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 Real Force in Education
In 1942, Free Will Baptists founded Welch College to provide a Christian response to secular education. During the previous century, many Christian institutions attempted to retain their Christian identity by requiring chapel attendance or enforcing strict moral regulations on campus while simultaneously rejecting orthodox Christianity in the classroom. Unsurprisingly, almost every major “Christian” institution in America abandoned...
The Ministry and Legacy of Ralph and Margaret Hampton
Many names fill the pages of Welch College history. The 75th anniversary of the college’s founding gives occasion to consider some of those names, including ones that are sometimes overlooked. Though Ralph and Margaret Hampton aren’t as well known to a rising generation of Free Will Baptists, their dependability, versatility, and longevity in the service of our movement and denominational college constitute a story that should be...
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...
Book Review: Sexuality, Gender, and the Church
“We’re living and ministering in an era of swift and unprecedented change, especially regarding the definition of sexuality, gender, and marriage,” writes J. Matthew Pinson in Sexuality, Gender, and the Church.[1] Though these issues are not unique to our day, many changes concerning sexuality and gender have arisen in recent years that have forced the church to reaffirm and strengthen its historical positions. While numerous books...
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