DULUTH, Ga. — The Georgia Baptist Mission Board has sold a five-story office building and adjacent property in Duluth to a hotel developer for $23.5 million, bringing an end to a years-long search for a buyer. “We are grateful to the Lord and to all those who worked so hard to make this happen,” said Mission Board Executive Director W. Thomas Hammond Jr. “The proceeds from the sale of this property will be used to expand the kingdom and continue to grow Georgia Baptist missions and ministries.”

STATESBORO, Ga. — An electronic timer on display at First Baptist Church in Statesboro showed the alarming rate at which people around the world are dying without the hope of salvation. The number climbed as seconds ticked by. Within 10 minutes, the count had reached 325 people. Each successive 10 minutes added that many more. And in the next 24 hours, according to the International Mission Board, the total would climb to 157,000. Pastor John Waters used the display during his sermon on Dec. 10 to highlight the urgency of the work of missionaries serving in countries around the world. Since then, he has seen an outpouring of financial support to get the gospel to the nations.

STATESBORO, Ga. — Tom Kollars walked into a Starbucks coffee shop in Statesboro not long ago, chatting with people as they waited for their cups of java. By the time the 64-year-old college professor left a short time later, he had led five strangers to Christ. Pastor Mike Dann of Botsford Baptist Church saw it all unfold and was amazed by the ease with which Kollars was able to successfully engage people in lifechanging conversations about the gospel. “He’s the most incredible soulwinner I’ve ever met,” Dann said.

CLARKSTON, Ga. — A 12-member team of Mississippi Baptists have visited Clarkston, an Atlanta suburb that has become home to refugees from around the world. Once a largely white community, Clarkston is now home to people speaking some 100 different languages, and many of them can be heard in the multi-ethnic and multi-generational Clarkston International Bible Church.

VALDOSTA, Ga. — More than 350 Georgia students made commitments to Christ at the Wild Adventures amusement park in Valdosta on Thursday and Friday, providing a spiritual grand finale to a year that will be remembered for large numbers of salvation decisions. More than 2,500 people attended the Georgia Baptist Mission Board’s annual MOVE Conference, a two-day evangelistic outreach for middle and high school students at a venue billed as 170 acres of rides, slides and exotic animals.

PEMBROKE, Ga. — First Baptist Church of Pembroke is a midsized congregation in a small town, but, thanks to a massive Hyundai automotive plant under construction, it could quickly become a large church in a bustling industrial suburb. Pastor Tommy Smith and his congregation are preparing for a population explosion. Pembroke is poised to grow by thousands almost overnight. Local governments have already begun expanding infrastructure to accommodate additional residents. School districts are planning building expansions. And, if churches are to minister effectively to the newcomers, they need to be prepared as well.

BAXLEY, Ga. —Signs of spiritual renewal swept across Georgia in 2023, producing thousands of new believers in the Bible Belt state. Church leaders reported a widespread “spiritual hunger in communities large and small” that they said generated a huge spike in numbers of commitments to Christ. Evidence of that was on full display in Baxley in October when some 10,000 people attended a four-night evangelistic crusade in the local football stadium. Some 1,600 of them responded to the gospel.

Georgia Baptists were busy people over the past year. Here's a sampling of photos of them in action, as seen in The Christian Index during 2023.

SNELLVILLE, Ga. — Fayetteville pastor Josh Saefkow will serve a second one-year term as president of the Georgia Baptist Convention, the state’s largest religious group with some 1.4 million members. That’s one of a long series of significant stories reported in The Christian Index during 2023.

NEWNAN, Ga. — Christians crowded into churches across Georgia on Christmas Eve where they heard words of hope in a world that’s rife with turmoil. Doug McCart, pastor of Unity Baptist Church in Newnan, preached to a congregation that has survived a series of tornadoes in recent years. “We can’t save ourselves,” said McCart, who sheltered with his wife inside the church last year while a tornado ripped it to pieces around him. “We need a savior.”

Churches across Georgia have been celebrating the Christmas season with candlelight services, Nativity scenes, and theatrical productions, all geared toward heralding the birth of Christ. Here are photos churches have posted to Facebook in recent days.

ATLANTA — Inside the Capitol rotunda, a towering Christmas tree shines with thousands of lights. Red poinsettias line the staircases. Long strands of garland hang from railings. And a children’s choir sings about the birth of Christ. That was the scene when Gov. Brian Kemp and his family kicked off the Christmas season in Georgia earlier this month with the lighting of the state Christmas tree, a clear signal that it’s still politically correct to celebrate Christmas as a Christian holy day in the Bible Belt.

SUWANEE, Ga. — The story of a 19-year-old aspiring preacher who baptized most of his teammates on the East Georgia State College baseball team amassed more readers in The Christian Index than any other news article in 2023.Analytics show Index readers have an affinity for stories about people turning to Christ. Of the newspaper’s most-read news articles of the year, all involved people turning to Christ.

VALDOSTA, Ga. – It would appear to the most casual observer that Northside Baptist Church in Valdosta exists to reach unbelievers. Northside’s Pastor, Robby Foster, is a Gospel preacher and has led his church to focus on the value of the reaching the unreached.

People from across Georgia were featured in The Christian Index in 2023. Some are old. Some are young. Some are somewhere in the middle. All are busy impacting their communities for Christ. Here’s a look back at a few of those people.

ATLANTA — Groups of Georgia Baptists took part in a series of prayer tours of the state Capitol over the past week.  Mike Griffin, public affairs representative for the Georgia Baptist Mission Board, led tours, providing insights into how state government operates. As the groups made their way through the Capitol, they made multiple stops to pray for government leaders.

The Georgia Baptist community lost many church leaders during 2023, including Charles Stanley and Michael Catt, the pastors who developed worldwide outreaches through Christian broadcasting and filmmaking.

MOUNT JULIET, Tenn. — With Christmas just around the corner, many Tennesseans are dealing with the aftermath of a series of tornadoes that swept through West and Middle Tennessee on Saturday. Tennessee Baptist Disaster Relief teams responded immediately to the storms, and recovery efforts are underway.

HOUSTON, Texas — Georgia preacher Levi Skipper will be heading west to serve as lead pastor of a Texas megachurch. Sagemont Church, a Southern Baptist congregation in Houston, announced Sunday that Skipper had been called as lead pastor. Skipper, with 17 years of experience as a senior pastor, has led the Georgia Baptist Mission Board’s church strengthening and evangelism teams since 2019.

BAXLEY, Ga. — Georgia-based evangelist Rick Gage rocked the Bible Belt in 2023 with his powerful brand of preaching in a series of crusades attended by tens of thousands. In his final crusade of the year, some 17,000 people packed into an open-air amphitheater just outside Jackson, Miss., for four nights of preaching. More than 2,000 people made decisions for Christ.

MONROE, Ga. — Pastors are sometimes depressed, distressed, discouraged, despondent, dejected, disconsolate, disheartened, even doleful. However, that is not true of Mike Peavy, pastor of Gratis Church in Monroe, Ga. At least a recent visit with him gave every evidence that he is a joyful, compassionate, dedicated pastor who always seems to see the glass as half full rather than half empty.

SWAINSBORO, Ga. — Robbie Lane, the starting shortstop on the East Georgia State College baseball team, has hit a grand slam of a different sort in an at bat as an aspiring minister. The 19-year-old baptized 11 of his teammates last week in a shiny aluminum watering trough set up on the baseball field.

Few Southern Baptists would know the name Robert Benjamin Headden, the late Georgia pastor under whose ministry famed international missionary Lottie Moon would be called to China some 150 years ago. By 1873, Headden, pastor of the Cartersville Baptist Church, had earned the reputation of a beloved pastor, dynamic preacher, denominational leader, and ardent supporter of missions, all of which would have been inconceivable 10 years earlier as he lay critically wounded for two days in Gettysburg.

DAWSON, Ga. — Christians in this small southern Georgia town are putting the spotlight back on Jesus this Christmas season, shifting the focus away from Santa who, for generations of Americans, has been the face of the holidays. That shift was on full display at a Christmas party for nearly 1,000 children on Saturday. The jolly old elf wasn’t there, nor were his reindeer, nor elves, nor any other commercialized yuletide decorations.

POWDER SPRINGS, Ga. — More than 200 years ago the Brothers Grimm published a collection of fairy tales about a poor shoemaker who was almost out of food to eat and leather to make shoes. However, during the night, little elves slipped into the shoemaker’s home and worked furiously to make incredibly beautiful and serviceable shoes that permitted the shoemaker to prosper. It is a beautiful Christmas story of goodness and grace.