By Mark Wingfield Is it possible that America’s evangelical churches have merely traded one form of uniformity for another? One of the criticisms of the old model of churches driven by denominational identity is that they were all the same….
Missing children
By Mark Wingfield Some people talk incessantly about their children; others never mention their children. I’m increasingly interested in the latter group. Particularly when the silence concerns older teenagers or young adults, it’s a clue that something is amiss. Or…
The problem of calling someone a liar
By Mark Wingfield As a Texan, I am not enamored with Ted Cruz as my senator. However, right now I have a bit of sympathy for him. Last week, he called Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell a “liar” on the…
Musical Chairs and the leaders of dying organizations
By Mark Wingfield “I don’t want the ship to go down on my watch.” These words have been uttered, or perhaps muttered under the breath, by many a pastor and organizational leader who has found themselves at the helm of…
Don’t forget to count the non-denoms
In all the hand-wringing about the statistical decline of Baptist congregations in America — which follows similar declines before in the mainline Protestant churches — one important shift seldom gets mentioned. That is the rise of the nondenominational church within…
Who will go to Destination Unknown?
“Destination Unknown.” That was the stated course of the troop ship on which Julia Graham and her first husband, Henry, embarked in May 1945, with their 7-month-old son, as Baptist missionaries to the Middle East. Julia and Henry and the…
Racism evident in response to Texas pool party
True confession: I am a 53-year-old white male raised primarily in the South, and I occasionally find myself involuntarily thinking racist thoughts. Not big, dangerous racist thoughts, just the kind of insipient stereotyping that comes as second nature to most…
8 topics that ought to be on every youth minister’s agenda
One of the hardest jobs in a church these days is that of youth minister. Not just because the schedule of activities can be grueling or the work can be physically demanding. The reason, instead, is ever-increasing demands placed on…
Can we be moderate and judgmental at the same time?
The first clue should have been when the Internet trolls didn’t immediately show up and condemn me as a liberal heretic. And then when some normally affirming voices fell curiously silent, it became obvious something was amiss. This response—or lack…