By Bill Leonard In his 1646 work, The Dippers Dipt, Anglican clergyman Daniel Featley published a scathing attack on the “Dippers” rampant in England. “Dipper” was an early name for Baptists and their practice of immersion baptism. Featley denounced such…
Prayers by the Book
By Bill Leonard In his 1646 work, The Dippers Dipt, Anglican clergyman Daniel Featley published a scathing attack on the “Dippers” rampant in England. “Dipper” was an early name for Baptists and their practice of immersion baptism. Featley denounced such…
The challenge of Chreasters in congregations
On Christmas Eve in my church I looked to my left and saw a Chreaster family sitting in the next section of pews. Although the service was crowded, I hoped that I could arrange to greet them at the conclusion…
Should a dying church be repurposed?
It seems that I’m stuck on thinking about dying or dead churches. Why so grim, Alan? That is a good question. It seems that folks are interested in talking about this topic. For some odd reason, I’ve been thinking about…
Baptists should heed mother’s plea
By Christa Brown A mother, who says her son was repeatedly molested by a minister at one of the Southern Baptist Convention’s largest churches, claims the church needs to come clean about a cover-up of child sexual abuse. “I want…
Lessons from the catwalk
In the fashion and entertainment world, many famous, infamous, and “wanna-be” famous individuals have strutted up and down catwalks, modeling the latest fashions and amazing audiences with their ability to appear in one full-fledged ensemble, disappear, and suddenly reappear with…
Acoustic smog
A little while back I bought The Green Bible. For me it was a small step towards environmental sustainability, but I must admit that I haven’t started a garden yet, although I’ve wanted to. And sometimes I don’t recycle, even…
Put your heart into it
By Bill Wilson Recently, our staff was talking about things our parents would tell us that we find ourselves repeating to our children or ourselves. We had to admit that we increasingly sound like those voices we vowed never to…
Funeral food
There are some rules everyone needs to understand about death and funerals. For starters, funerals call for a certain kind of food. There had better be chocolate cake involved, or the family is going to be left to scramble on…