Every three years since 1997, an International Conference on Baptist Studies has been held--each conference being in a different country. The theme in 2006, when the conference was held in Nova Scotia, was Baptists and Mission. This is a theme that has been at the heart of Baptist life. Papers examined home and foreign mission, evangelicalism, and social concern. This volume draws together a range of the papers that were delivered. This volume has studies of significant Baptist figures such as Hanserd Knollys, Andrew Fuller, and Earl Merrick. Home mission in a number of settings in North America and Europe is examined. The range of places covered in the papers on overseas mission is considerable, including Bolivia, Mexico, India, Ivory Coast, and Brazil. All of these studies, by historians drawn from many different contexts, add new insights in this crucial area of Baptist studies.

The Mission of Today's Church is a compelling collection of twelve essays from current Baptist leaders addressing three major questions: (1) What does it mean to be a Christian today on individual, group, and societal levels? (2) How can Southern Baptists best work together? and (3) What is next for the Southern Baptist denomination? Those addressing these key topics in-depth include Stan Norman ("Together We Grow: Congregational Polity as a Form of Corporate Sanctification"), Ed Stetzer ("The Missional Nature of the Church"), and Daniel Akin ("Ten Mandates for Southern Baptists"). Among the many other contributors are Chad Brand, Charles Kelley, and Jim Richards.

Southern Baptists had long considered themselves a missionary people, but when, after World War II, they embarked on a dramatic expansion of missionary efforts, they confronted headlong the problem of racism. Believing that racism hindered their evangelical efforts, the Convention's full-time missionaries and mission board leaders attacked racism as unchristian, thus finding themselves at odds with the pervasive racist and segregationist ideologies that dominated the South. This progressive view of race stressed the biblical unity of humanity, encompassing all races and transcending specific ethnic divisions. In All According to God's Plan, Alan Scot Willis explores these beliefs and the chasm they created within the Convention. He shows how, in the post-World War II era, the most respected members of the Southern Baptists Convention publicly challenged the most dearly held ideologies of the white South.