SARASOTA, Fla. — With the skies cleared and the wind calmed, Georgia Baptists are arriving in hurricane-ravaged Sarasota to help residents with cleanup. “It’s expected to be a long process,” said Georgia Baptist Disaster Relief director Dwain Carter. “We have about 60 people being deployed. We’ll have chainsaw crews and mud-out crews removing downed trees and cleaning up flooded homes.”

CLEVELAND, Ga. – A fledgling communication program at Truett McConnell University is intended to provide a pipeline that puts Bible-believing graduates into high-profile positions where they can influence public opinion and public policy. “We seek to educate journalists, attorneys, public office holders, corporate spokesmen, press secretaries, on-air newscasters, and other communication professionals,” said Barry McCarty, dean of the university’s Hans Denck School of Communication. “And whatever our graduates do for a living, they will do it with a Christian worldview, being witnesses to the truth of the gospel.”

SUTHERLAND SPRINGS, Texas (BP) – Frank Pomeroy has retired after 20 years as pastor at the Texas church where a gunman killed 26 worshippers and wounded 22 others  on Nov. 5, 2017.

DULUTH, Ga. – A revived Hurricane Ian pounded coastal South Carolina on Friday, ripping apart piers and flooding streets after the ferocious storm caused catastrophic damage in Florida, trapping thousands in their homes and leaving at least 17 people dead.

RICHMOND, Va. – International Mission Board trustees have approved the appointment of 22 additional missionaries to help take the gospel to the world and approved a $282,700,000 budget for next year.

DULUTH, Ga. – Hurricane Ian, one of the most powerful storms ever recorded in the U.S., destroyed a cross-section of Florida, trapping people in flooded homes, forcing patients from nursing homes and hospitals, cutting off a popular barrier island and obliterating a historic waterfront pier. Nearly 2.7 million people lost power as rain fell and waters rose. “We’re expecting heavy damage,” said Georgia Baptist Disaster Relief Director Dwain Carter.

McDONOUGH, Ga. – Four people surrendered their lives to ministry at a missions conference for Georgia college students last weekend, and three others made salvation decisions. They were among about 650 co-eds who attended Baptist Collegiate Ministries’ annual Confluence conference at Eagles Landing First Baptist Church.

DULUTH, Ga. – Georgia Baptist Disaster Relief crews are preparing to deploy as Hurricane Ian approaches on a track that puts the west coast of Florida in jeopardy. “I’ve put all of our Georgia volunteers on alert status,” said Dwain Carter, director of Georgia Baptist Disaster Relief.

ROME, Ga.  – Four-time World Series Champion and eight-time National League All-Star Darryl Strawberry will be the featured speaker at Shorter University’s 2022 President’s Gala on the campus in Rome on Thursday, December 1.

APPLING, Ga. – Revival fires kindled by the Great Awakening are still burning brightly in Georgia’s oldest Southern Baptist church. Kiokee Baptist Church, founded 250 years ago by a pastor who was converted during the religious revival that swept through colonial America, remains one of the state’s top baptizing churches. And this weekend, when Kiokee celebrates its semiquincentennial anniversary, the congregation will baptize another 15 new believers.

MADSONVILLE, Ky. (KT) – The cooperative effort of 45 churches in the Madisonville area to host a crusade preached by Georgia-based evangelist Rick Gage netted 172 professions of faith and 436 other decisions. “It was incredible,” said Kevin Maples, the senior pastor of Madisonville First Baptist who helped spearhead the effort.

ATLANTA – The work of Mission Georgia was showcased during the Atlanta Braves’ annual Faith and Family Day observed during their game against the Philadelphia Phillies on Sunday.

MARTINEZ, Ga. – Georgia Baptist Disaster Relief is seeing heightened interest from people wanting to join its ministry to victims of floods, tornadoes and other natural calamities. More than 100 people received training on Saturday at Abilene Baptist Church in Martinez so that they can take part in Disaster Relief deployments. “That’s significantly more than ordinary,” said Dwain Carter, who heads the Disaster Relief ministry for the Georgia Baptist Mission Board.

CLAYTON, Ga. – A roll of toilet paper presented to leaders of Camp Pinnacle on Saturday was no gag gift. That became apparent when Georgia WMU President Lauren Sullens and Georgia Baptist Women strategist Beth Ann Williams saw “$25,000” written on the bathroom tissue.

CLAYTON, Ga. – Surrounded by scenic mountains, Camp Pinnacle is a place of breathtaking natural beauty, but those who have spent time here over the years say it’s a spiritual element that truly sets the Appalachian getaway apart. “It’s a place that we regard as holy because of our personal experiences with the living God on this hallowed ground,” said Barbara Curnutt, former executive director of the Baptist Woman’s Missionary Union of Georgia.

LAWRENCEVILLE, Ga. – One of the top elected leaders of the Georgia Baptist Convention has challenged pastors to set the standard for their congregations when it comes to leading people to Christ. “If we’re going to see Georgia won for Christ, it’s going to begin in the pulpits,” said Brian Parker, pastor at First Baptist Church of Kingsland on Georgia’s southeast coast and fourth vice president of the state convention. “We have got to be the examples.”

FAYETTEVILLE, Ga. – Fayetteville pastor Josh Saefkow, a champion of the Cooperative Program and current chairman of the Georgia Baptist Executive Committee, will be nominated to serve as president of the Georgia Baptist Convention at an annual meeting set for Nov. 13-15 in Augusta. Buford First Baptist Church Lead Pastor Stephen Fountain said he intends to nominate Saefkow, who has been pastor of Flat Creek Baptist Church since 2016.

LAWRENCEVILLE, Ga. – Georgia Baptists face great challenges in reaching in the state with the gospel, and that’s why it’s imperative that they work together, Georgia Baptist Mission Board Executive Director W. Thomas Hammond Jr. told a group of the state’s top leaders this week. “Our business is to fulfill the mandates that have been given to us by our Lord to do His work,” he told members of the Georgia Baptist Executive Committee on Tuesday.

LAWRENCEVILLE, Ga. – A Mission Georgia initiative to build 15 tiny homes for survivors of human trafficking will get a financial boost on Sunday from the Atlanta Braves during the franchise’s annual Faith and Family Day. The Braves will present a check to Wellspring Living, the nonprofit organization that the Georgia Baptist Mission Board is partnering with to build the homes south of Atlanta.

LAWRENCEVILLE, Ga. – Shorter University President Donald Dowless made a strong case on Tuesday for the value of the faithful Christians who are graduating from his school’s nursing program. “One of these nursing students may one day be the last person someone on their deathbed gets to talk to,” he told the Georgia Baptist Executive Committee in a meeting at North Metro Baptist Church in Lawrenceville. “Do you want someone from a Baptist school who has been trained to share Jesus Christ as part of the loving care of that person? That’s what I would want.”

LAWRENCEVILLE, Ga. – The Georgia Baptist Executive Committee has approved a $32 million Cooperative Program budget, which includes $15.8 million for a wide variety of initiatives aimed at “pushing back lostness” in the state plus $12.8 million for national and international causes. “The generosity of Georgia Baptists is on full display here,” said Georgia Baptist Mission Board Executive Director W. Thomas Hammond Jr.

DULUTH, Ga. – Numbers coming in for the Georgia Baptist Mission Board’s SPARK conference point to what could be the annual event’s largest attendance ever, the organizer said Monday. More than 1,600 Georgia Baptists attended SPARK conferences held at regional sites across the state and nearly 1,000 more logged on for the event’s digital premiere.

DULUTH, Ga. – The Georgia Baptist Mission Board’s Mission Georgia team has scheduled a series of webinars in September to provide information about options available to churches that want to help some of the state’s most vulnerable residents. The webinars are being offered in conjunction with the September emphasis on the Mission Georgia offering, which allows congregations to support efforts to spread the gospel within the state in the same way that the Annie Armstrong and Lottie Moon offerings are used to share Jesus in North America and around the world.

SUMMERVILLE, Ga. – Residents of flood-ravaged northwest Georgia won’t have to worry about food or in the aftermath of last weekend’s severe storms.Georgia Baptist Disaster Relief …

FAYETTEVILLE, Ga. – The death of Queen Elizabeth II, the global icon of calmness and fortitude through decades of political upheaval and social change, has touched hearts around the world, including here in Georgia. In Fayetteville, New Hope Baptist Church Pastor Rhys Stenner called her “arguably the greatest monarch of the last thousand years.”