The Practice of Christian Hospitality
by Emily Vickery The Biblical command to be hospitable often makes us feel the need to buy better decorations for the living room or find the perfect recipe for teacakes. It conjures up images of lace doilies and fine china and often leaves us feeling quite unable to measure up to the Mary Berrys and Joanna Gaineses of the world. But it doesn’t have to be this way. In her latest book, Rosaria Butterfield advocates for what she refers...
Free Will Baptists and Communion: Open but Cautious
by Cory Thompson When the church observes the Lord’s Supper, who is invited? All believers? Only properly baptized believers? Only members of that particular Baptist church? Baptists have debated the question of who may come to the Lord’s Table since their beginning. Defining Open and Closed Communion Baptists have answered this question in two ways: closed communion and open communion. Closed communion is the position that only...
Phillis Wheatley: A Culturally Confident Believer (Part I/II)
by Frank Thornsbury The early-American poetess Phillis Wheatley lived over two hundred years ago, from 1753 to 1784, yet her life and literature speak to some of the most difficult questions of Christian cultural engagement today. How could this be? C.S. Lewis once wrote that through literature we can gain a window into someone else’s view of the world.[1] My aim is to help you see the world as Wheatley saw it and as she portrayed it...
Job 31 and Countercultural Integrity
by Gowdy Cannon There are not many chapters like Job 31 in our Bible. This beaten down and defensive man with nothing left, backed into a theological corner about God’s justice, spends forty verses defending his integrity. I suppose this is understandable, considering what Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar had driven him to with their simplistic view on suffering and God; yet it still smacks of pride. We know that Job did not consider...
Relational Discipleship
by Aaron Pierce Unsurprisingly, discipleship is a buzzword that has increasingly arisen in church conversations over the last decade. This trend is positive since many pastors of the twentieth century unfortunately relegated discipleship to the backburner. But with this new re-emphasis has appeared a vast array of materials, curriculums, and opinions on the nature and practice of discipleship in the local church. One particular...
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