Browse Archives
Check out news and opinion posts across the years
Women in Ministry: We’re Here to Stay
When a South Georgia congregation hired me in 1973 as their first full-time minister of music, Baptist women ministers were extremely rare. I had almost no female peers, anywhere. Needing community, I joined an...
Ash Wednesday Serves to Remind Us of Our Mortality
“Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.” I spoke that old phrase as I smudged the sign of the cross on the forehead of the 6-year-old girl in front of me. She was the first that night at the Ash...
The Needs Are Overwhelming, But You Can’t Do It All
Some days I feel like Britta Perry, a character on NBC's sitcom "Community." An outspoken proponent of social justice, she often tries to persuade her community college study group to be more involved in addressing...
Inmates are people, too.
I spent part of last Friday afternoon in prison -- not being fingerprinted or "scared straight," but hanging out with Terri Stratton, the first female senior staff chaplain in the 130-year history of North Carolina's...
Let’s Offer an Alternative to the Partisan Either-Or Approach on Income Inequality
Why does it have to be an either-or proposition for ideological pundits, political columnists and politicians? Writing some weeks ago in the Wall Street Journal, Ari Fleischer, President George W. Bush's former press...
Why One Hall of Famer May Not Watch the Super Bowl
Rayfield Wright, the football hall of famer for the Dallas Cowboys from 1967-79, isn't sure he'll watch Super Bowl XLVIII this coming Sunday. If he chooses not to, I'll join him – although for slightly different...
South Sudan Baptist Church Offers Hope Amid Conflict
I met Yai Kiir Dau, a young South Sudanese evangelist, at the training hospital of Juba, where a Hungarian Baptist medical team had been working already for a week caring for the patients who were injured during the...
One Truth at a Time: Proclaimer of the Kingdom
A sermon by Jim Somerville, Pastor, First Baptist Church, Richmond, Va. January 26, 2014 The Third Sunday after Epiphany Matthew 4:12-23 Now when Jesus heard that John had been arrested, he withdrew to Galilee. He left...
How Well Do You Handle Change
A sermon by Bob Browning, Pastor, First Baptist Church, Frankfort, Ky. Matthew 4:12-23 January 26, 2014 This morning our attention is drawn to the earliest days of Jesus’ public ministry. Matthew tells us one of the...
The United Way
A sermon by Randy Hyde, Pastor, Pulaski Heights Baptist Church, Little Rock, Ar. January 26, 2014 Psalm 27:1-9; 1 Corinthians 1:10-18 As I have mentioned before, after living on the east side of the big river for more...
Follow the Light
A sermon by Michael Cheuk, Pastor, University Baptist Church, Charlottesville, Va. January 26, 2014. Matthew 4:12-23 In Farmville, Virginia, Tommy Pairet ran a T-Shirt shop right next to Farmville Baptist, the church I...
Why Prison Shootings Are Necessary
Shooting – with a camera – has a place in prison. For EthicsDaily.com's new documentary "Through the Door" – on prisons and faith – producer Robert Parham and I visited five states. We shot in and around prisons in...
What’s the Connection Between Morality and Intellect?
What is the relation between moral goodness and intellectual insight? The modern assumption is that there is no connection, that ethics inhabits a different realm altogether from knowledge. This view would have been...
Three Years after the Arab Spring
2011 began with high expectations for new freedoms and prosperity across much of the Arab world. Three years on, there is a palpable sense of disappointment and frustration. Egypt has been through two revolutions, has...
No days like snow days
For folks who rarely see a good snow, a few inches of powder that doesn't melt upon contact can make for exciting times. Local TV stations pre-empt scheduled programming for round-the-clock reports of traffic...
Prison Reform Proving to Be an Exception to Partisan Politics
Republicans, Democrats and Independents are seeking common ground nationally and in state legislatures in an effort to reduce overcrowded prisons, address budget woes from prison costs and the high recidivism rate -...
If We Believe Jesus is the Way, Why Don’t We Show It?
Charles Sheldon wrote a book in 1896 titled "In His Steps." It was subtitled "What Would Jesus Do?" The book grew out of a series of sermons he delivered in his congregation. The thrust of his book was that Jesus was...
The Greatest Church That Never Was
When I was a pastor, I regularly received fliers from various "consultants" who offered me a scheme to "fix" my church. I threw them all away. These patent nostrums purveyed various forms of organization that would...
Prison and Faith Documentary to Premiere in Richmond
A new documentary on prisons and faith – "Through the Door" – will premiere at Bon Air Baptist Church in Richmond, Va., on Monday, Feb. 17, 2014. The documentary explores the initiatives of churches and faith-based...
Churches Struggling with Headwinds are Ready to Fly
I had a first-ever experience flying out of New York's LaGuardia airport recently. The weather was deteriorating, but we boarded our flight on time and I had high hopes of getting out before things backed up. We pushed...
3 Confessions from a Former Charismatic
Though I found my way to a Southern Baptist youth group and to ordination and pastoral ministry in the United Methodist Church of my infant baptism, my earliest memories of "church" were the charismatic movement of the...