Practicing Our Faith: Hospitality
You’ve heard me tell stories before from Father Greg Boyle and the ministry he started decades ago in LA called Homeboy Industries, the largest gang-intervent...
Practicing Our Faith: Testimony
It is only at one month old that scientists tell us babies begin building a vocabulary, too soon for words but tender with coos and kicks and smiles. They seem ...
Practicing Our Faith: Keeping Sabbath
I’ve told you before that throughout the 20th century, prognosticators of the future and experts in the field of labor increasingly predicted shorter workweek...
Practicing Our Faith: Saying Yes and Saying No
As Baptist pastor Kyle Childress tells the story: “I was ordained over 30 years ago by a small, rural Texas Baptist church who had called me as their new youn...
Practicing Our Faith: Household Economics
We continue in our exploration of Christian practices today, studying, as you remember, the “things Christian people do together over time in response to an...
Practicing Our Faith: Honoring the Body
As the story began, when all creation was poised on the precipice of beginning, there were some angels who grew bothered when they learned that God was planning...
A Transforming Demonstration
A sermon preached on Romans 12:1-8 on Sunday, August 23, 2026, by Rev. Dr. Paul Baxley at First Baptist Church on Fifth, Winston-Salem, NC...
Practicing Our Faith
Yesterday morning, Kelly Auditorium was a swarm of activity. Many of us gathered for Serve Together, a morning spent putting hands and feet to our commitments o...
How to Be Human: Take Heart
You only have to look to this summer’s movie theater box offices for evidence that stories of the sea are timeless. Thousands of years so, if The Odyssey has ...
How to Be Human: Complicate
How often in your life do you find yourself saying with a sigh, “it’s complicated”? Maybe you’re dodging an awkward question (or 17!) from your children...
How to Be Human: Rest
First, hear my confession – I got a speeding ticket yesterday. Now, hear my excu – justifications. I wasn’t even going that much over the speed limi...
How to Be Human: Welcome
Back in 2010, performance artist Marina Abramovic presented a 700-hour piece at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City called “The Artist is Present.” Fo...
How to Be Human: Friction
As the story goes, a photographer was taking pictures of first graders at an elementary school. You know those school photos that show up in yearbooks and in fr...
How to Be Human: Discern
I’m aging myself here, but I had a season of my life where my navy blue “W. W. J. D.” bracelet never left my wrist right here. Anyone else? They were ever...
How to Be Human: Suffer
Today begins the longest season of the church year called “OrdinaryTime,” so named for the lack of big splashy church holidays in the near future.In ordinar...
After the Confetti Falls
Are you surviving the celebratory days of May? I imagine there are parents of young ones here who’ve already prepared teacher appreciation gifts and rearrange...
The Next 100
An old preacher named Ernest Fitzgerald used to tell stories of the wonderful and colorful people he met when serving a little mountain church way back in the h...
Resurrection Has a Place: The Road
It was billed as “A Walk to Remember,” this journey through the spots and stops that punctuate the history of First Baptist on Fifth. A bunch of us gathered...
The Gardener Indeed
As the story goes, in the days when the Czar ruled over Russia, he was walking in his palace garden one day. In the far corner of the garden he found a soldier ...
A City, Displaced
Lawyer and theologian William Stringfellow once said that “Christians go to church on Palm Sunday because they love a parade.”1 As I read one pastor said in...
Lazarus, Displaced
I know I’m not the only one in this room that cut our Baptist teeth in children’s Sunday School classrooms doing Bible drill, right? (I won’t ask for a sh...
The Man Born Blind, Displaced
In my first week of preaching class in seminary my professor gave us the outline for what he called a brief exegetical method for preaching. For those who may h...
The Well Woman, Displaced
Finding Winnie is a children’s book that tells the true story of the bear that inspired, as the subtitle says, “the world’s most famous bear.” It recoun...
Nicodemus, Displaced
I’m unashamedly biased and clearly showing my age here, but I do believe the TV show, The West Wing, to be among the very best of all television’s medium ha...
The Ones in the Wilderness, Displaced
Maybe you’re the voracious one. Look around this world! Why wouldn’t you be, with an endless stream of experiences to have, places to see, things to do, mon...
A People, Displaced
“Tell your children of it,” Joel says as the book begins, “and let your children tell their children, and their children another generation.” It was a c...
Leaving Home: Fearless
Now solidly into Mid-February, I’m curious how many of us are still feeling the pressure to “make 2026 our year.” What major transformation has cons...
Prepare Him Room When Plans Change
It was a few days before Christmas on a day like today, days that parents start running through all their tricks to keep young children occupied, when young Meg...
Service of Lessons and Carols
We are so grateful to all the wonderful folks who made our annual service of lessons and carols possible: our Sanctuary Choir, guest musicians, and the many han...
Prepare Him Room with Good Fruit
It’s likely you likely first spotted the two hills before noticing the regal tree nestled between them. Tucked deep into Hadrian’s Wall at the northern edge...
Prepare Him Room in Uncertainty
Are we there yet? Is it time? Has my package arrived? Is my treatment almost over? Will we ever … get there? Fill in the blank with any of the yearnings in ou...
When the Walls Come Tumbling Down
In a recent essay titled An Optimistic Quest in Apocalyptic Times1, writer Nylah Iqbal Muhammad begins with an apocalyptic tone, not too dissimilar from the apo...
When Home Isn’t Home
There’s just something about the early part of November that codes our national mood, isn’t there? I’m speaking of election day, of course, and all that f...
Love Continues
As the story goes, one day, a man named Abraham invited a stranger to his tent for a meal. When grace was being said, the man began to curse God, declaring he c...
Fully Clothed
Asking for a show of hands among the students in the room – how many of you are glad to be back to school? (Parents, I won’t ask you how many of you are gla...
Fully Alive
Ten years ago this summer, Josh, Liam, Annabelle, and I loaded up our cars and headed southeast to plant our lives with you, right here in Winston-Salem. But be...
Fully Pleasing
Have you ever had a letter that you go back to from time to time? That shoebox of old cards. Maybe it’s from a loved one who has passed away, or maybe it&...
Free to Belong
Born a slave named Isabella in Ulster County, New York, around 1797, her young enslaved life was lived on her own. Sold for $150 at the age of 11, young Isabell...
Loosed!
Loosed! You know the story, this wild Pentecost narrative, one of breath and fire and tongues, one of innumerable languages and proclamation and hearing, one wh...
How Will I Know? By the Love
If you were hearing the gospel reading for today and wondering to yourself, “didn’t we just hear this text about a month ago on Maundy Thursday?,” well, y...
How Will I Know? By The Mark
Last week, Josh and I joined the many who were connecting dots between entertainment and current events by watching the movie, Conclave. Perhaps you’ve seen i...
Looking for the Living
About a half a dozen years ago on the Wednesday night before Easter, my family was leaving the church house with bags full of Easter goodies for our kids. My da...
Clear Out The Way
As the story goes, it was in Budapest that a man goes to the rabbi and complains, “Life is unbearable. There are nine of us living in one room. What can...
Clear Out Your Caution
Yesterday morning, I joined with hundreds of others to remember the good, good life of Wade Stokes, a friend who died after a startlingly brief bout of cancer a...
Clear Out Your Shame
Let me ask you a question: what’s your archetype? It was in the early 1900s that Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung defined archetypes as “ancient patterns of per...
Clear Out Your Impatience
In the hills overlooking Oakland, California, there stands a tree that time and neighborly affection has nicknamed the “Grandfather” or “Old Survivor.” ...
Clear Out Your Independence
There once was a young man, said to be the most pigheaded fellow in town, and a young woman, said to be the most mule-headed gal around, and of course they fell...
Clear Out Your Control
Five years ago this week, we entered a wilderness like the world hadn’t seen in a generation. The global coronavirus pandemic had reached the tipping point of...
Clear Out Your Heart
This past Saturday, I took to our sunroom with what an author I like calls “a heap of big black trash bag energy.” I call it a sunroom instead of perhaps it...
The Good Life: Caught
It’s a real gift as a pastor’s kid-turned-pastor to have my pastor parents here in Winston-Salem, and icing on the cake when my dad teaches a class I get to...
The Good Life: Proclaimed
We’re nearing the five year anniversary of one of the most ubiquitous phrases used by the modern American. No, I’m not talking about “we’re living in un...
See and Be Radiant!
Nearly five years ago after the pandemic had shut down so much of life as we’d known it, our family decided – like so many others – that we had to get out...
Home By Another Way
I grew up next door to my grandparents and needless to say I spent a lot of time with them, including road trips. We would travel from New Bern to their home in...
Do Not Be Afraid
Every year around this time, the internet seems to explode in an array of loudness: sales too good to pass up, houses too lit up to avoid, year-in-review hot ta...
Blessed are You
Pastor Tom Long tells a story from his childhood about a game he and his neighborhood buddies would play to pass the time on rainy afternoons when they couldn...
Service of Lessons and Carols
Our annual Advent Service of Lessons & Carols was a magnificent time of worship together! Enjoy the story of Emmanuel, God-with-us, in scripture and in song...
All Flesh Shall See
Just a few weeks ago, the world lost one of the greats: Tony Campolo – pastor, writer, storyteller to all. Among his many stories was one I’ve told you befo...
Your Redemption is Drawing Near
What is saving your life right now? This question’s popularity comes with a history of its own. As legend has it, beloved Baptist-turned-Episcopalian pastor, ...
When Life Together is Hard: Appearances
As the story goes, a little old Jewish lady sits down on a plane next to a big Swedish man and keeps staring at him. Finally she turns to him and says, ‘Pardo...
Speaking, Hearing, Seeing, Following
I’ve been listening to the Barefoot Contessa Ina Garten’s recently released memoir lately. I love an audiobook- especially when it is a memoir or autobiogra...
We Have This Treasure
There once lived a water carrier. Every morning, as soon as the sun rose, she walked from her home to collect water in two earthen pots that hung from a long po...
Church is for Life Together
Think with me for a minute of the groups of which you’ve been a part. Maybe a sports team, a company staff, a choir, a neighborhood association. Maybe a polit...
What is Church For?
I’ve told you before the story from Dr. Fred Craddock, the late pastor and storyteller, who shared about the first church he pastored....
Soul Food: Giving Up a Shelf-Stable Faith
A sweet Italian grandmother once was adjusting to her surroundings in her new American home. ...
Soul Food: Wonder Bread
I want to tell you a story about the history of Wonder Bread. You know Wonder Bread, right? ...
Soul Food: The World’s First Pot-Luck
Perhaps something you should know about your pastor is that among the things in this world that draw my highest religious devotion most are, well, peaches. I am...
Defying Norms: Citizens of Audacious Hope
When you first look at the painting, you’re not entirely sure what you see. On a fairly dim background sits a woman, alone and blindfolded. As you look more c...
Defying Norms: Silent and Still
Today’s gospel story may be short, but it is rich and full with a word from the Lord today, a word of good news for each of us and all of us to hear. So let...
Defying Norms: Insider/Outsider
When the Russian-Finnish border was being redrawn, the old story goes, a farmer was told that the boundary line passed right through the middle of his land...
Coming to Ourselves
Thank you, Emily, for the warm welcome. And thank you to my mom and dad for thinking that this was a good idea. It’s an honor, and frankly a...
Here & There & Everywhere
I had a bit of a chuckle when picking the title for today’s Easter sermon, thinking that perhaps half of you would hear “here and there and everywhere” an...
Again & Again: Emptying & Filling
Our church is one of countless around the world who are marking Palm Sunday today with rituals of celebration. We saw it with our children and youth waving palm...
Again & Again: Losing & Finding
Have you heard the story about the guy who loses his keys? There’s a guy… and he loses his keys! He’s looking and he’s looking and he’s looking for hi...
Again & Again: Perishing & Living
One Wednesday night awhile back, my kids, along with some of their friends and teachers here were doing as they do – running in circles around Kelly Auditoriu...
Again & Again: Tearing Down & Raising Up
This past week, I enjoyed a lecture on Monday night over at Wake Forest’s Divinity School. As I was entering the building, I shared in brief conversation with...
Again & Again: Gaining & Losing
In 1958, the communist government of China under Mao Zedong’s leadership decided they’d had enough. The offender? Not another country, or a protest group, o...
Again & Again: Near & Far
There once was a young man who had gone to the desert to pursue a holy life. For months on end, he fasted, he prayed, he pondered the meaning of scripture, and ...
Distended
It's Ash Wednesday, the day in our Christian year when we consider the truth of our finality and fragility: that 'from dust we came, and to the dust we shall re...
Tender Care: A Spiritual Detox
If you’ve been following along for these Epiphany weeks, you know we’re spending time with the Gospel of Mark. The most abrupt and fast-paced of all the gos...
Tender Care: Living Under Water
As the scene opens, Pete, Delmar, and Everett are seated around a campfire: hungry, scared, and on the run. They’re outlaws you see, having barely escaped a M...
The End is Only the Beginning
The end of the Christmas story is only the beginning. You don’t have to answer this question out loud, but how many of you all are willing to admit that you ...
Christmas Eve Worship: For Good News of Great Joy
Just the other day, I was checking out in the line at Target with what I was sure was the last Christmas present I’d need to buy (spoiler alert, it wasn’t!)...
To Dwell Among Us: For Fulfillment
We’re talking about fulfillment today, and I’m not just referring to the Amazon Fulfillment Centers all around the country who are in their final press to C...
Service of Lessons & Carols
Our annual Advent Service of Lessons & Carols was one for the ages! Enjoy the story of Emmanuel, God-with-us, in scripture and in song!...
To Dwell Among Us: For Nearness
Are we there yet? Is it time? Has my package arrived? Is my treatment almost over? Will we ever … get there? Fill in the blank with any of the yearnings in ou...
Intending to Do Good
Perhaps you’ve felt the seasonal confusion this week—making your Thanksgiving meal while Halloween skeletons and pumpkins look over your shoulder, watching ...
To Dwell Among Us: For the Way
“The beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God,” Mark writes as this first gospel begins....
Intending to Be Ready
If you are a music major in any college or university, the classic rite of passage as a junior or senior is the preparation of your recital....
Attending Church: Presence
Cartoonist and comedian Seth MacFarlane, creator of “The Family Guy” show, was interviewed a dozen years ago on NPR’s Fresh Air about a new album he had c...
Attending Church: Abundant Imagination
If I told you a world without poverty is possible - would you believe me? I grew up in a family that faithfully attended a small Baptist church in the mountains...
Attending Church: Fruitfulness
Over these past few weeks, we’ve been looking together in the parables of the Gospel of Matthew, listening to Jesus use these short, enigmatic stories intende...
Attending Church: Responsibility
These fall weeks, we’ve journeyed with Jesus through the Gospel of Matthew – first in an agrarian stretch of parables through Matthew chapter 13, learning o...
Attending Church: Stewardship
There once was a man named Pahom. Pahom loved land, truly more than anything in the world. He loved the land so much that he convinced himself it was necessary ...
Tending: What’s Priceless
As the story goes, an oyster saw a loose pearl that had fallen into the crevice of a rock, right on the ocean floor. It took great effort, but she finally manag...
Tending: What’s Small
The kingdom of heaven islike a mustard seed, Jesussays. The kingdom of heaven islike yeast. We’re back with Jesus in the parables, in these two tiny stories f...
Tending: To Hold and to Stretch
It was the summer of 1946 when a rumor began in South America that there was a famine sweeping across the continent. ...
Tell Me A Story
Barbara Brown Taylor once told a story about a day she went to her local nursing home one afternoon to celebrate communion with the guests there....
Then and Now: Purpose (The Story of Joseph)
In her clever short story called “Personal Testimony,” author Lynna Williams tells of the 12-year old preacher’s daughter who goes to a fundamentalist Bib...
Then and Now: Power (The Story of Jacob’s Sons)
A few weeks ago, I suggested that you all might be humming the songs from the movie musical, Jesus Christ Superstar, after we watched it together on our Friday ...
Then and Now: Struggle (The Story of Jacob)
This time last year, I completed a journey I thought would just about do me in....
Then and Now: Conflict(The Story of Jacob, Esau, and Rebekah)
I feel confident that in a few months when all the “best of” lists begin to come out, that the memoir called Spare will be at the top. You know the one. ...
Then and Now: Testing and Providing (The Story of Isaac)
Today, in our Then and Now sermon series exploring the Book of Genesis, we turn to Genesis chapter 22. Here, we encounter a familiar story, which is rich with i...
Then and Now: Laughter (The Story of Sarah)
Back in 2009, there was a young man who was beginning to be noticed by the NBA....
Then and Now: Oppression (The Story of Hagar)
He shuffles through this world, practically daring someone to see him. Overlooked and oppressed by every earthly measure, he prefers to blend in and be passed b...
Then and Now: Promise (The Story of Abraham)
I was a tender 12 years old, and God had called my family to leave our home of sweet small town life in Laurens, South Carolina for the booming metropolis of Kn...
Alienation and Reconciliation (The Story of Noah)
If you’re like many in the Christian tradition, the last time you may have thought about Noah was as a child yourself, or when a child in your life got those ...
Then and Now: Boundaries (The Story of Adam and Eve)
Have you read the story called The Giving Tree? You know this one, don’t you – the story that poet Shel Silverstein gave us about the tree who loved the lit...
Then and Now: Goodness (The Story of God)
I bet you know that story about the little girl, who could be one of yours or one of ours, who drew a picture in Sunday School one week....
The Resurrection Way Ahead
The late preacher George Buttrick was once sitting on an airplane, readying for his flight, and making notes for an upcoming sermon he was planning out. ...
The Resurrection Way of Us
You’ve heard me tell pastor Tom Long’s story, where, as the brand new pastor of a small church, he decided to try out a new teaching opportunity — a pasto...
The Resurrection Way of Witness
We have in my house a new hot item, the most fought-over item in the house. Now you may think perhaps it’s a toy, a video game, maybe a book, or maybe even ou...
The Resurrection Way that Abides
“I love you, now leave me alone.” That’s the title of an article you can find from this week’s New York Times, subtitled: “What Friendship Means to an...
The Resurrection Way Home
Just this week, our country’s Surgeon General Vivek Murthy issued an 81-page public health advisory for the latest epidemic to sweep our nation....
The Resurrection Way of Memory
Growing up, I spent many evenings fishing in the family pond. In fact, some of my fondest memories involve sitting, fishing pole in hand, beneath the same old...
The Resurrection Way of Surprise
read this week a story from Smithsonian magazine about a travel writer from the early part of the 1900s who loved to tell strange stories....
The Resurrection Way of Life
Over the past month or so, I’ve noticed an increase in the number of stories in our news and social media that reflect on the three covid-era years we’ve co...
The End of Ways and Means
We’ve spent this school year “on the way” with Jesus, examining the ancient roads he walked, the paths toward God he proclaimed, the journey of life and f...
Lessons Along the Way: Motion vs. Action
On the first day of his film photography class at the University of Florida, professor Jerry Uelsmann decided to do a semester-long experiment....
Lessons Along the Way: Finding the Good Path
Back in the summer of 2019, I traveled with our youth to Passport Camp. That year, Passport was held at my alma mater after all (go Paladins!), and any chance t...
Lessons Along the Way: Knowing Our Place
Jesus continues with his encouragement away from what distracts us from God’s kingdom here on earth and toward that which brings life....
Lessons Along the Way: Do Not Worry
We’re moving steadily through Jesus’ lessons along the way in the Sermon on the Mount, considering over these past weeks the things that capture Jesus’ im...
Lessons Along the Way: What’s at the Heart
“For Christians,” Frederick Buechner says, “to observe the forty days of Lent is to tithe for a holy use roughly a tenth of each year's days.”...
Lessons Along the Way: Shaping the Inner Life
It's Ash Wednesday, the day in our Christian year when we consider the truth of our finality and fragility: that 'from dust we came, and to the dust we shall re...
Lessons Along the Way: On a Moral Imagination
As the story goes, Mullah Nasrudden once found a diamond by the roadside. Muslim law dictated that finders became keepers only if they first announced their fin...
Lessons Along the Way: What’s Hard Between Us
Perhaps it’s the coincidence that this year finds Valentine’s Day just a couple of days past the Super Bowl, but I find that I have hearts on my mind and, w...
Lessons Along the Way: Blessing
On a warm Sunday morning in May 1911, a group of 13 friends set out by foot and by buggy from Highlands, NC to Whiteside. ...
Home by Another Way: Sent
Today, we conclude our month of talking through the Epiphany passages of Jesus....
Home by Another Way: Called
In the comic strip, Linus had gotten fed up with Lucy. She was up to her self-focused ways again, and he was over it. ...
Home by Another Way: Tempted
“A rich industrialist from the North was horrified to find a Southern fisherman lying leisurely beside his boat. ‘Why aren’t you fishing?’ asked the ind...
Home by Another Way: Baptized
If you’ve been following our worship themes this school year, you know we’ve been exploring the language, “On the Way.” After a fall spent unpacking the...