I started responding to a couple of questions and observations about my previous post on worship and decided that my comments might fit better under a new heading. Time restrictions prohibit me from engaging all the questions, but I hope to comment more on this issue in the future….
Fred Malone writes: We are glad to report that your generous gifts for our Hurricane Relief Fund are being used with great benefit. We have received the amazing sum of over $185,000 to date and have already distributed almost $50,000 to the 10 churches we have targeted. For the…
According to a Baptist Press story, First Baptist Church of Horn Lake, Mississippi came up a little short in their baptismal service recently. After 3 nights of showing the drama called “Heaven’s Gates and Hell’s Flames” (by Reality Outreach Ministries), 423 people made professions of faith. The pastor, Joe…
Does God have an opinion about how His creatures should worship Him? Yes He does. He has expressed Himself repeatedly on the subject. The first commandment tells us who to worship (“You shall have no other gods before Me,” Exodus 20:3) and the second tells us how to worship…
“North Port Church puts muscle in its message.” That’s the title of an article that appeared September 24, 2005 in the Sarasota Herald Tribune. It is an article on the (in)famous Power Team’s show being performed at the South Biscayne Baptist Church in North Port, Florida–about an hour up…
Timothy George was absolutely prophetic twenty years ago when he said, “The exchange of one set of bureaucrates for another doth not a reformation make” (he later put his thoughts in print). I supported the conservative resurgence in the SBC. The denomination desperately needed a theological correction. Everyone who…
The task force’s report included more than a dozen recommendations: — People “elected to Southern Baptist Convention positions of leadership” should come from “strong Cooperative Program churches” and should be “well-known advocates themselves of Cooperative Program commitment.” — Every elected SBC and state convention leader “should promote the Cooperative…
Richard Jackson, at the time pastor of North Phoenix Baptist Church in Arizona, had one of the best one-liners of the whole inerrancy controversy that dominated the SBC during the last two decades of the twentieth century. After he fell out of favor with the conservatives he scoffed at…
As I write this at 10 PM Thursday I have 19 relatives traveling in 7 cars out of Beaumont, Texas, running from Hurricane Rita. Rain from outer bands of the storm is falling outside my house in Cape Coral, Florida. Rita stretches 400 miles over the western half of…
1 Corinthians 13 is more often romanticized than thoughtfully studied. You hear it at weddings and see it on wall-hangings as if it were some kind of ode to love. But in at least two ways this chapter actually is devastating. One, it describes love in such a way…