Sitting in the car with my mother, I kept quiet. I’d already said enough. It was Thursday. My project on the state of North Carolina was due Monday. My fourth grade teacher, Mrs. Ballard, had made that clear months ago….
When Al Mohler takes up serpents, I’ll listen to his views on women
As a child in church, I didn’t know much. I sat quietly in the pew beside my sister. We’d watch as our Great Aunt Emmie would scoot out from a side door into the choir loft of the small Baptist…
Nothing’s fine: The truth your pastor won’t tell you
How long does it take to tell a lie? The same amount of time it takes to tell the truth. Is there really a difference if you tell it right? If you smile, wave or nod with assurance? If you…
Welcome to the Radical Leftist Scum Club
Costco at lunchtime is an experience like no other. You need to taste and see for yourself how good it is. Motorists brush bumpers backing in and out of parking spaces while weaving through the sea of pedestrians dragging 65″…
Who gets to be a Baptist?
You can’t tell a Baptist anything. This is one of the highest praises and damning criticisms of the group. They are a contrarian type of people. Willing at times to bite their noses off to spite their faces and bite…
Which side are you on?
I was raised at the foot of the North Carolina mountains. Mounds of earth pushed up, bookmarking spots of creation that deserve a little more attention. Scientists say the Appalachian Mountains are ancient. Older than the Rockies, older than the…
Alligator Alcatraz tourism
My wife, Lauren, told me a story once. When she was 16, her mother put her on a plane to Europe. She gave her a peck on the cheek, a few words of encouragement and a credit card. “Have fun,”…
The fireworks we need this Fourth of July
In 1989, I stood on a pee-wee football field, my skin the color of a fresh beet and close to blistering. Done so by the beams of a luminous ball of gas floating in space, some 93 million miles away….
What Joni Ernst doesn’t understand about heaven
Growing up, my family played a game. It’s a game that today drives my wife crazy. “You all speak in movie quotes,” she says. “Who does that?” We do. I do. For as long as I can remember, we’ve performed…
Shall the fundamentalists yet win?
In 1922, a Baptist minister serving a Presbyterian church in Manhattan’s Greenwich Village kicked a hornet’s nest with his Sunday message. Far from the first, or for that matter, last Baptist preacher to do so, he pleaded to those packed…
This isn’t ‘their’ problem; it is ‘our’ problem
In June 2015, my wife and I were on a mission trip with students at a church where I previously served as a youth pastor. The trip had all the makings of a typical youth excursion; students leaving things behind,…
What advice would my grandfather give a pastor today?
My grandfather Stigall was a walking quote. A man who, by intention or by divine gift, could lay down a zinger with little effort. His thoughts and expressions came out in eruptions. Held in for as long as he could,…