Question of the Week

The Southern Baptist Convention won’t be changing its historic name.

A task force recommended Monday night that the nation’s largest Protestant body retain its historic name, but also recommended that local churches that don’t like the name Southern Baptist use the name “Great Commission Baptists.”

Read more about it here.

Will the Southern Baptist Convention continue to be Southern?

A task force appointed to study a possible name change for the 166-year-old body is expected to report its recommendations Monday to the SBC Executive Committee in Nashville.

SBC President Bryant Wright appointed the advisory group last fall, saying that the current name is too regional and that a new identity might make the convention more effective in church planting.

Carl Brown Jr. is back in Memphis.

Brown, a homeless man with a sunken forehead, was reunited with his father in Seattle last summer, thanks to the efforts of Tom Lewis and his wife, Dr. Cathy Schanzer.

Carl Brown Jr. tells Tom Lewis that he will miss him as the two stand in the at the Memphis International Airport ticket counter. Lewis helped raise money to send Brown home to his family in Seattle.

I wrote about their encounter last August.

“Carl has returned to Memphis as of last Friday,” said Lewis, who first encountered Brown while he was panhandling one day last August at the corner of Ridgeway and Park.

Lewis picked him up again Thursday morning at the same corner.

“He said he tried to call us sooner and explained his reason for returning,” said Lewis, who helped raised money for Brown to go live with his estranged father in Seattle.

Brown, who is about 28, suffered a near-fatal head injury in a motorcycle wreck in 2003. He spent weeks in a coma. He had spent several years living on the street under the Madison Avenue viaduct, until he met Lewis.

“He looks good, is in good spirits,” Lewis said. “He said the months he spent in Seattle were overall a positive for he and his Dad, but that he just could not get comfortable with the home situation.”

Lewis said he plans to help Brown apply for subsidy housing and find some volunteer work.

“He has a little money and we will help if needed until he gets his next disability check in early March,” Lewis said. “He has promised to stay with his aunt until he has a place and his aunt has also agreed to such. He also promised to stay off the streets.”

Rev. Joseph Kerrigan, a former Memphis priest, is now a monsignor.

Pope Benedict XVI bestowed papal honors on the New Jersey priest in recognition of his service to his parish and the people of the Diocese of Metuchen, N.J.

Pope Benedict XVI bestowed pontifical honors upon Fr. Joseph Kerrigan, pictured, pastor of New Brunswick's Sacred Heart Church.

“I have often referred to him as ‘my John the Baptist’ for his prophetic voice on behalf of the Church and society’s most vulnerable members,” Bishop Paul G. Bootkoski said of Kerrigan in his petition to the pope.

Kerrigan, who grew up in the Metuchen diocese, has been pastor of Sacred Heart Parish in New Brunswick, N.J., since 2005. He served as a priest in five Memphis parishes in the 1990s, including Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception and Catholic Church of the Holy Spirit.

He is perhaps most-know for his humanitarian efforts on behalf of the International Children’s Heart Foundation in Memphis. He often credits the late Msgr. John Batson, former director of Memphis Catholic Charities, as a mentor and role model.

“I’d like to think that people who knew me 20 years ago… would recognize a lot of his leadership style in me,” Kerrigan said. “He brought a lot of applied Catholic social teaching to parish life, I think quite gracefully. I often wear white clerical shirts – as he always did – in his memory.”

Kerrigan serves as diocesan director of Catholic Relief Services and the Catholic Campaign for Human Development and is on the board of Catholic Charities in Metuchen.

The Memphis Teacher Residency Program, which seeks to recruit, train and support outstanding urban educators in Memphis in a “Christian context,” is being featured on the weekly PBS show, “Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly.”

Watch the report here, or check local listings for your TV provider.

Here’s a column I wrote last May about the program.