On a recent Saturday, a classic car show was held just down the road. There are several routes to the event, and since one passes right by my house, I spent the afternoon watching the vintage fleet parade to and…
Confessional Christianity and the choice Jesus offers
If you were listening to R&B in the early 1990s, especially in Cleveland, you may recall Chris Bender’s hit song “Who Will I Choose?” In the song Chris has a dilemma, he has two love interests contending for his heart….
Receiving ashes is a call to action
“You are dust and to dust you shall return.” With the words of one of several familiar formulas for the imposition of ashes on Ash Wednesday, many Christians begin their annual Lenten journey. Growing up Roman Catholic, Lent was a…
Trading the Cross for a cause
Many moderate and progressive-minded Christians are trying to live our faith in the most actionable way possible. We want a church that takes suffering seriously, tells the truth about injustice, shows up for neighbors and looks like Jesus in public….
These teachers taught me how to do nothing
My undergraduate Baptist college adviser was looking over his glasses at me as I prattled on and on about all I was doing. In my final semester, I was taking 18 hours in an attempt to pull a final-semester 4.0…
Feeling overwhelmed? Think local, Tyler advises
It can be overwhelming to consider that there won’t be a presidential election for nearly four years, or even the possibility of winning either the House or Senate away from the control of Christian nationalists for another two years. One…
Hope roots in truth-telling and grows with action
“People speak of hope as if it is this delicate, ephemeral thing. … It’s not. Hope has dirt on her face, blood on her knuckles, the grit of the cobblestones in her hair, and just spat out a tooth as…
Fellowship Southwest’s first conference calls for advocacy and action
Identifying needs and strategies for advocacy and action was the focus of Fellowship Southwest’s first Compassion and Justice Conference in Dallas last week. Convened at Life in Deep Ellum, a church and community center on the eastern fringe of downtown…
Prayer might not be enough
When someone shares a prayer request, what do you hear? We’ve been programmed to tell others when we have a need for God’s help. Many of us grew up going to Wednesday prayer service, where a significant block of time…
The troubled waters of sexual diversity: Moving from reflection to action
This is the seventh and final article in a series on sexual diversity. If we were profiling you, a reader of Baptist News Global, our profile would look something like this: You are English-language literate; college-educated, probably with some graduate…
American churches turn to prayer and song in solidarity with Ukraine
On the first Sunday of Russia’s brutal invasion of Ukraine, churches across America took to their knees and their feet, and turned to song and silence to utter their prayers for Ukrainians under siege. “When people were sharing their prayer…
‘We’re done educating you’
His words brought me up short. Gregg Neel is co-pastor at Westminster Presbyterian Church in Portland, Ore. He was our guest on our weekly webinar, talking about how his church has decided to come out of the pandemic accelerating into…