In 1979 when I began my work at the Virginia Baptist Historical Society, I discovered several large wooden packing crates, full of crumbling file folders. They were the papers of George White McDaniel, a prominent minister — pastor of First…
HeraldBeat: Tracking Baptists across the Mid-Atlantic
Accepted a new call? Been ordained? Church celebrating an anniversary? Mission trip or project that you would like highlighted on the HeraldBeat page? Send info to HeraldBeat editor Barbara Francis at [email protected]. Transitions ON THE MOVE Darrell Boggs, to First…
Growing trend: Ministers saddled with seminary debt
When Congress overwhelmingly approved a measure last month to relieve spiraling student debt, churches probably didn’t realize the problem hits closer to home than expected — many pastors are leaving seminary and divinity school with tens of thousands of dollars…
Awkward question: How much to pay the pastor?
It may be one of the most uncomfortable —and sometimes contentious — questions in congregational life: How much should we pay our senior pastor? Ministers struggle between commitments to a self-sacrificial calling on the one hand and providing for their…
OPINION: Reflections from New York: History as song
As the old hymn Blessed Assurance goes, “This is my story. This is my song.” How beautiful a metaphor to understand our faith journey as a song. Throughout this summer at Metro Baptist Church, groups have come to New York…
LETTER: Shariah is threat to American freedoms
Why would any American support using foreign laws by our judicial system [“Political dilemma,” Herald, Aug 12]? That is an affront to all of us who swore to protect and defend the Constitution of the United States. The seminal reference…
OPINION: Proleptic tables and prophetic waters
In my most recent column, I shared a personal reflection from a 2013 Cooperative Baptist Fellowship General Assembly workshop which sought to revisit the place and nature of the Baptist tradition of believer’s baptism in the 21st century. I wrote…
OPINION: Does it ever hurt to heal?
I recently heard and read about some potentially groundbreaking medical news. The basic gist of the news is that researchers at the University of Massachusetts medical school have found a way to essentially turn off the genetic material which causes…
Study connects views on race, church size
By Jeff Brumley Christians who worship in “very large” congregations see racial inequalities differently from those who attend smaller churches, a joint Baylor University and University of Southern California study has found. Members of the bigger institutions “do not tend…
SBC leader: Bible Belt collapsing
By Jeff Brumley Russell Moore has been making the rounds of national media outlets, telling his secular interviewers of the collapse of the Bible Belt and how it is bad for America but good for the church. Moore, president of…
Egyptian Baptists evoke spirit of founders
By Jeff Brumley In a letter describing the Islamist persecution of Christians in Egypt, a Baptist minister in Cairo provides a disturbing warning against the entanglement of religion and politics. And portions of the letter, two U.S. church scholars say, are…
Lawsuit fights Ten Commandments display
By Bob Allen The executive director of Mainstream Oklahoma Baptists is lead plaintiff in a lawsuit seeking removal of a Ten Commandments monument on the State Capitol grounds in Oklahoma City. Bruce Prescott, an ordained Baptist minister and member of…