About

In Brief

The headlines aren’t wrong. Much is broken — the world, the church, our own restless hearts. But beneath the bad news runs the real story: God is putting the world back together. That’s the work Jesus began 2,000 years ago, and he finishes what he starts. The front page says everything is going wrong. Where it matters most, everything is going right.

Rapt is a digital magazine for Christians of every stripe, and it runs on one rule: whatever is excellent, whatever leads to him. Some of it we make — essays of our own, interviews by the hundred (the famous, the faithful, the flat-out unexpected). The rest we gather — the best of the new books, honest recommendations for films, songs, podcasts and practices.

Why? Because we want to be part of what’s going right. And the only way to do that — the only way there has ever been — is to stay close to the One who's making it right. We were made for that nearness. So, that’s all Rapt is: a place to discover and recover ways to keep company with God.

The service and sifting and sweat is ours.
The finding is yours.

If it’s God himself you’re after, welcome.

If your only exposures to the movements of God were headlines and news articles, you’d be dismayed, disappointed and distressed — understandably. Journalists and statisticians, secular and Christian alike, profess doom and gloom. They tell us that we people of faith in America are divided by politics, theology, and scandal — and we are. They write that church attendance in the United States is declining — and it is. They inform us that the “nones” (people not identifying with religion) are increasing in staggering numbers — and they are.

But those headlines completely miss the much larger story: God is moving as powerfully as ever before.

“For I the Lord do not change” (Malachi 3:6, ESV).

Therefore, you and I must look through and beyond the distractions, arguments and consternations — to discover and discern what he’s up to. It’s the most significant thing in all the world. No breaking news, no political dust-up, no new poll numbers, nothing else comes anywhere close.

Black and white vintage rocket model with four fins, isolated on black background.

Testimonies fascinate us;
complaints bore us.
Beauty amazes us;
fear leaves us cold.
God’s presence thrills us;
putting limits on him makes us yawn.

Here’s one way we at Rapt see God moving: We look around today and find ourselves living in a golden age of thought, discipleship and technology. Breakthroughs in publishing, filmmaking, recording, podcasting and software are enabling large and growing and diverse fellowships of the faithful to encounter God (and one another) in innovative and profound ways.

That’s huge. It’s something to be shouted from the rooftops, and we’re doing that. But we’re not the only ones with something to proclaim. It’s noisy out there. Researchers at UC San Diego estimate that the average American is bombarded with something like 34 gigabytes of information each and every day. This translates, they say, into approximately 100,000 words, counting those read in print and online and those heard on television, podcasts and radio. By way of comparison, Herman Melville’s “Moby-Dick” contains 209,117 words.

That’s why we created Rapt, an interdenominational digital magazine designed to cut through the noise by commissioning and curating an essential selection of ideas and resources that can guide you into God's presence more easily, deeply and often. We help you uncover and recover the most interesting and excellent, hallowed and indispensable ways of meeting and experiencing the Ancient of Days, our Abba Father. We write some of it ourselves: original essays — made slowly, just for you. Then we pile the table high: interviews and excerpts from the latest and bestselling books, as well as trustworthy recommendations for films, podcasts, tech, habits, music, art, poetry, devotionals, Bible studies and so much more.

So, that’s what we’re all about — encountering God. Rapt is for the few who will settle for nothing less than the astonishing gift of God’s presence.

“We must never allow the authority of books, institutions, or leaders to replace the authority of ‘knowing’ Jesus Christ personally and directly. When the religious views of others interpose between us and the primary experience of Jesus as the Christ, we become unconvicted and unpersuasive travel agents handing out brochures to places we have never visited.”

— Brennan Manning

Why is the encounter so important? It’s simple. We’re made to be in loving relationship with God, obviously. The Bible is clear. But to love him, we must know him first. We cannot love someone we do not know — not really, not intimately. And when Jesus talked about that kind of knowing, he meant something specific. In Scripture, Jesus prayed that we would come to know his Father (John 17:3). And the Greek word used in his prayer is ginōskō — a verb that connotes “familiarity acquired through experience.”

To move from knowing of God to knowing him, we must encounter him personally. We can settle no longer for the idea of a relationship. We must move into actual one-to-one relationships with him, ones that are real and close and strong. And we do that by doing things with him.

And Rapt creates and curates the best things.

Now, you might be thinking, what entitles you to create and curate stuff for me? Well, we do loads of interviews with so many fascinating people:

➸ World-class leaders and entrepreneurs
➸ Culture-changing pastors and professors
➸ Blue-ribbon writers and filmmakers
➸ Front-line musicians and mystics
➸ Top-tier journalists and social influencers
➸ Cutting-edge comedians and artists
➸ Even a magician and a former mobster, too

We ask them questions and immerse ourselves in their stories, getting deep into how God’s love and grace flow through their lives.

We then pull data points from those hundreds of conversations — ideas, suggestions, recommendations, endorsements, testimonies — and enter them into our exclusive database, alongside data from the New York Times, Publishers Weekly, Amazon, ECPA, and Christianbook bestseller lists, the Billboard and K-Love spin charts, and data from outlets like Dove.org, Christian Cinema, Rotten Tomatoes, Netflix, Google, Apple, Spotify, Substack and Goodreads.

Black and white vintage motorcycle with large wheels, engine, seat, handlebars, and fenders.

Interviews Conducted ➼ more than 450 To Date

So, data. But the best kind of data: testimony data. Those conversations tell us what to gather: which books and films and podcasts and whatever else are reliably helpful in leading people into God’s presence. And they tell us what to make: which questions the faithful keep asking, which hungers keep surfacing, which essays no one has written — and which voices God keeps using. When we create and commission, we’re not guessing. We’re answering. That’s what makes Rapt an award-winning site. That’s why you can trust our creation and curation.

And that’s not all. We try really hard to present all that data in ways that are (hopefully) thoughtful, beautiful, enjoyable, and accessible. Our own writers are among this generation’s finest; the ones we syndicate are just as good.

So, what’s the upshot? We do the work. You get the good stuff. Ideas and resources that open the door to his presence, again and again.

Come along with us! Bookmark our front page. Or sign up for the Rapt Newsletter here, and don’t miss a thing!