For many people, summer is a type of Sabbath: a slower pace; vacation; more interaction with neighbors as the warm weather invites people outside; a deliberate pause between academic years. Even people whose lives do not operate solely on an…
Does your church need Millennials?
By Emily Hull McGee National news media outlets have been peppered recently with reports and opinions on the churchgoing habits of Millennials. Bloggers have rightly identified why this 18- to 35-year-old demographic is leaving churches of all stripes, citing a…
Does your church need Millennials?
By Emily Hull McGee National news media outlets have been peppered recently with reports and opinions on the churchgoing habits of Millennials. Bloggers have rightly identified why this 18-35 year-old demographic is leaving churches of all stripes, citing a need…
Why does Robin Thicke earn a “Get Out of Jail Free” card?
I am proud to say that I have not watched any kind of awards show since we tuned the old LeGrand console television to the Grammys in 1983, so that my sister and I could watch Michael Jackson do the…
On accepting a call to pastor
I am literally speechless. I have accepted the call to be the interim pastor at Emmanuel Baptist Fellowship in Lexington, S.C. I am speechless because even on this blog, I have expressed my doubts about being able to find a…
Things that make for freedom
By Bill Leonard “Free at last, free at last. Thank God Almighty, I’m free at last.” We recall the words of that spiritual a half-century after Martin Luther King Jr. sounded them across the Lincoln Memorial, a hallmark of the…
Things that make for freedom
By Bill Leonard “Free at last, free at last. Thank God Almighty, I’m free at last.” We recall the words of that spiritual a half-century after Martin Luther King, Jr. sounded them across the Lincoln Memorial, a hallmark of the…
Funding the formation of the called
Robert Dilday’s article on the educational indebtedness of the church’s future ministers published last Friday by Associated Baptist Press, along with the Auburn Center for the Study of Theological Education paper “The Gathering Storm: The Educational Debt of Theological Students”…
Making dreams come true
By Andrew Manis Some years ago, when I taught at Averett College in Danville, Va., my friend Thurman Echols, pastor of the Moral Hill Missionary Baptist Church in Martinsville, often came to speak on the civil rights movement to my American…
Still marching
The 40 in the room sit entranced. Most of them are children, and they unusually are silent. The young adults are rapt. Our Freedom School site has always channeled the energy and inspiration of the Civil Rights movement for our…
Clergy discouragement and satisfaction: part one
Recently, I’ve read a number of posts on various sites dealing with the topics of clergy discouragement and satisfaction. For what it may prove worth, I’ll add my observations to the conversation. Let’s start with discouragement. Based on my own…
Goodbye, unfriend?
By Mary Miller About a year ago I resigned the pastorate of a church where I had served for 13 years. As I prepared to resign, I faced the usual list of not-so-pleasant tasks: compose a resignation letter, figure out…