Baptist Briefs: New Baptist Covenant receives $1 million gift

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The San Antonio-based Eula Mae and John Baugh Foundation has pledged $1 million over four years to support a movement spearheaded by former President Jimmy Carter to unify U.S. Baptists across racial, geographical and theological lines. hannah mcmahan130Hannah McMahanThe grant will help the 7-year-old New Baptist Covenant movement shift from large meetings to “covenants of action,” where two or more churches from different Baptist traditions come together to address a pressing need in their community. Hannah McMahan, New Baptist Covenant coordinator, said the movement plans to nurture 100 covenants of action nationwide over the next four years. The inaugural New Baptist Covenant celebration January 2008 in Atlanta attracted more than 15,000 Baptists from various traditions. A second national meeting in 2011 was beamed via satellite to locations around the country. The next New Baptist Covenant summit is scheduled Jan. 14-15, 2015.

BWA reaffirms South African meeting site. The 21st Baptist World Congress will take place in Durban, South Africa, as planned July 22-26, 2015, and the Baptist Women’s Leadership Conference will precede it, meeting July 18-21 in Johannesburg. BWA leaders reached the decision to stick to the previously announced schedule and locations after broadly canvassing BWA regional secretaries and other Baptist leaders worldwide, in light of the spread of Ebola in West Africa and international concern about travel to parts of the African continent. “The decision to adhere to the schedule for the 21st congress represents an effort to express our solidarity with the Baptist community in Africa,” an official statement released by BWA said. “It is also a sign of our faith in the power of the sovereign God with whose help the tide of destruction in the three named countries in Western Africa can be turned back. We look forward to the day when, like South Africa, Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea will be Ebola-free.”


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