By Jeff Brumley Chris Wondree is a full-time seminary student and a student ministry intern at a Virginia church, all of which means he’s busy. Fortunately, Wondree said, the internet helps alleviate the stress of running back and forth between…
Baptists eye catechism (again) to instruct the faithful
By Jeff Brumley There may just be an ancient solution to the modern church’s problems of decreasing attendance and rising religious illiteracy in a post-modern culture turned off by denominational brand names, some leading Baptist scholars and educators say. The…
Numbering our days, applying our hearts
By Bill Leonard “So teach us to number our days, that we may apply our hearts unto wisdom.” Those words from Psalm 90:12 KJV challenge us at year’s end to contemplate what we’ve learned in 2013 and how we might…
OPINION: Billy Graham and the ‘old, old story’
(ABP) — “Billy Graham is the most famous evangelist in the world and his power of persuasion has softened the skeptics who used to call him the hot-gospeller from the Bible Belt.” That’s how legendary (cigarette-puffing) CBS newsman Edward R….
OPINION: At home in the 17th century
Seventeenth century Baptists would have known exactly what was happening when two Rowan County, N.C., state legislators recently proposed a resolution, affirmed by 11 other legislative colleagues, that declared that the United States Constitution does not “prohibit states or their…
CBF, a candle in search of darkness
Every good story needs an antagonist, a villain, and the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship story doesn’t have one. I was a graduate student at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville when the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship was founded in 1991. I…
OPINION: Always reforming
Ecclesia Semper Reformanda, so the saying goes — “The church is always reforming.” Those words came to mind last week when I heard sociologist-prophet-iconoclast Tony Campolo preach at the New Baptist Covenant II meeting, that multiracial effort at affecting Baptist…
ANALYSIS: Southern Baptists face the future — and an identity crisis
(ABP) — Institutionally and organizationally, American Protestantism is in a state of permanent transition — and the Southern Baptist Convention is no exception. These days it is clear that fewer religious Americans think of their primary identity in terms of…