By Rachel Held Evans Bass reverberates through the auditorium floor as a heavily bearded worship leader pauses to invite the congregation, bathed in the light of two giant screens, to tweet using #JesusLives. The scent of freshly brewed coffee wafts in from the lobby,...
By John Wimberly Almost everyone dreads the annual performance review that remains a ritual in most congregations. The employee wonders if it will be fair. If the pastor performs reviews of staff, she or he wonders if the results will be toxic for the relationship...
By Martin B. Copenhaver Rebekah called her younger son Jacob and said to him, “Your brother is consoling himself by planning to kill you… Flee at once to my brother Laban in Haran, and stay with him a while—until your brother’s anger against you turns...
By Jeff Brumley The value and purpose of church membership is becoming an increasingly hot topic in Baptist and other congregations these days. And that’s “hot” as in controversial and heated, not popular. And it’s one that occasionally pits older and younger...
Alban Weekly, April 2015 On a cold, rainy day in early March, a 30-something man walked into the sanctuary at the Haywood Street Congregation for the Wednesday midday service with a shaggy mixed-breed dog on a leash. Dark-haired and bearded, dressed in a brown T-shirt...