EWING – More than 70 people came to know Christ at a bicycle stunt show, March 22, in northeast Missouri. However, this doesn’t tell the full story of the Missouri Baptist Convention’s LIFE Initiative. Such events are planned months in advance with pastors and church leaders determining costs, locale, prayer input, encourager training, promotion, worship, community involvement, and other details. Brad Bennett, the MBC’s Making Disciples director, is aware that events can too often be … [Read more...]
Will Democracy survive in the United States?
EDITOR'S NOTE: J. Alan Branch serves as professor of Christian ethics at Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary. This article first appeared on Midwestern's "For the Church" website, ftc.co. Carl F.H. Henry’s 1996 book Has Democracy Had Its Day? is a provocative and helpful reflection on American democracy as he considers its future in an era when the Christian faith has been shoved to the side in favor of highly individualized moral autonomy. Since Henry’s death in 2003, the dramatic … [Read more...]
Yom HaShoah day grieves murder of 6 million Jews, honors survivors, rescuers
ISRAEL (BP) – Ric Worshill learned early that it was not something his family discussed, the murder of 6 million Jewish civilians during World War 2 that ended an entire side of his family. “It’s too heartbreaking, I think. It’s very hard,” Worshill told Baptist Press as Israel marked the beginning of Yom HaShoah on the evening of April 17. “It’s a whole side of the family that basically doesn’t exist anymore because they were killed in the camps, or killed in the resistance. Some of the … [Read more...]
Charles Stanley, pivotal SBC president, TV preacher, dies
ATLANTA (BP) – Charles Stanley, a former Southern Baptist Convention president and one of the nation’s foremost television and radio preachers, passed away peacefully at his home today (April 18) at age 90. Stanley presided over the two largest annual meetings in SBC history — 45,531 messengers in 1985 in Dallas and 40,987 in 1986 in Atlanta — when conservatives faced the most pronounced opposition to anchoring the convention in biblical authority. As senior pastor of First Baptist … [Read more...]
With needle and thread, FBC Clinton women stitch together a global impact for Christ
CLINTON – A dozen women here practice missions around the world, one spool of thread at a time. Mission Action at First Baptist Church, Clinton, produces all kinds of sewn items to supply the physical, emotional and spiritual needs of its community and people across the globe. “The items we make are just small gifts that meet a need and help open the door to pray with someone, invite them to church, introduce them to Jesus, or just let them know they are loved,” says Mission Action Team … [Read more...]
Missouri Baptist’s High Street Press releases book on return of Jesus
JEFFERSON CITY – The Missouri Baptist Convention, through its High Street Press imprint, has released a new resource for personal or group study titled What Every Christian Should Know about the Return of Jesus. The 500-page softcover book focuses on truths about Christ’s second coming that are plainly stated in Scripture, yet often overlooked when followers of Jesus prefer to debate the chronological minutiae of the last days. While the order of events surrounding Christ’s return is of … [Read more...]
‘I feel like we experienced revival’: FBC Steele praises God for post-pandemic growth, baptisms
STEELE – Pastor Ryan West joined First Baptist Church as senior pastor in June 2020, during a difficult season for churches across the nation. COVID-19 restrictions affected most churches. Three years later, many churches still face the challenge of recovering pre-COVID church engagement. However, consequences of the virus entered as a double-edged sword. The same virus that bred separation also bred a noticeable longing for community. “People weren’t afraid of being apart. They just … [Read more...]
Missouri Baptist evangelist reaches cowboys from Missouri to Guatemala
PLEASANT HILL – As a pastor, evangelist, and full-time cowboy, Sam Anderson has spent the last fifteen years of his life in ministry working to bring the gospel to other cowboys around the globe. From a young age, Anderson knew he wanted to serve God through evangelism: “I’ve always been interested in evangelism. It’s been one of my basic strengths for as long as I can remember. In college, I was even the chairman of the Baptist Student Union’s evangelism team. Sharing the gospel has been … [Read more...]
Fifth Circuit upholds protections in abortion pill appeal
NEW ORLEANS (BP) – A federal appeals court has blocked a nationwide injunction suspending the two-decade-old approval of the abortion pill but restored protective requirements weakened in recent years by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. In an opinion issued late Wednesday (April 12), a three-judge panel of the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans halted a federal judge’s April 7 stay of the FDA’s 2000 approval of mifepristone, the first drug in a two-step process commonly … [Read more...]
FBC Branson students serve widows during spring break
REEDS SPRINGS – You don’t have to travel around the globe to be a missionary; sometimes the mission field is as close as your own back yard. That’s what 15 junior high and high school students from First Baptist, Branson, discovered during a March 12-16 mission trip just a few minutes from home, in the neighboring town of Reeds Springs. “It’s a challenge to convince students to work on spring break, but these students were incredible,” Caleb McElvain, First Baptist high school director, … [Read more...]
State of the Bible 2023: Scripture engagement still down, but interest up
PHILADELPHIA (BP) – Scripture engagement remains down among Americans, but a widespread curiosity gives ground for evangelism, the American Bible Society (ABS) said in releasing the first chapter of its 2023 State of the Bible survey. Only 47 million Americans, or about 18 percent of the adult population, ranked as Scripture-Engaged in the 2023 study, using a descriptor based on Bible use and its impact in one’s life. Scripture-engaged described 49 million adults in 2022, down from 71 … [Read more...]
Could return to faith resolve nation’s ‘flight from work’?
Whether the COVID-19 lockdown of 2020 achieved any good for society, I’ll leave it for you to decide. But one good thing, at least, it did for me. See, for all the decades of my life, I’ve lived under the delusion that toilet paper is always in ready supply. The lockdown undeceived me, once and for all. Come to find out, if a man wants a delicate roll of two-ply at hand, the multitudes must sweat and toil. They must labor at logging companies, toilet paper mills and packaging plants, in … [Read more...]
- « Previous Page
- 1
- …
- 27
- 28
- 29
- 30
- 31
- …
- 219
- Next Page »