One of the more delightful aspects of my job here at WORLD Magazine and World News Group is the regular opportunity to meet those of you who are readers of our magazines or users of our various digital media. I love it especially during these summer months when you make it a point to stop by our headquarters in Asheville, N.C., and say hello.

I love that partly because it gives me a chance to invite you into my office for a 15-minute history lesson. I’m intrigued to discover how much you know about WORLD’s background—and about the religious landscape in general.

What’s the cost of faithfulness? For Christians living in China, it may be a police raid, an arrest, or censure for following Biblical teaching. Setbacks like these are what can strengthen believers’ resolve—or break it.

In the May 2015 article “Growing pains, great gains,” I visited three groups of Christians working to help mature the burgeoning Chinese church: a Singaporean pastor whose online sermons led to church plants throughout China, an American missionary family leading a house church and school, and a group spreading the pro-life message to Chinese Christians.

They had a dream: a God-ordained dream. After years of service in a foreign land, where they met and married and learned to speak the language fluently, they were ready to establish themselves in one area that would become their home, perhaps for the rest of their lives. They would raise their kids, start a business, establish a church, and win souls to Christ. Their goals were admirable and honest, and all the early obstacles were overcome. Surely the Lord’s hand was on this enterprise—until it failed.

Trevin Wax is a book publisher (Lifeway Christian Resources) and the author of a new book, This is Our Time: Everyday Myths in Light of the Gospel. Here are edited excerpts of an interview in front of students at Patrick Henry College. (For more from this interview, see “Millennial mission” and “Battering the gates.”)

WASHINGTON—Thousands of evangelical leaders are asking President Donald Trump to reconsider his executive order pausing the United States refugee program and barring travel from seven Muslim-majority countries.

The first time Dr. Nomura Takuyuki decided to put on a Christmas meeting at his 19-bed hospital 20 years ago, he feared what others would think of him and if it would hurt his business. Christians make up only 1 percent of Japan’s population, and most Christians stay quiet about their faith in a society where social cohesion trumps all.

Darrell Bock is a professor of New Testament studies at Dallas Theological Seminary and a past president of the Evangelical Theological Society. I spoke with him at a meeting of that society just one week after the November election.