Life and Ministry in a Cultural Tsunami

Rethinking Ministry through the Life of my 96 Year Old Grandmother

Grandmother’s World from her 4’4” entrepreneurial view… In the small community of Lone Star in Southwest Mississippi, my grandmother Grace McRaney, “Mammy” as I called her, shared her living space with her business that she and my grandfather purchased together as a startup in 1930. For 74 years, the last 52 years by herself, all […]

Church Planting and Evangelism

Can church planting turnaround the Southern Baptist Convention’s steady decline in baptisms? In 2002, the North American Mission Board of the SBC commissioned me to determine whether church plants are more effective by ratio in baptisms than established churches. Short answer to a longer complex matter, church plants have slightly better baptism ratios. Church plants […]

SBC Decline in Baptism

In 2014, according to the Annual Church Profile, the Southern Baptist Convention dropped to a 70 year low in baptisms. Why are Southern Baptists who are historically committed to evangelism, struggling to overcome decades of declining baptism numbers? In 2011, the Mid America Baptist Theological Seminary contracted me to research and write on the findings […]