PEACHTREE CITY, Ga. – Folks in Shane Dixon’s life group at First Baptist Church in Peachtree City knew something was wrong because he and his wife, Jenny, weren’t showing up for their weekly get-togethers. Turned out their nearly 20-year-old car had broken down again, and his government disability check just wasn’t enough to purchase a new one.

Midway Church in Villa Rica., Ga., recently celebrated its 175th anniversary. In those years, it has grown from 11 charter members to more than 3,000 members, and was recognized in 2021 as one of the Top 25 churches in Georgia in overall contributions to the Cooperative Program.

LAWRENCEVILLE, Ga. (BP) – Olha Soroka, 85, walks through the rooms of her home. She smells the roses from her garden and can hear the laughter from family dinners. She touches and kisses the …

CLAYTON, Ga. – June and July in Georgia mean hot days, cold sweet tea, and summer camps. Georgia Baptists saw the largest number of students in three years at their camps this year, resulting in more than 50 salvation decisions and nearly 70 teens called to ministry.

SUMMERVILLE, Ga. (BP) – The videos cover a lot of ground. In one, Sean Wegener goes over the basics of reading the Bible. In another, he explains the background of the Cooperative Program. In yet one more, he’s running alongside Anakin Skywalker and Obi-Wan Kenobi on the lava planet Mustafar in a heated lightsaber duel.

ATLANTA  – Pro-life advocates celebrated a federal appeals court decision Wednesday that allows a Georgia law to take effect banning nearly all abortions in the state. “This is an exciting day, a day when Georgians in the womb are finally going to enjoy the same right to life as Georgians outside the womb,” said Suzanne Guy, a member of Woodstock’s First Baptist Church and one of the state’s most ardent abortion opponents.

DULUTH, Ga. – Squeezed by high inflation and declining Cooperative Program receipts, the Georgia Baptist Mission Board has been forced to make mid-year budget adjustments that include staff reductions. Economic trends, coupled with discontent among some churches because of the Southern Baptist Convention’s handling of sexual abuse complaints and other hot-button issues, have led to a significant decline in financial receipts this year.

SWAINSBORO, Ga. – Churches in largely rural Emanuel County are making sure no children go hungry this summer. Billy Brinson, mission strategist in the Emanuel Baptist Association, said churches have donated more than $27,000 to buy enough food to keep children fed until August, when the local school district restarts its lunch program. “God is doing so much through the churches of Emanuel County,” Brinson said. “I feel wonderful about this.”

SUNDOWN, Texas (BP) – Coach Brannon Rodgers and others across the U.S. were paying close attention to the Supreme Court ruling in Kennedy v. Bremerton School District. By a 6-3 margin, justices ruled that the school district violated coach Joseph Kennedy's First Amendment rights by removing him from his position after he refused to stop praying at midfield following games.

WARNER ROBINS, Ga. – The Georgia Baptist Mission Board has expanded the SPARK discipleship conference to include in-person training at five regional locations across the state next month. The initial one will be on Aug. 6 at Second Baptist Church in Warner Robins where Woodstock First Baptist Church lead pastor Jeremy Morton will be the keynote speaker.

We met Jay last summer.  He was vacationing with his family and we struck up a conversation.     Like Jay and his people, we stay at the same place every summer.  This …

WASHINGTON (BP) – The U.S. House of Representatives passed two far-reaching abortion rights bills Friday that seek to repudiate a watershed ruling by the Supreme Court and defy pro-life protections enacted by the states. But the evenly divided Senate has already rejected the Women’s Health Protection Act twice this year by refusing to bring the legislation to the floor for a vote.

Rob Jackson said when he was in Ukraine in early July, a Baptist pastor told him the story of a young mother who showed up at his church. Three days after giving birth, the woman found out her husband had been killed. “She wept and asked the pastor, ‘What am I to do now? I have no husband, no job, and three small children. What am I supposed to do?’

As a campus ministries intern at the University of Massachusetts Lowell, Lissy Sandoval builds relationships and helps women come to know Christ. In her work, she has seen students’ lives transformed by the gospel.

LOUISVILLE, Ky. (KT) – Bill Mackey, who faithfully served as the executive director-treasurer of the Kentucky Baptist Convention for more than a dozen years, is being remembered as a true servant of God and the “epitome of a Christian gentleman.” Mackey died Thursday morning after a year and a half battle with cancer. He was 81.

When my Vietnamese friend heard I was sick, she called to give me advice.  My voice squeaked when I answered but she knew it was me.  “Swirl honey around in your mouth and it will help the blisters,” she instructed.  Great.  I HATE honey.  Of course, it would be honey.

AUGUSTA, Ga. – For some 40 years, Georgians have been listening to the preaching of Tony Evans on the radio. In November, they’ll be able to hear him in person. Evans, the familiar voice on the Urban Alternative radio program that’s carried on more than 1,400 stations, will be among the speakers at the Georgia Baptist Convention’s annual meeting November 13-15 at the Marriott Convention Center in Augusta.

DALLAS (BP) – A $100,000 inflation relief fund for Baptist General Convention of Texas pastors was depleted within 24 hours of its availability, the convention announced July 13 as inflation reached its highest point in decades at 9.1 percent.

NASHVILLE (BP) – Within images released by the James Webb telescope, Christians can not only get previously unseen views of the cosmos but resounding confirmation of God’s creative design and man’s place in it. David Block, emeritus professor at the University of Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, South Africa, and Danny Faulkner, who taught for 26 years at the University of South Carolina-Lancaster before joining Answers in Genesis, spoke with Baptist Press about the magnitude of the Webb telescope’s findings and how those discoveries are challenging Christians and non-Christians alike.

DULUTH, Ga. – The writer who turned the Rocky Mountains into a metaphor that is helping a generation of church leaders rethink ministry will be one of the speakers at the Georgia Baptist Mission Board’s SPARK Conference next month. Tod Bolsinger, a former California pastor now serving as vice president of Fuller Theological Seminary, has provided hope to pastors facing seemingly impossible barriers with his book Canoeing the Mountains.

Bryant Wright, the former long-term pastor of Johnson Ferry Baptist Church, faced the issue of pastoral succession. After decades of serving his church, the Lord led Wright to carry out a succession plan. His new book captures that journey from the first conversations about stepping down to the final sermon he preached before becoming president of Send Relief, an international relief organization that partners with local churches to provide help to those affected by a disaster or crisis.

EL CAJON, Calif. (BP) – Meridian Village is a pilot housing program under construction behind Meridian Baptist Church. In partnership with the nonprofit housing advocacy group Amikas, the city of El Cajon, and social service agency Home Start of San Diego County, Meridian is hosting the pilot project that runs through December 2023 and will serve homeless single mothers and their children.

While most Americans say religious liberty is on the decline in the country, even more believe Christians are increasingly confronted with intolerance in the U.S. But some say American Christians complain too much about how they are treated.

AUGUSTA, Ga. – Georgia Baptists are being called on this year to provide a send-off to potentially dozens of new international missionaries who are being deployed to countries around the world, some to places so dangerous they have to hide their identities. The International Mission Board, which has begun holding “sending celebrations” as part of state Baptist convention annual meetings, chose Georgia to be the launching pad for the latest crop of missionaries.

NASHVILLE (BP) – The weekday preschool ministry at Englewood Baptist Church in Rocky Mount, N.C., feeds approximately 60 children a day, a number that doubles in the fall. Food costs have always been a part of such ministries, but it’s just one of several areas where inflation has commanded more attention.