Are you a resolution maker? Spiritual formation ministers LOVE resolution makers. They keep us in business, really. There’s something powerful and inviting about the chance to be different; to be better somehow. Resolutions inspire the imagination with possibilities, like opening…
The illnesses of American Christianity
In his important new magnum opus, A Thicker Jesus, my friend Glen Stassen suggests that Christianity is ill in America, but in two very different ways. One form of Christianity is ill, according to Stassen, because it is essentially theologically and…
Baptist deaths in 2012
By Bob Allen Francis McBeth, an internationally acclaimed composer and conductor and longtime professor of music at Ouachita Baptist University, died Friday, Jan. 6, at age 78. Longtime Baptist journalist Jim Newton, 75, died Jan. 16 in Clinton, Miss., after a battle with…
The season of getting busy
By Amy Butler It could very well be just me, but I usually find the post-Christmas haze to be a little bit of a let-down. After all the excitement and anticipation of Christmas Day, I am never quite sure what…
When food oppresses
Then God said, “I give you every seed-bearing plant on the face of the whole earth and every tree that has fruit with seed in it. They will be yours for food. And to all the beasts of the earth…
How a Nativity re-kindled a mother’s hope
During the season of Christmas and Advent, a variety of nativity scenes are being displayed in home, churches, and communities around the world. At First Baptist Church of Pensacola, there is a small nativity scene in the window of the…
In good company (or, the futility of theodicy)
It was the innocence of the twenty youngest victims of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shootings, all the ages of my son and his first-grade classmates, which made this latest mass shooting most enduringly haunting. Their innocence also underscores the…
Green Day: on Holiday
The holiday season has reached its peak. Decorations, parties, calories and music abound. Some of this music is soul inspiring. I am warmed each time I hear Sheryl Crow’s “Blue Christmas”, The Barenaked Ladies’ “God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen” or…
Marching to a different drummer
The poinsettias are ablaze with holiday red. The Advent wreath is in place and we are on our countdown toward lighting the Christ Candle on Christmas Eve. Among the poinsettias, the wreaths, and the candles, there are numerous Christmas trees…