By Mark Wingfield Someone asked me why I included this phrase in my prayer at Wilshire Baptist Church’s worship service Sunday: “We pray that you would calm the anxious hearts of so many in our city. Help the ignorant to…
New mission center in Dallas taps Bill O’Brien as first executive
By Mark Wingfield Baptist missiologist Bill O’Brien has been named the first executive director of Gaston Christian Center, a new mission and ministry center in north Dallas which aims to create a collective of faith-based agencies and churches to serve…
Ice bucket do-gooders
By Mark Wingfield Americans have heated up the Internet with the Ice Bucket Challenge in the last two weeks. Unless you’ve just flown in from the Arctic, you know exactly what I’m talking about: The social-media-fueled fundraising phenomenon that’s benefitting…
Owning up to our flaws
By Mark Wingfield “The devil made me do it.” Years ago, the comedian Flip Wilson made a name for himself with a ’70s-era shtick in which this was his sassy answer to every misdeed his character committed. For folks of…
Build and tear down
By Mark Wingfield The church building is grand and beautiful, representative of the kind of early 20th-century architecture prevalent among prominent Baptist churches with resources. A recent restoration has brought the shine back to this gem of a worship space,…
Will you be known when you die?
By Mark Wingfield Years ago, there was a national ad campaign aimed at helping Americans understand the importance of going to church. One of my favorite ads in the series showed pallbearers carrying a casket in the front door of…
Will you be known when you die?
Years ago, there was a national ad campaign aimed at helping Americans understand the importance of going to church. One of my favorite ads in the series showed pallbearers carrying a casket in the front door of a church. The…
If you had a million dollars …
What would you do if you had a million dollars? That’s a fun “what if” game most of us like to play, pondering all the good we could do, all the fun we might have, all the contributions we could…
The new independent Baptist churches
By Mark Wingfield In the dialogue about “ex-SBC” folks that’s been transpiring on this site in recent weeks, a false assumption seeps in from time to time: That all “ex” Southern Baptists are now affiliated with the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship….