The Grocery Store Church: How to Pay Attention

by | Aug 17, 2006 | Opinion

After multiple church-growth classes and two shelves of church-renewal books I’ve decided churches need to take some lessons from the local grocery store. Whether we like it or not the mainstream church is not the popular place to be anymore. The question is...

Where are the Centrist Baptist Bloggers?

by | Aug 16, 2006 | Opinion

Bloggers are shaping public opinion. Evidence abounds that Web loggers have developed some muscle. Evidence abounds that Web loggers have developed some muscle. They are credited with helping to defeat Sen. Joe Lieberman last week in Connecticut’s Democratic...

Drought and Blessing

by | Aug 15, 2006 | Opinion

Recent showers will make it possible for us to mow the yard again this weekend. And the hayfield out by the county hospital has been cut for the second crop of hay this summer. Usually, a third cutting has already been bailed and put in the barn. It will not produce...

A People’s Writer For All Peoples And All Times

by | Aug 15, 2006 | Opinion

In more than 50 years of studying and reading Chinese no writer has captured my imagination as much as Lao She, the penname of Shu Qingchun. (Lao She is pronounced so the Lao rhymes with “how,” and the She almost like “shuh” in English.) He was...

I Choose to Hope for Congo

by | Aug 14, 2006 | Opinion

At the church I attended in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, we sometimes sang a song called, “Hakuna Mungu Kama Wewe,” a Kiswahili title that means, “There is No God Like You.” Each verse is sung in one of Congo’s languages:...