Posted: 3/09/06

CYBER COLUMN:
Thank God he's no helicopter parent

By Jinny Henson

On a flight from DFW to Chicago not long ago, I heard the most audacious example yet of helicopter parenting—a term used to describe the hovering nature of parents engineering their child’s every situation to create a positive result. Blame it on the vapid competition today’s children face or our parental thirst for validation, but these days some parents are hovering; paving the way and quick to indulge.

Behind me was a mother in her late 30s attempting to instruct her son in California via cell phone how to properly load cartridges into his new Nintendo D.S. player. She had him read the directions to her twice and offered her take on them. The Nintendo, it seems, has a space for both Nintendo games and its forerunner, Game Boy game cartridges. Oddly enough, the Granny Nanny taking care of the kids was of absolutely no assistance. Imagine that.

“Just hang tight, Trevor,” the mother said, with all of the intensity of a Madre swimming the Rio Grande with a bambino strapped to her back. “I’ll call Chase in Minneapolis. I KNOW he’ll know what to do. I’ll call you right back. Don’t move.” There she was, saving the day from afar. Luckily, the plane did not take off for a few minutes (this was not Jet Blue, by the way,) and she successfully trouble-shot from half a country away. Problem solved, I could feel her prideful mother-buzz of going beyond the call waft forward, powerfully penetrating through my flotation device.

If my generation of parents had a good upbringing, we want our children’s to be great. Convinced they will need therapy if they are deprived of The Disney Experience, we get ’em there, spend two days stalking characters who do not exist and gripe at each other from Tomorrowland to Cinderella’s Stinkin’ Castle. Despite knowing that we are building Barbie-sized expectations for our “Little Miss Sunshines,” we press on, expecting that if we work hard enough, our children will succeed and earn a bumper sticker we can proudly display on our car. Frankly, I’d like a sticker with my son’s name and a TV on it, because no one can watch the Disney Channel like my boy.

Oh, how God’s parenting style is different than ours. What I admire tremendously and am most vexed by is God’s self-restraint. He has all of the ability to grease the wheels for his children, yet he does not always choose to do so. In fact, the way of Christ has historically been the way of suffering beginning with his sacrificial life and death. Jesus had not even a rock upon which to lay his head. Jesus’ disciples heard his language about picking up their crosses but were too busy dreaming about their future prestige to pay much attention to crazy talk like that.

I’m not so sure we don’t expect the same. I mean, really, he’s God, the owner of a cattle on a thousand hills. Living for him in this corrupt generation should have some earthly perks, right? That’s what I heard a bleach blonde televangelist on TV claim. It was clearly working for her. Oh, that God would engineer things to work out to make us, and him, look good.

God knows his children are strengthened by the stretch and restrains himself from the quick fix. Personally, I think he’d be way more popular if he would make us all as look as great as Victoria Osteen, be as rich as Bill Gates and as healthy as cancer-survivor Lance Armstrong.

Even though Jesus perpetually cared for the poor and neglected in the Gospels, we have our own American ideals of what would make for abundant life in Christ. Maybe that is why we downplay the sacrifice part and highlight the eternal-treat-bag angle. God surely needs our PR. Oh, that God would replace expired hamsters while we are in school and spare his offspring the harsh realities of life!

I know I am blessed. I know I will never know the pain God has spared me from; I am sure it is monumental, but the invisible God has felt invisible when I have needed his intervention the most and hence allowed me the blessed discomfort of struggle.

Not that I begin to tie up in a succinct little bow God’s reasons for doing what he does, but I do know I have benefited from journeys I never asked to go on. This struggle has born fruit in me for which I never realized I contained seeds. For instance, God allowed me to see the dark side of Christians so that I could empathize with people who have been wounded by dysfunctional Christians. God allowed me to watch my father die and be strength for my ultra-strong mother during that time and God, through his restraint, has allowed me to see the virtue in little things done well regardless of the payoff.

I performed at a retreat with former ABC Nightly News religion correspondent Peggy Wehmeyer. Her tremendously moving words continue to impact me. She noted a Presbyterian pastor’s observation that even in the pre-fall Garden of Eden, Adam and Eve could not have it all. Right in the very center of the garden was a tree they could see yet were forbidden to touch. Although we may want it all, and even may think we deserve it all, we were never intended as the created to have it all.

So remains God, unchanged. We may perpetually rescue and give our children everything they desire, but not so with God. He sees the virtues deep within us that only his disciplined restraint can birth. And his refusal to interfere is love.

Jinny Henson travels the country as a Christian comedienne. John, Maggie Lee and Jack are an endless source of material for her. You can find out more about her at www.jinnyhenson.com

News of religion, faith, missions, Bible study and Christian ministry among Texas Baptist churches, in the BGCT, the Southern Baptist Convention ( SBC ) and around the world.

Updated: 3/02/07

Baptists’ post-Katrina efforts
in Louisiana still under way

By Carla Wynn

Cooperative Baptist Fellowship

LACOMBE, La. (ABP)—It’s been a long road for the home of Loretta and Samuel Ducre of Lacombe, La.

Their original home is gone—destroyed in August 2005 when Hurricane Katrina mauled the Gulf Coast. And its replacement, built and furnished by volunteers, has been on its way for nearly a year.

It started in Kelowna, British Columbia, where Trinity Baptist Church members constructed a modular home in the church parking lot, furnished it, packed it and sent it on its way to Lacombe. The town near New Orleans is a small African-American community, where the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship also still is building and restoring homes for Katrina’s victims.

The two parts of the modular home got as far as Kansas before another natural disaster—a tornado—destroyed half the home April 30, 2006.

“Something beautiful will emerge from the disappointment,” Reid Doster, disaster response coordinator for CBF of Louisiana, said last May.

And now, after delays caused by weather and government red tape, signs of progress are apparent. The surviving half of the home has been raised seven feet off the Ducres’ property, most likely alleviating future flood threats. A blitz build is scheduled soon to finish construction on the other half of the home, with help from CBF partner churches and volunteers from the Rotary Club of Little Rock, Ark.

The Arkansas club has partnered with CBF of Louisiana to do hurricane relief in Lacombe. University Baptist Church in Baton Rouge also is donating $7,000 toward furnishings for the new half of the home.

Meanwhile, in New Orleans, nearly 270 CBF volunteers renovated five churches and four pastors’ houses. Since the Fellowship’s six-month project in New Orleans concluded Dec. 31, volunteers are needed for restoration efforts in Lacombe and nearby Slidell, La. More than 200 volunteers are scheduled to come this year.

“We are now shifting our focus back to the northern shore of Lake Pontchartrain, especially in Slidell, where floodwaters ran thousands out of their homes,” Doster said.

“CBF will continue our ministry here so long as we have volunteers willing to let God use them to ease human suffering. As with CBF’s continued efforts in post-tsunami Southeast Asia, the work goes on right here in post-Katrina Southeast Louisiana.”

CBF partner congregation Bridgewater Church in Mandeville, La., helped a Slidell school, where many students and teachers lost everything to Katrina. Bridgewater and churches in Vermont and Florida filled 300 shoeboxes with personal items and distributed them in early January to students and faculty at Abney Elementary School.

Bridgewater also networked with an advertising agency in California to provide items on the school’s “Top 10 Wish List.” Monte Vista Baptist Church in Maryville, Tenn., donated 100 third-grade grammar books to the school, and a Bridgewater church member donated art supplies and has volunteered to teach watercolor painting at the school.

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

Updated: 3/02/07

If heaven is filled with music,
Bernice Larner arrived early

By George Henson

Staff Writer

MORGAN MILL—For the last 70 years, Sunday mornings have found Bernice Larner at a church piano bench. And she’s been blessed with every hymn she’s played, including her favorite, “He Keeps Me Singing.”

In addition to 62 years at Morgan Mill Baptist Church, Larner also was pianist for a church in Odessa for four years in the mid-1950s and in Azle for four years in the late-1960s.

While seven decades of making music for the Lord is quite of feat, Pastor Joe Rogers said it does not come close to describing Larner’s contribution to the church and the community.

“She’s still a big part of our Vacation Bible School,” Rogers said.

Larner acknowledged she helps with refreshments. But, Rogers countered, like everything else, that’s only the beginning. “You see her up and down the halls, taking care of everybody and everything that comes along.”

She also is one of the church’s leaders in missions efforts, Rogers said. The church that averages just over 100 worshippers each Sunday but gave more than $6,000 to the Lottie Moon Christmas Offering for Foreign Missions this past year.

“I have worked in the Woman’s Missionary Union all these years, but I just love missions,” Larner said.

She also takes care of sending cards, flowers and gifts to the “sick, sad and discouraged,” she said.

Often it is Rogers who delivers those gifts. In his 10 years as pastor at Morgan Mill, he always has been struck by how Larner doesn’t send something generic, but something that perfectly suits the person and the occasion.

“Everytime they open that package, I’m amazed,” Rogers said. “I’m very careful not to say that anyone’s the best I’ve ever seen at something because I’ve been in so many churches with so many talented people, but she’s the best I’ve ever seen at that.”

And when the church’s prayer chain needs to be activated, Rogers starts one link, while Larner starts the other. “I just love to pray for my pastor and the staff and others,” she said with a twinkle in her eye.

“Our big concern is that Bernice does so much.” Rogers said. “One morning, she calls me and says, ‘I’m moving.’ There’s this long pause while I’m thinking how do we fill all those positions she fills, but then she told me she was moving out of her house into a trailer because she thought the house had gotten too big. Then I could catch my breath again.”

Nobody seems to know how many people live in unincorporated Morgan Mill, located about halfway between Stephenville and Mineral Wells, but every one of them seems to know Larner.

When see sits down to lunch at the only diner in town, she repeatedly is interrupted, or more often, interrupts her own lunch to greet someone else. Not with casual greetings, but with the genuine joy of someone who hasn’t seen a good friend since yesterday.

It may stem back to days when the four churches in town would each have 10-day revivals during the summer. Larner would play for her church, the other Baptist church, and the Methodist church. “But the Church of Christ, they never asked me to play for them,” she said, laughing at the thought of playing in a church where instruments are prohibited in worship.

At Morgan Mill, she has been through 25 pastors and 10 paid ministers of music, and countless volunteer music leaders. And she still keeps tabs on most of them after they leave. Several have become missionaries, and she continues to pray for them.

She was the pianist 60 years ago when Holland Smith came to Morgan Mill as pastor. “After pastoring in Texas and Wisconsin for 22 years, I then served as a Texas associational director of missions for over 29 years. I have had the opportunity to work with many church pianists. Many were very good, but none ever better than Bernice Larner,” he said.

She even played in 2001 when she was diagnosed with rectal cancer. While undergoing weeks of chemotherapy and radiation, she never missed a Sunday at the piano bench.

“It was not easy to sit, I was weak and I probably didn’t need to be there, but I never missed a Sunday,” Larner said.

As for why she still plays, her answer is quick: “I guess it’s because the Lord still wants me to, and I just love to serve him.”

Her example has not been lost on her family. While her “sweetheart of 51? years,” her husband, B.A., died 15 years ago, she still is surrounded by family. Her daughters, Linda and Sandra, married brothers—Carroll and Mack Elston, respectively. Both men are deacons at Morgan Mill Baptist Church, and Linda Elston has played the organ there since the church first bought it 37 years ago.

While the church offered to pay the two accompanists several years ago, both declined, saying they already were being paid richly by being allowed to serve and reap the blessings God had bestowed.

“I have six grandsons—all Christian men who love the Lord—and 16 grands, and I’ve seen all but one of them baptized, and she will be soon,” Larner said with a broad smile. “That makes me about the richest woman that ever was.”

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

Updated: 3/02/07

ETBU international students offer
community a global perspective

By Mike Midkiff

East Texas Baptist University

MARSHALL—International students at East Texas Baptist University gave Marshall-area children and university students a glimpse into their native lands during an on-campus international fair.

The university’s international education office invited children’s missions and Bible groups from East Texas churches to the fair.

“Attendance and response far exceeded our initial expectations,” said Alan Huesing, vice president for spiritual development and director of international education at the university. “We go to great lengths to recruit and support internationals from a wide number of countries and cultures to be with us here in Marshall. They are windows through which area churches and our students and faculty view the world, and (they are) bridges to visit and interact with other cultures.”

Students in anthropology, cross-cultural missions and cross-cultural communications classes partnered with 21 international students to prepare exhibits. The internationals dressed in native clothing, shared examples of food and sang songs to help participants learn more about their culture and traditions. More than 40 university students acted as tour guides to lead 400-plus visitors through the exhibits.

John Githinji, a senior from Kenya, was surprised to see such a large crowd attend.

“Patience Boke and I sang a Kenyan song, ‘Jambo Bwana,’ over nine times,” reported Githinji, a computer science major who will graduate in May.“My voice started to get hoarse, but this was our most entertaining tool. The song made our visitors clap and dance as we sang it to them.”

Another tool Githinji used to spark interest was a quick lesson in Swahili. He taught visitors how to say John 3:16 in his language.

East Texas Baptist University senior John Githinji of Kenya sings for visitors to the international fair, sponsored by the university’s international education office.

Hannah Peter, a citizen of India who has resided in Kuwait, decorated her table with an Indian board game. Israel Nandamudi, associate professor of political science at the university, brought some of his Indian music instruments and artifacts to display.

“My visitors were taught to greet in Hindi, which is the national language of India,” said Peter, a freshman pre-med major. “I had a lot of fun simply wearing a traditional outfit and explaining a new country to a bunch of very excited kids.”

“The fair was an awesome experience” for the children, said Charlie Jones, who has been leader of Royal Ambassadors, a missions program for boys, at First Baptist Church of Hallsville 33 years. Jones brought more than 60 children to the event.

“This was a unique opportunity to see firsthand how varied our world is. Meeting the international students, playing new games, eating strange foods were all great. The world is truly our mission field,” Jones said.      

The International Fair was the concluding event of the university’s Cross-Cultural Week. Patty Lane, a cross-cultural consultant with the Baptist General Convention of Texas Executive Board, was a featured speaker during two chapel services.

“The fair gave those in attendance an opportunity to experience 16 different countries up close and in person—without really leaving home,” Huesing 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: 3/02/07

Megan Jones	Mallory Harrell	Lili Muongkhot	Erin Radomsky

Texas Acteen selected for national panel

By Amy Whitfield

Woman’s Missionary Union

BIRMINGHAM, Ala.—Woman’s Missionary Union has selected Tiffany Clark, 16, of Humble Area’s First Baptist Church to be a 2007 National Acteens Panelist.

Tiffany earned the honor because of her strong commitment to missions and to Acteens, a Baptist missions program for teenage girls, national WMU officials said. They also cited her exemplary leadership and involvement in her school, community and church.

Tiffany Clark

“Tiffany is always the first to volunteer and serve when help is needed—inside and outside the church—and has been a faithful leader in all our student ministry activities,” said Michael Anthis, high school minister at her church.

“Tiffany is a vital part of our student leadership, giving of her time to be the leader that God wants her to be. Most notably, she has gone above and beyond expectations serving in the missions ministry of Acteens.”

At her church, she participates in the youth and choir ensemble, student leadership team, Bible study and a monthly student-led, door-to-door outreach for recent visitors and members of the church.

She has been involved in several mission projects through Acteens, including a summer trip to rural Mexico, volunteering for a food pantry, Christmas caroling to shut-ins, cleanup days, fall festivals, Vacation Bible School and ministering at a Baptist ministry in inner-city Houston. Tiffany began working with teenage girls there in fall 2006 when her church started an Acteens group there. Now she plans weekly programs and leads devotions for the girls.

Tiffany also was a 2006 Texas Acteens panelist.

The 2007 National Acteens Panelists serve from Feb. 1 to Dec. 31, and each will receive a $1,000 Jessica Powell Loftis Scholarship from the WMU Foundation, to be used for higher education.

Throughout the year, Tiffany will write articles for The Mag, the missions magazine for Acteens, and for the Acteens website, HYPERLINK "http://www.acteens.com" www.acteens.com. In addition, panelists will work together as a focus group to help shape the future of Acteens.

She also will serve at at Blume, the national missions event for teenage girls and collegiate young women, July 10-13 in Kansas City, Mo., and at WMU Missions Celebration and annual meeting in San Antonio, June 10–11.

In addition to Acteens who are chosen to serve as panelists, WMU also selects 15 young women as Top Teens to recognize their strong involvement in missions. 

Mallory Harrell of Tallowood Baptist Church in Houston, Megan Jones of Humble Area’s First Baptist Church, Lili Muongkhot of First Baptist Church in Amarillo and Erin Radomsky of Hyde Park Baptist Church in Austin were selected, along with 11 other girls, as 2007 Top Teens.

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

Updated: 3/02/07

‘From the Dust’ takes music behind bars

By George Henson

Staff Writer

THE COLONY—Like missionaries Paul and Silas in the New Testament, band members of the Christian band From the Dust hope taking their songs to prisons might cause inmates to ask, “What must I do to be saved?”

From the Dust grew out of a church praise band that led worship on Sunday mornings.

Kevin Snow, bass guitarist and vocalist for From the Dust.

• Watch video clips about the ministry of From the Dust here and here. • Hear their blues version of Blessed Assurance. • Listen to more music at their website, www.fromthedust.com.

“We started praying, because we wanted to do more,” said Pat Callaway, the group’s drummer. “We talked about it and talked about it, and there was a guy doing sound at the church who got tired of hearing us talk about it and told us to do something about it.”

Like other bands, From the Dust began by playing at youth events and in churches, but gradually those opportunities dried up.

A relative of Callaway helped the band nab an invitation to perform in a prison. Even though they felt apprehensive at first, they decided God had opened the door, and they walked through it.

And while they continued to look to churches as venues, all those doors closed.

“We tried to do some community events and other things but walked away from them saying, ‘We probably shouldn’t have done that,’” Callaway recalled.

After that initial prison concert, however, other prison chaplains began to call. More importantly, From the Dust members began to sense God’s call.

“We wouldn’t ever have dreamed of playing in prisons, but that is where God has directed us,” said Kevin Snow, bass guitarist and vocalist.

“For me, it was a spiritual awakening to be around a lot of people—many of whom had problems all their lives—and to tell them about Jesus in a way they maybe hadn’t heard before,” Callaway added.

All the From the Dust members have a long history playing in bands—and not always churches. All have played in clubs and bars, and they participated in the lifestyle expected in those venues.

Drummer Pat Callaway and lead guitarist Mitchell Martin.

“All of us have dabbled in drugs and alcohol, and some us have more than dabbled,” Callaway admitted.

“But it’s interesting that God uses our mistakes with drugs and alcohol to connect with guys we probably wouldn’t connect with otherwise,” Snow added.

The band typically begins with songs that have a hard-driving rock-and-roll beat and gradually moves toward more worshipful music, preparing inmates to hear the message lead guitarist Mitchell Martin preaches.

Martin and his wife, Cissy, are members of Legacy Drive Baptist Church in Plano. Their bandmates are active in other Dallas-Fort Worth-area churches.

Prison inmates “connect with the music first, and then we can talk to them,” Callaway explained.

So far, 360 prisoners have said they have accepted Christ as Savior following a From the Dust concert.

“The worship experience in a prison is something else,” Callaway said. “They are down so low, they have no inhibitions about raising their hands in praise or anything else.”

God confirmed Snow’s calling for the band last November, he said. He went to hook up the trailer with all the band’s sound equipment, and it had been stolen.

“It didn’t occur to any of us to quit, but we just went to work sending out letters to friends and family, explaining the situation, and more money came in than we needed to replace the things we lost,” he said.

“When we saw that, we said, ‘This is a confirmation that God’s not done with us yet.’”

Band members made a list of what they needed to continue and a second list of instruments and equipment they would like to have. Both lists have been filled.

Money not only came from family and close friends, they said, but also from people they went to church with years ago. Most touching was the money from missionaries and the spouses of inmates who had little to give but still contributed out of their meagerness.

The experience has made From the Dust stronger, Martin said. Prior to the theft, the band members had pretty much been going it alone. Now, they not only have financial supporters, but, more importantly, an army of prayer warriors.

“God wants his people on mission,” Martin said. “That doesn’t mean going to China or even to prisons with us. They can do it by praying or whatever, but we’re always called to be on mission with Christ.”

While the band has had nothing but good experiences behind the walls of Texas prisons, John Denton, one of the group’s sound engineers, admits his first time was stressful.

He recalled looking up at a cross wrapped in razor wire atop the chapel. “It was very intimidating to walk up to the razor wire and have the lock behind you. I was nervous as a cat,” he remembered.

“Also, those guys were up on the stage all together with everybody watching them. I was in the back all by myself.”

Yvette Snow, From the Dust’s lead vocalist and keyboard player, said the band no longer is afraid.

“They treat you like gold. They are so appreciative that you have taken the time to come and play for them,” she said of the inmates.

Ninety-five percent of all prisoners who have been incarcerated for more than five years receive no visits from family or friends, Martin added.

Cissy Martin, the group’s manager and prayer warrior, recalled one time when the group was singing the song “I Can Only Imagine.”

“The Spirit impressed on me to go to the front and look at the inmates’ faces,” she recalled. “I saw the tears on their faces and noticed one man in a wheelchair. I’m not supposed to have any interaction except for shaking hands, but I bent down and put my arms around him and told him: ‘Won’t it be great? When we get to heaven, we won’t need wheelchairs.’”

“It really is great to see some of them come in with that hard ‘you’re not going to get to me’ look on their faces, and to see that just melt away as we sing about the love of Christ,” Kevin Snow said. “That’s the miracle for me, to see God chip away at their hearts.”

“We get to watch dead people come to life,” Mitchell Martin said.

Along with the calling, God also has given the group a gift.

“God has given us contact lenses to see the man, see the woman, but not the crime, not the place. God has given us the ability to see past the sin,” Yvette Snow said.

But it is the calling that brings them to two prisons a month, nine months out of the year.

“It’s just the absolutely fantastically glorious feeling of being in obedience. The Bible tells us that if we don’t praise him, the rocks will cry out. Well, we cannot not do this,” Yvette Snow continued.

“It’s a calling,” Mitchell Martin said. “God has put it in my heart to do this. It’s my joy to serve. Service to God is a joy, not a duty.”

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

Updated: 3/02/07

Sweet tells Truett conference
God is ‘defragging and rebooting’ church

By Hannah Elliott

Associated Baptist Press

WACO (ABP)—Deal with it, get over it or get help. That’s Leonard Sweet’s mantra when it comes to understanding Christianity’s fluid role in the postmodern world.

The Christian church is in the midst of a “perfect storm,” Sweet told a crowd at Baylor University’s Truett Theological Seminary. Such stormy weather is manifested in, among other things, postmodernism —the worldview that questions modern assumptions about certainty and progress. Modernism gave Christians a preferred status as “chaplain” to the culture. But Christians in the West no longer can expect to have that “home-court advantage,” he said.

What’s more, the church can’t change the fact that culture has rejected traditional institutions, he added. So, it must change from the inside out.

And it does no good to complain about it.

“God is defragging and rebooting the church,” Sweet said, alluding to computer terminology for reconfiguring and restarting a system. “What he is doing is he is getting us back to the original operating system of Christianity.”

Sweet’s address came as part of the seminary’s fifth annual conference for pastors and laymen. He is a professor of evangelism in the theological school at Drew University in Madison, N.J., and is a visiting professor at George Fox University in Portland, Ore. His latest book, The Gospel According to Starbucks, uses the coffee giant to illustrate postmodern people’s shift toward an experiential, image-laden and communal way of viewing the world.

The old model of church is “killing the West,” Sweet said at the conference. The out-dated model is “attractional, propositional and colonial.” It must become missional, relational and incarnational, he said.

“This culture understands that everybody knows they’ve been created for a mission,” Sweet said. “It’s not a mission project. Do you hear the difference? (Throughout) your whole life, you’re in it. It’s a pilgrimage. It’s a journey.”

According to Sweet, the Roman governor Pilate was the first postmodernist because he asked Jesus a “fundamental postmodernist” question: “What is truth?”

All of Christianity hinges on the answer, he suggested.

“Truth is Jesus,” Sweet said. “This is the uniqueness of Christianity in all of the religions of the world. Every other religion defines truth in propositional terms.”

All other prophets and spiritual leaders told adherents to follow their teachings to find the way to enlightenment, Sweet said, but Jesus was the “only one who had the chutzpah to announce to the whole world, ‘I am the way.’ Truth is a relationship.”

The ability to help people recognize the difference between propositional teachings and relational truth will come from a different mindset for teaching, preaching and living, Sweet said.

When he attended seminary, he learned that “preaching is making the Scriptures come alive.” Now, he has come to believe the complete opposite—Christians must come alive to the Scriptures.

“I’m not 360 degrees from there (his time at seminary), I’m at 180 degrees. The complete opposite,” he said. “The problem is not with the (Bible); the problem is with us.”

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

Updated: 3/02/07

Did the IMB ‘investigate’ charges?
Burleson, president say no

By Robert Marus

Associated Baptist Press

RICHMOND, Va. (ABP)—Wade Burleson says the Southern Baptist Convention’s International Mission Board did not conduct an “investigation” into his allegations of trustee improprieties—despite some trustees’ insistence to the contrary.

“What idiot told Mr. Burleson there was no trustee investigative committee?” asked trustee Jerry Corbaley recently on his blog.

That “idiot” was IMB President Jerry Rankin, Burleson countered.

The IMB trustees recently responded to Burleson’s call for an investigation, issuing a statement Jan. 29-31 that said, among other things, the agency has policies in place to prevent or correct some of the improprieties Burleson alleged and that other allegations were outside the IMB’s scope and authority.

The Southern Baptist Convention will act on the IMB’s response next June.

The response initially was described by Associated Baptist Press and several other news outlets as an “internal investigation.” But Burleson said Rankin told him that was not the case; no investigation was conducted. Instead, the response reportedly was drafted by IMB staff.

And an IMB spokesperson did not dispute that characterization.

Burleson, an Oklahoma pastor who is an IMB trustee, made his motion during the SBC annual meeting last June. The motion called for the SBC Executive Committee to conduct an investigation into several areas of IMB business for which the board recently came under criticism.

At the time, then-SBC President Bobby Welch referred the motion to the IMB itself rather than the Executive Committee—a common practice for motions made at convention meetings that deal with SBC entities. Burleson did not formally object to the referral.

The allegations included internal suppression of dissent among trustees over board policies and improper use of closed-door trustee “forums” to conduct policymaking business. Burleson also requested an investigation into the propriety of the board making policies for missionaries that go beyond the doctrinal parameters of the 2000 Baptist Faith & Message statement—the SBC’s confession of faith.

The board replied that it retains “the prerogative and responsibility of further defining the parameters of doctrinal beliefs and practices of its missionaries.”

Burleson also accused IMB trustees of bending to undue influence from SBC leaders outside the board, and alleged that members of the convention’s nominating committee had attempted to elect people with hidden agendas as IMB trustees.

In response to those aspects of Burleson’s motion, the IMB said the board had no authority to investigate actions by other SBC bodies—in this case, the convention’s nominating committee and other SBC agencies or officers.

On Feb. 2, Burleson—who operates a popular blog, kerussocharis.blogspot.com, that he has used to criticize some actions by his fellow trustees—posted a blog entry titled “There was no trustee investigative committee.” He said an IMB administrator told him the term “investigation committee” in his initial post about the response was inaccurate.

Burleson affirmed the board’s response, with the caveat that he is uncomfortable with moving beyond the doctrinal parameters of the Baptist Faith & Message without explicit SBC approval. Burleson noted he was aware the board couldn’t investigate the actions of other SBC leaders and agencies—which, he said, is exactly why his SBC motion called for an external investigation into the IMB’s affairs.

Then, on Feb. 8, fellow IMB trustee Corbaley of California used his own blog, sbcglossolalia.blogspot.com, to criticize Burleson’s description of the response.

“Since July of 2005 the IMB (board of trustees) has increasingly tracked, searched into, inquired systematically, examined in detail, expressing care and seeking accuracy, regarding the myriad accusations of Mr. Burleson,” he said. Burleson’s earlier critiques of his fellow trustees proved so controversial the trustees made an unsuccessful attempt to remove him from the board.

Corbaley, the director of a local Baptist association, continued: “What idiot told Mr. Burleson there was no trustee investigative committee? Or were such words twisted out of context?”

He said Burleson’s description discounts the work of both trustees and staffers at the Richmond, Va.-based agency, given their long exposure to the controversies that led to the motion. “Such a statement disparages the integrity of the International Mission Board trustees (again) and the Richmond staff,” Corbaley wrote.

Soon after, Burleson responded.

“The report speaks to IMB policy, and it is quite accurate on all counts, but there was no ‘investigation’ conducted into the major concerns I had expressed in the recommendation itself,” he said.

It is not clear how the SBC will respond to the IMB report. Burleson said he is hoping the convention will call for an external investigation.

“If an investigation is needed, and it may or may not be determined at the SBC that one is, then an outside ad hoc committee will be created by the president of the convention in consultation with the … Executive Committee—the very thing I asked at last year’s convention,” Burleson said on his blog. “The IMB board of trustees should not waste their time in these matters, just as the IMB report affirmed.”

Burleson then said Rankin himself wrote Corbaley to note he was the “idiot” who asked Burleson not to use the term “trustee investigation committee” to describe the response.

Corbaley countered that Burleson had improperly characterized Rankin’s description of the board’s response. “While I regret Mr. Burleson making Dr. Rankin an issue, I assert that whatever Mr. Burleson was told was twisted out of context by the time it was posted on Mr. Burleson’s blog,” he wrote on Feb. 12.

On Feb. 14, Burleson replied that he “most assuredly did not” take Rankin’s words out of context.

“Dr. Rankin, in his usual forthright and gracious style, told me that I should remove the phrase. He said that the report to my motion was an honest and cooperative effort to answer policy questions raised by my motion, to not spend any more time dealing with my recommendation than necessary, to attempt to be as noncontroversial as possible in the response, and to get back to focusing on the missions and purpose of the board.”

Burleson said he affirmed the rationale for the perfunctory nature of the board’s response, but asked why no one from the board ever asked to look at the evidence and documentation he had amassed to buttress his charges about impropriety surrounding IMB business.

“Again, he responded by saying, ‘There was no investigation committee,’ and suggested that I remove the phrase from my blog,” Burleson wrote.

A board spokesperson, Wendy Norvelle, declined to dispute Burleson’s description of events.

“Our leadership has conversations with individuals—trustee leadership and other individuals—all day, every day,” she said. “Individuals certainly have the right and freedom—no problem with us—to report that. We just don’t see any merit in trying to move into ‘he said, she said’ kind of things.”

When asked if Burleson’s description of the board’s reply to his motion was actually an investigation, she said simply, “It is a response.”

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

Updated: 3/02/07

Identity conference questions SBC’s direction

By Phillip Jordan

Associated Baptist Press

JACKSON, Tenn. (ABP)—The future should be bright for the Southern Baptist Convention, but it won’t be if infighting continues, SBC President Frank Page insisted at a conference on Baptist identity.

Page, pastor of First Baptist Church of Taylors, S.C., urged Southern Baptists—who have been squabbling over narrowing doctrinal parameters and other issues—to stick together.

“But if we continue to break into factions that continue to fight each other and focus on turf-protectionism, the future will not be bright,” Page said.

He spoke during “Baptist Identity II: Convention, Cooperation and Controversy,” a winter conference at Union University in Jackson, Tenn.

Page wove a theme of unity throughout his message, which focused on the need for Baptists to remain together despite disagreements.

He cautioned that dissent and debate should not devolve into anything that would reproach the gospel. The Apostle “Paul didn’t say, ‘Whose side are you on?’” Page said. “He asked, ‘Are you preaching Jesus Christ?’”

The conference comes amid intra-denominational disagreements among Southern Baptist conservatives and fundamentalists, who have controlled the 16-million-member SBC for almost three decades. Recently, internal differences—over issues such as control and cooperation, speaking in tongues, the place of women in leadership roles, censorship and alcohol use—have signaled some unraveling at the edges of the denomination.

For well over a year, some conservatives have expressed their displeasure with what they perceive as narrowing fundamentalism in some SBC circles. Page won the SBC presidency last June with support from allies who want more flexibility and transparency in the convention.

The three-day conference at Union University was organized in an attempt to discuss what the future of Southern Baptist life might look like.

Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary President Paige Patterson began the second day of the conference by asserting contemporary Baptists could learn much about how to relate to each other from Anabaptists—the Reformation-era ancestors of modern Baptists.

“If modern Baptists are to find a way out of our current malaise, we must, like the Anabaptists did, find a way to make church membership more meaningful,” said Patterson, himself a former SBC president.

Baptist churches—both in the Anabaptists’ time and today—are lacking in their ability to effectively discipline and provide guidance to new converts, he said. “We are showing a lack of care with new converts. And a disciplined church is necessary for the church’s witness.”

Patterson, a key figure in conservatives’ rise to SBC power, noted Anabaptists’ refusal to change their minds on issues unless convinced by Scripture should be a testament to contemporary Baptists.

Only God can know people’s religious motivations, Patterson said, chastising those who spread slander and gossip from within Baptist ranks.

“That should be shameful among any Baptists today,” he said.

Patterson’s remarks come less than a month after his dismissal of a female professor from her position at Southwestern’s School of Theology solely because she is a woman became public knowledge.

In January, Baptist blogger Wade Burleson, pastor of Emmanuel Baptist Church in Enid, Okla., wrote a widely circulated essay on kerussocharis.blogspot.com that denounced Patterson for dismissing Hebrew professor Sheri Klouda. Patterson adheres to a strict interpretation of biblical texts that he believes mean women should not be allowed to teach men, even in seminary.

While Patterson avoided the topic during his speech, members of the audience later said they wished the subject had been addressed. They included Baptist bloggers who have played a key role in recent SBC dissent and Page’s election. Interaction with the bloggers was a part of the conference program, and several attended.

Benjamin Cole, pastor of Parkview Baptist Church in Arlington, and another blogger who has written about Klouda on baptistblog.wordpress.com, said he wished Patterson had more time to answer questions. Patterson only answered two questions after his presentation.

Cole had planned to ask Patterson if he agreed with a thesis by author Roland H. Bainton that Anabaptists had been among the earliest reformers to advocate for women’s education, suffrage, ordination and holding church office.

“I wanted to ask him about what contemporary Baptists could learn from Anabaptists in that area,” Cole said. “Anabaptists were among the first to support women’s suffrage, and by the early 20th century, they supported the election of women to serve in the faculties of their schools.”

Other conference presenters included Thom Rainer, president of Lifeway Christian Resources; Mike Day, director of missions for the Mid-South Baptist Association in Memphis; Russell Moore, dean of the school of theology at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary; David Dockery, president of Union University; Ed Stetzer, missiologist and research team director at the North American Mission Board; and Timothy George, dean of Beeson Divinity School at Samford University.

More than 300 people attended the conferenc.

The first Baptist identity conference was held in April 2004.

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Updated: 3/02/07

Gonzales touts religious-freedom
initiative; others question Bush record

By Lonnie Wilkey & Robert Marus

Tennessee Baptist & Reflector / Associated Baptist Press

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (ABP)—Attorney General Alberto Gonzales chose the Southern Baptist Convention Executive Committee’s winter meeting to announce a new Justice Department focus on religious freedom.

But some Christian leaders questioned the move, as well as the Bush administration’s commitment to a robust defense of the Constitution’s religious protections.

Gonzales told members of the SBC’s main governing board the department was launching the “First Freedom Project” to fight religious discrimination in employment, housing, land use, education and other areas of the law.

“Religious freedom is a fundamental part of our nation’s history and one of its core principles,” Gonzales said.

His department’s civil-rights division will spearhead the effort, he said. It will include educational efforts to inform government officials, employers and everyday Americans about their religious-liberty rights under law. It also features a new website, www.firstfreedom.gov, containing resources on religious freedom and information on filing religious-discrimination complaints with Justice officials.

Gonzales sought out SBC leaders for the chance to make the announcement at the meeting.

“Throughout our history, nothing has defined us a nation more than our respect for religious freedom,” he said. “It is not confined to members of one church or the followers of one set of beliefs. Through this initiative, the Justice Department continues its vigorous efforts to enforce protections against religious discrimination.”

The announcement coincided with the release of the Justice Department’s “Report on Enforcement of Laws Protecting Religious Freedom: Fiscal Years 2001-06.” Referring to the report, Gonzales suggested the Bush administration had more assiduously enforced religious freedom than the Justice Department under President Bill Clinton.

The 43-page booklet, which is available on the First Freedom website, attempts to illustrate how Bush’s Justice Department has increased the enforcement of religious-freedom laws.

The report notes the department’s religious-discrimination caseload increased from one case and conducting no investigations between 1995 and 2000, during the Clinton administration, to 82 cases reviewed and 40 investigations during the first six years of the Bush administration.

For example, the department filed a successful lawsuit to protect the right of a Muslim student to wear a headscarf while attending public school and defended the right of religious groups to meet in public facilities on an equal basis with secular groups.

But some Christian leaders said Gonzales failed to draw attention to all aspects of religious freedom.

Brent Walker, executive director of the Washington-based Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty, said he appreciates the administration focusing on the First Amendment. But the amendment covers two aspects of religious freedom that are inextricably linked to each other, he added.

“The First Amendment has two protections for religious freedom—prohibition on religious establishments and protection for free exercise of religion,” Walker said. “The administration has often ignored the importance of the no-establishment principle by supporting attempts of governments to endorse a religious message, using tax dollars to fund pervasively religious organizations, allowing religious discrimination in hiring for federally funded projects, and going to the Supreme Court to cut back on the rights of citizens to challenge such practices.”

Walker also noted the Bush officials’ record on free-exercise protections is “not perfect.” He pointed to a Supreme Court case last year in which the administration attempted to limit a small religious sect’s ability to use hallucinogenic tea for sacramental purposes. A unanimous high court rejected the administration’s position.

The head of the National Council of Churches said he wished Gonzales had chosen a more representative body to hear his announcement. SBC leaders have been among Bush’s strongest and most consistent supporters.

“We are pleased to see the Bush administration focus renewed interest on religious freedom,” NCC General Secretary Bob Edgar said. Nonetheless, his organization does “find it unsettling that only a single denomination, representing a fraction of the rich diversity of religious life of America, was selected to receive the attorney general’s personal presentation. It would seem more appropriate had he made such an appearance before an ecumenical or interfaith gathering, symbolically underlining the vision of a nation in which the law plays no favorites but sees all faiths as equal before the Constitution.”

After his speech, Gonzales told reporters he chose an audience of Southern Baptists to announce the government’s new effort because “this is a group very interested in the protection of religious freedom.” He noted the “timing worked out where this was a good venue to speak to a receptive audience.”

Baptists in America were early champions of religious liberty and influenced the development of the Constitution’s First Amendment, which guarantees religious liberty and other freedoms.

But the NCC’s Edgar had invited Gonzales to appear at the NCC Committee on Religious Liberty meeting, slated for March 12 in Washington, to “extend to this very diverse group of interfaith advocates for religious freedom the same courtesy of a face-to-face visit that he has already extended to the Southern Baptist Convention,” he said.

The NCC also encouraged Gonzales to make similar appearances before leaders of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, the National Association of Evangelicals and “Jewish and Muslim faith groups who together make up the complex tapestry of religious life in our nation.”

The First Freedom Project will sponsor a series of regional training seminars for leaders interested in religious liberty. The first one will be March 29 in Kansas City, Mo., followed by seminars in Tampa, Fla., April 25, and Seattle, Wash., May 10. Other dates and locations will be announced later.

At the conclusion of his address, Gonzales asked the Executive Committee to help spread the word of what the Justice Department is doing to preserve religious liberty and to help educate Southern Baptists about religious-liberty laws.

Another initiative—unrelated to Gonzales’ announcement but called the First Freedoms Project—is a partnership between three Baptist organizations. The Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty, Associated Baptist Press and the Baptists Today newspaper have joined in that project to emphasize the Christian commitment to First Amendment principles, particularly religious liberty and freedom of the press. Their website is at www.firstfreedoms.com.

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

Updated: 3/02/07

CBF council reports declining
revenues, adopts new budget

By Hannah Elliott

Associated Baptist Press

DECATUR, Ga. (ABP)—Halfway through their fiscal year, leaders of the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship learned about a significant revenue shortfall during the CBF Coordinating Council winter meeting in Decatur, Ga.

Undesignated receipts were 13.2 percent below the year-to-date budget, according to a financial summary of the six months ended Dec. 31, 2006. That budget itself had been revised downward from an earlier adopted budget.

In order to address an anticipated revenue shortfall, council members instituted a plan last fall to operate at 90 percent of the original 2006-07 budget.

The Fellowship’s partner organizations, such as CBF-affiliated seminaries, already have felt the budget shortfall, since partner allocations are adjusted each month to reflect current revenues.

All told, CBF’s undesignated revenue for the first six months of the fiscal year totaled $5.9 million, compared to the budgeted amount of $6.8 million. The undesignated-receipts category includes general contributions, offerings for global missions and income from resource fees.

Including designated gifts, the Fellowship’s total revenue for the first half of the fiscal year was $8.5 million. CBF expenditures for the same period were $10.3 million, resulting in a net loss of $1.8 million for the period.

CBF Controller Larry Hurst said the revenue gap could be due to a “timing issue” for several contributing churches that have delayed their regular gifts in order to meet fund-raising goals. The discrepancy also could be due to reduced budgets at churches throughout the CBF network, he added.

Council finance committee member Joe Goodson said several key donors and churches had reallocated funds previously given to CBF in order to support ongoing hurricane-relief efforts along the Gulf Coast.

But while some initiatives like CBF’s Global Missions Offering remain underfunded, Hurst pointed out, resource income revenues are at 110 percent of the projected budget.

The organization’s staffers are reducing expenditures in light of the deficit, Hurst said. “We’ve got a gap here that we’re trying to close. We’re really trying to do anything we can think of to reduce costs.”

CBF employees have held conference-call meetings instead of on-site meetings and used local churches instead of hotel conference centers to host council meetings.

The finance committee also has decided to hire a new auditing firm, Capin Crouse, which will provide a decrease in auditing fees of about 50 percent from last year’s auditors. CBF had retained the national firm Deloitte and Touche as auditors since 1999.

The change to a smaller, niche firm with a long client list of nonprofit organizations would give CBF “more bang for the buck” in its auditing services, committee members said. Capin Crouse is based in Atlanta.

CBF Coordinator Daniel Vestal said he and his staff are “trying hard to be good stewards of the Lord’s money” but added that they could expand their services if they had more resources.

“This does represent more than money,” he said. “It represents the investment and the vision of the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship.”

Council members also unanimously approved the proposed 2007-08 expense budget, which projected total expenses of $16,481,000. The 2006-07 budget listed expenses of $17,050,000.

Connie McNeill, coordinator of administration, said the finance committee derived the 2007-08 budget from the previous year’s revenues. To get a new budget that would realistically reflect probable income levels “required a reduction of all the (Fellowship’s) initiative areas,” she said.

“It is, of course, something about which we share concern,” she said. “We hope that the message is that the challenge and the opportunities are there. We think the resources are there. We just hope we can get those together.”

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

Updated: 3/02/07

Covenant most important Baptist
event since Civil War, Allen says

By Hannah Elliott

Associated Baptist Press

DECATUR, Ga. (ABP)—Next January’s “Celebration of a New Baptist Covenant” will be the most important Baptist event since before the Civil War, an emotional Jimmy Allen told Cooperative Baptist Fellowship leaders.

Allen, the last moderate to serve as president of the Southern Baptist Convention, stressed that the two Democratic former presidents leading the charge for the historic pan-Baptist gathering—Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton—want to avoid politics at the rally.

“Be assured we will have Republican speakers in the plenary session,” said Allen, program chairman for the Jan. 30-Feb. 1, 2008, event.

“We will have at least two speaking as of right now,” he promised. “You will not be free of the accusation about (the event) being Democrat. You’re going to have that. But the answer is that neither of these folks wants it to be a political event. We don’t want that. We don’t want to be partisan. We want to speak to the issues.”

Allen declined to name confirmed Republican speakers for the event.

Some Southern Baptist leaders have criticized the gathering, which aims to draw as many as 20,000 people from all of North America’s major Baptist denominations to Atlanta to talk about more cooperative efforts and improve Baptists’ public image.

Besides the ex-presidents, it involves leaders of the North American denominational and para-denominational groups affiliated with the Baptist World Alliance.

Leaders of the Southern Baptist Convention, which is not involved in the New Baptist Covenant, have dismissed the event as merely another chance for disgruntled moderate and progressive Baptists to thumb their noses as the more conservative SBC. Some also have pointed to the event’s election-year timing and Clinton and Carter’s involvement as evidence it is designed to stir up Baptist support for Democrats—and especially the presidential bid of Clinton’s wife, New York Sen. Hillary Clinton.

Leaders of the event have denied those charges.

Allen said the presidents are involved because they probably are the world’s most famous Baptists. Nobody, he contended, could have compelled so many denominational presidents and Baptist leaders to meet “in the same room to talk about the issues except one man—a politician named Jimmy Carter.”

God’s Spirit “is moving in a new, energetic way in which we don’t try to do anything about turf,” he continued. “We’re not trying to start conventions and bureaucracy. We’re trying to create an atmosphere in which networking can be accelerated.”

Instead of creating a new denomination or political coalition, Allen and CBF Coordinator Daniel Vestal said, they hope the covenant forms the foundation to a new Baptist network.

“I hope that we’ll get so involved with each other … that we’ll have a major clearinghouse of information,” Allen said. “I hope that out of this comes a new energy for the issues that face us in our world.”

With a “silent majority” of 24 million people worldwide involved in the Baptist World Alliance, it could be quite a network.

But it’ll take a lot to create it. Mercer University, with President Bill Underwood at the helm, has taken a “great risk” in its role in the 2008 meeting in Atlanta, Allen said. The proposed budget is $1.4 million, and that’s “doing it on the cheap.” And critics must be answered—or at least acknowledged.

“Whenever God gets ready to do something big, there are going to be people throwing rocks at it,” Allen said. “And the right people are getting mad, so we must be doing something right.”

Allen himself said God must be laughing, because the event’s organizers are trying to do the impossible. They’ve planned the conference to dovetail with a joint meeting of the four major historically African-American Baptist denominations. That gathering is expected to draw more than 10,000 people.

“Less than a year from now, we’re taking over the whole (Georgia World) Congress Center,” Allen enthused. Event organizers said they will launch a website, www.newbaptistcovenant.org, soon.

The potential for thousands to participate in the covenant event presents what could become organizational chaos. But Allen assured CBF council members that multiple administrative factors have already fallen into place.

“If you have to, you can do it. And right now we have to. And we have to because right now is the time for it,” he said. “It’s just a matter of harnessing the power. It’s not a matter of creating it.”

Vestal agreed. He already has participated in planning meetings for the January convocation, and he urged council members to release an official statement supporting the covenant.

“If CBF is going to do this, I think as the governing body there needs to be some point when you say that,” he said. “In some way, among a lot of other things, this is one of those moments for which CBF has come to be. We are a renewal movement. And this, as I see it, is a part of that ongoing renewal.”

Council members agreed to consider the covenant and release a corporate statement of support later this spring.

And while critics are taking a wait-and-see attitude, others—including many at the CBF Coordinating Council meeting—are enthusiastic about the possibilities.

“If you’re tuned in, there’s a moving of God about this,” Allen said. “It’s one of those things where God sort of interrupts us and says ‘By the way, I’ve got something more important than you knew.’”

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