It is Saturday night. Your week has found you spending so much time at the hospital with church members you are thinking about stopping by Human Resources to pick up a paycheck. You woke up this morning with every intention to get started on your message early — yet here you sit, looking at your […]
When it comes to maintaining a vital relationship with the Lord, Sunday school leaders never graduate from the spiritual disciplines prescribed through the ages for all Christians: praising God and hearing His Word in weekly worship, praying to the Father and reading His Word in daily devotions, allowing the Holy Spirit to work through our […]
I am indebted to The Courier for an opportunity to write on such an important subject. There are libraries of information on exposition, so I decided simply to answer three questions I believe are worthwhile. What is expository preaching? A great deal of modern preaching is incorrectly labeled exposition. Therefore, a definition must be established. […]
EDITOR’S NOTE: Carlisle Driggers, retired executive director-treasurer of the South Carolina Baptist Convention, reflects on the Civil Rights Act of 1964, signed by President Johnson 50 years ago when Driggers was pastor of 23rd and Broadway Baptist Church in Louisville, Ky. Driggers became noted for his multiethnic ministry and later served on staff at First […]
Just as a frame of reference for this article, let’s step back from the American cultural forest and identify four distinct varieties of trees that have grown up in post-World War II America: – Baby Boomers: born from the mid-1940s to mid-1960s; grew up in a prosperous post-war society; sometimes referred to as the “Me” […]
Have you filed your tax return yet? Hopefully you have, or at least filed an extension. Maybe you are still looking for things that you can deduct. If so, you might want to consider what others have tried to deduct in the past. CNN Money recently published a list of “crazy” tax deductions. Here are a […]
My husband once told me I have three spiritual gifts not listed in the Bible: sleeping, shopping and talking! Oh my, I do seem like a shallow Christian. How reassuring to discover biblical support for my gift of talking. First Peter 4:10-11 says: “Based on the gift each one has received, use it to serve […]
Each year it seems local churches are devoting less time, less funding and less emphasis to equipping, encouraging and sending people to share the good news of Christ, particularly within their immediate communities. I believe the lack of evangelism within the local church is reaching a crisis stage. Entire regions within North America are largely […]
I was saved as a young adult in a small, Southern Baptist church in Beaufort, S.C. Early in my church experience, I heard about and saw our church willingly and gladly invest 10 percent of our undesignated gifts through the Cooperative Program in spite of having many financial needs herself. It was exciting to hear […]
She wants desperately to return to the hurting people she loves. Laura Miles* is a missionary on hold. At least, she sometimes feels that way. Miles spent two terms overseas with her husband, in places where the people she served are experiencing hard times and the threat of worse. It tears her up inside to […]