I wasn’t ready for the verdict to come so quickly. Justice came sooner than expected. I didn’t have my thoughts together and did not know how I would respond emotionally. I didn’t know what to expect or to make of it. Wringing hands and stomach turning, I’ve said too many names, saw too many videos […]
How do you pray when life looks like gibberish, when so many words are running together—pandemic, police brutality, protest, Confederate monuments, masks—and you can’t make sense of any of it? The present and past collide as history literally falls to the ground—though these rocks don’t cry out. If they could, they would sing the praises […]
“What can we do?” “We need to say something!” For many church leaders, who still see themselves as an authority despite the cultural shift away from religious institutions, the most appropriate response is to do the work of decolonizing your institution or place of influence, to speak up early, often and publicly about the […]
Well, Church, times have changed before we could call a business meeting or change our bylaws as the protests around the deaths of George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, Elijah McClain and countless others draw a dividing line between generations. Without a committee vote or a conversation with “the powers that be,” confederate moments are […]
I was recently invited to preach at Walker Memorial Baptist Church in Washington, D.C. We met via Zoom (of course) to finalize the details and to introduce ourselves to each other. Each preacher would enter the sanctuary to be filmed individually. We would preach to empty pews and take our cues from the balcony where […]