By Adam McDuffie Recently, I was walking back from lunch and saw a trickle of people walking along the street. They had clearly just left a demonstration of some sort, which I now know to have been the March for…
Desperate to avoid (dealing with) death
Recently I spoke at a conference of Retirement Community Chaplains. My thesis was that people who deal with the vicissitudes of life best tend to deal best with the reality of death. There are 72-year-old men and women who seem to…
Starting a conversation: The LGBT Issue, part 1
By David Gushee Follow David: @dpgushee Everywhere I go, I run into “the LGBT issue,” whether I feel like running into it or not. You may feel the same way. And everywhere, it creates conflict. It surfaces and creates conflict…
Navel gazing
By George Bullard All my life I have loved attending denominational celebration events and conventions. I love least the formal meetings. I love most the networking. I love seeing my friends in ministry and meeting new friends in ministry. It…
National Welcoming Week
Recently I went to an Iftar. This is the evening meal eaten during Ramadan by Muslims after the sun goes down. In Houston, where 25% of the population is foreign born, it is easy to become friends with someone from another faith,…
What’s in a name?
By John Carroll Hugh Hollowell, pastor to the homeless of Raleigh, N.C., through the scrappy and brilliant ministry Love Wins, told me a story once that I haven’t been able to shake. He has a good friend who is quite…
Reckoning with the children on our doorstep
By Alan Bean What do we do with the unaccompanied children, some say as many as 100,000, who have surrendered to American border officials in the last few months? Barack Obama speaks of a humanitarian crisis but thinks fast-track deportation…
Is the church too busy attending meetings and talking with itself?
All my life I have loved attending denominational celebration events and conventions. I love least the formal meetings. I love most the networking. I love seeing my friends in ministry and meeting new friends in ministry. It is part of…
A sense of the heart
By Bill Leonard In his Treatise on Religious Affections (1746), Jonathan Edwards wrote: “We come necessarily to this conclusion, concerning that wherein spiritual understanding consists; viz. that it consists in a sense of the heart, of the supreme beauty and…
Supreme Court ruling legalizes religious discrimination
By Bruce Gourley On June 30 the United States Supreme Court, in Burwell v. Hobby Lobby, ruled that the religious beliefs of employers trump the free conscience and civil rights of employees. For traditional Baptists, the decision hearkens to earlier…
In HBO’s ‘The Leftovers,’ concept of Rapture gets secular treatment
By Michael Parnell HBO pioneered the adult television series, shows that usually appear on Sunday nights. Game of Thrones, The Sopranos, Boardwalk Empire and the recent True Detective are examples of these series, but I like to think of them…
Leave Jesus out of the Fourth of July
On this 4th of July weekend, I exhort you, American preachers, do not take Uncle Sam into the pulpit. Carefully consider how you plan worship for this Sunday. A good place to start would be: do not sing “America the…