2006 Archives
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DOWN HOME: Buying toothpaste, counting blessings
Posted: 6/23/06
DOWN HOME:
Buying toothpaste, counting blessingsMy wife rarely sends me to the grocery store alone. And she never sends me to the store before dinner.
Joanna realizes I’m just a man. Made of flesh and blood. But mostly, with a stomach. And if it’s an empty stomach, I’m no match for the geniuses who arrange all the stuff in a grocery store.
If properly motivated—that means hungry—I can go to the store for a gallon of milk and eggs and return home with stuff my shopping-savvy wife never would buy.
A normal person wouldn’t fall for the crackers and cookies and salsas and salad dressings that lure me like Safeway Sirens. They contain enough preservatives to keep King Tut looking like he’s still 19 for another 4,000 years. But, heavens, they’re tasty.
06/23/2006 - By John Rutledge
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Church secretary retires after 47 years
Posted: 6/23/06
Ava Flanagan of Canton has retired after 47 years as a church secretary. Church secretary retires after 47 years
By Orville Scott
Special to the Baptist Standard
CANTON—Ava Flanagan is retiring after 47 years as a church secretary, but she quickly points out that she’s not retiring to the rocking chair.
Flanagan, who has served as membership and records secretary at First Baptist Church of Canton 17 years, enthusiastically looks forward to ministering to the growing numbers of senior adults in her church.
06/23/2006 - By John Rutledge
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Central Texas church knows how to read its community
Posted: 6/23/06
First Baptist Church in Laguna Park created a town library where it houses more than 8,000 donated books and a coffee house/Internet cafe. (Photos by Laura Frase) Central Texas church knows
how to read its communityBy Laura Frase
Communications Intern
LAGUNA PARK—When Pastor Doug Evans looked at a storage room at church, he saw the potential for a small town’s first community library.
Evans, pastor of First Baptist Church in Laguna Park, said he was tired of all the junk in the storage room, and in the process of cleaning it out, a 350-book library was born.
06/23/2006 - By John Rutledge
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Texas Baptist Forum
Posted: 6/23/06
Texas Baptist Forum
Southern Baptists & alcohol
According to a Southern Baptist Convention resolution, I’m just one step away from hell. I am now in a special status where I am not eligible to serve in an SBC position.
The convention resolution states: “Resolved, that we urge that no one be elected to serve as a trustee or a member of any entity or committee of the Southern Baptist Convention that is a user of alcoholic beverages.”
Letters are welcomed. Send them to marvknox@baptiststandard.com; 250 words maximum. 
“Fort Worth’s greatest crime scene is also the site of one of her greatest miracles. The Darkness sought to shut us down, but the Light shines ever brighter and ever stronger and will not be extinguished.”
Al Meredith
Pastor of Wedgwood Baptist Church in Fort Worth, noting hundreds of people have become Christians since the September 1999 shooting that killed seven people (Star-Telegram/RNS)“For people in America who are a part of my political tradition, our great sin has often been ignoring religion or denying its power or refusing to engage it because it seemed hostile to us. For … the so-called Christian right and its allies, their great sin has been believing they were in full possession of the truth.”
Bill Clinton
Former U.S. president, accepting an award from the Tanenbaum Center for Interreligious Understanding (The Associated Press/RNS)“Everything possible must be done to fight AIDS.”
Carlo Maria Martini
Roman Catholic cardinal, once considered a candidate for the papacy, announcing his support for use of condoms as a “lesser evil” to the spread of AIDS (RNS)I have a couple of ounces of Jewish Passover wine in the evening to get rid of a tickle in my throat—it is better than cough medicine. And I might have an “adult” beverage twice a year if my wife and I are on a special date.
06/23/2006 - By John Rutledge
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Texas Tidbits
Posted: 6/23/06
Texas Tidbits
BGCT hotel block opens. Discounted hotel rooms for messengers and visitors to the Baptist General Convention of Texas annual meeting now are available. The BGCT has negotiated discounted rates with a variety of hotels in Dallas, where the meeting will be held Nov. 13-14. To receive the reduction when making reservations, Texas Baptists must use the discount code “BGCT.” For a complete list of discounted hotels as well as other information about the BGCT annual meeting, visit www.bgct.org/annual meeting or call (888) 244-9400.
Memorial gift initiates endowment campaign. Christian Ethics Today received a $100,000 gift from Harold Simmons in memory of his longtime friend, ethicist Foy Valentine, the journal’s founder. In response, the publication’s board of directors organized the Friends of Foy Valentine Committee and set a $500,000 goal to partially endow the journal, which is sent free of charge to more than 4,300 subscribers. Two directors—Darold Morgan of Richardson and David Sapp, of Atlanta, Ga.—will oversee the campaign. For more information, visit www.ChristianEthicsToday.com.
06/23/2006 - By John Rutledge
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TOGETHER: CLC builds Baptists’ biblical convictions
Posted: 6/23/06
TOGETHER:
CLC builds Baptists’ biblical convictionsBaptists are in danger of losing the fruit of one man’s life. For decades, students of T.B. Maston came out of his Christian ethics classes to move across Texas and the world and give prophetic witness to the ethical demands of the gospel of Jesus Christ. They were pastors, missionaries, and college and seminary professors and presidents. They led the Christian life commissions of national and state Baptist conventions. But the Maston tradition of Christian ethics will be silenced if the seminaries do not maintain a strong Christian ethics emphasis and denominational agencies that promote biblical ethics get sidetracked from their calling.
Executive Director
BGCT Executive Board
It was my privilege to take the last class he taught in seminary, “Contemporary Issues in Christian Ethics.” He emphasized: Every concern can be addressed from a biblical perspective. Nothing is more important than discovering and following the will of God in one’s life. The goal in life is to be a Jesus kind of person. And you can get people to see difficult truths best if you take the time to love them.
He illustrated how to bring about change in church with a rubber band: “You can use a rubber band to lift a 2-by-4 if you work with it. Increase the tension slowly, and the board can be lifted. Jerk the band, and it will snap, leaving the board where it was.” I learned applying that truth was not easy, but you have to keep the tension on, and you have to be more interested in long-term change than in short-term irritations.
This story may put it all in perspective. In Texas Baptists: A Sesquicentennial History, Leon McBeth tells how the BGCT Christian Life Commission came into being.
06/23/2006 - By John Rutledge
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