Browse Archives
Check out news and opinion posts across the years
Training ‘Ministry Entrepreneurs’
A new group of ministers is emerging on the scene. I call these folks “ministry entrepreneurs.” These are folks who have a particular vision for ministry and have not been able (or willing) to find a way to pursue it...
Songs of the Stone Angels
A wrong turn put me on a street that dead-ended into one of Louisville’s Catholic cemeteries I’d not visited before. I took it as an opportunity to pay my respects for these unknown citizens from days gone by. With my...
Britney, Not Barack, Is Top Yahoo! Search
Britney Spears, not President-elect Barack Obama, was the most-searched item on the Yahoo! search engine in 2008. “The singer's steep trajectory to redemption restored her to the top of searches,” according to the...
Marley and B
Marley was a dog made famous by journalist John Grogan, who made a tidy living writing columns about his yellow lab's incorrigible but endearing qualities, and then turned them into a best-selling book called Marley...
Obama Selects Bible for Inauguration, Nation Awaits His Text Choice
President-elect Barack Obama has chosen a Bible for the swearing in ceremonies, but not a Bible verse upon which to place his hand. He has decided to use the same Bible that Abraham Lincoln used in 1861. That...
BCE Expands, Diversifies Board of Directors
The Baptist Center for Ethics elected three new board members and re-elected two current directors to three-year terms of service. The action expands the geographic representation and Baptist affiliation of BCE’s...
The Treaty of Tripoli and “Christian America”
“The government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion.” Advocates of church-state separation will happily agree with the statement above. It states what they clearly...
Three things to watch in 2009
The late sportscaster Skip Carey had the same response to any question involving speculation about the outcome of a yet-to-occur competition: "That's why they play the game."Yet speculation is not soothsaying (that...
Christmas ponderings
Spending Christmas evening with my parents brought to mind a simpler time when Christmas was a big deal for children, but not quite the production it often is today. Laptops and iPods were still in the distant future,...
Hopes and Prayers for the New Year
New Year's celebrations have traditionally become a time for us to gather up our hopes and prayers for the coming year and express them in resolutions. I confess to being a resolution maker. Not just about...
A Tale of Two Attitudes
“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times; it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness; it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity; it was the season of Light, it was the season...
A joyful Christmas
"Come to Bethlehem and seeChrist Whose birth the angels sing;Come, adore on bended knee,Christ the Lord, the newborn King."[Art by Rembrandt; words from "Angels We Have Heard on High"]
No donkeys in the manger?
I noticed something surprising this morning. As I contemplated a bloggy meditation on Mary's having ridden a donkey the 80 miles or so of dirt roads between Nazareth and Bethlehem, I re-read the story, for perhaps the...
The Christmas Story as Moral Resource in the Vortex of Conformity
Forgotten in Christmas homilies and hymns is the gritty story of human of resistance. Yes, resistance. Of course, resistance is a cold word that chills the warmth of joy to the world and peace on earth. Some might...
“Bedtime Stories”
The latest comedy from Adam Sandler, which opens Christmas Day, is mostly innocuous and average. “Bedtime Stories” stars former “Saturday Night Live” funnyman Sandler as Skeeter, a hotel handyman who knows his place....
Breaking the news
My first realization of how media technology is changing came in 1999. Word reached The Christian Index office in Atlanta (where I was managing editor) that pastoral care pioneer Wayne Oates had died in Louisville.It...
We Can Have Joy in the Winters of Life
In the children's book The Tree that Survived the Winter, a tree realizes it has survived the hardships of winter. "Her roots seemed to be extending further and more firmly into the soil. Her arms seemed to embrace...
Launching the Academy of Preachers
Editor’s note: This is the fifth and final column in a series. On Election Day—Nov. 4—I drove to Wilmore, Ky., to hear Shane Claiborne speak in the chapel of Asbury Seminary. Shane is the young man, now living in the...
Find the Right Fold
I let someone go from the church the other day. Not an employee. A parishioner. And a friend. We met in a coffee shop and she began asking about ways that she can get more involved in church. But that wasn't what she...
‘Christmas Trees’
We went and bought our Christmas tree; we looked and looked and looked Before we found the perfect one, shaped just the way we like. We checked it very carefully. We wanted it just right. We paid a price, we paid too...
Santa Claus and Pogo
All over the world Santa Claus is possibly the most easily recognized fictional personality. In various forms, styles and dress this old saint has been around for thousands of years. This character has monks and rakes...