By Aileen Lawrimore I have a lot of Millennials in my life: my own children and their friends, nieces and nephews, youth from churches where I’ve served, plus college students I’ve met through ministry. I Snapchat and text, Facebook and…
Congregations fix yesterday’s mistakes, hoping they will solve tomorrow’s challenges
No doubt the tragic death of 150 people involving Germanwings Flight 9525 on March 24 is of such extreme seriousness that no trite applications of what happened should be put forth. At the same time, the actions and lessons of…
‘It is finished’: The spiritual practice of daily examen
By Jayne Davis “When Jesus had received the drink, he said, ‘It is finished.’” — John 19:30 “It is finished.” Such powerful words. Jesus’ last words in his earthly life, the culmination of all that the Father had asked of him,…
Surprise!
In the 1970s the British comedy troupe Monty Python performed a sketch which turned a common expression of exasperation at an unwanted series of questions into a comic refrain. In the sketch a man and woman are having a conversation….
Feeling or flinging in basketball and an authentic Christian lifestyle
A personal game-within-a-game I play when watching basketball games is to guess in the split second between the time when a player shoots a jump shot and it comes down in or near the basket whether or not they felt…
Is love a mandate or an emotion?
By Molly T. Marshall I have often wondered why Peter was so resistant to Jesus’ offer of washing his feet. Lord knows they needed it! The grit would cling to his feet after a day of walking in dust. When…
Transforming together: What CBFNC’s General Assembly taught me
Recently I attended the Cooperative Baptist Church of North Carolina’s General Assembly. I was honored to receive the Randall and Lou Lolley Scholarship for my theological education at Duke Divinity School. But I couldn’t help but feel more than just…
Suicide: many questions, few answers
By Doyle Sager Springtime — a season of hope, right? Not for everyone. According to studies, more suicides occur in the warm, sunny days of spring and early summer than any other time of year. In the northern hemisphere, suicides…
Why do so many Christians think we need government to prop up Jesus?
In a recent Facebook post, Franklin Graham praised Indiana’s House of Representatives for passing a “religious freedom” bill “that would protect business owners who want to decline to provide services for same-sex marriages.” Religious freedom, which has been a hallmark…
Same-sex marriage and the intractable knot of freedoms
Same-sex marriage has tied American society into a seemingly intractable knot. Advocates of one great value pull a thread that ultimately tightens and restricts another cherished principle. And vice-versa. Human rights vs. religious liberty.
The death of god (or 5 ways to make people mad on the Internet)
Let’s be honest, blogging is sexy. Like an aphrodisiacal wine, crackling fire or bearskin rug, few things bring our raw and inchoate emotions to a startling head quite like a breathless 750-word epitaph elucidating the grizzly details of parenthood and/or…
Jesus’ law of respecting persons
By Kyle Henderson “Civil society” has become the newest oxymoron. People do not seem to be able to get along at all, especially if we have ideological differences. Christians are the worst. We focus on the Great Commission and the…