As the Southern Baptist Convention in its recent annual meeting has proved itself unreliably Baptist, it gives me pause to think about how quickly the transmogrification of this Baptist denomination into its ecclesiastical opposite has happened. Baptist folk often have...
By Luke Smith In the recent decision of the Supreme Court in United States vs. Windsor, the court struck down the federal law defining marriage exclusively as a monogamous union of a man and woman. I have been asked by…
By Jeff Brumley Some see the nation’s burgeoning church merger and multisite movements resulting from larger congregations preying on smaller ones, pressuring them into relinquishing buildings and land in exchange for survival. In some circles, that’s called “steeple-jacking.” But it’s…
The long-range goal of many congregations is to turn their church into a museum. It is not intentional. It is unintentional. It is just that actions taken year after year migrates them away from thriving as a missional movement to…
By Bob Allen A Southern Baptist camp in Illinois plans to host a National Rifle Association pistol course intended to help participants qualify for permits under the state’s newly passed concealed-carry law. The eight-hour course is scheduled for Saturday, Sept….
By Amy Butler Every minister knows there could be massive tomes written on the topic, “Things I Never Learned in Seminary.” This is not because seminary faculties try to trick us by leaving some of the essentials out of the…
By Amy Butler Every minister knows there could be massive tomes written on the topic, “Things I Never Learned in Seminary.” This is not because seminary faculties try to trick us by leaving some of the essentials out of the…
By Bob Allen A moderate Baptist ethicist compared Rep. Charlie Rangel’s recent use of the term “white cracker” to cooking celebrity Paula Deen and NFL player Riley Cooper using the “N-word.” The difference, Robert Parham of the Baptist Center for…
