Have you ever been downsized? It hurts, doesn’t it? It hurts the person who is downsized. It hurts their family. It hurts other employees. It even hurts bosses who have a deep, compassionate spirit. Just think what happens when you…
Pitfalls of worship
By Bob Burroughs There are some pitfalls in worship. Sometimes, things go wrong at the right time. We try hard to overcome these obstacles as they appear and try to patch them as best we can with temporary solutions, but…
Seven Reasons Why Christians Should Celebrate ‘Halloween’
Is celebrating a holiday that honors ghouls, demons, ghosts, and everything that goes bump in the night dangerous or even evil? Somewhere, in the halls of history, Halloween or All Hallows Eve, got hijacked. What started as a day to…
Choosing faith and freedom
By Henry Green In Mark 10, James and John ask Jesus for the positions of authority when he establishes his kingdom. The others learn of this and “became indignant” toward James and John for making such a request. In the…
Salvation by works?
Salvation by works. That’s a phrase that is anathema to baptists the world round. Instead, the rallying cry is sola fide, by faith alone. But what if that wasn’t the message of Jesus? We are, I presume, all familiar with…
Billy Graham and politics
My maternal grandmother thought Billy Graham was a saint above all others. You simply could not say anything negative about the evangelist in her presence. She held the same regard for Jimmy Carter, because she considered him a godly man…
Holding your staff accountable
By Bill Wilson At the Center for Congregational Health, we find that many times staff members operate in a congregational world devoid of healthy accountability. Without a thoughtful, rational system in place, evaluation and accountability disintegrate into personal opinion and…
The theology of the living dead
The zombies are coming! The third season of the hit show “The Walking Dead” is out. This hit TV show is based on a popular comic book series by the same name. This new series is not your typical ‘horror’…
How to make your pastor’s day
Over the past couple of weeks, as more and more cards and notes appeared on my desk, in my mail, and in my inbox, all thanking me for serving as their minister, I began to wonder if someone had announced…
The unculted
By Bill Leonard In his 1856 autobiography, Methodist circuit rider Peter Cartwright warned of those Protestants whose “pretense of Divine inspiration” led them to predict a new millennium while playing on the “ignorance, superstition and credulity of the people.” Some,…
Why we love the paranormal
What is it about the paranormal that Americans find so fascinating? A Gallup poll found that about 75% of Americans believe in the paranormal (ghosts, telepathy, clairvoyance, astrology, etc…) Nearly 50% believe in ghosts and 41% believe in extrasensory perception….
Is it still, ‘If we build it they will come’?
Many of us remember the 1989 movie “The Field of Dreams.” It is about the sense of compulsion a nearly bankrupt Iowa farmer felt to build a baseball field in the middle of acres of corn. The voice he kept…