Baptist

Former superintendent (director) of The Baptist Home, John Burney was affectionately known as “Mr. Baptist Home” by staff and trustees, since he was only a few months older than The Home itself. He died on Sept. 23 at the age of 105.

Republican Senate hopeful Josh Hawley was scheduled, as of press time, to speak during chapel at Hannibal-LaGrange University, a Baptist school in Hannibal, Mo., on Oct. 3 and in doing so might help the school break the political activity ban (also often called “the Johnson Amendment”) that Hawley wants to repeal.

HARRISONVILLE, Mo. (BP) -- Xavier Cunningham, 10, was climbing into a treehouse when he encountered a massive wasp nestand then, falling to the ground face-first, impaled his head on a foot-long meat skewer.

The next two days brought brushes with death and a survival story one neurosurgeon called "miraculous."

KANSAS CITY, Mo. (BP) -- Hopefulness for the future of the Southern Baptist Convention in a season of denominational transition was voiced by Thom Rainer, president of LifeWay Christian Resources, in a discussion Sept. 19 with Jason Allen, president of Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary.

Rev. Dr. C. Jeff Woods will serve as Acting General Secretary of American Baptist Churches USA while Lee Spitzer recovers from heart surgery at home.

GUAYNABO, Puerto Rico (BP) -- "Before Maria and after Maria" is the word on the streets of Puerto Rico. "That's how life changed," native Puerto Rican and Southern Baptist minister Jonathan Santiago told Baptist Press a year after the hurricane.

WILMINGTON, N.C. (BP) -- Rising floodwaters have cut off the supply chains of some Southern Baptist Disaster Relief efforts following Hurricane Florence, and others are increasingly threatened. But that's not slowing down ministry to North Carolina communities hit by the storm.

VALLEY FORGE, PA (ABNS)—The American Baptist Churches of the Central Region called the Rev. Dr. Gregg Hemmen to serve as its next Executive Minister at a meeting of the region’s Board of Directors on Saturday, September 8.

HOUMA, La. (BP) -- NASA's Clifton Arnold is a rocket scientist with a successful formula for church planting.

"You get them in the door with music, you keep them in the house with teaching," Arnold, who planted Kingdom Life Fellowship in Houma, La., in 2016, told the Baptist Message. "People go to churches where they like their worship style and their teaching is solid."

CARY, N.C. (BP) -- Southern Baptist disaster relief volunteers are on alert as Hurricane Florence, a Category 4 storm currently in the Atlantic Ocean, is reportedly expected to make landfall on the Carolina coast late Thursday or Friday morning.