North American Mission Board

MARRERO, La. – In almost every way possible, Leon and Javon Every of Marrero, La., looked like the heads of a traditional household.

RÍO GRANDE, Puerto Rico – No one would've guessed that "Go big or go home" was an Ortiz family truism. After all, when God called Oscar Ortiz and his wife Wendy to plant a church in Río Grande, they didn't first launch a marketing campaign, send out glossy, full-color mailers, or pay for billboards, radio ads,and social media blasts.

MARRERO, La. – They didn’t know how much longer they had left. But they knew it wasn’t long. “It was bad,” Linda Morrow says. “We had no money, no people. We were just barely getting by with a handful of senior citizens.”

ALPHARETTA, Ga. – Members of Bethany Baptist Church in North Little Rock, Ark., stared down the barrel of a problem facing hundreds of churches in the United States. The community around them had changed. Their church had not, and now, they were on the precipice of seeing their church fold.

MONTREAL – "The beginning of the story is good. But the ending is even better." That's Andrew Mark Adil's opening line when people ask how such an unlikely man ended up in such an unlikely place doing such an unlikely thing.

TAPPAHANNOCK, Va. – He stood behind a traditional pulpit and looked out over a traditional congregation sitting in traditionally padded pews. He wore a traditional Southern Baptist pastor uniform – gray suit, neatly pressed white button-down shirt, and a red silk tie – and he preached a traditionally structured three-point sermon on Hebrews 1:1-4.

TAPPAHANNOCK, Va. – The house is in a Virginia pine forest at the end of a long, bumpy dirt road. The 30 people living here are 46 miles away from civilization.

MOBILE, Ala. – “We are called to live sent.” That was the message shared in Chapel at the University of Mobile on Feb. 25 by guest speaker North American Mission Board President Kevin Ezell.

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. – In August, Erin and Ellie were strangers. By October, they were best friends. That's what can happen when two never-met-before college freshmen get assigned one small 250-square-foot dorm room in which to live.

NASHVILLE (BP) – The legacy of a just-resolved case involving the North American Mission Board may be … nothing.