Last week my husband and I had dinner with a couple we hadn’t seen in two years. We spent the evening catching up, having heated debate and laughing loudly. At one point the wife leaned over to me and whispered,…
TRENDING: Family on mission
As discussed recently, Mike Breen’s “State of the Evangelical Union” forecasts discipleship entering the center of evangelical focus. That conversation puts identifying ourselves around tribal customs or doctrinal distinctives in the rearview mirror. It also reorients worship gatherings and the…
VITAL SIGNS: Is your church a Corvette?
One effect of growing up in 20th century America is that I love cars. Early on, I got the fever. Played with them as a kid, worked on them, collected them, admired them, dreamed of them. I’ve owned around 25…
OPINION: A pope by any other name
March 13, 2013 — a day for the history books. Anytime a pope is elected it’s historic, but this is history of histories. We have a Latin American pope. And where was I when I found out the announcement? Sucking…
OPINION: Struggling with prayers at governmental meetings
A few weeks ago, I read with great interest Robert Dilday’s article in the Religious Herald regarding prayer at official government meetings in Rowan County, N.C. By happenstance, the very next week I was to give the invocation before the…
OPINION: Drawing boundaries
A story is told in my family about my grandfather, a lover of old time gospel music and, in an era before paid music ministers, the song leader at his rural North Carolina Baptist church. Music was such an important…
LETTER: No room for compromise
I write in response to the Religious Herald’s article entitled “Razor thin margin” in the March 25 issue. It is absolutely appalling to see how far we have slipped as Christians and Baptists. To place church autonomy above allegiance to…
LETTER: An open letter to Ginter Park Baptist Church
Dear Pastor Mandy England Cole, I am a member of McLean Baptist Church in McLean, Va. I am writing you as one Baptist to another and not as a representative of my congregation. That having been established, I have been…
OPINION: The lens of life
As we draw near to the celebration of the resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth from the dead, my mind is drawn to Paul’s magnificent exclamation near the end of his first letter to a group of Jesus followers in the…