The headlines each year going into the Southern Baptist Convention annual meeting seem to focus on Southern Baptists’ latest attempts to put women in their place and keep them there. Whether they were voting to remove Rick Warren’s Saddleback Church…
The gays who put out a fleece
How far would you go to let God direct your steps? Two young adults met in Belfast, Northern Ireland, in fall 2019. Both were American; both from conservative evangelical Christian stock. They had been introduced because they both worked in…
InterVarsity: Members of Gen Z are remaking missions
Members of Gen Z are committed to missions but insist on changes to old models before they sign on, says a survey from InterVarsity as the campus ministry prepares for this year’s Urbana Student Missions Conference Dec. 28-31 in Phoenix….
How far does our care go?
As the director of a community center in one of the smallest neighborhoods in New Orleans, I often heard residents call Hollygrove-Dixon “the forgotten neighborhood.” Just a mile from Celebration Church’s main campus, it was largely unnoticed — until our…
Jack Martin, bringer of hope to Thai prisoners
Jack Martin, who pioneered ministry to prison inmates in Thailand during his nearly 35 years as a Baptist missionary, died Sept. 20 after a long illness. He was 90. Like many pioneers, Martin didn’t take no for an answer when…
Baylor and CBF announce new partnership
Baylor University and the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship have announced a joint venture that will place three CBF field personnel — missionaries — on campus to guide students in responding to God’s call to ministry. Baylor is a Baptist heritage university…
I am a witness: Russia started this war
The narrative that Ukraine started the war in 2022 or even 2014 is a fabrication of Russian propaganda. As someone who has spent more than half her actual life as a missionary in Eastern Europe, I would offer the following…
“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…
Gladys the Baptist paved a way for women
Perhaps the greatest moniker Gladys Lewis ever was given was when the comedian Grady Nutt called her “Gladys the Baptist.” This Oklahoma City woman is not someone most contemporary Southern Baptists and Cooperative Baptists have heard of, but she helped…
Gaston Christian Center in Dallas — the place where hope lives
I remember the first Monday in February of 2010. I was on my way to Gaston Oaks Baptist Church in Dallas to serve as interim pastor to an aging congregation with a 62,000-square-foot facility. The church at that time had…
Baptist educator receives Order of the Rising Sun from Japanese government
Decades in Japan revealed Gary Barkley’s approach to evangelism was better suited for Japanese culture than for the Southern Baptist Convention, which appointed him as a teaching missionary to the island nation in 1984. “I always felt it was my…
Why the Haitian shoe seller can’t sell shoes
Last month, controversy around the true nature of former NFL football player Michael Oher’s relationship with his adoptive family, depicted in the 2009 movie The Blind Side, reignited a conversation around “white saviorism” — the tendency for privileged white Westerners…