Word&Way Voices

Robert Wilson-Black remembers Donald W. Dayton, who died last May 2020. Dayton was an important interpreter of Evangelical, Wesleyan, Holiness, and Pentecostal traditions, revealing how they were connected and displaying how their roots were more entangled than historians had previously understood.

Columnist Ken Satterfield reflects on vaccine hesitation and research on how to persuade people to get a coronavirus vaccine. He also connects those lessons to thinking about faith.

Columnist Sarah Blackwell writes about “beneficial mutations” that allow organisms to thrive in a new or changing environment. She proposes two areas where churches need to embrace such mutations.

Beau Underwood writes that he likes asking people “what makes you believe in and follow Jesus?” But he also reflects on that question in his own life since he has the responsibility to work out his own salvation with fear and trembling.

As this year’s Pentecost celebration approaches for congregations, the Spirit arrives as a yearlong pandemic hopefully draws towards an end. But emerging from the pandemic can be even more complicated and controversial for churches than their first responses to it. 

Columnist Greg Mamula writes about the holiness of vocation through a letter he penned to his hair stylist after she seemed surprised when he told her “your work is holy.”

Columnist Terrell Carter writes we can all have joy because God’s message of redemption and restoration was entrusted to people who did not fit the typical description of joyful people.

Columnist Ken Satterfield considers the potential of email signatures, the P.S. of electronic mail as the last impression your message will leave. This can provide ways to use the emails you send to encourage, amuse, uplift, and inspire your recipients.

Columnist Greg Mamula reflects on the crowd waving at Jesus during Holy Week and asks what kind of king did they think they were waving at. And he wonders how we might answer that same question today.

Patrick Wilson reflects on visiting the campus of his alma mater, Baylor University, hours after the school’s Commission on Historic Campus Representations publicly released its report documenting Baylor’s ties to slavery and the Confederacy.