Baptists are a branch of Christianity distinguished by baptizing only professing Christian believers and doing so by complete immersion. Baptist churches generally subscribe to the doctrines of soul competency, sola fide, sola scriptura and congregationalist church government. Baptists generally recognize two ordinances: baptism and communion.
The Southern Baptist Convention (SBC), alternatively the Great Commission Baptists (GCB), is a Baptist Christian denomination based in the United States. It is the world's largest Baptist organization and the largest Protestant and second-largest Christian body in the United States. The SBC is a cooperation of fully autonomous, independent churches with commonly held essential beliefs that pool some resources for missions.
Gordon–Conwell Theological Seminary (GCTS) is an evangelical seminary with its main campus in Hamilton, Massachusetts, and three other campuses in Boston, Massachusetts; Charlotte, North Carolina; and Jacksonville, Florida. According to the Association of Theological Schools, Gordon-Conwell ranks as one of the largest evangelical seminaries in North America in terms of total number of full-time students enrolled.
Reformed Baptists, Particular Baptists and Calvinistic Baptists, are Baptists that hold to a Calvinist soteriology. Depending on the denomination, Calvinistic Baptists adhere to varying degrees of Reformed theology, ranging from simply embracing the Five Points of Calvinism, to accepting a modified form of federalism; all Calvinistic Baptists reject the classical Reformed teaching on infant baptism. While the Reformed Baptist confessions affirm views of the nature of baptism similar to those of the classical Reformed, they reject infants as the proper subjects of baptism. The first Calvinistic Baptist church was formed in the 1630s. The 1689 Baptist Confession of Faith is a significant summary of the beliefs of Reformed Baptists. The name "Reformed Baptist" dates from the latter part of the 20th century to denote Baptists who retained Baptist ecclesiology, and reaffirmed Reformed biblical theology, such as Covenant theology.
A megachurch is a church with a very large membership that also offers a variety of educational and social activities. Most megachurches are Protestant, and particularly Evangelical, although the word denotes a type of organization, not a denomination. The Hartford Institute for Religion Research defines a megachurch as any Protestant Christian church that draws 2,000 or more people in a weekend.
The Metropolitan Tabernacle is a large independent Reformed Baptist church in the Elephant and Castle in London. It was the largest non-conformist church of its day in 1861. The Tabernacle Fellowship have been worshipping together since 1650. Its first pastor was William Rider; other notable pastors and preachers include Benjamin Keach, John Gill, John Rippon and C. H. Spurgeon. The Tabernacle congregation still worships under its present pastor, Peter Masters.
The mainline Protestant churches are a group of Protestant denominations in the United States and Canada largely of the theologically liberal or theologically progressive persuasion that contrast in history and practice with the largely theologically conservative evangelical, fundamentalist, charismatic, confessional, Confessing Movement, historically Black church, and Global South Protestant denominations and congregations. Some make a distinction between "mainline" and "oldline", with the former referring only to denominational ties and the latter referring to church lineage, prestige and influence. However, this distinction has largely been lost to history and the terms are now nearly synonymous.
The Fourth Great Awakening was a Christian awakening that some scholars – including economic historian, Robert Fogel – say took place in the United States in the late 1960s and early 1970s, while others look at the era following World War II. The terminology is controversial, with some historians believing the religious changes that took place in the US during these years were not equivalent to those of the first three Great Awakenings. Thus, the idea of a Fourth Great Awakening itself has not been generally accepted.
Tennessee Temple University was a private Christian university in Chattanooga, Tennessee. Temple Baptist Seminary was the university's graduate school of Christian theology, also operating in Chattanooga. The university merged with Piedmont International University in 2015.
Briarcrest Christian School (BCS) is a private, coeducational, Christian school in Eads, an unincorporated area of Shelby County, Tennessee. The school was founded as a segregation academy during the racial integration of public schools in Memphis, Tennessee. Today, it serves students in kindergarten through 12th grade. The school also offers "early school" for ages 2-4.
A Bible college, sometimes referred to as a Bible institute or theological institute or theological seminary, is an evangelical Christian or Restoration Movement Christian institution of higher education which prepares students for Christian ministry with theological education, Biblical studies and practical ministry training.
Mark E. Dever is a theologian and the senior pastor of the Capitol Hill Baptist Church in Washington, D.C., and the president of 9Marks, a Christian ministry he co-founded "in an effort to build biblically faithful churches in America. Dever also taught for the faculty of Divinity at the University of Cambridge and also served for two years as an associate pastor of Eden Baptist Church in Cambridge."
Eddie Lee Long was an American pastor who served as the senior pastor of New Birth Missionary Baptist Church, a megachurch in unincorporated DeKalb County, Georgia, from 1987 until his death in 2017.
The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary (SBTS) is a Baptist theological institute in Louisville, Kentucky. It is affiliated with the Southern Baptist Convention. The seminary was founded in 1859 in Greenville, South Carolina, where it was at first housed on the campus of Furman University. The seminary has been an innovator in theological education, establishing one of the first Ph.D. programs in religion in the year 1892. After being closed during the Civil War, it moved in 1877 to a newly built campus in downtown Louisville and moved to its current location in 1926 in the Crescent Hill neighborhood. In 1953, Southern became one of the few seminaries to offer a full, accredited degree course in church music. For more than fifty years Southern has been one of the world's largest theological seminaries, with an FTE enrollment of over 3,300 students in 2015.
Jack N. Graham is the pastor of Prestonwood Baptist Church in Plano, Texas.
Beltway Park Church is a Baptist Evangelical multi-site megachurch based in Abilene, Texas. It is affiliated with the Southern Baptist Convention. In 2016, Beltway Park averaged approximately 4,836 people in attendance each week. The head pastor is David McQueen.
The Unregistered Baptist Fellowship (UBF) is an organization of churches opposed to registering as 501(c)(3) corporations for IRS tax exempt status. It was organized under this name in 1994, having formed out of the American Coalition of Unregistered Churches (ACUC) organization, founded by Greg J. Dixon, Sr. in 1984.
