The Cooperative Program is our grand cooperative funding mechanism. SBC churches give on average a little under 5% of their undesignated offering plate dollars to the CP, totalling over $460 million. It is the envy of other denominations. But you knew all that, right? Ronnie Floyd, CEO of our Executive Committee has outlined a plan, […]
ERLC should answer questions from the Executive Committee [update: I hear there has been answers submitted]
[But I don’t know what the answers are. They will be dribbled out to the hinterlands eventually, I suppose, unless some Baptist pundit gets his hands on them and tweets them.] This is a long-running, slow motion deal. It is critical in many ways that we get this right. SBC Executive Committee creates ERLC study […]
Ridgecrest Conference Center scares me…
…only because I’m here at the place and looking around at things to spend money on if I owned it. When I arrived mid-week, I didn’t see another guest. Lots of staff. No paying customers save for one pastor who is appreciatively discounted. No complaints from me. Lifeway announced earlier this year that they were […]
Leaving the SBC behind? This has to be discussed about Cornerstone Church
I don’t recall a more widely discussed departure from the SBC than that of Cornerstone Church in Atlanta. In my memory only a few high profile, moderate churches leaving the denomination generated as much publicity. Christianity Today has the most comprehensive story about this: Atlanta Church Splits With SBC for Downplaying Racial Issues [Pastor John] […]
Put John Lewis statue in the rotunda, Alexander H. Stephens in a museum
This is a totally parochial article, pertains to the state of Georgia. Each state gets to put two statues in the Capitol Rotunda. The last time I was in the place, I gazed absentmindedly at our state’s statue of Alexander Hamilton Stephens while some group’s tour guide blathered on about the statues. Stephens was the […]
So, wear a stinkin’ mask…
…if that doesn’t exert you too much. Here I am in my blogging sanctum sanctorum, my basement of course, all masked up but only for illustrative purposes. I don’t quite get it when I see people in their car alone with a mask. I stay pretty close to home these days but venture out to […]
“Woke” won’t work here
“Woke” is a dog whistle, a red flag signal; a brainless, thoughtless, mindless, vapid bit of freshman frat boy drivel. If the word is snarled out in a comment it’s a lead pipe cinch that the comment is a flash of drive-by nonsense. There are good arguments for and against renaming SBTS buildings. “Woke” or lack […]
Some of our entities funded by the Paycheck Protection Plan
Retirement plus quarantine may provide too much time. Thus, the huge Small Business Administration database listing some of the recipients of the Paycheck Protection Plan loans. I make no moral judgment about those who chose or declined to choose to apply and receive these government backed loans. Generally, all the SBC leaders gave advice about […]
Humble advice for the passive pastor in the parsonage
I’m retired now but served three churches as pastor. For most of that thirty-year period my family and I lived in homes owned by the church, the parsonage. An article earlier this year on the subject, Behold, the lowly parsonage, covers much of the details on this. Comments were generally positive towards living in a […]
Is the small, single full time clergy staff church a luxury churches can no longer afford?
The adjectives in the title have meaning. I’m referring to the thousands of small churches, somewhere around the SBC median of about 70 in average weekly attendance, that have a single clergy staff, the pastor, who is fulltime and not bivocational. My first church, it was in rural South Carolina, was an example of this: […]
Cooperative Program, under considerable stress these days
I love an optimist and Baptist Press “staff” reports on our beloved Cooperative Program are invariably positive and optimistic. “Staff” should get a raise. Latest CP story headline: Cooperative Program giving highest in three months, down only 1.47% for year This is the Executive Committee portion of the CP, funding mostly for the mission boards […]
God bless America
This is the closest church to my house if you don’t count the bird house church in my backyard, a little box with a steeple that someone gave me. The church pictured isn’t my church but it’s Southern Baptist. I know the pastor who is a good guy. Good church. Good pastor. God bless them. […]