(ABP) — Auditors have made “a number of constructive suggestions for improvements” to financial procedures at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary in Wake Forest, N.C. The recommendations came after reports surfaced about a car given to an aide to former president…
IRS denies it told church not to pray for re-election
(RNS) — A Virginia pastor who prayed that God would re-elect President Bush says the Internal Revenue Service threatened him with charges of improper “electioneering,” but the IRS maintains it has made no decision in the case. The controversy erupted…
Members of Congress accepting religious trips
(RNS) — Over the past four-and-a-half years, private organizations spent nearly $570,000 flying members of Congress and their families around the globe on religion-related trips, putting them up in hotels and feeding them, a study of congressional records shows. An…
Church and people news
STAFF CHANGES Jim Day, to Broad Run Church, New Baltimore, as pastor. John Compton, resigning as senior pastor of First Church, Alexandria, to accept a similar position in Mississippi. Lance Yost, to Jahnke Road Church, Richmond, as bi-vocational pastor. DEATHS…
Gardner-Webb program aims to tackle hunger in region
BOILING SPRINGS, N.C. — Many Americans are still struggling to put food on the table, a full four years after the global recession ended, a new poll by Gallup shows. “Twenty percent of people polled last month said that they…
Baptist to lead justice ministry for farmworkers
Lindsay Comstock (ABP) — Lindsay Comstock, an ordained Baptist minister, graduate of Baptist Theological Seminary at Richmond and former human-trafficking specialist for the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship, is new executive director of the National Farm Worker Ministry, a faith-based organization advocating…
Lean on other Christians — It’s biblical
The Bible offers the key ingredient Christians — laypeople, ministers and church leaders alike — need to help them learn to lean upon one another. Each believer is a necessary and vital part of the body of Christ. Robert Creech,…
Why is it so hard for Christians to learn to lean on others?
The old hymn, Learning to Lean, encourages Christians to learn to lean on Jesus when they face life’s difficulties. Believers today emphasize being God’s hands and feet to minister to the world. But how many believers allow brothers and sisters…
Five suggestions for pastoral self-care
Charles Chandler, founder of the Ministering to Ministers Foundation, gives five suggestions of pastoral self-care. • Develop an informal feedback group within the congregation. Pastors should choose just a few that they can trust and whom other members talk to….
Ministers are not able to leap tall buildings or stop bullets
Charles Chandler can joke about preachers suffering from “Superman syndrome” since he portrayed the “Man of Steel” when Metropolis, Ill., claimed the status as the superhero’s hometown. The first “Superman” for the city’s annual celebration, Chandler, now director of the…
A new book claims more Baptists will embrace liturgical forms of worship as inherently missional
(ABP) — Pastors and scholars familiar with a new book about liturgical worship say its publication signals the practice’s spread in Baptist churches which realize ancient Christian practices are inherently missional and may lure younger generations to the faith. Gathering…
Do BYU visits signal evangelical-Mormon truce?
(RNS) — Last month, after being sure to get his caffeine fix at Starbucks, Southern Baptist leader Richard Land went where few evangelicals had dared to go before: the campus of Brigham Young University, the intellectual heart of Mormonism. After…