By Sara Hunt Young CBF leaders, I’m one of you. We’re on the same team, you and I. Our stories are woven with similar threads. You and I, we’re passionate, alive and ready to see the good news of our…
Wait! Advent 2013
Celebrating Advent means being able to wait. Waiting is an art that our impatient age has forgotten. It wants to break open the ripe fruit when it has hardly finished planting the shoot. But all too often the greedy eyes…
Broken immigration system breaking lives
By Miguel De La Torre We often say our immigration system is broken, but seldom do we contemplate how our immigration system is breaking lives. Sandra Lopez is just one life to be crushed under the immigration grinding mill. She…
A “buyer’s market” for pastor search committees
The 21st century is proving to be a buyer’s market for many churches that are looking for a pastor. Even a tiny, troubled Baptist church can get 100 resumes from men and women looking for a church to pastor. A…
Be a peace-wager like Nelson Mandela
As the world reacts to the death of Nelson Mandela, we cannot help but read and understand his amazing history of peace. Fighting against injustice and apartheid in South Africa were his notable achievements, but Mandela did so much more….
Nelson Mandela: Peace wager
By Alan Rudnick As the world reacts to the death of Nelson Mandela, we cannot help but read and understand his amazing history of peace. Fighting against injustice and apartheid in South Africa were his notable achievements, but Mandela did…
Time to wake up
I recently sat down with Ian Morgan Cron’s memoir, Jesus, My Father, the CIA, and Me. For those who aren’t familiar with Ian Morgan Cron, he is an Episcopal priest with a gift for writing, and his story is a…
The first war on Christmas
By Bill Leonard The Blessed Virgin Mary scares me. It happens every Advent. She questions my ways and means, confronts me with mystery, gives me guilt and makes me think twice before driving to the mall. Listening to the Blessed…
Advent as parenthesis
A parenthesis is a break in the flow of a thought, an interval, or a time between two events. We experience many events in life that embody this idea of waiting either in anticipation or in dread. Life transitions are…
Liberal like Jesus
By Terry Maples Language naturally evolves over time. I’ve observed the evolution of many words since my childhood. One example is the word “mouse.” When I was young the word referred to an undesirable furry rodent or the more winsome…
Forever Changed #13: flying our flags together
What a week! I know I say that every week. But it’s is true. How many of you aren’t happy unless you are running your life at 100 mph with your hair on fire? Most of you know that pretty…
Dear CBF
By Lesley-Ann Hix I was in elementary school when my church ordained one of our female ministers. We were excited. We even decorated her car. Someone painted, “Take that, Paige Patterson!” I asked my mom what it meant. “She’s a…