By Connie Davis Bushey
News Editor, Baptist and Reflector

Jeff Lovingood, senior associate pastor, First Baptist Church, Cleveland, baptizes Savanna Wheaton on March 13 at the church.

CLEVELAND — The March 13 evening service of First Baptist Church here was unique. No one at the church had been in a service where 100 people were baptized.

Amazingly, in many ways, the event wasn’t planned. For instance, 97 new Christians were signed up to be baptized but three more people came to bring the total to 100 people baptized.

No special occasion or event was held at the church which resulted in the many people making the commitments. The people baptized had made professions of faith mostly during the past six months or so.

In fact, baptisms are the norm at First Baptist. The church baptized 253 new Christians last year. First Baptist draws about 3,300 people to its five Sunday morning services. All of the services are held on site at the main campus. [Read more…]

Wallace Memorial’s healthcare ministry receives ultrasound machine from ERLC

By Tom Strode
Baptist Press

Dan Darling of the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, speaks to the congregation of Wallace Memorial Baptist Church. Looking on, from left, are Mike Boyd, pastor; Sandy Bolton, director of missions for Wallace Memorial; John Swisher, president, Wallace Mobile Healthcare; Joe Sorah, compassion ministry specialist, Tennessee Baptist Convention; Phil Young, director of missions, Knox County Association of Baptists; and Tom Hodges, director, Montgomery Village Baptist Center, Knoxville.

KNOXVILLE — An East Tennessee ministry has a new resource provided by Southern Baptists for its mission to serve the needy — in this case, underprivileged, pregnant women.

Wallace Mobile Healthcare, based in Knoxville, received an ultrasound machine March 6 from the Psalm 139 Project of the Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission. The gift — the latest made by the ERLC to centers across the country — occurred during the morning worship service of Wallace Memorial Baptist Church in Knoxville.

The ERLC is “honored to work with Wallace Mobile Healthcare (a ministry of Wallace Memorial Baptist) to provide hope for pregnant women in crisis,” said Dan Darling, the ERLC’s vice president for communications, after making the presentation.

“Wallace Memorial has such a wonderful legacy, inspired by the great missionary Bill Wallace, of providing gospel hope to the most vulnerable,” Darling said in a March 7 news release. “This ultrasound machine is just one more way the heroes working here every day can serve the community with a holistic, pro-life ethic.” [Read more…]

78-year-old Jerry Milam enjoying fruits of new church start in Lyles

By Lonnie Wilkey
Editor, Baptist and Reflector

Nancy and Jerry Milam stand outside the Pizza Junction in Lyles. The restaurant serves as the home of New Life Baptist Church which celebrated its first anniversary on March 13. Milam is a 78-year-old church planter.

LYLES — Statistics indicate that the average church planter is somewhere in his late 20s to his mid-30s, according to Lewis McMullen, church planting specialist for the Tennessee Baptist Convention.

If that’s the case, Jerry Milam acknowledges (with a grin), “I’m well above average.”

Milam, 78, is pastor of New Life Baptist Church in the Hickman County town of Lyles. The church celebrated its first anniversary on March 13.

He began the church with about 25 people after serving as pastor of smaller, traditional churches for more than 50 years. Milam had envisioned retiring last May from Wrigley Baptist Church in Lyles, a congregation he had served three different times for a total of 33 years. “I was going to sit on the back pew and rest, but it didn’t work out that way,” he recalled. [Read more…]

By Lonnie Wilkey
Editor, Baptist and Reflector

Union President Dub Oliver welcomes conference attendees.

JACKSON — Leaders who recognize the need and are willing to be involved are critical to church revitalization, speakers agreed at a church revitalization conference held at Union University here last week.

The conference, which was sponsored by the Tennessee Baptist Convention and Union, addressed the issue of “Fanning the Flame of Christian Leadership.”

Tennessee native Jim Henry, former pastor of Two Rivers Baptist Church, Nashville, and First Baptist Church, Orlando, Fla., spoke twice during the opening session on March 14.

A former president of the Southern Baptist Convention, Henry has a unique perspective on church revitalization. [Read more…]

By Lonnie Wilkey
Editor, Baptist and Reflector

BRENTWOOD — Groundbreaking for the Tennessee Baptist Convention Executive Board’s Church Support Center will be held Saturday, April 23, on the new site in Berry Farms, south of Franklin.

Executive Board offices have been housed in the LifePoint Building in Brentwood following the sale of the former Baptist Center in 2013.

“The Church Support Center groundbreaking/worship ceremony will be both exciting and historic,” said Randy C. Davis, TBC executive director/treasurer. [Read more…]