Tennessee Baptist and Reflector

Telling the Story of Tennessee Baptists Since 1835

THE GOLDEN RULE IS STILL GOLDEN

By Randy C. Davis
President and executive director, TBMB

Social media has the potential for good, but it also has a dark side that Christians too often get drawn into. It’s time we evaluate ourselves and assess if what we’re contributing to the public market of ideas leads to edifying the body of Christ and making Jesus attractive to spiritually lost people. The Golden Rule is still golden, and it should filter the thoughts we’re about to fire across the virtual landscape. 

This certainly seems to be the current need within the Southern Baptist Convention. Our public rhetoric is destroying our witness to a lost world and is discouraging to the saints who see their pastors and other leaders taking verbal swipes at each other 280 Twitter characters at a time.  [Read more…]

WHAT GETS YOU GOING IN THE MORNING?

Editor’s note: This is Part II of a two-part series by TBMB leader Randy C. Davis. Part I, “What’s Keeping You Awake at Night?” can be found online at BaptistandReflector.org

By Randy C. Davis
TBMB President & Executive Director

One of our Tennessee Baptist pastors recently asked what were things that kept me awake at night and what were things that got me going in the morning. I’m glad he asked. It’s been a great opportunity to evaluate if my personal and ministry goals align with what I hope the Lord wants to accomplish through me.

So here are five things that get me up in the morning, or put another way, here’s what cranks my tractor:    [Read more…]

TENNESSEE BAPTISTS HAVE STEPPED IN, STEPPED UP DURING PANDEMIC

Davis, Chesser reflect on first-year anniversary of COVID, look to future

By Lonnie Wilkey
[email protected]

FRANKLIN — During a year marked by COVID-19, Tennessee Baptist pastors and churches stepped up and “took lemons and made lemonade,” observed Randy C. Davis, president and executive director of the Tennessee Baptist Mission Board.

Davis and Tennessee Baptist Convention President Bruce Chesser reflected on the challenges and ministry accomplishments of 2020 during the one-year anniversary of COVID-19.

 “It was a year ago this week that we canceled Youth Evangelism Conference 48 hours before it was to take place. It was this week that churches started seeing the need to shut down their worshiping together,” Davis recalled during a video presentation. 

“The majority of our churches did that, and we all kind of hoped for the fact that we would be back worshiping again Easter. But then it stretched through Resurrection Sunday and that wonderful season and then it went on through the summer and you know the history of what it’s been like,” he continued. [Read more…]

UNDERSTAND THE DANGER OF THE EQUALITY ACT

Editor’s Note: The following is an open correspondence to Tennessee Baptists by Randy C. Davis, president and executive director of the Tennessee Baptist Mission Board.

 

Tennessee Baptists, it’s time for vigilance and action.

We stood for life and were heard just a couple of years ago when we needed to speak into prolife legislation here in Tennessee, and now we need to stand and express our voices on a national level.

The Equality Act, which is a dangerous piece of legislation that President Joe Biden and his administration set as a priority to pass within his first 100 days, has passed the U.S. House of Representatives vote and is moving to the Senate. This bill, if it becomes law, has deep and wide sweeping implications across our country. Please contact your U.S. senators AND ask them to vote NO. Also, let the White House know of your opposition to this bill. [Read more…]

WHAT’S KEEPING YOU AWAKE AT NIGHT?

Editor’s note: This is the first of a two-part series by TBMB Executive Director Randy C. Davis. Part Two will appear in the March 10 issue of the Baptist and Reflector.

By Randy C. Davis
TBMB President & Executive Director

One of our Tennessee Baptist pastors recently asked what were things that kept me awake at night and what were five things that got me going in the morning. I’m glad he asked. It’s been a great opportunity to evaluate if my personal and ministry goals align with what I hope the Lord wants to accomplish through me.

So here they are — the five things that keep me up at night:

Spiritual lostness

I have had a burden for the eternal destiny of friends, family and people in general since I came to faith in Christ. The day Granny Davis died, I read in her Bible a note written in 1956: “I am standing in the gap for my dear children so that one day they will be a circle unbroken, together in heaven forever.” [Read more…]

PERSPECTIVE ON THE SOUTHERN BAPTIST CONVENTION

By Lonnie Wilkey
Editor, Baptist and Reflector
[email protected]

Messengers from across the Southern Baptist Convention will travel to Music City in June (COVID-permitting) for their annual meeting to be held at the Gaylord Opryland Resort and Convention Center.

The last time the SBC annual meeting was held in Nashville in 2005 , it drew 11,641 messengers. That number likely will go unchallenged in 2021, primarily because a large number of people probably will be hesitant to travel due to uncertainties about COVID-19.

Still, with a large number of Southern Baptists who live within a six-hour drive to Nashville, attendance could be better than expected. A number of Tennessee Baptists will be involved as volunteers at the annual meeting. We will have information in an upcoming issue about Crossover Nashville which takes place on June 13. So, with the SBC looming close, my thoughts have been more on the SBC than normal. [Read more…]

ARE WE ‘LOST IN DISTRACTION’ OR ‘NOW FOR MISSIONS!’

By Randy C. Davis
TBMB President & Executive Director

It only takes a spark to start a controversy.

It was just one article, but its publishing in 1896 ignited a flashfire reaction across the Southern Baptist Convention. Sides formed. People postured. Proverbial lines were drawn in the sand. Rhetorical flames fueled by passionate conviction rose higher and higher and threatened to gut any good work Southern Baptists had accomplished.  

But a voice of reason can extinguish the flames with a much-needed biblical perspective. 

E.E. Folk was that voice. 

Folk was the proprietor and editor in 1897 of the Baptist and Reflector. Folk was described as “a strong promotor of the entire denominational program on both the state and national levels.” His diplomacy was needed because when William H. Whitsitt, president at the time of Southern Seminary, published his article disparaging Landmarkism, he effectively tossed a match on dried kindling. 

Many Southern Baptists of the day firmly embraced a Landmarkist perspective. Outrage swelled. Entire associations called for Whitsitt’s immediate resignation. Others called for a rigorous academic inquiry to be made on the subject while others counseled Southern Baptists to reject “judgements” and expressions of “opinions” which would “injure the seminary.”

The battle raged on, but Folk stepped into the fray and wrote that while there were strong arguments on both sides, there was a larger view that was more important.  [Read more…]

WHEN GOD MAKES MUCH OF LITTLE

By Randy C. Davis
TBMB President & Executive Director

There are times when the peculiar will cause you to pause and think.

For instance, during the first of November, the TBMB received an anonymous donation of two pennies in an envelope addressed to no one in particular, and with no specific gift designation. The envelope had no name or return address, just an Etowah postmark and inside the giver’s two cents. [Read more…]

TBMB LEADER CHALLENGES ERLC OVER LANGUAGE IN AMICUS BRIEF

By Lonnie Wilkey
Editor, Baptist and Reflector
[email protected]

FRANKLIN — A state convention leader has publicly challenged the Southern Baptist Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission for stating that there is a denominational hierarchy in an amicus brief filed by the SBC entity in August.

“There is absolutely no denominational hierarchy when it comes to the Southern Baptist Convention,” Randy C. Davis, president and executive director of the Tennessee Baptist Mission Board in a column released Dec. 2 on the Baptist and Reflector website.

Davis also wrote a letter to Russell Moore, president of the ERLC. Referring to an amicus brief, written on behalf of the Thomas More Society and the ERLC, Davis wrote that he “was deeply distressed that our Southern Baptist polity, our historical practice and our SBC constitutionally-protected relationships were so blatantly misstated and misrepresented.”

ERLC filed the amicus brief on behalf of the North American Mission Board which is involved in a lawsuit with Will McRaney, former executive director of the Baptist Convention of Maryland/Delaware. [Read more…]

DAVIS: TENNESSEE BAPTISTS ARE ‘RISING TO THE OCCASION’

By Lonnie Wilkey
[email protected]

Tennessee Baptist Mission Board president and executive director Randy C. Davis.

FRANKLIN — As COVID-19 cases begin to rise throughout the state, Tennessee Baptist churches will rise to the occasion, said Randy C. Davis,  president and executive director of the Tennessee Baptist Mission Board.

In a pre-Thanksgiving video update (view the video HERE), Davis acknowledged the spike in COVID cases.

Davis observed he has seen it in a personal way through a conversation with his neighbor who works in an ICU unit at a Nashville hospital. “She says it’s as bad as it’s ever been before,” he related. 

“Over the past few weeks, we’ve heard of more lay people, more ministry leaders and more pastors having tested positive for COVID,” he added. 

“Many of them are suffering greatly because of it,” Davis said. “Thankfully, some cases are very mild and it’s a matter of a week, two weeks and they’re back at it, but there are a lot of people experiencing some very severe symptoms, and we want to be praying for each other during that time.” [Read more…]

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