By Lonnie Wilkey
Editor, Baptist and Reflector

Change. For many people this “five-letter” word may as well be a “four-letter” (curse) word. Most people detest change.

I admit that while I am not necessarily anti-change, I am usually not out in front leading the change band-wagon.

Change is hard for most individuals and even churches because we get comfortable with what we are doing. The only problem with getting comfortable is that we get satisfied with where we are in our life or in our church and we get complacent. [Read more…]

By Lonnie Wilkey
Editor, Baptist and Reflector

Dizzy Dean, a baseball great who pitched for the St. Louis Cardinals in the 1930s, was known for his wit as well as his pitching.

He once said, “It ain’t bragging if you can do it.”

Bragging is bragging, but of course it does help when you can back up your talk with actions and Dizzy Dean could do that. [Read more…]

By Randy C. Davis
TBC Executive Director

I never tire of seeing people baptized. Every one of them tells a unique story of God’s grace at work in the lives of individuals.

One I remember is Charlie Tanner. I led Charlie to the Lord in his living room almost 35 years ago. He came out of a Mormon sect in which most of his family was strongly entrenched. I felt like shouting when Charlie accepted Christ and was baptized. To this day he is a great disciple of Christ and an active member of First Baptist Church, Vancleave, Miss. [Read more…]

By Chris Turner
Director of Communications, TBC

Ten years worth of stellar performance reviews. You gave yourself to your job and your company. Needed somebody to work overtime? You were there. Last second projects that needed doing? You were all over it. Deadlines? You ate lunch at your desk to ensure you met them. Employee of the month? Yep, multiple times. In fact, your boss singled you out as the poster child of dedication and commitment to “a job well done.”

But here you are, in human resources and sitting across the desk from the personnel director. [Read more…]

By Johnnie Godwin
Contributing Columnist, B&R

My diary entry for June 20, 1955 reads, “I feel that Phyllis is the answer to my prayers if I will try to seek God’s will.” I was 18; she was 16. At 15, I had reluctantly answered a Moses-like call to preach God’s Word. To answer that call, I knew I wasn’t meant to do it alone but matched to the wife God designed for me. So I prayed for Him to send that exact mate. He did! Her name is Phyllis. [Read more…]

By Randy C. Davis
TBC Executive Director

Bob Hall is not a complicated man. He has a love for Jesus and a love for others, and sharing his love for Jesus with others has been a hallmark of his 37 years as campus minister of Baptist Collegiate Ministries at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville.

Bob retires tomorrow (July 31). However, even though the page is turning on decades of formal ministry, Bob’s influence will ripple across Tennessee, the United States, around the world and into eternity. [Read more…]

By Lonnie Wilkey
Editor, Baptist and Reflector

The “Name It and Claim It” theologians have it all wrong.

Noted speakers and authors such as Joel Osteen, Kenneth Copeland, Benny Hinn, Creflo Dollar, and others advocate that if you have enough faith bad things will not happen to you and you will prosper.

Evidently these “experts” are not reading the same Bible I read. [Read more…]

By Lonnie Wilkey
Editor, Baptist and Reflector

I recently received a note from a pastor friend who was distressed that his church was considering cutting his salary.

I was disturbed as well because I know this pastor and no one works harder and cares about his flock and the lost in his community than he does.

Budgets are tight everywhere, from our own personal budgets to businesses and in our denomination and churches. [Read more…]

By Larry Robertson
President, TBC, & Clarksville Pastor

The “famous theologian” Bob Dylan said it well: “The times they are a-changin’.” I know, change is not a welcome word for some folk. Yet change, in and of itself, is neither good nor bad. It is, however, sometimes necessary.

Did you know that lobsters have to shed their shells periodically in order to grow? If they didn’t go through that necessary process of molting, their inelastic shells would become their prisons and eventually their caskets. Shortly after vacating their shells, lobsters remain secluded for a number of days while their soft shells harden. [Read more…]

By Randy C. Davis
TBC Executive Director

I refuse to be a rotten egg; and I don’t want you to be one either. Fortunately, there is still time not to become one.

Maybe I’d better explain.

Theologian C.S. Lewis writes in his seminal book, Mere Christianity, that, “It may be hard for an egg to turn into a bird: it would be a jolly sight harder for it to learn to fly while remaining an egg. We are like eggs at present. And you cannot go on indefinitely being just an ordinary, decent egg. We must be hatched or go bad.” [Read more…]