I may refer to 2020 as “The Year Without an Easter.” That is certainly how it felt to me, at least. I had been serving as pastor of Ardmore Baptist Church for less than seven months before the global pandemic…
New devotional book asks what it means to follow God in a time of global pandemic
Greg Funderburk’s first book followed the survivors of the Great Storm that killed 8,000 people in Galveston, Texas, in 1900. His second book, released this month, is a devotional born from the COVID-19 pandemic that has killed nearly 3 million…
One year later, letting go of ‘what used to be’
Yesterday was one year since COVID-19 was declared a pandemic by the World Health Organization. It’s a bit hard to put any words on e-paper today. Many of my public health and epidemiology friends are feeling the same way. It’s…
Pandemic plans: Keep on coping
We have been battling COVID-19 for a year. 2020 already stands unique in the annals of our memories. And 2021 seems to continue the trend. Hospitals, schools, universities, churches, stores, restaurants … no destination or gathering place has been immune…
What I learned by listening to women pastors during the pandemic
The COVID-19 pandemic has had a differential impact on women. In particular, working mothers have faced a greater burden of child care and home schooling than men and have ended up leaving the work force in significantly greater numbers than…
Christian citizenship means somebody’s calling my name
What does it mean to be a Christian citizen? The question should challenge every breath in our bodies in the way George Floyd and Breonna Taylor and many other Black Christian citizens died daring to breathe. There is no dodging…
Family, faith and humor recalled as Babs Baugh laid to rest in Houston
Baugh, former president of the Eula Mae and John Baugh Foundation and a benefactor of progressive Baptist ministries and movements around the world, died June 14 in San Antonio after battling Parkinson’s disease. She was 78.
My sister died – alone – from COVID-19. Her story, like others, calls for reform in our system of senior care.
Would reforms to address flaws in senior care facilities, proven amid a pandemic to be fatal for far too many older persons, have prevented the death of my sister? Perhaps not. Would they have made her last weeks less painful and traumatic? Of that I have no doubt.
McLaren: progressive Baptists essential to countering politics, racism in the white church
“I think evangelicals and Baptists were closer to the truth 30 years ago when they used to say that character counts. I think the abandonment of character as a political standard is tragic and regrettable and we will reap what we have sown.”