Note: This is the second in a three-part series by Chris Caldwell about his work in Kentucky prisons. When I was preparing to teach in prisons, I thought about a lot of things: bars, windows, cells, towers and fences, to…
Six things I learned from teaching incarcerated students
Note: This is the first in a three-part series by Chris Caldwell about his work in Kentucky prisons. I recently had the pleasure of teaching a college class in two medium-security Kentucky prisons. I’m on the faculty of Simmons…
The pastorate — always a challenge — is even harder in this post-intention world
I served 27 years as a pastor, the last 15 of them in a wonderfully supportive and healthy congregation. Even so, mistrust in the narthex, rooted in our toxic culture, is part of what led me toward the church exit…
What does the SBC tell us about America’s future?
I hope the way the Southern Baptist Convention fell apart 40 years ago is not a picture of what will happen in America, but the parallels are scary. What was the SBC and what is the United States of America…
Beyond ‘contact without fellowship’: How can white people move toward black people?
While white people in America will never fully imagine what black people endure, this does not excuse the sin of racial ignorance or the empathy deficit that black pastor and theologian Howard Thurman called “contact without fellowship.”
10 bogus ideas my white culture taught me growing up
I posted a list on Facebook of 10 bogus ideas I learned growing up in America’s white culture. The responses were interesting and sometimes surprising.
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Remembering Grady Nutt, Baptists’ ‘Prime Minister of Humor’
Grady Nutt, the late Baptist humorist and television entertainer whose gentle teasing of Southern church culture earned him a wide audience in the 1970s and ’80s, was remembered at a celebration Sept. 23 in Louisville, Ky.
The importance of the pastoral prayer
By Chris Caldwell Question: What’s the second-most-important thing a pastor does every Sunday? Answer? The pastoral prayer. Even so, while most pastors spend hours on sermons, many of us merely jot a few notes down for the pastoral prayer —…