Trustworthy news, stories with heart remain essential elements of TAB’s mission

Trustworthy news, stories with heart remain essential elements of TAB’s mission

What makes a story one you’d want to read?

The day Jennifer Davis Rash, editor of The Alabama Baptist (TAB), asked that question on the TAB News podcast, she went on to tell the story of Dewayne Rembert, a young man who grew up stealing from houses and selling drugs — until Jesus got hold of his heart and changed everything. 

Now Rembert is planting a church in an urban area of Alabama filled with young men facing similar struggles as he did.

That’s the kind of story Rash says TAB wants to tell. It’s the kind that fills the pages of TAB’s weekly print edition, the text of its digital format and the minutes of its weekly podcast.

And the heart behind it — a heart to encourage and inform people and help them walk a little closer to Jesus — is the same heart that’s been there since TAB was founded 176 years ago. 

Great stories

From the minute Baptists first arrived in Alabama they started changing their towns, their state and their world. And they still do today. They pray, they give and they invest in their churches. They raise up missionaries, build houses, feed the hungry and take the hope of Christ to the ends of the earth. And all of those things make great stories, stories that others need to hear.

In the past 23 years TAB has won more than 250 awards for its content —  graphic design, editorials, stories about Alabama’s difference-makers and investigative articles. One series in particular helped rally voters to put a halt to an almost assured statewide lottery in 1999.

It showed “what can happen when Christians work together,” wrote Bob Terry, TAB’s editor emeritus who retired in 2018 after 23 years at TAB and 50 years total in Southern Baptist newspaper life.

Across its history TAB has been led by a number of editors, but only four in the century after it was made a convention entity — L.L. Gwaltney, Leon Macon, Hudson Baggett and Terry. Rash, Terry’s successor, has been at TAB since Jan. 1, 1996, and at the helm since Jan. 1, 2019.

“At TAB we want to help believers grow in their faith and stay focused on our main priority — to love the Lord with all our heart, mind, soul and strength and to love our neighbors as ourselves,” Rash said. “We want to provide encouragement to survive the difficult days and resources to help with a variety of life issues. We also desire to give inspiration to share the gospel as the Lord leads and let His light shine through us in every moment of our day-to-day lives.”

TAB also strives for excellence and to provide trustworthy news reporting, she said.

A few quick facts you need to know:

The print edition reaches nearly 55,000 households every week. It offers heartwarming feature stories, resources for Christian living, Baptist news, articles on the persecuted church globally and other important information from Alabama and around the world.

The digital edition is delivered each week to every subscriber’s inbox and includes the full content of the paper in full-color.

The TAB website, thealabamabaptist.org, offers an archive of the newspaper’s articles from 2000 to the present with full access available to TAB subscribers.

The TAB News podcast — co-hosted by Rash and Debbie Campbell, TAB’s director of communications — presents an inspirational interview or two each week, along with an audio digest of a few selected stories from that week’s issue. You can access it on the TAB website or your favorite podcast app, like Apple Podcasts or Stitcher. (And you can find Rembert’s story on the March 26 podcast.) 

Radio show

TAB also has a radio show that airs in north and central Alabama each Saturday at 2 p.m. on Birmingham’s WXJC 101.1 FM and 850 AM or at http://player.listenlive.co/42691.

You can find TAB on social media — follow @AlabamaBaptist on Twitter and Instagram and like The Alabama Baptist newspaper on Facebook.

Home office

The offices of TAB moved around the state for decades before finding a permanent home in Birmingham’s Homewood neighborhood in 1975. Recent changes in the building include the creation of a community space downstairs complete with tea and coffee that can be used for meetings, Bible study or simply a resting spot.

The inspirational story of TAB’s gritty journey to survive wars, fires, tough financial times and other obstacles is told in a book released in 2018 for the newspaper’s 175th anniversary — “The Alabama Baptist: Celebrating 175 Years of Informing, Inspiring and Connecting Baptists.” (TAB)