Next week, the Southern Baptist Convention will hold its annual meeting in Indianapolis and vote on the second reading of what has come to be known as the Law Amendment. A proposed amendment to the SBC’s Constitution, named after the…
Making sense of denominational decline and church shifting
Evangelical Protestantism continues to be a growing force in American Christianity, as Mainline Protestant denominations continue to decline, but where are these converts coming from? There is very little data showing where Christians go when they convert away from a…
On the Trump trial, the SBC and accountability
What happened in New York City Thursday? For one brief moment, in my 72 years, I saw a nation united around one idea that the rule of law still works as it was intended. Transparency hurts at times. In shortly…
Wine, women and gospel: A perilous inerrancy
In Primitive Baptists of the Wiregrass South, author John G. Crowley writes that for those Appalachian Baptists, “the use of fermented wine, usually made by the deacons” is standard in their celebration of the Lord’s Supper, a biblical mandate they…
This is what support looks like: The Harrisonburg Baptist Church story
When Eli Withers, associate pastor at Harrisonburg Baptist Church in Virginia, found out she was on the infamous list of female pastors a leader in the Southern Baptist Convention circulated in March 2023, she found herself feeling “a little pissed…
Why a Calvinist pastor may be coming to your church
Recently, I heard yet another story of a “centrist” Southern Baptist church calling a pastor who is inevitably going to steer the church sharply to the right. It doesn’t take a Ph.D. in theology to understand this. It only takes…
87-year-old Ed Young steps down at Second Baptist Houston, to be succeeded by his son
When Ed Young became pastor of Second Baptist Church in Houston, Jimmy Carter was president of the United States. Forty-six years later, at age 87, the high-profile pastor is stepping down and has named his 60-year-old son as his successor….
Texas editor says NAMB is willing to take millions from BGCT but won’t continue funding church planting partnerships
The Southern Baptist Convention North American Mission Board is happy to take money from Texas Baptists but unwilling to give money back to shared missions causes, the editor of the Texas Baptist Standard said in a May 23 editorial. In…
Fourteen years later, SBC has implemented only two of seven Great Commission plans, audit shows
Fourteen years after adopting an aggressive plan to advance the Great Commission of Jesus, the Southern Baptist Convention largely has failed to follow its own plan, a blue-ribbon evaluation team reports. “What will likely be the key takeaway from this…
What can be learned from the SBC Book of Reports? The circle remains unbroken
The Southern Baptist Convention is so big and its empire so far-reaching that it’s hard to get true perspective on its scope and trends. One of the few snapshots to give insight is the Book of Reports, published just prior…
The Sunday we left the Southern Baptist Convention
On Sunday, we voted to leave the Southern Baptist Convention. It happened at a special, called business meeting that took place in our Fellowship Hall during the Sunday school hour. When I got there, after preaching at the early worship…
When Baptists fight, they stop fishing
In his book In the Eye of the Storm, Max Lucado shares a story of a group of guys going on a long-awaited fishing trip. The problem starts when the weather turns ugly. They arrive at the lake and have…