Baptists, communion and wine are words rarely used together. But they will be the next four Sundays as First Baptist Church in Dayton, Ohio, hosts an Episcopal parish for worship while the latter’s building undergoes renovations.

The joint services will include Anglican rituals of preparation for the bread and wine used in the Eucharist. Grape juice will be offered at two stations for Baptists.

Rather than eyebrows or complaints, the news instead raised questions in the American Baptist congregation about why grape juice is used in the Lord’s Supper at all, said Pastor Rodney Kennedy, a former Southern Baptist from Louisiana.

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You see, the CNN team seems to think that there is such a thing as a Southern Baptist tradition (there are many, quite frankly) and even a Southern Baptist theology (there is no one such approach to doctrine; ask Bill Clinton about that). The elder Stanley is held up as a prime example of the old Southern Baptist way and then Andy becomes the brave young leader who steps away from that frozen orthodoxy and finds his own way.

Truth is, Baptists and members of similar free-church flocks always evolve from generation to generation with millions of churchgoers flocking to the hot new preachers and the emerging super congregations that rise and fall in power year after year, decade after decade. One generation always creates its own new tradition and then outvotes the older generation by moving on to something new. In these evolving structures only the living saints get to vote.

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A $69.40 offering by a group of homeless Christians in Vermont reminds a local Baptist leader of the widow’s two mites that Jesus commended in the Gospels.

Terry Dorsett, director of the Green Mountain Baptist Association, has a new perception of the homeless because of the gift to the association’s mission offering for starting new churches and meeting church financial emergencies. Dorsett has asked the financially able among the association’s 35 churches to match the donation.

“I think we tend to think of homeless people just as being a bunch of addicts and people with problems,” Dorsett said. “And then while that does describe many homeless people, there’s a whole subculture of homeless Christians who obviously don’t have those problems and they’re just trying to live for the Lord in a different lifestyle setting than most of us might choose.

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“We are facing more obstacles than we ever have before, but this is no surprise. This believer represents the very first person who wants to be baptized in this place. Satan’s not just going to give that up easily,” [John]Costa said.

For [Aaron] Juergens, that’s no reason to quit, but encouragement to persevere, even in sickness and freezing temperatures atop a mountain.

“I’m up there, wearing six jackets and three gloves and five socks and I really just kind of want to sit in a bed,” he said. “But then you think about those people (who haven’t heard yet). If we turn around, who is going to come next? I mean, how many people have turned around? The world is getting smaller. The day is coming when everybody is going to have no excuse whatsoever for not hearing. There’s no excuse for turning back.

“We keep going.”

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The influx of foreign-born people into North America gives Southern Baptist churches a unique opportunity to reach the nations, a veteran International Mission Board worker said at the 2012 Send North America Conference.

Most churches, though, are failing to take advantage of the opportunity, he said at the conference sponsored by the North American Mission Board.

“We need to look at some other models and methods when we start churches among people groups,” IMB representative Bryan Galloway said during a conference breakout session on “Reaching the Nations in North America.” “We’re just not doing that.”

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In 1986, he was invited to take over Franklin Avenue Baptist Church [in New Orleans]. Under him, its congregation grew from a couple of dozen people to 7,000 ”” the largest Southern Baptist church in Louisiana. Then Hurricane Katrina struck in 2005, destroying the sanctuary.

“It would have been easy for Fred Luter to have said, ‘I think God’s calling me elsewhere,’ ” says Russell Moore, dean of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Ky. “And he could have gone to a very comfortable pastorate anywhere in the country.

“And yet, he stayed,” Moore says. “And he stood with the people of New Orleans and said, ‘We’ll be back, we’ll rebuild’ ”” and became a spiritual anchor.”

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Leaving the hospital three months [after an accident]…he soon walked on crutches down the aisle of Greater Mt. Carmel and committed himself to the Lord.

“I immediately started a street ministry because … I was so shocked by my relationship with Christ, I wanted everybody in my neighborhood, all my partners … to know the God that I knew,” Luter said. “So every Saturday at 12 noon I’d be preaching on different streets of the Lower Ninth Ward and sharing Christ. And that’s how, as they say, that’s how it all began.”

The first African American president of the Southern Baptist Convention is amazed at how God has blessed his ministry, opening doors previously closed to those from Luter’s side of town.

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In the service lay a story of black Christians and white Jews who once shared a kind of promised land, a peacefully integrated section of Indianapolis called Southside. Its decades of harmony were a rebuke to the Southern-style racial divisions that characterized Indiana for much of the 20th century, from the Ku Klux Klan’s heyday in the interwar years to George Wallace’s popularity with the state’s voters in the 1960s.

Upward mobility, Interstate 70 and the construction of a football stadium hollowed out the neighborhood starting in the late 1960s, scattering its residents and severing bonds of commerce and friendship. But in the last four years, an anthropology professor at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis, Susan B. Hyatt, has set about finding former Southsiders and restoring those ties through social events and reciprocal worship services at South Calvary and the Etz Chaim Sephardic synagogue.

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A respected Baptist academic has called upon churches to ensure they are a welcoming home for Britain’s ageing population.

Dr Roy Kearsley, of South Wales Baptist College, admitted that ageing was a challenge for church, mission and pastoral care.

He said that recent headlines about poor levels of care for older people in Britain were “disturbing” and indicative of a “social and spiritual crisis”.

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Debt can limit a person’s generosity — and a church’s.

Travis Smalley arrived at the Cincinnati-area Lakota Hills Baptist Church six years ago with a vision to plant churches locally, nationally and internationally. But just in Ohio, with just one Southern Baptist church for every 17,868 people, Smalley knew Lakota Hills couldn’t reach everyone.

Yet Smalley’s passion to start churches ran up against a major roadblock — lack of funds.

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Meet the Rev. Fred Luter Jr., pastor of New Orleans’s 4,500-member Franklin Avenue Baptist Church””and the man who this spring will likely become the first black president of the Southern Baptist Convention. He announced last month that he was putting himself in the running, and the convention’s movers and shakers seem almost unanimous in their support.

The SBC was born in 1845 after Baptists from the Northern states refused to appoint slaveholders to missionary posts, and the Southern states decided to break off. Like many Protestant denominations in America that split over the issue of slavery, the Baptists remained separate long after the Civil War. Though the leadership of the SBC supported an end to segregation even before Brown v. Board of Education (1954), the denomination’s churches in many cases remained hotbeds of racial animus.

It wasn’t until 1995 that the SBC issued a resolution on racial reconciliation….

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Three reasons for observing some form of Lenten practice suggest themselves, in ascending importance.

One: we need to live in community with the larger body of Christ. Since the vast majority of Christians practice some form of Lenten observance, joining them in some way is a good step toward solidarity of faith and ministry. This is also an important witness to others, answering Jesus’ prayer, “May they be brought to complete unity to let the world know that you sent me” (John 17:23).

Two: we cannot fully appreciate Jesus’ resurrection unless we have experienced something of his sufferings. A fast of some sort is an appropriate means of spiritual identification with our Lord’s suffering for us.

Three: we need a period each year for intentional spiritual introspection and contemplation….

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St. Philip’s Episcopal Church, an architecturally important and beloved part of downtown Germanton for generations, may be torn apart, moved and rebuilt to house a congregation in Carrboro that needs a place to worship.

Germanton Baptist Church, which sits next to the Episcopal church, is buying the land from the Episcopal Diocese of North Carolina, said the Rev. Jeff Stephens of the Baptist church.

“Our church is experiencing significant growth,” said Stephens, who came to the church in January 2011. “And for the Episcopal diocese to approach us about purchasing the property is an exciting opportunity because we are in desperate need of some room to grow.”

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Seven influential megachurch pastors took part in live unscripted discussions on different approaches to ministry in the second round of The Elephant Room ”“ an event billed as “conversations you never thought you’d hear” from pastors.

Held in Aurora, Ill., and broadcast to over 70 locations around the U.S., the discussions were mediated by James MacDonald of Chicago’s Harvest Bible Chapel and Mark Driscoll of Seattle’s Mars Hill Church.

With nondenominational churches growing across the county, the role of denominations and church networks was the first topic discussed.

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In recent years, [Richard] Land has numbered himself among those who describe Mormonism as a kind of fourth Abrahamic tradition, a new faith that has reinterpreted the past under the guidance of its own prophet and its own scriptures. In this case, he said, “Joseph Smith is like Mohammad and The Book of Mormon is like the Koran.” Mormons believe they have restored true Christianity, while Trinitarian churches reject this claim that they have lost the faith.

Thus, it’s not surprising that a new LifeWay Research survey of 1,000 liberal and conservative Protestant clergy in America found that 75 percent disagreed with this statement: “I personally consider Mormons (Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints) to be Christians.” The surprise was that 48 percent of mainline Protestant pastors strongly agreed that Mormons are not Christians.
Meanwhile, the Vatican in 2001 addressed the issue of “whether the baptism conferred by the community The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, called Mormons in the vernacular, is valid.”

The response from the late Pope John Paul II was blunt: “Negative.”

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I share these two experiences alongside a comment I came across years ago: every church and every member of the clergy, over a span of time, needs to belong to a denomination. I serve as a district superintendent, and I am aware of the church’s imperfections, and my own. I watch over 69 local churches and a few assorted institutions within our geographical boundaries, and we are at work on the development of a new church plant and the development of a missional church network. At any given time about 3-5 of these churches are in real crisis: they are in need of outside intervention, mediation, conflict resolution and spiritual guidance. A denomination, at its best, provides a framework for the protection of the clergy in a workplace and supervision of even the most powerful clergy leaders. In addition, a denomination works out the implications of a missional strategy in an area that is more nuanced than simply whatever the market can bear.

I share these experiences at a time when there is much rhetoric around moving energy, resources and attention to the local church. I love the local church. It is the basic context for the mission of making disciples for the transformation of the world. At the same time, the local church will, on occasion, be stronger as it accomplishes mission that is beyond its own capacity, and as it is accountable to a wisdom that is outside its own day to day movements.

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What’s in a name? As Shakespeare has it, a rose by any other name smells the same. But in the case of America’s largest Protestant denomination, changing the name could change everything.

A week ago, Southern Baptist Convention President Bryant Wright told his organization’s executive committee in Nashville that he had appointed a task force to study a possible name change. Abandoning the 166-year-old identifier, he argued, would help the group thrive both in America and internationally.

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I regard the atheist group’s attack on the Bible the same way I view fringe Christian organizations that pull similar stunts. It is nothing more than a crass and pathetic attempt to gain publicity. As such, it really should be ignored.

However, if you compare the news coverage this has garnered with the media attention given Christian groups that have held similar events, the terms hypocrisy and double-standard immediately come to mind.

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For over a decade from his pulpit here at Oak Hill Baptist in North Mississippi, the Rev. Michael O. Minor has waged war against obesity and bad health. In the Delta this may seem akin to waging war against humidity, but Mr. Minor has the air of the salesman he once was, and the animated persistence to match.

Years into his war, he is beginning to claim victories.

The National Baptist Convention, which represents some seven million people in nearly 10,000 churches, is ramping up a far-reaching health campaign devised by Mr. Minor, which aims to have a “health ambassador” in every member church by September 2012. The goals of the program, the most ambitious of its kind, will be demanding but concrete, said the Rev. George W. Waddles Sr., the president of the convention’s Congress of Christian Education.

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Mount Moriah Missionary Baptist Church in North Charleston is a little like a small city, focused on nurturing a sense of community, delivering services and worshipping God.

Where most churches offer Bible study sessions that attract perhaps a couple of dozen people who meet in a classroom, Mount Moriah fills its 800-seat sanctuary Wednesday nights with people who want to learn about the Scriptures. Bible study becomes a mini-service….

Membership has surpassed 4,000 (with perhaps 3,200 considered active members), and its sanctuary no longer can accommodate everyone who comes to worship. A spillover room with a big video screen is regularly used.

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Baptisms fell to their lowest number in 60 years among Southern Baptists, the nation’s largest Protestant denomination.

The new numbers are a sign that the denomination is in trouble, Baptist leaders say.

“This is not a blip,” said Ed Stetzer, president of LifeWay Research. “This is a trend. And, the trend is one of decline.”

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Each of the 90 federal historic sites in the United States has its appeal. But for all their cultural value, the sites don’t change much. A studious tour given by a park ranger. A plaque to read. Another note in a travel journal.

But this week, one of the sites held the sort of electric charge usually not found among dusty period chairs and explanatory dioramas.

Inside the historic Ebenezer Baptist Church ”” the place where Martin Luther King Jr. was both baptized and eulogized ”” a new, meticulous renovation underscored the weight of one of the most significant social movements in modern America.

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Peter John Gomes (rhymes with homes) was born in Boston on May 22, 1942, the only child of Peter Lobo and Orissa White Gomes. His father, born in the Cape Verde Islands off Africa’s west coast, was a cranberry bog worker. His mother was a graduate of the New England Conservatory of Music. Peter grew up in Plymouth with literature, piano lessons and expectations that he would become a minister. He was active in the Baptist Church and preached his first sermon at 12.

He worked as a houseman to help pay for his education. After graduation from Plymouth High School in 1961, he attended Bates College in Lewiston, Me., a co-educational liberal arts school founded by abolitionists in 1855. He majored in history and received a bachelor’s degree in 1965, then earned a bachelor of divinity degree at Harvard in 1968 and was ordained a Baptist minister….

In clerical collar and vestments, he was a figure of homiletic power in the pulpit, hammering out the cadences in a rich baritone that The New Yorker called a blend of James Earl Jones and John Houseman. In class, he was a New England patrician: the broad shoulders, the high forehead and spectacles that tilted up when he held his head high, the watch-chain at the vest and a handkerchief fluffed at the breast pocket.

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I will take comments on this submitted by email only to at KSHarmon[at]mindspring[dot]com.

Zion Baptist Church on Sunday was loaded and hot, nearly every pew full.

This by itself is not unusual for a Sunday, but seeing white and black worshippers sitting side by side was a little different.

“(First Baptist Church) Pastor (Tom) Bayes and I had talked about how Sunday mornings were one of the most segregated times in America,” said Pastor Samuel Duren of Zion Baptist. “We don’t feel like that has to be that way, and so we decided to join the worship services.”

Zion Baptist, a predominantly black church, and First Baptist, a predominantly white church, are separated by only a few blocks, but the two had never really come together until recently.

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At the same time mainstream denominations lose thousands of members per year, churches such as Crosspoint are growing rapidly ”” 15 percent of all U.S. churches identified themselves as nondenominational this year, up from 5 percent a decade ago. A third dropped out of major denominations at some point.

Their members are attracted by worship style, particular church missions or friends in the congregation.

“They no longer see the denomination as anything that has relevance to them,” said Scott Thumma, a religion sociology professor at Hartford Seminary in Hartford, Conn. He’s compiling a list of nondenominational churches for the 2010 Religious Congregations and Membership Study. “The whole complexion of organized religion is in flux.”

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“To continue playing the game of ‘ain’t it awful what they have done to Christmas’ may be a cop-out,” argued [the Rev. Rick] Lance, executive director of the Alabama Baptist State Board of Missions. “After all, we contribute to the commercialization of Christmas. We are a part of the supposed problem of abuse that the Christmas season has experienced.

“A revitalization of Christmas will not come from Wall Street, Main Street, the malls or the halls of Congress and the state legislature. The chatter of talking heads on news programs will not make this a reality.”

It would help if churches offered constructive advice. That’s why it was significant that, just before Dec. 25, the Southern Baptist Convention’s news service published several commentaries by Lance and others raising unusually practical questions about how members of America’s largest non-Catholic flock can fine-tune future Christmas plans.

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Two decades after declaring victory in the war over biblical inerrancy, Southern Baptists are battling about booze.

Seeking to remain relevant in today’s culture, many Baptists have abandoned former taboos against social activities like dancing and going to movies. Now some are questioning the denomination’s historic position of abstaining from alcohol, prompting others to draw a line.

The Baptist State Convention of North Carolina recently passed a motion to “study a policy of the social use of alcohol” related to funding of church plants, employment of personnel and nomination of persons to committees and boards of trustees.

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In a recent article in Christianity Today, a pastor is quoted as saying, “A funeral is like a North Star in the sky, by which a navigator knows where his ship is and how to adjust its direction and get to the destination. At a funeral, you get these coordinates to position yourself in life.” I wholeheartedly agree.

We live in a culture that has forgotten the concept of the brevity of life. Many of us can go for months and even years without attending a funeral and being faced with ultimate issues. But the church is the community of the resurrected Christ- therefore; we say loudly that while death is a reality for all people, it does not triumph because Christ has overcome the grave. Therefore, the understanding of eternity in Christ should teach us how to live well and how to die well.

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Our role in Iraq has also been to help win the hearts and minds of Iraqis through humanitarian missions and establishing local relationships with religious leaders. One such local leader is the Rev. Canon Andrew White.

Canon White is the rector (pastor) of St. George’s Church of Baghdad, the only Anglican Church in the country, established during the time when Iraq was a British territory. Canon White, also titled the vicar of Baghdad by the Church of England, plays an important role as a peace ambassador in the Middle East. He has been kidnapped. He has been beaten. He has lain on a floor with body parts scattered around him. Yet, he faithfully continues to preach and works for peace in one of the most dangerous places in the world today. He faces such persecution because he is one of the few vocal Christians in the city working for the good of Iraq.

Given Canon White’s persecution in Baghdad, I have reflected on what the situation would be like if it were reversed. What would the situation be like for those who are not the religious majority of a country?

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