It may now seem surprising to many United Methodists, and even more Baptists, that for most of our histories in the United States, all Methodists and Baptists were regularly designated as evangelical denominations. The most important reason is that both...
By Bill Leonard Recent conversations about hymnody and history sent me back to a century-old family photo I discovered after my mother’s death two years ago. It shows a group of some 70 men, women and children standing in front…
This is the third of three posts by Jason Coker, written in the days before and after his father died on Jan. 27. The first post can be read here and the second here. Jan. 30, 2015 I got the…
Scars have a bad reputation. They’re branded as the bullies on the playground, the bad apples in the barrel, the “Debbie Downer” of the party. We ban them from our conversations. We send them to sit in the corner by…
The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., said: “Life’s most persistent and urgent question is: ‘What are you doing for others?’” (From: The Words of Martin Luther King, Jr., 2011).
There’s a lot of discussion that goes on about church growth: what causes it; how to generate it; prepare for it; launch it; build it; cultivate it and even, to some degree, manufacture it. Many of the discussions are helpful,…
By Jeff Brumley Australia and much of the rest of Asia are caught up in an international media and political storm swirling around the so-called Bali Nine as two of the group of drug smugglers are scheduled for execution in…
By Bob Allen A Russian Baptist leader has voiced concern about recent legislation by Congress authorizing $350 million in lethal and nonlethal military assistance to Ukraine and expanding the president’s authority to impose sanctions on Russian energy and defense firms….
By Bob Allen A Baptist minister who performed one of the first legal marriages in Alabama between members of the same sex said the ceremony was pretty much like marrying anyone else. “To me doing a same-sex marriage as a…
