feet.”  

The commercial elicited strong responses from Christians and non-Christians alike. Some Christian leaders expressed outrage, characterizing the ad as “heretical” and “apostasy.” Conversely, those who are unfamiliar with the story of Jesus washing his disciples’ feet expressed bewilderment, as one news outlet reported, “Super Bowl viewers baffled by ‘foot fetish’ commercial.”

He Gets Us, which is managed by the nonprofit organization Come Near, was launched in 2022 with the goal of spending $1 billion in marketing and advertising to spark interest in Jesus and the Christian faith. 

RELATED: He Gets Us: Reframing Jesus for a Skeptical Generation

The campaign previously ran ads during the 2023 Super Bowl, which also drew criticism. Some Christian leaders have expressed discomfort with He Gets Us spending money on advertising that could be spent on humanitarian efforts, while others take exception with the campaign’s depiction of Jesus, which they have characterized as soft on sin.

A common theme of the criticism surrounding this year’s Super Bowl commercial has been what some perceive as the implication that washing someone’s feet is tantamount to condoning their sins, including abortion or immoral sexual behavior.

In the week that has followed the Super Bowl, some online creators have produced parody remakes of the commercial. One features images of people who famously experienced dramatic conversions to Christianity, including tattoo artist Kat Von D and writer Rosaria Butterfield, and changed the tagline from “He gets us” to “he saves us.”

Another, produced by Christian satire site The Babylon Bee, is titled “Satan: He Gets Us” and emphasizes that Satan “affirms everything about you.”

Nevertheless, the goal of the He Gets Us campaign is to generate conversations, get Bible resources into the hands of seekers, and connect people with local churches—and it seems to be accomplishing those ends. 

RELATED: He Gets Us: Offending (Some) Christians While Reaching the Unchurched

He Gets Us spokesperson Greg Miller told ChurchLeaders that the He Gets Us website had more than 715,000 visits in the first 18 hours following the Super Bowl. Miller also said that the average time users were spending on the site doubled and “thousands of individuals took action to Read More via the reading plans available online or requested to be connected to a group through Alpha.”

Michael Shamblin, son of Remnant Fellowship Church leader Gwen Shamblin Lara, has broken his silence about his mother’s church, calling it a “cult” and his mother a “narcissist.” Shamblin spoke to investigative reporter Phil Williams, who first met Michael Shamblin over 20 years ago.

“Gwen Shamblin Lara was a narcissist. She always had the answer. She knew more than anybody in the room wherever she went,” Shamblin told Williams, chief investigative reporter for NewsChannel 5 in Nashville, Tennessee. Williams conducted an extensive interview with Shamblin that is being released in several installments.

Shamblin used to be a worship leader at Remnant Fellowship Church, which his mother founded in Brentwood, Tennessee. “It’s hard to call it a church in my mind,” he said, because of all the people harmed by it. “It is a church, but…it’s a cult.”

RELATED: Gwen Shamblin Lara Accused of Being a Cult Leader in New HBO Docuseries

When pressed, Shamblin added, “I do believe it’s a cult,” explaining the reason why is because Remnant “is a group of people who are devoted to a person, Gwen Shamblin Lara.”

Michael Shamblin: ‘She Loved the Spotlight’

Gwen Shamblin Lara became well-known in the 1990s due to her Weigh Down Workshop, which was offered in many churches, and her book, “The Weigh Down Diet.” She founded Remnant Fellowship in 1999 with Weigh Down participants as core members and herself as the primary leader in the church.

On May 29, 2021, Shamblin Lara and six other people died tragically in a plane crash. Among the deceased was her husband, former “Tarzan” actor Joe Lara, as well as Remnant Fellowship church leaders David Martin and his wife Jennifer, Jonathan Walters and his wife Jessica, and Shamblin Lara’s son-in-law, Brandon Hannah. Michael Shamblin and Elizabeth Hannah, Shamblin Lara’s two children, were not in the crash, and Elizabeth Hannah remains a leader in her mother’s church.

In September 2021, Max released the first three episodes in a docuseries titled, “The Way Down: God, Greed, and the Cult of Gwen Shamblin.” The final two episodes came out in April 2022. The docuseries makes the case that Gwen Shamblin Lara was a cult leader and that Remnant Fellowship was spiritually abusive. Former members recount brainwashing, child abuse, manipulation, eating disorders, depression, and suicidal ideation.

Michael Shamblin did not appear in the docuseries but told Williams, “I think they actually did a fantastic job.” According to Shamblin, people who attend Remnant are not allowed to watch the series.

(RNS) — Laura Hepker, a 50-year-old single IT manager, said she has felt like a unicorn in the evangelical Christian churches that she knew from a young age. “The structures of the church,” she said, “are very much designed for family.”

Data suggests Hepker is anything but a unicorn. Almost half of American adults are now single (including the widowed and divorced), and a thought-provoking Valentine’s Day-themed Pew Research Center study a few years ago suggested that the majority of unmarried men and women aren’t looking to date (and if they are, it’s complicated).

Meanwhile, many churches suffering a decline in attendance tend to focus on traditional families. Studies have shown that parents choose churches with their children’s Christian formation in mind, and many pastors are charged with providing ministries that attract these parents to help their congregations survive in an increasingly secular culture.

The emphasis on family ministry, however, is stuck in the demographics of midcentury America, when houses of worship were thriving. “The church model that worked in 1960 doesn’t work anymore,” said Peter McGraw, a professor of marketing and psychology at the University of Colorado at Boulder and author of the recently published “Solo.”

In an environment where churches are hoping to attract and retain members, McGraw argues, “Why do anything that marginalizes a large group of your congregation?”

McGraw advises churches to look closely at their demographic. Singles, he said, are more prone to be involved in their communities. “If your goal is to build community, recognize the ways that singles are involved in building community. It’s not a dramatic shift, but it requires a shift for people to feel like they belong.”

That includes, he suggests, not only creating inclusive congregational groups, but details like making sure that promotional materials such as emails and newsletters target everyone.

Evangelical churches seem to be the most dedicated to pursuing families as members — or creating families out of their unpaired members.

Katelyn Lettich, a 28-year-old director of the evangelical Christian organization Young Life, said it seems as if the best the churches she has attended can offer young single members is dating opportunities. She advocates putting more unmarried people on church boards and planning committees to make sure singles’ voice are heard, but also to signal that they are as welcome as marrieds. “Invite single people into normal spaces,” said Lettich.

Younger singles aren’t the only ones looking to be included. Lindy Dimeo, 68, a retired crisis pregnancy center director, is a member of Blue Ridge Community Church, a small evangelical church near Charlottesville, Virginia. Dimeo and her husband played in the worship band together, but after he died, she took a few months off. “At the time it was hard living a single life in a family-oriented culture.”

But she said that it’s possible to grow into a churchgoer in one’s own right. Almost 20 years after her husband’s death, Dimeo said: “It would be nice to have somebody special, but it doesn’t impact my life at church anymore. My church is a very close community.”

Mainline Protestant churches, while perhaps less focused on the theology of family, also have room for improvement, said the Rev. Jennifer Schultz, pastor of Bethlehem Lutheran Church in Los Alamitos, California. Schultz is divorced and said her congregation, largely retired adults, has never known her as anything but single. It has never been an issue, she said: “We provide a space for single people, but don’t dwell on it, and don’t make them feel any different.”

(RNS) — The Christian production company Revelation Media will unveil its new animated Bible project on Easter, with the first segment aiming to depict the stories of the Book of Genesis in a child-friendly way.

Watching the iBible will appeal to digital natives more than reading Scripture, said Steve Cleary, executive director and producer of the series.

“We want kids to read their Bible, but if we don’t reach them in a visual manner, we’re seeing the result. They don’t. They’re not reading their Bible,” he said.

He believes that short attention spans and a growing aversion to reading are making it impossible for kids to get interested in the Bible. Churches, said Cleary, are late to the party when it comes to finding creative ways to interest internet-savvy kids in biblical texts.

His solution is to reach young kids where they are: on screens. From the creation story to the death of Joseph, the 42 episodes will tell stories from the Old Testament in hopes of increasing a younger generation’s biblical literacy.

This animated Bible translation, the first of its kind, he said, strives to be a “legitimate Bible translation.” All scripts of the seven-minute episodes are approved by the Summer Institute of Linguistics, an evangelical nonprofit that rates the accuracy of Bible translations.

The episodes, which are planned to depict the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament, were also reviewed by Anglican, Presbyterian, Baptist, Pentecostal and Methodist clergy members. The entire project is expected to take years to complete.

In the meantime, an episode titled “The Real Story of Jesus” is already available for users who want to skip to the Gospels. Each episode is also followed by a discussion prompt for kids to consider.

With a background in animation — Cleary co-produced the animated “The Pilgrim’s Progress” in 2019 — he said he’s seen the power of visual learning for Generation Z and Generation Alpha.

“You can read something dramatic and easily forget it. But you’ll never forget what you see,” said Cleary, who has recruited around 50 people to work on the project now.

The 500,000 viewers who watched “Pilgrim’s Progress” during the COVID-19 lockdown were also the first to hear about the iBible project via email, and their monetary donations supported the project’s early days. According to a Revelation Media press release, the entire iBible project will require $25 million in funding.

Cleary said translating the Bible in short animation clips allows pastors and parents to touch on taboo topics with kids.