Posted: 11/07/03

Baptist Briefs

Patterson sent letter to IMB trustees. The "Vision Assessment" document written by a Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary professor and distributed to trustees of the Southern Baptist International Mission Board carried a cover letter from Paige Patterson, president of Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary. After reporting in last week's issue about the document, which is critical of the current IMB administration, the Baptist Standard obtained a copy of Patterson's cover letter, in which he said, "The critical importance of this paper, especially in light of the conservative movement in the Southern Baptist Convention, will be apparent to you as you read it." Meanwhile, IMB spokesman Larry Cox told Associated Baptist Press Keith Eitel's criticisms are "groundless accusations" and will be addressed by trustees this week.

ABC faces missions shortfall. American Baptists' global missions agency faces a $3 million budget shortfall next year and could be forced to recall missionaries if finances don't improve. The International Ministries division of American Baptist Churches in the USA issued a news release Nov. 3 reporting "a serious financial challenge," brought about because giving by American Baptist churches has not kept up with growth of missionary work. Hector Cortez, who took over as International Ministries' executive director in August, blamed losses in the stock market and a decades-long decline in denominational giving as factors behind the agency's financial woes.

Posted: 11/07/03

Buckner and church partner to provide food service

By Russ Dilday

Buckner News Service

DALLAS–A line of cars winds snake-like through the parking lot of First Baptist Church of Urbandale, wrapping around the block.

They're lined up to receive food stacked in bulk on 10 pallets at the front steps of the church–fresh vegetables, juice, cereal and soft drinks.

Cars line up near First Baptist Church of Urbandale for the monthly food distribution that is staffed by a wide variety of volunteers.

“Two!” shouts Jackie Belt, manager of the Buckner Crisis Relief Center, to volunteers as the next car in line pulls up. Belt's administrative assistant, Sharon Hedrick, takes down the occupants' information as they pass by. The shouted number indicates the number of families represented by those in the car. They will receive two families' worth of distributed food.

“One!” he calls out as the following vehicle containing a mother and three children pulls up. As if on cue, the gray sky opens up in a light downpour, drenching Belt, Hedrick and volunteers. But the occupants inside each car stay dry. They are only required to open their trunks, where the volunteers stack the food.

Belt coordinates the Food for Families program the second Friday of each month, distributing the food to pre-screened families who have submitted requests and have been approved for vouchers, based on need.

“I work with the North Texas Food Bank to recruit volunteers, line up the food drops, distribute the food, work with the church on arranging the parking lot for all the cars and oversee the cleanup process so we don't leave it a mess for the church,” he explained. “We serve about 150 families representing close to 450 to 500 people on average.”

By the end of this afternoon, 37 volunteers had served 203 families representing 809 people.

Along with the location provided by First Baptist Church of Urbandale, Food for Families is a partnership between Buckner Children & Family Services, Sharing Life Ministries of Mesquite, Southeast Dallas Emergency Food Center, Pathway of Life, and The Family Place.

Each organization provides at least two volunteers for the distribution. This summer, Buckner Children's Home residents and houseparents helped.

Among the most active volunteers are students at Dallas Academy, where Karen Kinsella is assistant director.

This community service provides her students lessons in giving, she said. “I know without giving to the community, the world doesn't work very well. I want (these students) to understand that. These kids all have a pretty good lifestyle, and it's really important for them to see the other side of what's going on out there in the world and to know they can make a contribution in ways other than money–giving of their time, giving of themselves.

Through its partnership with Buckner Children & Family Services and other area ministries, First Baptist Church of Urbandale has extended its outreach and now provides basic food support for as many as 200 families each month. (Russ Dilday/Buckner Photos)

“This is a classroom,” she said. “They may not remember the algebraic equations they are learning two or three years from now, but maybe they'll remember the lesson of learning to give to other people.”

Those receiving the food also learn something about the compassion of the Christian community, affirmed one of the recipients, Mary.

“Oh, Lord, it means so much to me,” she said. “I lost my job about two years ago, and they have helped my whole family. I have two granddaughters that live with me. I'm getting food for my friend Bernice. She has five kids staying with her–her daughter got on some drugs–and she doesn't have a car.”

These scenes of need make an impression on the student volunteers, said Dallas Academy student Jeff Earnshaw.

“Where there's a lot of kids, that's the worst. One lady looked like she would be a senior in high school, and she had three kids, and I didn't see a father in the car. That got to me. She looked my age and has three kids. It looked like she was out there on her own.”

Posted: 11/07/03

New Texas-based seminary names
first four faculty; Corley to lead

By Mark Wingfield

Managing Editor

DALLAS–Four faculty members have resigned from Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary to become the inaugural faculty of the B.H. Carroll Theological Institute.

However, founders insist the new seminary has not been formed in reaction to changing leadership at Southwestern and will not seek to draw students away from Southwestern or other traditional seminaries.

Read reactions to establishment of the seminary below.

Bruce Corley, former dean of theology at Southwestern and former faculty member at Baylor University's Truett Seminary, has resigned as a New Testament professor at Southwestern and will become president of the Carroll Institute, announced Russell Dilday, former Southwestern president and an organizer of the new enterprise.

Inaugural faculty of the Carroll Institute are Bruce Corley, Stan Moore, Budd Smith and Jim Spivey.

Corley will be joined by Jim Spivey, Budd Smith and Stan Moore.

Spivey, who has taught church history 16 years at Southwestern, will teach historical theology at the Carroll Institute. At Southwestern, he also has been administrative dean for the seminary's Houston campus.

Smith, who has taught Christian education at Southwestern for 24 years, will teach in that same field in his new assignment. At Southwestern, he also has directed the Oxford Studies Program.

Moore, a former missionary to Brazil, has taught church music at Southwestern for 16 years. He currently is acting dean of the School of Church Music there.

Dilday and Scotty Gray, a retired administrator at Southwestern, announced the first faculty appointments at a news conference Nov. 4 at Park Cities Baptist Church in Dallas.

Park Cities will become the first of what organizers hope will become 100 teaching churches–the backbone of the Carroll Institute's concept. Numerous other churches have expressed interest in the concept, but no other agreements have been finalized, Dilday said.

However, churches currently served by the 1,400 doctor of philosophy graduates of Southwestern Seminary are “the kind of churches we're targeting,” he added.

Neither Dilday nor Gray will draw compensation from the seminary, although Dilday has been given the honorary title of chancellor. Gray has served as director of the seminary during its initial development.

Jim Denison, pastor of Park Cities Baptist Church, explained the concept of a teaching church tied to seminary studies will provide a more practical education than an institutional seminary.

“This is a new way of doing theological education that at the same time returns us to our roots,” Denison said. He and the other organizers cited the original vision of B.H. Carroll, who as pastor of First Baptist Church in Waco founded the precursor to Southwestern Seminary as a department of Baylor University. Carroll became the founding president of Southwestern when it separated from Baylor and moved to Fort Worth in the early 20th century.

This happened in the context of educating ministerial students within the local church, Denison said. “We are returning to his vision and advancing his vision.”

Ironically, when Baylor University formed Truett Seminary in 1991, it was hailed as a fulfillment of Carroll's vision of placing a seminary within a university. More recently, Southwestern Seminary President Paige Patterson in his inaugural address pledged to tie Southwestern to the founding vision of Carroll.

Although Carroll's name and vision have been tapped in various ways, this is the first time an institution has been named for him.

The Carroll Institute is needed, organizers said, because of its different approach to theological education and because existing seminaries are not producing enough trained ministers to meet demands.

“In the past 20 years, the number of Southern Baptist churches has grown by 17 percent, but the number of ministers has grown only 10 percent,” explained a document distributed to reporters. “The number of SBC seminary graduates per church has declined 30 percent. The number of SBC seminary graduates per member of SBC churches has declined 45 percent.”

Although the institute will have a small headquarters somewhere in the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex, its primary work will be done through affiliated teaching churches. Ideally, organizers said, students will be engaged in ministry roles with those and other churches concurrent with their studies.

“Carroll Institute will not aim at recruiting students who desire to attend one of the residential seminaries already in existence,” according to information given to reporters. “It will recruit students who desire to continue ministering in their own local congregations while pursuing theological education at a teaching church very near their home base.”

Instruction will be delivered in four ways, the organizers said:

Traditional classroom settings with face-to-face interaction between teachers and students.

Live electronic instruction via the Internet, akin to distance-learning concepts in use in many universities.

Online classes.

Electronic correspondence studies.

Classes will begin in fall 2004, and tuition will cost $100 per credit hour. The rate will be the same for both Southern Baptist and non-Southern Baptist students.

The business plan calls for reaching 500 to 1,000 students enrolled in the Metroplex alone, with 200 to 300 at each additional teaching church site.

The institute will develop both a physical library and a virtual library, Dilday and Gray said. Students also will access other existing libraries in or near where they live.

The institute's primary collection received an initial boost from Eddie Belle Newport, widow of John Newport, longtime academic vice president at Southwestern. The 4,892-volume Newport library will be housed at the institute's headquarters.

In addition, the Carroll Institute library will include 500 volumes donated by Lois Hendricks, widow of William Hendricks, longtime theology professor at Southwestern Seminary, Southern Baptist Theological Seminary and Texas Christian University's Brite Divinity School.

Six other retired faculty members are “in the process of making their libraries available to us,” reported Carl Wrotenbery, retired director of libraries at Southwestern.

Full implementation of the Carroll Institute's business plan, including endowments, will require $35 million to $50 million, Gray said. The initial cost is estimated at $8 million to $10 million.

Required funding for the first year will be about $400,000, Dilday said. To date, about half that amount has been raised, he added, including one large gift and a number of smaller and mid-sized gifts.

The Carroll Institute plans to remain an autonomous Baptist institution that will “seek to build collaborative and collegial relationships with all Southern Baptists, with the Southern Baptist denomination as a whole, with state conventions and with local churches,” the press statement said.

Dilday and Denison insisted the Carroll Institute will not serve only moderate Baptist churches disaffected by the rightward shift in the SBC.

“We do not see this as a moderate seminary,” Denison said, adding that the institute will not become “politically identified.”

Information given to reporters said the “sole authority for faith, practice and teaching” in the institute will be “Jesus Christ, whose will is revealed in the holy Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments. The confessional position of Carroll Institute is the consensus of opinion concerning those articles of the Christian faith and practice that have been most surely held and expressed in historic Baptist principles and practices.”

Articles of incorporation filed with the Texas Secretary of State May 1 list three men as directors of the corporation: Gray, Herbert Howard and William Latham, all of Fort Worth.

A strategic plan document lists 16 people as members of the strategic planning group that has birthed the Carroll Institute. In addition to Dilday, Denison, Gray, Howard and Latham, they are Tom Chism, Tom Coston, Robert Feather, Tom Hill, Cheri Jordan, Hilda Moffett, Joan Trew, Fran Wilson, Michael Wright, Wrotenbery and Jerry Yowell.

The institute also announced a website–www.bhcti.org.

A formal launch of the institution, along with announcements about a headquarters location and more teaching churches, will occur in January, Dilday said.

Reactions mixed to Carroll Institute launch

Paige Patterson, president of Southwestern Seminary: “People are, of course, free to employ whatever name they wish. Whether this is done with integrity depends upon whether the principles of the one whose name is thereby invoked are honored and espoused. While one may question the justice of using the name of the founder of Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in a competing effort against that seminary, the real test will be whether they have honored Carroll's name or just used it.”

Paul Powell, dean of Truett Seminary at Baylor University: “The need for theological education is vast and this is a bold experiment. These are my friends and I wish them God's favor.”

Charles Wade, executive director of the Baptist General Convention of Texas: “I welcome this new paradigm of seminary education represented by the B.H. Carroll Institute in our ongoing effort to train effective Christian leaders, biblically sound pastors, passionate gospel preachers, evangelists, missionaries and ministers who value our Baptist heritage. The leadership announced are men who have contributed greatly to Texas Baptist life. We look forward to working with them and commend them to our churches.”

Posted: 11/07/03


See second cartoon here

"Next time, give us more meat. You left milk stains on the carpet."

Posted: 11/07/03

Designated gifts boost CBF despite drop in church giving

ATLANTA–As projected, undesignated gifts to the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship fell short of budget goals for the 2002-2003 fiscal year, requiring a $513,000 dip into reserve funds for operations.

However, designated giving pushed total revenue for the CBF to a record $24.5 million, according to audited figures released by CBF officials.

Total revenue increased 15.1 percent, but contributions from churches fell 2.1 percent.

“We knew this was going to be a down year, the mid-year contribution numbers confirmed it, and we began making modifications and amending our plan early on,” said Jim Strawn, the Fellowship's chief financial officer. “Without that fiscally responsible action, the deficit would have been more.”

The CBF maintains operating reserves of $8.3 million, Strawn said.

Designated contributions increased 28 percent from the previous year, fueled by a Lilly Endowment grant for ministerial development and a $5 million anonymous gift.

The CBF's Global Missions Offering received $5.3 million, short of the $6.1 million goal.

The $5 million gift in April enabled the Fellowship to commission 18 new global missions field personnel at the general assembly in Charlotte, N.C., in June. Without that gift, which designated $4.2 million for global missions over the next three years, the Fellowship would not have been able to send new field personnel, officials said. The gift also included $500,000 designated for endowment for the CBF Church Benefits Board, $250,000 for church starts and $50,000 for a new, shared database system in the Atlanta Resource Center.

Gifts from churches and individuals in Texas to national CBF totaled $3.13 million, down slightly from the previous year's total of $3.14 million. Undesignated gifts from Texas totaled $1.4 million, while the Global Missions Offering received $1.32 million from Texas.

The number of churches contributing in Texas rose from 379 in fiscal year 2001-02 to 450 in fiscal year 2002-03. The number of individual contributors also rose from 609 in 2001-02 to 638 in 2002-03.

Nationwide, the number of churches contributing to the CBF increased for the fiscal year, and the number of individuals contributing also increased. More than 1,800 churches and 3,700 individuals made contributions to CBF in fiscal 2002-03, compared to 1,715 churches and 3,128 individuals in fiscal 2001-02.

Church counts are approximate because CBF of Florida began reporting church contributions mid-year and because CBF does not receive the names of churches that contribute through the Baptist State Convention of North Carolina. CBF also is a part of giving plans through the Baptist General Convention of Texas and the Baptist General Association of Virginia. Those two states provide church counts to CBF.

Posted: 11/07/03

Census tracks grandparents raising grandchildren

ALEXANDRIA, Va.–Nearly 6 million grandparents live in the same household with their grandchildren in the United States, and 40 percent of those grandparents are the primary caregivers for their grandchildren.

The data, based on the 2000 Census, was released by the Census Bureau at a Generations United Conference in Alexandria, Va.

One-third of grandparent caregivers live in “skipped generation” households where neither parent of the grandchildren is present.

The report, “Grandparents Living With Grandchildren: 2000,” shows the geographic distribution of grandparents living with grandchildren and serving as caregivers, as well as the length of time the grandparents cared for the grandchildren. The percentage of grandparent caregivers who live in poverty also is shown.

Among the report's highlights:

Almost all grandparents responsible for grandchildren were either the householder or the householder's spouse (94 percent).

Coresident grandparents younger than 60 were more likely to be grandparent caregivers than were grandparents age 60 and over.

Racial and ethnic differences in grandparent coresidence and caregiving were prominent. Although the majority of grandparents living with grandchildren were non-Hispanic white (2.7 million), they comprised only 2 percent of the non-Hispanic white population age 30 and over. By comparison, 6 percent to 10 percent of other racial and ethnic groups lived with their grandchildren.

Nineteen percent of grandparent caregivers were living in poverty in 1999. The highest proportion of grandparent caregivers in poverty was in the South (21 percent), and the lowest proportions were in the West (16 percent) and the Midwest (15 percent).

Posted: 11/07/03

Officials claim no underground church in China

WASHINGTON (RNS)–Leaders of government-sanctioned Protestant churches in China said Oct. 22 that “there are no underground churches in China” and dismissed reports of harassed Christians in the communist nation.

Officials from the China Christian Council and the Three-Self Patriotic Movement also agreed with Beijing labeling the Falun Gong movement an “evil cult” that must be stopped.

“The Chinese government is doing a better and better job of ensuring freedom of religious belief,” Cao Shengjie, president of the China Christian Council, said at a news conference at the Chinese Embassy. “If the government had not implemented this policy, the Christian church in China could not have had this development.”

Cao dismissed reports of a thriving but persecuted underground church that human rights groups say has been harassed by Chinese officials. Instead, she said, there are “only a limited number” of churches that have not registered with the government.

“In the final analysis, a church is a church, and there can be no underground or above ground between them,” Presbyter Ji Jianhong, chairman of the Three-Self Patriotic Movement, said through a translator.

U.S. officials disagree. Last May, Secretary of State Colin Powell named China a “country of particular concern” for its religious freedom policies, and the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom reported “widespread and serious abuses of the right to freedom of religion and belief in China.”

Paul Marshall, a senior fellow at the Center for Religious Freedom at Freedom House, a human rights watchdog group, estimated at least 25 million people belong to the underground churches, and “it could be double or triple that.”

“They are wrong on both counts,” Marshall said. “There is an underground church, and it is persecuted.”

Much of the concern by human rights groups has focused on the government's crackdown on the Falun Gong movement, which it labeled an “evil cult” that aims to subvert the government.

Cao said: “Falun Gong has nothing to do with the question of religious belief. It is an evil cult that has committed many crimes against the Chinese people.”

Both Cao and Ji said Western churches must not try to establish missionary outposts in China.

Posted: 11/07/03

Scholars see shift in church-state views

By Kristen Campbell

Religion News Service

WASHINGTON (RNS)–In the beginning, Baptists preached, promoted and, yes, probably prayed for separation of church and state.

Indeed, Roger Williams, co-founder of the first Baptist church in the United States, wrote in the 1640s: “An enforced uniformity of religion throughout a nation or civil state confounds the civil and religious, denies the principles of Christianity and civility, and that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh.”

So the ways in which many Southern Baptists–the nation's largest Protestant denomination–have shifted their views regarding separation of church and state in recent years have been surprising to Charles Haynes, senior scholar at the First Amendment Center in Arlington, Va.

“Baptists were the great separationists in our early history and were the army that supported … disestablishment in Virginia,” Haynes said. “Theologically, going back to Williams and others, Baptists always believed that authentic religion was corrupted when the state got involved in it.

“It's a long history of theological and political opposition to church and state entanglement that has been reversed, by at least the Southern Baptist Convention,” Haynes said.

But Cecil Taylor, dean of the School of Religion at the Southern Baptist-related University of Mobile in Alabama, contends it's the current crop of separationists who have changed their views, not Southern Baptists.

“The Baptists that I know favored separation of church and state so long as it meant the state could not interfere in church matters,” Taylor said. “Separation of church and state has come to mean the excision of God from government as we perceive it.”

Today, Taylor said, the United States is engaged in a “dangerous experiment. … We are trying to build a stable, workable society without reference to God. That appears to be the objective of the courts and the people who are filing the suits. They want no recognition of God by the state.

“That is an experiment that has never been attempted before in the history of man. … I'm not sure the experiment's working out very well.”

Sentiments like Taylor's may evolve from a belief that Supreme Court decisions and secular culture have destroyed morality, Haynes replied. “So the response to that is, 'We need to return the nation to God.'”

Those who espouse such views mark a change in Southern Baptists' ideology, said Haynes, who believes the group's thinking changed as the Southern Baptist Convention grew more theologically and socially conservative. During that transformation, which started more than 20 years ago, the nation's largest Protestant group also gained political clout.

“When the group becomes the majority in some parts of the country and a powerful force politically and religiously, there does seem to be a tendency to forget what it was like to be the beleaguered minority,” Haynes said.

“The Baptists in Utah, they understand why it's so important for the state not to promote religion, particularly in a public school. They feel the impact of it,” Haynes said. “They understand the importance of the First Amendment because they need it. … They're aware of what it means to be persecuted.

“That's why, of course, under the First Amendment, it's important for citizens to take responsibility to guard the rights of other people,” he said. “We're all a religious minority somewhere in the country. The only way for that to work without violence, without oppression, is for the state to be neutral.”

Posted: 11/07/03

ANOTHER VIEW:
You don't need 911 to dial heaven

By David Wilkinson

There ain't no busy signal

on the hotline to God.

—"Cotton Patch Gospel"

You know you're having a bad day when you dial 911 and get put on hold.

I was sitting semi-conscious on the couch a few minutes after midnight when the phone rang. It was my wife, Melanie, who was nearing the end of her two-day drive home from Minnesota after depositing our son, Micah, at St. Olaf College

“I need you to call 911 for me,” Melanie said as I answered the phone.

David Wilkinson

Before I could stammer a Stupid Husband Response like “You mean you don't know the number for 911?” she quickly explained: “I've just seen two guys breaking into a car. My cell phone is nearly dead, and I can't find the adapter.”

My wife has this thing about civic duty and Christian compassion. At least this Good Samaritan chose to call rather than apprehend the thieves directly.

“Call 911,” she repeated, resisting the urge to ask me to write down the number.

“Tell them I asked you to call because my cell phone battery was about to go dead and that I have just seen two men breaking into a car parked on the shoulder on the north side of Highway 121 just past exit 103.”

“Got it. Highway 121, just past exit 103,” I dutifully repeated without commentary. (After 25 years of marriage, I've learned a few things.)

I hung up and dialed 911.

“Please do not hang up,” intoned the recorded message. “Your call is important to us.”

“Glad I'm not having a heart attack,” I thought. After a minute or two, a live person came on the line.

“I am calling on behalf of my wife, who is traveling southwest on Highway 121 and has just witnessed two men breaking into a car parked on the shoulder on the north side of the road just past exit 103. She asked me to call because her cell phone was about to go dead.”

“Would you repeat that, please?”

I did.

“Exit 103. Did your wife give you a cross street?”

“No.”

“Hmmm, no cross street.”

“No, sir, she was careful to get the exit number, but she didn't give me a cross street.”

“OK, did she give you the names of some of the businesses at that exit?”

“No sir. I have told you everything my wife told me.”

“What about a description of the car?”

“It was a car. It was being broken into. She didn't say what kind of car; she just told me exactly where it was located–just past exit 103.”

“I'm sorry, sir, but I need more information than an exit number.”

I started to suggest he look it up on AAA's web site.

“Is that in the Fort Worth city limits?”

I tried to remain calm. “I don't know. All I know is the exit number.”

“OK. Well, since you don't know if it's in the city limits (how stupid of me), please stay on the line while I transfer you.”

After a few rings, Mr. 911 lateralled to Mr. Highway Patrol. I recited the details, all of them, again. And, I kid you not, this is what came next:

“Can you give me a cross street?” followed by “Can you tell me any of the business establishments near that exit?”

That pushed me over the edge. “With all due respect, I've been on the phone so long those guys are now enjoying a beer while going over their stolen items inventory.”

“Well,” he said, irritated by my attitude, “I guess I could send a car up Highway 121 for a look.”

I had hardly settled down on the couch again when the doorbell rang.

“For goodness sake, Melanie,” I grumbled, “the door is unlocked. And you're going to wake up Meredith.”

I opened the door to find a firefighter in full gear standing on the front step.

Behind him on the sidewalk stood two others.

Parked on the street behind them was a fire truck, red lights flashing.

As I tried to take in the sight, a police car pulled up behind the fire truck. I imagined the neighbors peeking through their mini-blinds.

The firefighter spoke.

“You called 911?”

I'm glad we pray to a God who “neither slumbers nor sleeps” and always knows where to find us.

Even without a cross street.

David Wilkinson is minister of education and discipleship at Broadway Baptist Church in Fort Worth

Posted: 11/07/03

DBU students devote fall break to Guatemala trip

DALLAS–Fall break brought a respite from study but not from ministry, as 25 students and staff members from Dallas Baptist University traveled to Guatemala with Buckner Orphan Care International.

“We love working with college students, because they have the time and energy to travel, and also because of the special love they have for children,” explained Eraina Larson, mission coordinator for Buckner Orphan Care International. “Specifically, we partnered with DBU because of the quality of the students and their passion to help in countries like Guatemala where the situations are so desperate.”

The team, led by DBU Executive Vice President Blair Blackburn and Ozzie Ingram, assistant vice president for administrative affairs, served 100 children and teenagers at an orphanage in Xela, Guatemala.

The experience was life-changing, both for students and staff, said Adam Wright, director of freshman recruitment.

“Our journey to Guatemala put a whole new perspective on life for me,” he explained. “Sharing the love of Christ and the hope we have in the Lord with orphans in Guatemala was a moving experience I will never forget, and it made me realize, more than ever before, how blessed we are to live in a country like America. We don't have to be in another country to work for the Lord; there is a mission field in our own backyard.”

DBU senior Jason Hatch expressed a similar sentiment.

“It was amazing to be able to go into the orphanage and minister to all the children,” he explained. “Two young Guatemalan teenage boys approached me one night and told me they were Christians but they had no idea what they needed to do now. God has placed a sincere love in my heart for Spanish-speaking people, and after seeing what I saw on this trip, I am praying about going back to Guatemala on a long-term basis to help disciple the orphans. They desire to live godly lives and are hungry for someone to teach them.”

DBU senior Brance Barker entertains a Guatemalan orphan.

The team provided daily Bible school activities for the children as well as fellowship and evangelistic exercises for teenagers. These activities included Bible stories, Scripture memorization, crafts and recreational sports.

Twenty children and teens professed faith in Jesus Christ.

Working with the staff that manages the orphanage helped Katy Matthews, a senior English major, redefine the meaning of commitment and hard work.

“What impacted me the most during the trip was the encouragement we received from the staff that worked at the orphanage in Xela,” she said. “They are understaffed and often struggle to take care of more than a hundred children, several with special needs. They ministered to me because of their dedication and genuine love for the children.”

DBU students involved with the trip were enrolled in a course titled “Mission: Servant Leadership.” The course provided a study of servant leadership theory, but the trip provided hands-on training in the area of servant leadership.

And the lessons learned came more from personal experience than textbooks.

“It was such a blessing to go and work with the children in Xela,” said Candice Wright, a master's student. “You can tell they long for love, and we had the opportunity to not only love on all of them, but to share with them how much their heavenly Father loves them. The faces of each of these orphan children will forever be engraved on my heart.”

Posted: 11/07/03

D.C. convention looks ahead despite cuts

By Robert Marus

ABP Washington Bureau

SILVER SPRING, Md. (ABP)–Despite having nearly a third of its funding cut off by the Southern Baptist Convention, leaders of the District of Columbia Baptist Convention gave upbeat reports during the organization's 127th annual meeting Oct. 27-28.

Among other actions, messengers adopted a 2004 budget that reflected a slight reduction from the 2003 budget, approved a minimum annual contribution for participating churches, signed a covenant reflecting the re-organized convention's purpose and accepted 10 churches into the fellowship.

The meeting was held at Luther Rice Memorial Baptist Church in the Washington suburb of Silver Spring, Md.

The SBC's North American Mission Board announced last year that it would cut off nearly $500,000 in annual funding it sent to the DCBC because of perceived doctrinal differences between the two organizations.

The D.C. convention is unique among Southern Baptist-related state or regional conventions in that it also affiliates with two other national Baptist bodies–the American Baptist Churches in the USA and the Progressive National Baptist Convention.

In addition, many D.C. churches are affiliated with two moderate splinter groups of the SBC–the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship and the Alliance of Baptists.

About 150 churches belong to the D.C. convention, including many in Washington-area suburbs of Virginia and Maryland and beyond.

“Over the last year, we have endured much hardship as soldiers of Jesus Christ,” Jeffrey Haggray, the convention's executive director-minister, said. He especially noted that, two years ago, the convention employed 23 full- and part-time staff members. Now there are 10.

Despite the hardship, the de-funding and attendant reorganization plan created timely opportunities, Haggray said. “Our churches want hands-on ministry that is indigenous, contextual, staffed by their members and is driven by them as they feel led by the Holy Spirit.”

Another inadvertent benefit, he added, is that all convention staff members' salaries are now 100 percent underwritten by the D.C. convention itself.

And although leaders of at least two churches supportive of the SBC's conservative wing indicated they would withdraw support from the D.C. convention as a result of the controversy, Haggray noted several times as many congregations have affiliated with the body since the controversy began.

In an additional move to shore up finances, messengers adopted a motion to set an annual minimum contribution of $500 for cooperating churches. Previously, the convention's constitution required only that member churches be financially supportive of the convention without specifying any required amount.

Posted: 11/07/03

COMPANIONS IN DEATH:
No One Dies Alone

By Inara Verzemnieks

Religion News Service

EUGENE, Ore. (RNS)–And so it has come to this: Alone in a hospital bed, no family or friends to hear the last ragged breaths, the sounds of a lifetime ending.

The nurse with the purple highlights running through her hair and a penchant for quoting Mother Teresa–although she points to the purple as proof she is more Madonna than Teresa–picks up the phone and punches in numbers.

More than 200 people are on her list–a roster of hospital staff–housekeepers, engineers, food service workers, administrators–who have volunteered day and night to come and sit with the dying who have no one else.

Sandra Clarke, a nursing supervisor at Sacred Heart Medical Center in Eugene, Ore., started the No One Dies Alone program. Volunteers from the hospital take turns sitting at the bedside of dying individuals who otherwise would have no one. (Motoya Nakamura/RNS Photo)

It has been nearly two years since Sandra Clarke, a nurse at Sacred Heart Medical Center, launched the program she calls No One Dies Alone, but already her grass-roots effort has earned national attention, and hospitals around the country are asking how they can replicate her idea.

As baby boomers age, as families shrink and settle far apart and as more people choose to live by themselves, the number of those who have no one to be with them at the end of their lives likely will grow.

Even now, Clarke picks up the phone two or three times a month to arrange for a volunteer to sit with someone who might otherwise die alone.

According to the American Geriatrics Society, the size of the older population will double in the next 30 years. By 2030, one in five people will be 65 or older. At the same time, people are living longer and having fewer children, narrowing the circle of family and friends they can depend on as they age.

More people also are living alone. About one in four households consists of a single person, the U.S. Census Bureau says. Among those 65 and older, it's one in three.

“This is only going to get worse,” said Charles Cefalu, chief of geriatric medicine at Louisiana State University medical school. “It's going to become a significant problem.”

In a hospital, demographic shifts–the signs of families fragmented and far flung–play out in the simplest human terms: An elderly man, slipping away, called weakly to the nurse, “Please sit with me.”

But Clarke was busy, just starting her rounds, with six or seven others who needed her first. It was 1986.

“I'll be right back,” she remembers telling him. She'd meant it, too; she hurried to his room as soon as she could. But he already had died.

“That plagued me,” explained Clarke, 61, a nursing supervisor.

As she walked the hospital hallways, staff streaming by, she wondered: With all these people working here, wouldn't there be someone who had time to sit with the dying who otherwise would have no one?

For several years, Clarke played with her idea. Then one day three years ago, she mentioned it to another nurse. The director of pastoral care overheard Clarke and urged her to write a proposal.

By November 2001, No One Dies Alone was running. And since then, Clarke, an energetic woman who laughs easily and often, the daughter of a professional wrestler turned Hollywood stuntman, has devoted hours to seeing her vision take form.

Most of the patients the program serves are elderly. Many have outlived friends and relatives. A few have been abandoned by family. Some have alienated themselves.

Clarke tells of one man who died with a hospital engineer at his bedside. When the nursing staff called the family to tell them they might want to come soon, they said: “Good riddance. We hate him.”

“Who's to say they weren't right?” Clarke admitted. “But I feel at that point, it's not our time to judge.”

Others among the dying are far from home–new residents or strangers traveling in the area when tragedy strikes, and family can't get to the hospital soon enough.

When the nursing staff learns of someone who has less than 72 hours to live, a “do not resuscitate” order and no one else around, they page Clarke, who gets out her list of volunteers and starts to call.

Anyone who volunteers with No One Dies Alone must be employed at the hospital or have at least six months' experience volunteering there. Everyone attends an hour-long orientation, which covers topics such as how to determine whether someone is in pain and how to tell when someone has died. Volunteers get few instructions, although they are told not to talk about religion unless the patient asks.

Clarke urges volunteers to treat the dying person as they would family or friends. “It has to come from the heart,” she said.

For Penny Jones, who works in hospital admitting, that has meant stroking patients' arms, moistening their lips, covering them when they shiver.

For Jim McFerran, a leadership and employee development specialist, it has meant leaning forward and whispering to an elderly woman, as she drew her last breaths, that she was loved, that she would be missed.

For Jim Graham, 67, retired after years of building homes, it has meant playing soft music and offering stories about his own life. “I tell them I wish we could have talked under different circumstances,” he said, “but we all come to this place.”

Volunteers sign up through a hospital website to spend as little or as much time as they like at a patient's side. Some offer to sit until Clarke can summon someone else. Others volunteer to sit all night.

At every orientation, Clarke–who recently completed a how-to guide for hospitals that want to start their own programs –asks each volunteer why they want to do this.

Some say they had a parent or a grandparent or a sibling who died alone and they want, in their small way, to make up for that. Quite a few say they themselves are afraid of dying alone.

“It's not something for everybody, in the sense that being with somebody who is dying causes you to have to think about what that means to you personally,” said Barry West, who works in information technology at the hospital and helps Clarke run the program. “It's the sort of thing that raises unresolved issues, feelings and questions in the person who volunteers.”

In many ways, it is as much a program for the living.

Before going to sit with a patient, a volunteer picks up a duffel bag from a battered metal filing cabinet near the hospital's main entrance. Inside is a compact disc player, a few discs, including harp music and Mozart symphonies, a Bible, a journal in which volunteers can write their thoughts, and a stack of notecards.

The notecards were a volunteer's idea–a way to relay what happens in the person's final hours.

When a patient dies, a card accompanies the body, so that if anyone should claim it, they might take comfort in knowing that someone was there to mark the end.