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Peter’s charge has always been a favorite of mine: “Love the brotherhood” (1 Peter 2:17b). The word brotherhood is a collective term, denoting the whole. We are brothers and sisters in Christ, individually. Together, we are brotherhood.

Hence, the only two times the word is used, both by Peter, it is upheld by fraternal and sacrificial love and solidarity with like-minded believers in suffering for the kingdom, firm in faith, resisting every effort of the devil to pull us away from our commitment to Christ (1 Peter 5:9). It bespeaks an awareness of and appreciation for a suffering, engaged and dedicated brotherhood.

To further that awareness and to cultivate that solidarity, BNc was born. And as a part of that mission, we invite you to partner with BNc. Read more

Editorial: BNc celebrates first year on the web

by J. Randal Matheny, editor

(BNc) — A year ago today, BrotherhoodNews.com made its official launch. With a couple of hands on board and a small group of well-wishers to see us off, the crew of BNc took the fair winds and blue skies as a harbinger of blessing for our voyage.

With no backing of a queen or king, no full-time captain nor even a navigator to keep us pointed toward our destiny, we still managed to steer by the grace of God and his kindness toward fools with a dream. Read more

Time Capsule Captures Moment

By Cherie Speller
From the Sunday, July 27, 2008, edition of The Daily Reflector

The columns I write generally publish on Mondays but I took the opportunity to move it to Sunday this week for the sake of history.

My family and I worship with the Westside Church of Christ, which today moves to a new town with a new name Church of Christ, Winterville. As part of the congregation’s moving celebration, a time capsule will be buried today in the lawn of the church on Winterville’s Church Street Extension. Read more

Little Is Much When God Is in It

Feature story by Neal Pollard (adapted)

(BNc)- A few years ago in Richmond, Va., a small group of homeschooled children whose families were members of the Lord’s church got together for a service project to raise money to buy hearing aids for deaf orphans in Zhitomir, a city in western Ukraine. Read more

Too Many Aarons

Commentary by Richard Hill

First, my apologies to everyone named Aaron. This is not about you. You just happen to share a name with Aaron, the brother of Moses.

Some time ago I received the following list of questions. Apparently, from the context of the message, the specific answers were intended to change with every cultural shift. Read more

How We Pay Our Missionaries

Guest commentary by Ed Smithson

(BNc)- It is about time. I’ve heard that expression applied to one thing or another. There are things, for some reason, we are not supposed to speak about in the church. If it is mentioned someone will say, “you can’t say anything about that!” My question is, “Why not?”

I will speak of this now, and I will speak of it again, the Lord willing and I live long enough.

We’ve come a long way in paying preachers in the last 30-50 years. Many preachers make a decent salary where they didn’t 30-50 years ago. They also get periodic raises, sometimes, that they didn’t get 30-50 years ago.

But while we have made great strides in support of our local preachers, we have, in many instances, done it on the backs of the missionaries.

Do you know, on the average, missionaries get paid a lot less than the “local” preacher? Sometimes only about half as much. Do you wonder why?

Of course, there are some who get paid a lot more. Usually, they are native preachers in a country where the average pay is very small and are being paid by a U.S. church that doesn’t know or care about the pay scale. But they are sure aware of the pay scale at home!

Through the years I have known men who went into mission work and did so knowing they would have to take a cut in pay. On top of that, they would have to raise their own support. Why? It is ridiculous to believe that because a man is preaching for someone who can’t pay him, or preaching for someone who is not a member of the church he should be penalized his pay! Yet, it is almost always that way.

I remember a young man in Oklahoma a few years ago who had just graduated from one of our “Preacher Training Schools.”. He was married and had a family, I believe, at the time, one little girl. He was “hired” by a congregation and worked with them for about a year. His pay was barely more than half of what the local pulpit preacher received. Now everyone has to start somewhere but half-pay? That’s ridiculous! In any large company he could have started at twice what he was making, or close to it. But since he wanted to preach the gospel, he must “learn to sacrifice”. Some brethren believe that, and they are going to make sure it happens.

I actually had an elder to tell me that one time, and he was not kidding. He was very well off, worth close to a million, if not at least that much, but he said when a man decided to preach, he felt he had decided to make a sacrifice.

Many a man does, but not because he wants to. It’s because he knows that is the way the brethren think and if he is going to preach he might as well get ready to do without.

Another preacher I was acquainted was sent by a church to the northern part of the U.S., to establish the church. No members in this town of some 25,000. He was paid only about 2/3 of what he was making in the “Bible belt” and wasn’t given any working fund to use, either.

I heard of a preacher once who “hired out” to a congregation. When they began discussing vacation time, one of the elders wanted to know how long he had been preaching. When he was told 30 years, the elder said he got a month of vacation time because that was the way it was where he worked. This preacher was flabbergasted. He had never had anyone think of preaching in that way before. Usually a preacher gets the customary two weeks no matter how long he has been at it or how long he has been where he is.

Back to the pay for missionaries. I had one elder say that if a man had a family he deserved more than one who didn’t. I asked what passage he got that out of. “The laborer is worthy of his hire” (Lk 10:7). “They who proclaim the gospel should live of the gospel” (1 Cor 9:14). “Thou shalt not muzzle the ox when he treadeth out the corn” (Deut 25:4; 1 Cor 9:9).

For years, a friend has done work in an area that would certainly be considered mission. He has lived on a salary that is about half what his counterpart at home in his sponsoring church makes. He does not have the local preacher’s benefits, either. He pays his own insurance, makes his own house payments, pays his own utilities and, while his counterpart at home has a retirement plan to which the church contributes, he has none. While his counterpart gets a book allowance, car allowance and expenses paid to college lectureships, he gets none of these. In fact, he drives his car, which is a lot older, a lot more miles than his counterpart at home, yet he pays all the expenses, mileage, upkeep, repair, etc.

One of these days this man, who has no children left at home, may get to the age of retirement or, for some health reason, have to retire. What is he going to do then? He is going to be criticized by brethren who will say, “Well, he didn’t plan for old age.” Most of them had someone else do it for them, and they made a lot more money. He is going to be left to the mercy of his children, or worse, his brethren, if he gets any kind of care at all, because he can’t pay for it.

Since the church is autonomous I can’t suggest anything that would work for every situation. But where missionaries are concerned, they need to be treated better than stepchildren where pay and support are concerned.

A man should get paid according to his needs, but he should also be paid according to his ability and time in service.

We have the money. Churches of today are richer than I have seen them in 60 years. Lack of money is not the problem.

I know several churches who are collecting interest on Certificates of Deposit while their missionaries are fighting to keep the bill collectors away from their door.

Brethren, such should not be the case!
_______
From Ed’s “Frankly Speaking Notes,” used by permission. See his OldPathsPulpit.org.

Which Way the Brotherhood?

Commentary by J. Randal Matheny, editor

What has happened to Howard Publishing Company is a bellwether of the direction of a large segment of the brotherhood. Read more

A Debt We Owe

Guest editorial by Ed Smithson

Years ago I was attending a daytime speech at a college lectureship. A fresh PhD had taken the podium and told us that, today, all preachers must have a Master’s and preferably a PhD.

I wanted to jump up and challenge him. On the podium with him at the time were two preachers who had done great works in the kingdom: one had only a high school education and the other was brother who had, as I remember, a third-grade education.

James O. Baird was president of the college at the time, and he took the lectern and told how much our pioneering preachers had done to bring us where we are today. I was never more proud of brother Baird than I was then.

Only eternity will reveal the amount of gratitude we owe those who have preceded us. Without their courage, endurance and sacrifices, we would not enjoy the status we do today.

I remember my dad mentioning men well known in Missouri and Arkansas, like Joe Warlick, Joe Blue and others. Then there were the preachers, most of them who at one time, earned their living by farming or hard physical labor during the week and preached for churches on Sunday for almost nothing.

John Rodgers would leave his family and farm and hold meetings for months at a time, returning home with little more than when he left.

Can you see our modern-day preachers doing that today? I think I know some who would if they had to, they want to preach that much.

What about David Lipscomb, who along with Tolbert Fanning began the Gospel Advocate, which is still published in Nashville today, and the Nashville Bible School he started (now Lipscomb University). In the early years they turned out gospel preachers.

Or what about brother N.B. Hardeman, the Tennessee Orator, who along with A.G. Freed, started Freed-Hardeman College which still operates in Henderson, Tenn. Both men were strong believers in the all-sufficiency of the Scriptures and great preachers in their own right.

In my own lifetime I think of men like Roy H. Lanier, Sr., my first Bible teacher in college, and what he did that has meant to the brotherhood for years. He began the preacher school at Bear Valley in Denver which still turns out preachers today.

I also remember men like E.R. Harper, who was speaker on the “Herald of Truth” radio program in its early day; Gus Nichols and Franklin Camp who were great students of the Bible; and Marshal Keeble, who worked long and hard and suffered things we will never know, because he dared to preach the “unsearchable riches of Christ.”

These are certainly not the only ones and I am sure you can think of many others. These men blazed the trails for us and we have it much easier than they, because of the work they did.

Preachers today are being better treated, better housed and better paid, because of what these and others have done before us.

God bless them and their memories, for they, like Abel “being dead, yet speaketh” (Hebrews 11:4).
_______
Published Apr. 15 in Ed’s “Frankly Speaking Notes” through his website Old Paths Pulpit, and used with his permission.

BNc Offers Flash News

(BNc)- For those tidbits and quick items that don’t justify an entire news story or for which we lack full information, BNc is offering Flash News. Read more

The Little Church that Could

RECIFE, BRAZIL (BNc)- This past weekend was my second visit to the Prazeres congregation in the greater Recife area of northeastern Brazil. My first impression was confirmed on my second visit. Read more

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