SUWANEE, Ga. — Georgia Baptists, who give millions of dollars each year to reach the lost around the world, will focus their financial resources on their home state in the coming month. September has been set aside as the Mission Georgia emphasis month, meaning churches will spent the next four weeks encouraging members to get behind an effort to reach the state’s 7 million unchurched residents with the gospel.

DALLAS, Ga. – The Sons of Jubal brought their robust worship and singing to First Baptist Church in Dallas on Thursday. The Sons of Jubal are part of Jubal Ministries, which also includes the Jubalheirs women’s chorus, Jubal Symphony, and the Jubal Brass orchestra. The Sons of Jubal and Jubalheirs, each with more than 200 members plus instrumental accompanists, combine their voices a few times each year to form the Jubal Chorus.

ATLANTA, Ga. — Standing-room-only crowds of students have been flocking to Baptist College Ministries on university campuses across Georgia as the new academic year gets underway. One of the largest gatherings involved 450 international students who gathered at Georgia Tech for  worship and a meal provided by First Baptist Church of Woodstock, said Beverly Skinner, collegiate ministry catalyst for the Georgia Baptist Mission Board.

CLAYTON, Ga. — In the cool of the morning, Kevin McDade steers a golf cart along the main thoroughfare at the Pinnacle Retreat Center, discussing his first impressions of the Appalachian getaway where he now works. “When you drive through the gate, the anxiety of the world kind of leaves you,” McDade said. “It’s a peaceful feeling that you’re entering a special place, a place of rest. You can leave the stress of the world behind you when you come in.”

BRENTWOOD, Tenn. — A study from Lifeway Research has found that 52% of American Protestant churchgoers say their church teaches God will bless them if they give more money to their church and charities. That’s an increase from 38% of churchgoers surveyed in a similar study in 2017.

ATLANTA — Fortune 500 companies looking for quality business leaders are finding that pastors make topnotch managers, motivators, and multitaskers. That’s according to Todd Linder, founder of Launch Point, an Atlanta-based firm that has carved out a niche in the business world nationally by helping pastors transition from churches to the secular marketplace. A significant increase in the number of pastors leaving ministry opened the door for the new venture.

COLUMBUS, GA — Knowing that prayer is the engine that moves a church forward, Pastor Tim Jones led his church to begin gathering for prayer each day at noon three years ago. The prayer vigil at Britt David Baptist Church is still going strong.

NASHVILLE — Southern Baptist Convention Executive Committee interim president Willie McLaurin has resigned effective immediately after members of a search team found that he had included false information on his resume. He had been interim leader since February 2022 and was a candidate for the permanent position.

The news was so exciting that it was hard to keep it a secret. The chief officer of the Zambian women’s prison, a local believer, pulled the visiting International Mission Board missionaries into his office. He looked around conspiratorially, burst into a huge smile and said four women who attend their weekly Bible study would soon be released. They’d received a presidential pardon. 

BRENTWOOD, Tenn. — “Fear not” is a frequent command in the Bible, but most pastors feel churchgoers aren’t getting the message. A Lifeway Research study finds almost 7 in 10 U.S. Protestant pastors believe there is a growing sense of fear within their congregations about the future of the nation and world. Additionally, more than 3 in 5 say their churches have a similar increasing dread specifically about the future of Christianity in the U.S. and around the world.

LAFAYETTE, Ga. — Life gets messy, even in small towns like LaFayette, population 7,500. Fires, medical emergencies, domestic disputes, vehicle crashes, illegal substances and more are attended to by radio-toting first responders who too often see gut-wrenching things most people are shielded from.

MOULTRIE, Ga. — Scott Sullivan challenged church leaders Saturday to develop strategies to grow strong disciples who can unleash the power of the gospel in their communities and around the world. “My opinion is that the greatest gospel force on the planet is not in the pulpits; it’s in the pews,” said Sullivan, the discipleship catalyst for the Georgia Baptist Mission Board who preached in the first of a series of SPARK conferences scheduled across the state over the next month.

VILLA RICA, Ga. — Georgia pastor Kevin Williams sees what he describes as a spiritual shift that is bringing the Bible back to the Bible Belt. “People are searching for truth,” he said Friday, a day after 220 students in Carroll County, Ga., surrendered their lives to Christ. “We’re living in a time that the Bible warns about, when people will be calling wrong right and right wrong. We’ve reached a point where people are saying enough is enough. It’s like a switch has flipped and things are going back the other direction.”

MILLEDGEVILLE, GA – Jeff Morgan became the interim pastor of Milledgeville’s First Baptist Church in July of last year. After 12 months of loving the people and faithfully preaching the Word the church’s pastor search committee recommended Morgan as the new senior pastor and the church voted to call him to that role on August 6, 2023.

ATLANTA — Austin Reaves is convinced that Georgia State University can play a key role in getting the gospel around the globe. Georgia State is one of the most ethnically and culturally diverse campuses in the U.S. with students from 177 nations, and that, Reaves said, perfectly positions the school for worldwide evangelism.

FORSYTH, Ga. — A new nonprofit organization has been created to generate financial support for the Camp Kaleo Retreat Center, a site in rural Monroe County where children gather each summer to learn about Jesus. Friends of Kaleo will raise money for improvement projects and to help cover camp fees for students who otherwise wouldn’t be able to attend, said Jim Strickland, president of the new organization.

CENTRALHATCHEE, Ga. — Mark Williams has a simple explanation for why 120 people have become followers of Christ in this small Georgia community over the past two months. “God has just been moving,” said Williams, pastor of First Baptist Church in Centralhatchee, population 400.

It was a fusion of the quality preaching and teaching of Spurgeon’s London Tabernacle, the evangelistic passion of a Moody crusade, and a rare conservative dose of the social gospel movement. It was the Tabernacle Baptist Church of Atlanta, Georgia’s first megachurch.

SWAINSBORO, Ga. — Lured by a few simple handwritten signs and some orange traffic cones, long lines of people showed up for a drive-through prayer outreach in Swainsboro. And in yet another sign of spiritual revival in Georgia, some 30 people surrendered their lives to Christ.

CHATSWORTH, Ga. — As a school bus driver, Robert Richardson feels the weight of responsibility in hauling the most precious of all cargos — children. But, as a Baptist minister, he gladly shoulders that responsibility. With school districts across Georgia struggling to fill bus driver positions, church leaders have been stepping into the role, fitting bus routes into their daily ministry routines.

CARROLLTON, Ga. — Thousands of backpacks filled with classroom supplies have begun making their way into the hands of needy children in time for the start of school, courtesy of Mission Georgia, the wide-ranging outreach to the state’s most vulnerable residents.

MONROE, GA – Scores of people from 1025 Church and community gathered for the dedication of the church’s newest facility, which will be called the Murray Ministry Center. The freshly painted, sparkling white building, formerly occupied by Monroe’s First National Bank, was given to the church by Kenneth and Jean Murray. Their son, Kenneth Murray, Jr. is an active deacon at 1025 Church, drummer for the worship team, and Pastor Fountain’s prayer partner.

STATESBORO, Ga. — Cambodian Southern Baptist leaders believe their recent purchase of a 7-acre former wedding venue, to be used as a conference center, is a miracle given to them by God. They call it the Blessing Field, an obvious reference to the Killing Fields Cambodians endured during the 1970s as depicted in a 1984 major motion picture of the same name.

More than 1,000 children and teens spent time this summer at Georgia Baptist camps that mix outdoor fun with Bible teaching.  Camp Pinnacle in the mountains of north Georgia hosted 546 students of whom 10 came to faith in Christ. Camp Kaleo had 346 overnight campers and nearly 450 day campers of whom 39 made salvation decisions.

CORNELIA, Ga. — A spiritual movement that began in Georgia in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic is still going strong, showing up most recently in Habersham County where 39 people made salvation decisions last week in an evangelistic outreach. Tony Gray, associational missions strategist in the Habersham and Liberty Baptist associations, said a new church also could be planted as a result of the outreach, which, he said, shows the impact congregations have when they work together.