2008 Archives
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BCFS given lead role in emergency care for medical special needs
Posted: 2/15/08
BCFS given lead role in emergency
care for medical special needsBy Haley Smith
Baptist Child & Family Services
The Texas Governor’s Division of Emergency Management has given Baptist Child & Family Services the lead role in care for medical special needs disaster evacuees.
The San Antonio-based agency will provide medical special needs shelter training sessions for cities and counties statewide in the next year.
02/15/2008 - By John Rutledge
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Around the State
Posted: 2/15/08
Around the State
• “Awake 2008: A Call to Spiritual Awakening” is being sponsored by Tryon-Evergreen Baptist Association. The March 29 rally at the Lone Star Convention & Expo Center in Conroe will feature T.W. Hunt. The event will begin at 6 p.m. Call (936) 856-2001 for more information.
• The Conference of Texas Baptist Evangelists has named its officers for the year. Elected were Paul Cherry, president; Todd Keller, vice president; Gary Newman, secretary/treasurer; Sam Craig, music director; and Ricky Davis, assistant music director.
• Former Baylor University First Lady Mary McCall has been presented the Founders Medallion for 2008. The medallion is reserved for people whose service and contributions have been unusually significant to the life and future of the university. McCall served the school as a student, professor’s wife, parent, president’s wife and alumna. She has been a member of numerous Baylor organizations and in 1982 was awarded the W.R. White Meritorious Service Award. For many years, she was a Sunday school teacher and trustee at First Church in Waco. She now is a member of Park Cities Church in Dallas.
Mary Russell McCall was presented the 2008 Founders Medallion by Dennis Prescott, vice president for development, and Baylor President John M. Lilley. • Gabriel Cortes has been named director of church and alumni relations at Baptist University for the Americas. He and his wife, Maria, have two children, Esteban and Andres.
02/15/2008 - By John Rutledge
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Book Reviews
Posted: 2/15/08
Book Reviews
Before You Plan Your Wedding … Plan Your Marriage by Greg and Erin Smalley (Howard Books)
Little girls dream of wearing flowing white dresses and lovely sheer veils. Brides and grooms, along with their families, spend hundreds of hours and thousands of dollars making the fairy tale ceremony and reception come true. But all too often, they forget that marriage for a lifetime is more important than wedding for a day.
Before You Plan Your Wedding … Plan Your Marriage offers guidance for building a lasting Christlike union. In chapters ranging from “Will You Forgive Me?” to “If Only We Had Known,” psychologists Erin and Greg Smalley share principles for making marriage work. “Couple exercises/homework” conclude each chapter, as the authors suggest activities such as focusing on each other (and not the wedding) 20 minutes a day.
What are you reading that other Texas Baptists would find helpful? Send suggestions and reviews to books@baptiststandard.com. The Smalleys manage to tackle tough issues and differences in male-female communication and expectations with humor and personal stories. They share that early in their dating, Gary called Erin for a defining-the-relationship talk. Over dinner, he indicated he felt pressured. Erin left the restaurant assuming they had broken up—a suspicion confirmed when he didn’t call for some time. So she started dating another guy, much to Greg’s surprise when he returned from a long trip he forgot to mention to Erin.
02/15/2008 - By John Rutledge
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Baptist Briefs
Posted: 2/15/08
Baptist Briefs
Fewer forced terminations in SBC churches last year. Forced terminations in the Southern Baptist Convention were down during 2006. The Southern Baptist Church-Minister Relations Association found 680 full-time and bivocational pastors were forced out of their positions in 2006, plus 265 staff members. While the total of 945 is 27 percent lower than the 1,302 reported for 2005, Barney Self, a former pastoral counselor with LifeWay Christian Resources who conducted the survey, pointed out the report lacked input from four state conventions. The omissions mean the actual number of terminations may have been closer to 1,100, he noted. According to the survey, control issues were the top reason for staff dismissals—the same reason that has topped the surveys since they were initiated in 1996.
SBC conducts online survey about youth. Teenagers, their parents, student ministry volunteers and youth ministers in Southern Baptist churches are eligible to participate in an online survey through April 13. Church registration for the survey, at www.sbcstudents.com/annualsurvey, runs through the end of March. After the survey closes, each participating church will be able to download a full report April 15. It will show the responses of their congregation separated into groups without identifying specific individuals who took the survey. All individual input will remain confidential. Free online manuals will be made available to churches to guide them in conducting workshops that bring key parents, youth and leaders to the table to set a new direction based on the information gathered from the survey. State conventions will be able to post statistics from their states on their websites, while SBC entities will have access to national figures to help determine effective directions for student ministry within the convention. Participating churches, meanwhile, will be able to compare their results with statewide and nationwide results.
02/15/2008 - By John Rutledge
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Shared meals at church take on a different flavor to meet changing needs
Posted: 2/15/08
Shared meals at church take on
a different flavor to meet changing needsBy David Briggs
Religion News Service
AKRON, Ohio (RNS)—Andrew Hamilton still can taste the homemade apple, cherry and peach pies that capped off the covered-dish church meals of his youth in Lakeville, Mass.
In those days, children played on their own for hours while adults spent Sunday afternoons in conversation. The church seemed like one big family, said Hamilton, 44, pastor of Akron’s Springfield Church of the Brethren.
Markesha Kimmie, 10, arranges Kool-Aid for a supper at Broadway United Methodist Church in Cleveland. Many churches have revamped the traditional church supper to meet the changing needs of busy families. (RNS photo by Lynn Ischay/The Plain Dealer of Cleveland) 02/15/2008 - By John Rutledge
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2nd Opinion: Touch others: Healing & helping
Posted: 2/15/08
2nd Opinion:
Touch others: Healing & helpingBy Jerry Hopkins
Educators learn a great deal about people—their views, virtues, vices and other things. The aim of most teachers and educational administrators is to help people. A central theme for educators is to be helpful, constructive and positive.
This also is one of the important themes of Jesus’ life. In the historical book known as Acts, author/historian Luke describes this: “God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit, and with power, who went about doing good and healing all who were oppressed by the devil, for God was with him” (Acts 10:38). Doing good and healing should characterize anyone’s life who works with people.
The central theme of our lives should be to serve others like Jesus did—offering healing, loving, helpful touches. Jesus went about doing good, lifting and loving, rather than hurting and hindering; blessing and building, rather than blighting and condemning. We need to do an audit of our lives, our attitudes and actions. Are we doing good, helping and healing?
02/15/2008 - By John Rutledge
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EDITORIAL: Candles alight for new Baptist unity
Posted: 2/15/08
EDITORIAL:
Candles alight for new Baptist unityWould you rather light a candle or curse the darkness?
At least 10,000 candles glowed in Atlanta, pushing back the cursed darkness of racism that enshrouded Baptists in this hemisphere for more than 160 years.
Those “candles” actually were people—Baptists who defied nay-sayers and doom-forecasters to attend the New Baptist Covenant convocation. They brightened the bleak midwinter. They cast light toward a new spring, a time for thawing frozen feelings; a time for planting seeds of reconciliation, collaboration and infinite hope; a time for leaning into awkward trust, unproven optimism and untested love.
Nay-sayers did their best to dampen those candlewicks so they’d never light. Doom-forecasters projected darkness for Atlanta, predicting polarization. They said the whole thing was cooked up by Jimmy Carter to promote a liberal Democratic agenda. They said the politicians would pollute the well of naive goodwill with partisanship. They said white attendance would be appalling and set racial reconciliation back five generations. They said Southern Baptist Convention-haters would leverage the platform to bash the SBC. They said Bill Clinton would campaign for his wife. In sum, they declared disaster.
02/15/2008 - By John Rutledge
