Cox’s ‘Art to Heart’ celebrating 50 years with 50 drawings

Few people would be brave enough to step up to a canvas with a piece of chalk and start drawing in front of a room full of carefully watching eyes, especially having never done a chalk drawing before, but Bill Cox did. Fifty years have since passed, and Cox now is celebrating a half-century milestone […]

Fire guts Camp Creek’s sanctuary, but members’ spirit undaunted

Their sanctuary is gone — now only a charred shell. A lightning bolt likely ignited the blaze that gutted the building on Sunday, July 2. But “the church is the people,” interim pastor Joe Hayes Jr. maintains, and the spirit of Camp Creek’s members remains undaunted. They will continue to worship on the northern Greenville […]

New Orleans annual meeting features two S.C. pastors

(Updated 5/30/23) As The Courier went to press on May 18, more than 8,800 messengers had pre-registered for the SBC Annual Meeting in New Orleans to convene June 13-14 at the Ernest N. Morial Convention Center — already passing the 7,868 registration mark set at the 2012 annual meeting there. Two South Carolinians are on […]

Abuse Reform Implementation Task Force changes course, divides website work

In response to recent concerns regarding the selection of Faith-Based Solutions to develop the “Ministry Check” website that will track sexual abuse in Southern Baptist churches, the SBC’s Abuse Reform Implementation Task Force has announced a decision to “consider alternative pathways” and move away from the division of Guidepost Solutions to create the database. Meeting […]

Google search leads N.Y. teen to Mullins First for baptism

How far would you go to be baptized? Down the street? Across town? To a neighboring county? To a local lake or river? A teenager from Orchard Park, N.Y., a few miles southeast of Buffalo, recently traveled with his father to Mullins, S.C. — a trip of more than 700 miles — to be baptized […]

Leopards devoted to helping couples ‘like each other’ again

A longtime South Carolina pastor, Eddie Leopard, and his wife, Dawn, have launched a ministry together devoted to helping couples who love each other learn to like each other again. While they’ve heard some spouses say, “I love him or her, but I just don’t like them,” Dawn noted, “Well, at some point you had […]

Caring for Senior Adults Also Part of Sanctity of Life

While most people think of babies and abortions, Tom Turner also sees senior adult care as being connected with a holistic understanding of the Sanctity of Human Life. “In Job 12:10, it says that the life of everything is in His hands as well as the breath of all humanity,” he explains. “And so, as […]

Faith sustaining Varnville music leader after paralyzing fall

Chip Mixon was helping his son build a house, lost his balance, and tumbled off of a scaffold. The fall from a height of more than 10 feet fractured a vertebra in his spine, leaving his legs paralyzed. On that Saturday, Aug. 6, and every day since, Mixon, who leads the praise team at First […]

Bethlehem at Christmas: Not What You Picture

What is being in Bethlehem at Christmas like today? Well, it’s not exactly how a Hallmark card makes it out to be, as one tour host put it. A high point of a recent trip to the Holy Land for me was the opportunity to visit Bethlehem. But everything was not as I expected. Bethlehem […]

Hollingsworth recognized for service to S.C. Baptists

Messengers to the annual meeting at Irmo’s Riverland Hills Baptist Church took time to honor Executive Director-Treasurer Gary Hollingsworth for his seven years of service to South Carolina Baptists. Hollingsworth has set his retirement date as April 30, 2023. Calling his years at the state convention’s helm the pinnacle of his 48 years of ministry, […]