If stones can communicate, (Joshua 4:6) and rocks cry out, (Luke 19:40) then maybe someday walls will talk and church pews will preach. That’s what I’m thinking as I watch brand new friends load 32 church pews into trailers for…
My story and the Southern Baptist Convention
Some will question the veracity of the fact that I feel bad about what is happening to the Southern Baptist Convention in light of the story I am telling for the first time in such a public forum. If ever…
Reflecting on a Baylor commencement 60 years later
“Oh, what a beautiful morning.” Those words obviously were made famous in the song by that title in the Broadway Musical Oklahoma!, which is my home state. I gladly loaned them to Texas on the morning of May 6 and…
Reflections on a life in ministry: Knowing when to go and knowing when to leave
I was privileged to be a friend to a remarkable woman most people do not know. Josephine Scaggs went as a single missionary to Nigeria in the late 1930s. There she spent a big part of her life ministering and,…
What to preach the Sunday between Christmas and New Year
A few days ago, something amazing transpired at a fast-food drive-through window in Atlanta. A young woman named Feroza Syed was waiting in her car to reach the service window when she happened to notice something bizarre happen at the…
In church on Saturday
By Gary Cook In Sue Monk Kidd’s remarkable book, The Invention of Wings, a fictional account of real people caught up in the 19th-century drama of slavery and the abolitionist movement, there is an encounter between Sarah Grimke, who became…
Living, dying and laughing
By Gary Cook The ancient words from the wisdom literature of Ecclesiastes 3 concerning a time for living, dying and laughing and the words from Proverbs 31 about laughing at the days to come become more real as one gets…
A sacred moment in a hair salon
By Gary Cook Thai Le Nugyen is my first really good friend who is Vietnamese, and she is my first really good friend who is Catholic in her faith. I had an uncle who married a young Pennsylvania Dutch woman….
Medicare, end of life and living our theology
Medicare is consistently a wedge issues for both sides of the political spectrum. The issue becomes even more controversial in the reality that more than 30 percent of the cost of Medicare comes in the last year of life. Unfortunately…