Today, 11 Wilshire members are worshiping alongside Primera Iglesia Bautista de Río Piedras in San Juan, Puerto Rico. First Baptist Church Río Piedras is a historic congregation. Established in 1899, it was the island’s first Baptist church and at one time its...

By LeAnn Hampton.  Today is the first Sunday in the season of Lent and coincides with a new season in the life of our church as we welcome Ariel Merivil as our new minister of music. In the search committee’s conversations with Ariel, we heard his desire to build on...

By R.G. Huff.  It’s Super Bowl Sunday. It’s the last Sunday before Ariel, our new minister of music, starts. Timothy is back from preaching at St. Bart’s Cathedral in New York, and it’s Transfiguration Sunday in the lectionary. I have to admit: I understand the first...

In looking over this morning’s service, I was immediately struck by the words our Youth Choir will be singing in the Call To Worship: “In the midst of pain, I choose love … in the midst of war, I choose peace … when my world falls down, I will rise.” These words are...

The year was 1978 in the Roxbury neighborhood of Boston. A group of five teenage boys came together and created a band, New Edition, so named to indicate they were a new edition of the Jackson 5. The group reached the height of its popularity in the 1980s and...

Have you ever assessed your listening skills honestly? I recently did and realized I am often least attentive when I’m listening to those I love most. There are times when Chris or the kids mention a person or anecdote that I have no memory of previously hearing. It’s...

By Heather Mustain I remember my first missions trip like it was yesterday. I was a freshman at the University of Colorado and had recently come to know Christ. Eager to live into this new life, when the opportunity to spend my spring break in Jamaica serving at a...

By Charlie Fuller. It was on a cloudless night back in the 1960s. My dad took my older brother and me out to the backyard, and we craned our necks upward. The night sky was filled with stars. Bright stars. Dim stars. Clusters of stars. Individual stars. Stars...

It was the yearly church fishing trip, and it was quite exclusive. My uncle, the pastor, gave up on trying to teach me the right catfishing technique. As I started to cry, Rev. Tate took me aside, and she worked with me for hours. She first taught me that the best...

Each year, 150 to 200 of us bring ornaments to place on our large extended-family Christmas tree. There is one ornament my grandma puts on the tree every year: it’s a little ornament in the shape of underwear. It’s her reminder to us to always have on a fresh pair....