Greenville South Carolina (SC)

Our Mission Statement: Impacting as many people as possible with the Gospel and empowering them to become committed followers of Christ, working together toward multiplying church plants in Lee County and around the world.

We are a traditional, fundamental Baptist church located in Troutman, NC which is only a short drive from Statesville NC or Mooresville NC. Our goal is to impact our community with the best news ever- the Gospel of Jesus Christ!

Kansas City Missouri (MO)

Independent Baptist church in Haslet, Texas

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Need: Full-Time Youth/Music Minister

What The Bible Says - Good Samaritan's Penny Pulpit by Pastor Ed Rice

What The Bible Says Good Samaritan's Penny Pulpit by Pastor Ed Rice

What The Bible Says Good Samaritan's Penny Pulpit by Pastor Ed Rice

Sunday Morning Service, 05/12/2024 Happy Mother's Day! Pastor Tom Vineyard II Kings 22:1-2 (KJV) "The Influence and Impact ...

Giving a personal testimony of the impact of God's word, this message was preached on Wednesday evening, Jan. 17, 2024, by ...

Thank you for joining the Bethel Baptist Church this Sunday Morning!

American Bible Society study finds majority don't trust technology with spiritual matters.Ask ChatGPT how to improve your spiritual life, and the natural-language processing artificial intelligence chatbot has plenty of suggestions.But Americans are skeptical that artificial intelligence, or AI, has much to offer in the way of reliable religious guidance.Sixty-eight percent of people don’t think AI could help them with their spiritual practices or “promote spiritual health,” according to the latest research from American Bible Society (ABS). Fifty-eight percent say they don’t think AI will “aid in moral reasoning” and only one out of every four people say they feel optimistic about the impact the technology will have.“Americans are more fearful than hopeful about artificial intelligence,” said John Farquhar Plake, an ABS program officer and editor-in-chief of the State of the Bible series. “People don’t know how AI will change the culture—but they’re mildly uneasy about it.”ABS surveyed about 2,500 people for its annual report on Scripture engagement and related topics. While technology has been a regular part of the survey, this is the first year ABS dedicated a set of questions to the topic of technology that performs tasks traditionally associated with human intelligence.AI is rapidly evolving, and currently includes everything from Amazon’s “virtual assistant” Alexa to chatbots running large language models that can pass the bar exam. People are pushing the technology further every day, and some Christians who work in tech are excited about the possibilities—dreaming of algorithms that might one day help people grow, learn, and go deeper in their faith.“It is not difficult to imagine how pastors and ...Continue reading...

Spiritual care is essential as stressors among law enforcement rise.Sitting in the front row of a supervisor training in 2016, Stamford Police Sgt. Sean Boeger raised his hand every time the instructor asked who had dealt with a particular experience, including homicides, fatal accidents, and child deaths.During his nearly 30 years as a police officer, 48-year-old Boeger had helped with body recovery efforts at Ground Zero after 9/11. When 20 children were killed by a lone shooter in 2012 at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, just 40 miles from Stamford, Boeger volunteered to help the small Newtown police department. He covered midnight shifts as officers took time to recover.The instructor at the training triggered something in Boeger. Until that class, he had never dwelt much on the effect of witnessing so much trauma. Driving home that evening, he also thought back to another incident, when he responded to a report of a small child falling out of an eighth-story window.“I felt overwhelmed, kind of panic-stricken,” he recalled of that evening. “I think I was more in shock from the stuff I’d never contemplated and the trauma impact it had on me. Because you don’t stop to think about it.”So Boeger did something he had never contemplated previously: He sought help from John Revell, a chaplain who had recently been spending time with his department.“I don’t know what’s going on with me, but I feel like I need to talk to you,” Boeger recalls telling Revell, whom he calls “the Rev.” Revell invited him over, interrupting his family dinnertime, and the two spent an hour or so talking. It opened the door to a longer-term relationship, and an eventual appreciation for the Rev’s consistent presence around ...Continue reading...

Schaeffer demonstrated that “charity and clarity” must go together. His deep compassion for people and firm conviction in truth has left an enduring legacy. May we follow his example.? ?

In the country's most secular state, tiny congregations have made a big impact by their disaster response.For weeks, Tárik Rodriguez had been working on bringing a guest preacher and worship leader from across the country to help his church celebrate its third anniversary. In 2021, Rodriguez and a small team launched Viela da Graça Igreja in Novo Hamburgo, a small city in Brazil’s most southern province, Rio Grande do Sul.Then, it started raining.The floods have done more than interrupt the small Reformed congregation’s celebratory plans. They’ve devastated the community. The storms that began at the end of April struck Rio Grande do Sul’s most densely populated areas and have killed at least 116 people. Around 130 people are still missing. The high water has closed roads and even the airport, which has grounded flights until May 30. As of Friday, May 10, nearly 400,000 people have been displaced from their homes and 70,772 are in public shelters.Some of those have found their way to Viela da Graça, which is located on higher ground and has been largely protected from a water breach. Since May 4, Rodriguez and members of the 75-person congregation have been hosting around 50 people in a two-bathroom, 3,500-square-foot building.“As Christians, we needed to open our doors,” Rodriguez says. “And that’s what we did.”Beyond the bathroom constraints, the situation has been less than ideal. There are frequent power cuts (1.2 million people have been affected by outages) and the building has lost access to both running and potable water because the sanitation company cannot treat the dirty floodwaters. A nearby residential condominium, which gets its water from a well, has provided drinking water and showers.Continue reading...

The Uniform Civil Code seeks “one nation, one law” to govern citizens' personal lives, but religious minorities fear hidden costs.In February, the northern Indian state of Uttarakhand passed a Uniform Civil Code (UCC), which aims to implement a common set of rules governing crucial aspects of life, including marriage, divorce, inheritance, and adoption.This code would supplant existing personal laws that religious groups in India currently ascribe to. Personal laws cover family-related matters such as marriage, divorce, child custody, adoption, property rights, and inheritance.If the ruling Hindu-led Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has its way, a UCC will eventually be implemented across all of India. (At present, Goa is the only other state with a UCC, derived from the Portuguese-era Civil Code of 1867.)The BJP’s push to implement a national UCC may bring relief for Christians in India, especially in terms of women’s inheritance rights. Under existing personal laws, Christian mothers cannot inherit their deceased children’s property. The UCC proposes to eliminate discriminatory provisions that favor male inheritance, potentially leading to more equitable inheritance rights for Christian women.But few of India’s religious minorities trust the BJP, whose policies have often been more harmful than helpful to Christian communities. In Assam, Christian leaders protested the passing of a bill banning “magical healing” as it unfairly impacted their custom of praying for the sick. Ministries including World Vision and the Evangelical Fellowship of India recently lost government authorization to collect foreign donations. Nine states now have anti-conversion laws in place, and believers have borne the brunt of religious unrest in these areas as a result.As this year’s general elections seem likely ...Continue reading...