After having what will one day be recognized as a Hall of Fame NFL career, Demaryius Thomas died unexpectedly of what police are calling “a medical issue” in his Georgia home on Dec. 9, 2021. He would have turned 34…
She’s Tim Tebow’s mom, but she’s got her own story too
When you hear the name “Pam Tebow,” you might think first of her influential son, Tim Tebow, winner of the Heisman Trophy. She’s fine with that. “Timmy is doing fine,” she said in a recent interview. “I have five kids,…
How do you change a society?
The gospel calls for social justice, not just individual, personal salvation. Societal justice. Although it’s not the same thing, social justice is not unrelated to the call for “liberty and justice for all.” It is too commonplace in our superficially…
What Patrick Mahomes taught us
Kansas City Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes has taught us much about athletic prowess in his relatively short football career. At the high school in small-town Whitehouse, Texas, he was a local football hero. In his senior year, he passed for 4,619…
If you would have marched with Dr. King, where are you now?
Editor’s note: In October 2017, Freddy Haynes of Friendship-West Baptist Church in Dallas wrote an open letter to Robert Jeffress of First Baptist Church in Dallas, asking his cooperation in fighting racism in America. Haynes is a nationally known figure…
‘You can’t get much bigger’ than the public mourning of NBA great Kobe Bryant
The Jan. 26 death of retired NBA star Kobe Bryant touched off a wave of public mourning that transcended social class and grieved many who aren’t sports fans. And that came as no surprise to Chanequa Walker-Barnes, associate professor of…
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.”
How Trump, Kaepernick and NFL inspire venom — and prophetic witness
When Texas pastor Freddy Haynes joined other ministers over the summer calling for a boycott of the NFL, it was to protest the league’s treatment of embattled quarterback Colin Kaepernick. But Donald Trump has pushed the debate, and the proposed…
Why do congregations keep firing their leaders?
In a recent conversation, a pastor whose father was also a pastor related to me this interesting observation. The elder pastor said, “In my generation, if you could really hang your hat on one or two aspects of ministry, you…