Liminality

“For this reason I now bow my knees before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth takes its name. I pray that, according the riches of his glory, he may grant that you may be strengthened in your inner being with power through his Spirit . . .” Ephesians 3:14-15 I love this phrase, “strengthened in your inner being.” The author of Ephesians is tapping into something I believe in wholeheartedly. For so long we as people, especially Baptists, have neglected an intricate part of life – our inner being. I feel like it was lost or overlooked during the Revivalistic Era in America which put so much energy into saving souls and getting people into Heaven. This is an important time period in Baptist History but we overlooked what to do with the people who claim Jesus as the Lord and haven’t died yet. What do the Christians do after they accept Jesus and aren't dead yet? My answers are: Become more like Christ. Learn to commune with our Creator. Join in t...

Studying theology forces me to come to grips with who I am and why I believe the way I believe. For instance, I am a pacifist, male feminist, and one who thinks the world is not necessarily evil. It has taken me seven years of theological reflection to discover these things about myself and twenty-four years to develop them. Let me explain. Where you are from, the culture you are raised in, the parental situation you had, the number of siblings you have, the demographics of the community you grew up in, the amount of students in your classroom, the type of lady/man who taught you Sunday School all play a part in who you are today. I am most noticeably a Caucasian, middle class, American raised in the South, liberal arts educated male who happens to be the youngest of three boys whose parents are still married and who grew up in a neighborhood where race and color did not affect the make-up of the small town chemistry. These are the facts about my social location and they say...

In Mark 6 Jesus was rejected in Nazareth and he delivered the line, “A prophet is not without honor, except in his hometown.” Jesus was never seen more than the stereotype of his family. He was never given the chance to become more than what he seemed to be. Judgment was not suspended for him but rather decreed. He was Mary and Joseph’s son. He was a carpenter. He was not fit to do miracles or to teach. He needed to learn his place. He needed to step in line. Jesus felt the wrath of his hometown turning their back on him and he had to live with that regret forever. I honestly believe the central message of this story is showing us how sad it looks when a community disenfranchises someone. There is not one sin too great (in my opinion) to put someone outside the bonds of a church fellowship – unless it’s the sin of the church being blinded by their own ideals. A healthy church must never stop growing and seeing growth in the people around them. The best metaphor...

During the three weeks in the Middle East we as a group got extremely close to one another and really enjoyed a sense of community. You would have never thought on Day 1 that all of us by the end of the trip would be overly concerned with each other’s bowel movements – but we were! The five other seminaries that traveled with us were similar yet different when it comes to theological leanings. We had two Methodist groups (Emory and Duke), a Presbyterian school (Columbia), a Christian Church school (Emmanuel), and two Baptists schools (Southern and McAfee). I, of course, go to McAfee. The differing backgrounds made for healthy and lively theological debates. Some of us baptize infants and others do not. Some of us believe women can be equal to men in authority and others do not. Some believe homosexuality should not keep someone from being a minister and others do not. These theological biases splintered us early in the trip but really made for healthy community by the end of t...