William Thornton

I asked a close acquaintance, ministry colleague, if they liked Ravi Zacharias. “Not any more,” was the quick and laconic reply Dave Miller’s article of last week lumped the whole sordid matter under “The Ravi Zacharias Problem” and I’ll presume that readers are familiar with that squalid and deplorable mess. One aspect of it that […]

If there is a bias in SBC life it is in favor of larger churches. Not that denominational leaders and employees deliberately discriminate against average churches (median attendance, 70; average attendance around 120), or their pastors; it’s just that most of the revenue, most of the trustees, all of the leadership, all of the elected […]

There are two main targets in SBC life these days, Russell Moore and the ERLC and Kevin Ezell and the North American Mission Board. In regard to the latter, NAMB is incessantly criticized for their spending policies. A few observations: NAMB designed and manages successful national SBC programs in the area of church planting and […]

One man’s crusade to clean up the SBC is reporter Julie Roy’s podcast with SBC presidential candidate Randy Adams. The interview is a roundup of the usual SBC suspects. Adams is a heavy NAMB critic. Fine, we can disagree about church planting philosophy and spending policies. While NAMB has several recent incidents that have not […]

Randy Adams is one of four announced candidates for SBC president. Baptist Press covers his announcement with links to the other three (Al Mohler, Ed Litton, and Mike Stone) in this article. Adams was to be nominated this past year but the virus gave the SBC JD Greear for another year. I doubt I would […]

More accurately, both my wife and I are getting the first of the two shots today and it has been a strange journey to get to this spot. The way it has worked here in Georgia, the health departments had the vaccines. You had to go sign up, which, seems to me was a waste […]

The hallmark of our country’s governance has always been the peaceful transfer of power. The capitol insurrection was an utter disgrace and the most serious challenge to the transfer of power in our history. (Well, we did have that other insurrection 160 years ago.) Utter disgrace. The more that is know about it the uglier […]

The chances aren’t at absolute zero for this but are pretty close. But, let’s dream and speculate anyhow. ____________ Those who want to take over the SBC will privately gripe and grumble over the delay in their well-laid plans. Those who see themselves as The Lord’s SBC Kingmakers will privately fume, since they believe they […]

It’s a Southern Baptist cliche: “We are a convention of small churches.” We are indeed. The median SBC church will have 70 souls in average weekly worship attendance  this coming Sunday which means that around 25,000 SBC churches have a pastor who looks out when he preaches at no more than a few dozen hearers. […]

I suppose I’m known as a state convention critic, with good reason. All that is for another time. I can recall three times my state convention helped me and my church. Here they are. Volunteer mission trip. Way back when state conventions had formal partnerships with various countries around the world, through IMB and their […]

Although I am retired and not serving as senior pastor of any church now, I was saddened to hear of a family leaving one of my former pastorates for another church nearby. Both the family and the current pastor (my successor in the position in my former church) are my friends. I have had casual […]

…and concluding that my day may indeed be past. Clergy temp staffing agencies. The idea that the person who fills the pulpit or who leads worship of Almighty God, or who teaches students or other church staff can be interchangeable, that is, it doesn’t really matter who the person is, is foreign to me. Filling […]