SBC Voices

It's "bombs away" on Pearl Harbor Day in America in the two Georgia senatorial runoff races. I'm being bombed by political mail. To date, I have received a single, lonely Christmas card and a dozen or more giant, colorful postcards about the Republican candidates, David Purdue and Kelly Loeffler. So far the Democrats have AI that determines that I am not to be one on which to waste their postage. I've received not a single Dem mailout. There's no party voter registration in Georgia but the Dems have ways of finding stuff out. Repubs also. "Urgent notice: your absentee ballot needs your … [Read more...] about Report from ground zero in the existential struggle to save America

In 1887 the famous missionary Lottie Moon was struggling on the mission field in China.  She knew that the harvest was great and she was doing her best to reap the harvest. But she also knew that more workers were needed.  In that year Moon wrote a letter requesting funds for help on the field.  That Christmas an offering was taken that eventually bore her name and continues to make a lasting impact on the work of Southern Baptists around that world. But that wasn’t the only big event in world missions that year. Across the world in the small town of Cowpens, SC a baby girl was born to John … [Read more...] about Baptists You Should Know: Bertha Smith

My wife and I served as FMB/IMB missionaries for twenty-four years, and I’ve taught missions at three SBC seminaries. You can mark me down as a fan of the Southern Baptist Convention’s method of funding missions. The International Mission Board (formerly Foreign Mission Board) receives 55% of its funds from the Lottie Moon Christmas Offering (LMCO) for International Missions, 40% from the Cooperative Program, and about 5% from special gifts, bequests, and interest income. To explain the last, the IMB receives most of the money from the LMCO in the first three months of the year. So, the IMB … [Read more...] about In Praise of SBC Missions Funding

Over the history of the Southern Baptist Convention there have been many gifted preachers. Those men have been used by God to provide timely and prophetic sermons that have guided, shaped, and corrected the course of individuals, churches, and the SBC. In this series we will look at some of those sermons. Even though most of these men will be dead, the message that they preached lives on because of the truth of the ever living Word of God.   When RG Lee was a young pastor in SC, a deacon came up to him after a prayer meeting where he had given a devotion.  The deacon told the young … [Read more...] about Famous Baptist Sermons: Payday Someday by RG Lee

Here's what ya do: Get the checkbook out. Sit down. Write a big check for the Lottie Moon Christmas Offering. The 2020 Lottie Moon Christmas Offering® goal is $175 million. That number is significant because 2020 marks the 175 th anniversary of Southern Baptists sending workers to the nations. The annual offering makes up almost 60% of the International Mission Board’s revenue and helps to support 3,535 missionaries and their families. I'm not a shoebox kind of guy, even though the church I attend does the boxes. Cold cash, or whatever cyber equivalent you choose, is the way to go. It's … [Read more...] about Lottie Moon! Eschew the shoeboxes. Money puts people on the mission fields.

My granddaughter is inconsolable today, crying her 7-year-old eyes out. She came out to check on her bunny and found that it had gone to bunny glory. She'd had it for less than a year and to be honest, since she moved to the country recently and got a couple of cats, she'd spent less and less time with the bunny. When she found it lifeless, though, she was absolutely crushed. It would be easy to tell her to get some perspective, to recognize the suffering all around her and to see that in the grand scope of things, one little bunny doesn't matter all that much. I was crying a few moments … [Read more...] about Perspectives in a Pandemic

Seventy-one percent of the earth’s surface is covered with water and I have gone swimming, diving, or snorkeling in as much of it as I have been able. I spent a lot of time in the Atlantic, a little in the Pacific, and have dipped my toe in the Indian Ocean. Never made it to the Arctic. Growing up in Taiwan, I pretty much lived in the Morrison Academy swimming pool in the summer and in college, I took a SCUBA class which took us diving off Palm Beach. We explored “the Wrecks” in about 60 feet of water and did a drift dive 90 feet down in the Gulf Stream. Jenni and I have gone snorkeling in … [Read more...] about “Christ-Active” Thanksgiving

There is a lot of room under the banner of Great Commission Baptists for people who do not see eye to eye on many issues. Some among us seek to narrow the fellowship of Southern Baptists, or Great Commission Baptists, according to their own preferences. If you do not do as they do, prefer what they prefer, vote as they vote, think as they think, you are not a true Southern Baptist. We are an odd and ill-defined fellowship with an ill-defined identity, and so this kind of claim to Southern Baptist identity becomes possible. Boiled down, though, there are three basic aspects that identify … [Read more...] about “Great Commission Baptists” Have a Big Tent

The news on this is that the state convention for which Randy Adams is CEO, Northwest Baptist Convention (Oregon, Washington, northern Idaho - around 500 churches) had a "virtual participation Annual Meeting" last week. As he describes it in his blog (Virtual participation at the 2020 Northwest Baptist Annual Meeting) Messengers voted remotely on six items "in real-time through an on-line polling system" and the results were announced during the meeting. Participants could "chat" and ask questions that were read and answered. I gather this was like many FaceBook meetings. Adams has … [Read more...] about Why Randy Adams is still wrong about virtual SBC annual meetings and remote voting