BELLS — Chris Garner had everything mapped out in his mind: He was going to move to West Tennessee to plant a church that would be part of the BlueOval Initiative. Turns out, he was only half right.  Yes, God opened the door for Garner and his family to move to West Tennessee, but church planting wasn’t part of the equation.  Instead, Garner was called as senior pastor at Holly

PIGEON FORGE — As bivocational ministry specialist for the Tennessee Baptist Mission Board, Roger Britton understands the unique challenge of serving as a pastor and holding down a job. Britton has been a bivocational minister nearly 45 years, including the last 27 as pastor of Whites Creek Baptist Church in Rockwood. He fully understands the need to balance sermon preparation, hospital visits, funerals and weddings, time with spouse and children,

HARROGATE — Pump Springs Baptist Church has a mission field that is less than five minutes from the church — Lincoln Memorial University, a four-year, private liberal arts university.  While LMU is not a large university (an undergraduate enrollment of 1,560 students in the fall of 2022, according to U.S. News & World Report), on any given semester, the university has students from about 35 countries, said Will Deavours, associate

FRANKLIN — Bill Gruenewald, president-treasurer of the Tennessee Baptist Foundation since 2014, has announced his plans to retire on Oct. 31.  Gruenewald informed TBF trustees of his intentions at their December board meeting. If needed, he said he would remain “a few months longer” in order to ease the transition.  Gruenewald joined the Foundation in 2011 as executive vice president and served for three years before being elected president after

SPRINGFIELD — Her favorite color is purple, she loves animals, is a fourth grader at South Haven Christian School, and some of her favorite books are the Zoe’s Rescue Zoo series.  She loves going to church at Hopewell Baptist Church in Springfield, Tennessee, to see her friends and learn about Jesus — and she’s also raised $28,000 selling hot cider on two weekends to help build four churches for the

MEMPHIS — During the civil rights movement, Martin Luther King Jr. was quoted as famously saying that “11 a.m. on Sunday mornings was the most segregated hour of American life.” Roughly 60 years later, King’s statement continues to ring true in many cases. And yet something recently took place in Memphis — a city that has been rife with racial tension through the years — that demonstrates how God’s love

FRANKLIN — Ten Acts 2:17 workgroups have been named (see full lists below) and have begun working on their assigned tasks. Tennessee Baptist Convention messengers at last year’s annual meeting in Chattanooga overwhelmingly adopted vision and priority statements that will ultimately lead to every Tennessean hearing the gospel. For more on this, see article in Nov. 23, 2023 issue of the Baptist and Reflector. The priority statements are grouped into