Affirmations and Questions for State Conventions

  Anthony Jordan, the Executive Director for the Baptist General Convention of Oklahoma (BGCO), wrote a recent article entitled “Perspective: SBC & State Conventions.” In that article he argued that SBC leaders should not hold up the Florida Baptist Convention (FBC) as “the model for state conventions of the future.” The FBC now sends 51% of their CP dollars to …

Principles for Christian Engagement in a Social Media World: A Humble Response to Drs. Vines and Draper

  Recently, Drs. Jerry Vines and Jimmy Draper wrote an open letter to Southern Baptists that was posted at Baptist Press. The main topic of the letter was disagreements between Southern Baptists about the 2016 Presidential election, specifically disagreements over Southern Baptist leaders who chose to attend the evangelical leaders meeting with Donald Trump. Vines and Draper urged, “Disagreements with fellow …

What Needs to Change at the IMB?

I had the privilege of participating in a panel at this year’s SBC on “The Future of the IMB.” The SBC was created for the purpose of having an international mission board that propagates the gospel, so the future of the IMB is massively important. As I contemplated our discussion of the IMB’s future, I later thought of four suggestions …

CP: ANOTHER WAY?

By Jon Akin I love the Cooperative Program because through it my church gets to join with other churches annually to send out and support over 5,000 international missionaries, train 16,000 seminary students, and plant 3,000 churches. Yet, I also recognize that it has some limitations. Baptists created the SBC in order to get the gospel to the unreached places …

Helpful Resources For Teaching Proverbs

Written by Jon Akin My doctoral dissertation is on Proverbs, and I am currently preaching through the book. I often get asked about the best resources for Proverbs. There are many helpful resources for Proverbs, so here I try to list some that have been most helpful to me. Commentaries:  Bruce Waltke’s 2 volume in NICOT– This is the best …

Should We Imitate OT Characters?

by Jon Akin I was on a panel recently that discussed Christ-centered preaching. One of the topics that we discussed was the issue of the current backlash against a moral example hermeneutic—seeing the behavior of OT heroes as examples to emulate or avoid. Also, Dr. Daniel Block mentions this approach to the OT in his recent post on Ed Stetzer’s …

The Gospel Project Panel: Why Talk about Christ-Centered Preaching?

Recently, I was on a panel about Christ-centered preaching with Ed Stetzer, Trevin Wax, and Eric Hankins. You can listen to that discussion here. I had a lot of fun and was sharpened by the discussion. I wanted to take this opportunity to elaborate on the first question that was asked: “Why have this discussion?” I think there are at …

Focusing Your Sermon

Deciding what to include and leave out from sermon study is one of the most difficult tasks for young pastors in crafting sermons. Often sermons become a regurgitation of the cool things they learned in their study, instead of a focused exhortation. A couple years ago, Pastor Ronnie Floyd tweeted a link to a Harvard Business Review article on “How …