This week’s Send North America Conference, the joint North American Mission Board and International Mission Board event in Nashville that was designed to help participants find their place in everyday missions, had, as SBC events always do, a means for folks to respond. Of the 13,607 registered attendees, Baptist Press reports that about 1,100 had […]
Things seen and not seen at the SEND conference
I didn’t see or hear any convention hall, hallway, sidewalk, or restaurant talk about the speakers or conference being a disappointment. I saw a lot of people who didn’t look like the usual convention crowd. I didn’t see or hear anyone take a shot at the Cooperative Program, state conventions, seminaries, or mission boards. I […]
About this maxed out SEND Conference in Nashville
I’m at the Send Conference in Nashville. It is a joint IMB and NAMB event and it’s maxed out. The arena seats 13,500. Reminds me a bit of the days when the SBC annual meeting attracted tens of thousands but that ended two decades ago (attendance around 20k in Atlanta) and these days around 5,000 […]
Ten Things You Probably Did Not Know About Lottie Moon
Lottie Moon, missionary to China from 1873 to her death in 1912, is the most famous person in Southern Baptist history. Our largest offering, the Lottie Moon Christmas Offering for International Missions, is named for her. In time, her life came to be mythologized by Southern Baptists and her name invoked in order to raise […]
What’s your attitude on The Lord’s Day, Pastor?
That’s “attitude” brethren, not “altitude.” It’s presumed that all SBC pastors will be “high” on Sundays when they are with the assembled congregation and when they ascend to the pulpit and preach God’s Word. But what about attitude? It’s important and I confess that some of the 48 or so Sundays each year I arrived […]
Anyone attending the Send >> North America Conference, Nashville
August 3,4 in Nashville The conference, last I checked, has registered about double the number who attended the SBC annual meeting last month. I’m planning to be there and would love to meet and visit with any SBCV contributors, commenters, or others. SendNA is the biggest thing going in SBC life these days. One notes that […]
Anyone fact-check your sermons, pastor?
Chances are, someone will, perhaps in real time. You likely have bored listeners sitting in the pew who can quickly google “pastor jailed in Vermont for refusing to perform gay wedding”. Didn’t happen. Snopes it, bro. As a fallback position, you can say that you meant to say that a preacher was arrested and locked […]
Pastors have a tough job in our ministry system
If someone sat down and designed a ministry system for senior pastors and other church staff it’s hard to visualize the design of a tougher system than we already have in the Southern Baptist Convention. There is no entry level of education; therefore, many pastors who have plenty of both compete with others who have […]
Pastor protection act proposed for Georgia
Georgia House Speaker David Ralston has announced his intent to file legislation for a “pastor protection act” later this year when the legislature is in session. The pastor protection act will: a) provide security for pastors against forced termination b) legislate civil protections for pastors against obstreperous deacons c) cause the state to pay for […]
Bart Barber’s stalwart defense of religious liberty
For most of us religious liberty in America is an abstract matter that allows us to declaim profusely and vigorously in matters that never touch us personally. We can talk and blog about it without leaving our comfortable pastorates. We can preach about it from our secure pulpits without risking anything save boring our congregation […]
Lottie Moon: SBC’s most heroic figure
Because of the offering in her name, Charlotte Digges Moon, Lottie Moon to all of us, is the SBC’s most heroic figure, a completely subjective opinion. Regina Sullivan wrote the latest biography of LM (cover image is shown above). A previous biography, 1980, was written by Catherine Allen. I bought the former and was […]
Your work, pastor, as an agent of the state
“…by the authority vested in me as a Minister of the Gospel of Jesus Christ and the laws of this state…” Thus, thousands of Southern Baptist clergy complete a marriage ceremony by some fashion or wording invoking the authority granted them by the government, the state. How are you feeling about that now, brethren? I’ve done […]