Baptist Briefs

Posted: 8/17/07

Baptist Briefs

Some SBC leaders endorse blog. Several prominent Baptist leaders have publicly endorsed a groundbreaking blog operated by reform-minded pastors within the Southern Baptist Convention. The endorsers include the presidents of three SBC entities and a college president—Morris Chapman, president of the SBC’s Executive Committee; Thom Rainer, president of LifeWay Christian Resources; Jerry Rankin, president of the SBC’s International Mission Board; and David Dockery, president of Union University. All have posted messages of support for SBCOutpost.com. The weblog, previously run by Georgia pastor Marty Duren, relaunched in June as a collaborative site with the goal of becoming the “premier site for Southern Baptist news and commentary.” All of the bloggers are conservatives and have been involved in efforts to reform the Southern Baptist Convention, which most say has become too narrow and moribund under the leadership of an older generation of biblical inerrantists.

NAMB plans to sell FamilyNet. Southern Baptists’ North American Mission Board plans to sell its FamilyNet to Atlanta pastor Charles Stanley’s In Touch Ministries. NAMB trustees reportedly voted unanimously Aug. 8 to accept a letter of intent from In Touch outlining the ministry’s intent to buy the television network. Under terms of the letter, NAMB and In Touch Ministries will work together to evaluate and negotiate the planned sale and purchase of FamilyNet, and finalize details for the sale on or before Oct. 31.

Former Campbell president dies. Norman Wiggins, president of Campbell University for 36 years before his retirement in 2003, died Aug. 1 at age 83 in Winston-Salem, N.C. Under his leadership as president, Campbell College grew to become a full-fledged university, adding graduate programs in law, education, business, pharmacy and divinity. Wiggins, a former president of the Baptist State Convention of North Carolina, served as the school’s chancellor after he retired from the president’s post.

Holy water from Falwell school? Move over, Perrier. The next designer bottled water may come out of Lynchburg, Va., courtesy of the late Jerry Falwell. Liberty University, the school founded by the fundamentalist Baptist evangelist who died May 15, has announced that it will bottle water drawn from a spring near the campus, according to the Lynchburg News & Advance. Liberty Mountain Natural Spring Water apparently was one of Falwell’s last projects before his death. The 16.9- ounce bottle of water will be taken from a spring on university property once owned by the late Carter Glass, a Democratic U.S. senator from Virginia who died in 1946. Falwell bought the estate and founded his university there in 1971. The spring had been out of operation for at least 35 years until about six months ago, when Falwell had it brought back into service.

Seminary president, ethicist debate homemaking studies. Paige Patterson, president of Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Fort Worth, and Robert Parham, executive director of the Baptist Center for Ethics, squared off on Fox News to debate the value of the seminary’s new undergraduate program in homemaking. The classes are part of a homemaking concentration for a bachelor of arts in humanities degree through the College at Southwestern, the seminary’s undergraduate school.