By Bill Leonard In scene one of Bertolt Brecht’s play Galileo, a boy named Andrea enters the scientist’s room carrying “a big astronomical model” showing earth at the center of the galaxy, an idea attributed to the ancient philosopher Ptolemy….
Givenness
By Scott Dickison Marilynne Robinson, the gifted writer, novelist and Christian apologist, argues in her new collection of essays that for all our modern questioning and search for meaning we often fail to appreciate the “givenness of things.” I’m taken…
3 leadership strategies every pastor should adopt
By Amy Butler I had a spirited conversation with some friends the other day about church revitalization. The topic came up because, in my circles, some version of this question is on everyone’s mind these days: “How can we revitalize…
5 suggestions for Christian voters
By Jeff Harris The 2016 presidential election is still a year away and I am already tired of it. Maybe I’m too cynical, but the 24-hour news cycle has a way of bringing out the worst in us. Our dumbed-down,…
Next-Year People
By Scott Dickison I endured a bittersweet moment recently as I walked with my 2-year-old son through a critical rite of passage. We are, as Dickisons, devout (I use this term reverently and deliberately) fans of the Chicago Cubs. This…
Baptist politics and the BGAV
By Derik Hamby I personally do not know Brad Hoffman or Nancy Stanton McDaniel. Both are now candidates for the Baptist General Association of Virginia presidency. That last sentence was hard to type. “Candidates” is a strange word for those…
Reformation Day — 498 years and counting
By Brett Younger Seminary professors spend a lot of time around 24-year-olds. As a result, we spend a lot of time feeling old. Our church experience is different from theirs. My parents took me to church three times a week….
Evangelicals, admit racism is real
By Alan Rudnick News broke on Wednesday that South Carolina deputy Ben Fields, who brutally abused a student in school — WWE-styled — was fired. The abuse was caught on tape. This incident was the latest in a series of…
The African-American roots of Bonhoeffer’s Christianity
By Alan Bean Dietrich Bonhoeffer was the only prominent Christian in Germany to grasp the hideous spiritual implications of Adolf Hitler and the Nazis from the outset. Martin Niemoller’s famous ”first they came for” litany sketched out a typical pattern…