Grace in Arminian Thought: A Plea for Clarity
by Jeremy Craft A few years ago I found myself in a discussion with a Free Will Baptist minister who was uneasy with how I taught about the believer’s perseverance. To him, my strong emphasis on grace sounded too Calvinistic, as if I believe in the doctrine of eternal security (once saved, always saved) and that grace gives license for sin. Yet this very same minister had also heard me teach on the doctrine of apostasy. Interestingly...
Unity Movements among Free Will Baptists of the South Near the Turn of the Century: A Little Known Story
by Robert E. Picirilli During the late 1800s and early 1900s, several unity movements emerged among Free Will Baptists in the South. Two of these have just recently come to light and are briefly described in this article for the first time. Robert Vaughn and I have written the story in full detail for publication later.[1] Some historians suggest that such movements were the fruit of the Second Great Awakening. One such was the merger...
Cultivating Mission
by Matthew McAffee and Matthew Steven Bracey The mission of Welch College is to educate leaders to serve Christ, His church, and His world through biblical thought and life. Our institution has faithfully executed this mission now for seventy-five years. The names, faces, and location have all changed considerably since L. C. Johnson initiated this project in Free Will Baptist higher education in 1942, but the mission has not. This...
The Theological Contribution of J. P. Barrow
One Sunday night earlier this year, I was speaking with my grandfather, a lifelong Free Will Baptist pastor and evangelist. He mentioned a name to me that I’d never heard before: Jesse Parrot Barrow. My grandfather had visited my grandmother’s grave that Sunday afternoon in a small North Carolina town, as he often does, but that Sunday he had also found the grave marker of J. P. Barrow. In all of my reading and all of the...
Preaching and Teaching Mark: Opportunities and Challenges
We made it: Nineteen months and fifty-three sermons later, our congregation completed a Sunday morning series on the Gospel of Mark. As I said in an earlier post, we regularly study through entire books of the Bible as part of the pulpit ministry. We don’t always do this, but we often do. And seldom do we proceed through an extended study without several planned breaks (usually due to holidays, guest speakers, or other series). This...
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