WASHINGTON (ABP) — Ricky Creech, once a Southern Baptist missionary and associational director of missions and more recently on the staff of a Georgia United Methodist church, was elected in a close vote March 28 to be executive director of…
From the Eastern Shore to Cumberland Gap
STAFF CHANGES • Doug Davis, to Poroporone Church, Shacklefords, as pastor. • Don Wilson, to Nelson Church, Nelson, as senior pastor. MISSION MOMENT: For Children’s Ministry Day on Feb. 19, the children of Orange Baptist Church in Orange visited the…
EDITORIAL: The unpredictable journey through Baptist life
How are things in the Tarheel state? It depends on who you ask. To basketball fanatics who follow the Blue Devils or the Tarheels, we won’t know until they have recovered enough to respond. We can imagine their outlook on…
Bell’s hell draws heat, accusations of heresy from critics of new book
WASHINGTON (RNS) — One of the nation’s rock-star-popular young pastors, Rob Bell, 40, has stuck a pitchfork in how Christians talk about damnation. Bell is pastor of Mars Hill Bible Church, a megachurch in the Grand Rapids, Mich., area. His…
What would Niebuhr do? Legacy of preeminent theologian is debated
PRINCETON, N.J. (RNS) — What happens when the contested legacy of America’s most famous 20th-century theologian meets the harsh political realities of the 21st? You end up with questions like whether Reinhold Niebuhr would support water-boarding. It’s impossible to know…
FAITH DIGEST
Airline apologizes to Orthodox Jews. Alaska Airlines issued an apology for misinterpreting the devotional behavior of three Orthodox Jewish men on a flight from Mexico City to Los Angeles. The men had strapped on tefillin—black leather bindings and boxes worn…
RIGHT or WRONG?
Candidates broke records for campaign spending last fall. This seems like a terrific waste of money, especially all the attack ads. If you could take all that money and channel it to gospel causes, how would you spend it? Look…
BTSR trustees chart future course, plan ‘orderly selling’ of buildings
RICHMOND, Va. (ABP) — Baptist Theological Seminary at Richmond trustees have adopted a new business plan that calls for "orderly selling" of campus buildings and eventual relocation in order to broaden the seminary's academic mission beyond granting theology degrees to…
Small groups “catapult” members into larger life of the church and world
ALLEN, Texas — When a Connections class at First Baptist Church in Allen, Texas, began meeting in January a year ago, its diverse membership included a self-proclaimed atheist who attended because he had a friend at church, three unmarried cohabiting couples…
Small groups crucial, but not cure-all
Establishing small groups within a large church — heralded by some as a remedy to the drawbacks of burgeoning congregation size — is “good medicine,” but not a cure-all, according to a national study by Baylor University sociologists. “Simply having…
OPINION: Finding a Bible that fits
I wandered into the Bible section at a Borders' going-out-of-business sale and thought, "I need more choices." Fortunately, the publishers are looking out for me. On Ash Wednesday, new translations of the New International Version (the most popular evangelical version)…
States caught in crossfire over guns in churches
The way Jonathan Wilkins sees it, members of his Baptist church in Thomaston, Ga., should have the right to carry guns into worship services to protect the congregation. Wilkins’ Baptist Tabernacle and a Georgia gun-rights association are challenging a new…