Posted: 7/06/07

Embracing the World:
The Church and Global Mission in the 21st Century

Editor’s note: Below are the remarks made by CBF Global Missions Coordinator Rob Nash during the Friday afternoon session of the CBF General Assembly in Washington, D.C. Exact wording of this sermon is subject to change during delivery of the message.

By Rob Nash

CBF Global Missions Coordinator

It was as clear and clarion a call to global mission as I have ever heard. The man who uttered it was short and stocky, a former imam at a mosque in the Middle East who had managed to plant a Baptist church in the middle of a challenging and difficult urban context. The two of us were participants in a church planting conference at the Arab Baptist Theological Seminary in Beirut. Among our number were a sprinkling of Americans and Europeans and a group of about 15 church planters from Egypt, Jordan, Syria, Lebanon and Iraq.

He delivered a word from God directly to me, on cue, and straight from the mouth of the Almighty. I heard myself take a sharp breath and then discovered that I wasn’t exhaling.

You see, I’d been pounding the pavement since your Coordinating Council, in an act of absolute madness, elected me to this position last June – and I’d been in more states than I want to admit and more pastor’s offices and fellowship halls and Baptist meetings than my therapist spouse thought healthy, and I heard from you and talked with you about the fact that God was doing something powerful in the United States and around the world and that it was high time that we figured out how to take this power and energy within the global church and change the world with it. I mean, I thought it was a good idea – and you churches seemed to be on fire about it. But, like Hans Luther, Martin’s father, I wasn’t sure if it was an idea from God or from the devil.

Then it happened – in the Middle East of all places – where most of us would assume nothing of any significance in the kingdom of God. As I recall, it was during a time for response to what some of the Americans and Western Europeans had to say. This former imam, a Shia as I recall, raised his hand and stood to make his point.

“There was a time,” he said, “when we Christians here in the Middle East asked for you Christians in the West to send us your missionaries. But now,” he continued, “I have a different challenge for you. In this new day and in this new century, we ask that you send us not your missionaries only– but also your churches. Send us your churches – let our churches and your churches come together in ministry in the name of Jesus.”

I don’t know if anyone else there heard it or remembers it. But I heard it. For me it was absolute validation of the new direction in global mission that I am convinced must become foundational to our understanding of what it means to be Christian and to be church and to follow in the footsteps of Jesus. The time has come for congregations to engage the world in concert together and with the gospel of Jesus Christ. The time has come for a whole new paradigm in which congregations join together in global mission and in partnership with sister congregations all around the world for the purpose of learning from each other and of sharing the good news of the gospel of Jesus Christ.

It’s just sad that such an undertaking requires a revolution in our understanding of our Christian calling in the world. David Bosch has said that mission is the “totality of the task God has sent [the] church to do in the world.”[1] This understanding of mission is predicated upon a number of convictions – that mission is the chief calling of the church in both its universal and local expressions, that all of scripture points toward the missionary mandate and that the calling of every Christian person is, at heart, a missionary calling to bring about a truly converted and transformed community of people who are committed to following in the way of Jesus.

This particular understanding of Christian mission in the world is becoming increasingly clear in this first decade of the twenty-first century. For the first time in Christian history, a truly global church is emerging. Christians and congregations across the world are embracing the reality of their own missionary callings and moving beyond the modern divides of the twentieth century that divorced professional from lay missionaries and the sending church of the West and North from the receiving church of the East and South.

This new effort is both exciting and fraught with challenge, particularly within the western church. “There was a time” (my Jordanian friend was right) through most of the twentieth century when congregations in North America and Western Europe outsourced their global mission engagement to their respective denominations and, through those denominations, created a powerful missionary force in the world.

It was a powerful and mighty thing that God did. A predominately western missionary force of thousands carried the gospel to the world. These missionaries taught and preached and baptized and the gospel took root in other cultures in the southern and eastern hemispheres and became something different from what either those who preached or those who listened ever expected it to become. The faith, despite its apparent enslavement to western culture, became a Filipino faith, a Korean faith, a Nigerian faith, an Indian faith, a Chilean faith – and the church in those places saw things in that gospel that we in the West could never see and they heard things in it that we never heard and they learned things from it that we never learned.

Meanwhile, back at the Western ranch, congregations were doing their very best to support the work of career missionaries. They gave. They listened. They prayed. When they could engage directly, they did and their efforts came to be identified as “voluntary” and supportive of the role of career missionaries rather than as equal in importance to the career missionary. This complementary role worked quite nicely in a time in which travel was rather difficult and/or expensive and congregations were precluded from such engagement.

Then somebody moved the equator. On November 9, 1989, a wall fell in Berlin. The foundations shook. The earth quivered. We lived for a time in “No Man’s Land” – the times between. Aftershock after aftershock rocked our world. Then . . . sudden silence as a new century dawned. It was the calm before the storm. The big one hit on Sept. 11, 2001. Two more structures came crashing to the ground. We were suddenly catapulted beyond the boundaries of old paradigms that were no longer meaningful. We stepped out of no man’s land and into a universe turned upside down. The destruction of the wall convinced us to engage the world. The destruction of the towers demanded of us that we learn to embrace it.

For congregations, there was no longer a reason to remain on the edge of the global mission engagement – to stand on the sidelines while others carried the essential message of Jesus into the global arena. The work was too significant and enormously challenging and possible. The shift began in the mid-1990s as thousands and thousands of Americans, sent on short-term mission engagements by congregations, engaged the world in global mission. After Sept. 11, 2001, that tide swelled from thousands to millions. In 2004, something between 2 to 3 million American Christians, sent out from local congregations, embraced the world. This embrace is the pattern Christ intended from the earliest days of the Church.

We are on the edge of something here, something profoundly significant in the kingdom of God. By “we,” I want you to understand very clearly that I do not mean “we” as the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship. I don’t even mean “we” as Baptists. I mean “we” as God’s people, followers of Jesus Christ, in the world. This is a kairos moment in which we have the possibility to join what has gone before in the twentieth century with the passion of congregations and field personnel and partners all over the world in a truly collaborative network of global mission engagement that can carry the gospel of Jesus Christ to a hurting, lost, hungry and sick world.

We have the power through Jesus Christ to end poverty in our lifetimes. We have the power through Jesus Christ to make sure AIDs sufferers in Malawi can get the medicine that they need. We have the power through Jesus Christ to ensure that women and girls are lifted up out of sexual slavery. We have the power through Jesus Christ to bring Muslim and Christian together at table to overcome the differences that separate us. We have the power to end illiteracy in the world. We have the power to share the good news of the gospel of Jesus Christ with the world by planting churches and sharing the faith that sustains us, knowing beyond a shadow of a doubt that it can sustain all who accept it.

But there is no single entity in the world that is going to do this. We’re in it together! It is the missional passion of congregations that will fuel it. It is field personnel committed to hard, lifetime work in challenging places that will facilitate it. It is a network of kingdom partners that will enable it.

Here’s what has to happen. It’s a simple approach really:
1. Congregations must take their place at the center of the global mission engagement of the twenty-first century, alongside field personnel and working in concert with them and with other partners.

2. Movements like the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship must facilitate such engagement in ways that enable local congregations to engage in global mission in transformative ways and that create connections between and among congregations and partners.

3. Congregations must be careful to frame a meaningful missional engagement with the world that is intentional and strategic, carried out in concert with other congregations and with the wider Church, and fully sustainable in its context.

4. Such a corporate engagement, by intention and design, must be carried out in ways that are collaborative and network-based and that are not controlled by any particular movement, institution or agency.

I think we are all ready to make this happen. Certainly we are ready to make it happen in and through the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship. We’re ready to implement a viable model for global mission engagement in the twenty-first century that encourages and facilitates congregational participation in global mission, affirms and supports the significant work and ministry of field personnel, and encourages a collaborative and network-based missiological framework that values partnership and engagement with other Christians, churches, and institutions.

To this end, on August 1 the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship will implement a new structure within Global Missions that provides for an intentional and proactive connection between field personnel, local congregations, partners and the world. A new missional church team will begin its work alongside our field ministries team that facilitates the work of our field personnel. The calling of this new team will be to facilitate the connection of congregations to global mission and to do so with the conviction that the engagement of congregations is as significant and strategic as the engagement of field personnel. This team will be charged with assisting congregations in formulating global mission strategy, training congregations for cross-cultural engagement, assisting in short-term mission engagements, connecting congregations to networks or communities of practice, building global connections for congregations, nurturing missional leaders in congregations, and connecting congregations to the work of field personnel and partners. Our calling will become a calling that enables congregations to “embrace the world” as Jesus Christ has intended for us to do from the earliest days of the church. His calling was clear – it was a call to the church. “As the Father has sent me,” he said, “So send I you.”

For centuries now, missionaries, mission societies, ministers, and denominational agencies have begged, pleaded, and cajoled the church toward global mission. These days of begging, pleading and cajoling have come to an end. Local congregations are ready to engage and we are ready to help you with that engagement.

There is no way to say exactly what this model of congregational engagement will look like in the end. Together, congregations, partners and field personnel around the world will shape it and give it life and vitality and purpose. Congregations and CBF field personnel have been hard at work alongside each other for more than 16 years now, ministering in the world, nurturing relationships, and creating ministries that are fully sustainable. In the future, this process of collaborative engagement will continue with a great deal more intentionality given to the connection and with the conviction that congregations are as necessary to the effort as field personnel. I am convinced that it is this kind of collaboration that will make all of the difference in God’s kingdom in the world.

“There was a time . . .,” the former imam said – and indeed there was a time when a professional western missionary force went it alone in the world. There was a time when a Global Mission Coordinator for the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship would have stood here before you this afternoon and said, “Would you as an individual Christian sitting where you are respond to the calling of God to take the love and grace of Christ to the world.

“But now . . . ,” the former imam said. But now, indeed. “Now . . . send us your churches.” This is his call to us. Do you hear him? It is also God’s call to us. I do not stand here to issue an individual call to missions to each one of you. My conviction is that you answered that call on the day in which you asked the Lord Jesus Christ to enter into your heart. I stand here to issue a call to every church that has attached itself to this movement of renewal. It is time for our churches to engage the world with intentionality and purpose, to go, not just to the easy places but also to the hardest places of all – across the street, around the corner, beyond the bend, and over the horizon to the rest of the world. Are we churches ready for that kind of challenge? Are we ready as congregations in the United States to stand alongside our Christian brothers and sisters and our field personnel in the hard, hard places of the world? We are far beyond the time for volunteers and mission tourism and mission trips. It is time for the church in the United States to listen to the voice of the church in the rest of the world saying, “Come over and help us and let what we know about following in the footsteps of Jesus have an impact upon you.” To put it in the commonly accepted vernacular of our sacred space, this is not a “you come” like Paul’s vision in Acts. This is a “Y’all come.” Come over and let’s see what we all can do together.

Now is the time for all of us as congregations to embrace the world with intentionality and purpose – to open our arms to Christian brothers and sisters and to a hurting world both near and far away. We’re way past shaking hands. To embrace is to hold onto. It’s time for the church here to hold onto the church there and for the church there to hold onto the church here and together for all of us to pull the world up by its bootstraps and into the full embrace of Almighty God.

Here is my challenge to all of us today. It is a call to commitment. I am convinced that it is a divine calling. It is revealed in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, embedded in the pages of scripture and bathed in the blood of martyrs. The church of Jesus Christ is not called simply to send. The church of Jesus Christ is called to go. Where is your church going? Where is my church going? Have we made it across the street yet? Have we considered the possibility that a Baptist congregation in a predominately Muslim country on the other side of the world, pastored by a former Shiite imam wants to partner with us for their good and for ours? Have we considered the possibility that Jesus Christ is calling us, not just to the easy voluntourism spots of the world, but to the hard, hard places where there is sickness and death, hatred and despair? Have we considered the possibility that the church over there might have a whole lot more to teach us than we have to teach them? God is bringing divinely-sanctioned and global possibilities right to the front steps of our churches. May we listen with ears of faith, speak with voices of love, step out with feet of courage, and embrace the world with arms wide open.

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

Posted: 7/06/07

Accrediting association reprimands
Criswell College due to finances

By Robert Marus

Associated Baptist Press

DALLAS (ABP)—A Bible college with close ties to the Southern Baptist fundamentalist movement is in danger of losing its accreditation due to financial problems.

The Southern Association of Colleges and Schools announced June 28 on its website that it had placed Criswell College on a one-year probation period. The news was publicized July 5 by the Dallas Morning News and SBC Outpost, a blog run by several Southern Baptist pastors disgruntled with the denomination’s leadership.

“Criswell College was continued in accreditation for good cause and placed on probation because the commission determined that it failed to demonstrate compliance with Comprehensive Standard 3.10.1 (Financial Stability) and Comprehensive Standard 3.10.4 (Control of Finances) of the [SACS] Principles of Accreditation, ” the statement from the association read. “These standards expect an accredited institution to provide evidence that it has (1) a recent financial history that demonstrates financial stability and (2) appropriate control over all its financial resources.”

The Dallas-based school’s finances have been under SACS scrutiny for two years. While the association’s statement indicates Criswell displayed enough progress on “non-compliance” with SACS financial standards to prevent a complete withdrawal of accreditation, those advances apparently were not enough to return it to good standing with the association.

SACS rules require it either to regain good standing after the two-year study period, continue accreditation but in a probationary period, or have its accreditation revoked entirely.

The statement said SACS officials would continue studying the school’s finances and make another determination on Criswell’s status in June 2008.

Criswell President Jerry Johnson did not return telephone calls requesting comment . However, according to the Dallas Morning News, he released a statement expressing surprise at the sanction.

“Criswell College is surprised that the commission would place the institution on probation, given some recent positive developments," he said. Among those developments are new gifts to the school’s endowment of more than $6 million.

The SACS statement said its officials could not comment further on the reasons for suspending Criswell’s accreditation.

Criswell has about 300 students. It was founded in 1970 by Southern Baptists who wanted a reliably conservative school to train pastors and other ministers.

Throughout its history, the school has been closely associated with First Baptist Church of Dallas and is named for one of its former pastors, the late W.A. Criswell. The church founded the school, and many Criswell trustees are members of the congregation.

However, the school and the church have had an adversarial relationship in recent months, with Criswell trustees and First Baptist leaders disagreeing over the school’s decision to sell its radio station, KCBI.

Criswell has also been closely associated with the leaders of the fundamentalist movement that took control of the Southern Baptist Convention’s governing bodies during the 1980s. One of the architects of that movement, Paige Patterson, served as Criswell’s president during the takeover period. Patterson is now president of Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary.

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

Posted: 7/06/07

RIGHT or WRONG?
Baby shower for unwed mother

One of the unmarried teenage girls in our church is pregnant. Should we give her a baby shower, or does that send the wrong message to other young girls?

What a gift! Your church is about to welcome a new life into the world. This baby may be entering under circumstances that none of us would have chosen, but what a wonderful opportunity for the new mother and her infant to be surrounded by the body of Christ, who already are anxious to show God’s love, grace and care.

In your particular church, a simple shower may be very appropriate if that is how new life usually is celebrated. If you choose a shower, the emphasis should be on the baby, not on creating a party atmosphere appropriate to a teenager. You may find that in your case it is more appropriate to support this mother through some means other than a shower. You might choose to provide diapers, a week’s worth of meals after the birth of the baby, transportation or childcare assistance, or other necessities. Whatever method is chosen, it is important to show grace, love and care to a new child, as well as a very young expectant mother who probably is scared, ashamed, embarrassed and overwhelmed.

Your other point should not be forgotten, however. Parents, Sunday school teachers, youth workers and other church leaders have an opportunity to influence teenagers greatly. You are wise to consider how your actions will have an impact on others in the youth group. Your church has the opportunity to support and encourage this new family while still helping other teenage boys and girls make wise decisions regarding their sexuality.

It is incredibly necessary to set a good example and provide sound biblical teaching for other teenagers who are struggling to answer difficult life questions. Rather than ignoring this extremely sensitive issue, churches and parents must work together to continue the dialogue with teenage students about the appropriate expression of sexual intimacy within a committed marital relationship.

Perhaps your church should consider celebrating students who wait until they are married to have sex. It also is important to provide students with the tools they need to make wise decisions. Simply telling them that sex outside of marriage is wrong is not enough. Your teenagers need opportunities within a safe environment to talk about these sensitive issues. They need adults who are willing to listen and to teach as they explore these issues out loud before they are faced with making real decisions.

By creating an entire church environment that is not afraid to address this issue consistently, students will understand God’s perspective on sex outside of marriage and the grace God provides during days that are both difficult and joyous.

Emily Row-Prevost, team leader/coordinator leader

Communications/spiritual formation specialist

Baptist General Convention of Texas

Dallas

Right or Wrong? is sponsored by the T.B. Maston Chair of Christian Ethics at Hardin-Simmons University's Logsdon School of Theology. Send your questions about how to apply your faith to btillman@hsutx.edu.

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

Posted: 6/28/07

Hispanic Convention to build
homes for retired pastors

By John Hall

Texas Baptist Convention

AUSTIN—The Hispanic Baptist Convention of Texas is launching an effort to build homes for retired pastors.

During its annual meeting, the convention passed a motion to create a network of construction teams that would help build homes for retired pastors. The network will be divided into three groups—one that raises money to buy materials, one that builds homes and one that identifies candidates for houses.

Many pastors of Hispanic congregations live in church parsonages and are not paid enough to purchase houses of their own, said Baldemar Borrego, second-term president of the Convención Bautista Hispana de Texas. This action by the convention will help pastors secure housing at little or no cost.

Convention leaders hope to build at least two houses a year. The first house already is being built for Pedro Salce, pastor of Iglesia Bautista Nuevo Nacimiento in Laredo, who is set to retire soon after 40 years of ministry.

“For my family, it is a great blessing of God,” Salce said. “I never dreamt about my own house.”

Messengers to the convention’s annual meeting gave $3,700 to help offset the costs of building the first home.

Borrego, who helped pour the foundation of what will be the first house Salce ever has owned, praised the pastor’s commitment to ministry, calling him “a very humble servant who never sought his own good.” Borrego hopes to have the house completed in the next two months.

This year’s convention—typically conducted almost entirely in Spanish—also featured a fully bilingual sermon by Jesse Rincones, pastor of Alliance Baptist Church in Lubbock. The program also included an expanded youth track in English.

“We need to connect to the second and third generations,” Borrego said. “It’s vital to make that connection to succeed as a convention.”

In other business, the convention re-elected its officers—Alex Camacho, pastor of Iglesia Bautista Cristiana in McKinney, as first vice president; Ruben Chairez, pastor of Primera Iglesia Bautista in Del Rio, as second vice president; Carlos Alegria, pastor of Iglesia Cristiana Bautista in Lufkin, as third vice president; and Darlene Gamiochipi as secretary. Borrego, pastor of Nueva Esperanza Baptist Church in Wichita Falls, has another year of service left in his tenure as president.

Messengers also passed motion to create a taskforce to study the possibility of holding the convention’s annual meeting in San Antonio each year starting in 2010.

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

Posted: 7/06/07

Women in ministry report
highlights progress & obstacles

By Robert Marus

Associated Baptist Press

WASHINGTON (ABP)—Moderate and progressive Baptists continue to grow in their theoretical support for women as pastors, but their churches remain far behind in practice. That’s one conclusion from the second annual “State of Women in Baptist Life” report, releasedby Baptist Women in Ministry.

Authors Pam Durso and Eileen Campbell-Reed released the report at the organization’s annual meeting, held in conjunction with the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship general assembly in Washington.

The authors used a wide variety of data to estimate that as many as 1,825 women have been ordained to the gospel ministry by churches of Southern Baptist heritage or that grew out of controversies in the Southern Baptist Convention.

That figure has grown substantially since 1997, when Baptist sociologist Sarah Frances Anders first estimated that more than 1,200 Baptist women were ordained in the South.

However, the report found, only about 600 women serve as senior pastors of Baptist churches in the United States, and most are American Baptist, Durso noted.

Durso said Baptist Women in Ministry had identified only 117 women serving as senior pastors of congregations of Southern Baptist heritage. And, she added, “Some of those are just recently discovered by our research”—not necessarily reflecting an overall increase in the numbers of senior pastors.

The report estimated that, “at best, 6.2 percent of Cooperative Baptist Fellowship churches and 9.1 percent of American Baptist Churches USA churches are pastored by women.”

Durso also noted that women “don’t fare as well (as men) in executive positions … in Baptist agencies.”

Those figures, Campbell-Reed said, showed that, “Despite some marginal increases, women are still not making dramatic advances. So, we wanted to check out attitudes.”

To do that, the authors devised a non-scientific online survey aimed at Baptist Women in Ministry supporters and others in moderate Baptist churches.

Campbell-Reid said 1,464 people responded to the survey. She and Durso compared its results to earlier, scientific surveys about societal attitudes toward women, beginning with a 1970 Harris poll.

The results showed dramatic increases in support for women in ministry. Even among respondents who said their churches’ primary identity was with the Southern Baptist Convention, about 80 percent supported women’s ordination.

In comparison, the study noted, a 1977 poll showed 80 percent of respondents disapproved of female ministers.

“Support and attitude is high, and yet practical reality remains very low,” Campbell-Reed said.

Baptist Women in Ministry officials have instituted several new programs and events to help raise congregations’ comfort level with the idea of having a woman in the pulpit. Rachel Gunter Shapard, the organization’s outgoing coordinator, said the group would make an annual tradition of its Martha Stearns Marshall Day of Preaching.

The event—named for an early Baptist woman preacher—will take place annually on the first Sunday in February, Shapard said. In it, congregations invite a woman to preach in morning worship services. Last year, 55 churches participated, and Shapard said they hope for more this year.

The group has also started an official registry of Baptist women who are working as pastors or in other professional ministerial roles, Durso noted. Records and statistics for female ministers in Baptist life are difficult to get because of the panoply of Baptist organizations and the lack of any central denominational or educational agency that keeps statistics on Baptists of Southern heritage.

The registry includes pastors and other females in ministerial roles who are not ordained, Durso said. As of May 10, 617 women had registered.

“We have a lot of work to do to get the word out about this registry,” she said. It is accessible on the organization’s website, www.bwim.info.

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

Posted: 7/06/07

Historian urges ‘true Baptists’
to reclaim prophetic role

By Robert Marus

Associated Baptist Press

WASHINGTON (ABP)—One of the most prominent historians of American evangelicalism called on “true Baptists” to re-assert their prophetic role “as watchmen on the wall of separation between church and state.”

Randall Ballmer, a history professor at Columbia University, told more than 550 supporters of the Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty that many of America’s Baptists, in recent decades, have “lost their way.”

“They have been seduced by leaders of the Religious Right into thinking that the way to advance the gospel in this country is to abandon Baptist principles,” he said.

Among the examples he listed were former Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore, a Southern Baptist. Moore’s controversial decision to place a massive monument to the Protestant translation of the Ten Commandments at the center of the rotunda in the Alabama Supreme Court building ultimately cost him his job, but it also made him a folk hero among many of the nation’s conservative Christians.

Moore argued that his oath to defend the United States and Alabama constitutions required him to “acknowledge God” as “the source of law” by creating the monument.

“Why not post the Decalogue in public places? Because, quite simply, it trivializes the faith and makes the Ten Commandments into a fetish,” Ballmer said. “What Roy Moore was peddling was idolatry, pure and simple—a conflation of the gospel with the American political order.”

Ballmer also assailed Baptists who have, he argued, so aligned themselves with political movements, they have diminished their ability to call the very officials they helped elect to moral account.

“The identification of the Religious Right with the Republican Party has deprived the faith of its prophetic voice. Where are the Baptist voices of conscience decrying this administration’s immoral war in Iraq, the relentless assault on civil liberties and the abomination of torture?” he said.

“In too many cases, the answer is that those voices have been co-opted by the promise—often the mirage—of access to political power,” he said. He added, referring to President Bush’s chief political adviser, “It is hard to escape the conclusion that the Religious Right has abandoned the faith for a conference call with Karl Rove in return.”

Ballmer argued that Baptists who oppose such entanglements between religion and government need to bring their wayward brethren back into the fold.

“Every true Baptist understands that any attempt to baptize the faith with the imprimatur of the state … ultimately diminishes the integrity of the faith,” Ballmer said. “I’m asking Baptists to reaffirm their heritage. I’m asking them to rededicate themselves to the importance of liberty of conscience. Baptists were once a minority themselves, so they should know better than most the importance of protecting the rights of minorities, religious and otherwise.”

The speech came during the 17th annual meeting of the BJC’s Religious Liberty Council, held in conjunction with the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship General Assembly and the American Baptist Churches USA Biennial in Washington.

The council is comprised of the individual donors who contribute to BJC, a Washington-based advocacy group supported by CBF, ABC and all of the nation’s other large Baptist denominations except for the Southern Baptist Convention.

The council re-elected its three officers to second one-year terms. Co-chairs are Hal Bass, a professor at Ouachita Baptist University in Arkadelphia, Ark., and a member of First Baptist Church of Arkadelphia; and Cynthia Holmes, a St. Louis attorney and member of Overland Baptist Church in Overland, Mo. Henry Green, pastor of Heritage Baptist Church in Annapolis, Md., was re-elected as secretary.

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

Posted: 7/06/07

CBF panelists urge Baptists
to see ‘humanity’ of AIDS crisis

By Jennifer Harris

Missouri Word & Way

WASHINGTON (ABP)—AIDS asks one question: Are you human? That’s what Genie Hargrove told participants in a Cooperative Baptist Fellowship panel discussion on HIV/AIDS. Churches must see the humanity behind the crisis, she said.

Hargrove, pastor of Beulah Baptist Church in Devereux, Ga., said she gained that perspective when she saw the AIDS memorial quilt. The quilt, an ongoing community art project, is a series of 12-foot “blocks” made of three-foot-by-eight-foot panels. Each panel memorializes the life of someone who died of AIDS.

“This panel is a person,” Hargrove said. “We need to go into the world and let people see this is a human thing. They are all people—God’s children.”

Hargrove emphasizes that her church is in a small town, but a lack of resources hasn’t stopped the church from being active in the lives of those with HIV/AIDS. The church supports various organizations financially, including the Samaritan Ministry, based in Tennessee. The church also provides phone cards to a local prison when prisoners with HIV/AIDS are released. The phone cards allow people to reconnect with their families or secure a job.

“It is simple but necessary,” she said.

Mike Bergman, worship pastor at Hope Community Church in Belton, said his local HIV/AIDS support center was skeptical of his church’s interest. At the time, no other churches had provided help.

After consistent urging, his new church, with a total of 40 members, produced 26 people interested in beginning a pals program, a one-on-one connection between a member of the church and a person with HIV/AIDS. At this point, only 3 clients are part of the program.

Support center personnel “have been reserved about pushing it because they weren’t sure how the church would handle it,” Bergman said.

Bergman’s interest in HIV/AIDS ministry began a year ago at CBF’s HIV/AIDS summit. While a woman introduced as “Ann” was speaking, Bergman felt an urge to give her a hug. According to Bergman, this is an unusual experience for him. “I’m a hugger of people I know, but I never hug strangers,” he said.

Ann left the session early, but Bergman ran into her again during a panel discussion the next day. He tried to talk himself out of approaching her, assuming others would want to talk to her. But after the panel, he approached her and asked if he could give her a hug.

During the hug, he broke into tears. “It was the first time I knowingly touched someone who had AIDS,” he said. “It was like getting over a fear I didn’t know I had.”

Karen Estle never planned to do HIV ministry. “The good Lord had different plans,” she said. Estle works on a palliative care team for a hospital in Indianapolis. Palliative care is a service to help individuals and families deal with a terminal disease before hospice care is necessary.

Estle began seeing a need for HIV ministry while working at the Baptist center. She started an HIV group but noticed the “Baptist” sign kept people away. With some encouragement, she moved the group to a local 24-unit housing building full of people with HIV/AIDS.

Instead of limiting religious discussion, the move actually increased the conversation. People began asking to meet with her one-on-one, so she decided to attend seminary.

“I’ve had people tell me ‘I never understood unconditional love, but you’ve kept coming. I know what unconditional love is because you never gave up,’” she said.

Estle began inviting her church to help. A women’s group holds dinner once a week. The church also sponsors monthly birthday parties, where each person is given a gift from the dollar store. For some of these people, this gift is the only thing they receive.

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

Posted: 7/06/07

Baptist sex-traffic mission worker
urges others to ‘show up’ for ministry

By Marv Knox

Editor

WASHINGTON (ABP)—The key to ministry in Jesus’ name—even in difficult and dangerous places—is to “show up,” Lauran Bethell told participants in the William H. Whitsitt Baptist Heritage Society annual meeting.

Bethell, an American Baptist missionary who has spent most of her adult life ministering to and rescuing women from prostitution and sexual trafficking, received the Whitsitt Society’s annual Courage Award. The group met during the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship general assembly in Washington, June 28.

“I don’t feel very courageous. … The word ‘fool’ describes it,” Bethell said as she accepted the award. “I did not ever plan or prepare to be hanging out with prostitutes and to be involved in trafficking.”

But she became burdened for the physical and spiritual needs of prostitutes when she moved to Thailand for missionary language school more than 20 yeas ago, she recalled. There, Bethell first saw, then met, young women who worked as prostitutes. She learned many of them were victims of sexual trafficking. Some literally were sold as sexual slaves.

Others were tricked into the trade when they accepted what they thought were respectable jobs and moved far from their homes, only to find they had no escape. Still others sold their bodies as the only way to support their families.

“I was unprepared to encounter this. It’s unrealistic,” Bethell acknowledged. “But I knew I wasn’t going to be happy in this country without helping these women, who were sacrificing themselves for their mothers, fathers, brothers and sisters, and sometimes even their own children.”

At first, she felt all alone in her calling. “The church response to this issue was silence,” she recalled. So, she prayed, expressing her shock and anger to God.

Six weeks later, fellow missionaries told her they were starting a ministry to rural Thai women who were leaving the countryside for big-city brothels. Although Bethell had “no qualifications, no training, no funding,” the call changed her life and, ultimately, the lives of many others. “I knew in that moment why I was in that country,” she said.

They started New Life Center in Chiang Mai, Thailand. Although Bethell was the director, she said tribal women from Thailand primarily staffed the center. “These women were smart, fun, incredible—my guides,” she reported.

They listened to girls who came looking for work to support their families and wound up in prostitution. They sought to meet the women’s most pressing needs by providing education and vocational training.

Within a few years, five Christian groups were operating ministries to Thai women trapped in the country’s notorious sex trade. And then the media wanted to know about the “sexy story.” Eventually, the government started to get embarrassed about people being trafficked, being forced into prostitution across borders.

“This was God’s moment to reach the darkest places—constant and unrelenting abuse,” Bethell said.

Later, Bethell became a full-time consultant, traveling the globe to help groups of Christians who want to minister to victims of sexual trafficking. She lives at the International Baptist Theological Seminary in Prague, Czech Republic. Although she travels often, she also leads a ministry to prostitutes in Prague, many of whom are young Eastern European women who have been trafficked into the sex trade, trapped far from home.

When the ministry started, Bethell and seminary students encountered 30 to 40 prostitutes on the streets. They sat with the women in the smoky bars, sipping coffee and soft drinks and, at the prostitutes’ request, singing Gypsy praise music, while pornography played on the television and other prostitutes turned tricks in the bathrooms.

In time, two bars that were the center of significant prostitution closed down, and the number of prostitutes has diminished.

Bethell credited prayer as the key to ministry, noting she and her Christian friends prayed for a year before they went out into the streets of Prague. “What we have felt most profoundly is we are called to pray. So we go out every week and pray,” she said. Even after years of ministry to prostitutes, Bethell sees “no formulas or models; every situation, city or country is different.”

Lest they get too comfortable, Bethell reminded the Whitsitt audience that the United States is not immune to sex trafficking, noting 15,000 to 20,000 people are trafficked into the United States each year. “Most end up in prostitution,” she lamented.

The lesson Bethell has learned through her ministry is simple, she said.

“Doing new things doesn’t mean we have to have all knowledge first. We have to show up,” she said. “God takes control and does surprising things. …We don’t have to do God’s work. We just have to show up. God will do God’s work.”

The Whitsitt Society is named for William Whitsitt, president and church history professor at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in the late 1800s. He was hounded from office after he proposed that Baptists could not trace their lineage in unbroken succession all the way back to the first century church and Jesus. Eventually, all reputable church historians backed Whitsitt’s view.

Bethell is the 16th recipient of the society’s Courage Award.

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

Posted: 7/03/07

CBF considers UN campaign
to fight poverty, hunger & disease

By Greg Warner & Matt Kennedy

Associated Baptist Press

WASHINGTON (ABP)—The Cooperative Baptist Fellowship at its general assembly took the first step toward joining the United Nations’ campaign against global poverty and disease, called the Millennium Development goals.

In a break from business-as-usual during the Fellowship’s national meeting, participants voted overwhelmingly to instruct their governing body to consider ways CBF can join other Christian groups to reach the United Nations’ Millennium Development goals.

The Fellowship’s Coordinating Council will spend the next year investigating “the feasibility and means by which CBF might be involved” with other religious and non-governmental groups rallying behind the U.N.’s long-term and comprehensive campaign to eradicate hunger, poverty, AIDS, and crushing Third World debt.

Colleen Burroughs of Birmingham, Ala., executive vice president of the mission-focused Passport Camps and founder of the development project Watering Malawi, introduced the motion from the floor of the assembly.

Motions from the floor of the assembly rarely result in action. Often they are referred to the Coordinating Council, the 68-member representative body that meets three times a year. Virtually all business in the 17-year-old Fellowship is funneled through the Coordinating Council. The Fellowship’s bylaws disallow resolutions and discourage debate during the plenary sessions.

But CBF Moderator Emmanuel McCall referred Burroughs’ motion to a business breakout session, where it quickly garnered the support of other participants, including CBF missions and programming staffers.

The eight Millennium Development Goals, intended to eradicate extreme global poverty by 2015, are:

• Reduce by half extreme poverty and hunger.

• Achieve universal primary education.

• Promote gender equality and empower women.

• Reduce child mortality by two-thirds.

• Reduce maternal mortality by three-fourths.

• Reverse the spread of HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases.

• Ensure environmental sustainability.

• Develop a global partnership for development.

Council leaders declined to consider the Millennium Development goals prior to the assembly, deferring instead to the CBF’s partner organizations that deal with public policy and global ministry.

Meanwhile, many other Christian denominational groups have endorsed the U.N. goals since they were introduced in 2000, among them American Baptists, United Methodists, Evangelical Lutherans, Church of the Brethren, the Episcopal Church and the Mennonite Central Committee.

CBF of Virginia also voted to allocate half of the “emerging opportunities” line item in their budget for the development goals. That initial allocation was $5,000, totaling $2,500 to the U.N. goals. The Virginia group also collected an offering of $2,400 that went toward providing water in Malawi, which Virginia leaders also counted toward the development goals.

During the breakout session, supporters argued for asking the general assembly to act.

“I understand why you don’t want people popping up and making resolutions on every issue under the sun,” said David Breckenridge, pastor of Rivermont Avenue Baptist Church in Lynchburg, Va. “But, that being said, I wonder if we overreacted just a bit. Maybe we have some procedures that are so ironclad that it makes it very tough to act decisively in a timely manner.”

Others said endorsing the goals does not commit the Fellowship to rearranging its ministry strategy.

Harriet Harral, CBF’s incoming moderator from Fort Worth, said the Fellowship is already engaged in addressing some of the U.N.’s concerns.

“CBF is already doing a number of things that are consistent with these goals—for example, our involvement with Christian Churches Together to confront issues of hunger and families in need,” Harral said. It also includes “our work with Together with Hope and Buckner International.”

Rather than referring Burroughs’ motion to the council, most breakout participants favored asking the full general assembly to act on it.

“I don’t think we have to wait for the Coordinating council to take that action,” said Jack Glasgow, CBF moderator-elect and a pastor from Zebulon, N.C. “I’m really in favor of this motion because it’s doing more than just asking for endorsements. It is also asking for action.”

Breakout participants, who are empowered to make a recommendation to the general assembly, amended the motion to “instruct” rather than “request” the Coordinating Council to consider a response to the U.N.’s goals.

The motion was presented to the general assembly June 29 and approved without opposition.

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

Posted: 7/01/07

CBF leaders endorse New Baptist Covenant

By Greg Warner

Associated Baptist Press

WASHINGTON, D.C. (ABP)—Leaders of the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship endorsed the New Baptist Covenant June 27, saying the mission of the diverse Covenant coalition is consistent with the Fellowship’s core values.

The New Baptist Covenant, launched by former president and Baptist layman Jimmy Carter last April, is a broad-based initiative to improve the image of Baptists in North America and unite the majority of those Baptists across racial lines into a loose-knit network committed to the gospel message of Jesus and to addressing social ills.

The six-paragraph CBF statement was adopted without opposition by the Coordinating Council, the Fellowship’s top decision-making body, June 27, one day prior to the Fellowship’s annual general assembly. The council also approved a budget 3.3 percent smaller than the current spending plan.

Covenant program chairman Jimmy Allen of Big Canoe, Ga., urged people gathered for the general assembly’s opening session to participate in the inaugural Covenant event Jan. 30-Feb. 1, which organizers hope will draw 20,000 people to Atlanta and launch an unprecedented ministry collaboration among the famously independent-minded Baptists.

Allen called the January event “the most significant meeting (Baptists) have had in a hundred years.” Baptists have eschewed such broad-based cooperation since before the Civil War, historians have noted.

The Coordinating Council statement said, “It is hard to imagine any development among Baptists more consistent with the spirit, ideals and core values of the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship than the creation of the New Baptist Covenant.”

Paraphrasing the Covenant mission statement, the Coordinating Council said: “Our Fellowship desires to bring persons and congregations together for Christ-centered ministry. We strive to be a catalyst for renewal among the body of Christ. We seek to be the presence of Christ in ministry with the poorest and most neglected persons. We attempt to be a voice that champions historic Baptist principles of freedom and liberty.’

“How marvelous is the opportunity before us—to carry out our deepest sense of mission in covenant with a diverse group of North American Baptists,” it concluded.

So far, 40 Baptist denominations and organizations in the United States and Canada have indicated a willingness to participate in the Covenant. The organizations, which include most of the Baptist denominations in North America except the Southern Baptist Convention, encompass about 20 million Baptists.

That’s more than the 16 million members claimed by the SBC, the largest Baptist group in the world. SBC leaders, who have moved sharply to the political and theological right in the last 25 years, have already cut off relations with most of the Covenant organizations and criticized the Carter initiative as a political effort.

Although the January meeting boasts some of the United States’ most prominent Baptist politicians as speakers—including Carter and former President Bill Clinton—organizers insist it is a non-partisan and apolitical event to inspire gospel-based ministry.

The Coordinating Council statement was written by Jack Glasgow, pastor of Zebulon Baptist Church in Zebulon, N.C. Glasgow is expected to be voted in as Fellowship moderator-elect June 29, which puts him next in line for the Fellowship’s top elected office. In that capacity, he will lead both the council and the larger Fellowship body.

Current moderator Emmanuel McCall, a seminary professor and pastor in the Atlanta area, is the first African-American to serve in that role. He will be succeeded this year by Harriet Harral, an organizational consultant from Fort Worth, and then Glasgow.

The Washington meeting of the Fellowship is historic also because it is the first joint meeting of CBF and the American Baptist Churches, USA, The groups will hold a combined worship service June 29, in which they will commission their first jointly appointed missionaries.

In his report to the council, Executive Coordinator Daniel Vestal, CBF’s chief executive, celebrated the growth of the Fellowship’s ministry partnerships, particularly internationally. “These Baptist bodies around the world want to work with us, not because they want money; they just want to be treated with respect, treated as brothers and sisters,” he said.

He cited five “challenges” CBF faces: 1) “codifying” those partnerships, 2) “strategic prioritizing” of CBF’s many ministries and partnerships, 3) reviving slumping contributions and fund-raising, 4) enhancing Web-based communications, and 5) increasing collaboration with CBF’s partners and state affiliates.

The council approved a $16,481,000 budget for 2007-08 that is a 3.3 percent reduction from the current budget of $17,050,000. The proposed budget, which still requires approval of the general assembly June 29, cuts funding for most ministry areas, including global missions.

Only two ministry areas receive increases: “faith formation,” primarily for spiritual and “missional-church” training for congregational leaders, and “building community,” primarily for Hispanic church-planting and networking among Christian educators. Most traditional partner organizations receive cuts in the proposed budget.

Vestal said he is “not happy with” the organization’s current revenues and warned that making additional cuts in CBF spending would require difficult choices.

In concluding his report, Vestal said his primary concern is communicating the gospel of Jesus. “There are still a billion people in this world who have no access to the gospel,” he said. “… My heart yearns to see people come to faith in Christ.”

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

Posted: 7/01/07

CBF moderator McCall says God’s
covenant gives Christians responsibility

By Marv Knox

Editor

WASHINGTON (ABP)—God’s covenant with Christians “places the responsibility for being the presence of Christ squarely on our shoulders,” Emmanuel McCall told participants at the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship general assembly June 28.

God is a covenant-keeping God, insisted McCall, the Fellowship’s moderator and pastor of The Fellowship Baptist Group in suburban Atlanta. He cited several covenants recorded in the Old Testament but stressed God sealed the “new covenant”—God’s most precious pact—with the life and atoning death of Jesus.

Since the nature of covenants calls for mutual accountability as well as mutual rewards and benefits, God’s new covenant places demands upon Christians, McCall added.

“Our part in the covenant is our repentance for our sins and a commitment to follow Jesus’ way of living,” he explained. “A changed, new way of living is called for on our part. On God’s part, it is the covenant of life beyond life for all eternity.”

That’s why this covenant places high demands upon those who accept it, he said.

“God’s new covenant has no room for excuses, no room for blaming others, no harboring resentments for past mistakes or failures,” he declared. “Unlike the covenant of old, it is not etched in stone. … It was placed in fluid, living vessels, in the hearts and minds of transformed people.

“Transformed people are God’s work through his Holy Spirit. We are transformed, not for the sake of transformation, but to be the very presence of Christ in this world.”

The Fellowship is familiar with covenants, McCall observed. He cited covenants with affiliated seminaries, institutions, and state and regional organizations, as well as Christian Churches Together, a coalition of 36 Catholic, Orthodox, Evangelical, Protestant and Pentecostal denominations. In addition, the Fellowship is one of the principle organizations involved in the New Baptist Covenant, which is pulling together numerous Baptist organizations representing about 20 million Christians.

But keeping the most significant covenant—God’s new covenant —means the Fellowship will be “the presence of Christ in this world,” he repeated, echoing the general assembly’s theme, “Free to be the Presence of Christ.”

“Because we are his presence, people will come to know the Lord,” McCall maintained. “Not by gimmicks. Not by rules and regulations. Not by manipulations. Not by schemes and crafty advertisements. Not by sleight of hand or trickery of spirit. But they shall come to know the Lord. … No human sociological boundary will separate us from the love of God through Christ Jesus our Lord.”

The Fellowship fulfills its covenant with God in three key areas, he said:

• “We are evangelizing by loving people into a relationship with God,” he said. “We are evangelizing by dealing with the needs people have, which if not addressed, will obscure our message.”

These needs include “challenging unjust situations — the disparities and inequities of life,” he explained.

Acknowledging some people dismiss that task by claiming it’s “just social action,” McCall begged to differ. “It is far more than that,” he stressed, pointing to the Gospels. Challenging injustice and inequity is “just what Jesus did,” he said. “Can we dare do less?”

• “We are … loving the unloveable, those who have been marred by life,” he reported. “There are people marred by addictions of all kinds,” he insisted, citing not only alcohol and chemicals, but ego, arrogance, loneliness and “spiritual snobbery” as sources of addiction.

The Fellowship’s task is to “find people out of covenant with God,” whose bodies or souls are disfigured by their sin, and to bring them back into covenant with God, he said.

• “We are fulfilling God’s covenant when we reach out to teach, to nurture, to develop, train or to support those who are involved in these ministries,” McCall added.

“Covenant people take seriously the Great Commission of our Lord. We are not only to preach and proclaim, but to help in spiritual formation, to aid in the development of the mind, spirit, heart or however you prefer to refer to the inner being.

“People are not just souls to become the objects of evangelists’ head-counting. Every person is a person made in God’s image and likeness. We must ourselves strive to be the presence of Christ and to help others also become like Christ.”

Although keeping the covenant is not easy, the Fellowship doesn’t have to advance under its own strength, McCall reminded.

“Christ-bearing is a daunting task,” he said. But “we have not been called to a Royal Caribbean cruise into eternity. No, despite the prosperity garbage, Jesus calls us to take up a cross and to follow him.

“Even though we take up a cross, he does not leave us to bear it alone. He promises his presence. … We can trust him to see us through, even the most difficult crises of life and the challenges of servanthood.”

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

Posted: 6/29/07

Rockwall prayer advocate
feels drawn to West Africa

By Jesse Lyautey

International Mission Board

DAKAR, Senegal—Each summer for the past eight years, Lance Bedford has walked the beaches of Africa’s westernmost point.

He watches his step to avoid sharp objects, trash or fish heads thrown from the boats lining the beach after the day’s haul. But Bedford really watches the people, the Lebou fisherman of Senegal, and prays they will have an openness to hear the gospel. They are the reason he returns, year after year.

Cal MaCintire (left) and Lance Bedford (center) prepare a meal for Lebou believers during a worship gathering.

“I felt drawn to it here,” Bedford said. “There is something about when I am here. I feel the presence of God.”

There wasn’t a missionary working among the Lebou during his first visit. So, he went home and started praying.

The next year, Bedford returned with a group from Lake Pointe Church in Rockwall to run a dental clinic. He continued to pray for a permanent worker among the people.

By the time he returned in 2000, God had answered his prayers by sending Cal and Patty McIntire to serve as full-time missionaries among the Lebou.

But Bedford knew he wasn’t done with the Lebou people. God had called him, too.

As the McIntires started their work among the Lebou, they needed prayer—and a lot of it. Bedford was the natural choice to become the Lebou team’s stateside prayer advocate.

As a prayer advocate, Bedford recruits individuals, churches, associations, and organizations to pray for the Lebou people. “I started getting all the people I could think of to pray for them,” Bedford says. “I make every effort to get more people to pray for the Lebou.”

The Lebou prayer team is more than 6,000 people strong.

Another part of his job is to send out resource CDs to volunteer teams with “all you need to know about West Africa.”

He also meets once a month with other Lake Pointe members who have visited the Lebou people to pray they will hear the gospel and believe.

“I have seen results among the Lebou because of prayer and God,” Bedford said.

Two more missionary couples have joined the McIntires in Senegal. In 2006, Bedford saw the first church worship together and read the Bible in their own language.

All the Lebou Christians recognize Bedford—the man with the bushy, grayish-white beard wrapped around a huge, warm smile. They know he has a heart for them and always is carrying a camera. He takes pictures of the Lebou people to send out so Americans can put a face with the prayer requests—anything to help people pray.

His dream is to see all the Lebou come to Christ, start churches all along the coast of Senegal and become missionaries to the other people groups around them.

“Someone drew me a picture one time of Cal (McIntire) fishing with the fishermen,” Bedford said. “All the fish swimming in the ocean had the names of other people groups in Senegal. The Lebou were fishing for other people groups.”

Read more about the Lebou people at www.fabulousfishtales.blogspot.com.

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