Emmylou Harris released a new record today: “All I Intended to Be”. I thought a great way to celebrate might be to point to several folks who have caught my ear and my heart. The videos on YouTube have been disabled for embedding, so here she is singing “Midnight Train to Georgia” with the Indigo…

One of things I find to be true in this life is evangelical churches have it all over us mainline folks when it comes to sound systems. I’ve been in several on both sides of the aisle and my observation remains spot on. I don’t have an explanation for this phenomenon, nor do I intend…

I always knew her as “Grandma C.” Her name was Marie. She was my dad’s stepmother. My father’s mother died a month after he was born and his father remarried when my dad was eleven. She saw me when I was born and then saw me get on a boat with my missionary parents to…

I had been youth minister at the church I served in the eighties about six months when the couple that taught twelfth grade Sunday School let me know – actually, they told the pastor – they were leaving the church. Because of me. He was a professor of youth ministry at the seminary and was…

Thanks to the folks at DirecTV, we have XM Radio in our house. Thanks to XM Radio, we have a channel called “The Village” that is all acoustic singer-songwriters. I play it when Ginger isn’t home, just as she listens to the disco station when she is alone in her car. When she came in…

Christine’s blog at Abbey of the Arts has been one I’ve visited regularly for about as long as I have been reading blogs. A couple of weeks ago, she offered me to take part in one of her “sacred artists interviews” that she does from time to time. She posted it yesterday. Here’s the first…

It would be interesting to trace the transformation in American society that broke the link between popular religion and high intellectual achievement, between religious enthusiasm and generous and transformative change. In my experience, many of the schools in the old abolitionist archipelago are entirely forgetful of their history, or are embarrassed by the little they…

We stepped back into the history of our church today for our annual worship service at O’Kelly Chapel, the birthplace of our congregation (as explained by this plaque): We had an amazing cool, sunny spring day for our gathering, which included dinner on the grounds following worship. We used the old hymnals, which meant we…

A few weeks back I was on my way home from work when Ginger called to say the main sewer line running from the house to the street was blocked and she had called a plumber, but he had not yet arrived; if I needed to go to the bathroom I should stop somewhere on…

“Baptists don’t baptize infants,” I heard some say not long ago, “they ordain them.” In the spring of 1977, in the summer after my junior year in college, I was called as pastor of Pecan Grove Baptist Church near Gatesville, Texas, which meant I needed to be ordained. In early June, an ordination council was…