Church

On Thursday, faculty, staff, and students at Hannibal-LaGrange University, a Baptist school in Hannibal, Missouri, gathered together to pray for a miracle amid financial woes threatening the school’s existence.

One of the nation’s largest Black Protestant denominations has stopped making payments to retired ministers on its pension plan, according to a report from the Wall Street Journal.

Hannibal-LaGrange University is holding a 10-hour “time of prayer, fasting, petition, and repentance” on Thursday (March 10). But the Missouri Baptist Convention with which the school is affiliated, put out different reasons for the event — and they raise questions about the financial state of HLGU.

Since 1997, 13 men have served as president of the Southern Baptist Convention. But during that time, only one person has held another important position for the nation’s largest Protestant denomination: Recording Secretary John Yeats. However, that will change in June.

The United Methodist Church has delayed its General Conference meeting for a third time due to the continuing COVID-19 pandemic. In response, some conservative United Methodists have announced they will preemptively leave the denomination rather than wait for the long anticipated meeting.

Ed Litton, president of the Southern Baptist Convention, the largest Protestant denomination in the United States, announced Tuesday he will break with tradition and not seek a second term in the top convention role.

The Southern Baptist Convention’s Executive Committee has offered a public apology and a confidential monetary settlement to sexual abuse survivor Jennifer Lyell, who was mischaracterized by the denomination’s in-house news service when she decided to go public with her story in March 2019.

The tone of the midwinter Nashville gathering was in stark contrast to that of recent Executive Committee meetings, which were marked by sharp divides over issues such as race and politics and how to proceed with an investigation into the ways Baptist leaders have responded to the issue of sexual abuse.

The path that led to Southwest Baptist University’s accreditation woes in many ways started just across the street. Yet, this weekend the school in Bolivar, Missouri, will partner with that neighboring church — Southern Hills Baptist Church — for a conference already sparking controversy and plans for a protest.

The United Church of Christ has now paid off more than $100 million in medical debt for people across the United States. The UCC announced Monday that it used $200,000 from one of its annual Giving Tuesday campaigns to purchase and pay off $33 million in medical debt for residents of Ohio, where the mainline Protestant denomination is based.