Advancing the stories and ideas of the kingdom of God.
Nicole Massie Martin
CT Staff
A letter from Mission Advancement in our November/December issue.
There’s no place like home. There’s no place like home.” These now-iconic words defined Dorothy Gale’s ultimate quest in The Wizard of Oz.
In every song and with everyone she met, Dorothy articulated her heart’s desire to return to a place of familiarity, love, and belonging.
We all long for a place to call home. We yearn for what the prophet Isaiah saw, a future where people live in “peaceful dwelling places, in secure homes, in undisturbed places of rest” (Isa. 32:18). This sense of home involves more than just a physical location. These peaceful dwelling places are also the relationships that stabilize, the communities that shape, and the structures that speak to who we long to be. While we yearn for places that satisfy our core need to belong, the global reality of displacement often keeps literal home and safety out of reach.
All of us can ask: How can we experience God in the tension of our earthly places and our heavenly home? What do we do if our current places actually detract from a more magnificent vision of our eternal home to come? You hold in your hands an issue that wrestles with these questions.
Each weekly CT Pastors issue equips you with the best wisdom and practical tools for church ministry.
This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.
Thanks for signing up.
Explore more newsletters—don’t forget to start your free 60-day trial of CT to get full access to all articles in every newsletter.
Sorry, something went wrong. Please try again.
At Christianity Today, we are navigating the balance between earthly displacement and the promise of our ultimate home with Christ. We are pilgrims on the way. We embrace this in-between space through stories and ideas that elevate the kingdom of God, whose fulfillment and shalom we so desperately desire now.
With your continued support, we will not only learn to thrive as sojourners and pilgrims for our time here but also raise a new generation with the necessary resilience to find home wherever God’s presence may lead them.
Through The Next Gen Initiative, which is part of The One Kingdom Campaign, CT partners are helping us equip and inspire the next generation of the church with a compelling vision of what it looks like to follow Jesus. Together, we’re also creating a sense of home, a place to belong in a world that often divides and isolates.
There is an urgent cry for the church to redeem and reclaim the places and spaces around us. Like Dorothy, we can find ourselves following yellow brick roads, wondering if we’ll ever reach the answers we seek. But with Jesus as our focal point, we can walk together in our communal calling until we arrive at the place Christ has already prepared: our divine home in glory.
Nicole Massie Martin is chief operating officer at Christianity Today.
This article appeared in the November/December 2025 issue of Christianity Today as “No Place Like Home”.
As we enter the holiday season, we consider how the places to which we belong shape us—and how we can be the face of welcome in a broken world. In this issue, you’ll read about how a monastery on Patmos offers quiet in a world of noise and, from Ann Voskamp, how God’s will is a place to find home. Read about modern missions terminology in our roundtable feature and about an astrophysicist’s thoughts on the Incarnation. Be sure to linger over Andy Olsen’s reported feature “An American Deportation” as we consider Christian responses to immigration policies. May we practice hospitality wherever we find ourselves.
View issue
Kyle Dugdale
Review
Matt Reynolds
Matthew Hirt
News
Daniel Silliman
Lanier Ivester
Review
John G. Turner
Review
Rick Ostrander
Review
Brian Key
Text by Ann Voskamp and Photos by Esther Havens
Russell Moore
Testimony
Franco Iacomini
Mark D. Bjelland
Qualms & Proverbs
Karen Swallow Prior, Kevin Antlitz, and Kiara John-Charles
Photo essay by Andrew Faulk
View issue
View All
Andy Olsen
A Colombian couple prayed with neighbors and raised their children in one of America’s most influential churches. What did we gain from their deportation?
Isabel Ong
Three experts discuss whether the popular concept has a future in missions discourse.
Deborah Haarsma
The heavens declare the glory of God in the person of Jesus Christ
Chris Howles
UK mission mobilizer wants to rethink “unreached people groups” amid changing migration patterns and a digitally-connected world.
Nicole Massie Martin
A letter from Mission Advancement in our November/December issue.
Kirsten Sanders
Our therapy culture has made us too comfortable with God.
Kyle Dugdale
A monastery on Patmos builds silence in a world of noise
Samuel Law
Singapore-based missiologist argues that the term “unreached people group” is a misnomer and can feed a romanticized notion of missions.
You can help Christianity Today uplift what is good, overcome what is evil, and heal what is broken by elevating the stories and ideas of the kingdom of God.
© 2025 Christianity Today – a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization
“Christianity Today” and “CT” are the registered trademarks of Christianity Today International. All rights reserved.
Seek the Kingdom.