Baptist

On the first Sunday after he became a U.S. Senator, the Rev. Raphael Warnock described his election and the changing scene at the U.S. Capitol — from insurrection to inauguration — as forms of divine messaging.

As a student in college and seminary, then as a pastor in Texas, Dwight McKissic has been affiliated with the Southern Baptist Convention for more than 45 years. Now he’s pondering whether he and his congregation should break away.

As the FBI and local police investigate an explosion at First Works Baptist Church in El Monte, California, which has been the center of protests for its anti-LGBTQ messages, both supporters and protesters of the church are denouncing the attack.

Doyle Sager, a Word&Way columnist and the lead pastor at First Baptist Church in Jefferson City, Missouri, passed away Friday (Jan. 22) after a battle with cancer. He was 69.

An accreditation body investigating recent events at Southwest Baptist University recently notified the school of an upcoming focused visit to further investigate recent governance changes. The visit by the Higher Commission also automatically changed SBU’s accreditation path.

The Summit Church, whose senior pastor is Southern Baptist Convention President J.D. Greear,  has retained the services of an outside firm to perform an independent review of specific actions taken by one of the pastors at The Summit Church in his handling of 2010 sexual misconduct allegations.

On his first day as president, Joe Biden signed several executive orders to undo Trump administration actions. One order signed by Biden on Wednesday repealed the previous administration’s Muslim and African travel ban — a move that BJC quickly praised. 

Ed Litton, pastor of Redemption Church in the Mobile, Alabama, suburb of Saraland, will be nominated for SBC president by Fred Luter, who was the first — and, so far, only — Black SBC President. Litton will face Al Mohler and Mike Stone in the vote in June.

After 14 controversy-filled months as the only announced candidate for the next president of the Southern Baptist Convention, Al Mohler will face at least one challenger in the vote this June. Mike Stone, a Baptist pastor from Georgia announced his candidacy Wednesday.

Dwight McKissic, a prominent Black Southern Baptist pastor in Texas, announced Friday that his church would make denominational changes in light of efforts by prominent Southern Baptists to condemn Critical Race Theory.