April 19, 2024
RICHMOND (IMB) — Steve Smith, who filled key leadership roles in Asia with the Southern Baptist International Mission Board, died March 13 after a long illness. He was 57.
Smith and his wife Laura served with IMB for 18 years, always focused on parts of the world where the Gospel was little known. He began his service in East Asia and was later named to direct work among Southeast Asian peoples. He also served as a consultant on church-planting movements for other areas.
Smith was involved in a church-planting movement in East Asia. He and colleague Ying Kai wrote "T4T: A Discipleship Re-Revolution." The book detailed the biblical principles behind church-planting movements and a process developed by Kai and his wife Grace to pursue such movements.
Smith is survived by his wife and three grown sons: Cris, David, Josh and wife Caroline and twin grandsons.
A memorial service was held March 16 at WoodsEdge Community Church in Spring, Texas.
NASHVILLE (BP) — Prayer leaders across Southern Baptist life have a new opportunity to connect through "Pray SBC." Launched March 18, Pray SBC is a Facebook group for members to share expertise, ask questions and offer ideas to "foster a culture of Kingdom-focused prayer toward revival and spiritual awakening," according to the group's description. The "C" represents a Southern Baptist Community of churches praying in concert with one another.
The page will be maintained by SBC PrayerLink, a network of prayer leaders from Southern Baptist Convention entities, state conventions, associations, ethnic fellowships and local churches.
A main impetus for the development of Pray SBC was an article published in SBC LIFE last fall about the War Room prayer ministry at First Baptist Church in Montgomery, Ala. The article mentioned that the church uses a specific plan to lead people in praying through the Word, and the church received numerous requests for a copy of the plan.
Aside from Facebook, more information about prayer ministry in the convention is available here.
BIRMINGHAM (BP) — Southern Baptist Convention President J.D. Greear has named tellers for the SBC 2019 annual meeting June 11-12 in Birmingham.
Stephanie Orr, member of First Baptist Church in Chipley, Fla., and board member of the Florida Baptist Children's Home will serve as chairperson. Ray Carr, pastor of Baptist Center Church in Clayton, N.C., has been appointed vice chair.
Fifty percent of the tellers are women, and 45 percent are non-anglo.
Continue reading here for more 2019 tellers.
LOS ANGELES (SBTS) — R. Albert Mohler Jr. took questions for nearly two hours at the University of Southern California addressing a range of hot-button issues.
The event was the third stop on the Ask Anything Tour, a series of public question-and-answer forums with Mohler, president of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, on university campuses around the United States.
At USC, some 500 students crammed into one of the historic auditoriums on campus. Previous events took place last year at the University of Louisville and at UCLA in a partnership between Southern Seminary and the discipleship organization Ligonier Ministries.
Topics included: the Gospel and social justice, toxic masculinity, and Christians and Muslim evangelism.
KETTERING, Ohio (BP) — At age 100, with some memories fading, Walter Davis still remembers the 1962 phone call he received from then-Southern Baptist Convention President Herschel Hobbs to ask if Davis would serve on a committee to revise the Baptist Faith and Message.
"It was an honor to serve on the committee," Davis told Baptist Press with help from his son Greg.
Walter Davis turned 100 this month and is believed to be the only surviving member of the 1963 Baptist Faith and Message committee.
In 1962, Davis was among 23 Baptist state convention presidents placed on the Committee to Study Baptist Statement of Faith and Message along with Hobbs as chairman, according to the 1962 SBC Annual. The suggestion to assemble a committee of state convention presidents came as a recommendation from the SBC Executive Committee and was affirmed by messengers. Davis was president of the State Convention of Baptists in Indiana.
FORT WORTH, Texas (SWBTS) — "I believe Southwestern Seminary historically has been at its best when it's been known as the big-tent seminary of the Southern Baptist Convention," Adam W. Greenway said in his first chapel sermon as president of Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, March 21.
Evoking the imagery of big-tent revival meetings, Greenway laid out his vision for the seminary's future, explaining that just as a tent has four pegs, so Southwestern Seminary holds to four points of conviction and commitment — a high view of Scripture, the Baptist Faith and Message, the Great Commission, and cooperation.
Greenway, who holds an M.Div. from Southwestern, was unanimously elected as the seminary's ninth president during a Feb. 26-27 called trustee meeting at the Fort Worth, Texas, campus.
"I think it's important to say even in the midst of uncertain, changing, transitional times, some things ought never to change," Greenway told the chapel audience. "I don't come in with some radical new vision and complete discontinuity from the glorious 111-year history of the crown jewel seminary of the Southern Baptist Convention.
