By Randy C. Davis
President & executive director, Tennessee Baptist Mission Board

The Southern Baptist Convention is facing a Nehemiah moment. 

Put your sandals on and let’s take a walk through the rubble known as Jerusalem. Nehemiah wasn’t a preacher, or evangelist or any other type of vocational minister. He was a godly layman who heard the distant city was in ruins and the effort to rebuild the walls and reestablish the Jewish center of life was stalled. There appeared to be no hope that the nation of Israel would return to prominence and be the testimony to God’s greatness that the Lord had called it to be. 

Nehemiah was broken hearted. He was crushed, and he wore his devastated spirit on his sleeve. The Babylonian king noticed and through Nehemiah’s humility, repentance, boldness, faith and determination, God used him to restore the nation.  [Read more…]

By Randy C. Davis
TBMB President & Executive Director

We wanted to gather, and we did … in droves.

After a year without an annual Southern Baptist Convention because of the pandemic, and with much on our minds, Nashville hosted the largest gathering of Southern Baptists since 1995 with more than 20,000 messengers and guests.

Prior to the convention, I put out a call for Tennessee Baptists to show up and show why we are known as the Volunteer State. You did it.

I am extremely proud of the servant leadership and kind hospitality Tennesseans provided as the SBC gathered under the banner, “We Are Great Commission Baptists.” From those who served as ushers and greeters, to disaster relief volunteers who coordinated childcare, to our friendly Tennessee Baptist Mission Board staff who spent an enormous amount of time extending a red-carpet welcome to folks from all around the globe, Tennessee Baptists did a great job helping to host the SBC. [Read more…]

By Randy C. Davis
President and executive director, TBMB

I love being a Tennessee Baptist, and there are countless reasons why, beginning with our rich history and continuing with our very bright future. 

Just a few years ago, the Tennessee Baptist Mission Board exhumed the remains of Tidence Lane, the first Baptist pastor to journey over the Appalachian Mountains and into East Tennessee to invest his life in church planting, the pastorate and actively participating in associational ministry. 

His remains were in a family plot in the middle of a pasture on land he received for distinguished service during the Revolutionary War, just a couple hundred yards from the spring near where he planted Bent Creek Church in the 1780s. That’s a decade-plus before Tennessee even became a state. 

His remains, along with that of his wife and other family members, were reinterred about a mile away, at Whitesburg Baptist Church, which is the direct descendant of Bent Creek.  [Read more…]

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…]