Blog
Blog 
Four Alliance of Baptists representatives attended the annual meeting of Alliance mission partner Aliança de Batistas do Brasil in Maceio during August. Paula Clayton Dempsey, Alliance minister of partnership relations, celebrated the partnering of our two groups and delivered the keynote sermon.
Eric Cain, Alliance member, Maddox Pastoral Resident at Alliance-affiliated Northside Drive Baptist Church in Atlanta, GA.
Northside Drive Baptist Church (NDBC) was happy to be a part of Alliance of Baptists Sunday 2010. We joined with many fellow Alliance congregations in celebrating the history of inclusiveness, healing, and justice the Alliance has stood and worked for over the past twenty-plus years.
Brian Ammons, former Alliance Board member and adjunct professor, Duke University, Durham, N.C.
The Big Tent Christianity conference in Raleigh, N.C., was the second event I attended organized by the Transforming Theology crew out of Claremont School of Theology. Honestly, the “emergent church” identification of many of the panelists made me a bit nervous, wondering how and if I would fit. While “emergent” is never a title I have claimed for myself, over the past year it is one that has increasingly been read onto me. I’ve tried to figure out what it is that makes me a bit uncomfortable with the scene, and I think it’s mostly a post-evangelical flair mixed with the feel of another capitalist cottage industry.
Paula Clayton Dempsey, Minister for Partnership Relations
The buildings and grounds of any congregation reveal the values and priorities of the worshiping body. None more so than First Baptist Church of Greenville, S.C., whose richness of visual symbols is celebrated in stained glass and a boldly designed worship center.
Perhaps, though, the church’s most prominent symbol now is not its elegant steeple, but rather the one-year-old Activities and Youth Ministry Center tucked away on the back of the church property. The AYMC with its open spaces and more-windows-than-walls speaks boldly of two commitments of the soon-to-be 180-year-old congregation: outreach to the community and environmental sustainability.
A Summer Communities of Service Reflection
Paula Clayton Dempsey, Minister for Partnership Relations, Mars Hill, N.C.
Psalm 82
O Compassionate Teacher,
You are our merciful Counselor;
in the Silence You make yourself known to all who take time to listen.
Would that those in power would heed your Voice:
“How long will you misuse power that oppresses the poor? When will you learn to act justly and with integrity will bring mutual blessing to all? Do you not know that to give succour to the poor and to free people to succeed will bring you more joy than all your bank accounts?”
Ned Allyn Parker, Associate Director of Student Services, Admissions and Retention Andover Newton Theological School
I believe that both as a nation and a global society we galloped into the 21st century unprepared for what might unfold. Certainly, as a nation, we now talk about ourselves in terms of a post-9/11 society and we all have been affected by Katrina’s destruction, still visible in the South and now accompanied by the effects of the Deep Water Horizon catastrophe. As clergy and lay-leaders of faith, we find ourselves a decade into the 21st century unprepared for the way social networking and media are changing the way our congregations expect us to interact with them.
Sheila Nelson Ross, Alliance friend, Executive Director of Communities in Schools of Orange County, Inc. and member of Union Missionary Baptist Church in Durham, N.C.
Do you like being affirmed? Do you like being celebrated? Come on; admit it. Who doesn’t? During my daily devotional period I ask God to affirm me and celebrate me so as not to go seeking for such through inappropriate measures. How wonderful it is to be a part of the Alliance organization, an organization I view as being an extension of God’s affirmation and celebration of me as a minister, and foremost, as a woman minister.
Carol Blythe Goodman and Mandy England Cole, President and Vice President, Alliance of Baptists
Hello to the Alliance of Baptist Family from the new leaders of your board of directors for 2010 to 2011! We appreciate the confidence, prayers of support and blessings that have been expressed to us at Convocation and in many notes since then. We are excited about our work on the Board over the next two years as we carry forward the good work of God began by many others through our beloved Alliance of Baptists.
Brooks Wicker, Board Member
A consistent and welcomed question over the years from members old and new has been, “How can I get directly involved with the good work of the Alliance?” The answer to that question is to join or form an Alliance community.
What a Brunch Bunch in Baltimore!
Paula Clayton Dempsey, Minister for Partnership Relations and Mary Andreolli, Minister for Outreach & Communications
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