By Bob Allen Pastor Jason Coker opened his third Sunday in Advent sermon at Wilton Baptist Church with words describing irrepressible joy written early in the week. “Circumstances dictate change,” Coker told parishioners Dec. 16 before switching gears to preach…
By Jeff Brumley When it began nearly a decade ago, the Alternative Christmas Gift Fair at Boulevard Baptist attracted barely 100 church members and generated a few thousand dollars for participating nonprofits and mission groups. But it has since generated…
By Jeff Brumley Knoxvillian Kendall McCosh spent the better part of last week providing disaster relief — not in the Sandy-plagued Northeast but in Louisiana, rehabbing homes ravaged by winds and flooding from Hurricane Isaac on Aug. 29. McCosh, a former…
Recently my family was honored to participate in my son’s ordination to the Gospel ministry. After heeding a call from God, enduring seven years of higher education and gaining quality experiences, his church in Topeka, Kansas felt it was time…
Today we have an opportunity to exercise our civil liberty by going to the polls to vote. Tom Brokaw reminds us that we will go freely and “not at the point of a gun or a tank” and that is…
By Jeff Brumley Baptist churches and ministries in the Mid-Atlantic and Northeast were hunkered down and anxious Oct. 29 to see what happens when Hurricane Sandy arrives. “There’s been a heightened sense of anxiety because we are sitting here waiting,” said Amy…
By Jeff Brumley Annette Ellard and Steve Clark — a husband-and-wife team commissioned by the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship in 2006 to work with refugees from Burma in Louisville, Ky. — expected that population would face daunting language, cultural, employment, housing, medical and…
I’ve been thinking about one phrase in The Lord’s Prayer: “Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.” The longer I ponder the words, the more I become convinced of a few matters. The…
By Bob Allen One girl remained hospitalized two weeks after a church van crash killed two, injured 10 others and left a Tennessee Cooperative Baptist Fellowship congregation reeling. “Things are going pretty well,” Bob Lynch, pastor of Cedar Grove Baptist…
