EDITORIAL: ‘Pour out your heart’ & fight hunger

Posted: 11/11/05

EDITORIAL:
'Pour out your heart' & fight hunger

True confession: Before I recently traveled to China with Buckner Orphan Care International, I fretted about going hungry. I'd heard “you don't want to know” the source of meat in many Chinese dishes. I wondered if meals would be appetizing, much less adequate. So, although I could stand to lose a few pounds, I weighed down my suitcase with protein bars, trail mix and nuts. Turns out, we ate wonderfully. With only one exception, the food looked similar to the fare served in nice Chinese restaurants back home. And although I did lose about four pounds, that had more to do with my dexterity with chopsticks than with the quantity and quality of Chinese food.

How off-base and selfish: Leading up to a trip of a lifetime, I wasted energy thinking about and shopping for transportable food so I could last a little more than a week overseas without feeling a single hunger pang. Maybe I'm willing to tell you this little story because I don't think I'm all that different from most Texas Baptists. We're food-centric. Many of our best get-togethers feature fellowship-hall tables laden with fried chicken, casseroles, home-cooked vegetables, and pies and cakes. We plan trips and visits with friends around where we'll eat.

This time of year, as we look ahead to Thanksgiving and an annual feast with family, Texas Baptists also think about food for others. This is the season when we collect the Texas Baptist Offering for World Hunger. “Pour Out Your Heart” is the theme for this year's offering, and we will do that as we seek to meet the $800,000 goal.

Actually, $800,000 is a worthy goal–but only a fraction of what is needed to take on hunger in Texas, across the United States and around the world. According to Bread for the World and America's Second Harvest:

Worldwide, 852 million people are hungry, an increase of 10 million in just one year.

The largest groups of hungry are children and the elderly. Each day, more than 16,000 children die from hunger-related causes. That's one child every five seconds.

More than 33 million Americans are classified as “food insecure,” meaning they are hungry or at risk of hunger.

The Texas Baptist Offering for World Hunger is a wonderful investment in reducing hunger. Not only is all the money channeled to reduce poverty, provide food and secure clean water, but it is delivered in the name of Christ. Recipients not only get food; they receive the Bread of Life. Not only do they drink water; they are presented Living Water. The offering makes both a current and an eternal difference in lives. As you support the Texas Baptist Offering for World Hunger, you carry the presence of Christ to the people he loves most–the “least of these” all over the world.

Good news for Baylor

So much for all the folks who think Baylor University's regents don't believe in miracles.

“Miraculous” echoed from the lips of Baylor regents after they unanimously elected John Lilley as the university's 13th president.

Just about everyone who has tracked Baylor's recent strife was shocked a candidate could receive a unanimous vote from the board, whose divisions have taken on legendary proportions. But Lilley, president of the University of Nevada at Reno, filled that bill.

One reason regents unanimously elected Lilley is he's lived outside the Baptist mainstream, where debating all things Baylor–particularly the administration of President Robert Sloan and the Baylor 2012 long-range plan–has been a preoccupation. He has not been branded by positions on either Sloan's tenure or the flashpoints of Baylor 2012.

Lilley also earned the regents' unanimous support because he is an impressive academic administrator and Christian leader. He meets presidential criteria outlined in a Standard editorial: First, he is able to lead Baylor to academic greatness. He can guide the university past its debate between classroom teaching and academic research, and he can lead it to champion both faith and learning. In so doing, he can help Baylor close its divisions. Second, he has demonstrated commitment to historic Baptist principles. “Eternal salvation by faith, not of works; immersion; soul freedom; priesthood of the believer–all those things I learned at my father's knee,” he noted. And although, for several reasons, he has been a member of Presbyterian congregations, he has told their pastors, “I may be joining your church, but I'm a Baptist.”

The regents could have helped Lilley by creating a reconciliation task force. But he's already talking about how to restore relationships, speaking a refreshing word, “listening,” to go with a hopeful word, “talking.” Now, all who love Baylor should pray for the university and her new president.

Marv Knox is editor of the Baptist Standard.