William Thornton

Easter came about a month after I arrived at my first church, an  average sized congregation in rural South Carolina. Our  church was the only one of several SBC  churches in that part of the county that had a full-time, if modestly paid minister. My church and three others traditionally joined for an Easter sunrise […]

…wherein your humble, hacker and plodder blogger, a non-golfer, gets to smugly drop the info that he has been to the Masters several times. Yes, indeed. The world’s premier golf tournament, under way right now, and the world’s most famous golf course is 110.5 miles from where I type and everyone around here has been, […]

Churches do some strange things and high among the head-scratchers is how many churches have an affection for promoting personality inventories in their congregation. The most well-known of these is, of course, that one with a hyphenated name which doesn’t include the term “personality” at all. I pass on dropping the name because I don’t […]

“Billy died,” my father said over the telephone. “I thought you would want to know.” It was unusual for me to receive a call from my dad, so I expected something serious. “I think he took his own life.” Billy was a close childhood friend from years past. I was surprised and saddend to hear […]

That Ronnie Floyd was the Executive Committee’s nominee for CEO was the worst kept secret in the entire Southern Baptist Convention. If you didn’t know, consider yourself dangerously (or, delightfully) unconnected. Chuck Kelley looks bad because of statements he is said to have made about race and the NOBTS’ presidential search. Multiple, credible, anonymous sources […]

Congratulations to Ronnie Floyd on being elected our day-to-day, SBC leader. And congratulations on having a job that has exactly zero power over the 47,000 SBC churches and their often unruly clergy and members. SBC Voices has a leader, Dave Miller (who has a nice article from two days ago about RF) and several others, […]

I think it started with the best of intentions. A preacher I held in great esteem drank deeply from the cup of alliteration. If it was beneficial for him, why not me? Slowly, I began with simple sermonic points (rich, real, relevant) but the thing began to grip me and I spiraled down into secondary […]

I love the change. Presume we’ll see it a lot of it in Birmingham.           The old one: complex, busy, cluttered. The new one: simple, clean, historic. May not be the most important change on campus but it’s a good one.    

LifeWay put itself in the news by announcing the closure of all of its stores..so have some more attention, brethren and sistren: Future Plans — The future of LifeWay Worship Resources is more exciting than ever. In 2017, we partnered with the LifeWay Christian Stores Division to better coordinate the development and promotion of church […]

The Spring Equinox today at 5:58 pm, Eastern Daylight Time. The sun is shining, the flowers are blooming and the birds are singing…the Doxology, either that or the Sevenfold Amen, except for in Nashville where something about tears and beer have to be worked into every song. The Executive Committee has a guy, the celebrated […]

Some unexpected things have already happened. Speculation is rampant, but then, we are SBCers and we always speculate about things. It doesn’t cost a thing. Here you go…from the hacking and plodding SBC hinterlands: J. D. Greear can stir the pot, as we have seen. Any more surprises, JD? Here, take this giant Baptist spoon […]