A Houston megachurch has been in the news due to member concerns about the ways its bylaws were amended and governance was effectively removed from the congregation and entrusted to a small group handpicked by the senior pastor. While this...
Illumination makes things clearer for those willing to look where the light is shining. And these are a few lessons I’ve learned from the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship’s Illumination Project.
While scrolling through the pages of the Illumination Project Committee report, my opinion pile began to grow: Good decision; bad decision. I like this; I don’t like that. This is progressive; that is regressive. But as I quieted my own internal committee and let myself become still, I felt the Spirit pressing a cool cloth to my fevered, dualistic mind. “God is at work and more will be revealed” is the word that came.
The recommendation was written by straight people for straight people. It was written by people who are not affected by the hiring policy for people who are not affected by it either. By including any language of exclusion in the hiring and implementation policies, they have chosen discrimination. It is a policy written from a place of privilege.
People are frankly weary of “either-or” thinking and conversations that devolve into shouting matches. They want to see an instance where people of good intentions on all sides of a given topic come together to speak their hearts humbly, charitably and respectfully. If we as people of faith can’t offer such a witness, then who can?
The Cooperative Baptist Fellowship will continue to make sexual orientation a consideration in some, but not all, employment decisions with a new hiring policy and implementation plan adopted Feb. 9 by the CBF Governing Board.
By Chris Hughes HOUSTON – When the news of Hurricane Harvey’s devastation in Texas and Louisiana reached members of Second Baptist Church in Little Rock, Ark., they only had one question for Chris Ellis: “When are we going?” Within a…
President Trump praised God and country Thursday, calling the U.S. “a nation of believers“ and saying faith is central to “American life and to liberty.“
A lot of people make a lot of money in and around football at almost every level. Abolitionists will be branded as killjoys — even treasonous, or heretical, or fiscally irresponsible. The strategy for addressing the carnage of this sport won’t begin at the top. Calling for an NFL or college football program boycott would be foolhardy. Rather, the squeeze needs to start at the lower end.
What if more of us believed in and trusted in a more loving, gracious, inclusive God? What if more of us focused on this life rather than the afterlife and understood salvation in terms of healing, wholeness, reconciliation and liberation from the life diminishing forces that possess us and oppress us, so that we are free to truly love God and love others?
The top elected leader of the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship described a review of the organization’s LGBTQ hiring policy to be voted on this week as an attempt to meet various CBF constituencies “where they are” on a highly charged issue on which there is no consensus.
Leave it to a pastor to find encouragement for churches in a Super Bowl victory speech. That’s exactly what American Baptist Alan Rudnick does in his Feb. 6 blog post, “Churches, listen to Super Bowl MVP Nick Foles.”
When Martin Luther wrote, “Love God and sin boldly,” he was not in a fast food restaurant, but he could have been. Luther was inviting us to recognize what is important and what is not. There are times when you should order the salad, but sinning a little without worrying about it too much may, on occasion, be good for your soul.
