New Meredith president takes helm. Jo Allen starts her tenure as president of Meredith College in Raleigh, N.C. on July 1. Allen, elected April 18, is the first Meredith alumna to serve as president of the 120-year-old college, with historic…
Southern Baptist Convention leader criticizes Obama on Israel
WASHINGTON (ABP) — The Southern Baptist Convention’s top public policy official called Barack Obama “the worst president of the United States that Israel has ever had” at a rally for social conservatives held June 3-4 in Washington. “The reason I…
HeraldBeat
TRANSITIONS ON THE MOVE Wayne McCarty, to Cowan’s Branch Baptist Church, Gate City, Va., as pastor. Matthew Hensley, to Huguenot Road Baptist Church, Richmond, Va., as associate pastor for discipleship, effective Aug. 1. Jimmy Dunn, now serving as minister of…
VITAL SIGNS: Dreaming with God
I’ve made a transition in recent years in the way I think and talk about God’s will. For many people, the will of God is a mysterious, elusive and frustrating concept. Too often, we have made it into a game…
HERITAGE: The future of the past
For the next four years there will be many emphases upon the 150th anniversary of the Civil War; and unlike the Centennial in the 1960s, the emphasis often will include emancipation. The Centennial was marketed as a celebration and it…
TRENDING: Leadership through the lens of discipleship
Robert Greenleaf coined the phrase “servant leadership” in 1970. This idea became a counterpoint to power-based, hierarchical models of how we lead. Many others (Peter Drucker, Max DePree, Peter Senge, Ken Blanchard, etc.) later added harmonies to the melody, signaling…
EDITORIAL: Where arts and history converge
Never one to pass on an opportunity to mix business with pleasure, while traveling in Germany recently I visited the German village of Schwäbisch Hall. A quintessential German mountain town nearly 875 years old, it features narrow, winding cobblestone streets…
VA BRIEFLY
"Moire," by Marvin Tadlock. Award for Intermont artist. Marvin Tadlock, professor of art at Virginia Intermont College in Bristol, Va., received a merit award this spring for his sculpture “Moire,” exhibited during the Knoxville (Tenn.) Art in Public Places Competition…
Opinion opens doors to guns in Va. churches, but some pastors are wary
RICHMOND, Va. — Virginians can carry firearms into churches and other places of worship, according to a legal opinion issued this spring, but some Baptist pastors in the state say they’re unsettled by the prospect of congregants with handguns. Virginia…
Mars Hill College hires female chaplain with ties to CBF
MARS HILL, N.C. (ABP) — Mars Hill College, located in the conservative mountains of an increasingly conservative North Carolina Baptist environment, has hired an ordained woman with Cooperative Baptist Fellowship ties as campus chaplain. Stephanie McLeskey comes to Mars…
150 years after the Civil War, reminders of that conflict are fresh
One hundred and fifty years after Confederate artillery fired on Fort Sumter, S.C., and the Civil War began, reminders of the conflict that divided a nation remain fresh. Some see them any given Sunday morning when black Christians and white…
OPINION: Being Baptist — An interracial journey
One Sunday in January 1994, our family — Candyce, Stephanie and I — walked across the parking lot of the Sixth Avenue Baptist Church in Birmingham, Ala., after the morning service. An elderly African-American woman approached us and asked: “Reverend,…