2008 Archives
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For Casting Crowns, performing and recording music is just a side job
Posted: 2/01/08
Mark Hall, center, is the frontman for the Christian group Casting Crowns and a youth pastor at Eagle’s Landing First Baptist Church in McDonough, Ga. All seven members of the band also work in full-time youth ministry. (RNS photo courtesy Song BMG Music Entertainment) For Casting Crowns, performing
and recording music is just a side jobBy Adelle M. Banks
Religion News Service
FAIRFAX, Va.—On one night, youth pastor Mark Hall puts plans together for his Wednesday night youth service at Eagle’s Landing First Baptist Church in the Atlanta suburb of McDonough, Ga. The next night, Hall is on stage in the Washington suburbs, fronting his Grammy-nominated band, Casting Crowns.
For Hall and other members of his group—all of them involved in youth ministry in Atlanta-area churches—middle-school and high-school students are top priority. It just happens they end up reaching them both on stage and off stage.
02/01/2008 - By John Rutledge
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New book examines life and contributions of âDaddy Kingâ
Posted: 2/01/08
New book examines life and
contributions of ‘Daddy King’By Greg Trotter
Religion News Service
NEWFIELD, N.Y. (RNS)—Few dispute that Martin Luther King Jr.’s courageous leadership in the civil rights movement of the 1960s forever changed the course of American history. But even before he led the historic Montgomery bus boycott and other nonviolent protests, another King was pounding the pulpit and the pavement for social justice—his father, Martin Luther King Sr., known as “Daddy King” to his family, friends and members of his church.
Gurdon Brewster has decided to make Daddy King’s story better known. Brewster’s memoir, No Turning Back: My Summer With Daddy King, recounts the months in 1961 he spent with the elder King and his wife, Alberta, in Atlanta.
Gurdon Brewster welcomes Martin Luther King Sr. to Cornell University in 1979. Brewster is the author of No Turning Back: My Summer With Daddy King. (RNS photo courtesy of Gurdon Brewster) 02/01/2008 - By John Rutledge
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VeggieTales creatorâs self-image: More Mr. Rogers than van Gogh
Posted: 2/01/08
The VeggieTales series’ second feature-length film is The Pirates Who Don't Do Anything. (RNS photo courtesy of Big Idea) VeggieTales creator’s self-image:
More Mr. Rogers than van GoghBy Andrea Useem
Religion News Service
WASHINGTON (RNS)—VeggieTales co-creator Phil Vischer views the new feature-length movie, The Pirates Who Don’t Do Anything, like a biblical parable.
It teaches about the Kingdom of God through an entertaining story—in this case, the tale of three bumbling vegetable friends who must band together and overcome their fears to save their friends.
02/01/2008 - By John Rutledge
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Explore the Bible Series for February 10: Do you obey in faith?
Posted: 2/01/08
Explore the Bible Series for February 10
Do you obey in faith?
• Genesis 22:1-18
First Baptist Church, Petersburg
Years ago, a man was walking through the desert in Nevada when he came across an old abandoned store with a pump to a water well next to it. Upon approaching the pump, he noticed there was a note attached to the handle.
02/01/2008 - By John Rutledge
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Evangelism requires commitmentâeven if it means holding church under a tree
Posted: 1/30/08
Youth who have never fit in at church are drawn to Ron Evans' Church Under the Tree in a Plano park. Evangelism requires commitment–
even if it means holding church under a treeBy Loni Fancher
Texas Baptist Communications
ROCKWALL—Commitment is the key to a fruitful ministry, said Ron Evans. He should know. He’s persistently followed God’s calling to break through barriers and reach a group of disenfranchised young people as pastor of Plano’s Church Under the Tree.
During Super Summer in 2006, the youth pastor of Brown Street Baptist Fellowship in Wylie felt God calling him to reach out to unchurched and disenfranchised youth.
01/30/2008 - By John Rutledge
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DOWN HOME: Talk about your gridiron miracle
Posted: 1/30/08
DOWN HOME:
Talk about your gridiron miracleThis season, the National Football League once again demonstrated an old adage passed down from generation unto generation: Football will break your heart.
Unless, inexplicably, you are a New England Patriots’ fan (like my son-in-law, Aaron), or, even more incomprehensibly, you favor the New York Giants, you got your heart broken weeks—maybe even months—ago.
Well, that’s not exactly true.
I haven’t polled Houston Texans fans to see if they’ve suffered like all of us who root, root, root for the Dallas Cowboys. We were disturbed when the Cowboys lost their Mojo in December. And we were crushed when the despised Giants knocked them out of contention for the Super Bowl.
01/30/2008 - By John Rutledge
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EDITORIAL: The BGCTâs opportunity for success
Posted: 1/30/08
EDITORIAL:
The BGCT’s opportunity for successLike few decisions in the past 100 years, the Baptist General Convention of Texas Executive Board must make a correct call on the election of its next executive director.
Although the BGCT is composed of about 5,500 churches, more than 100 associations, 27 agencies and institutions, and more than a million Baptist Christians, the executive director wields unparalleled influence in shaping the overall direction of the convention. That’s because the Executive Board stands at the visible “center” of the BGCT. It supplies the connective tissue between Texas Baptist churches and the institutions and convention ministries. It provides most of the conventionwide promotion, receives and allocates the BGCT’s Cooperative Program unified budget, and helps coordinate overall strategy and tactics for making an impact on our state, nation and the world with the gospel.
During the last few years, for a variety of reasons, the BGCT has been in a funk. We have lost churches to a competing state convention. More tragically, churches have distanced themselves from our convention because of apathy and a sense the convention is irrelevant to them and to their ministries. Cooperative Program receipts have suffered. The Executive Board has endured rounds of staff cutbacks and reorganizations. Support for institutions has not been satisfactory. Attendance at vital events, such as the BGCT annual meeting, has been disappointing. Factions have pointed fingers of blame at each other. Morale has suffered, both in the Baptist Building and across the state.
The next person to occupy the executive director’s chair—which became vacant Feb. 1—must restore a spirit of purpose and unity to our beloved BGCT. This will be more difficult and demanding than we can imagine. For one thing, the Cooperative Program is expected to decline, most likely necessitating further staff cutbacks and possibly curtailing institutional and missions/ministry support. These moves will bruise morale. For another, some aspects of factionalism have had time to set up and harden, so bringing our disparate constituencies back together will require patience, persistence and sacrificial, selfless integrity. The person who steps into that breach will feel as if he’s being pressured and questioned from every direction, an excruciatingly lonely assignment.
01/30/2008 - By John Rutledge
