It’s no secret that I’ve been a friendly critic of the apparent lack of clear direction afflicting the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship in recent years. A challenging column of mine published in another Baptist news journal last year elicited everything from…
Thank you, Mrs. Duerksen
I’ve been reading through Calvin Miller’s memoir “Life is Mostly Edges.” Reading his experiences have given me a greater appreciation for the things I had to go through as a child and the way people have helped me through the…
CBF a candle in search of darkness
By Alan Bean I was a graduate student at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville when the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship was founded in 1991. I left Southern Baptist life to become an American Baptist minister in 1994, and last…
CBF General Assembly…
I am in Ft. Worth at the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship’s annual General Assembly, sitting on the second floor lobby of the Omni Hotel looking out at the Convention Center, where most of the activity is taking place. This is my…
Embracing the inner artist
Embracing the inner artist I am not an artist, or at least I have never considered myself to be one. I have always admired the creative energy that artists possess, and their ability to turn a blank canvas, stage or…
Your own personal Jesus
By Starlette McNeill Personal Jesus is an app that can send more than 200 personal quotes from the Bible to your iPhone or iPad, utilizing an image of Jesus Christ. The application also allows you to share these words with…
Baptists who “do this”
Cooperative Baptists are Baptists who “do this” when they get together. They “do this” not only in their local churches but also in their assemblies and in the institutions of theological education with which they partner. I’m talking about the…
The meaning of life
Following the Second World War several existentialist authors wrote at length about the meaning of life. One of these was Albert Camus, whose “Myth of Sisyphus” opens with these words: “There is but one truly serious philosophical problem, and that is suicide….
The best pens (yes, pens) at CBF’s assembly
I’m just going to get right to the point: one of the best things about this CBF General Assembly, my first, has been the pens given away by the vendors. I knew coming into Fort Worth that this would be…
Being there
Do you know one of the hottest topics in the counseling field is these days? Mindfulness. Yep, that somewhat spiritual sounding practice of being where you are while you’re there is one of the hottest therapeutic tickets around. Not so…
Welcome the moneychangers?
Although Jesus did through the moneychangers from the Temple, perhaps we would be well served to welcome them back. With summer nearly, officially, underway not only have beautiful flowers, graduations, and Romney/Obama attack advertisements arrived, but a so too has…
Preaching peace in a timid church
By Brett Younger At the 2012 William Self Preaching Lectures at the McAfee School of Theology, “Preaching Peace in a Crumbling Empire,” Brian McLaren argued that the Bible is a call to speak God’s word of peace to an empire…