A weekly digest of Southern Baptist, Reformed, and broader theological news — curated for pastors and elders.
Voters in Missouri, Idaho, Virginia, and Nevada face abortion measures on Tuesday, and Virginia's ballot also asks voters to redefine marriage. At least 60 Orthodox Christians were killed in two ambushes in Ethiopia's Oromia region. Church insurance premiums have jumped as much as 30% this year, a federal appeals court heard the Summit Church's zoning case, and Ouachita Baptist will ask its faculty to sign its doctrinal statements. Pew finds the youngest adults attending church more often than their parents' generation, and one of the largest United Methodist churches in the country has voted to leave. On All Saints' Day, a week to pray for the persecuted, vote with a clear conscience, and look hard at the fine print of the church's insurance policy.
Gunmen attacked a Greek Orthodox funeral in Jordan, killing at least seven, and a school shooting in Bend, Oregon, reached into a young Southern Baptist church plant. A new law reopens Social Security to ministers who opted out, Lifeway finds most pastors feeling the economy in their pews, and a former Lifeway director has been indicted for misusing funds. Federal regulators documented how banks shut out customers over their convictions, and Missouri Baptists are pressing hard on Amendment 3 before Election Day. Andy Stanley has named his successor. On Reformation Sunday, a week to grieve with those who mourn and to keep the books, and the pulpit, clean.
Southern Baptists gave $212.5 million to the Lottie Moon offering, the most in IMB history, and Lifeway found that 93% of pastors won't endorse candidates from the pulpit even if the courts say they may. Abortion is on the ballot in four states, evangelical and Catholic leaders spoke together on immigration, and the Supreme Court will hear a Catholic preschool case on Election Day. The PCA lost one of its founders at 101, and a Kentucky Baptist pastor's arrest is a reminder of why churches guard the door. A week of generosity, restraint, and vigilance.
Three weeks before the midterms, SBC President Willy Rice told pastors to "step up" and teach their people why to vote as they do, while the Pentagon announced that the Fort Hood gunman will be executed by firing squad on a public livestream, drawing objections from Catholic bishops, the National Association of Evangelicals, and senators of both parties. The Supreme Court took a church land-use case, the FDA put off its abortion pill review until spring, and Lifeway found pastors preaching longer with their people's blessing. A week to ask what a pulpit is for, and what it is not for.
On Cooperative Program Sunday, a new compensation study found Southern Baptist pastor pay falling for the first time since 2008, with nearly two in three churches giving their pastor no health insurance, while Congress sent the Clergy Act to the president's desk. A federal judge narrowed the long-running Sills lawsuit, the Pentagon moved its chaplains under a new Office of Religious Affairs, and the Supreme Court opens a term that includes another Colorado religious liberty case. A week for elders to look at how the church cares for the men it asks to shepherd it.
The new SBC president used his first Executive Committee meeting to propose a new article on gender and marriage for the Baptist Faith & Message, while the committee cut its own budget 12% and removed a church over its handling of abuse. The same week, a long investigation named a small circle of Reformed pastors and influencers selling segregationist theology to angry young men, and Lifeway found more churchgoers saying parts of Scripture have outlived their relevance. A week about what a confession can say, and what it cannot do for a church that stops believing it.
Al Mohler said three words this week that most public theologians never say — "I blew it" — and withdrew the blasphemy provision from his hypothetical Christian nationalist constitution. Meanwhile the ACNA's archbishop trial closed with no verdict before December, a new book argues women are now leaving church faster than men, and forty-six missionaries were sent to places where some of them could not show their faces. A week about what we ask the state to enforce, and what only the church can.
The PCA formally closed the book on women deacons this week, the ACNA finished the first week of its archbishop's trial behind closed doors, and on Saturday Illinois became the latest state where a doctor may help a patient end his life. Three different tests of whether churches will hold a line — and a reminder that the hardest ones will reach the hospital room before they reach the assembly floor.
Tomorrow the Anglican Church in North America puts its own sitting archbishop on trial — the first time in its short history — while the PCA and OPC both call their churches to fast and pray this month for renewal and for laborers. One communion is testing whether its discipline works; two others are admitting that structure alone will not fill their pulpits.
SBC President Willy Rice named a commission to settle how the ban on women pastors will actually be applied — and the G3 network dissolved after its president admitted to anonymously mailing the plagiarism dossier against Tom Buck that this digest covered last week. One story is about drawing a boundary; the other is about what happens when men police a boundary in the dark.
A Texas appeals court held this week that an independent, elder-governed church is entitled to the same constitutional protection from judicial review as a diocese with a code of canon law. Read alongside the death of a 20-year-old in a Southern Baptist missionary boot camp, the week poses one question twice: if the courts will not examine how elders investigate and govern, who will?
Johnny Hunt's three-and-a-half-year defamation suit against the SBC ended Aug. 12 with a final summary judgment against him — and in the same week, the Pawleys Island academy closed its doors. The convention won in court. The underlying problem did not go away.
A proposed federal class action out of Pawleys Island named the Southern Baptist Convention itself this week — testing whether "autonomous local church" holds as a legal shield, and putting every elder board's child-protection file back on the table.
A decade-old reference letter from Wheaton's president resurfaced this week and put a hard question on every elder's desk: what do our commendations cost the people who trust them?
Eighty-six abuse survivors and advocates have asked the SBC's new president to take back the word "hoax." How he answers will tell Southern Baptists more about the next four years than any resolution did.
A hard week for pastoral credibility: a Tennessee pastor confirmed federal agents raided his home over church finances, and a Texas pastor was indicted for allegedly defrauding his own congregants of $3.2 million. Meanwhile the quieter, better story — four SBC seminaries sending one joint mission team — is the one worth telling your church.
The week after Independence Day, the church's relationship to the nation is the through-line: the White House Religious Liberty Commission's public-comment window closes tomorrow, July 13, as Southern Baptists mark America's 250th with resources on faithful citizenship — even while the Reformed world buries Paul Kooistra, one of the great Presbyterian missions statesmen of the last half-century.
A quiet post-convention, post-holiday week turns on transitions and money: Southern Baptists have voted the International Mission Board up to 51% of Cooperative Program dollars, cementing missions as the budget's top priority; Phil Johnson's cancer-driven retirement from Grace to You closes another chapter of the MacArthur era; and the Johnson Amendment fight sharpens as the White House commission's public-comment window closes July 13.
The White House Religious Liberty Commission has released a 224-page draft report recommending twelve federal actions — including repeal of the Johnson Amendment — with public comment open only through July 13; meanwhile the SBC's longest-serving seminary president prepares to hand off the reins, and the OPC quietly stands up a study committee on race.
The PCA's 53rd General Assembly adjourned in Louisville: messengers decisively turned back an overture to ordain women as deacons and advanced — but pointedly did not finalize — a committee report rejecting the harder forms of Christian nationalism, while the Supreme Court handed down a narrow but consequential religious-liberty loss in *Landor v. Louisiana*.
The Reformed world's attention moves north this week: the PCA's 53rd General Assembly convenes tomorrow in Louisville, where the long-awaited Christian Nationalism report arrives unfinished — its committee asking for another year rather than a verdict — while a dozen overtures press again on who may serve as deacon.
Orlando has adjourned: Willy Rice is the new SBC president, Mohler's "Truth & Unity Amendment" cleared its first two-thirds vote, and missions giving hit a long-sought milestone — but the new president's press-conference claim that the abuse crisis was "weaponized" has reopened the wound the convention spent the week trying to close.
Orlando is in session: more than 11,000 messengers are gathered for the SBC Annual Meeting, with Al Mohler's "Truth & Unity Amendment," a contested presidential race, and an immigration resolution that quietly drops the convention's old path-to-status language all set to be decided this week.
All eyes turn to Orlando this week: the SBC Annual Meeting convenes June 9–10, with Al Mohler's revised "Truth & Unity Amendment" on women in the pastoral office set to be the flashpoint, a two-man presidential race, and a new ERLC president stepping onto the stage for the first time.