By Bob Allen A former youth minister at a Southern Baptist church in Texas is free on $100,000 bond following his arrest on charges of inappropriate contact with female victims under the age of 17. Local media report that Joshua…
Retiring SBC agency head lands in NC
By Bob Allen Richard Land, who last year announced plans to retire in October after 25 years as president of the Southern Baptist Convention Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, has been named president of Southern Evangelical Seminary, a non-denominational school…
Pastors get tips on burying the dead
By Ken Camp Anxiety about his or her own mortality can hinder a pastor’s ability to minister effectively when a death occurs, a former hospital chaplain said at a recent conference at Baylor University. “We are not immune to the…
Sexuality resource updated, released
By Bob Allen The Alliance of Baptists, Association of Welcoming and Affirming Baptists, and Baptist Peace Fellowship of North America teamed up to revise and update a congregational resource on human sexuality first released in 2000. The March 2013 edition…
Alliance: Drop Cuba from terror list
By Bob Allen The Alliance of Baptists appealed April 6 to President Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry to remove Cuba from a list of state sponsors of terrorism in a State Department annual terror report due out April…
‘Bapticostal’ comic rising Hollywood star
By Jeff Brumley Nowadays, comedian Michael Joiner is billed as “God’s Smart Aleck” to gently remind audiences that his clean humor comes from a Christian perspective. But there was a time when the Indiana native, raised a Baptist, was anything…
Lawsuit against Baptist camp dismissed
By Vicki Brown Camden County Circuit Court Judge Ralph H. Jaynes has dismissed legal action against Windermere Baptist Conference Center and several financial institutions the Missouri Baptist Convention executive board filed in Camden County on Nov. 1, 2006. The MBC…
SBC leader calls HHS mandate ‘persecution’
By Bob Allen The Southern Baptist Convention’s top spokesman for moral concerns charged the Obama administration with “religious persecution” for requiring religious employers to cover preventive health-care services including FDA-approved contraceptives. The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, also known…
Beeping eggs help seeing-impaired children participate in Easter tradition
NEWPORT NEWS, Va. — Two-and-a-half year old Paul Bloxom experienced the joy of his first Easter egg hunt on April 6. His parents brought him from their home in Chincoteague, Va., to First Baptist Church in Newport News, Va., to…
OPINION: The art of doing nothing
The art of being busy is not art at all. It is illusion — movement masked as purpose, distracting one’s audience from realizing that there is not much going on at all. The real art, the difficult, lost, and hard…
OPINION: Creating contexts for conversion, part 1
What is the likeliest context in which someone who is not currently a Jesus follower will take up such a journey? This is the question readily apparent and to which several answers were given at a recent conference I had…
OPINION: Why things break apart and how they get back together
“A few years ago, researchers completed the most meticulous survey ever made of the San Andreas Fault. They found detailed features that nobody could have seen before. “ (Headline from Earth and Science, December 2005) Everyone agrees: it’s just a…