STAFF CHANGES • Steven R. Gupton, to First Church, Virginia Beach, as pastor. He had served as pastor of Ivor Church, Ivor. • Joel Jenkins, resigning as pastor of First Church, Charlottesville, to continue active duty service in military chaplaincy….
EDITORIAL: Spiritual leadership is the demand of the day
Each Lord's Day pastors throughout the world stand before their congregations and deliver sermons they believe are messages from the Lord. Speaking from experience, the weight of such weekly work is both exhausting and exhilarating. The sheer effort required in…
OFFERINGS: Taking the gospel to Russia’s struggling Udmurt people
IZHEVSK, Russia (BP) — No father should have to bury a son. But the world can be a sad place — particularly the piece of it called Udmurtia (ood-MER-ti-yah) in the foothills of Russia's Ural Mountains. On a spring day…
Lectionary helps some Baptist preachers feed their flocks a ‘balanced diet’
RICHMOND—It's Saturday night. Do you know where your pastor is? A pretty safe guess might be “in a study, frantically developing the next day's sermon.” But how does a preacher decide on the Scripture text? Some free-church Baptist pastors find…
Adventures of a church planter
Jeremiah Bell Jeter was in a dilemma. After several years of a highly successful pastorate at the prestigious First Baptist Church of Richmond, “the music demon” visited the church. In today's language, it was “the worship wars.” And it all…
OFFERINGS: Ukrainian believers take gospel to Kazakhstan
PAVLODAR, Kazakhstan (BP) — Roman Gopanchuk gestures with his left hand and leans forward to explain a Scripture passage to his home Bible study group in Pavlodar, Kazakhstan. Just outside the living room door, Gopanchuk's 8-year-old son, Timofey, plays with…
Integrity demands preachers avoid pulpit plagiarism
If preachers pass off other people's work as their own, they automatically limit themselves to preaching about only eight commandments. “Thou shalt not steal” and “thou shalt not bear false witness” become off-limits. But preachers can avoid plagiarism by beginning…
SECOND OPINION: Getting past reaction
One of the enduring tendencies in human life is reaction. Unhappy with the prevailing tendencies of a person or group we oppose, especially in situations of sharp conflict, we swing sharply in the other direction. Oftentimes when we do so…
We three kings of Orient are … mostly unknown to Christians
They came. They saw. They gifted. That's about all we know of the foreign visitors who traveled to Bethlehem to see the infant Jesus. The scene ingrained in the public imagination — a stately procession of three kings in turbans,…
Virginia Baptist Mission Board elects officers, allocates funds for ministry
RICHMOND — The Virginia Baptist Mission Board elected new officers and allocated funds to a variety of statewide and international ministries during its organizational meeting Nov. 27-28 at the Virginia Baptist Resource Center. Joe Lewis, pastor of Second Baptist Church…
Out Loud
“A headline last Sunday about a Muslim man and an Orthodox woman who are partners in two Dunkin' Donuts stores described their religions incorrectly. The two faiths worship the same God — not different ones.” The New York Times The…
New Baptist Covenant preach-in features Forbes, other notables
ATLANTA (ABP) — A miniature preaching festival within next year's Celebration of a New Baptist Covenant will feature one of the nation's most famous preachers among a group that is broadly diverse in terms of ethnic background, gender, denominational affiliation…