In less than a week, about 12,000 messengers are expected to arrive in Orlando for the 168th annual session of the Southern Baptist Convention. Leading the concerns facing church representatives are the election of a new convention president and a…
BNG podcasts and social media address Twin Cities issues
Two of BNG’s podcast have released segments addressing ICE actions in Minneapolis-St. Paul and the reactions to that show of force. On “Stuck in the Middle with You,” co-hosts Mark Wingfield and Benjamin Cole seek to discover if there’s anything…
Two new podcast episodes tell the stories of changing pastoral ministry
Fifty years ago, O.S. Hawkins and George Mason were not estranged in their affiliation with the Southern Baptist Convention. Both men attended Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Fort Worth, Texas, and went on to become well-known pastors in large Baptist churches. But a fork placed…
What happened to the SBC’s Vision 2025 and its $1.25 million?
Southern Baptists arrived in Dallas this week to consider how they will finance mounting legal bills after a spate of lawsuits were filed in the wake of a 288-page report published in 2022. That report detailed at length how key convention…
A conservative Baptist’s prayerful appreciation for Pope Francis
“Pope Francis has died.” Those words were the first banner I saw on my iPhone when I woke up Easter Monday. The Supreme Pontiff and Bishop of Rome (yes, it’s hard for a Baptist to type those words) died at 7:35…
In new podcast episode, Mark and Ben try to talk about Trump
Baptist News Global’s podcast series “Stuck in the Middle with You” is back with two special episodes that introduce a second season of the show. Co-hosts Mark Wingfield and Benjamin Cole intend to devote most of season two to interviews…
Matt Queen, we hardly knew ye
There’s an old Irish drinking song that was repopularized in the 1960s about a young soldier who ran off to South Asia to join the British armies fighting the Kandian War in modern day Sri Lanka. The lyrics capture the…
“Stuck in the Middle with You’ podcast drops 10th episode
BNG’s new limited-series podcast, “Stuck in the Middle with You,” now has 10 episodes available for streaming and download. The series features BNG Executive Director Mark Wingfield in dialogue with Benjamin Cole, also known as The Baptist Blogger. Each episode…
New podcast episode explores right-left shift of SBC and CBF
A new episode of BNG’s podcast series “Stuck in the Middle with You” published Aug. 29 focuses on the widening rift between the Southern Baptist Convention and the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship. BNG Executive Director Mark Wingfield, speaking with cohost Benjamin…
Special extra episode of ‘Stuck in the Middle with You’
BNG’s new podcast series, “Stuck in the Middle with You,” dropped a new special episode earlier today focused on the case of Jane Roe against Southwestern Seminary and its former president, Paige Patterson. Cohosts Mark Wingfield and Benjamin Cole discuss…
Here’s what’s wrong with the SBC’s trustee system
Every problem facing the Southern Baptist Convention, every new crisis and scandal and reported financial irregularity, can be reduced to a single and seemingly insoluble root cause: a bloated trustee system that is outdated, inefficient, unmanageable and hopelessly beset by…
New BNG podcast puts Wingfield and Cole in conversation about the SBC
Baptist News Global Executive Director Mark Wingfield and blogger Benjamin Cole don’t see eye-to-eye on everything in Baptist life, but they do agree their respective denominations have drifted further apart than ever before. In the inaugural episode of the “Stuck…