“They actually are going to say this book is a Christian book, just not a very good one—not good enough for people like them.” (B. Inman, ahead of the 2025 PCA report)
The Presbyterian Church in America (PCA) does not sell or recommend Jesus Calling for its own members but is silent about its distribution to vulnerable, non-PCA women in prisons and rehab centers, via contributions from the Jesus Calling Foundation, a PCA-adjacent organization.
For 13 years, PCA missionary Sarah Young and the Jesus Calling Foundation have provided custom paperback copies of Jesus Calling to The Next Door Recovery, which gives the books to prison inmates and to all the women who enter their residential and transitional care facilities.
In 2025, as part of an investigation into Jesus Calling, the PCA required its Committee on Discipleship Ministries (CDM) to assess the appropriateness of the book “for Christians in general and PCA members and congregations in particular.” The CDM reported that it did not recommend Jesus Calling for PCA congregants but declined to comment on its suitability for other Christians, much less as an evangelistic tool.
Meanwhile, the Jesus Calling Foundation increased its donations to the Next Door from $50,000 to $212,500 in 2025, presumably providing even more books to non-PCA women. Next Door Executive Director Rachel Morris announced the arrival of the new books with enthusiasm, “Today is Jesus Calling delivery day!”
A Foundational Book
In a promotional video for the Next Door and Jesus Calling, staff members explain that Jesus Calling is vital to their recovery program:
Each woman who arrives at the Next Door receives a copy of Jesus Calling and is encouraged to read the daily passages as a way to rekindle their faith and establish a daily connection to God while they’re in recovery. Jesus Calling is central to everything we’re about at the Next Door. When we walk in the building on the first right is our chapel, and every woman here receives a Jesus Calling book and it’s been foundational to who we are and it’s a beautiful tool. It’s a tool to drive people to the Lord and that’s what we’re about.
Tacit Approval
The PCA is in effect blessing the use of Jesus Calling for evangelism by saying nothing, just as it did during Sarah Young’s lifetime. In a 2024 interview with Dr. Benjamin Inman, Presbycast host Brad Isbell summed it up, “I understand why you would say that she surely felt affirmed by the millions of sales, but she must have felt at least tacit approval from the fact that nobody called her on it from the PCA…. The loving thing to do would have been to correct her in love and show her a better way.” But this correction apparently never happened and isn’t happening retroactively today.
Not Over Yet
The PCA still has time to explain to the Next Door and to the world at large why it does not recommend Jesus Calling to its own members. It still has time to affect millions of people by clarifying and warning about the serious problems in the book. This denomination that God has richly blessed in many ways is responsible for this. And all desire for God’s work by them to flourish and to continue—all of that has to be weighed in saying this is embarrassing. It’s a scandal. But this is our Lord, and he’s not saying to us if you repent it’ll be great danger. He’s saying— if you don’t, it’s great danger. . . . If the PCA is going to have an influence of planting sound churches and bringing revival, I can’t imagine a more likely way to start it than repenting (B. Inman).
(Listen to Dr. Inman’s entire interview with Brad Isbell here, starting at 5:00)
(Listen to Dr. Inman’s entire interview with Doreen Virtue here, starting at 20:40)
Sources
Instagram. 19 Nov 2025. https://www.instagram.com/reel/DRQKIEBD84-/
jesuscalling.com. Accessed 05 Nov 2026. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UaXbDBuR7nY
(quote at 09:58)
MTW and CDM Respond to Jesus Calling Overture. 04 Jun 2025.
https://byfaithonline.com/mtw-and-cdm-respond-to-jesus-calling-overture/
OVERTURE 33, TE Ben Inman “Erect Ad Interim Committee on the Book Jesus Calling” (amended): https://byfaithonline.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/Overture33Amended.pdf
Propublica. Accessed 05 Nov 2026. https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/884314928/202632189349100608/full
The “Jesus Calling” Industry & the PCA. 01 Feb 2024.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h9vj3pMy20s (quote at 42:17)
The Next Door Recovery. https://thenextdoorrecovery.org/
Will Presbyterian Church of America finally renounce Jesus Calling? 03 May 2025. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-lsjNeufrm4&t=1672s (quotes at 34:50 & 42:50)
