Aliança! Aliança! That’s the word the hooded young men wielding guns kept saying. How did they know that’s who we were, I wondered? We were the Aliança de Batistas do Brasil. How could these strangers know that?
‘God sent you here,’ child tells minister in violent community
Cooperative Baptist Fellowship field personnel Cecelia Beck has established herself as a presence in the lives of children, youth and adults since moving to the “Weed and Seed” neighborhood of Shelby, N.C. “It is important to be present in order…
Trafficking sting nets children’s minister
A children’s pastor at a Southern Baptist church was among 32 people arrested in a three-day human trafficking sting operation in Knoxville, Tenn., law enforcement officials announced May 20. Jason Kennedy, 46, children’s pastor for birth through fifth grade at…
How Jeanne Bishop forgave her sister’s killer and is working for his good.
It took Jeanne Bishop 20 years just to speak his name. That, she believed, would attribute a level of humanity to the man who shot her pregnant sister and brother-in-law to death in their own house — a level of…
Church shooting suspect gets public defender
A Pennsylvania man charged with manslaughter in an April 24 shooting inside a Southern Baptist church has been assigned a public defender in advance of a preliminary hearing scheduled May 12. Reports from local media say that members of the Montgomery…
Arrest made in Philly church shooting
Criminal charges have been filed in a fatal shooting that took place inside a Southern Baptist church in Pennsylvania during a Sunday morning worship service April 24. Mark Storms, 46, of Landsdale, Pa., was arraigned April 28 on charges of…
Police investigating Baptist church homicide
Gunfire interrupted the 11 a.m. Sunday worship service at a large Southern Baptist church in suburban Philadelphia April 24, leaving one church member dead and investigators trying to decide whether to bring charges against another. Authorities say Robert Braxton, 27,…
Richard Shahan trial postponed
The trial of a longtime Southern Baptist minister charged with murder in his wife’s 2013 stabbing death has been pushed back until 2017. Richard Shahan, former children and families pastor and facilities director at First Baptist Church in Birmingham, Ala.,…
Concert to remember slain Union University student
A Southern Baptist church in Tennessee will hold a special night of worship Sunday, March 6, in memory of a Union University co-ed murdered in 2014. “A Night of Worship with Proclamation of Union University in Memory of Olivia Greenlee”…