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Foreign It's Friday, May 15, 2026. I'm Albert Moeller, and this is the Briefing, a daily analysis of news and events from a Christian worldview. You know, school boards across the country are facing numerous challenges, but there is one more than any other that I think should have our attention. Headline recently. This one from the Times, the New York Times, quote, U.S. schools face a crisis as the number of children dropped. Drops. Subhead. With fewer students, many public school districts are confronting unfilled classrooms and hard choices about school closures. There's a team of reporters on this. It is a big story. And by the way, it's not an exaggeration. If anything, it's an understatement. The loss of students, in fact, in some areas, the loss of population, net population, is now having effects on school enrollment. And that has a lot to do with the ability of school systems to fund those schools, which are often based on enrollment in terms of the funding and also keep full staff and all the rest. So in other words, headline in this case just says, number of children drops. We know as Christians, there's got to be a lot more to the story. That's a huge headline. So what's behind it? Well, listen to the first sentence of the article. Quote, as American women have fewer babies each year, the number of young children in the United States is dwindling. The trend is now catching up to the nation's public school districts. End quote. Okay, that is really interesting. So in other words, the headline just simply says, number of children drops. But then the introductory lead sentence says, as American women have fewer babies each year. Okay, so it's not just some kind of neutral fact out there, disconnected from anything else that says the number of children drops. No, it's actually women having fewer children. It's also interesting that this article is written basically without reference to marriage at all. It's just women having fewer children. And by the way, the fall in that birth rate is very significant. We talk about it pretty regularly, but the reason we just have to keep coming back and back to it is because it now is having a material effect. So school districts across the country, many of them, and it's not equally distributed because the birth rate drop is not equally distributed between red and blue America. It is more acute in blue America than in red America, for reasons I think most of us understand, worldview shows up in birth rate. The problem is you have school districts, and I'll just say hypothetically, here's one with 100,000 students. Well, if it goes down to 80,000. That's catastrophic. That means you have to close schools. That means you have to lay off people. That means you have administrators who are at the peak of their career who are now not going to have a place to administer. It means all kinds of things. It also means that the problem is not just, as you look at this, the declining birth rate. No, the article also says that it is disproportionate because. Well, let me read to you this. Quote, declining enrollment has hit many of the nation's largest urban school districts, including Los Angeles, Chicago and New York. And the paper's analysis found, quote, smaller and suburban districts are shrinking at a similar rate, but they're in areas where people are just net leaving rather than coming. So to put it another way, there are some parts of America where you have families with children moving. We've talked about, for example, the Dallas metropolitan area. Texas is a state, Florida is a state, much of the Sun Belts included in this. But we give a particular attention to coverage about, for example, what's happening in the northern area of Texas, north of Dallas. Just huge, huge influx of people. And they're not moving from nowhere. They're moving from somewhere. One of the lead places they are leaving in order to move to Texas is the Southern California area, but it's also Northern California. It's also Seattle, Portland. But you also have different parts of the country. For example, in the Northeast, a very similar kind of thing is happening, and that actually predates some of the exodus from, for instance, the West Coast. And by the way, we're going to be looking even next week at some of the reasons why all these things are coming together at once. And so the big difference is here you have some districts that are having to build new schools, and you have other districts where the schools are increasingly empty and they're having to decide which ones are going to exist in some kind of consolidated, reduced system. Okay, but there's some other issues that also come up in this, and one of them is that urban areas are losing a lot of students pretty fast. So Kimberly Armstrong, identified as the superintendent of the system in Portland, Oregon, she said, quote, people are choosing to raise kids somewhere other than in the city, moving the suburbs or places where they have access to affordable housing. She said. So it's not just about losing students. It's about the city of Portland losing families, end quote. And, of course, this has to do not only with students in schools. It also has to do with challenges faced by churches and others in this area, including evangelical churches, where you have a declining population. It has now reached some cities, such as Denver and Colorado. We're told that school enrollment there started to decline in 2020 as a result of both lower birth rates and, quote, high costs that pushed families out of the city. Then you also had immigration that tended to reverse the pattern. But now, with immigration numbers down, Denver's enrollment is declining again. One of the things that shows up in this article is that you do have a huge political challenge here. These school systems are political entities, public school systems, very much political entities, powerful political entities and powerful political magnets in most of these urban areas. And closing a school can be a highly politicized act. You're going to have defenders of the school. You're going to have people who are going to claim that their family or their group will be disproportionately harmed by the closing of this school. There are systems that will adopt as a plan to try to keep as many schools as open as much as possible for as long as possible. But this is a losing game because the numbers just don't change quickly. And that's something else to note. And this is something Christians need to understand. When you talk about a declining birth rate, you're not talking about something that can be fixed tomorrow. If you have fewer 17 year olds this year than the year before, you can't just go out and get more 17 year olds. This is a very long problem. This is very biblical in terms of its dimensions. We need to understand that a falling birth rate is in many ways a consequence of a secularizing age. And recovery is not something that can come quickly. And recovery is disproportionate. So let me just say that among evangelicals, the birth rate's higher. Among conservative Catholics, the birth rate's higher. Where you have very strong religious conviction, the birth rate's higher. But you also have increased numbers of people who are deciding, we're not going to send those kids into the public schools anyway. And so even where you have a higher birth rate, you may have an even higher exodus rate from the public schools. And we understand why. I found it very interesting that William H. Frey, I've seen him cited many times before, who's pointing to the mass migration pattern. He's identified as a demographer and senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. He said, quote, people are broadly moving to where they can get an affordable house and a good job, and their families are going to feel good living there. End quote. Now, I'm simply going to say that is emphatically true. It's sort of obviously True. And you don't have to be a demographer to see that it's true. But I point to it because I think it's an honest statement from this specialist in demography and population dynamics coming back and just saying, look, this is what it comes down to. People are broadly moving to where they can get an affordable house and a good job and their families are going to feel good living there. I think that must have something to do with crime rates and other things like that, other pathologies and dynamics. But I did find it really interesting that here you had a major demographer just use that kind of language saying people are moving where their families are going to feel good living there. End quote. That should not come to us as a surprise. Okay, now let's turn to questions. We'll try to get to as many as we can. An 18 year old young man from Dallas, Georgia wrote to me. I appreciate the question. He says, in my experience in discipleship and disciple making, I have come across a lot of young men who want to take their faith seriously but don't want to practice the sacrifice necessary for that. He says, what do you think is the driving force in my generation for that? And what's the best ministry response to that? Okay, so I really appreciate this. Here's an 18 year old young man. You can tell how serious he is about discipleship just because of the way he frames this question. He says he's come across a lot of young men and here's how he describes them. They want to take their faith seriously, but don't want to practice the sacrifice necessary for that. All right, all right, let's think about that for a moment. You know, I appreciate the fact that this young man uses the phrase that so many of his fellow young men want to take their faith seriously. Okay, so that's important. So that is something that we are noticing in the larger culture. It is remarkable in its own way. This is the first time in recorded history that there are more young men of these ages in church attendance than young women. That has just not happened before. Something's going on here. But then the next phrase, the problematic one, is but don't want to practice the sacrifice necessary for that. Okay, so I could come up with all kinds of ways of imagining an 18 year old young male predicament in terms of wanting to take the faith seriously but not practicing the sacrifice necessary for that. And then this young man asking the question says, what's the driving force? And what's the best ministry response to that? Well, I think the driving force is the fact that we as human beings, fallen human beings, as sinners, we want to continue in our sin and we do not want to move into a higher demand made of us. And so let's ask the question. I'll just turn to the young man who asked me this question and I'll pose a question to him, then I'll kind of answer it for him. I'll pose the question to him. Why do you think young men who are serious about the faith do respond by making the sacrifice, the serious commitment necessary to that faith? And I'm going to say it's because they really do come to a transformative experience with Christ that genuinely grounds them and makes them hungry and thirsty for all that the Gospel includes and all the Scripture teaches. And so I will simply say that I think a deeper interest is good, but it is the transformative interest by the power of the Gospel that makes all the difference in the world. And I think one of the things that we should do in response to that is make really clear what the Gospel is and make really clear that Christianity is not an interesting belief system. It is the faith, once we're all delivered to the saints, it is the faith of apostles and martyrs and those who have sacrificed for that faith and have paid in some cases the ultimate price for their allegiance to Christ. But in all ways know that we have to follow Christ and not the way of the world. And I will just tell you, I am surrounded by so many young men who take the faith seriously and are making those sacrifices and knowing they are going to have to be committed to a lifetime of making those sacrifices. I think the young man asking this question is standing with the church in asking this question. And the response just has to be once again the gospel of Jesus Christ and a deeper understanding of, of the truth of the gospel and what the Gospel requires of us in terms of following Christ. I also want to make one final comment of someone who was once a young man and whose ministry has been directed in so many ways towards the education and preparation of Christian young men. And that is this, that when it comes to the willingness to sacrifice to follow Christ, there are some things a young man would be drawn to, but has to put aside. There are some sins that are quite natural to an 18 year old male that simply have to be set aside. Living unto Christ and unto righteousness is something that does come with a cost. But let me just tell you that cost takes one shape when a young man is 18, but over a long life of faithfulness that challenge is always there. It's the challenge of faithfulness to Christ or walking away. The Christian church just has to preach the gospel in such a way that this is set before men of every age, men and women of every every age, in the full force of biblical truth. That is the best I know to answer in terms of the church's response to this challenge. Next, a question from a woman listener. She says she's a member of an SBC church. The church started a podcast where the pastor and staff answer follow up questions about the Sunday sermon. She said the purpose of the podcast is to expound on the sermon, exposit the word of God to the whole church, and offer practical application advice. The problem is, she says, one of the staff members on the podcast is a woman. She's not a pastor by role or title, but I believe she's acting as a pastor in this context because she's giving advice to the whole church body. And I'll just simply say also she's teaching because that's exactly what we're told the podcast is doing. And so I simply want to say I appreciate this woman writing this question. I think there's one error in the question where she says she's not a pastor by role or by title. If she is functioning as a pastor, then she is assuming the role of a pastor. And I think that's what's implied here. And yes, I do see that as a problem. I don't think the church should ever lean into offering confusion on this issue, but should lean into clarity. And so I don't know the church. I don't need to know the name of the church. I can just tell you, I think this is something that needs to be thought through on a far more substantial biblical basis. And if this person is functioning with other pastors as a pastor, the title really doesn't matter all that much. That's because the biblical conception of pastor is both the title and the function, the title and the role. And so avoiding the title doesn't mean you've avoided the problem. Sweet question coming in from a young woman in Northern Ireland who is not a mom yet but is looking forward to being so. And she says that in her wider family there are now quite different views about how to educate our children. She speaks about education there in Northern Ireland, and she says that a lot of the schools are very Christian still. Plenty of Christian teachers in the schools, regular Bible teaching in the public schools, assemblies multiple times in the week, gospel presentation, and many of the public events that take place in the schools she also recognizes the larger society as secularizing. She says there's a split in her family. One side of my family believes very strongly that we should homeschool our children, even though there's still a strong Christian ethos in the schools. She says the other side thinks that it's important that we as Christians do keep sending our children into the schools while we can. Okay, I really appreciate this question because it is not just a Northern Ireland question, but how sweet is it to get a question from Northern Ireland from a believer there? So thank you for writing in. And the situation there is a bit different because of history and constitutional arrangement. Northern Ireland is different in this case even than many parts of the British Isles, which are more secular, and that secularization is more evident in the schools. Northern Ireland is a very interesting place with a very interesting history. And so I understand a bit of how this has happened. I will tell you that I do feel a real connection to this precisely because I grew up in the south in the United States, and I went to public schools at a time when those public schools were populated overwhelmingly by Christians. And so we also had Bible readings at times. We had a very clear Christian ethos. We had Christian teachers in the schools. There was a lot of public evidence of commitment to Christianity. The morality I was taught at school was exactly the same morality I was taught at home. There was nothing contrary in my elementary school years, nothing contrary that I can even imagine to God's word that I was taught. However, that all began to change even in many parts of the south, particularly because of federal mandates, particularly because of fast growth. And in some southern areas, you have a lot of people from other areas moving in, and then there's just a general secularization of the culture. I can tell you that I was sent to the public schools during that time, and my parents never had to worry about the things that parents have to worry about now. But things changed. And in this particular question, at several points, there is the acknowledgment that things are changing even in Northern Ireland. So your family is split over this. I want to step back for a moment and say, first of all, every Christian home should be a homeschooling home. And by that I mean the primary responsibility falls on parents. That doesn't mean, I believe it's absolutely, categorically wrong in every case for parents to choose another educational schooling option as a part of their larger responsibility. They take and simply don't delegate out as parents, Christian parents. And I'll simply say that when it comes to the Public schools. There are massive numbers of evangelical Christian families involved in the public schools. And I know from my own experience there are some wonderful, wonderful Christian teachers in the schools, wonderful Christian principals. There are school boards. And I'm speaking to you in the state of Kentucky. I'm not speaking to you from New Jersey. I'm speaking to you from the state of Kentucky. There are many school districts here where the overwhelming population of teachers and administrators and school board members and families very explicitly Christian and even particularly evangelical Christian. And so I will just tell you, I find that to be a very different context than what is the case in many other areas of the country. I think geography matters. I think chronology matters. I say chronology because in my own life, I would never send my children to the school I attended as a child because things have radically changed. I think the educational options are being reduced for faithful Christian parents. I'll be honest about that. I think in many parts of the nation, the public schools are just increasingly hostile to everything Christians understand. There are also some other issues here. I'm a big proponent of classical Christian schools. I'm a big proponent of homeschooling. And so I do think that's going to be, every year, more and more a part of the evangelical Christian of the serious Christian experience. I think that's going to become more and more characteristic. But I do think over time and over space, there are some variations in which I would give grace to Christian parents to figure this out in the optimal way for their faithfulness. I'll just leave it at that. That's the best I know to do. Okay, this week has been a week for some really interesting questions that I've never confronted before. And so I love this question coming in from a mom. This is a mom in Louisiana writing about the Pledge of Allegiance. She says, I was raised in a solid Christian home and was homeschooled. I remember beginning every school morning with reciting the Pledge of Allegiance and doing our Bible class. Looking back, she says, I don't think reciting the pledge was harmful to me in any way. However, as my husband and I plan to homeschool our own children, I've been wondering if it is biblical to recite the Pledge of Allegiance. I believe it to be good to study as a part of history lessons. But should Christian parents teach their children to pledge allegiance to anything or anyone other than Christ? What a great question. And this gets back to a fundamental biblical question. Do we owe allegiance to any secular government? Do we owe allegiance to any lesser authority than the one true and Living God. And the answer is by God's own decree, yes, there is a proper allegiance that we owe. I love the way the Apostle Paul puts it, honor to whom honor is due. And that's just really important. Honor to whom honor is due. There is certain honor due to the United States of America. I'm glad and proud to say there is certain honor due to those who are presidents and prime ministers and governors and legislators. And you just go down the list. There is a proper allegiance, but it is not the same as our allegiance to Christ. It is derivative of our allegiance to Christ because it is Christ who, through the Word and through the apostles, instructs us that we are to live peaceably under the law, and we are to respect the government's role to enforce the law and also to punish the evildoer. And we are to be willing, out of love of neighbor, to stand with our fellow neighbors in terms of the defense of what is right and true and what kind of policies and laws should be put in place. And so I will simply say, I don't think there is a problem with the Pledge of Allegiance. By the way, the words under God were inserted later in the middle of the 20th century. The pledge goes back to, really, the beginning of the 20th century in terms of widespread adoption in schools. And in the middle of the 20th century, the words under God were put in. That's a very good clarification. We pledge allegiance to a nation which is under God, and I think that's just really important. All right. A young man sends in a question again, brilliant question. He's writing about our discussion on the briefing about unmarried women having children. He says, I started thinking about the term moral stigma, and I'm curious of your thoughts on it. He writes, should Christians view moral stigma as a good thing? It can help promote father staying in the home, discourage LGBTQ relationships, promote child rearing, etc. Or is it a bad thing as it can ostracize a person from Christianity believing they don't meet some Christian criterion, and in turn further embrace their sin? Should Christians encourage moral stigma or should we discourage it? Okay, I love the question. Let me change the word stigma to shame. And so let's not use stigma for a moment. That's a social term meaning the recognition of shame, the attribution of shame, the cultural acknowledgment of shame. Let's just use the word shame because that does appear in Scripture, and shame can be right or wrong. And let's just follow that logic. Shame for breaking the law of God, shame for sin is actually right. We should be ashamed of sin. Shame should be attached to sin and should follow sin. Not only that, but in the Bible, there are those who are publicly identified as sinners who basically, as Paul explains in Romans 1, give themselves to their sin. There is horrifying shame in that. A society that doesn't exercise shame is a society that has no moral sanity. So, for example, for example, just think of some recent things that have happened. You think about, let's take it out of the realm of sexuality for a moment. Let's put it in the realm of violence. Someone who walks into a school with murderous intent. There should be shame attached to that. And then we also understand sin as a category. It always involves shame. As a matter of fact, in the Scripture, sinful acts are sometimes referred to as shameful acts. They are the things that bring shame. Insofar as the sin is sin, shame is attached to it. Stigma is the society, the community, recognizing the reality of that shame. So we stigmatize certain behavior. We have to, right? We stigmatize people cheating on their taxes. We stigmatize people who drive while drunk. We stigmatize all kinds of things because a sane society has to say, this is a moral category of things we. We recognize in common. You must not do, you should not do. They're wrongful acts. Even a society that doesn't have the category of sin has the category of harm and wrong. Or again, if it has any moral sanity at all, it should be, however, as Christians understand, attached to actual behavior. In other words, we shouldn't have shame for doing the righteous thing. We shouldn't have shame. If we feel shame for doing the righteous thing, there's something wrong with our understanding. But we also understand that we must be careful stewards of this. And so I understand that the impetus. This young man's asking a question saying, what about some people who believe that they can't be Christians because of shame? Well, that's gloriously answered in the New Testament, and that's the glorious thing. All of us are sinners. All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. Therefore, in God's eyes, all of us are infinitely shameful by the power of the Gospel. However, for those who are in Christ, the Father does not see our shame and unrighteousness, but rather the imputed righteousness of his own Son. So, in other words, there is no one so shameful that he or she cannot gloriously come to know salvation through Jesus Christ our Lord. And that means full acquittal of sin. And that means every single one of us receives the imputed righteousness of Christ which is infinitely needful for every single one of us. The church is not made up of the righteous who need less grace, but of those who have experienced true grace and been transformed by it. Hopefully biblically that should be transformed also into graciousness. Okay, we're going to end on a very big question, all right? A very big question asked by a 15 year old boy, a 15 year old young man who so kindly writes in as a listener and expresses appreciation. This means the world to me to read that. And then he says, while I would consider myself a traditional five point Calvinist, I do struggle with the sovereignty of God and predestination and salvation. Let me just pause here for a moment and say this 15 year old, there isn't a thoughtful Calvinist who doesn't struggle with those issues. In other words, we know the biblical answer. We understand how to deal with these things, but we still understand that there are huge eternal consequences that are involved here. We're seeking to get this right. He goes on and says, I do struggle with the sovereignty of God and predestination and salvation. As someone who believes that God truly loves all people, the thought of God allowing billions to go to hell when he has the power to save them all is somewhat confusing to me. So my question is, does God really love the whole world? And if so, what does that actually mean? I would appreciate some insight into this. Rather puzzling and hard to process reality. End quote. Well, God bless a church and a family that produces 15 year old Christians asking questions like this. Very encouraging to me. Okay, I want to say, first of all, let me answer the question, does God really love the whole world? Well, God tells us he does. John 3:16 is not famous among Christians by accident. It's because it is that very clear summary. God so love the world world that he gave his only Son, that whosoever believes in him might not perish but have everlasting life. But that verse actually also reveals the fact that God's love explains why Christ has come. But it does say whosoever believes in him should not perish, but have everlasting life. So even as we're told God loves the whole world, the act of salvation that Christ accomplishes is not applied to the whole world, but rather to those who believe in Him. All right, now Calvinism is the answer that every Christian by the way, has to answer. Any thoughtful Christian as to how do you explain how the Gospel works? How do you explain how The Gospel is tied to God's will. How is it tied to the eternal promises of God? To save to the uttermost and to hold secure all of those who come to faith in Christ. So in other words, I do believe it all holds together. I believe it's all revealed in Scripture. And so I'm with you, five point Calvinist. But you ask the question, does God really love the whole world if not all come to faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, have forgiven their sins and given the gift of life everlasting. Okay, so that's not a Calvinist question. I'll simply say that's a Christian question in terms of anyone who actually holds to the gospel believing that God saves all those who come to faith in the Lord Jesus Christ and those who do not come to faith in the Lord Jesus Christ are lost and face the consequences, the eternal consequences of being lost. So I simply want to say here, this isn't a Calvinist, non Calvinist question. It's a gospel, non gospel question. Calvinists and non Calvinists who agree in the gospel disagree on the background as to how all of this happens and what the Scripture teaches. But in that distinction between those who are saved and those who are not saved, at the end of the story, on the day of judgment, we are in absolute agreement. What marks those who are among the redeemed? They have come to faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. They profess Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord placed their faith and trust in him. And so that's the distinction. So saying this is actually a Christian problem, let me answer the larger question. How do we really say God loves the whole world? Well, it is because God loves the whole world, because he brought the entire world into being. He created it. He loves what he created. He loves the entire world thinking of human beings because he made certain that every single human being is a miracle of life, made in his image and possessing dignity. He loves every single human being because by common grace, by general provision, he makes possible for us the goods of this life and he gives us the gift of life and breath. And that in itself shows God's love for us. Now, when it comes to eternity, on the other side of the judgment of God, the fact is the big question is not why God doesn't save all, but why God saves any, period. Regardless of whether you're a Calvinist or a non Calvinist, if you love the gospel, the question is why are there some who come to faith in the Lord Jesus Christ and others who do not? There are some who are saved and there are the many who are lost. That is just fundamental. It doesn't mean that God doesn't love all whom he has created in his own image. It does mean that in the economy of the Gospel it is clear that God loves some unto everlasting life. And that's the sum and substance of the gospel. The dividing line here is the Gospel of Jesus Christ. And as Christians we lay hold of the Gospel and believe all of it. And we know that God loves all whom he has created because he tells us so. We also remember the clear biblical teaching that all who call upon the name of the Lord will be saved. I'm thankful for an age and for a church that produces 15 year olds asking such questions to God be the glory. Thanks for listening to the briefing. Send your own question by writing me@mailbertmoeller.com youm can follow me on Twitter or x by going to x.comalbertmohler for information on the Southern Baptist Theological seminary, go to sbts.edu for information on Boyce College, just go to boycecollege.com I'll meet you again on Monday for the briefing.