Illumination makes things clearer for those willing to look where the light is shining. And these are a few lessons I’ve learned from the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship’s Illumination Project.
Illuminations: The healing space between ‘good’ and ‘bad’
While scrolling through the pages of the Illumination Project Committee report, my opinion pile began to grow: Good decision; bad decision. I like this; I don’t like that. This is progressive; that is regressive. But as I quieted my own internal committee and let myself become still, I felt the Spirit pressing a cool cloth to my fevered, dualistic mind. “God is at work and more will be revealed” is the word that came.
Breaking the ‘Four Fragile Freedoms’: A response to CBF’s decision on the Illumination Project’s recommendation
The recommendation was written by straight people for straight people. It was written by people who are not affected by the hiring policy for people who are not affected by it either. By including any language of exclusion in the hiring and implementation policies, they have chosen discrimination. It is a policy written from a place of privilege.
Illumination Project: On cooperation, transformation and hope
People are frankly weary of “either-or” thinking and conversations that devolve into shouting matches. They want to see an instance where people of good intentions on all sides of a given topic come together to speak their hearts humbly, charitably and respectfully. If we as people of faith can’t offer such a witness, then who can?
CBF relaxes policy on hiring LGBTQ staff, but maintains some restrictions
The Cooperative Baptist Fellowship will continue to make sexual orientation a consideration in some, but not all, employment decisions with a new hiring policy and implementation plan adopted Feb. 9 by the CBF Governing Board.
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‘Activist kind of church’ says disaster response in its DNA
By Chris Hughes HOUSTON – When the news of Hurricane Harvey’s devastation in Texas and Louisiana reached members of Second Baptist Church in Little Rock, Ark., they only had one question for Chris Ellis: “When are we going?” Within a…
CBF moderator says proposed LGBTQ hiring policy meets Fellowship Baptists ‘where they are’
The top elected leader of the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship described a review of the organization’s LGBTQ hiring policy to be voted on this week as an attempt to meet various CBF constituencies “where they are” on a highly charged issue on which there is no consensus.
Super Bowl MVP offers key to survival for struggling churches, minister says
Leave it to a pastor to find encouragement for churches in a Super Bowl victory speech. That’s exactly what American Baptist Alan Rudnick does in his Feb. 6 blog post, “Churches, listen to Super Bowl MVP Nick Foles.”
Baptists among nearly 150 groups opposing Johnson Amendment repeal
In advance of Thursday’s National Prayer Breakfast, 145 organizations called on Congress to reject attempts to weaken a rule that bars churches receiving tax-exempt status from engaging in partisan politics.