Posted: 3/02/07

Christian Churches Together
seeks united front against poverty

PASADENA, Calif. (ABP)—Leaders from 36 Christian bodies and religious organizations have issued a joint statement addressing domestic poverty and urging constituents to alleviate the problem as part of their Christian duty.

“As Christian leaders in the wealthiest society on earth, we are called by God to urge our churches and nation to strengthen and expand efforts to address the scandal of widespread poverty in the United States and around the world,” the statement said. “The gospel and our ethical principles place our service of the poor and vulnerable and our work for justice at the center of Christian life and witness.”

Leaders convened at a meeting organized by Christian Churches Together, a loose coalition begun in 2001 to unify the “diverse expressions of Christian faith today.” It includes representatives from evangelical, Orthodox, Roman Catholic, Pentecostal and Protestant congregations.

Leonid Kishkovsky of the Orthodox Church of America said the annual gathering is “good news” for American Christians.

“Our gathering of the wider spectrum of U.S. Christian churches is succeeding in building mutual trust and overcoming stereotypes,” he said. “Our common hope and expectation is that CCT will enable our churches to offer a strong and united Christian moral voice and vision in the public square.”

With others like Archbishop Hovnan Derderian of the Armenian Orthodox Center in Los Angeles, William Shaw of the National Baptist Convention, USA, and Wesley Granberg-Michaelson of the Reformed Church in America, Kishkovsky emphasized the group has no partisan political agenda and wants instead to “create proposals that transcend divisive political divisions.”

“As leaders in Christian Churches Together, we believe that a renewed commitment to overcome poverty is central to the mission of the church and essential to our unity in Christ,” group leaders wrote.

“Therefore, in order to obey our God, respect the dignity of every person, and promote the common good of society, we must act. Our focus here is domestic poverty, but we reaffirm our commitment to overcome poverty all around the world.”

Their statement listed four main ways to eradicate poverty—strengthen families and communities, reduce child poverty, provide access to good education and ensure that full-time work offers a “realistic escape” from poverty.

Roughly 37 million people in the United States alone live below the poverty line. Eighteen percent of all U.S. children live in poverty.

Daniel Vestal, national coordinator for the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship, called the event “the broadest ecumenical experiment ever attempted in this country.”

“It represents a desire for Christian unity that doesn’t compromise the integrity of any of the participating bodies but creates a way for us as Christians to draw closer to one another in Christ and explore ways for us to share a common witness to the nation,” he said.

The 16-million-member Southern Baptist Convention declined to participate in the coalition. But participating groups represent denominations or coalitions of churches with more than 100 million members, according to the organization.

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

Posted: 3/02/07

Human trafficking—exotic and close to home

By John Hall

Texas Baptist Communications

AUSTIN—Lauran Bethell likes dark streets and late nights. She loves prostitutes.

She’s a self-described “missionary who hangs out in red-light districts.”

Bethell, an American Baptist Churches missionary, and students from the International Baptist Theological Seminary walk the streets of Prague, Czech Republic, greeting prostitutes with carnations and a simple message—someone cares about you.

The greeting usually builds into a relationship between Bethell, the students and the prostitutes. They begin to recognize each other and develop a friendship. Bethell and the students started having coffee with some of the prostitutes in local bars.

The missionary discovered many of the prostitutes are Bulgarian gypsies. Some of them were trafficked into the country and forced into prostitution. Most of them asked Bethell and the students to pray for them, a request they gladly accepted.

“The focus of our work, the work we have felt most profoundly called to, is to pray with and to pray for,” she said during the Ethics Without Borders conference, organized by the Baptist General Convention of Texas’ Christian Life Commission.

Human trafficking happens in all nations, Bethell said. As many as 17,000 people—mostly women and girls—are trafficked into the United States each year. They travel primarily through Texas, California and New York.

Baptist General Convention of Texas-endorsed Chaplain Bruce Peterson of Alvin told conference participants human trafficking is an issue Texas Baptists must deal with, because it happens in their backyards. Trafficked individuals work in the food-service industry, bars and strip clubs. Some of them work as prostitutes.

Messengers to the 2006 BGCT annual meeting passed a resolution decrying human trafficking and calling upon Texas Baptists to minister to trafficked individuals at their point of need.

Peterson asked Texas Baptists to follow up on the resolution by looking for people near them who have been trafficked. Ministering to these individuals impacts a local Texas community, but it also touches victims’ families around the world.

“We’re without borders when it comes to this issue, and we need to live that way,” he said.

Bethell concurred human trafficking is a large issue.

When she first encountered the people who are modern-day slaves, she didn’t know what to do. She didn’t think she could affect such a large problem.

But Christians can fight it with little actions, she added. The prayer and relationships Bethell and the students have offered are evidence that strategy makes a difference.

Many of the prostitutes Bethell and the students met and befriended have stopped walking the streets. The first bar where students were having coffee with the prostitutes was raided and later shut down. The second also shut down. Both have been replaced by other businesses.

“My ‘not enough’ and the ‘not enough’ of so many people … were being multiplied way beyond anything we could have imagined,” said Bethell, who received the 2005 Baptist World Alliance Human Rights Award.

“Our God is not the God of not enough, but the God of the multiplication of loaves and fishes.”

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

Posted: 3/02/07

Faith Digest

No pope for Anglicans. An Anglican-Catholic commission has warned that doctrinal disputes within the Anglican Communion are an obstacle to unity between the two churches. An upcoming report by the International Anglican-Roman Catholic Commission for Unity and Mission lays out areas of doctrinal agreement and disagreement between the two churches and outlines ways to continue ecumenical dialogue. But contrary to rumors, officials said, the report does not propose a plan for Anglicans to unite under the pope. “Talk of plans to reunite the two communions is, sadly, much exaggerated,” the commission said. The “present context” of Anglican dispute would make it premature to issue a formal Anglican-Catholic statement of shared beliefs, which was the goal set by Anglican and Catholic bishops who launched the commission in 2000.

Beliefnet names ‘most influential black spiritual leaders.’ Two Texas pastors—T.D. Jakes of the Potter’s House in Dallas and Kirbyjohn Caldwell of Windsor Village United Methodist Church in Houston—have been listed among the 17 “most influential black spiritual leaders” by Beliefnet, an interfaith website. “Whether inspiring their congregations to stand up against social injustice or urging a focus on God-centered family values, African-American religious leaders are a crucial component of a rich and diverse spiritual landscape,” the Beliefnet editors wrote in their introduction to the list. Others on the list include William Shaw, president of the National Baptist Convention, USA, and Gardner Taylor, senior pastor emeritus of Concord Baptist Church of Christ in Brooklyn, N.Y.

Catholic parochial schools take dip. The glory days of the U.S. Catholic parochial school are gone, according to a new University of Notre Dame report. Enrollment in the nation’s 7,800 elementary and secondary Catholic schools is now about 2.4 million, after peaking near 5 million in the mid-1960s. Recent school closures wiped out the modest enrollment increases of the 1990s. The nuns and priests who educated generations of American Catholics are almost gone, retired or deceased. Collections and Mass attendance are down. Faculty salaries are too low, while tuitions and costs are rising, the report noted. Internal and external trends are responsible for the declines, including demographic shifts, the “changing role of religion in the lives of American Catholics” and an increase in other educational options. Moreover, only 3 percent of Latino families send their children to Catholic schools, despite the nation’s rising Hispanic Catholic population.

Canadians most tolerant toward Muslims. Canadians have the most tolerant attitudes toward Muslims among citizens of 23 Western countries, according to a new international study that measured levels of fear of Islam in each nation. More than 32,000 respondents from 19 European countries, plus Canada, the United States, Australia and New Zealand, were asked the question: “Would you like to have a person from this group as your neighbor?” Of nearly 2,000 people surveyed in Canada, only 6.5 percent said they would not like to live beside a Muslim. Respondents in Greece (20.9 percent), Belgium (19.8), Norway (19.3) and Finland (18.9) were most likely to answer “No” to the question. Results in the United States and Britain were 10.9 and 14.1 percent, respectively. The average percentage of negative responses in all Western countries was 14.5 percent. The study, called “Love Thy Neighbor,” was co-written by economists Vani Borooah of the University of Ulster in Northern Ireland and John Mangan of the University of Queensland in Australia.

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

Posted: 3/02/07

Author seeks to connect the
dots between sex and God

By Charles Honey

Grand Rapids Press

GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. (RNS)—About halfway through his new book, Sex God, Rob Bell recalls a scene of exquisite torture at a middle-school dance.

He was 12, lined up with all the boys on one side of the cafeteria, while all the girls were lined up on the other. Then he worked up the guts to “bravely venture across this massive chasm” and ask a girl to dance.

Her response? “She burst into tears and ran into the girls’ bathroom, where she spent the rest of the evening,” Bell recalls.

The anecdote is more than a funny and familiar peek into the adolescence of the pastor, author and leader of the Emergent Church movement. In typically elliptical fashion, Bell links this bit of hormonal humiliation to God’s yearning for love from humans.

Like the girl at the dance, people have the choice to say no to God, writes Bell, pastor of Mars Hill Bible Church in Grandville, Mich.

With references to the Song of Solomon and corny country ballads, Bell relates the vulnerable risk of love to God’s heartbreak when people turn their backs on him.

“In matters of love, it’s as if God has agreed to play by the same rules we do,” Bell notes.

In his second book, published by Zondervan and due in stores this month, Bell says sexuality is really about spirituality—a powerful human urge to connect with each other and with God.

“Sex. God. They’re connected,” Bell writes. “Where the one is, you will always find the other.”

It’s an argument likely to find an eager readership. Between the 11,000 worshippers who attend Mars Hill, more than 2 million viewers who have seen his NOOMA series of short videos and more than 200,000 copies sold of his 2005 book, Velvet Elvis, Bell has built up a national following.

A book on sex was a natural extension of his ministry, Bell said. When he’s preached on the topic at Mars Hill, people always thank him and ask for more.

“You can’t live in this world and deal with all the issues without bumping into spirituality and sexuality. It’s everywhere,” Bell said. Besides, he asks with a laugh, “Is there anything more interesting?”

Publisher’s Weekly found the book plenty interesting, in a starred review awarded to only one of about every eight books it reviews.

“Sex God is about relationships revealed in a way that elevates the human condition and offers hope to those whose relationships are wounded,” the review says. “This book joyfully ties, and then tightens, the knot between God and humankind.”

The tie is implicit in the title, which Bell playfully says “has lots of room for interpretation.” Does it just mean sex and God? Or sex is our god? Sex is like God? Bell leaves it up to readers.

“A lot of people are looking for God in sex,” he said.

He traces the idea in his 200-page book, subtitled “Exploring the endless connections between sexuality and spirituality.”

Sex God is bound to raise eyebrows. But readers will find more scriptural teaching than sex manual in its spare, often witty prose.

“Our sexuality is all of the ways we strive to reconnect with our world, with each other and with God,” Bell writes.

He compares the sexual experience with the sense of oneness people experience at rock concerts, church services or justice rallies. They are moments “God created us to experience all of the time. It’s our natural state. It’s how things are supposed to be,” he says in his book.

That sense of connection to something greater than oneself is the spiritual state people seek in sex, Bell asserts. It’s a desire to restore the harmony people felt with each other, the earth and their creator when God first made people, he says.

Bell calls it “God’s dream for the world.”

In fact, you don’t necessarily need to have sex in order to be sexual, Bell insists. He writes about a celibate friend who focuses his sexual energy on helping the oppressed, adding, “Some of the most sexual people I know are celibate.”

He presents sex as a powerful human urge that should neither be denied as an unclean thing, nor enslave people as lust and addiction.

And in startlingly graphic imagery, he compares the objectification of women in U.S. culture to the dehumanization of Jews in concentration camps.

Asked if the comparison is extreme, Bell shoots back, “Have you see any beer commercials lately?

“Think of the large-scale dehumanizing of women through ads, but nobody ever says this is insane. I think (the culture) is the water people are swimming in, and you have to drag them out of the water onto the beach.”

He does not harp on abstinence programs as a cure for teens’ sex problems. But he criticizes those who mock them as unrealistic, writing, “Who decided that kids—or anybody else for that matter—are unable to abstain?”

Bell also does not touch on homosexuality because, he says, it’s too big and volatile a subject for this book.

“The church has significant work to do in the area of homosexuality,” he said. “That’s another book for another time.”

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

Posted: 3/02/07

Continuous ministry key
to transforming neighborhood

By John Hall

Texas Baptist Communications

ABILENE—Two years ago, Hardin-Simmons University called Danyel and Brandon Rogers to a special task—transform a neighborhood.

After moving into the community and building relationships with their neighbors, they started ministry programs for children and mothers.

Months before the couple moved into a remodeled home provided by the university, which the school calls a Friendship House, the Rogerses began walking the neighborhood, meeting people who were working in their front yards.

After moving into the community and building relationships with their new neighbors, they started ministry programs for children and mothers. Hardin-Simmons officials re-cruited students to help them and organized neighborhood clean-up days.

That’s when community transformation began. Residents cleaned their homes. Neighbors got to know each other and began caring for each other. And Danyel Rogers’ view of the neighborhood altered.

Hardin-Simmons University alumna Dana Shaw swings with Aislin Taff during a Bible club at the HSU Friendship House. (BGCT photo by John Hall)

Two years ago, she considered the area “a rundown neighborhood,” she said. “But as I’ve gotten to know people, I see people who care and are trying to make a living.”

She is one of many Texas Baptists who have discovered continuous ministry is the key to changing lives. Through regular interaction, relationships can be built and behavior altered, community ministry leaders agree.

Churches across Texas are following a biblical mandate to feed the hungry and clothe the naked, said Tomi Grover, director of community missions for the Baptist General Convention of Texas.

They are meeting the immediate needs of people looking for help, Grover noted.

But teaching a person to become self-sustaining requires understanding how a person thinks about and lives, Grover said. Starting from there, Texas Baptists can begin to change someone’s life.

Jimmy Dorrell, executive director of Mission Waco, ack-nowledged such an approach takes time. It doesn’t al-ways result in people conquering ad-dictions or finding a job. Sometimes, people relapse.

But Dorrell has realized continuous ministry is the most successful way to approach community transformation, and Mission Waco is passionate about that method.

“We are committed to an em-powerment or developmental model of ministry,” he said.

“There are a lot of challenges with that. It’s going to take more time, more involvement. Yet it’s the stuff of transformation.”

Churchill Baptist Church in San Antonio is expanding what began as a children’s ministry into what it hopes will become a church in a home it purchased.

The congregation tutors children, teaches English-as-a-second-language classes and distributes food throughout the neighborhood.

The expanded ministry helps meet people at their points of need, Pastor Neil Bennett said.

The new effort is designed to improve the church’s ability to address the spiritual, emotional and physical needs of the neighborhood, he noted.

“It’s an exciting thing,” Bennett said. “It has gone from something that was essentially a children’s outreach to something that’s serving the entire community.”

Joel Odom, pastor of Oak Hills Community Church in Floresville, agrees that continuous ministry is needed for change to take place, but the church does not have the facilities to sustain ministries like a clothes closet or food pantry.

So, Odom’s congregation partners with a different organization each month to allow the church to reach out to the community and ensure that continuous ministry takes place.

“It lets the community know that we love them, we care for them,” he said. “We’re not here to take up a parcel of ground. We’re here to care.”

Many community mission efforts—including Hardin-Simmons’ Friendship House—are supported by the Mary Hill Davis Offering for Texas Missions. Texas Baptists support church-starting efforts through the BGCT Coopera-tive Program unified budget and the Mary Hill Davis Offering.

Dorrell applauds churches that partner to meet the needs of a community, saying ministry cooperation allows congregations to provide a wide variety of outreaches without duplication.

Grover believes Christian ministries are more effective when they are connected to churches, because that allows a family of faith to care for an individual in need.

A congregation can provide a support system for people whose lives need to be changed, she added.

Care and concern can lead to change, Danyel Rogers observed. When Christians are willing to be vulnerable and invest in other people, God’s love can be seen clearly.

“Anybody who goes out and cares about others, they see change,” she said. “Maybe I’m naïve, but I think that’s the principle of love God gave us. Love changes people.”

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

Posted: 3/02/07

SBC leaders acknowledge
Baptist bloggers here to stay

By Phillip Jordon

Associated Baptist Press

JACKSON, Tenn. (ABP)—Like it or not, Baptist bloggers are here to stay, speakers at a conference on Baptist identity agreed.

And people who want to bring healing to the Southern Baptist Convention should listen to the bloggers’ critique, several speakers added during the conference, titled “Baptist Identity II: Convention, Cooperation and Controversy.”

Blogs maintained by Southern Baptist ministers and seminary students have become popular forums for debate, particularly for younger conservatives who have taken issue with the SBC’s narrowing fundamentalism.

Bloggers played a significant role in getting SBC outsider Frank Page elected president last June. And they have influenced trustee actions at the International Mission Board and Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary.

While the overriding theme of the Baptist identity conference at Union University was the need for more unity in the SBC, speakers acknowledged—and sometimes welcomed—the role of bloggers as the conscience of the convention.

Mike Day, a presenter who spoke on the future of Baptist associations, said blogs cannot be ignored by the SBC leadership.

“Some people have said ‘blog’ stands for ‘big load of gossip.’ So we ignore it,” Day said. “I’d suggest we better get to the point where we define ‘blog’ as ‘better listen to the outpost guys,’ because they’re raising the questions that we need to answer.”

His reference apparently was to www.sbcoutpost.com, one of the early and most popular Baptist blogs.

Underscoring Day’s point even as he spoke, laptop-toting participants typed away, posting passages from his speech in real time on their blogs and websites. Interaction with the bloggers was included as part of the conference program.

Day and four other speakers spent a significant amount of time talking about the impact of such blogging Baptists.

Gregory Thornbury, Union University’s founding dean of the School of Christian Studies, even delivered an address titled “The ‘Angry Young Men’ of the SBC,” which delved into reasons for the proliferation of blogs.

Thornbury noted bloggers are not homogenous, but most of them feel estranged in some way from SBC leadership.

“Can we dismiss them?” Thornbury asked. “I am not persuaded. They can be irreverent, incisive, sarcastic and funny, but they are not overwhelmingly angry.”

Still, the immediacy and anonymity of blogs could turn them into divisive tools as well, Thornbury said.

He asked disaffected bloggers not to completely remove themselves from Southern Baptist life because of minor disagreements.

“Let us not too quickly abandon the Baptist ship,” Thornbury said. “It may not be the Good Ship Lollipop, but it is the best vessel we have.”

The limited time for questions after each conference presentation did not afford a true opportunity for open debate, but most of the bloggers said they were satisfied with the acknowledgment of their medium.

Several bloggers said they wished one of their own had been given a chance to address the conference, but they expressed gratitude for the comments by Thornbury and SBC President Page in particular.

“I appreciate what they said about the bloggers,” said Tom Ascol, the executive director of Founders Ministries, who also keeps a blog. “We’re so frequently decried as Internet graffiti. If everyone approached these debates with as gracious a spirit as Frank Page, we’d be a lot better off.”

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

Posted: 3/02/07

Page cautiously optimistic about Southern Baptists

By Tony Cartledge

North Carolina Biblical Recorder

PHILADELPHIA—The future is bright for the Southern Baptist Convention if its members have the right mindset, follow the right motives and adopt the right methodology, SBC President Frank Page told a group of Baptist state newspaper editors.

Repeating themes he has emphasized in several recent speeches, Page said he is challenging the SBC to be “more authentic in faith and more intentional in sharing the gospel,” to “reach the lost and challenge the saved.”

Baptists need a mindset of Christlike selflessness, a motive based in understanding the convention belongs to God, and methodologies that are always Christ-honoring, said Page, pastor of First Baptist Church in Taylors, S.C.

“I sense a huge number of people who are authentically loving Christian men and women” who care about others and want to help, Page said. Church members are “really tired of the pastors fussing and fighting,” he added. “They don’t understand it all, and if they do, they don’t like it.”

Page expressed concern that many churches “have become one-generational churches, small groups of white people that haven’t learned how to reach out to ethnic groups or even (to) other generations of their own ethnic group.”

With current pastors aging and a declining number of seminary graduates who want to pastor traditional churches, he said, “we could see some serious issues soon.”

Although SBC seminaries are experiencing record enrollments, most of the growth has been in new undergraduate college programs and degrees not designed to train pastors, he said.

Younger students sense “an extreme call to make a difference,” he said. “If challenged properly, they will make a great difference. But they want to do it differently.”

Page often encourages seminary students not to disregard traditional churches and to “see potential in them, that they are not dead yet,” he said. “It’s hard work, extremely hard work, and casualties along the way are many,” because some who say they want to change really mean “so long as you don’t change what I like.”

Self-centeredness also is a problem for churches, Page said. Larger churches sometimes think they don’t need the Southern Baptist Convention, so they cut back on support for the Cooperative Program, the SBC’s unified budget.

Agreeing his upset election last year was in part “a referendum on the Cooperative Program,” Page said the giving program could use some work, “some adjustments in percentages,” but deserves increased support. Those who have issues with the Cooperative Program should continue supporting it and try to bring change from within, he said.

Page downplayed a recent interview in which he was reported to have said that divisive issues in the SBC, such as the 2000 Baptist Faith & Message statement or the ordination of women, should be up for discussion.

Page affirmed the Baptist Faith & Message position that only men should serve as senior pastors but said, “We should also affirm the ministry that women do in all of our churches.” He did not elaborate further.

Asked if he thought it was appropriate for SBC entities to institute policies more strict than the Baptist Faith & Message on issues like refusing to endorse female chaplains or not allowing women to teach theology, Page said he affirms the structure that allows entities to be governed by their trustees.

“Personally, I would encourage entities not to go beyond the Baptist Faith & Message,” he said.

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

Posted: 3/02/07

Will associations, conventions become relics?

By Phillip Jordan

Associated Baptist Press

JACKSON, Tenn. (ABP)—Baptist state conventions and associations will soon cease to exist as they are currently structured, according to Mike Day, director of missions for the Mid-South Baptist Association in Memphis, Tenn.

“A new paradigm is on the horizon,” Day told participants at the “Baptist Identity II” conference at Union University. “It is not a fully developed paradigm. It is at the stage where it is embraced by a few, touted by a few, and discussed and dismissed by the many. But it is emerging.”

At a three-day symposium featuring speakers such as Paige Patterson, Frank Page and Thom Rainer, Day sparked the most discussion with his description of a new model for Southern Baptist state conventions and associations.

This year, Baptists will celebrate the 300th anniversary of the association, traditionally a geographic grouping of congregations—in the South, typically the size of counties. In the last two centuries, state and regional conventions also have developed, giving Baptists a bureaucratic structure many believe is ill-suited for today’s world.

Day called for associations to quit directing church programs. He called for associations to turn control of all properties and programs over to congregations. Instead, they should exist only to help support what churches are doing.

He also suggested associations be organized regionally so that state conventions can morph into these new supplementary regional associations.

Associations and state conventions never were established to be superior to local churches, but that is how they operate today, Day said. And as associations and conventions have lost influence, so too have local churches.

Southern Baptists “will proclaim autonomy as sacred and necessary,” Day said. “Yet we behave sometimes like we require the approval of others or we behave as if we have the right to approve. It’s an implied hierarchy, for sure. We won’t ever admit that it exists.”

Because of that, services are duplicated at the church and associational levels, churches lose influence, funding structures become more bureaucratic, and mission dollars get stretched even thinner, he added.

“Now, some of you are wondering what in the world am I eating, what am I smoking?” Day joked. “I know what the SBC has been saying, and I know about the massive restructuring in 1995. I know we say the focus is on the local church.”

“But my question is, has the church gotten that message? Does the church realize that is what we’re about? I would say, based on the predicament we are in, it has not heard the message, or we have not done a good enough job communicating it clearly.”

But that must be changed, he said. The new paradigm must be church-driven, priority-based, resource-focused, strategically managed and regionally oriented.

He pointed to St. Louis, Tulsa, Okla., and his own Mid-South Association as examples of where this shift already is under way.

“It starts with the church as the legitimate expression of God’s mission in the world,” Day said. “It affirms that the Great Commission was given to the church and was not given to associations or denominational entities.”

The boldest statement of Day’s speech came near the end, when he predicted if associations are not bound by geographical boundaries, then they can be located regionally around the top 50 cities, and state conventions will no longer be needed.

“They won’t exist,” Day said. “They will eventually morph into these regional associations.”

These new-look entities could be interdenominational, he observed.

Art Rogers is the pastor of Skelly Drive Baptist Church in Tulsa, where the regional association has been working toward this new model for more than a year. Tulsa is even further along that path than the Memphis-based Mid-South Association, he said.

“We have completely divested ourselves of owning any institutions and are moving to a completely supportive role,” Rogers said. “We don’t want to run things anymore. It’s a completely new approach.”

Tulsa’s association has given away a campground, ministry center, crisis-pregnancy center and other possessions either to independent bodies or local churches.

A trimmed budget, smaller staff and downsized bureaucracy has allowed Rogers’ association put money back into programs run by local churches—and avoid duplicating any services.

“Everything has just flourished as we’ve done it,” Rogers said. “Everybody is just so much freer now to do what they’re supposed to do.”

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

Posted: 3/02/07

Tolerance, not uniformity,
needed to keep SBC together

By Phillip Jordan

Associated Baptist Press

JACKSON, Tenn. (ABP)—Dissatisfaction brewing within the Southern Baptist Convention “could re-ignite a battle we don’t want to fight again,” David Dockery warned at a conference on Baptist identity.

The need for greater unity among Southern Baptists emerged as the overriding theme at the “Baptist Identity II: Convention, Cooperation and Controversy” conference held at Union University.

However, presenters and participants frequently differed over which issues merit cooperation, which outside groups merit Southern Baptists’ cooperation and what methodology should be used. Some speakers also argued over just how far Southern Baptists need to go to uniquely identify themselves.

“Defining our circumference is necessary, but we should not expect or demand uniformity, lest we impose a straightjacket on Southern Baptists,” said Dockery, president of Union University.

“The current frustrations and disappointments that some of our younger people have—and I understand their frustrations—could re-ignite a battle we don’t want to fight again, he said. “We must seek to establish a new consensus. Otherwise, I fear we drift apart.”

Dockery emphasized the need for a united front, saying biblical passages stressing unity, such as John 17 and Ephesians 4, are being ignored. And he suggested it is a lack of understanding of Baptist history that leads to disputes among Baptists today.

“Throughout most of the 20th century, being a Southern Baptist had a cultural and programmatic identity to it unlike anything else,” Dockery said. “This kind of intactness provided Southern Baptists with an identity unmatched by any other denomination.”

The self-evaluative conference came amid intra-denominational disagreements among Southern Baptist conservatives, 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. And for well over a year, some conservatives have expressed their displeasure with what they perceive as narrowing fundamentalism in some SBC circles.

SBC President Frank Page, who was elected with the support of those reformers, began the identity conference by urging Southern Baptists not to let peripheral issues divide them from their ultimate mission.

“If we continue to break into factions that continue to fight each other and focus on turf-protectionism, the future will not be bright,” said Page, pastor of First Baptist Church of Taylors, S.C.

The Apostle “Paul didn’t say, ‘Whose side are you on?’” Page added. “He asked, ‘Are you preaching Jesus Christ?’”

Ed Stetzer, a missiologist at the SBC North American Mission Board, said Southern Baptists spend too much time objecting to terminology and not enough working together toward achieving common visions.

“I am ready to see Southern Baptists united by our mission. Personally, I’m ready to cooperate, even with those who are different than me,” Stetzer said. “I want to be in a convention where we agree on enough to get on mission. If we can’t do that, we should start preparing now for our ultimate denominational demise.”

Stetzer’s address, “Toward a Missional Convention,” included several exhortations for Southern Baptist congregations to follow the lead of other denominations in becoming “missional.”

To be “missional,” Stetzer said, congregations must contextualize their message to the culture and cooperate with Southern Baptist churches that have methods and practices different from their own.

If Southern Baptists truly want to change the prevailing culture, they must become culturally relevant once again, not just biblically faithful, he said. “Our churches must be culturally relevant, biblical faithful, countercultural communities.

“Preaching against culture is like preaching against someone’s house. It’s where someone lives. We must pay attention to the culture if we are to be truly missional.”

While Stetzer’s delivery and approach may have deviated from how the conference’s more conservative speakers discussed the same issues, Stetzer’s call for unity—and the need to address differences from within the SBC—echoed pleas voiced by several other speakers.

Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary President Paige Patterson chastised those who spread slander and gossip from within Baptist ranks.

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

Timothy George, dean of Samford University’s Beeson Divinity School, called his unity speech a “summons to humility” and questioned just how much further Southern Baptists must go to uniquely identify themselves.

He admonished his audience to a “particularity in the service of unity” that preserves theological consistency but allows for ecumenical cooperation.

“Isn’t there something a bit narcissistic about focusing on our Baptist identity?” George asked. “There is a fine line between retrieval (of one’s religious traditions) for the sake of renewal, and retrieval for the sake of a projection of a Baptist-centricity that is self-serving and self-gratifying.”

Several speakers emphasized the result of all the current fragmentation and fighting among Southern Baptists is taking a very tangible toll on the denomination.

Thom Rainer, president of Lifeway Christian Resources, the SBC’s publishing house, said that despite having SBC membership that is 130 percent larger than it was half a century ago, overall baptisms are down by 5,000 a year.

“On any given Sunday, only about 7 million (of the 16 million) Southern Baptist members attend church,” Rainer said. “That which is dead cannot tell another dead person how to have life.”

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

Posted: 3/02/07

Texas Baptist Forum

‘All will be well’

The Feb. 19 editorial notes valid concerns of the Baptist General Convention of Texas—missions funding, recent parliamentary rulings, etc.  I believe reports from the Executive Board and the convention’s executive leadership will very much satisfy the concerns of all Texas Baptists who can be satisfied. 

• Jump to online-only letters below

Letters are welcomed. Send them to marvknox@baptiststandard.com; 250 words maximum.

“The Holy Spirit works best when we’re weak. There’s pressure in the church to look like you’re strong; it’s a false sense of what it’s like to be in Christ.” Kenneth Fong Pastor of Evergreen Church in Los Angeles (Baptist World Alliance) “I’m running for a secular position. I subscribe to what Abraham Lincoln called America’s political religion. The Constitution and the rule of law are the highest promises I would make in taking the oath of office.” Mitt Romney Presidential candidate, discussing the potential impact of his Mormon faith (USA Today/RNS) “If your name is Barack Hussein Obama, you can expect it, some of that. I think the majority of voters know that I’m a member of the United Church of Christ, and that I take my faith seriously.” Barack Obama Presidential candidate, explaining he doesn't believe voters have a ‘litmus test” on religion or his childhood years spent in Indonesia, a predominantly Muslim country (RNS) “If God is on anyone’s side in this mess, he’s on everyone’s side.” Oliver Thomas Minister and lawyer, commenting on strife in the Middle East (USA Today/RNS)

The matters this editorial mentions have been and are being addressed in appropriate ways by appropriate leaders, and all will be well, and we should not doubt that that is so.

For every true or perceived problem in church life, 1,000 great things are happening. They certainly deserve Texas Baptists’ continued attention while problems are being corrected. 

David Troublefield

Wichita Falls

Coal-fired power plants

Many of us are appalled with the recent inflammatory articles and questionable publicity generated on behalf of Texas Baptists regarding the proposed new coal-fired power-plant issue. I do hope our tithes and offerings are not supporting this type of activity!

We as Texas Baptists, as opposed to other forms of media, have no business in getting involved in presenting inaccurate and/or biased information, and overstated, over-simplified and emotionally charged “facts.”  

For the record, TXU proposed to use the latest coal technology as required by the Environmental Protection Agency and is using the one energy resource of which we have in abundance—coal.

Natural gas, as an alternative, is a comparably expensive and finite resource, and it likewise produces carbon dioxide when combusted.

Other resources, such as bio-mass, wind, etc., while important, cannot supply the increasing demand for electricity, even with greater conservation and other measures.

As a former utility executive, a registered professional engineer and an energy consultant, and an environmentalist—in the true sense of the word—I, along with others, would appreciate unbiased accuracy in any position we as Christians and as Baptists legitimately take on any issue.

Let’s stay on mission and keep proclaiming the gospel of our Lord Jesus.

R.E. Ayers

Kerrville

Christians & homosexuality

May I question some aspects of the “Right or Wrong” article on homosexualism (Feb. 19).

It appears to presuppose “the big lie” promoted by homophile, lesbian and pedophile activists that they are created with a homoerotic nature. While original sin does affect each individual differently—some with a special tendency to murder, some to steal, some to lie, some to lust—all such tendencies are identified by Scripture as sin (Exodus 20:13-17; Matthew 5:22, 28, 33; Romans 1:26-32; Ephesians 4:28), that is, as products of the fall (Genesis 3:16-19) and not of creation (Genesis 1:26-27). As R.A.J. Gagnon’s The Bible and Homosexual Practice has shown, the Bible nowhere countenances homoerotic desire or conduct.

The article appears to confuse the commitment to agápe love that wills the good of the other (John 13:35) with the toleration of homoerotic love that sexually desires the other.

For Scripture, the only erotic love that is compatible with agápe love is the sexual desire and the ensuing permanent and exclusive sexual commitment and unity of one man and one woman in marriage. All other erotic desire and/or conduct the Bible regards as evil.

Of course, Christians are to love the sinner and hate the sin, and the church should accept homosexual sinners as she does all others. That is, with their “repentance toward God and faith toward our Lord Jesus Christ” (Acts 20:21) and with their desire and commitment to holiness to which Christ calls each of us (Matthew 5:48; Romans 6:19,22).

E. Earle Ellis

Fort Worth

What do you think? Send letters to Editor Marv Knox by mail: P.O. Box 660267, Dallas 75266-0267; or by e-mail: marvknox@baptiststandard.com.

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

Posted: 3/02/07

Mainstream Baptists cite
freedom as Baptist hallmark

By Marv Knox

Editor

IRVING—A refrain of freedom echoed throughout the Mainstream Baptist Network convocation Feb. 23-24.

About 80 participants gathered from across the South and Southwest for the sixth-annual event. The Mainstream movement is composed of Baptists who strive to preserve traditional Baptist doctrine and distinctives in the face of fundamentalism.

Seven speakers addressed “Why I am Still a Baptist.” They mentioned a broad range of issues, but freedom provided a common denominator.

“Many folks today are scared of being a Baptist and run off in fear,” acknowledged Joe Lewis, pastor of Second Baptist Church in Petersburg, Va. “I stopped counting the friends who left.”

Nevertheless, “I’m still a Baptist because I believe in freedom,” Lewis said, noting spiritual pioneers John Smyth and Thomas Helwys “began the Baptist movement demanding freedom” in the early 1600s.

Citing the research of church historian Walter Shurden, Lewis noted “four fragile freedoms”—Bible freedom, soul freedom, church freedom and religious freedom—are Baptist hallmarks.

Tyrone Pitts recalled that his appreciation for Baptists’ emphasis on religious freedom and its corollary, the separation of church and state, grew as he worked with other faith groups, such as the National Council of Churches and the World Council of Churches.

“Others in the ecumenical movement do not have this quality,” said Pitts, general secretary of the Progressive National Baptist Convention, one of four predominantly African-Amer-ican Baptist bodies. “We are unified around soul freedom and liberty. It is our passion for freedom that other people … try to emulate.”

A focus on freedom is Baptists’ defining characteristic, said Bill Underwood, president of Mercer University in Macon and Atlanta, Ga.

“We are free to think for ourselves, free to read the Scriptures to determine what they say—free,” Underwood insisted. Although people are accountable to God, no government and no individual have the right to tell them what to believe, he added.

Unfortunately, such a conviction “is becoming somewhat out of fashion,” not just among fundamentalists, but also among moderate Baptists, he asserted.

Underwood pointed to the Baptist Manifesto, drafted in 1997 by a group of “Baptist communitarian” scholars who have said they cannot commend the “unchecked privilege of interpretation” of the Bible.

“Who will do the checking?” Underwood asked.

“It is right to suggest we exist in community and have a responsibility to the community. But it is wrong to insist the community can declare orthodoxy. It is wrong to deny a place for the individual in community.”

No one has a monopoly on truth, he said. And besides, sometimes the community is wrong, he added.

“What communitarian Baptists ignore is the need to acknowledge a place for that lonely, prophetic voice, the voice of dissent,” he said.

Baptists’ historic demand for religious liberty is rooted in an understanding of God and creation, said Bruce Prescott, executive director of Mainstream Oklahoma Baptists.

“God did not create androids and robots,” Prescott said, explaining the Bible teaches that God created people in order to have a loving relationship.

“You cannot coerce someone to love you,” he added. “God desires everyone to love him, but if love is a free response of faith, then to reject him must also be a possibility.

“So, if God leaves us to be free in matters of faith and religion, then what right do men have to force them upon others?”

Although government initiatives could erode religious liberty and church/state separation, Prescott said these trends can be reversed “if Christians stand up, speak out and do something … and stand for religious liberty for all persons. Only then will the gospel be good news and not bad news.”

Freedom manifests itself in the unique nature of Baptist churches, said Suzii Paynter, executive director of the Baptist General Convention of Texas’ Christian Life Commission.

“We live in a franchise-oriented culture, where people validate their identity by being like others,” she observed, countering, “Church is not a franchise.”

Instead, she said, a better model for Baptist churches is a molecule—a cluster of cells that attract each other but differ in type by the way they form clusters.

Similarly, each church is free to cluster with churches, denominations and other groups as it sees fit.

Freedom is the natural characteristic of Baptist churches, said David Currie, executive director of Texas Baptists Committed, who described growing up in the Baptist church in Paint Rock.

“We did not even realize churches could not be free,” he recalled.

But such freedom never is resolved once-and-for-all, noted Scott Walker, pastor of First Baptist Church in Waco.

“I want to be part of a people who have in their hearts a dream of religious liberty,” he said. “But we must work it out in every generation. I’m excited to see what will happen.”

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

Posted: 3/02/07

Christians use movie to spotlight
modern-day human trafficking

By Robert Marus

ABP Washington Bureau

WASHINGTON (ABP)—Nearly 200 years after William Wilberforce brought an end to England’s slave trade, a wide audience has a chance to see his story told on film. But the producers of Amazing Grace, and a wide coalition of Christian and other groups, hope the legendary reformer’s inspiring tale will focus the West’s attention on a more disturbing story—the modern-day slave trade.

The feature-length film uses the beloved hymn for its title and organizing theme in telling Wilberforce’s story. After rediscovering his Christian faith in his 20s, the member of Parliament struggled for nearly three decades in the 18th and 19th centuries to abolish England’s trade in African slaves.

The hymn’s text was one of many written by Wilberforce’s spiritual mentor and fellow abolitionist, Anglican priest John Newton. Newton had been converted to Christianity as a young man after a harrowing experience piloting a slave ship during a storm.

According to one of the film’s producers, the makers of Amazing Grace realized its potential to spotlight both the historic and the modern-day evil of slavery. Human trafficking is “probably the biggest human-rights problem in the world today,” said Bob Beltz, a former pastor who now oversees film production for the Anschutz Film Group.

Early on, Beltz said, the film’s producers and marketers decided it would be both financially and socially responsible to join the film with a social-justice campaign against modern-day slavery.

A wide variety of religious and human-rights groups—from the Congressional Human Rights Caucus and Focus on the Family to the National Council of Churches—have joined with the film’s producers in supporting the Amazing Change campaign (www.theamazingchange.com). The campaign aims to use various grassroots groups to raise awareness of the historical and modern slave problems.

According to the U.S. State Department, somewhere between 600,000 and 800,000 people are trafficked—by force or coercion —across international borders every year. Between 14,500 and 17,500 of those people are sold into the United States.

“The thing about trafficking is that it can occur in the biggest city or in a rural environment—and it is a hidden phenomenon,” said Martha Newton, director of the office of refugee resettlement at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Her agency deals with refugees from the slave trade.

Newton noted there are many different kinds of human trafficking—forced servitude, labor coercion and fraud, sexual slavery and child slavery.

Most captives are women and children, although adult men are forced or coerced into labor as well.

Newton’s agency coordinates with other governmental and private organizations to uncover the victims of human trafficking, remove them from bondage and help them rebuild their lives in the United States.

Wilberforce won his battle to abolish the slave trade in the British empire.

In 1807, Parliament finally outlawed the slave trade in England. The reformer—who had many health problems and dealt with a long-standing opium addiction—lived long enough to learn, in 1833, that Parliament would extend the ban to all of England’s colonies.

But 200 years later, his struggle continues.

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