This is the ninth in a BNG series of articles on Christianity and democracy that will lead toward the July 4 celebration of America’s 250th birthday. The series has been curated by Carol McEntyre, senior minister at First Baptist Church of...
W.A. Criswell would be so proud of the Southern Baptist Convention this week. The man who once was the spokesman for why women should not — cannot — be pastors has reached peak influence 114 years after his birth. About…
The Southern Baptist Convention has removed its largest congregation, Saddleback Church of Lake Forest, Calif., for appointing a woman as a teaching pastor. The SBC Executive Committee, which acts on behalf of the nation’s largest Protestant denomination in-between the convention’s…
Asbury University has ended the revival that drew tens of thousands of participants and generated global media attention across the past two weeks. The Christian school in Wilmore, Ky., said Feb. 20 it took the action in consultation with law…
The Southern Baptist Convention has turned to a familiar source to operate its online database of clergy sexual abusers. Faith-Based Solutions, a division of the investigative firm Guidepost Solutions, will build and develop the SBC’s Ministry Check website, members of…
Baptists and other Christians must resist economic trends that diminish the moral and spiritual influence of Christianity in an increasingly secular American society, historian Curtis Johnson warned during a webinar presented by the Baptist History and Heritage Society. “We live…
Touchdown! Like a full-field kick-off return, United Methodists scored 180,000 pounds of food for hungry people in five states during a Super Bowl food drive challenge. United Methodists in four annual conferences — Great Plains (Kansas and Nebraska), Missouri, Eastern…
The Passport student camping ministry will release “Journey to the Cross,” its annual Lenten devotional series, on Ash Wednesday, Feb. 22. The series will be published on the organization’s devotional website, d365.0rg. The series — which features Scripture, prayer and…
I’ll never forget walking into my annual staff evaluation meeting and encountering a roomful of awkward looks. The head of our church’s personnel committee started the meeting off with, “So, do you feel that your … um … anxiety issues…
Survivors of child sexual abuse are attempting to enact laws in Missouri and Texas to change the legal landscape for Christian camps that cater to children and teens. Four witnesses who say they were abused at Kanakuk Kamps, a popular…
Surprise! It’s a revival! So said Thomas H. McCall, a theology professor at Asbury Theological Seminary, located adjacent to the ongoing spiritual event at Asbury University in Wilmore, Ky. “Sometimes God does what Johnathan Edwards called ‘surprising work’ and what John…
Great Rivers Fellowship, a new Cooperative Baptist Fellowship regional organization formed by the merger of CBF units in Arkansas, Louisiana and Mississippi, has elected its first staff leaders. Mississippi native Brittany Caldwell, a program coordinator and pastor who most recently…
I served 27 years as a pastor, the last 15 of them in a wonderfully supportive and healthy congregation. Even so, mistrust in the narthex, rooted in our toxic culture, is part of what led me toward the church exit…
