Last night, I stood on our back porch smelling the post-rain air. The air was particularly sweet because it had been threatening to rain for two days. The herb garden Sam got started for me for my birthday in April had been baking on the steps of our front porch ready to soak up the …
The call Sam and I felt to start ministrieslab to pop up in the midst of need is indeed a call from God to minister to God’s people, but I didn’t realize it was a call to question my own privilege. Privilege that blinds me to need. Privilege that causes me to think I know …
As I hear more and more stories of spiritual abuse, I am discovering that many people who are victims of spiritual abuse shy away from saying they experienced spiritual abuse. I understand their sentiments because to name yourself as someone who has experienced spiritual abuse is to identify a community of faith as a place …
On Thinking Religion this week, Dr. Thomas Whitley and the Reverend Sam Harrelson talk about the access to information we all have at our fingertips. (How they get to this point is a really fascinating trail that’s worth listening to!) We all have the opportunity to read from a wide range of perspectives and we …
Summertime brings longer visits with our girls and longer times when all three of our kids together. Last night as we came back to our house, the 7 month old and I from a week at General Assembly and Sam and the girls from a trip from Asheville, the house slowly began to settle into the sounds …
“I don’t want to be in competition with you. I want to be in collaboration, in community, in fellowship with you,” I recently admitted to a group of young baptists. It was a reflection on the realization that the open pulpits that exist are not enough for the number of talented men and women who …
On Coming in Second and Competition for Open Positions Read More »
As more and more people begin to arrive in Greensboro for CBF’s General Assembly, there is no question that the press release this morning with a call from Suzii Paynter to work towards unity was meant to set the stage for the conversation about CBF’s discriminatory hiring policy. It sounds a lot like we are following in the …
For those of us who are preparing and traveling to CBF General Assembly, there is a question that is on all of our minds, “What is the future for CBF?” This is the 25th Anniversary of CBF and while it is a time to catch up with people and celebrate, it is also a time …
Next week is Cooperative Baptist Fellowship’s General Assembly, the annual gathering for those affiliated with moderate and progressive Baptist churches, the group that famously split with the SBC 25 years ago. 25 years ago CBF formed as the Baptist that supported women in ministry and upheld historic Baptist principles. Next week in the midst of the …
I remember in seminary, discussing a case study in which someone was asking to become a member of Baptist church. In the case study, the person had been baptized as an infant and did not want to be rebaptized. This was rich fodder for us as future ministers because many of us were serving in …
