By Bill Leonard “Will the CBF make it another 20 years?” That question is asked frequently these days as individuals inside and outside the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship consider its future. While the question is sobering, it need not be discouraging….
Giving thanks
By Bill Wilson Healthy Christians are people of gratitude and generosity. That is a clear biblical truth that has been lived out across the years in church history. If the gospel has not penetrated a person’s heart to the point…
Love, your favorite heretic
By Elizabeth Evans Hagan I got a thank-you e-mail the other day from one of my friends who does not regularly attend church. She signed the message: “Love, your favorite heretic.” This is a friend with whom I often talk…
Coming home for Christmas
By David Breckenridge For a lot of us, Christmas is about home. It’s about going home, if home is elsewhere. Its about others coming home, if home is here. It’s about reconnecting with those to whom we are connected —…
Giving good gifts
By Ken Sehested We have a problem. On the one hand, gift-giving is not only fun but is also a reflection of our most cherished convictions. Maybe the deepest current of Scripture is God’s gift-giving character, with the parallel notion…
Gilded Age America redux
By David Gushee Since the origin of Christian social ethics in the late 19th century as an Anglo-American academic-ecclesial discipline, economic problems have been at the center of our profession’s concerns. Christian ethics was born during the days in which…
Setting the stage at Advent
By Barry Howard In the close-knit rural church of my upbringing, we didn’t observe Advent. Not by that name, anyway. We naively made a huge leap from Thanksgiving to Christmas. The important liturgical dates on our church calendar other than…
Celebrities and saints
By David Wilkinson Americans’ obsession with celebrities seems inexhaustible. The ubiquity of the Internet and the rise of social media have added a whole new dimension to this social phenomenon. Today, one can read about, watch and “follow” a favorite…
Getting burned
By Amy Butler On Saturday evening after Thanksgiving, I stood at my stove. I’d decided to mix things up a bit — no leftovers that night — so the spicy dish I was cooking was, if I do say so…
More than a spiritual eraser comes at Advent
By R. Kevin Johnson My friend Ray is a pastor who tells a story about an encounter he had with a visitor to his church office. The man started with, “Pastor, I need your help. I think I’ve made a…
Empty hands sometimes mean content souls
By Carra Hughes Greer I was 13. While my friends were ecstatic about all the new clothes and other stuff they would be getting for Christmas, I was facing the very real fact that we would not be exchanging any…
Sharia and the Constitution
By Jim Denison In last month’s midterm elections, voters in Oklahoma overwhelmingly passed an amendment to their state constitution prohibiting state courts from considering Sharia law when deciding cases. U.S. District Judge Vicki Miles-LaGrange then issued a temporary restraining order,…