When Baptists in North Carolina decided in 1830 to join forces to facilitate pastor education and winning the Native Americans in the western part of the state to Christ, one of the first things they did was to create a communications tool to encourage, inspire and inform each other about how they were doing.

Thomas Meredith founded and edited the Biblical Recorder in its first 16 years and established it as a vital, Kingdom tool. This year Chairman John Pond, staff and North Carolina Baptists celebrate the 175th anniversary of the founding of the Biblical Recorder.

Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary historian Nathan Finn, says in a series on Meredith, that the Biblical Recorder “kept its readers abreast of happenings in the Baptist world. Every issue contained news from various level of Baptist polity. Local churches reported the results of ‘protracted meetings’ — what today we might call revival meetings.

Associations often published their minutes, resolutions, and circular letters in the paper. The same was true of the state convention. ...

Meredith understood that keeping North Carolina Baptists informed about Baptist advances in their own state and in other parts of the English-speaking world would foster a common sense of ecclesiastical identity among his readers.”

Recognizing that educational resources for North Carolina pastors were extremely limited, Meredith frequently addressed theological issues and expounded on the doctrines of faith.

Today with colleges, seminaries, libraries, Amazon, book stores and web based resources abundant, the Recorder concentrates more on mission and ministry news from churches and the Baptist State Convention. It is a community building resource enabling North Carolina Baptists to stay in touch with each other, to comment and dialog about stories and to find examples of what others are doing that might work in their communities so they can go and do likewise.

Subsidized by the Cooperative Program to keep subscription costs affordable, an individual subscription to the Biblical Recorder is just $15.50 annually. Group plans are even cheaper.
Subscribe at PO Box 18808, Raleigh, NC 27609 or at www.biblicalrecorder.org.