“It’s been a long, a long time coming. But I know a change is gonna come, oh yes it will.” The refrain from Kathy Manis Findlay’s Oct. 21 op-ed is significant. However, bringing about change will require the Christian community to…
Abiding in thin places: Día de los Muertos and lessons from loved ones passed
My longest-standing disagreement with my mother stems from an early childhood memory. I recall waving to my great-grandmother while an adult held me in loving arms. I vividly remember Big Granny smiling and waving back to me as strangers carried…
How the evangelical church messed up and lost its way
The evangelical church in the United States is a mess. I’m not talking about reports of declining membership and lower baptism numbers. Those statistics merely provided warning signs that something was amiss, that things were going in the wrong direction….
I want to experience Christianity much bigger than a shoebox
Every year about this time, old content from the Baptist News Global website starts lighting up, due to searches for “Operation Christmas Child.” As it turns out, people are not just searching these words because they love the program and…
‘Hateful faithful’ model paves the way for a fascist society
I was born, educated and live in Arkansas. Recently, white legislators in Arkansas responsible for redrawing voting districts in ways that fracture communities of Black and Latinx voters expressed dismay when Black and Latinx leaders denounced the re-drawn districts as…
Twister blows up a crisis in the BubbaDoo’s family
I’m used to the phone ringing at odd hours. Or at least as used to that as you get. Nothing about the sacred call upon a minister’s life for vocational work completely smooths over untimely interruptions. If the call comes…
Need good news? Here are 10 reasons to feel optimistic about church
I needed some good news. Working with congregations and clergy these days is often an exercise in encouraging the discouraged. And sometimes, even the encourager gets discouraged. Data, surveys, media and real-life experiences combine to paint a bleak picture for…
Do you play church in a pretend world or serve people in the real world?
There is the world the church acts like we all live in, and then there’s the world real people live in. These are not the same places. It has taken more than a year of deconstructing my own experiences as…
The scandal of the persistent ‘color line’ in American Christianity
In addition to Halloween yesterday, many in the Protestant Christian world celebrated Reformation Day, commemorating when Martin Luther posted his “95 Theses” on the door of the Castle Church in Wittenberg, Germany, Oct. 31, 1517. This is commonly understood as…
There’s no time like the present to be a present
“I learned from a 5-year-old prophet on my run this week that every day is a gift from God because that’s why it’s called ‘the present,’” a pastor said recently during the greeting time at church. The present of every…
The return of the witch hunters
It’s that time of the year when the Sanderson sisters come back to our small screens, and little witches run around our neighborhoods with pointed hats and brooms, asking for treats at our doors. I do love Hocus Pocus as…
Seeing ghosts may cause us to settle accounts long overdue
I sent my children to Scarowinds last week, and I do not feel at all guilty about it. Scarowinds is the end-of-season hurrah for Charlotte’s theme park, Carowinds. Staff dress up in Halloween costumes, the park stays open late, and…