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Baptist Message

"Helping Louisiana Baptists Impact the World For Christ"

Chuck Kelley on the state of the SBC (Evangelism)

By Dr. Chuck Kelley In 1906, the SBC voted to create a Department of Evangelism to be placed under the umbrella of the Home Mission Board (now North American Mission Board). Its purpose was to provide encouragement, strategies, and resources for evangelism to Southern Baptist pastors and churches. From that day until this, the Convention has expected the North American Mission Board to take the point in promoting evangelism in Southern Baptist life. In the face of growing decline and perhaps in part as a result of the enormous attention to evangelism created by SBC President Bobby Welch, NAMB prepared what was intended to be a massive evangelism initiative involving every level of the SBC. In the words of NAMB president Geoffrey Hammond to the 2008 SBC meeting: “This National Evangelism Initiative is a huge task, and we are praying that this will be a part of a Great Commission resurgence” (Annual of the Southern Baptist Convention, 2008, p.184). God’s Plan for Sharing (2008) Through the years, the Board perfected ways to mobilize SBC churches for national evangelism campaigns with significant success. All those lessons learned were incorporated into an effort to create the largest and most comprehensive evangelism initiative … [Read more...]

Louisiana College issues statement on Floyd death, racism

By Louisiana College Office of Communications PINEVILLE, La. (LCNews) — We stand with our fellow Christ followers in grieving the senseless death of George Floyd. Racism is sin! I have and will continue to teach and stand against it with all my heart! We are all made "in the image of God!" (Genesis 1:27) Fellow Christians and Americans, we need to see others as Christ does, as we are all created in His image and for His service. Louisiana College is a Christ-centered institution, and we not only pray for those directly affected by his death, but for citizens who have been wrongfully persecuted, judged, or harmed----because of their race. The Bible calls upon the righteous to speak. Christians can no longer be silent in the face of racial injustice. Christians have been given "the ministry of reconciliation." (2 Corinthians 5:18) Therefore, we can no longer simply give lip service to or simply offer piecemeal solutions to the racial issues that continue to plague our nation. Americans must stand together across racial, political, and cultural lines and recognize our common humanity. Reconciliation will happen when the true church of Jesus unites and loves one another and the world the way Jesus showed us. -Rick … [Read more...]

Fred Luter: ‘Another deadly virus’

By Fred Luter It’s hard to believe that this is the twelfth week since we have been able to come together as brothers and sisters in Christ to worship the Lord, and it’s all because of the COVID-19 virus affecting our nation.  It is contagious, lethal and deadly. But as contagious, as lethal, and as deadly as COVID-19 has been, last week another virus was exposed in our nation, just as contagious and lethal.  The virus of racism is alive and well in black communities all across America, leading to the senseless, sad, and shocking deaths of African-Americans all across our nation. We saw it in Minneapolis last week when a white police officer kneeled on the neck of George Floyd in front of three other police officers as he suffered, facedown in the street in full view of a gathering crowd, shouting, “I can’t breathe!  I can’t breathe!” Will Smith said it best when he said this week, “Racism isn’t getting worse in America.  It has always been bad; however, the only thing different now is that it’s being filmed.”  Jim Lewis, one of our members and a prolific author, said it this way when I talked to him: “Being a black man in America is dangerous and deadly.” He’s right.  Because of racism, black lives are being taken … [Read more...]

Chuck Kelley on the state of the SBC (Bully Pulpit)

By Dr. Chuck Kelley With the dawning awareness of the decline creeping into Southern Baptist churches came a slowly growing determination to turn things around. Over the next two decades, five distinctive approaches to ending the decline were undertaken. Each approach was unrelated to the others, a factor which may have affected their effectiveness. These approaches were: the SBC president’s use of his position as a bully pulpit to emphasize evangelism (2004-06); a National Evangelism Initiative (2008); the Great Commission Resurgence (2010); the Pastor’s Task Force on Evangelistic Impact and Declining Baptisms (2014); and the Evangelism Task Force (2018). What follows in this and future blogs is a brief description and assessment of each approach in an effort to discover what we can learn about how to help the diverse and loosely organized churches of the SBC find ways to reach their communities for Christ and begin to grow again. The Bully Pulpit (2004-2006) The instinctive response of Southern Baptists to major issues and challenges has always been to address them through preaching. The President of the Southern Baptist Convention traditionally preaches more widely and more often to a greater number of Southern Baptists each … [Read more...]

Chuck Kelley on the state of the SBC (Origins)

By Dr. Chuck Kelley The Southern Baptist story to date can be summarized in three words: growth, plateau, and decline. In 1845 in Augusta, GA, individual Baptist churches from across the South came together to form a Convention of churches that would hold two conflicting realities in permanent tension: true congregational autonomy for every church and deep missional cooperation to prepare ministers and fulfill the Great Commission. After the ravages of the Civil War, Southern Baptists grew steadily until World War II. After World War II, the growth became explosive, driven by aggressive evangelism and even more aggressive discipleship, making Southern Baptists the largest Protestant denomination in the United States. The growth began slowing in the sixties, although baptism numbers did not peak until the Jesus Movement in the early seventies. In spite of the Jesus Movement spike, the period of plateau had begun for Southern Baptists, and from that point the statistics began to flatten out. The numbers moved up and down, but the peaks were lower and the valleys more frequent. The days of steady, continual growth were over. I suggest the turning point from plateau to decline can be traced to the year 2000, when records indicate a … [Read more...]

Horn calls Louisiana Baptists to focused prayer on Thursday

By Message Staff ALEXANDRIA, La. (LBM) – Louisiana Baptists' Executive Director Steve Horn is asking members of the Louisiana Baptist family of congregations to devote Thursday to focused prayer and fasting for God’s intervention in the current challenges facing the country. Horn said he is not trying to organize an event. Instead, he said Louisiana Baptists are a praying people and his call to prayer is meant to organize what they already are doing but with united hearts and minds as a faith community. The basis for his call to prayer, he shared, is Nehemiah 1:4 - When I heard these things, I sat down and wept. For some days I mourned and fasted and prayed before the God of heaven. “I realize that this is short notice, but the present circumstances of our nation demand an immediate prayer and fasting response,” Horn told the Baptist Message. “Because of the short notice, I am requesting everyone help get the word to churches through social media and associational e-newsletters.” … [Read more...]