By Mark Wingfield “The devil made me do it.” Years ago, the comedian Flip Wilson made a name for himself with a ’70s-era shtick in which this was his sassy answer to every misdeed his character committed. For folks of…
What are we going to do about all those children?
By Marv Knox The crisis on our southern border is complicated. Except when it’s not. Surely you know the story: Since last fall, 52,000 unaccompanied Latin American children have flooded the U.S. border with Mexico, most of them along the lower…
Public prayers and the art of conversation
By Mike Greer Real conversation is an art form and requires a host of honed skills. We are all painfully aware of how rare thoughtful and meaningful conversations are these days. Most of us have learned that when conversing in…
Build and tear down
By Mark Wingfield The church building is grand and beautiful, representative of the kind of early 20th-century architecture prevalent among prominent Baptist churches with resources. A recent restoration has brought the shine back to this gem of a worship space,…
The complexity of short-term missions
By Blake Hart Lately I’ve had the privilege to be part of great discussions about how to improve our current short-term mission praxis. Many of us know that something is wrong with the way we do short-term work, and thankfully…
Missing the point over the border crisis
By Mike Greer On its web site The Minutemen Project says it is once again recruiting volunteers to guard the U.S.-Mexico border from “illegal immigration,” claiming the government has failed to do its job. Jim Gilchrist (strangely, his name means…
‘Snowpiercer’ offers distorted image of how God works
By Michael Parnell There have been some great movies set on trains. Joining that list is Snowpiercer, a movie like Titanic without the love story. Set 17 years in the future, a compound called CW-7 has been set loose in…
In church on Saturday
By Gary Cook In Sue Monk Kidd’s remarkable book, The Invention of Wings, a fictional account of real people caught up in the 19th-century drama of slavery and the abolitionist movement, there is an encounter between Sarah Grimke, who became…
Dialogue — or monologue?
By Luke Smith The term dialogue seems like a totally reasonable request. Who after all is not willing to listen to the heartfelt convictions of another? We come from different places. We have different experiences. We think about complex issues…