Stories tagged with: diversity

• NEW - 4 hours ago

  Church merger 'undivided example in divided world'

  by Diana Chandler, posted Tuesday, August 20, 2019 (4 hours ago)

  

  Photo courtesy of Kelvin Oliver/Electric Eye

  PORTSMOUTH, Va. (BP) -- Longtime pastor Jack Stallings determined years ago to empathetically view life from the eyes of a black Christian, a feat he says he hasn't quite achieved, being he's white.

  "A person that has helped me tremendously with that, and has probably been the single greatest contributor to whatever ability I have to be able to do that, is Rev. Lee," Stallings said of Robert Lee, installed Sunday (Aug. 18) as the senior pastor of Collinswood Agape Baptist Church, a merger of Stallings' and Lee's previous Portsmouth, Va., pastorates. Read More

• NOBTS workshop focuses on minorities & academia

  by Gary D. Myers, posted Friday, May 10, 2019 (3 months ago)

  

  Photo by Shaale Arencibia

  NEW ORLEANS (BP) -- When New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary Chancellor Chuck Kelley announced his "Different Voices Initiative" in 2018, a top priority involved encouraging students from different ethnic and cultural backgrounds as well as women to pursue a calling to academia.

  A May 6 workshop, "Faculty Hiring 101," marked a key step toward that goal, offering practical tips for those sensing a call to teach in a Baptist institution. Read More

• Churches looking 'more like their neighborhoods'

  by Aaron Earls, posted Thursday, June 28, 2018 (one year ago)

  

  iStock

  NASHVILLE (BP) -- More American churches are multiracial, but still less so than the neighborhoods surrounding them, a new study shows.

  A Baylor University study, released June 20, found the percentage of multiracial congregations in the United States nearly doubled.

  From 1998 to 2012, the most recent year for which data is available, multiracial churches grew from 6 percent to 12 percent of all U.S. congregations, according to the report. Multiracial congregations are places of worship in which less than 80 percent of the congregants are of the same race or ethnicity. Read More

• TRUSTEES: African American businessman voted SBTS officer

  by Aaron Cline Hanbury & Andrew J.W. Smith, posted Thursday, April 19, 2018 (one year ago)

  

  Photo by Emil Handke/SBTS

  LOUISVILLE, Ky. (BP) -- Southern Baptist Theological Seminary trustees elected their first African American officer in the school's 159-year history by a unanimous vote during their April 16 meeting.

  The election of Alan "Keith" Daniels, a businessman from Texas and member of MacArthur Boulevard Baptist Church (SBC) in Irving, as board secretary is "another necessary step in the history of the Southern Baptist Convention demonstrating at every level of denominational leadership the diversity to which we are called," said R. Albert Mohler Jr., president of Southern Seminary. Read More

• Newbell helps children put diversity in Gospel focus

  by Tom Strode, posted Wednesday, September 27, 2017 (one year ago)

  

  NASHVILLE (BP) -- Trillia Newbell required only one experience from teaching a Sunday school class to be convinced she should write a children's book about God's view of diversity.

  She had taught a children's class on "the image of God and racial harmony" about a year before, Newbell told Baptist Press Tuesday (Sept. 26) in an email interview. "It was such a joy for me to watch the kids think through what it meant to be equally created by God to reflect His image, that God ... Read More

• WWII-era couple's sacrifice yields new Hispanic church

  by Lonnie Wilkey/Tennessee Baptist and Reflector, posted Monday, July 24, 2017 (2 years ago)

  

  Photo by Lonnie Wilkey

  FRANKLIN, Tenn. (BP) -- Missions has been a way of life for Earl and Violet Newcomb since the mid-1950s in helping start six churches.

  Earl Newcomb served as song leader while operating a business in Franklin, Tenn., and Violet served as pianist and church treasurer.

  "Lord, open the door and we will go," they always said.

  In 1975 the couple helped begin their last church, Harpeth First Baptist in rural ... Read More

• 'Mirror image' of Christ in Fla. church's racial unity

  by Diana Chandler, posted Friday, February 10, 2017 (2 years ago)

  

  Photo by Marcellus Marsh

  ORANGE PARK, Fla. (BP) -- Tami and Roger Clemmons searched more than a year for a church home after moving from Georgia to Palm Coast, Fla., in 2014. Nothing seemed to fit the couple's desire for racial diversity coupled with strong biblical preaching.

  Based on recommendations from respected pastors, the white professional couple in their mid-50s visited the Orange Park campus of Shiloh Metropolitan Baptist Church some 70 miles away. Read More

• No reconciliation without cross, NAAF guest says

  by Diana Chandler, posted Wednesday, October 14, 2015 (3 years ago)

  

  Photo by Diana Chandler

  PHILADELPHIA (BP) -- Gus Roman, pastor emeritus of Canaan Baptist Church in Philadelphia, looked at Southern Baptist executive David Waltz and said aloud, "You remind me of that fellow who kicked me in my stomach."

  Roman, 82 and black, grew up in Louisiana during the Jim Crow South; Waltz, white, grew up a pastor's son in the Pittsburg suburb of Mount Lebanon. Read More

• Committees report giving, diversity of members

  by Staff, posted Wednesday, June 17, 2015 (4 years ago)

  COLUMBUS, Ohio (BP) -- The SBC Committee on Nominations for the coming year has the most diversity in its history, Committee on Committees chairman Bryan Smith reported at the SBC annual meeting June 16. Read More

• Diversity still needed, SBC leaders say

  by Tom Strode, posted Tuesday, March 31, 2015 (4 years ago)

  

  Photo by Alli Rader

  NASHVILLE (BP) -- The Southern Baptist Convention's progress in racial reconciliation will fall short of what is needed if it is measured by the one-time election of an African-American president, speakers said at a leadership summit. Read More