The Rev. Charles M. Sheldon of “What would Jesus do?” fame attracted readers from around world with his faith-based newspaper, but it didn’t last more than a few days.

Not to be outdone, supporters of The National Courier tabloid created a periodical that covered diet, daytime TV and ways to treat a sore back but with a decidedly Christian approach. The experiment lasted nearly two years. Organizers learned that a Christian audience may say it wants a newspaper with Christian content, but when the product exists, Christians often reject the effort.

Why? It’s not right to have to pay for Christian insight.

READ: Confronting Misinformation With Kindness

This year, The Pour Over — a profitable faith-based newsletter that reaches as many 550,000 unique subscribers through its newsletter — has surpassed all those previous efforts. It began in 2018 with a handful of readers and continues to grow, although founder Jason Woodruff doesn’t consider a greater audience the mark of success. Instead, he said, it’s helping readers gain balance in a world that batters them with strident political reporting that can leave audiences off balance.

The Pour Over, a thrice-week email newsletter, identifies the top news stories from the mainstream press and offers a biblical perspective — along with a Bible verse or two to provide a context to contemplate the day’s news.

That’s the design of Jason Woodruff, the 28-year-old businessman with an MBA, who wants to offer an alternative to the online news for readers who may be overwhelmed with the relentless updates and overkill represented by many news sites.

“We think 2024 may be a Dumpster fire in the news and we try to help people understand the biggest news of the day and point them to Christ,” Woodruff said in a video call from his home near the University of Iowa. “We’re nothing flashy. Our mission is to help readers gain a healthy relationship with the news.”

He went on to say people who identify as Christians often don’t have healthy boundaries in their news diet and he is hopeful that TPO can keep readers informed.

“We want to offer a way for readers to consume the news in a way that honors God,” he said. “If a reader finds out about a disaster but can’t do anything about it, that’s not helpful. When we write about an issue, we often provide a biblical way to think about the disaster and offer some scripture.”

TPO works with a partner to donate money to help with humanitarian relief, often twice a month.

Woodruff said his newsletter name was inspired by the Morning Brew, a newsletter digest that summarizes the news in five minutes. Woodruff also likes the way the Skimm does business, another newsletter that provides summaries with an attitude.

So far, TPO has been profitable. It won’t accept donations, but it is doing well with the display advertisements that are often woven into the content. A recent sponsored advertisement played off of the The Pour Over’s association with coffee. Beam Organic promoted its coffee-like products that the company says will reduce jitters and the afternoon crash that can happen with conventional coffee.

Some critics, even the faith-based Sojourners magazine, don’t see the newsletter as offering a clear alternative. It found the notion of TPO’s mantra of political neutrality to be vague. Did Joe Biden win the last U.S. presidential election? Woodruff said TPO reported that Biden won, but that a controversy continues to exist with Donald Trump insisting the election was stolen. Both ideas are factual, but some critics are not convinced that content can be neutral, a position long debated by those within journalism circles.

“We try to be transparent,” Woodruff said, adding that he and his team of eight share a deep Christian faith but eagerly offer supportive and opposing views on public policy. “We don’t think of ourselves as artists but we like fun and engaging news.”

The goal? “We want everyone to respect each other by loving Christ first,” he said.

Woodruff is quick to acknowledge he is not a journalist — although he took a couple of classes during his MBA days. Although he admires the diligence of the working press with its attention to detail, Woodruff said his newsletter borrows from the work of the leading legacy media such as The New York Times, Wall Street Journal and others to summarize the most salient of the top news stories of the day. Woodruff and his team compress these sometimes complicated reports into a 125- to 130-word briefs, along with some Christian perspective and a Bible verse that he hopes connects in some way to the issue at hand.

In a post in late January, TPO noted Trump’s win in the New Hampshire primary and former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley’s good showing. It offered the following:

Whatever the outcome of 2024’s election, the hope of Christians won’t be shaken. Our truest home is God’s kingdom, and he is our ultimate king. Live as exiles here, serving as Christ’s winsome, peace-making ambassadors with your eyes fixed on your heavenly home.

“For Christ’s love compels us, because we are convinced that one died for all, and therefore all died… He has committed to us the message of reconciliation. We are therefore Christ’s ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us.”

But Woodruff’s chief critics point out the difficulty of pairing Scripture with tragic news. And, by the way, where’s Woodruff’s theology training?

Woodruff once considered seminary, but chose business school instead. Woodruff does have a bit of an inside track. Michael Woodruff, Jason’s father, schooled Jason in rich, evangelical theology. These days the Rev. Woodruff provides a bit of rivalry with his own newsletter, The Friday Update.

The Friday Update explores the culture from a cerebral clergyman’s point of view with whimsical observations. The brief newsletter often ends with a prayer from a leading Christian thinker from days gone by.

Hannah, 28, Jason’s wife, also helps with the administration of TPO, making it a family affair.

Without enormous journalism training, limited systematic theology background and a business model that gives the content away for free, Woodruff has detractors.

Nonetheless, prolific communication scholar Robert Fortner said the site is built on the outstanding feature of the New Testament: Christian love.

“This method seems to lean in that direction so the interpretive method should help Christians understand the news within a very useful context,” he said.

Journalist-turned-Regent University professor Steven Perry agreed, noting, “That is an excellent idea of what we need to be thinking about as we review the news of the day.

Michael Patrick, a communication professor at LCC International University in Lithuania, went deeper.

“The world is unraveling quickly,” he said. “The Pour Over allows someone to reflect on it with a sense of how to respond with a Christ-like perspective. The Pour Over can offer encouragement and perspective in our walk alongside a hurting world with compassion and help. “

Dr. Michael A. Longinow, a former journalist and now professor, said TPO is not designed to be in-depth news or offer original reporting, and observed, “The POUR method of covering news might be considered thin and unprofessional —a voice coming from untrained journalistic lips. But it's just the kind of news that many Christians are craving.

“The stats on Americans who are disillusioned by traditional news has been a trend going back decades,” he said. “People in the U.S. who want news have, as Eli Pariser would say, fled to their "filter bubbles" where all they hear is what they agree with and like to hear about the world.”

Biola University’s Longinow praised the TPO concept for its attempt to overcome bubbles, adding, “Christians who want to hear the news and hear it from a biblical perspective are a stalwart group. They want to hear what progressive journalists, and especially those who mistrust or don't understand Christians, are not talking about. So they turn to World magazine and its growing media arms, to Christianity Today, to The Gospel Coalition, to Relevant magazine, and most recently to The Pour Over. This is an audience that won't quibble with the data or whether someone quoted is being quoted in context. They want an overview of what's happening, and they want to know that the person or people telling them the news are doing so based on a biblical world view.”

With ads in TPO selling for between $9,000 and $13,000, The Pour Over is positioning itself for continued expansion — enriching its podcast and possibly writing a book or launching an online course.

“Will the Pour Over survive?” Longinow wondered. “We'll see. But if it becomes unsustainable, journalism scholar Mitchell Stephens would say there will be another entity likely to take its place. Demand requires supply. And what drives Christians to care comes from a mandate in Ezekiel (written to ancient Jews, but taken on by today’s believers) to be ‘watchmen on the wall,’ speaking God's truth to a world so self-focused that it forgets that God has the last word.”

Woodruff said TPO is having some impact. A father recently reported that the Christian perspective on one of the newsletters inspired him to seek forgiveness from a family member and the family reconciled.

“The dad said he had made too much of small things — acting as if they were God-of-the-universe important. Now a dad is talking to his family again,” Woodruff said. “We are working to put the news into its proper place.”

Michael Ray Smith is a professor of communication at LCC International University. He regularly contributes to Religion Unplugged. His “7 Days to a Byline that Pays” book is used by some universities in their journalism programs.