Shivering, wet guests file into the fellowship hall. It is cold and raining on the Thursday before Christmas. Two hundred homeless people have come to church for chicken spaghetti. I pass a marker around my table. We fill out nametags….
Putting an end to prayer vigils
Jewish synagogues have been defaced with swastikas. Latina women have been threatened. Muslim women have been forced to remove their hijabs. On Veterans Day, Marie Boyle, a U.S. army veteran from the Philippines, was told to “Go back to Mexico.”…
Why New York needs churches
When my stylist at Supercuts finds out that I have only lived in Brooklyn for five months, she offers to explain New York to me. She looks me in the eye and says, “If you love New York, she will…
Too busy to sing? Try anyway
I go to work on Tuesday with a detailed to-do list. If everything goes perfectly, I will end the day writing a column for Baptist News Global. If I get through six of the 10 items, it will be a…
Abraham Lincoln, Susan B. Anthony and Adam Sandler: Signs of a church that is more than a museum
Years ago when attendance was pretty low, Plymouth Church in Brooklyn, N.Y., brought in a consultant who said, “You can either be a museum or a church.” The consultant had been going to the wrong museums. A good church is…
Holy smoke: Barbecue with a side of faith
I think of my vegetarian friends like I think of my Jewish friends. I love and respect them, but we are of different faiths. I believe in barbecue. To the casual observer those who gather for a church barbecue have…
Still learning to see the third time across the Brooklyn Bridge
I like running to Manhattan and I love running back to Brooklyn — though running may not be the right word. I have trotted across the Brooklyn Bridge three times. I go slow enough not to miss much. According to…
A Southerner living in a foreign land — Brooklyn
“Yankee” was a term of derision in my fourth grade class. When the teacher announced, “We have a new student who just moved to Mississippi from New York,” we looked on his poor little lost soul with pity. The progressive…
‘If the church is so great, then why are you teaching in seminary?’
During my first class as a professor at Mercer University’s McAfee School of Theology, I began waxing poetic on my years as a pastor and the glory of preaching: “What could be more wonderful than to imagine your way back…