Confessions: What They Are and Why We Need Them
Free Will Baptist can sound a bit odd to those who have never heard the name before. When I announce that I’m a Free Will Baptist to Calvinist Baptists at Southern Seminary, I often receive questions such as, “What exactly is a Free Will Baptist?” or, “Do you all believe in Perfectionism like Wesleyans, or that Man’s will is totally free like Semi-Pelagians?” I do my best to quickly calm my classmates’ fears that a heretic, having...
Preaching and Teaching 2nd Corinthians: Challenges and Opportunities
My congregation and I recently completed a 7-month, 23-message journey through the book of 2 Corinthians on Sunday mornings.[1] Like past Forum contributor Jeff Manning, I believe that expositional preaching is the most effective means of communicating God’s truth in a faithful, balanced way over time. While this approach to preaching doesn’t exclusively require going through entire books of the Bible, I find that the expositional...
Teach Them to Sing
by Rebekah Talbot Alabama summers: hot, humid days where there’s little left to do than to sit under a fan, staring at the heat waves hovering over the sizzling pavement. By the time night fell, this curly-headed girl and her sisters were stir crazy to say the least. These were times when my wise mother would sit down at our antique, upright piano and pull out her childhood hymnal. We’d hear the melody from a distant room, and one by...
How to Give (and Receive) Godly Counsel
by Sarah J. Bracey One of my favorite service opportunities is to help out with the 2-3 year olds in the nursery at church. Never a dull moment with these little ones! I love to talk with them each week about God and put together some craft or coloring page that goes along with our lesson. Don’t let the glue sticks and safety scissors fool you. Sometimes these crafts can actually be quite complicated and require some skilled hands to...
Book Recommendations (Spring 2015)
School’s out for summer! Whether we spent the last several months slogging through assigned reading, reading students’ assignments, or helping our children with homework, we all feel a sense of relief when the semester finally ends. However, don’t let that relief translate into a lazy reading regimen! Below we at the Helwys Society Forum have provided some of our recent finds and favorite repeat-reads from the last several months....
The Sound of Silence: The Call of a Neglected Discipline
by Rebekah Morgan Recently I joined my college’s choir in making a recording of our hour-long program. High-powered microphones were brought in, and we were educated in the ways of live recording. The key, we learned, was total silence, in order to avoid unwanted noise on our recording. So we turned off the air-conditioner and settled in for three hours of silence. At first, the stillness was uncomfortable; we fiddled with our clothes...
Recent Comments