By Jeff Brumley One of the most pressing needs of struggling churches — good preaching — has inspired a Baptist pastor to launch a company providing a streaming sermon service. “This is something I have been thinking about for years,” said Jim…
Baptists seek guidance as same-sex marriage expands
By Jeff Brumley The widening legality of same-sex marriage has ministers and churches across the nation scrambling to respond. And Baptist pastors are right in the thick of what is in some quarters a frantic search for the right theologies…
BWA reconfirms 2015 Africa congress
By Jeff Brumley The 21st Baptist World Congress will convene as planned in Durban, South Africa, next year despite disease and travel concerns in Africa, Neville Callam, general secretary of the Baptist World Alliance, said in a news release Oct. 27….
As churches grapple with mental illness, ministers open up
By Jeff Brumley Robin Williams’ suicide in August sparked a wave of articles on mental health issues, including many gauging society’s knowledge and sensitivity toward persons with mental illnesses. Christian writers and media outlets pondered whether the modern church is…
MAGAZINE IMMIGRANT STORY
By Jeff Brumley Before ISIS and before Ebola, there was “the surge” – the seemingly unending wave of undocumented immigrants, most of them minors, rushing the southwestern U.S. border during the spring and summer of 2014. Images of overwhelmed government…
Baptist church strives to help Afghan Muslim find welcome, work
By Jeff Brumley A Baptist congregation in Oklahoma has taken in an Muslim man who fled Afghanistan to escape Taliban retribution for interpreting for American forces. The folks at NorthHaven Church in Norman say their acceptance of the 31-year-old interpreter…
No magic bullet for church survival, Rick Warren and other Baptists say
By Jeff Brumley For years now, some agencies and experts who coach church planters and struggling congregations have tried to steer over-eager or desperate clients away from the quick fix of sizzling worship services or other gimmicks to draw big…
2 seminaries with Baptist ties join others adding science curricula
By Jeff Brumley As high-profile, science-versus-faith debates rage across the nation, a handful of American seminaries, including two with Baptist ties, are pursuing the notion that reason and religion are compatible and even complementary. Andover Newton Theological School and Wake…
For West pastor and family, new home means recovery
By Jeff Brumley It’s much quieter these days in West, the tiny Texas town partially flattened by a deadly fertilizer plant explosion in April 2013. Gone are the convoys of semis and church trailers hauling debris and construction supplies, lawn…