Gospel Gothic, a Sunday-morning radio show hosted by Jake Hall, pastor of Highland Hills Baptist Church in Macon, G.A., features candid conversation about faith in the Christ-haunted South interlaced with celebrated roots music. Together, Jake Hall with Brad Evans and…
Photo Gallery: Jake Hall, Gospel Gothic, Music and Radio
All photos taken in this photo gallery of Jake Hall and Gospel Gothic are by Jenna Eason. In this ‘Signature Ministries’ series, Gospel Gothic, a Sunday-morning radio show hosted by Jake Hall, pastor of Highland Hills Baptist Church in Macon, G.A.,…
Signature ministries: ‘The art of human contacts’
The Catholic Worker Movement, one of the most important Christian social ministries of the modern era, began in 1933 in New York during the Great Depression. The founders, Catholic Peter Maurin and journalist/Catholic convert Dorothy Day initiated the movement, Day…
Decades of life with the ‘Lost Boys’ from South Sudan: Charlotte church loves their neighbors as themselves
Martha Kearse knew the young men were out of their element as soon as she saw them milling in bewilderment at the grocery store’s vast array of options. Very tall, very thin and very confused, they stood out like flies in a glass of milk. Kearse suspected they were some of the Lost Boys of South Sudan that she’d seen featured on the TV news magazine 60 Minutes.
Photo Gallery: Lost Boys in photos
All photos taken in this photo gallery of the Lost Boys are by Norman Jameson. In this ‘Welcoming the Stranger’ series, we learn what happens when one church decides to live up to its covenant of “We will…
How do congregations cultivate a culture of call to vocational ministry?
What is it about the culture of those churches that encourages a call to ministry among their members? How do they create a “culture of call” that invites parishioners to consider deeply the possibility that God may be leading them into vocational ministry?
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.”
Courageous conversations are no longer optional. It’s time to cross boundaries.
We’re going to have to do more, to move past talking (even preaching!) and into the messy and painful work of deep conversation held together by real relationship. In fact, it’s increasingly my conviction that this may be the heart of the faith community’s work in this moment: building authentic relationships upon which these difficult conversations can rest.
Believing what we’ve preached, post-election
For the past two weeks, I’ve crafted my sermons in light of the election that was coming. I engaged the themes raised by the lectionary texts of the day to deal with the difficulty of an election season that put…