Bravely Onward!

 Hello,  Some church members were wondering where they can go and read about some of the happenings with the Southern Baptist Convention Which happened in June. Here are several links to Baptist Press which help to tell some of the stories: The resolutions passed during this and prior meetings-  https://www.sbc.net/resource-library/resolutions/ Regarding the resolutions-  https://www.baptistpress.com/resource-library/news/messengers-overwhelmingly-affirm-resolutions-targeting-racial-reconciliation-hyde-amendment-equality-act/ The SBC Book of Reports gives reports from all the Southern Baptist Convention Entities. You can see the recommendations of the Executive Committee to the Messengers starting on page 51... https://sbcannualmeeting.net/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/2021-Book-of-Reports-with-links.pdf The Book of Reports will eventually be included in the 2021 SBC Annual. SBC Annuals seek to record all the happenings among Southern Baptist entities during a given yea...

I am always inspired by the generosity of our church membership! It amazes me that so many people would give so much because they want to see the kingdom of Christ advanced. We want to see our gifts contribute to the spread of the gospel and the fulfillment of the Great Commission. We want to see people trust Jesus as Savior and Lord as we have! To all of our members who give faithfully, thank you for giving to the Lord.  For many of us, we are glad to give, but if we're honest, we have little idea what happens to these gifts after we give them. In this post, I want to demystify the process by which our gifts turn into resources for ministry. Today, I just want to talk only about giving which is applied to the annual budget (a.k.a., undesignated giving). As I've mentioned in other posts, our church is an autonomous and self-governing church. In part, this means church members decide how to apply their gifts toward the ministry of their church. The way that the membership does t...

 What does it mean to be a Southern Baptist church? This is a very interesting question. A short, albeit loaded, answer is that  Southern Baptists are a network of autonomous baptistic churches which voluntarily partner for the purpose of advancing the Great Commission.  Wow! That's a mouthful. Let's see if we can break this down? Autonomous-  means that each Southern Baptist church is truly independent and self-governed. Local Baptist churches do not receive directives from a centralized denominational government. Instead, the members of each church determine the course for their own church through a democratic process of voting. We do things this way because we believe that Christ is the head of each church and that the church members have the ability to know His will through prayer and the study of His Word. We believe that His specific will for each specific church is discoverable through the voting of its members (see Acts 15:22).  Baptistic-  This ter...