My Devotional and Prayer in Atlanta, March 9, 2026 Today, I had the rare privilege of serving as Chaplain of the Day for the Georgia House of Representatives, an invitation initiated by Rep. Sam Park, who introduced me very kindly. It was truly an honor to serve in this role, and an eye-opening experience to […]
A Word to the Georgia House of Representatives
Sermon, Commissioning Service, Mercer University School of Theology, May 9, 2025 Note to Readers: This message reflects the profound challenges that I believe face all ministers of the Gospel at this moment in this context, and the kind of character and faith with which we must meet those challenges. It was presented to the graduates
Convictional. Resistant. Steadfast.
Note: Every day I make a discipline of reading the lectionary texts scheduled for each day. These are the readings for today, February 7, 2025, as presented by the US Catholic Bishops. Reading 1 Hebrews 13:1-8 Let brotherly love continue.Do not neglect hospitality,for through it some have unknowingly entertained angels.Be mindful of prisoners as if sharing
A Very Short Homily on Today’s Readings
The Lenten season has been especially intense for me this year on a spiritual level. I have sought to follow its rhythms, demands and opportunities from Ash Wednesday until now, Holy Week. Each day I have read the Mass readings and experienced their impact. My sense that the Christian life is best undertaken within the rhythm
I have a weekly prayer cycle I try to practice in my morning devotional time. On Mondays, I pray for myself, my discipleship, health, calling and responsibilities. On Tuesdays, I pray for each family member. On Wednesdays, I pray for my friends. And on Thursdays, I pray for the church and the various institutions and churches
We’ve just celebrated Martin Luther King weekend. The great Baptist preacher, scholar and activist would have been 95 years old. We rightly honor him. The Civil Rights Movement led by King was not that long ago. We still live with the reverberations of that era. Indeed, I would suggest our own miserably divided politics still reflect
Racism’s Absurdity in Light of the Gospel
Joint article by Lisa Sharon Harper and David P. Gushee. Immediately the king sent a soldier of the guard with orders to bring John’s head. He went and beheaded him in the prison. — Mark 6:27 On the day we write this post, during the week Tyre Nichols was buried after being murdered by Memphis police
The State Murder of Tyre Nichols
Black America flipped the script on a racialized democratic state to make it more perfect. It is Black people’s fight that makes the United States exceptional. —Randal Jelks (2022) Many of us are profoundly worried about the health of American democracy. If so, we need to attend deeply to the deadly contradiction between structural racism and
The Black Resistance Tradition and Its Fight for U.S. Democracy
I was talking with someone very close to me recently who said something important I want to share: Our country has so many things going wrong, so many things really to feel ashamed about in a way, that it seems like on an average day I have two choices: either think about those things and then
I learned this week that sales of my 2014 book Changing Our Mind are just about to cross 25,000, apparently very rare in the book business. This becomes the occasion for my column this week. Long-time readers of Baptist News Global will remember that this book originated as a series of posts on this site beginning in the summer of 2014.
Changing Our Mind, 25,000 Sales Later