2007 Archives
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DOWN HOME: Pucker up for some really good news
Posted: 3/30/07
DOWN HOME:
Pucker up for some really good newsNow, here’s some useful news:
Kissing is good for you.
And I’m not making this up.
Heart-Healthy Living magazine puts it out there in black and white in its spring issue. “Couples who kiss often are eight times less likely to feel stressed or depressed.” Ta-da!
03/30/2007 - By John Rutledge
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EDITORIAL: Worse than crashing a $1.5M Ferrari
Posted: 3/30/07
EDITORIAL:
Worse than crashing a $1.5M FerrariDid you hear the one about the actor and the sportscar?
No joke. Comedian Eddie Griffin was practicing for a charity car race to promote his upcoming movie, Redline, when he lost control of a rare Ferrari Enzo and crashed it. (See the wreck on YouTube here.) Griffin totalled the car. It cost $1.5 million.
Wrap your brain around that: A $1.5 million red sportscar, gone in a nanosecond. Can you even comprehend anything on four wheels costing $1.5 million?
The car’s owner took the wreck pretty well. Redline producer Daniel Sadek reflected: “I’m glad Eddie came out of the crash OK, but my dream car got destroyed. I went to my trailer for about 15 minutes, and I thought: ‘There’s people dying every day. A lot of worse things are happening in the world.’”
03/30/2007 - By John Rutledge
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ETBU nursing students put training into practice in Mexico
Posted: 3/30/07
ETBU nursing students put
training into practice in MexicoBy Mike Midkiff
East Texas Baptist University
MARSHALL—East Texas Baptist University Department of Nursing students took time away from the books and put their training to use, conducting free medical assessment clinics during a weeklong mission trip to Mexico.
The eight nursing students accompanied 28 students involved with the Baptist Student Ministry, traveling to Monterrey, Mexico, during spring break.
Residents of a remote village outside of Saltillo, Mexico, wait to have a free health assessment done by nursing students from East Texas Baptist University. ETBU nursing students spent time during spring break to do medical missions in Mexico. (Photo courtesy of ETBU Department of Nursing) 03/30/2007 - By John Rutledge
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Faith Digest
Posted: 3/30/07
Faith Digest
Survey says moral values weakened. Three-quarters of Americans believe moral values in America have weakened in the last 20 years, and almost half think they have significantly weakened, according to a survey released by the Media Research Center. The survey found 74 percent of American adults said they believe moral values in the United States are weaker than they were two decades ago, while 48 percent said moral values were “much weaker.” Sixty-eight percent of Americans surveyed said the media—both entertainment and news—have a detrimental effect on moral values. More specifically, 73 percent said entertainment media had a negative influence on moral values, and 54 percent said the news media do. Eighty-seven percent of Americans said they believe in God, while 36 percent agreed that people should always live by God’s principles and teachings. The study was conducted by the polling firm Fabrizio, McLaughlin & Associates and the center’s Culture and Media Institute. The results were based on 1,000 surveys of American adults ages 18 and older by telephone and 1,000 surveys completed online in December. It had an overall margin of error of plus or minus 2.2 percentage points.
Wipe out malaria, first lady urges. Laura Bush congratulated religious and community organizations involved in the fight against malaria and urged others to join in the campaign at a White House conference. She highlighted the President’s Malaria Initiative, called PMI, which was launched in 2005 and aims to spend $1.2 billion over five years to address malaria in 15 countries. The first lady cited several groups—from Catholic Relief Services to megachurch pastor Rick Warren’s Saddleback Church in California—that are fighting the disease, which kills about 1 million people, many of them children, each year.
03/30/2007 - By John Rutledge
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HBU students take local & global missions plunge
Posted: 3/30/07
Brittany Myer, a Houston Baptist University student, shares a smile with two children from Yellowstone Academy in Houston. (Photo courtesy of HBU) HBU students take local & global missions plunge
Two groups of Houston Baptist University students recently stepped out of their comfort zones and into places where they could meet urgent human needs in Christ’s name.
One team spent spring break taking an “urban plunge” into Houston’s Third Ward—one of the city’s most impoverished areas. Another group dug wells, helped offer medical clinics and led Vacation Bible School in Nicaragua.
A village girl in Nicaragua enjoys the pure, clean water a new well provides. The inner-city missions experience, coordinated with the school’s Center for Student Missions, included visiting an adult day-care center, leading a museum field trip for schoolchildren from the Third Ward and helping at the Harbor Light shelter sponsored by the Salvation Army. An inner-city church provided lodging for the students during their three days of service with nonprofit organizations in the area.
“Initially when the students arrive in these impoverished areas, they arrive with the comprehension and interpretation from what they’ve seen on television—the crimes, the poverty, the struggle. We immediately take them to these neighborhoods they’ve heard about from the news and show them around. Then, they are connected with people who live in these neighborhoods,” said Jason Shaffer, HBU coordinator of spiritual life, community service and missions. “Students’ stereotypes and fears fade as they recognize the humanity in those that society casts aside.”
03/30/2007 - By John Rutledge
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Keep ‘dream stealers’ at bay, keynote speaker urges lay leaders & ministers
Posted: 3/30/07
Nearly 100 pastors, youth and women ministry leaders and Sunday school teachers at Inspire ’07 were motivated to evangelize and grow their churches. The customized regional event was held at College Heights Baptist Church in Plainview. (Photos by Ferrell Foster) Keep ‘dream stealers’ at bay, keynote
speaker urges lay leaders & ministersBy Barbara Bedrick
Texas Baptist Communications
PLAINVIEW—Pastors and lay church leaders should “recognize those things that are dream stealers” and exercise mountain-moving faith, keynote speaker David Mahfouz told participants at Inspire ’07.
The Baptist General Convention of Texas and Caprock Plains Baptist Association sponsored the inaugural Inspire event March 24 at College Heights Baptist Church.
03/30/2007 - By John Rutledge
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Evangelical support for Iraq war apparently wavering
Posted: 3/30/07
Evangelical support for Iraq
war apparently waveringBy Julie Sullivan
Religion News Service
DAMASCUS, Ore. (RNS)—Suzanne Brownlow shivers on an Oregon highway overpass as a cutting wind whips her sign: “Honk to End the War.” Her weekly demonstration is the latest turn in a fractious journey that has taken the evangelical Christian mother from protesting abortion clinics to protesting the war in Iraq.
“I feel like at least we are doing something,” Mrs. Brownlow said, waving to passersby along with her husband, Dave, and two youngest children.
Suzanne Brownlow and daughters Desi (left) and Sierra (center), look at photos of their son and brother Jared, 20, who serves in Iraq. Mrs. Brownlow is an evangelical who had supported President Bush but now strongly opposes the war. (RNS photo by Benjamin Brink/The Oregonian) 03/30/2007 - By John Rutledge
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Texas Baptist Forum
Posted: 3/30/07
Texas Baptist Forum
God & Allah
Charles Kimball claimed Islam and Christianity worship the same God: “Allah is simply the Arab name for God” (March 5).
Letters are welcomed. Send them to marvknox@baptiststandard.com; 250 words maximum. 
“As I thought of what may await me, I felt a feeling of great trust. No one raised in the kind of church environment I grew up in totally leaves behind the acrid smell of fire and brimstone, but I felt an overwhelming sense of trust in God.”
Philip Yancey
Author, on awaiting news of whether injury sustained in a car crash would threaten his life, before he was released with a neck brace to be worn for 10 weeks (www.philipyancey.com/RNS)“There has been a great deal of talk lately about the role of religion in politics. Yet, if the religious voice were truly a factor, then 45 million Americans—and 8 million children—would not be uninsured.”
Marla Feldman
Director of the Joint Commission on Social Action of Reform Judaism (RNS)“Saddam Hussein is developing at breakneck speed weapons of mass destruction he plans to use against America and her allies.”
Richard Land
President of the Southern Baptist Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission, in 2002 (Baptist Press/ethicsdaily.com)“My justification for the war was not based upon weapons of mass destruction.”
Richard Land
In 2007 (BeliefNet/ethicsdaily.com)This is a ploy by Muslims to encourage the widespread use of this falsehood by nonbelievers so the non-Islamic world might be tranquilized into thinking Islam is just another harmless religion, one that might some day be persuaded to convert to Christianity, if we don’t antagonize them by political incorrectness.
A comparison of the characterizations of Allah in the Qur’an and Jehovah God in the Bible will reveal vastly different beings the most casual eye can easily detect.
03/30/2007 - By John Rutledge
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Students find missions calling through BSM
Posted: 3/30/07
Students from Stephen F. Austin State University helped work on a Katrina-damaged church during spring break. Students find missions calling through BSM
By John Hall
Texas Baptist Communications
NACOGDOCHES—When Ashlee Stricklin was a high school senior, Stephen F. Austin State University barely made the list of colleges she considered attending. But when she visited, she found God calling her to the campus.
Stephen F. Austin State University pray during Beach Reach at South Padre Island.
Students Minister at Spring Break
• Beach Reach volunteers immersed in missions service
• Baylor fraternity brothers serve God in the Ozarks
• DBU students build homes in South Carolina & South Dakota
• HBU students take local & global missions plunge
• ETBU nursing students put training into practice in Mexico
• Students find missions calling through BSM
• More than a day at the beachShe stopped by the school’s Baptist Student Ministries, where a speaker told students God brought each one of them to the BSM that night for a reason.
03/30/2007 - By John Rutledge
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Two generations of Wiesers serve as student missionaries
Posted: 3/30/07
Ken Wieser (left, top row), associate pastor at Heights Baptist Church in Alvin, and his wife, Judy (left, lower), never expected their three children—Kris (center, top), Jana (center, lower) and Keith (right, top)—to follow in their footsteps and serve as student missionaries with the Baptist Student Ministry at Stephen F. Austin State University in Nacogdoches. Keith’s wife, Paige (right, lower), also served as a student missionary. (Photo courtesy of the Wieser family) Two generations of Wiesers
serve as student missionariesBy Ken Camp
Managing Editor
ALVIN—The Wieser family sees student missionary service as more than a family tradition. For two generations, they believe it’s been God’s instrument for confirming a calling to Christian service.
Ken and Judy Wieser both became involved in missions through what was then called the Baptist Student Union at Stephen F. Austin State University in Nacogdoches. Their three children—Keith, Jana and Kris—not only followed their parents’ lead in their college choice, but also each served terms as student missionaries.
03/30/2007 - By John Rutledge
