Growing up, my favorite thing about Thanksgiving was that our local radio station began playing Christmas songs. It was finally time for wonder and cheer.

It feels like Christmas is starting earlier this year. I even listened to Christmas music on the way to church this week. But before we can celebrate the joys of Christmas morning, we have to sit in patient anticipation. We have to wait.

Here’s something that might make reflection on this year easier for you. The Daily Examen is an ancient prayer technique that was very important to St. Ignatius and is still used today by many Christians.

Well, I blinked and here November is, knocking on the door again with its colorful leaves and mugs of apple cider. It’s time to begin thinking about where we stashed those boxes of Christmas lights from last year.

When I was a teenager, my mom and I would binge watch Gilmore Girls every Christmas break. Gilmore girls, for those of you who don’t know, is a show about a mother and her teenage daughter in a small town in Connecticut.

This week for the midterm in my Baptist class, I wrote a children’s book about important women of the Baptist faith. Some of them, like Anne Hutchinson and Beth Moore, I knew a lot about. Others, like Martha Stearns Marshall, I had never heard about before.

Two weeks ago I turned 34. On my birthday, I usually reflect on where I have been. I think about what has happened in the past year, and I think about the overall journey of my life.

The summer between my freshman and sophomore years of high school my church youth group packed up and went on a week and a half long mission trip to Puerto Rico. We were there to join forces with a local organization and help build houses in the neighborhoods of Juana Diaz

In one of my very first undergraduate religion courses at Campbell, I was delighted to learn of several verses throughout the Old Testament in which God is described using female imagery. Of course, I had grown up hearing God called “Father…”

I hesitate to tell this story, for a number of reasons. First, it doesn’t give the impression that I am a levelheaded, put together person. Second, it sounds a little bonkers, admittedly. But here goes anyway.

My first day of class was a few Thursdays ago. As we usually do on our first day, we went around and introduced ourselves. Everyone said their name, where they lived, what church they go to, and something they did this summer.

As students begin to go back to school, there are thoughts of dread at all of the tests, quizzes, and homework that lie in store for the 2021-2022 school year. I myself am not free of these feelings of stress and anxiety.

My Mom isn’t the best driver. Well, what I mean by that is, she isn't the best at directions. We've lived in Raleigh my whole life, and yet she still uses the GPS to get to most places…

When I was in the third grade, (this would have been mid-late 90’s) I did a brief stint at a rural public elementary school in Elizabethtown, NC.

The third distinctively Baptist belief is in that of Church Freedom - the affirmation that each individual Baptist church is free and autonomous, and can determine for themselves how to organize, who to ordain, and how to participate in the larger community of believers.

Our second distinctive Baptist belief is in soul freedom - this is the affirmation that each person has the right and responsibility to deal personally with God without the imposition of creed, clergy, or civil government. 

Over the last few years I’ve done some thinking as to why I am a Baptist and as to why I choose to stay a member of the Baptist church.

Over the last few posts, I’ve written about the way 19th century Baptists in the south thought about and reacted to the institution of slavery leading up to the Civil War.

Desmond Tutu is quoted as saying “if you are silent in times of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor.” I think there’s no greater example of that quote in action than in the story of 19th century Baptists in the South.

Like I said last week, there are lots of contributors to the Baptist drama that unfolded in the 19th century surrounding the issue of slavery. The problems between northern and southern Baptists really began in the 1830’s when English Baptists began writing to American Baptists about the importance of abolition.