Religious freedom, actually radical religious freedom, is in the DNA of all healthy Baptists. Truth to tell, religious freedom may be the only special theological contribution Baptists may claim to have made to the broader Christian community.

Our Baptist forebears insisted such freedom must be absolute. It is for everyone, regardless of the decisions they may make with regard to religion. Thomas Helwys, ...

A few years ago a seminary student on the verge of graduation asked me a question. The student had served in some part-time church staff positions but now faced the prospect of being called as pastor by a small church. The question came over coffee at a local fast food establishment:  "What does it take to be a pastor?"

Since then I've pondered the question, and my answer today would in ...

What do we do after Easter? That's a tough question for most Baptist Christians. Our typical response is to "let down." It's almost as if the end of Easter marks the beginning of summer vacation! Sure, the children are still in school, but otherwise we relax, step back from church a bit, and figure we'll gear back up spiritually come September.

The New Testament presents a better option: life-ch ...

Once again Tony Campolo has gotten to the heart of what it means to live as a Christian. His latest book Letters to a Young Evangelical ought to be required reading for Christians of all ages (not to mention a model of effective, engaging writing for would-be authors!). All of the chapters deserve careful reading. Personally, I found those on how history might end, transcending partisan politics, women and the church and a Christian work eth ...

I've been thinking about the nature of the church. Doing so puts me in good Baptist company, for the truth of the matter is that the Baptist movement has been and is fueled by a passion for defining church. We tend to devote a great deal of time to matters such as how one enters the church, the ways in which love and power interact in the context of church, the course or courses of individual Christian discipleship in relation to the larger Body of Christ, and t ...

I've been preaching a series of sermons on the theme "How to Build a Christian Character." This past Sunday I focused on courage. In the course of sermon, I tried to paint a picture of what courage in action looks like when seen in Jesus. One of my church members asked me to post a summary of that portion of the sermon. You'll find it below.

When I look at Jesus I see what courage looks ...

Kathleen Norris book Dakota: A Spiritual Geography has taken its place among those volumes I read again and again. She writes well. More importantly, she nearly always says something worth saying, more often than not in the form of a brief story or a single well-crafted sentence.

Like many of us, Norris dares to hope that a church might be a community even as it nurtures the individua ...

A few weeks ago I read a story about a woman who was the classic "pack rat." She lived alone. Her house was filled with stuff. Tall stacks of papers, bags, clothes, pots and pans, and all the other kinds of things available for purchase took up nearly all the space in all the rooms. The woman moved through her house via narrow corridors that ran among the stacks.

Naturally, she paid a price. She ...

All of us have seen the ads posted on the backs of semi-trailers as they blow by us on the interstate. The ads, in one form or another, declare that the trucking company needs good drivers and is willing to pay well for each one it can find. Apparently, such drivers are valuable!

Can you imagine what the company means by "good driver?" I'll hazard a guess. No doubt they expect a driver to keep t ...

Recently, leaders from Baptist conventions and fellowships numbering some 20 million members announced a new, cooperative initative. Participants include the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship, the National Baptist Convention, the Progressive Baptist Convention, American Baptist Churches USA plus several other bodies. A gathering of interested Baptists has been scheduled for January 30-February 1, 2008 at the World Congress Center in Atlanta, Georgia. If all goes as ...