Tell me about the GARBC (subllibrm et al)

ALAYMAN said:

I/we ain't quite ready to lurch that far from the fundy mold.

I think the thing with courting the SBC chilled the relationship with the right-side of the GARBC. I thought long and hard about ALAYBOY going to Cedarville for the purpose of having a considerably more wholesome collegiate environment, but alas, he wanted the urban experience.

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I think I told you, my daughter joined FCA and CRU when she decided to go to a state school, University of Wisconsin at Eau Claire. She grew deep in her faith, witnessed to and won numerous young ladies to Christ. The dangers are the liberal teaching that pervades.

Bob Jones V said:

I think I told you, my daughter joined FCA and CRU when she decided to go to a state school, University of Wisconsin at Eau Claire. She grew deep in her faith, witnessed to and won numerous young ladies to Christ. The dangers are the liberal teaching that pervades.

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Sounds to me like you did something right with your daughter! You should be very proud!

Baptist Renegade said:

Sounds to me like you did something right with your daughter! You should be very proud!

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It was all the grace of God, and a lot of prayer and Bible reading and singing in the home. God is the one who called her to himself, so Praise him. She's a missionary in Central Africa now.

I have subscribed to the official GARBC magazine "Baptist Bulletin" for many years. It has been published for almost 100 years. I just received this notice: "We will be pausing publication of The Baptist Bulletin at the end of January 2026. This pause allows us to step back and thoughtfully evaluate how the Baptist Bulletin can best serve our fellowship in the future. With subscriber engagement trending downward, we desire to be wise stewards as communication habits continue to change. . . . You will receive additional communication regarding subscription refunds."


Sounds like a rather permanent "pause" to me. I find it puzzling that a major church association with 1200 churches cannot support a publication like this which provides a vital information service to the GARBC constituency. I am not sure if this reflects a decline in finances or in involvement by GARBC people in their movement. Or perhaps the GARBC is strong as ever, but folks are just not interested in print publications any more, as reflected by the demise of various Christian and secular periodicals. The venerable and once-influential "Baptist Bible Tribune" (BBF) apparently ceased publication some years ago, and the ABA and BMA movements have cut back on their periodicals. In my old-fashioned way of thinking, less publishing translates into less influence and impact, but I am told that most communication of Christian material is done by videos these days.

Seems the way of things, at least as print media goes. The Canadian Baptist, once the flagship publication of our largest Baptist convention, stopped publication years ago, and it's basically been succeeded by a semi-annual newsletter. When even major newspapers and magazines get smaller, thinner, and less frequent, small-scale publications like denominational magazines are going to feel the pinch all the more.

Paul Dixon was an evangelist from the church I attended in Chattanooga in the early 70s, when he announced that he and Pat were moving to Ohio because most of his meetings seemed to be at GARB churches there. Unbeknownst to us at that time, he was probably being groomed to be in the position to take over as President of Cedarville. Dr. Earnest Pickering was probably the foremost voice of the GARBs calvinist front at that time. I was a member of a GARB church in Northern Indiana in the mid to late 70s. Most of the pastors of the churches I knew were Calvinist, although I knew a couple who weren't.

Ransom said:

100 years ago was the thick of the fundamentalist-modernist controversy, which resulted in a whole lot of conservative Protestantism: The Fundamentals, J. Gresham Machen, Christianity and Liberalism, the Orthodox Presbyterian Church, GARBC, and others. The two denominations I've been associated with here in Canada, the Fellowship of Evangelical Baptists and the Associated Gospel Churches, were both formed from conservative churches that left liberal denominations.

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The FEB is where I started but left with my parents in 1984. It wasn't because of any issues in the last church. There were great people in that church. I think it was just my dad didn't want to drive that far so we went to other churches (including Pentecostal only once) for the next 4 years. One of those was a Missionary Alliance church (I think it was because our family doctor went there). We were there 2 years and attended other Baptist churches after that.