God Wants You to Call Him “My Father”

Here, Ed Welsh notes the uniqueness of praying to God as Father, “There is not one psalm that is addressed to “Father,” “My Father,” or “Our Father.”[1] So when the disciples asked Jesus to teach them to pray, and he opened with: “Father, hallowed be your name” (Luke 11:2), it must have seemed foreign to them. They had heard Jesus pray this way. Now he invited them to address the Holy God of Sinai as their Father too. This signaled that big changes were ahead. And he invites you, and he invites me, to share in those changes.”

How Formal Membership Makes the Church a Family

“Every church has a sense of membership. Every church has some kind of idea of who is a part of that congregation and who is not. But in some churches the distinction between the church and the world is blurry, while in others that distinction is more clearly defined. The life of the church may feel more natural and organic in church without formal membership—but it’s the organic relationships of a commune, not a family. Communes are just people who happen to live near one another, but a family is a web of organic relationships that develop within defined commitments and roles. If you want the church to be a family, commit to formal church membership.”

A Baptist Reflection on Reformation Day

When most people think of the Reformation the Baptist are not the denomination that jumps to the top of the list, but here, Bruce Ashford shows the Baptist are clearly and squarely within the Reformational tradition.