COMINGS & GOINGS Marcelle Ronquille, new as interim pastor, Pleasant Hill Ruston. Steve (wife Lizzie) Mears, new as minister to students, Kingsville Pineville. Pastor: Bart Walker. Andy Prince, new as interim pastor at Calvary Homer. Roy Strother, new as interim pastor at Calvary Springhill. Doyle Hales, new as pastor at Midway Serepta. Marty Wright, new as interim pastor at New Serepta. L.B. Canterbury retired in March from Old Union in Shongaloo. Jerry Elgin, new as interim pastor at Westlake Doyline. Josh De Loach, new as interim pastor at New Ramah in Castor. Beau (Olivia) Guidry, new as pastor at First Milton, from First Longville. Loyd Sowers resigns as pastor of Kaplan Baptist. Sam (wife Donisha) West, new as pastor, Main Street Mission, Pineville. NEEDED & GIVING Pastorless churches in Bayou Macon and Madison Baptist Associations. First Oak Grove, Warsaw Baptist near Delhi, Mound Baptist, Unity Oak Grove, New Hope Monticello, Elmwood near Lake Providence. DOM: Jay Morgan. Pastorless churches in … [Read more...]
Rural churches windfall plowed into missions
By Karen L. Willoughby, Managing Editor EDITOR'S NOTE: Each Easter season, the Southern Baptist Convention observed an annual Week of Prayer for North American Missions in conjunction with the 2011 Annie Armstrong Easter Offering, with a goal of $70 million to help pay the salaries and ministry support of 5,000-plus missionaries serving in North America under the SBC's North American Mission Board. For more information, go to www.anniearmstrong.com. COUSHATTA -- A look at an oil shale map of Louisiana shows that rural Coushatta is on the southeast edge of one of the largest discoveries of natural gas in the history of the Ark-La-Tex, the region connecting Arkansas, Louisiana and Texas. Landowners' mineral rights for the Haynesville Shale discovery have been sold at successively higher prices to wildcatting companies since word leaked out in 2008, and Fairview Baptist Church near Coushatta has received the tithes and offerings of people who want to bless the Lord as He has blessed them, pastor Matt Endris said. With this financial windfall, Fairview gave $106,090 to the Annie Armstrong Easter Offering for North American missions in 2009, making it the largest giver to the offering … [Read more...]
Questions We’ve Pondered
By Bill Warren, Professor of New Testament and Greek at NOBTS Question: In the passage about a spear being stabbed into Jesus’ side, what is the significance of that act? Bill Warren responds: John 19:34 mentions that “one of the soldiers stabbed his side with his spear, and blood and water immediately came out.” The context has Pilate ordering the speeding up of the deaths of the crucified men by breaking their legs, thereby taking away their ability to sustain their bodies and breath. When the soldiers came to Jesus, however, he was already dead and so they didn’t break his legs, thus fulfilling Scripture (see verse 36). Instead, a soldier stabbed Jesus in the side, with blood and water coming out, most likely due to Jesus’ lung being pierced (also a Scripture fulfillment, see verse 37). The spear piercing also showed that Jesus was clearly dead, a truth that had become more controversial by the time John was writing. Some were denying the humanity of Jesus in the late first century, a belief known as Docetism (Jesus only seemed to be human). John notes in 1 John 4:2, however, that belief in the humanity of Jesus is essential, and in 2 John 7 he warns … [Read more...]
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