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Paul Msiza, a South African pastor serving as president of the Baptist World Alliance for 2015-2020, traveled to Jefferson City, Mo., in March. During his visit, he stopped by the Word&Way offices for an interview with Editor Brian Kaylor.

Nearly 700,000 tourists from the United States travel each year to Israel, accounting for about one-sixth of its tourists. Despite being considered a kind of religious pilgrimage to the “holy land,” the lands of the Bible actually stretch across several modern nations.

(The Conversation) This Sunday, April 16, Christians will be celebrating Easter, the day on which the resurrection of Jesus is said to have taken place. The date of celebration changes from year to year.

Easter is quite similar to other major holidays like Christmas and Halloween, which have evolved over the last 200 years or so. In all of these holidays, Christian and non-Christian (pagan) elements have continued to blend together.

(RNS) About 65 million Americans – or 1 in 4 adults – have a criminal record that can lead to reduced access to jobs and education and a restriction from voting. A national prison ministry is joining forces with conservative and liberal groups to call on church leaders and politicians to give former prisoners a second chance at normal lives.

More than 110,000 Missourians, ages 65 years and over, suffer from Alzheimer’s Disease. Experts estimate that by 2025, that number will exceed 130,000. With more than 2,026 deaths in 2013, Alzheimer’s is the sixth leading cause of death in Missouri. Alzheimer’s deaths in Missouri rate 9th highest in America, with a whopping 85 percent increase since 2000.

Fresh from a four-year stint in the White House, a Baptist scholar in church-state issues offered advice on faith and politics to a packed church in a suburb of Washington, D.C., on March 8. Melissa Rogers, who served as executive director of the White House Office of Faith-based and Neighborhood Partnerships from 2013 until January 2017, spoke to a meeting of the North American Baptist Fellowship, a group that unites 40 Baptist bodies in Canada and the United States.

Leaders of religious minorities in Iraq issued a declaration of principles in January urging support for freedom of belief. The Masarat Institution for Cultural Development, a non-profit organization in Iraq that works to protect minorities, organized a series of dialogues leading to the crafting of the “Baghdad Declaration for Supporting Religious Freedom.”

Last November, faculty and students at William Jewell College and Second Baptist Church in Liberty, Mo., made a commitment to “Get Stronger” by strengthening their global presence. Through this collaborative effort, they realized a need in Thailand and Myanmar to aid immigrants and refugees in southeast Asia. In January, five members of Second Baptist and two William Jewell students traveled to Thailand to take the next step.

NAIROBI, Kenya (RNS) As she drives her family’s donkeys to a new borehole at the base of the Uuni Hills in eastern Kenya, Eunice Wambua says the water it provides is much cleaner than what she used to get from a dam several miles away.

“It was dirty water and we believed it colored our teeth brown,” she recalled.

In February, B&H Academic — a division of the Southern Baptist Convention’s publishing house — released the first in a 12-volume set of “The Lost Sermons of C. H. Spurgeon.” The books are edited by Christian George, who found the sermons a few years ago. George serves as curator of The Spurgeon Library and assistant professor of historical theology at Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Kansas City, Missouri.