Baptist Message Staff

ALEXANDRIA, La. (BP) — Associate Executive Director and Chief Financial Officer of the Louisiana Baptist Convention Dale Lingenfelter announced today that he plans to nominate Don Currence for the office of Southern Baptist Convention registration secretary.

ALEXANDRIA, La. (LBM) – The worship center at Atlanta (La.) Baptist Church and the White House Lodge of Dry Creek Baptist Camp in Dry Creek, La., were destroyed after fires engulfed the two facilities Wednesday afternoon (Feb. 17).

CALCASIEU PARISH, La. (BP) — Louisiana Baptist churches damaged by Hurricane Laura may not have been able to gather in their worship centers on Sunday, but the powerful storm did not prevent them from meeting in other ways.

PINEVILLE, La. (BP) -- "America's Got Talent" contestant Robert Finley paid a visit to the Zion Hill Church Family on Sunday, (Aug. 4) to share a simple, yet profound musical message of hope. "Hold onto God's unchanging hand," Finley said in between songs at the church in Pineville, La. "Keep your faith. Good things come to those who wait, if you wait upon the Lord."

WOODWORTH, La. (BP) -- The Louisiana Baptist Convention Executive Board voted unanimously to elect Steve Horn as the 19th executive director of the organization during the entity's spring meeting at the Tall Timbers Baptist Conference Center in Woodworth May 7. He was nominated by a search committee composed of board members and led by Waylon Bailey, president of the Executive Board and the senior pastor of the First Baptist Church in Covington. Horn will succeed David Hankins, who retires as executive director June 30.

WOODWORTH, La. (BP) -- Friends and family from around the nation paid tribute to David Hankins, the Louisiana Baptist Convention's outgoing executive director, during a retirement dinner Thursday, April 11. "Our hearts are full of gratitude -- gratitude to God for the blessings of this life," Hankins told the crowd gathered at the state convention's Tall Timbers Baptist Conference Center in Woodworth. "I would be the most ungrateful person in the earth to have one complaint or one gripe about what has happened in my existence. God is so good -- a great expression of that is you all.

GRAMBLING, La. (BP) -- An early morning shooting Wednesday (Oct. 25) at Grambling State University -- that left two men dead, one of whom was a student at the school -- has prompted a call for prayer from Louisiana Baptist Convention Executive Director David Hankins. "The brokenness of our world sadly continues to be on display, as we learned from the shooting on the Grambling campus," Hankins told the Baptist Message. "Our hearts are grieved for the families of the victims.

DENHAM SPRINGS, La. (BP) -- After hearing his pastor share about the need for ministry for Hurricane Harvey victims in early September, Mickey Watson felt led to form a team with other members of Amite Baptist Church. For several weeks, teams from the Louisiana church in Denham Springs traveled to Texas, cooking meals, gutting homes and delivering supplies, like many other Southern Baptist churches and teams from around the country. Volunteers from Amite spent two days working on homes in Beaumont, Texas.