One of my favorite parts of church as I was growing up, was the Wednesday evening fellowship meal. To me, it wasn’t something separate, it was a part of church life. It was more than a meal. It was a fellowship meal. Unlike other parts of church life, we didn’t have to be quiet, or…
I remember in the 1950s someone complaining about the cheerleaders at our Junior High School (Middle School) wearing “skimpy” uniforms because “too much of their legs were showing.” I am so glad those same people are either no longer alive or too old to have been watching the Opening Ceremonies of the 2024 Summer Olympics…
A series of funerals over the past few weeks, have had me thinking about death. Here are some interesting quotes: “Let us endeavor so to live that when we come to die even the undertaker will be sorry.” Mark Twain “Someday a loving Hand will be laid upon our shoulder and this brief message will be…
I was hosting a video-based training program for the Evangelism Section of the SBC Home Mission Board in the late 1980s and I needed to interview someone who was a local church prayer coordinator. I was introduced to Elaine Helms, who served with the Johnson Ferry Baptist Church in Marietta, Georgia. She graciously agreed to the interview. Later…
The full story can now be told. We were good friends and collegiate ministry colleagues for a lot of years. In the early years, he served at Texas Tech University, and I was at Pan American University. Every March we took a few of our missions-minded students to Southwestern Baptist Seminary for the Student Missions…
I moved several hundred books on prayer out of my office last week. It reminded me that someone once said, “Show me a man’s office and I’ll tell you about the man.” In my twenty-two years on the faculty of Southwestern Baptist Seminary I had six offices in two buildings. In retirement I have a…
I was excited about the chance to speak on a subject I had not spoken on in several years. I worked hard updating old notes and adding new thoughts. I even spent several hours preparing a power point presentation to accompany my notes. An invitation went out to area churches including and emphasizing the live-stream…
I attended my first Southern Baptist Convention annual meeting in Chicago, Illinois when I was 8 years old. Needless to say, I have attended my share of conventions and enough for the share of some others. I enjoyed every one, partly because it was a place and a time to see friends, former students, past…
This week, the Southern Baptist Convention convenes for its annual meeting, There will be much discussion, perhaps another amendment or two, and then a vote on the issue of churches who have female staff members who carry the title of “pastor.” My feelings on the issue are forged by two experiences. The first goes back…
I recently spent more than three hours at a concert listening to old-fashioned, southern gospel quartet music. I have loved this style of music since my very early days in deep east Texas, where “quarterly singings,” sometimes called “fifth Sunday singings” were common. Last week was a journey back into those early days of yesteryear….