Historically, Baptists have prided themselves on being "People of the Book." By this we've usually meant to imply that we read the Bible, derive our beliefs from the Bible, and attempt to order our lives accordingly. I applaud the goal. It says something good about how seriously we hope to take the Bible. I am concerned, though, about the quality of our performance.

For example, how many of us a ...

Recently a friend of mine produced a blog entry asking what the church might look like fifty years from now. His excellent piece jogged my thinking a bit, and I want to try and bring some order to the results.

Let's start with a dose of reality: no one (least of all me!) can hope to predict accurately the look or shape of church life half a century from now. That's true even if we limit ourselves ...

"Come, Lord Jesus."

Early Christians prayed these words often, and their spiritual descendents have continued to do so through the centures and in the present day. The prayer is particularly apt during the season of Advent, the time in which we attempt to prepare hearts and minds to celebrate the past, present and future Christ.

We prepar ...

There's nothing like an annual state convention meeting to stir up Baptists! The Tennessee Baptist Convention met in annual session in Memphis, Tennessee. Insofar as I can discern, the messengers spent most of the time debating and settling a handful of matters.

They voted to affirm belief in the 2000 Baptist Faith & Message, effectively declaring it to be the required creed for any who wish to p ...

As N.T. Wright puts it, "temptation always takes as its starting point something which is in itself good." To put it another way, temptation takes some part of what God has made (and what God makes is good) and attempts to bend it in an ungodly direction.

Examples abound. God built rest and recreation into his plan for creation, but we tend to take the gift and convert it into self-indulgence. W ...

It's the time of year when all kinds of lists are released to the public. Today's fare includes a list of the safest cities in the United States. Hundreds of cities are ranked in order of the safest to the least safe, supposdly on the basis of FBI data. Murfreesboro ranked #166, coming in as the safest city in Tennessee.

No doubt, chambers of commerce all around the nation are scrambling to celebrate or ...

Recently I reread Kathleen Norris' book Dakota: A Spiritual Geography. Like all good books, it spoke me to me in new ways on second reading.

For example, Norris cites a woman who knows how things work in that part of the world. The woman tells her the truth about winter wheat. She says, "Well, you seed it in September. And it comes up right away. Then i ...

Most of us know what it is like to give up on church. We may do so for many reasons. Boredom, competing interests, hurt feelings, honest questions about faith, conflict with other church members, and the like spring readily to mind. I suspect, though, that the gap between the church's stated aspirations and it's actual, daily life is the major factor.

Following yesterday's sermon (10-08-06), some of you asked me to post the outline of the self-test I discussed. The sermon drew upon Luke 11:37-54. Based on the text, I proposed a self-test we might take in order to discern if we are building lives of which God would approve. The seven elements of the self-test are as follows.

1. Am I facing and dealing with the ungodly stuff inside myse ...

Christianity is not defined in terms of "liberal" or "conservative." Still, many us fall into the trap of trying to do so.

Two conversations illustrate the point. In the first instance, a young man took me aside during a gathering and posed a quesiton: "Are you a liberal or a conservative?" I did not know whether he had religion, politics, genorosity versus miserliness, or so ...