[Update: I erred in not reading the footnote that said that the Florida state convention included numbers from their partnership with Haiti. This means that FBC’s figures are not comparable to the other states. My mistake.] Baptisms are the currency of the Southern Baptist Convention. Baptize many and you will be praised, honored, and […]
Seven interesting SBC items of 2015 that you might have missed
In no particular order: “…while shared ministries are supported at all levels of Southern Baptist life, the phrase itself and the concept in general are no longer communicating the allocation of funds clearly, [Alabama Baptist State Convention Executive Director Rick] Lance explained. So going forward, the budget language in Alabama will only deal with state […]
Top Ten Cooperative Giving State Conventions
SBC Life, Winter 2015 Cooperative Program Allocation Budget, Oct 1, 2014 – Sep 30, 2015 (in millions of dollars) (this shows the CP gifts received by the Executive Committee, not total CP received by the states; as most of us know, state conventions keep about 62% of CP gifts given by churches) 1. Alabama […]
SBC Numerology: Some top ten financial lists for SBC state conventions
These lists are for the year 2014 as calculated by yours truly with LifeWay’s “SBC Statistics By State Convention. _______________________________ Top Ten Richest State Conventions, as measured by total receipts (in millions of dollars) LifeWay footnotes their chart and says, in effect, ‘don’t pay a lot of attention here because of incomplete data’, which means […]
Top 2015 SBC news stories
RNS has a story on the top religious news stories for 2015. To the chagrin of many among us who see our beloved Southern Baptist Convention as the center of the religious universe, only one SBC event made RNS’s top 25. See if you can guess what that one is…shouldn’t be hard. Here is my […]
Angels and demons, churches, and zoning laws
Before I attended seminary and pastored for three decades I was a zoning administrator for a mid-sized city/county planning agency. As a twentysomething bureaucrat in his first post-college job, part of my responsibility was to inform property owners, real estate developers, and other interested citizens what could and could not be done with a particular […]
Syrian family resettled in my area
A Syrian refugee family was recently settled in the Atlanta area according to a local paper article: Bryant Wright, a former president of the Southern Baptist Convention and now the pastor of Johnson Ferry Baptist Church, confirmed Monday that his large Marietta church is helping resettle a Syrian refugee family that arrived in Georgia last […]
Trump? Nope. Never.
There is no circumstance under which I would vote for Donald Trump. Trump represents or exhibits most of the things that run counter to the Christian values, morals, virtues, and principles I have spent half a lifetime attempting to model, preach, and teach. Am I to classify these as mere trivialities such that in the interest […]
So, what will Lottie do this year?
I don’t know. I don’t know if our International Mission Board has a projection that goes along with their $175 million goal. In past years, they have used real estate sales and reserves to spend as if the goal were met. With considerable reductions in personnel (I am unaware of any hard numbers released by […]
10 years since Adrian Rogers died
I believe the brightest light in the SBC Conservative Resurgence was Adrian Rogers and it ought to be noted among us that it’s been a decade since he left us for a better place. I’m highly prejudiced in this since I was a Bellevue member for the three years I lived in Memphis and attended […]
These are complicated times for SBC international missions
Consider me to have a bit of a deficit in denominational nostalgia. I don’t apologize for it. A lament heard often in our SBC circles is about the halcyon days of ten percent Cooperative Program giving, the fictional harmony among various groups that made up the SBC back then. That lament includes despair for the days of ever […]
Pastor disaster is always just around the corner…or is it?
A staple of the pastoral ministry is the ubiquity of doomsdayers, naysayers, and highly negative soothsayers. To wit: Epidemic of forced pastoral terminations! Thousands of pastors leaving ministry each month! Depression rampant among pastors! Pastors are overworked, underpaid, drowning in a sea of student debt! Average tenure of pastors is short, and unsweet! Toxic churches […]