Posted: 1/26/07

Politics not behind plan to
unite Baptists, Underwood insists

By Robert Marus

Associated Baptist Press

MACON, Ga. (ABP)—An ambitious plan to unite Baptists in North America around the compassionate message of the gospel is not secretly a plan to get Baptists to elect Hillary Clinton as president, one of the plan’s leaders said.

Bill Underwood, a co-organizer of the effort with former President Jimmy Carter, said former President Bill Clinton’s offer to lend his star power to the upcoming Celebration of a New Baptist Covenant is not a covert political move.

“This has not been something that Bill Clinton has organized or worked towards or even been involved in,” said Underwood, president of Mercer University.

“This is really President Carter’s brainchild. I think he took the initial step on this. And President Carter … invited President Clinton to join us for our last meeting, and I’m grateful that he did.”

On Jan. 9, leaders of 40 Baptist denominations and organizations in the United States and Canada—led by Carter and “cheered,” as he put it, by President Clinton—announced a commitment to put aside social and theological differences to unite most Baptists behind an agenda of compassionate ministry. The effort will begin with the celebration, which is set for January 2008.

Since the announcement, conservatives who weren’t invited have complained the intent is more than Baptist unity.

Richard Land, head of the SBC Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, told the Washington Post the timing was suspect.

“Purportedly they’re going to hold a convention of several thousand people in Atlanta in early 2008, hosted by two former Democratic presidents, one of whom has a wife seeking the Democratic presidential nomination. Some would see that as an overtly political activity,” he said.

Rick Scarborough, a Texas-based Southern Baptist minister who is the head of the Religious Right group Vision America, also noted the timing in an entry on the group’s website. He noted that the January 2008 celebration is “not coincidentally nine months away from the next presidential election.”

In a parenthetical aside, Scarborough rhetorically suggested Sen. Hillary Clinton might “be invited to lecture on honesty in government.”

Mercer’s Underwood noted that the Jan. 9 meeting at which Clinton appeared was the product of previous meetings Carter had conducted with representatives of the North American Baptist Fellowship. The fellowship is composed of the Baptist bodies in North America that belong to the Baptist World Alliance— including those that are conservative, moderate, predominantly black, predominantly white, American and Canadian.

The Southern Baptist Convention was not invited in its official capacity because the SBC has withdrawn from the NABF and the Alliance. But several of the January 9 participants are members of Southern Baptist churches, and Carter and Underwood said they welcome participation of Southern Baptists.

They also noted that they hope for prominent Baptists who are Republicans to lend their influence to the effort as well. Clinton and Carter are the only two living former presidents who are Baptists. Carter is a long-time deacon and Sunday school teacher at Maranatha Baptist Church in Plains, Ga., and Clinton is a longtime member of Immanuel Baptist Church in Little Rock, Ark.

Clinton’s involvement in the celebration is merely to provide a bigger platform to the effort to unite Baptists around a positive message, Underwood said.

“I think that when he described himself as a cheerleader, I think that’s a good description,” he said. “But I think beyond that you have two men who, as former presidents of the United States, have a platform that very few other people in the world have.

“I think that presidents Carter and Clinton have been very generous to share their platform with a wide array of Baptists and stand on that platform and declare the good news of Jesus Christ. And I think that’s a cause for celebration.”

Carter, for his part, told the Washington Post he is focusing on the positive aspects of the meeting. “We hope … to emphasize the common commitments that bind us together rather than to concentrate on the divisive issues that separate us,” he said.

“There’s too much of an image in the Baptist world, and among non-Christians, that the main, permeating characteristic of Christian groups is animosity toward one another and an absence of ability to cooperate in a spirit of brotherhood and sisterhood.”

News of religion, faith, missions, Bible study and Christian ministry among Baptist churches, in Texas, the BGCT, the nation and around the world.

Posted: 1/26/07

Baptists in Beirut endangered as violence escalates

By Robert Marus

ABP Washington Bureau

BEIRUT (ABP)—An urgent communiqué from a Lebanese Baptist leader warned that escalating violence is threatening the Beirut Baptist School.

Nabil Costa, executive director of the Lebanese Society for Educational and Social Development, sent an e-mail message Jan. 25 to friends and colleagues at Baptist institutions worldwide requesting prayer for Lebanon and for the school, which serves preschool through high-school age students. It is located near Beirut’s commercial and cultural heart.

“The security situation deteriorated sharply this afternoon in the vicinity of our Beirut Baptist School,” wrote Costa, whose organization runs the school and the nearby Arab Baptist Theological Seminary. “‘Til this very hour some of our students remain at BBS, unable to go home because of the shooting in the streets.”

The conflicts were outgrowths of a weeks-old protest that supporters of Hezbollah, a Shiite Muslim political party in Lebanon, and its allies have waged against the Sunni-led government of Prime Minister Fouad Siniora. The unrest followed a devastating bombing campaign by Israeli fighter jets and naval vessels in July and August of 2006, mainly aimed at Hezbollah-friendly areas of the country.

During the Israeli attacks, the nation was shut down and much of its infrastructure destroyed, killing hundreds. Israeli officials said the attacks were in response to a cross-border raid by Hezbollah guerillas and Hezbollah missile attacks on northern Israel.

During the Israeli bombing campaign, both Beirut Baptist School and the seminary housed hundreds of Shiite refugees from other parts of the nation. However, the schools remained relatively safe.

But Costa noted the latest conflict has led to minor conflicts all over Beirut—and is an unpleasant reminder of the war between Sunnis, Shia and Christians that ravaged Lebanon between 1975 and 1990.

“Watching today’s clashes on the television brings to mind the civil war that Lebanon labored under for almost two decades. God forbid that we be heading in that direction again,” he wrote. “Please pray that God may intervene and calm the spirits of the two main conflicting groups.”

Costa also requested prayers for Lebanon’s diverse Christian community, which is among the largest in the Middle East and encompasses Catholics and Orthodox Christians as well as multiple kinds of Protestants. During the civil war, many Christians allied themselves with one of the two Muslim factions.

“Pray that the Body of Christ in Lebanon refrains from taking sides, but maintains its focus on the Lord and seeks amidst this difficult time to bring about a spirit of reconciliation and peacemaking,” he wrote.

Costa, who also serves as the general secretary of the nation’s alliance of evangelical schools, requested guidance “as I seek to lead the decision-making process in relation to when we should open or close our schools during this delicate period of time. The lives of our students, faculty and teams are an enormous responsibility. Moreover, each decision we take stands the risk of being misinterpreted to be a political stand.”

News of religion, faith, missions, Bible study and Christian ministry among Baptist churches, in Texas, the BGCT, the nation and around the world.

Posted: 1/25/07

BaptistWay Bible Series for February 4

What Jesus Wants For His Followers

• John 17

David Wilkinson

Broadway Baptist Church, Fort Worth

As I read John 17, I recalled a prayer I overheard 27 years ago. I was a young journalist working for the Southern Baptist Christian Life Commission (CLC). An assignment took me to Hendersonville, NC, where I stayed in the home of Dr. and Mrs. A. C. Miller. Dr. Miller, then in his 80s, was teaching young pastors from western North Carolina at Fruitland Bible Institute. Many years earlier he had served as the first executive director of the Texas Baptist CLC and then the national CLC.

Early one morning as I stepped out of the upstairs bedroom to go for a jog, I was startled by a voice. Through the slightly open door of his study, I could hear Dr. Miller praying aloud. This venerable old saint was praying for his students. With great tenderness and love, he prayed for their safety as they commuted to school several days a week. He prayed for their families and their churches. He prayed for specific needs and challenges in their lives. He prayed that they would learn, and that he would have the wisdom to teach them what they most needed to know. And he prayed that they would remain faithful to their calling as ministers of the gospel.

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An Overheard Prayer

In John 17, we are invited to overhear another teacher praying for his students. Only hours before his betrayal by a member of his inner circle and the rapid succession of events culminating in the agony of an execution on a Roman cross, Jesus prays for his disciples. It is the longest prayer placed on the lips of Jesus by the Gospel writers. It is a prayer of consecration for himself and his friends. It is a tender pastoral prayer, the prayer of the Great Shepherd for the sheep who know his voice and follow in his steps.

Philip Melanchthon, Martin Luther’s adviser and colleague, wrote of this prayer, “There is no more voice which has ever been heard, either in heaven or in earth, more exalted, more holy, more fruitful, more sublime, than the prayer offered up by the son of God Himself.”

The prayer is often called the “High Priestly Prayer” of Jesus, in part because its structure parallels a prayer offered by Aaron, the high priest, in Leviticus. It concludes Jesus’ farewell discourses in John. Jesus’ transition from addressing the disciples (and the church) to addressing his Father in prayer reflects the integrated quality of his life and ministry.

Prayer’s Structure and Focus

The prayer is commonly divided into three sections. Jesus prays for himself (17:1-5), for his disciples (17:6-19); and then for all his followers to come (17:20-26). The perspective of the writer, however, seems to be that of the post-resurrection church, and Jesus’ words, while spoken in the present, are also timeless. At one level, this is a prayer for his disciples. At another level, it is a prayer for disciples in every age. It is a prayer for the church.

Jesus prays for us. That should give us pause. As one writer notes, “It is interesting to ponder how the Christian community’s self-definition would be changed if it took as its beginning point, ‘We are a community for whom Jesus prays.’”

Significance of ‘The World’

Here (verses 6, 9, 11, 14, 15, 16, 18, 21, 23, 24, and 25) and elsewhere in the Gospel, the term “the world” has special meaning and significance. This is not the “world of creation”; rather, the writer uses “the world” (like Paul’s use of the word “flesh”) in the sense of “the world as it organizes itself against God.”

“The world” . . . is what is out there when people try to run their lives as though God didn’t exist, which is why there is solid and settled hatred for genuine Christianity and those who, however inadequately, attempt to stand for it.

In the language of the prologue, Jesus, as the Word that was in the beginning with God, “was in the world, and the world came into being through him; yet the world did not know him” (1:10).

Jesus asks his Father to consecrate or to sanctify his disciples “in truth” (17:17-19). To sanctify is, literally, “to make holy.” This is a deeply counter-cultural concept. Holiness in scripture is not primarily a moral category, but a way of speaking about living in the presence of God. It is about being set apart for right living.

Sent Into the World

Jesus prays for the disciples (then and now) as his “sent” people: “As you have sent me into the world, so I have sent them into the world” (17:19).

Against the background of the entire Gospel that has preceded it, this is a remarkable statement. The Father sent the son into the world to do his works. He and the Son were one in everything. At the end of his mission, the son went back to the glory of the Father. It will be the same for the disciples. They will take on the works of the son. The will be one with him in everything. And, finally, they will join him in glory, leaving yet more disciples to do the works of the son and the Father.

This sending is startling in many ways, but it is not new. The image of the God who sends is woven throughout scripture. God calls, empowers and sends out of covenant relationship. For reasons beyond our comprehension, God has chosen from the beginning to carry out God’s purpose in creation with us and through us. This collaboration and co-creation is inherent in the nature of God. It is consistent with the God who takes the initiative in salvation history, in the task of redeeming and reconciling a fallen and broken world.

Jesus prays for you and me because he has called us to be part of God’s mission in the world. That is what it means to be a Christian.

Questions for Discussion

• What does “overhearing” Jesus in prayer suggest to you about the nature and importance of prayer?

• Jesus prays for his followers’ protection from evil, their mission in the world, and unity with one another and with God and himself. Imagine Jesus offering to pray for you. Considering these three categories, what would you ask Jesus to pray for on your behalf?

News of religion, faith, missions, Bible study and Christian ministry among Baptist churches, in Texas, the BGCT, the nation and around the world.

Posted: 1/25/07

Bible Studies for Life Series for February 4

The Word From God

• John 1:1-18

By Kenneth Lyle

Logsdon School of Theology, Abilene

Several years ago, my family and I traveled from our home in southwest Virginia to Baltimore, Maryland to visit my sister, brother-in-law, and nephews. We were also excited because we had tickets to see the national touring company of Les Misérables. It was near Christmas, and so when we arrived at my sister’s house the Christmas decorations were already out and the feeling of Christmas was everywhere.

My sister, Christy, collects nativity sets from around the world. She told me a story about a recent visit from some friends, where the friends’ four year old daughter was playing with one of the less expensive nativity sets while the adults enjoyed a second cup of coffee at the dinner table. All of the sudden a yell sounded out from the living room where the child was playing, “Miss Christy, Miss Christy…I lost God!” Christy wondered what the little girl meant, and after investigating found that she had misplaced the Joseph figurine. In the logical thinking of a child, the little girl put two and two together—father of Jesus equals God, father figurine missing equals, “I lost God.”

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The lessons in February bid us to remember that Christianity is Christ. Using the first six chapters of John’s Gospel, the lessons ask us to reconsider the centrality of Jesus Christ to the Christian message. The lesson for today focuses on the Prologue to John’s Gospel found in 1:1-18. The familiar stanzas of this powerful text prompted the great preacher Fred Craddock to observe that this is a passage that “resists all attempts at interpretation.” In these first eighteen verses of John, the gospel writer makes tremendous claims about the person Jesus and his relationship to God, creation, and all of humanity.

John writes his gospel to a community of Christians in need of a pastoral word of comfort. By all accounts, this group of Christians feels a growing sense of distress. They have become increasingly marginalized from their religious roots. Leaving, or being pushed out of the Synagogue, they are becoming their own distinct and separate Christian community. They are sure of what they know and what they believe, but in many ways—like the little girl with a lost figurine—they had “lost God.”

Some in that community of believers had lost God in the dark corner of routine—forgetting that God in Christ was before all, and in all, and above all. The opening verses of the Prologue offer power words that remind us that the Word was in the beginning, the Word was with God, the Word was God, and that by the Word all things were created (1:1-3). Simple, self-evident truths we sometimes set aside as we go about the routine of our lives. The doing of things—marriage, family, job, studies, even church—distracts us from the marvelous truth of God incarnate.

Some in John’s community had lost God in the dusty sideboard of personality. Two times in the text (1:6-9; 1:15) the author mentions John the Baptist and goes to great pains to remind the readers that John was not the Christ, but only a witness to the Christ. John understood his role as a witness to the light, but some in the early church held out a special role for him, perhaps even supplanting respect and reverence for Christ with a misplaced devotion to John. There is nothing wrong with spiritual mentors, leaders, teachers, or preachers, but when human personalities overshadow the person of Jesus Christ, we begin to lose God.

Some had lost God in the nooks and crannies of exclusivity—thinking that “our way is God’s way.” They, like we, needed to be reminded that God in Christ came to all and for all (1:4; 1:9; 1:11-13). Some lose God in the dark closest of sinful living—living in dark ways, rejecting the light of Christ in our lives (1:5; 1:11). Others lose God in the shadows of aloofness—a willful ignorance of God. We hold God at arms length and imagine that God is distant, and uncaring, forgetting that “the word became flesh and dwelt among us” (1:14a). On the other hand, some lose God in the deceptive glare of familiarity. We make God into a buddy, a pal, and we forget that in the word become flesh we behold “the glory of the One and Only, who came from the father, full of grace and truth” (1:14b).

Many in John’s day, and some in our day lose God under the oppressive rug of legalism. The relationship with God reduced to a set of rules and regulations and we forget that though “the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ” (1:17). The grace of God poured out through Jesus Christ, on all who believe, and by which we receive countless blessings (1:12-13; 1:16).

John concludes the Prologue by asserting that “no one has ever seen God,” (1:18), but that in Christ, the only begotten of the Father, God is made known to us. In Victor Hugo’s Les Misérables, the main character, Jean Valjean, lives life on the run always fearful of his nemesis Javert. At the end of his life, after doing good to all those around him, and even sparing the life of his enemy Javert, Valjean comes to the conclusion that “to love another person is to see the face of God.” No one has seen God, but God in Christ is revealed to us. Jesus himself said, “whatever you did for the least of these… you did for me” (Matt 25:40). God in Christ shows us how to see the face of God. God is not lost—God in Christ calls us to sight and to service everyday.

Discussion Questions:

• In what other ways do Christians “lose God”?

• How does the incarnation—the word made flesh—help us to understand and know God more clearly?

• Do human personalities sometimes still get in the way of our knowing God?

News of religion, faith, missions, Bible study and Christian ministry among Baptist churches, in Texas, the BGCT, the nation and around the world.

Posted: 1/24/07

Holiday visit with Kenyan orphans
changed students' perspective on world

By Jennifer Sicking

University of Mary Hardin-Baylor

BELTON—Instead of spending her Christmas with her family, University of Mary Hardin-Baylor senior Katie Speckman opted to spend it with 40 children in Africa.

“It was really hard. It was the first time I’d ever done it,” said Speckman, an elementary education major from New Braunfels, about spending the holiday away from home.

Yet, even with troubles she and her friend encountered on the way, she said it was the right decision to travel to Nairobi, Kenya, in late December.

“It was totally worth it giving 40 kids who never had a Christmas a gift on Christmas morning,” she said.

Speckman first encountered Kenya in 2005 when she and other college students, many from UMHB, traveled there for a mission trip. After leaving, she felt compelled to return and set up another mission trip for summer 2006. At the Good Hope Children’s Home in Nairobi, she did chores while the students attended school. She also helped lead worship and morning devotions.

After returning for her last year at the university, Speckman and her friend Terah Sellars began thinking about taking Christmas to the children at the home.

“They don’t have anything,” said Sellars, a sophomore art major from Kingwood.

With the support of Oakwood Baptist Church in New Braunfels, Speckman’s home church and the place where Sellars interned during the 2006 summer, the girls’ dream became a reality.

“They were awesome about it,” Sellars said. “We told them our idea and everyone jumped on board.”

The youth group held a car wash to raise money. Adults pitched in with gifts.

In the end, the girls packed tennis shoes, toothpaste, toothbrushes, watches, toys and UMHB Welcome Week T-shirts for each of the children. However, getting there and other aspects of the trip, did not go smoothly.

“It was actually a disaster,” Speckman said. “It took four days to get there instead of one. Satan really worked hard to keep us away.”

Sellers’ bags with the shoes, T-shirts and watches finally arrived in Nairobi in mid-January.

“The director will hand them out soon,” Speckman said about the gifts. “Hers were part of the 10,000 bags mixed up in London while we were there.”

Sellers and Speckman are still recovering from ingesting the ecoli bacteria and contracting ringworm while they were there. Yet, the children made the trip worth it, they said.

“The kids were awesome,” Sellers said.

They spent their days playing soccer with them and performing skits. They also took them swimming, a treat for the children who rarely leave the orphanage.

“You go over there to serve these kids. They serve you 10 times more,” Speckman said. “They’re the perfect example of servanthood.”

The children often do their own cooking and cleaning as well as reaching out to others.

“Their stories are heartbreaking,” she said. “Yet they’re so thankful to have a home. You can’t help but want to be there.”

It also made the girls thankful for their homes.

“I’ve heard this all my life: If you go to a third world country, it will change your life, change your perspective,” Speckman said. “It makes you thankful for what you have in your life.”

News of religion, faith, missions, Bible study and Christian ministry among Baptist churches, in Texas, the BGCT, the nation and around the world.

Posted: 1/22/07

Authorities investigating fires
at North Carolina churches

By Hannah Elliott

Associated Baptist Press

GREENVILLE, N.C. (ABP)—Suspicious fires damaged two Baptist churches and a break-in was discovered at a third in Greenville, N.C., the night of Jan. 13.

Memorial Baptist Church and Unity Free Will Baptist, located near each other in the city about 50 miles east of Raleigh, burned in fires that authorities have labeled “suspicious.” Losses are estimated at $ 1 million, according to local reports.

Police are also investigating the break-in at Oakmont Baptist Church, which is located near the other two churches. As of the afternoon of Jan. 16, they had yet to say if they believe the three events are connected. No injuries were reported in connection with the events.

According to Associated Press reports, witnesses saw a person running away from Memorial Baptist right after the fire started. The North Carolina Bureau of Investigation and the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives are also helping with the case.

The fire gutted Memorial’s main educational building and its 90-foot steeple suffered heavy damage. The adjacent sanctuary suffered mainly water and smoke damage, according to reports and a photo on the website of the Daily Reflector newspaper.

The fire also destroyed a wing of the facility that housed Memorial’s large child day-care program. Four other Greenville churches have offered their space for the program to use while the building is repaired.

Founded in 1827, Memorial was the first Baptist congregation in Greenville. According to a history on the church’s website, the church relocated in the late 1970s from a historic downtown location to its current campus in the city's eastern section. Memorial is affiliated with the Southern Baptist Convention as well as the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship and the Baptist State Convention of North Carolina. Oakmont is also affiliated with CBF.

Unity Free Will Baptist belongs to the National Association of Free Will Baptists. The fire there was contained to only one room.

Staff members at the burned churches were unavailable for comment for this story.

In February 2006, arsonists destroyed several Baptist churches in central Alabama over a two-week period. Authorities later charged three young men—two of them college students in Birmingham—with the crimes.

Robert Marus contributed to this story.

News of religion, faith, missions, Bible study and Christian ministry among Baptist churches, in Texas, the BGCT, the nation and around the world.

Posted: 1/22/07

SBC officials accuse Carter
of ‘voodoo ecumenism’

By Greg Warner

Associated Baptist Press

ATLANTA (ABP)—Southern Baptist officials harshly rejected Jimmy Carter’s effort to unite all Baptists in North America under a compassion agenda, calling the ambitious plan “voodoo ecumenism” and a thinly veiled Democratic strategy to woo values voters.

But other Southern Baptists, including some reform-minded younger conservatives, called the SBC response un-Christ-like and prejudicial criticism from “fundamentalist elites.”

On Jan. 9, leaders of 40 Baptist denominations and organizations in the United States and Canada—led by Carter and “cheered” on by Bill Clinton—announced a commitment to put aside social and theological differences to unite behind an agenda of compassionate ministry. The effort will begin with a Celebration of a New Baptist Covenant, a gathering set for January 2008.

The presence of two former Democratic presidents at the forefront of the ambitious plan triggered allegations that a political motive lurks behind the talk of Baptist unity.

SBC ethics official Richard Land said most Southern Baptists voted against Clinton and Carter, as well as failed presidential candidate Al Gore—all Baptist Democrats.

“I suspect that Mr. Carter and Mr. Clinton are upset about that,” Land, president of the SBC’s Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

Noting most Southern Baptists disagree with Democratic support for abortion rights, Land said the Carter-led Baptist coalition “might be the ‘Pro-choice Baptist Convention.’“

In an editorial in Baptist Press, the SBC’s communications arm, seminary dean Russell Moore called the Carter-Clinton effort “voodoo ecumenism.”

“The unity of which news reports speak is a unity based on social action and ethical engagement,” said Moore, theology dean of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary.

“Even apart from questions of (Clinton’s) personal ethics and about the long-ago debates over alleged high crimes and misdemeanors, what about the official social agenda of the former president? This is, after all, a man who vetoed legislation protecting unborn infants from partial-birth abortion, and then blamed his abortion-rights ideology on what he says he learned from his former pastor at a Little Rock Southern Baptist congregation.”

Southern Baptist blogger Jerry Grace, a Republican layman from Satartia, Miss., was one of many commentators who dismissed the New Baptist Covenant as the political machination of the two former presidents.

“To be consistent, I despise both of these men,” Grace wrote Jan. 11 on sbcouthouse.blogspot.com. “Jimmy Carter may be the most naïve man on the planet. … Bill Clinton is far smarter than that, with every word coming out of his mouth either designed to promote his need for power or to pick up women.”

“None of us need to speculate about its content,” Grace said of the New Baptist Covenant, a statement based on Jesus’ compassion agenda in Luke 4. “It will be a reflection of the Democratic Party platform designed to promote other great religious leaders like Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton to deliver the black vote to Hillary Clinton, that torchbearer of maternal virtue and humble leadership.”

The Southern Baptist Convention rooted out its moderate leaders in the 1980s and more recently severed ties with the pan-Baptist global network known as the Baptist World Alliance because of allegations of liberal influence. As with the independent and fundamentalist Baptist groups, Southern Baptists are skeptical of any pan-Baptist coalition that would include more progressive members.

So the leaders who joined Carter to launch the New Baptist Covenant, representing an estimated 20 million believers, were resigned to the fact—and somewhat relieved—that the Southern Baptist Convention won’t be making the journey with them.

Those leaders steered clear of criticizing the Southern Baptist Convention while publicly offering an olive branch to individual Southern Baptists or others who want to join the cause. Still, they said, America needs “a broader Baptist witness” that is known more for compassionate ministry than “negative” pronouncements.

Southern Baptist leaders rejected that implied criticism and signaled the 16 million-member SBC, easily the continent’s largest Baptist denominational group, is happy to go it alone.

In the official SBC response, released through Baptist Press Jan. 10, chief executive Morris Chapman and current president Frank Page said the Southern Baptist Convention already is ethnically diverse, is ministering to the needy, and enjoys favorable public opinion.

“Instead of engaging in a war of words, let’s do a reality check,” said Page, pastor of First Baptist Church in Taylors, S.C. “Word games are fine, but reality says Southern Baptists are presenting a positive life-changing message, impacting our culture with our ministries and sharing the Good News of Jesus Christ.”

Added Chapman: “Zogby International conducted a survey for the SBC that showed adults view Southern Baptists favorably, equally to their views about Catholics and United Methodists.”

Chapman said Carter, who left the SBC in 2000 to join the moderate Cooperative Baptist Fellowship, “has been one of the most vocal critics of Southern Baptists, using ‘fundamentalist’ as a pejorative and drawing a caustic comparison between Ayatollah Khomeini’s rise to power in Iran and the resurgence of conservative leadership being elected in the SBC.”

Chapman said the SBC has a good record of addressing social needs, citing the denomination’s $5.8 million donation in 2006 to fight world hunger. “The great difference in our approach from liberals is that in ministering to the body, we do not neglect the needs of the soul…,” he added.

Not all Southern Baptists were ready to dismiss the New Baptist Covenant and the effort to reunite the fractured Baptist family, however.

Wade Burleson, a leader in the network of reform-minded conservatives who elected Page as president, said Chapman’s and Page’s criticisms are uncalled-for.

While not familiar with Covenant and its leaders, Burleson said, “It would be difficult for me to criticize any evangelical Christian movement whose stated goals are to live out the gospel through doing justice and loving mercy.”

“There comes a time when we as Southern Baptists should simply remain silent if we cannot say anything supportive of other Baptist attempts at addressing pressing social and cultural issues in a prophetic manner,” said Burleson, an Oklahoma pastor.

“To provide a public defense of our convention’s record, while at the same time criticizing others, seems to be acting in a manner contrary to the spirit of our Lord and the good of his kingdom at large. I wish nothing but success for all Baptists who seek to live out the gospel for a world in need of a Savior.”

Ben Cole, another leader of the young reformers and a blogger at baptistblog.wordpress.com, also criticized his SBC colleagues.

“I am not surprised to see a response movement beginning to develop to provide balance to the fundamentalist tire-slashers who have managed to arrest the microphone of public witness among Southern Baptists,” Cole said. “Neither am I surprised to read the prejudicial criticisms already being lobbed at Carter and Clinton by some of my fundamentalist brethren.”

“Southern Baptists had better be careful when it comes to criticizing efforts to unite people of faith who seek social justice for the poor and oppressed,” said Cole, a Southern Baptist pastor in Arlington. “The role of the Levite or the priest in Christ’s parable of the Good Samaritan is not one to be preferred. It could be that men whom the Southern Baptist fundamentalist elites regard as undesirable are the very ones who gain heaven’s blessing in their efforts to bind up the wounds of those in our society who have fallen among thieves.”

Cole said he shares the Covenant group’s desire for more Baptist voices to be heard.

“The Southern Baptist Convention has gained a great deal of media attention in the last quarter-century, and our spokesmen have not always reflected with fairness the diversity of Baptist identity on issues of political or social importance,” he said.

David Dockery, a Southern Baptist supporter and president of Union University in Jackson, Tenn., likewise was hesitant to question Carter’s motives.

“I think everyone admires President Carter’s ongoing efforts to promote unity among Baptists,” he said. “I believe it truly reflects his heart. Even when people disagree with Mr. Carter, I think they still admire him as a person of integrity.”

Dockery, who participated in Carter’s previous attempt to reconcile Baptists, said the New Baptist Covenant echoes some of the themes of that 1998 effort. But he predicted few Southern Baptists will join the latest movement.

“To the degree that Baptists can work together in the areas of racial reconciliation, in promoting compassion, and Christian unity, we should do so,” Dockery said. “Those themes, however, it seems to me need to be balanced by a renewed commitment to truth in an age of relativism and religious pluralism, to doctrinal fidelity, and to faithfulness to the Christ-centered message of the gospel.

“Unfortuantely, the harsh words that President Carter has used on occasions about Southern Baptists since 2000 seem to me to make it hard for most Southern Baptists to join in these efforts with him. If this “new covenant” effort is used of God to advance the gospel and to extend the kingdom of God, we should all give thanks to God.”

Organizers of the New Baptist Covenant predicted the movement may achieve unity among Baptists in North America for the first time in a century and a half. With Southern Baptists on the sideline, however, the Covenant may also reveal the clearest division yet between Baptists on the left and right.

News of religion, faith, missions, Bible study and Christian ministry among Baptist churches, in Texas, the BGCT, the nation and around the world.

Updated: 1/19/07

Planned 2008 convocation grows
from desire for ‘new Baptist voice’

By Robert Marus & Greg Warner

Associated Baptist Press

ATLANTA (ABP)—The nation’s two living Baptist ex-presidents have called for a historic convocation in Atlanta next year, intended to improve the negative image of Baptists in North America and unite the majority of Baptists into a loose-knit network to address social ills.

President Jimmy Carter and President Bill Clinton will announce the 2008 convocation in a Jan. 9 press conference in Atlanta, following a meeting of about 80 diverse Baptist leaders at the Carter Presidential Center.

The 2008 convocation is a result of Carter’s initiative to create a new Baptist “voice” to counter what he and others say is a negative and judgmental image of Baptists in North America.

Last April, many of the same Baptist leaders signed the North American Baptist Covenant to counter the often-combative pronouncements of many of the nation’s most prominent Baptist leaders. That meeting included representatives of the Baptist World Alliance, American Baptist Churches, National Baptist Convention USA, Canadian Baptist Ministries, Cooperative Baptist Fellowship and other groups.

The covenant expressed the participants’ “desire to speak and work together to create an authentic and genuine prophetic Baptist voice in these complex times.”

It also reaffirmed their commitment to “traditional Baptist values, including sharing the gospel of Jesus Christ and its implications for public and private morality.”

Organizers expect the convocation, to be held Jan. 30 to Feb. 1, 2008, to draw more than 20,000 Baptist participants from throughout the United States and Canada.

Bill Underwood, president of Baptist-affiliated Mercer University, helped Carter organize the April 2006 summit and the Jan. 9 press conference. He told Baptist leaders he hopes the 2008 convocation will be a way to draw attention away from “the Baptists who have the microphone” currently.

Underwood—former interim president of Baylor University—said the only image most North Americans have of Baptists comes from ultra-conservative leaders who frequently appear on television news shows or other media. They represent some of the most negative rhetoric, most conservative political views and most fundamentalist theology among the broad range of Baptist denominations and congregations.

“They are increasingly defining the Baptist witness in North America,” he said.

“North America desperately needs a true Baptist witness,” Underwood told leaders of the 30-plus Baptist denominational entities, which range from conservative to progressive. “There’s no organization in this room that has a strong enough voice … but the organizations in this room together do have a strong enough voice.”

Baptists need to be known for feeding the hungry, healing the sick and working for justice, Underwood said.

The organizations represented by meeting participants comprise about 20 million Baptists in North America, the event’s organizers noted. That’s more than the 16 million members claimed by the Southern Baptist Convention, the largest Baptist group in the world, whose leaders have moved sharply to the political and theological right in the last 25 years.

While official SBC representatives have not been involved in the Carter initiative so far, organizers say they hope the convocation can include SBC leaders and other conservatives who are open to working with an array of Baptists more ideologically diverse than the denomination’s leadership.

Carter and Clinton, both of whom will speak at the 2008 convocation, have identified with more progressive Baptist groups, but organizers said the convocation will include conservative speakers as well.

In the April meeting, Carter, a former Southern Baptist, said he feels a need to create such a voice because of the schism the SBC experienced in the 1980s.

“The most common opinion about Baptists is we cannot get along. … I have been grieved by the divisions of my own convention,” he said at the time.

Carter has been a longtime member, deacon and Sunday school teacher at Maranatha Baptist Church in his hometown of Plains, Ga. The church recently ordained his wife, Rosalynn, as a deacon—a move many Southern Baptist leaders oppose.

Clinton has recently joined Carter in lending his star power to the pan-Baptist effort. Although he attended Washington’s Foundry United Methodist Church with his Methodist wife, Hillary, during his years in the White House, Clinton is a longtime member of Immanuel Baptist Church in Little Rock, Ark.

Editor Marv Knox contributed to this story.

News of religion, faith, missions, Bible study and Christian ministry among Baptist churches, in Texas, the BGCT, the nation and around the world.

Updated: 1/19/07

Ad hoc group monitors progress
on church-starting changes

By John Hall

Texas Baptist Communications

DALLAS—An eight-person group appointed to monitor the timely implementation of investigator-recommended steps to prevent further misuse of Baptist General Convention of Texas church-starting funds met for the first time Jan. 5.

Jim Nelson, chairman of the group, said he was pleased with the five-hour-plus meeting, during which members addressed all related motions approved by the BGCT Executive Board. They included:

• Fully implement the investigative team’s recommendations in a timely manner.

• Revise church-starting guidelines and elevate them to policy status. Policies are mandatory provisions established by the Executive Board that can be modified only by the board, whereas guidelines are developed by staff and can be revised by the chief executive officer.

• Create an internal audit function.

• Direct the executive director—in consultation with legal counsel—to evaluate the advisability of referring the investigative team’s findings to legal authorities.

• Direct the executive director—in consultation with attorneys, the BGCT president and the BGCT Executive Board chairman—to consider all appropriate and practical avenues to recover misappropriated church-starting funds.

In October, BGCT-commissioned investigators found Texas Baptists gave more than $1.3 million in church-starting funds to three pastors in the Rio Grande Valley between 1999 and 2005. The investigators presented evidence that up to 98 percent of those churches no longer exist and some never existed, except on paper.

Fred Roach, a member of the ad hoc group, said people shared their thoughts openly during the meeting.

“I think it went great,” he said. “I think there was a full discussion. Everyone got to express themselves.”

Members of the eight-person group asked questions of Baptist General Convention of Texas staff leaders, including Executive Director Charles Wade, Chief Operating Officer Ron Gunter and Chief Financial Officer David Nabors. The group then discussed the staff’s progress among themselves.

Nelson said the convention’s staff is moving forward with the implementation of all the Executive Board’s directives.

“I was pleased by the attention the staff has given to this thus far, and I was very pleased with the thoroughness of the concern of the group’s members,” he said.

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Updated: 1/19/07

Faith leaders tell Congress: Deliver
on promises made to values voters

By Hannah Elliott

Associated Baptist Press

WASHINGTON (ABP)—Faith leaders are calling for members of Congress to deliver on promises made to values voters during the 2006 mid-term elections.

In a Jan. 9 panel discussion, representatives from Sojourners/Call to Renewal, the National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference, Let Justice Roll, Christian Peace Witness for Iraq, the National Association of Evangelicals and the National Religious Campaign Against Torture asked Congress to “deliver concrete gains on issues of deep concern to religious voters.”

Jeff Carr of Sojourners/Call to Renewal said a “cross-fertilization” of religious groups has led to a newfound range of voter diversity on the religious front. And those voters want newly elected leaders to put their money where their mouth is.

“One of the things we learned in this last election is that if you look at some of the polls … Americans said poverty and economic justice (are) the most urgent moral crises in American culture,” he said. “It’s clear that many folks—governors on both sides of the aisle—are committed in states to overcoming poverty.”

Indeed, 62 percent of voters between the ages of 18 and 29 said the most important crises in America are economic justice, poverty and greed, according to a poll commissioned by Faith in Public Life and Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good.

To that end, successful candidates during the 2006 campaign spoke early and often about personal faith. Not surprisingly, Democrats gained popularity among previously Republican-leaning faith voters.

As the religious debate expands within partisan politics, people of faith must address the nation’s “unconscionable” minimum wage, said Paul Sherry, national coordinator of the Let Justice Roll Living Wage Campaign. He called the minimum wage “the foremost values issue” of the last election.

Raising the minimum wage to a “livable wage” has enormous public support within the faith community and beyond, he said, adding that it is both a moral issue and an economic issue.

“A job should keep you out of poverty, not keep you in it,” Sherry said.

Let Justice Roll played a major role in state minimum wage increases in Ohio, Arizona, Colorado, Missouri and Montana in 2006. The current federal minimum wage is $5.15 per hour. The group has proposed an increase to $7.25 per hour.

In addition to discussing the minimum wage, panelists urged Congress to address immigration reform. Sam Rodriguez, president of the National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference, said Hispanic Evangelicals should demand comprehensive immigration reform legislation.

Immigration reform had a significant role in the 2006 elections, but not in the way many experts predicted, he said. In fact, Republican candidates lost many Hispanic votes because they had no plan for comprehensive reform.

“We are seeing our country torn apart again as many on the fringe elements of this issue are attempting to polarize and divide our nation,” Rodriquez said. “We need to pass comprehensive immigration reform that will stop illegal immigration, protect our boarders, (and) provide an earned pathway to citizenship for those who are already here. … Then we can secure our boarders, secure all of our families, and secure the American dream.”

Like poverty and immigration, voters of faith also have a moral obligation to address creation care, said Paul de Vries, president of New York Divinity School and a board member of the National Association of Evangelicals.

“We are very eager to see Congress act on a number of things, including raising standards of fuel efficiency, pollution reduction, sustainable use of natural resource and proper care of wildlife and their natural habitat,” de Vries said. He said many companies receive financial benefits from “bankable ecology,” or using business resources in ways that emphasize efficiency, recycling of used materials, and reduced waste products.

“We’re passionate about creation care,” he said. “Ecology has to be a priority. We’re people lovers, but we can be tree lovers at the same time. We’re people huggers and tree huggers.”

While the panel discussion focused on prompting work done in Congress, those leaders weren’t the only ones called upon. Speakers also appealed to President Bush as they put emphasis on “kitchen table” issues.

“Along with poverty, historically war and peace issues have been at the center of our agenda,” Carr said. “What we’re not looking for from the president is more of the same. We’d really like to see the president take a more thoughtful approach to … de-escalate this war, not escalate it. I fear that that’s not what we’re going to see.”

Rick Ufford Chase of Christian Peace Witness for Iraq agreed. His group is planning a worship service in March at the National Cathedral and an all-night prayer vigil at the White House asking for a “clear plan” to remove troops from Iraq.

“We’re really concerned at this point that there is a clear moral imperative to end the war. That was clearly backed up by a political imperative” which is now being ignored, he said. “We are clear that what we are looking for is a clear plan to end the war in Iraq. … The only way to create true security is to build those solid, right relationships that cross boundaries.”

Turning from war and torture in favor of “right relationships” will foster justice both abroad and in the United States, he said.

News of religion, faith, missions, Bible study and Christian ministry among Baptist churches, in Texas, the BGCT, the nation and around the world.

Updated: 1/19/07

BGCT president’s wife donates
building to Lubbock ministry

By John Hall

Texas Baptist Communications

LEVELLAND—Donna Vernon is donating a Texas Baptist Men-constructed building she won in a drawing at the Baptist General Convention of Texas annual meeting to My Father’s House, Lubbock.

TBM volunteers had constructed the building on-site at the BGCT annual meeting as an exhibition of the organization’s church-building ministry.

Vernon, whose husband, Steve, is the BGCT president and pastor of First Baptist Church in Levelland, said she decided to donate the building after realizing she could not find a place on her church’s land to showcase it properly.

“I just thought it would be better utilized over there,” she said. “It would have better visibility. It would be used every day.”

The building will be turned into a prayer chapel for My Father’s House, Lubbock, a residential ministry that teaches parenting and vocational skills to unemployed or underemployed women. One aspect of the program is Christian Women’s Job Corps, a ministry of Woman’s Missionary Union supported in part by the Mary Hill Davis Offering for Texas Missions.

Since the building had to be disassembled for transport, Texas Baptist Men volunteers will reassemble it Jan. 29 and finish out its interior.

Vernon hopes the building serves as a sanctuary for the women at My Father’s House, Lubbock. There they will be able to focus on their spiritual health.

“I’d really hope it would be meaningful to the women who live at My Father’s House and help them develop spiritually,” she said.

Shirley Madden, executive director of My Father’s House, Lubbock, said the building will be a welcome addition to the ministry’s campus.

“We are a ministry that was birthed and grew and succeeds because of prayer,” she said. “Adding a prayer chapel outside continues to announce to the world who we are.”

News of religion, faith, missions, Bible study and Christian ministry among Baptist churches, in Texas, the BGCT, the nation and around the world.

Updated: 1/19/07

Students grow up, learn to make
faith their own during college years

By Teresa Young

Wayland Baptist University

PLAINVIEW—A teenager might have been the leader of the pack at the church youth group during high school. Or maybe she was the quiet, loyal one who showed up every Sunday and every fellowship. Or maybe he wasn’t very interested at all in church things.

Regardless how involved in church teens were before high school graduation, things are certain to change somewhat when they reach college, whether they’re living in the same town or miles away. But Gary Manning, professor of religion at Wayland Baptist University, insists parents have no reason to panic.

“Anytime children leave our presence, there is fear—terror for some,” said Manning, who specializes in youth ministry issues. “Parents sometimes think they can buffer their children, and nothing will happen to them. But that’s just not true.”

Instead, parents need to realize they have enormous influence on their children before they leave home and use that influence to educate them about dangerous behaviors and the consequences, he said. Modeling commitment to church involvement and spiritual growth is the key to keeping them on that road when they leave home for college, he added.

“Children need to own their faith and their response to God,” Manning said. “Part of the growing-up process is making their faith their own, and it may be very different from what they grew up with.

“A good approach to letting children go is to have open, honest discussions about what is out there and ensure them that no matter what they do, they are always loved and welcomed home. But you need to say outright that you don’t want them to do those things and give them encouragement for getting out of a bad situation. And if they do get in trouble, it’s not valuable for parents to try to spare them from the consequences of their actions. They’ll never learn if they don’t let them experience those and your love and God’s love.”

Research from the National Study of Youth and Religion found that after that time of searching and asking and introspection, students’ religious commitment generally will mimic their parents’ commitment, Manning noted. That’s good news for some parents and bad news for others, he said.

Still, when students leave for college and don’t immediately join a local church—or quit going altogether—parents understandably may worry.

Manning advises parents of college students to be honest in conversations, realizing their major influence on the students has waned significantly, and avoid preaching or bugging them about the situation.

He offers these tips:

• Realize students are adults and must be talked to like adults. Instead of nagging them or telling what they must do, Manning encourages asking simple questions about how local church services have been and whether you can pray about anything specific for them. Praying with them before tests and in stressful times—even over the phone—can go a long way toward modeling the importance of prayer and the spiritual perspective, he said.

• Know that each student’s experience is different and some go through the soul-searching process earlier in their college career, some later and some even after they graduate from college. The key is being intuitive, listening with an open mind and not, as Manning said, “pushing the panic button.”

• Talk about your own spiritual journey to your student. Rather than barraging students with questions about why they haven’t been to church or what they are doing instead, having honest conversations about your own spiritual experiences and what is going on at the home church can model the importance of that lifestyle, Manning said. It also may prompt honest talk about the spiritual struggles they may be facing if they know you as the parent still face challenges and struggles of your own. The point is that you talk about it.

• Realize that just because your student may have chosen a Christian institution, they are not shielded from struggle. This time in their life is typically a soul-searching time in many aspects of life, not just about religion and faith, and that likely would happen at any institution. The benefit at a Christian school is that students are more likely to find faculty and staff concerned about their spiritual growth and will encourage them in the process, he noted.

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