Residents of a retirement community are no strangers to grief. They have lost parents and siblings. Sometimes their spouses have died, sometimes a child. Sometimes the move meant leaving a beloved family home. Their trusted neighbors in the old neighborhood…
Leaving a church: Sometimes it’s a matter of conscience
Leaving a church is a hard thing to do. We leave a community of relationships and end a shared history. It’s even harder when we leave over matters of conscience.
If we truly believed in God, how could we be sad?
Christians with a “winter spirituality” may wonder if they really do believe because the mountaintop is never a part of their faith journeys. Yet, as Martin Marty argues, their faith is just as real and valid as any other, just sung in a different key.
Women cannot serve as pastors. Really, Southern Baptists, you’re going to go there again?
The Spirit of God keeps blowing where it will. Baptist women are now serving as pastors and associate ministers in all kinds of different settings and situations.
The national conversation about sexual abuse by Baptist clergy is important. But it doesn’t go far enough
Churches must address three foundational issues if they are truly going to become safe spaces for children.
Those children
Amid the atrocities on the southern border, we have to stand up for the sanctity of these human lives.
Grief isn’t a disease
She’d lost her husband to a terrible, slow disease and now had just buried her son. I asked her how she was. “Some days, she said, “I just stand in the middle of my house and scream.” What a wise…
Church matters
For as long as I can remember, I’ve always loved church. About the only thing I ever resisted was singing in the children’s choir because I considered the robes with their big floppy bows as an affront to my eight-year-old…
Blue Christmas
Last year about this time I was preaching for the Blue Christmas service held at a church in a another city. It’s one of those services where the church gives a nod to the fact that not all people are…