Cooperative Baptist Fellowship
How to create a theologically diverse church community? A Baptist church planter offers insight and suggestions on seizing the opportunity to be a more diverse and create a theologically thick congregation. Read more
How to create a theologically diverse church community? A Baptist church planter offers insight and suggestions on seizing the opportunity to be a more diverse and create a theologically thick congregation. Read more
A Baptist seminarian shares about what NBC's new hit family drama This Is Us has to do with Advent, the sense of knowing and being known in our sufferings and the transformative promise of hope. Read more
I have a confession to make. As a seminary professor, I am terrified of teaching Christian ethics. The thought of forming and teaching people to be morally good makes my blood pressure rise and I feel the urge to run far away. But with great fear and trembling, I have found the courage to journey through with my students. Let me say more. Read more
The recent election cycle was brutal. In the midst of great cynicism and fear, let's remember that advocacy is an ancient art and does not depend upon the vicissitudes of a fickle electorate. In other words, win or lose, our work goes on. If there is one clear message embedded in the Advent season, it is that God has not given up on this world. Neither should we. Let's stop whining and get busy. Let's stop procrastinating and become engaged. Let's be Christ's presence. Read more
Thoughtful, compassionate and loving Christians would never consciously seek to use those in cross-cultural communities in which we serve during short-term missions. But the truth of the previous sentence illustrates the issue at hand. If the predominant thought in our mind as we prepare for missional engagement is serving others, then we run the risk of violating the basic tenets of what makes relationships meaningful, that is their mutuality. Read more
One Sunday morning during the collection of tithes at First Baptist Church of Vero Beach, Florida, Randy (not his real name) reached in, dug deep, and padded all of his pockets in order to find money to put into the offering plate. His pants, too big for his lean body and too old to wear anywhere else, hung loosely and flapped about him as he struggled to find his treasure. The plate passed by, and Randy was disheartened, unable to contribute. Read more
I consider any doctrine, or any conviction, that places women, or their capacities, subordinate to that of men to be an instance of misogyny. Such misogyny (no matter how text-proofed or ecclesiastically robed the “doctrines” are) flies in the face of multiple biblical examples and the sheer common sense of those who are willing to put away their culturally-informed blinders to the power, strength, giftedness, and obvious equality of women. Read more
Have we forgotten that we are to love all people? Some of our people are hurting. They feel unloved. Throughout the past few years, the greater Church has remained noticeably absent from the Black Lives Matter movement. There was a time when the Church led the charge for civil rights. A law was passed because of such a charge. Brothers and sisters, it is time to take up our crosses once again. #BLM Read more
I never had the luxury of just being a human being; no one in our area did. You were either white or black. This was the racial discourse of the Mississippi Delta in the decades of my childhood—1970s-1990s. I was white—sort of. I embodied a problem—a terrible problem at the intersection of race and class. I was that hybrid-monster white trash. By race, I had all the privilege of whiteness. By class, I was among the poor. This contradictory, paradoxical space is what I call liminal whiteness. Read more
This election season has been rough. I’ve seen people of peace breathing fire. I’ve heard people of compassion firing arrows of hate. I’ve felt the Church, the people of God, fractured. All in the name of freedom. We have (mis)used our freedom for meanness. In the name of freedom, we have weaponized our words. In the name of freedom, we have grabbed for power. Read more
Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In