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…
New data show SBC not really reckoning with sexual abuse
According to the Southern Baptist Convention’s latest statistical report, the SBC has lost more than 3.3 million members since 2006, which happens to be the year I did my first sidewalk press conference outside SBC headquarters, talking about clergy sex…
How Southern Baptists got ‘distracted’ from the gospel
What do you think might count as a “distraction” from the gospel? To Southern Baptist Convention presidential candidate David Allen, all the sexual abuse cases piling up against the SBC and its churches are a “distraction.” To North American Mission…
SBC membership declines again but not as much, while number of churches still decreasing
The bad news for the Southern Baptist Convention is that membership declined for the 17th consecutive year. The good news is that last year’s 1.8% decrease was less than recent years. Those are among findings from the SBC’s Annual Church…
Candidate for SBC president stirs a storm by saying sexual abuse cases are a ‘distraction’
In a six-man race for the Southern Baptist Convention presidency, one candidate made headlines over the weekend for his stance on the 42 sexual abuse lawsuits reportedly pending against the denomination. Critics pounced when David Allen, a seminary preaching professor,…
Church life is the perfect cover for abusers, Brown says in BNG webinar
The all-encompassing nature of church life can provide predators with the ideal cover for committing sexual abuse within congregations, abuse survivor and author Christa Brown said. “Access and trust. Pastors and churches have both access to kids and enormous trust…
SBC Cooperation Group offers four recommendations, says Constitution is clear enough
A group tasked with studying ways to increase cooperation among a fractious Southern Baptist Convention has proposed four recommendations to be considered over the next year. In addition to the four recommendations, the Cooperation Group said May 1 it believes…