William Thornton

Almost nine years ago, I wrote an article about how two-thirds of the young college graduates who serve overseas through our International Mission Board’s Journeyman program were females. This is one of the SBC’s best opportunities to serve the Lord in places far more needy than affluent U.S. of A. IMB Journeymen are young adults, […]

The SBC Annual Meeting will be off with a gavel slam in 15 days. I’ll be there along with around 15,000 other messengers, guests, media, and protesters. Count me in the first group, a messenger from an SBC church. This is the unofficial SBC Voices guide to the Annual Meeting. Unofficial because I couldn’t get […]

This is a change that diminishes the ability of members of cooperating churches from knowing about the entities that they pay for. Better take a look at this.   Current Business and Financial Plan, (In the SBC Annual this sentence is in Article XIV. On SBCNet, which I have linked, the sentence is not in […]

This isn’t a sleeper item, it’s been publicized by Baptist Press: Rewritten Business & Financial Plan awaits adoption by SBC messengers. It is a snoozer, though. Not one messenger in 100 will read it. Not one Southern Baptist in a thousand will care one whit about it, but it is an important item. The various […]

In one of the great naval battles of history, the HMS Hood, pride of the British Navy, for years the largest, most powerful ship of its day, was sunk on May 24, 1941 by the giant and famous German battleship, the Bismarck. The Hood, launched in 1918,  was getting a bit long in the tooth […]

This is the time of the year, just prior to the SBC Annual Meeting, when Lifeway Christian Resources releases the dreaded Annual Church Profile data collected for the previous year. Baptist Press story: Southern Baptists grow in number of churches, plant 588 new congregations amid COVID-19 pandemic. I’m in favor of emphasizing the positive so […]

One of the most common questions I’ve fielded over the past few decades is about the ordination of Southern Baptist clergy. The most common misconception in regard to ordination is that seminaries confer ordination after the individual graduates, along with the degree earned. Nah. Seminaries confer a lot of stuff but not the thing that […]

I recall one of the moderate candidates, Winifred Moore, back in the day of the original Conservative Resurgence having a campaign that included airport stops with news interviews. The idea was, one supposes, to get on television news or in print. Moore was quite the avuncular preacher with homespun stories but rather unsuited for this […]

Seminary professors Malcolm Yarnell and Keith Whitfield wrote an article put here on February 16, 2019, Addressing Abuse in the SBC: A Proposal. Keith Whitfield is Professor of Systematic Theology at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary. Malcolm Yarnell is Research Professor of Theology at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary. This is the only concrete proposal I have […]

Somewhere it is inscribed in stone, as if by the finger of God, that there must be SBC state conventions and that they must receive the lion’s share of Cooperative Program revenues. Such is not inscribed by the finger of the Almighty but by the finger of respected but not omnipotent denominational bureaucrats. Our venerable […]

I’m the guy who will actually bend over and pick up a penny in a parking lot. In a restaurant parking lot at the beach eagle-eye Plodder spotted a bill behind the car parked next to mine. Nope, not an old school Gospel tract fake currency, guaranteed to alienate restaurant servers who think they have […]

The average attendance at the main weekly worship service for a cooperating Southern Baptist church is around 100. LifeWay gave me a figure of 70 a few years ago along with a median size of 125. There are different ways to calculate it but, regardless of the method, the Southern Baptist Convention is a convention […]