On the first Sunday of Russia’s brutal invasion of Ukraine, churches across America took to their knees and their feet, and turned to song and silence to utter their prayers for Ukrainians under siege. “When people were sharing their prayer…
One sweet song came out of COVID: The revival of Polyphony Music Resources
A revived and reconstituted Polyphony Music Resources is working to usher in a renaissance for church musicians and their ministries battered and isolated by the COVID-19 pandemic, the organization’s executive director said. The need has only grown during the return…
BYKOTA people and COVID vaccines
Carolyn Weatherford Crumpler was a Baptist icon of her generation. For 15 years, she served as executive director of Woman’s Missionary Union, an auxiliary organization to the male-dominated Southern Baptist Convention. When she retired in 1989, she was tired of…
In Busia, Kenya, a rare look at what became of a mission project 15 years later
It’s a common scenario in church mission work: A congregation goes into an area and provides a much-needed ministry, and then they leave for whatever reason and never see the results that follow. But every now and then a chain…
Thanksgiving looks different at churches but the spirit of helping goes on
As families rethink their Thanksgiving plans amid the COVID-19 pandemic, so too have churches. In accordance with public health guidelines, many congregations have shelved plans for churchwide meals and high-touch canned food drives. For example, Melissa United Methodist Church in…
Pandemic opens the door to a far-flung notion of church membership
There’s nothing new about people attending church in their living rooms and kitchens. Since the earliest days of television, there has been a symbiotic relationship between preachers and viewers. But what once was a sometimes-dubious bond — with televangelists offering…
On church buildings reopening: Let love be your guide
Mark Twain put it pithily: “It were not best that we should all think alike; it is difference of opinion that makes horse races.” The novel coronavirus is not, however, a horse race. Opinions may differ, but we should not…
What our Wilshire congregation learned: Have ‘the conversation’ anyway
Congregations that open themselves to full participation by those in the LGBTQ community are likely to begin hearing the other side of the story they have missed for so long, and that story includes a lot of hidden pain.
Black pastors challenge their white colleagues’ silence
“We need to hear you say clearly in the pulpit and in the streets that white supremacy and racism is wrong,” a black pastor told a group of white colleagues following the police shooting of an unarmed, African-American man. “And no more generalizations. It has to be specific.”