Christianity is reassessing how to describe sexual misconduct, with an eye to owning up to the seriousness of abuse that was once dismissed as innocent or covered up to protect the powerful.

Southern Baptist leaders wrestled with questions of procedure and accountability during a gathering on sexual abuse, grappling with how best to address an issue some say the denomination took far too long to address.

The gospel cannot be separated from how the church deals with sexual abuse, Southern Baptist leaders J.D. Greear and Russell Moore told the Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission’s sixth annual national conference.

Courage and a recognition of trauma’s long-term effects are called for if the church is to deal sufficiently with its sexual abuse crisis, two well-known evangelical women told a Southern Baptist Convention conference on the subject.

Representatives of Baptist Global Response, Southern Baptist disaster relief, the International Mission Board, and two state Baptist conventions toured the Bahamas to scout ways for Southern Baptists to support Baptist churches on the islands.

Reported baptisms among Southern Baptist churches have declined in eight of the last 10 years. The falling numbers helped prompt the SBC Executive Committee to name Sept. 8 as Baptism Sunday.

The sexual abuse crisis in churches led hundreds of congregations to accept the Caring Well Challenge—a Southern Baptist Convention initiative to help churches prevent abuse and care for abuse survivors.

Theologian and educator David Dockery has joined the Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary faculty as professor of theology.

An initiative to strengthen ministers and their families in Juarez grew out of longstanding relationships a campus minister in Levelland developed with pastors in the Mexican border city.

As a Mission Friends leader in Alabama, Kathryn Nunnelley delighted in sharing stories about missions and missionaries with enthusiastic preschoolers. Perhaps more significantly, God was instilling a call to missions in her own heart.

As a minister for more than 40 years, Mike Glenn walked through the valley of dementia and Alzheimer’s disease with many families. But he admits that until you face it personally, it is hard to understand what a family goes through.

Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary says it is not liable for any monetary damages to a former student who claims in a lawsuit she was raped on campus at gunpoint by a student the seminary employed.