October 2, 2026
PAINTSVILLE, Ky. (KT) — A Kentucky Baptist pastor has penned a question-and-answer book about the Baptist Faith & Message 2000 to encourage other pastors and teach church members more about its contents.
Seth Carter, the senior pastor of First Baptist Church in Paintsville, said he was first prompted to consider writing about the BF&M 2000 from a resolution that passed in the Kentucky Baptist Convention’s Annual Meeting in 2023 that encouraged pastors and other church leaders to preach more frequently on it.
“So many church members were unfamiliar with it,” he said. “I began to act on that in church and after having more intentional conversations finding that to be true in our church. A lot of people knew we had it but they didn’t know what was in it.”
That’s how it started for Carter, who began an intentional effort to teach on the BF&M more consistently.
“I wanted to write a catechism to make a long statement of faith more digestible,” he said. “I thought a question-and-answer to be less intimidating. I looked to see if anyone else had done that and couldn’t find one anywhere. That’s when I started working on it.”
His finished product, “Firm Foundations: A Question-and-Answer Guide Through the Baptist Faith and Message,” is a 49-page paperback that asks 150 questions and gives the answers in short form.
The BF&M 2000 is a statement of beliefs adopted by the Southern Baptist Convention in 2000. Before that SBC churches used the BF&M 1963. The first version was written in 1925. It outlines key tenets of Baptist theology, including the authority of the Bible, the nature of God, salvation and the purpose of the church.
“It’s an offensive weapon in teaching us what we believe,” Carter said. “It’s also defensive in guard against false teaching. There are 18 articles altogether. With our non-reading culture, most people are not going to sit down with it and read through it. That’s one of the things that prompted the project. We’d give a whole copy to everyone who took our new members class and asked them to read through this document. Hardly no one would read through the whole thing. That prompted me to turn it into a smaller question and answers book.”
Carter has taught about the BF&M 2000 on Wednesday nights and Sunday School classes and discipleship groups have also used the book as a study guide.
Carter came up with the question and then used the BF&M 2000 to answer. For example, on page 41, the question is asked “What is man?” The answer from the document reads: “Man is the special creation of God, made in His own image. He created them male and female as the crowning work of His creation. The gift of gender is thus part of the goodness of God’s creation.”
In the book’s introduction, Carter suggests ways the book can be used. He mentions personal devotion time, Sunday school, discipleship, youth and children or just as a grid for pastors to teach the entire Baptist Faith and Message to congregations.
Carter said he was attending an event at the KBC on Thursday and received encouragement from French Harmon, the executive director of the Kentucky Baptist Foundation who plans on purchasing some books for pastors. Carter also gave copies of the book to Jeff Iorg, the president of the SBC executive committee, who Carter said seemed to appreciate it.
“I pray the Lord would use it,” Carter said.
The book is $7 and available on Amazon.
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This story appeared in Kentucky Today.
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