BUTLER, Pa. (BP) – It happened for Bob Hurd and others at a wedding reception on the evening of Saturday, July 13. Phones began chiming with alerts and texts. Donald Trump had been shot.

PARIS (BP) – Olympic wrestler Aaron Brooks holds nothing back. You don’t have to encounter Brooks long to know the top priority in his life. His Instagram posts regularly reference Scripture verses. In his media interviews, he frequently and repeatedly talks about his commitment to Christ, sometimes while wearing a headband with the phrase “100% Jesus.”

Peggy Meeks said Cross Walk to Life, the Christian Women’s Job Corps site she leads in Las Cruces, New Mexico, has one common need — English classes.

MONTGOMERY, Ala. — First Baptist Church Montgomery’s golf carts caught fire Sunday morning, July 14, during the 11 a.m. worship service, causing a blaze in the church courtyard. According to a Facebook post by Pastor Mark Bethea, the fire was “contained quickly by our wonderful Montgomery firefighters.” The cause of the fire wasn’t mentioned.

FRANKLIN , Tn. — Tennessee Baptist Mission Board president and executive director Randy C. Davis and Brent Leatherwood, president of the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, were quick to respond in the aftermath of the assassination attempt on former President Donald Trump during a rally in Pennsylvania on Saturday, July 13.

NASHVILLE (BP) – The auditorium in the Southern Baptist Convention Building in Nashville has been turned into a makeshift shipping center this week as former members of the SBC’s Abuse Reform Implementation Task Force box up thousands of copies of a curriculum they produced and ship them to state Baptist conventions around the country.

SOMERSET, Ky. (KT) — A baptismal service in a creek is not unusual these days. But a baptism requiring six people to make it happen is far from ordinary. Why did it require so many? The man who had made a profession of faith and wanted to immediately follow in baptism had a unique situation — he had an ankle bracelet that his probation officer said must not get wet.

Randy Adams, the Northwest Baptist Convention’s executive director-treasurer since May 2013, has asked the convention’s executive board to begin an executive transition plan to find his successor and allow him in the next year to move toward retirement.

Summer is here, and in many churches across Georgia, that means it is time for Vacation Bible School. VBS has been a mainstay of children’s ministry programs for decades, if not longer.

DOUGLAS, Ga. — A Georgia pastor lost his home Sunday, July 7, when it burned down. Pastor George Paulk of First Baptist Broxton was not home at the time, and no one was injured  in the blaze.  Paulk's wife, Judy, resides in an assisted living facility.

According to Lifeway Research, among Protestant pastors in the United States, 3 in 5 consider someone in their congregation a regular churchgoer if they attend church at least twice a month. Come to church every other Sunday (26 times a year) and you’re now considered a regular in the American church. To say that infrequent is the new frequent is not an exaggeration.

In August of 1971, sitting side by side on a brown couch in Jerry Bottom of Huddy, KY, my sister-Teri, and I gave our hearts to Jesus.  We were baptized together, went to Sunday School together and Training Union on Sunday nights.

Ruth Carolyn Maguire Wilson, 80, of Cumming, GA passed away July 9, 2024.

Have you ever been down and blah and you just can’t put your finger on exactly why? Have you ever felt like there was a heavy cloud over you and you just can’t seem to get out from under it? Or maybe you have been stressed because you just felt like you couldn't do enough and give enough to make a difference?

LINCOLNTON, Ga. — Former Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia once said, “Some people are inherently likable. If you are not – work on it.” Paul Reviere is a man who is inherently likable and one of the most interesting individuals you could ever hope to meet.

MANSFIELD, La. (LBM) – Though Beulah Baptist Church was destroyed by Tropical Storm Beryl, its pastor is thankful no one was injured as the storm passed, Monday, July 8.

Personal testimonies are one of the most authentic ways to share the gospel. Your story can be used by the Holy Spirit to point people to Jesus. As a follower of Jesus Christ, your salvation story is one of the most powerful tools, one of the greatest tools, and one of the most effective tools to bring people who are far from God into a personal relationship with Jesus Christ.

ORLANDO, Fla. — Primera Iglesia Bautista de Orlando made history on Saturday, June 29, by hosting the graduation of 73 Hispanic men and women as chaplains through the Florida Baptist Convention’s chaplaincy course.

MILWAUKEE (BP) – A release of the Republican National Convention’s platform reveals a potential shift in the party’s focus on a federal abortion ban. The announcement came hours after the RNC’s platform committee met on Monday morning.

MATAGORDA, Texas – Hurricane Beryl made landfall early Monday morning near Matagorda as a Category 1 hurricane with 80 mph winds after wreaking havoc in the Caribbean as a Category 5 storm where it claimed the lives of at least 11 people. Southern Baptist Disaster Relief and Send Relief are already helping survivors.

The latest song on the radio, the updated body design for a car and the fashion trends are a few examples of our ever-changing society. We have refrigerators that can order groceries for you and vehicles that drive themselves. The next big thing drives our culture, from marketing to even how we do ministry.

The focal passage for this lesson picks up the theme of persecution that Luke shared earlier in the chapter. The popularity of the apostles resulted in opposition from the Sadducees. The Jewish religious leaders arrested the apostles and placed them in the public jail (v. 18). An angel of the Lord opened the doors,  led the disciples out of the jail and commanded them to “tell the people all about this life” in the temple compound.

When a group from Crosspoint Church in McKinney recently traveled with Proclaim Cuba to minister in that Caribbean country, they took with them water filters provided by Texans on Mission. “I wanted to personally thank you for the donation of the filters,” Curt Neal, a member of the team, wrote to Mitch Chapman, director of Texans on Mission Water Impact.

Hurricane Beryl made landfall as a Category 1 storm along the Texas coast on Monday morning. The first storm of the Atlantic hurricane season — which runs from June 1 to Nov. 30 —  to make landfall in the U.S. has already left reportedly 1 million residents in the Houston area alone without power. The storm reportedly killed at least 10 people in Caribbean islands last week.

There is a unified community in the Midwest bound together by hope and love. In this city, you will find people who rally around its most vulnerable, full of grit and tenacity. This community is Ferguson, Missouri. While the name is frequently associated with images of national unrest and a community fractured by racial tension, Ferguson, along with the rest of the Greater St. Louis metropolitan area, is more than the tragic event that occurred nearly 10 years ago. The story of Ferguson is one of healing and restoration, not division, and Send Relief, alongside a dedicated community, is helping rewrite the narrative.