Five Reasons Pastors Have Guest Blindness
By Thom S. Rainer On my personal blog at ThomRainer.com, I have referred many times to my days of church consultation, particularly those experiences where we sent one of our consultants to be a first-time guest in a church. He or she would return with a report of...
The Explainer: What You Should Know About the Kentucky Clerk Marriage License Controversy
from the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission What is the story about? When the Supreme Court handed down the Obergefell v. Hodges ruling, it made same-sex marriage legal throughout the U.S. and required every state to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples....
Redemption Hill holds preview service for church plant in Sioux City
Pastor Richard Crowson and a core group of about twenty individuals recently held their preview service for a new church plant in Sioux City Iowa. The group met at the Holiday Inn for a service that Crowson describes as having a warm and exciting spirit. The church...
IMB’s Platt sends open letter to SBC family
by IMB staff RICHMOND, Va. (BP) -- International Mission Board President David Platt released an open letter to Southern Baptists Friday (Sept. 4), related to the organization’s financial plan announced Aug. 27. In the letter, Platt addresses several concerns and...
If David Platt Is Going to Be THAT Kind of Leader….
…then the IMB is going to be in pretty good hands. by Dave Miller If you can get past the cacophony of naysayers questioning every decision he makes, turning every action he takes into some kind of portent of evil, and if you examine the actions he has taken in his...
Iowa Missions Offering Focus: William and Garlinda Hyde
The Iowa Missions Offering is named in honor of two Iowa natives who served as missionaries in the Philippines until Bill was killed in a 2003 terrorist attack in the Manila airport. Bill and Garlinda lived out the vision of preparing and embracing new church leaders...
Midwestern Seminary receives $7 million lead gift for proposed student center
KANSAS CITY, MO (MBTS) - In what President Jason Allen called an answer to prayer for one of the “most significant institutional needs” since the school’s inception in 1957, Midwestern Seminary received a lead gift from an Oklahoma family for a new student center....
10 years after Katrina: ‘The storm changed my entire philosophy of ministry’
by Allen Blume & Seth Brown/Biblical Recorder GULFPORT, Miss. (Christian Examiner) -- Shortly after 10 a.m. on a hot Sunday in August 2005, residents of the Mississippi Gulf Coast heard the familiar tone of the National Weather Service's radio warning....
Suicide draws focus of study
by Lisa Cannon Green NASHVILLE (BP) -- Most Americans believe they are seeing an epidemic in the United States of people taking their own lives, a LifeWay Research study shows. But most Americans don't view suicide as a selfish choice, and they don't believe it sends...
Five keys to an incredible greeters’ ministry
By Thom S. Rainer It’s the one thing all churches can do to reach more people, but it’s one thing most churches give little attention. Most churches can take five simple steps to create and/or improve their greeters’ ministry and potentially see dramatic results. Let...
