Much of the New Testament is actually other people's mail.

Read the ancient biblical letters carefully and you’ll find what still fills envelopes today: thank-you notes, appeals for money, travel updates (paired with excuses for not visiting sooner), and even requests to send along items left behind on previous visits: “When you come, bring the cloak that I left with Carpus at Troas, also the books, and above all the parchments,” writes the author of 2 Timothy.

These letters—affectionate, critical, encouraging, or exasperated—also evidence an intimacy among the members of the early church that transcended political borders. Even their frustration with each other points to the kind of crazy-making that only comes from family: “I have been a fool! You forced me to it,” Paul writes to the church in Corinth.

What would it be like if churches around the world still wrote letters like that to each other today? If we’re honest, most Christians in the U.S. don’t have much of a relationship with our global siblings. And to the extent we have communicated with Christians in other countries, we have far too often been the ones talking.

So we invited Christians from around the world to write letters addressed to the church in the U.S.; the subject matter was entirely of the authors’ choosing. We received letters, which we’ve reprinted here, from India, Honduras, Pakistan, France, Argentina, Kenya, South Africa, and the Wakka Wakka nation in Australia. Like the New Testament epistles, they offer a mix of pastoral advice and prophetic challenge—and a window into the global body of Christ. —The Editors