Having observed the recent controversies at our alma mater, Southwest Baptist University (SBU), a number of like-minded alumni have corresponded and determined it would be beneficial to provide alumni testimony and express our concerns regarding SBU. All of us had amicable relationships with our professors. Some of our professors welcomed us into their homes and […]
So You Want Your Own Deaf Ministry, Eh?
I’ve had conversations with local pastors and associational leaders who expressed fascination with Deaf ministry and missions. “We,” the response comes, “need to do something like that.” Everyone has a wife, or a friend, or an aunt who knows sign language and many of them “used to interpret down at the church.” But one guy […]
Is He Worthy? A Good Friday Meditation
The veil of heaven was pulled back for a moment and in Revelation 4, John recounts his vision as glorious worship is directed to the One who is seated on the universe’s throne. Angelic beings gathered around him crying, “Holy, Holy, Holy is the Lord God Almighty, who was, and is, and is to come.” […]
It’s Friday, but Sunday’s Coming!
SM Lockridge. Published this six years ago. Thought I’d put it back up. Thought I’d throw this one in just for fun! I’m working on Good Friday and Easter. Then headed to Florida for a week. Unless the world falls apart I won’t be blogging much. He is risen.
Easter sunrise services and how Armand made my deacon hall-of-fame
Easter came about a month after I arrived at my first church, an average sized congregation in rural South Carolina. Our church was the only one of several SBC churches in that part of the county that had a full-time, if modestly paid minister. My church and three others traditionally joined for an Easter sunrise […]
Milestones at SBC Voices
I coached at Isaac Newton Christian Academy in Cedar Rapids for about 13 years, before I moved to Sioux City, both soccer (we were the dominant program in Eastern Iowa among Christian middle schools) and basketball. I kept track of stats and analyzed them. I still have the files. Numbers and statistics fascinated me. SBC […]
Pointless Cooperation
A much-valued tenet of Southern Baptist life is the emphasis we place on cooperation among churches. We even have an entire funding program named for this; it’s apparently a Very Big Deal. Cooperation is how we fund seminaries, send missionaries, reach America, fight for religious liberty, and support Southern Baptist churches in general. Personally, my […]
The Christian Effectiveness Officer (C.E.O.) (Clayton Pruett)
Over the last few years, a stunning shift has taken place in church culture. Successful, influential, and powerful pastors are being dismissed from their churches. Not for the typical moral failures or money scandals but for unhealthy leadership practices. Why has this become such an issue? Understanding the problem The simplified version is that decades […]
K. Marshall Williams to Nominate J.D. Greear for Second Term
Baptist Press is reporting that Pennsylvania pastor K. Marshall Williams has announced that he will nominate J.D. Greear, of Summit Church in Raleigh, for a second term as president of Southern Baptist Convention. There is much solid information in the BP article. We have been thrilled with J.D. Greear’s diverse appointments, his leadership on the […]
Southwestern Seminary: Painful Recalibration
Baptist Press carried an article about the trustee meeting at Southwestern Seminary this week, in with its new President, Dr. Adam Greenway, spoke of his desire to lead the seminary to “recalibrate and to reposition” itself in “every way to strengthen the core of what we do.” Greenway said, At the end of the day, […]
Five things your church could learn from Augusta National Golf Club…
…wherein your humble, hacker and plodder blogger, a non-golfer, gets to smugly drop the info that he has been to the Masters several times. Yes, indeed. The world’s premier golf tournament, under way right now, and the world’s most famous golf course is 110.5 miles from where I type and everyone around here has been, […]
So, you like to play those personality and spiritual gift inventory games at your church?
Churches do some strange things and high among the head-scratchers is how many churches have an affection for promoting personality inventories in their congregation. The most well-known of these is, of course, that one with a hyphenated name which doesn’t include the term “personality” at all. I pass on dropping the name because I don’t […]