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…
If the Bible has a litmus test…
If the bible has a litmus test…and it’s an if. A big if. I hesitate and say “if” because terrible acts have been committed more than once in history when scripture is sliced, diced, and served up to my personal…
Uncluttering
By John Chandler About 25 years ago, a wise and slightly-bored retiree friend told me that he was about to start a new business venture: self-storage units. He had done extensive research on American habits and thought he was onto…
Why dads matter
I grew up in the television heyday of the family sitcom. Shows like The Cosby Show, Full House, Step by Step, Home Improvement, The Wonder Years, Boy Meets World, Family Matters, and so on were hugely popular and as far…
Losing Sunday
By Starlette McNeill I have served as an associate minister at a handfull of churches in the District of Columbia. All were unpaid and offered too few opportunities for mentoring, leadership development, preaching and the ecclesiastical practice of one’s gifts…
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…
Dunn deals
By Bill Leonard At a Baptist gathering several years ago I was approached by an intense, well-meaning, recent seminary graduate (aren’t they all intense and well-meaning?) who rushed up and declared: “I’ve just seen Dr. James Dunn and he looked…
Baptist colleges complicit in sin
Last week, two Baptist colleges in Texas jumped into the debate over women’s health. Baptist News Global reported that East Texas Baptist University and Houston Baptist University objected to “providing — directly or indirectly — emergency contraceptive drugs they believe cause…
A lavish welcome to the table
By Amy Butler I’ve always been a little sensitive about being left out, and I don’t even need a therapy session to tell you why. When I was a little kid we would visit my grandparents every summer, and during…