It’s Friday on the Gulf Coast and we are headed into a holiday week as we celebrate the 4th of July. Sunday we will find the Worship Center decorated in red, white and blue. If you are in Pensacola, join us for a great day of worship.
 
Today in the Dallas Morning News the pastor of FBC Auburn, Alabama, had an article entitled “A Moderate Baptist Considers Today’s SBC.” Pastor Jim Evans wrote in his column that he sees modest shifts in the conservative SBC. He is an outsider looking in. The paper called him a “Baptist pastor of a moderate stripe.” Pastor Evans’ insights were that the SBC has been aligned with Republican policies and might be shifting a little. He suggests we should do more in the area of poverty and the environment. He also speaks of SBC president Dr. Frank Page and his appointments to convention boards as being a move away from rigid fundamentalism. 
 
The article goes on to speak of flat line growth in SBC churches. He says it is the result of political rancor.

Baptisms are down in our denomination. However, I believe our problems are not with politics but with slothfulness, prayerlessness and spiritual deadness. We are often more concerned about the people in our churches than the lost souls we are to be reaching locally and around the globe.
 
I urge you to join me Sunday evening at Olive. We are having a prayer time in the service for revival in the American church. We will be confessing our own sins. I hope when the world looks at us in the years to come they will say those Baptists at Olive were of a “helpful and holy stripe.”

Pastor Ted Traylor