By Bob Allen Pastor Jason Coker opened his third Sunday in Advent sermon at Wilton Baptist Church with words describing irrepressible joy written early in the week. “Circumstances dictate change,” Coker told parishioners Dec. 16 before switching gears to preach…
By Bob Allen Pastor Jason Coker opened his third Sunday in Advent sermon at Wilton Baptist Church, written earlier in the week, with words describing irrepressible joy. “Circumstances dictate change,” Coker told parishioners Dec. 16 before switching gears to preach…
Christmas songs are among the popular music in the world. Music historians believe the first explicitly Christmas hymns were composed in Rome in the 4th century. However, in Luke 1:46-56 we find a story culminating in Mary’s song, the first…
By Bill Wilson Current Christmas celebration habits are a uniquely post-World War II phenomenon. Much of the excess we experience stands at odds with the way Western society approached the holiday only a few years ago. This shift has lessons…
Last year about this time I was preaching for the Blue Christmas service held at a church in a another city. It’s one of those services where the church gives a nod to the fact that not all people are…
By Jeff Brumley Growing up Baptist, Jennifer Harris Dault says her calling into the ministry was clouded by comments and assumptions along the way that the pulpit was no place for women. “I had this feeling as a kid that…
By Molly T. Marshall I have always been an avid reader of Dr. Seuss. Long before I became a theologian, I knew that his whimsical rhyming contained great wisdom and ethical insight. He was well ahead of his contemporaries on…
By Darrell Gwaltney “In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit,” so begins J.R.R. Tokien’s The Hobbit or There and Back Again. In preparation for The Hobbit: An UnExpected Journey opening this weekend, I picked up my old…
By Bill Leonard In 394 CE the Spanish nun Egeria visited Holy Land sites, participating in the church’s great liturgical moments from Epiphany to Easter. She kept a wonderful diary of her exploits that includes this experience in Bethlehem’s Church…
