Posted: 2/01/08

For Casting Crowns, performing
and recording music is just a side job

By 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.

“Our priority in our scheduling and our priority in how we do things is definitely student ministry because you can’t pop in and pop out of the student ministry,” said Hall, the 38-year-old leader of the band known for its pop contemporary and worship music.

“You can’t just come in for a day and be a youth pastor—or I would hope you couldn’t. You can’t be a good one, anyway.”

Despite the success of Casting Crowns—their latest album debuted at No. 2 in the nation on Billboard’s Top 200 chart, coming in behind the High School Musical 2 soundtrack—Hall said their music and mission are focused on helping average Christians, whether teenagers or former teenagers, grow closer to God.

The group’s latest album, The Altar and the Door, dwells on the difficulties faced by Christians who are challenged to live life a certain way when they’re inside the walls of a sanctuary but seem to forget some of those lessons once they leave church.

Juan DeVevo, 32, a guitarist for Casting Crowns who works with the

student praise band at Eagle’s Landing, said the high ranking on the

Billboard chart is a sign that their music also is reaching

non-Christians.

“Believers are giving our CD to nonbelievers, and they’re feeling like that stuff can speak to people and help them in their time of need, even though they may not even go to church,” he said.

The band found fame when a college student at the church put their CD in the hands of Mark Miller, frontman for the country music group Sawyer Brown. He started the Beach Street Records label in 2003 and became the band’s producer.

Three albums later, Casting Crowns took home the “favorite artist” award in contemporary inspirational music at the American Music Awards last November.

Four of the group’s seven members started playing together in 1999 as a band at First Baptist Church in Daytona Beach, Fla., where then-pastor Bobby Welch didn’t even know of Hall’s musical abilities when he hired him. But after Hall moved to Georgia and the band became more established there, Welch invited them to perform at the 2006 annual meeting of the Southern Baptist Convention, when Welch was SBC president.

“I don’t think he’s just doing a unique balancing act,” Welch said of Hall. “I think his music and his ministry make each other.”

Tricia Whitehead, a spokeswoman for the Gospel Music Association, said other Christian artists have come out of the church and continued to work as music ministers even as they performed onstage. But Casting Crowns, with its involvement in youth ministry, is different.

“Casting Crowns has set a standard that is fantastic to see, that they continue to be so involved in ministry alongside the huge success they’re having” as musicians, she said.

When Hall meets with youth pastors at concerts, he reminds them that relationships, not lectures, are the key to reaching young people.

“You’ll teach more in the car on the way to Burger King after church than you will in your Bible study,” Hall said. He may spend hours working on “neat, artsy, cool” worksheets for his Wednesday night youth group, but he finds teens are more interested in one-on-one time to discuss a personal matter.

Reagan Farris, the other youth pastor at Eagle’s Landing, said most of the students at the church are unfazed by the band’s success.

“Not many students in the student ministry are just in awe that they’re Casting Crowns,” said Farris, 29, who was once a member of Hall’s youth group. “He’s their youth pastor. He’s not Casting Crowns. He’s Mark.”

In addition to reaching students, Hall has tried to help parents understand the sometimes mysterious lives of teenagers—especially the side of kids they only reveal online. He wrote a song, and then a column in USA Today, after a voyage through FaceBook and MySpace.

“They just want to have a friend to sit with at lunch,” Hall said. “They want to be accepted and sometimes your need for acceptance lures you outside of what you know to be right, what you know to be godly.”

Hall’s life is a constant balancing act. Before hitting the road for the concert in Virginia, he attended a staff meeting and sketched out worship plans. Then he met with about 400 youth for their weekly gathering, and hung around afterward to meet with a parent and help a student in crisis.

After sleeping on the bus from Georgia, he helped home-school one of his three children and also kept in touch with youth back in Georgia.

“I texted 22 students this morning with a sort of a verse-for-the-day kind of thing I like to do with them,” he said. “You don’t just check out of student ministry. It’s impossible.”

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.

The book offers an intimate look at the King family in that turbulent time and reveals the inner conflicts of Brewster—a white Episcopalian from the North immersed in the black struggle for freedom and equality.

The memoir illustrates the pivotal role of the senior King in the nonviolent fight for racial equality, while also raising questions of faith and social class within the young narrator.

“People don’t know much about Daddy King,” Brewster said in an interview. “But Dr. King stood on the shoulders of Daddy King, who stood on the shoulders of (his father-in-law) Rev. A.D. Williams. There’s a long legacy of civil rights work there.”

In 1961, Brewster was a 24-year-old seminary student in New York who volunteered to participate in a program that sent white Episcopalians into black churches in the South for the summer. He requested Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, where Daddy King, a stocky preacher with a booming voice, served as pastor.

The Kings welcomed Brewster into their household to live when no other family in the congregation offered to take him.

Over plates of grits and bacon in the mornings, Brewster learned the story of Daddy King’s hard-fought journey, from sharecropper’s son to big-city pastor.

“Daddy King and M.L. shared a very similar faith in Christ,” Brewster said. “But they expressed it differently because of where they came from.”

Martin Luther King Sr., seen here in an undated photo, set the stage for his son’s remarkable career fighting for civil rights. (RNS file photo)

While the younger King grew up middle-class in Atlanta, Brewster said, Daddy King was reared in rural Stockbridge, Ga. His father plowed the fields on a white man’s farm; his mother scrubbed floors for a living.

Although his father wanted him to farm, Daddy King moved to Atlanta to go to school. He was so far behind that he had to attend the fifth grade when he was 20 years old.

After scrapping his way through the intellectual rigors of Morehouse College, he became pastor of Ebenezer in 1931. In 1935, about 20 years before his son led the Montgomery bus boycott, the senior King led a march on City Hall for improved black rights. He soon got hate mail for his efforts.

“People think that the civil rights movement started with Rosa Parks” in 1955, Brewster said. “But Daddy King was leading marches in the 1930s and 1940s.”

Brewster’s book depicts him learning of Daddy King’s struggle and reflecting on his own respective place of social privilege. He also discovered first-hand how difficult the younger King’s message of nonviolence was to put into practice.

“To love your enemy like Dr. King preached is a huge piece of faith,” Brewster said. “It’s much easier to just go buy a gun.”

The younger King also schooled Brewster on the role of the church in American society. According to Brewster’s account of their conversations, King felt that churches of all races and denominations should do more to promote social justice.

“What Dr. King did was take Daddy King’s prophetic vision and thrust it into the public arena,” Brewster said.

After his summer with the Kings, Brewster went on to serve as chaplain for Cornell University in New York for 35 years. In 1979, he invited Daddy King to visit Cornell and speak to the students.

A recent book notes that Martin Luther King inherited not only his preaching ability, but his passion for social justice from his father, “Daddy King.” (RNS file photo)

Daddy King was then the survivor of his two sons and wife. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated in 1968; his other son, A.D., drowned in 1969. His wife, Alberta, was killed in 1974 when a gunman opened fire as she sat at Ebenezer’s organ.

In his 1979 sermon to the Cornell students, Daddy King discussed his losses and expressed an unwavering gratitude and faith in God. He died five years later of a heart attack. He was 84.

Brewster continues to serve as an Episcopal priest, works as a sculptor and lives in Newfield, N.Y.

Brewster contends that both Kings would still be fighting for social justice if they were alive today. Though much progress has been made, Brewster said, there is still much more that churches could be doing.

“It’s a strange time we live in,” Brewster said. “There’s a lot of milquetoast Christianity, soft on issues of justice. And that’s a shame, because at the very heart of Christianity is a great tradition of justice and fairness.”

Posted: 2/01/08

VeggieTales creator’s self-image:
More Mr. Rogers than van Gogh

By 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.

Q: Why would the movie appeal to non-Christian parents and kids?

Phil Vischer

A: This is a fun adventure that shows how everybody can be a hero and how the hero isn’t the tallest or the strongest or the best looking. The hero is the one who does what’s right, no matter how hard.

Q: Is hard for a Christian movie to compete with mainstream movies that don’t have Christian themes?

A: Eight out of 10 Americans still identify as Christian, even if they haven’t gone to church since their parents made them when they were kids. But when they become parents, all of a sudden they look at their own kids and ask, “What values am I passing onto them?”

Q: What makes a movie religious? Is Finding Nemo a Christian film?

A: It’s not an un-Christian film. There are very strong Judeo-Christian values in most successful family films, though not all. It’s hard to tell a compelling story that goes against those values or disregards them. You’d have to be wildly cynical as a filmmaker to craft a kids movie that throws Judeo-Christian values out the window.

Q: So how is The Pirates Who Don’t Do Anything a biblical movie?

A: The movie is an allegory, like a parable. If you read the parables in the Bible, none of them mention God or Jesus explicitly, but there’s always a character that represents God. Parables are lessons about the kingdom of heaven wrapped into the vernacular of the day. With this movie, I said, “Let’s create a modern day parable about what it means to be a hero.”

Q: And what do you hope kids will learn about being a hero?

A: What we don’t say is, “Every one of you has such extraordinary capabilities that you can, under your own power, be a hero.” What we’re really saying is: Regardless of how you view yourself, God has created you to do something really cool. That’s why we’re here, and it involves helping others, and it has nothing to do with how big and brave and strong you are, and everything to do with trust in God to give you what you need to do what he’s asked you to do.

Q: Is it a theological problem that you can create a “biblical movie” without any overt references to God or Jesus?

A: Our movie is allegorical, but it is a fairly overt allegorical statement about God. I don’t know that a movie from a Christian filmmaker has to stand apart that much from a well-told film. There are so many films that have compelling messages with spiritual implications. When Christian filmmakers say, “Mine has to read like a tract,” you’re not making movies anymore, you’re making sermons with a camera.

Q: But you yourself exist in the Christian world …

A: So we’ll get some flack. But we always get flack; it goes with the territory.

Q: As an artist, do you sometimes feel suffocated by the Christian community?

A: Honestly, many do. I know Christian artists who just can’t take it; they walk away from the Christian world and get on with their art. I am more a teacher than an artist, which is why I have been so happy making VeggieTales, where a tomato gets down on his knees and says, “God made you special and loves you very much.” At the end of the day, I’ve got more Mr. Rogers in me than van Gogh.

Q: In the movie, the three pirate characters have a ball that guides them and tells them what to do. Does the ball represent the Bible?

A: No, it’s God’s call. It’s just a device of beckoning, the instrument through which God reaches out and says, “Pssst. I’ve got something for you.” The danger of allegory is that everyone starts trying to find biblical characters around every turn. It’s better to look at the allegory in a simple way; otherwise you’re making stuff up.

Q: And your simple message is that everyone can be a hero?

A: Yes, and the message is also: Stop being a consumer and be a producer, because our culture is all about consumption. If you reach adulthood under the impression that the world exists to entertain you, you are going to be on the couch your whole life.

That’s not what God is telling us to do. The world is on fire. He wants us to jump in, grab a bucket, and start putting out fires.

Q: In your movie, the character symbolizing God is a bearded old white man. Do you see that as problematic?

A: Actually, he’s green; he’s a zucchini. But yes, he’s an old bearded man. I think that may be an issue for 0.7 percent of the audience.

Posted: 2/01/08

Explore the Bible Series for February 10

Do you obey in faith?

• Genesis 22:1-18

By Donald Raney

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.

It read: “I had to close the store, but all who pass by are welcome to use the well. This pump is connected to a continuously supplied source of natural underground spring water. Due to the climate, however, the pump must be primed with each use. Under the white rock to you left is a sealed bottle of water which contains enough to prime the pump but not if you drink any first. Pour about a fourth of the water slowly around top to soak the washers and then pour the rest directly under handle and pump quickly. It may take a minute, but keep pumping. The well never has run dry. When you get water, refill the bottle and put it back for the next person. Signed Desert Pete P.S. Remember, don’t drink first. Have faith and prime the pump. You will have more water than you can hold.”

If you had walked across desert for hours without water and found this, what would you do? The Christian life is a life lived by faith. Sometimes God asks us to let go of things that we think we need to hold tightly in order to more fully trust him. Abraham had such an experience with God that can teach us how to obey through faith.

When God’s call does not make sense (Genesis 22:1-2)

Imagine how Abraham must have felt and what he must have thought. He faithfully had left his father’s house with all of its security and followed God to a foreign land. He faithfully had waited 25 years for the birth of the promised child. He had already lost one son, Ishmael, who was banished from him home. And now when he was well over 100 years old, God asked him to sacrifice the life of his only son—the child through whom all of God’s promises would be fulfilled.

Why would God ask for such a sacrifice? Everything seemed to be following a logical course. Although the timing of sending the child when Abraham was advanced in age seemed out of the ordinary, now that Isaac was a growing boy, the path to the fulfillment of God’s promises seemed to be clearing. What God was asking now just did not make sense.

Today, many believers are fully committed to follow God as long as the road is smooth and the course follows a logical path. Occasionally we may even begin assuming that we know what the next step is before God leads. Then suddenly God steps in and asks us to change paths. It does not take faith to walk along a well-lit path. That is why God sometimes calls for us to take a step without illuminating the path. We must step where we cannot see where our foot will land or what we might encounter.

Abraham’s swift obedience to God’s call to sacrifice Isaac challenges us to obey in faith even when it does not make sense.

When God’s call requires work and costs (Genesis 22:3-10)

Not only did God’s call to sacrifice Isaac not make sense, it called for considerable effort on the part of Abraham. Since he knew he would be gone at least six days, he had to first arrange for the care of Sarah and his flocks. He had to explain where he was going to Sarah. He had to chop wood and gather provisions for the journey. With each task, Abraham certainly questioned God’s directions.

Then for three days as they traveled, he must have wrestled with himself and with God over what he was doing. For three days as he watched Isaac obediently following his father, Abraham must have wanted to turn back many times. Who could have blamed him? God was asking too much. Up until this point, each time God had spoken to Abraham, God’s call for Abraham to act had come with a promised reward. This time there was no such promise and we must remember that Abraham did not know this was simply a test. But Abraham proved to have a faith that persisted through the physical and emotional difficulties of the task of following God.

According to Hebrews 11:17-19, Abraham’s faith led him to believe God would fulfill his earlier promises, even if it required raising Isaac from the dead. When God calls for his followers to faithful obedience, it often requires physical and emotional effort and cost.

God rewards our faithful obedience (Genesis 22:11-18)

For many years, God had tested Abraham. Each test called for a deeper level of faith on Abraham’s part. While each of the previous tests had involved considerable effort, none had required Abraham to give up something so special to him. God knew Abraham would follow him. Now he wanted to see if Abraham could let go of all earthly attachments and fully trust God to provide.

When Abraham demonstrated his willingness to sacrifice Isaac, God responds, “Now I know that you fear God seeing that you have not withheld your son from me.” God knew Abraham’s faith had the potential to pass the test, but that potential had to be given the opportunity to be realized through testing.

Abraham’s faith passed the test, and God rewarded him. Not only does he return home with Isaac, but God reaffirms his covenant oath to greatly multiply Abraham’s descendents. God often does call us to do difficult things which require us to stretch our faith. Yet if we can summon the strength to let go of all else but God, we will find great reward.

Posted: 2/01/08

On the Move

• David Gruhn to Trinity Church in Watseka, Ill., as pastor from First Church in Palacios.

• Matt Homeyer to Fellowship Church in Marble Falls as pastor.

• James Lane to First Church in Markham as pastor.

Posted: 1/31/08

Blogger Burleson resigns
from International Mission Board

By Hannah Elliott

Associated Baptist Press

GAINESVILLE, Fla. (ABP)— Wade Burleson, the pastor/blogger who railed against what he saw as an excessive narrowing of parameters within the Southern Baptist Convention, has resigned from his position as a trustee of the SBC’s International Mission Board.

Burleson, pastor of Emmanuel Baptist Church in Enid, Okla., said he also plans to write a book “to tell everything that has not been told” about recent disputes in the denomination. He said he hopes to have it published before the SBC annual meeting in June.

His resignation came after a Jan. 29 plenary session at the board’s meeting in Gainesville, Fla. At the meeting, Burleson read a letter he had originally sent to IMB Chairman John Floyd in December. The letter was an apology for violating a rule against board members publicly criticizing IMB policies.

Burleson said the letter was a “good-faith effort” to “apologize for people being offended” and to “live at peace with everyone.” But, he said, it became clear during the meeting that the apology would not work, and he quit on the spot.

“I am resigning because I am a distraction to the work of the IMB board,” he said Jan. 30. “It was the work of last night’s letter to the IMB board to [allow me to] stop being a distraction, and it was not accepted. But I will not go away. I will continue to work to effect change in the Southern Baptist Convention.”

The resignation was not planned long in advance, Burleson said, was prompted by the events of the meeting. Soon after receiving the letter last December, Burleson said, Floyd told him it was an insufficient apology, but board leaders would present it to the full panel at the Gainesville meeting.

When the IMB executive committee did not report the letter during the Jan. 29 session, Burleson requested and was allowed to read it to the full board.

“I do admit that I have in the past intentionally violated our newly revised internal standards of conduct,” Burleson said in the letter.

“In particular, I publicly disagreed with certain actions taken by this board, rather than speaking in supportive terms or staying silent on matters about which I disagreed. … I want you to know that I never expressed my dissent out of a desire to harm the work of the IMB or any of you, my fellow trustees and brothers and sisters in Christ. Instead, I did so out of an exercise of my conscience.”

Burleson said in the letter that he wanted to get along with trustees and would “no longer violate, intentionally or otherwise, our new trustee standards of conduct. If I find myself in disagreement with a policy or proposed policy of the board, I will express my disagreement using the channels that are available—for example, plenary-forum sessions, trustee-forum sessions, and private communication with fellow trustees—but will not take my disagreement outside of those confines to the blogosphere or world at large.”

Burleson has long clashed with some of his colleagues on the board. In 2005, IMB trustees decided voted not to appoint missionary candidates who said they practice “private prayer language” or who have not received “biblical baptism.” Burleson protested, saying the board should not create doctrinal requirements for missionaries narrower than the strictures in the SBC’s Baptist Faith & Message doctrinal statement. He also wrote on his blog that some trustees should not conduct secret meetings to plan the board’s formal sessions.

Then, in January of 2006, several trustees requested that Burleson be removed from the mission board. They later rescinded their motion but placed limitations on his involvement with the board, effectively barring him from executive sessions and committee meetings. Other trustees complained Burleson had broken confidentiality agreements by blogging about IMB business.

Burleson said in the December letter that if the apology was accepted, he would shut down his blog, and if he disagreed with an IMB policy in the future, he would resign.

After allowing Burleson to read the letter Jan. 29, Burleson said, Floyd told the group the executive committee did not accept the apology. He then dismissed all non-board members to enter a closed session.

Floyd reportedly then told the board the apology was insufficient because Burleson did not apologize for violating the newer standards of trustee conduct that prohibited any public dissent of board-approved actions. Those standards were adopted in 2006, and Burleson has said he intentionally violated them by blogging about his disapproval of the new restrictions on missionaries.

“I intentionally violated that policy for a higher moral good. It is a matter of conscience for me,” he said. “I said, ‘I will always apologize for people being offended— I want to be at peace with everyone—but I cannot apologize for breaking that policy.’”

It was “the worst policy in the history of the SBC,” he added.

“The narrowing of these doctrinal parameters of cooperative mission work is dangerous to our convention and threatens our belief in the historic Baptist principles of the sufficiency of Scripture, cooperative missions, and religious liberty,” he said in his resignation letter, posted on his blog (kerussocharis.blogspot.com).

“Worse, the 2006 revised trustee standard of conduct that prohibits public dissent is unconscionable, unbaptistic, and will one day be viewed by Baptist historians as a tragic mistake.”

Burleson said he plans to spend the time he’ll gain from not participating as an IMB trustee by documenting other missteps by convention leaders.

“The point of the book is not a tell-all of the IMB, though there will be illustrations from the dangerous effects of stifling dissent, moving beyond the (Baptist Faith & Message) on doctrinal policy and attacking people who disagree,” he said. “It is a wake-up call to Southern Baptists that we better start cooperating despite our differences, or we will dry up and shrivel away as a convention.”

Burleson said he plans to tell the stories of Dwight McKissic, a Texas pastor who was censored after telling students at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in a chapel sermon that he used a “private prayer language,” and Sheri Klouda, a former Southwestern Hebrew professor who is suing the seminary for firing her because of her gender. He said he will highlight other “anecdotes, personal histories and narratives of how many people are affected by the actions of the trustees at our largest agency,” the IMB.

Burleson said he looks forward to having “a platform where I am not continually placed in a position of having to defend myself.”

“I feel really good about what happened,” he said. “It’s just the next step.”

An IMB spokesperson said on the afternoon of Jan. 30 that Floyd and other board leaders were preparing for a missionary-appointment ceremony and would not be available for comment.

Robert Marus contributed to this story.

Posted: 1/30/08

RIGHT or WRONG?
Win or reconcile?

Years ago, I was taught church members should be able to work out their differences with patience and respect. Now, most Christians seem to prefer fighting and winning to reconciliation. This is about to drive me out of my church. What can I do to “hang in there” and make a difference?

An ethic has been around a long while—the ethic of “win/win” at all cost. Business training has emphasized it. Stress-management programs have adapted it. Financial planners use it. The airwaves bombard us with advertisements from consultants, trainers and promoters who offer “win/win” solutions.

Even “prosperity gospelers” proclaim this philosophy as God’s will for our lives. No one wants to be considered a “loser.” Winning is supposed to show superior wit, good contacts and success. In religious circles, some use it to prove God’s divine favor.

Turn to God’s word for guidance to this situation.

When asked about the qualifications for entrance into God’s kingdom (Luke 10:25), Jesus began by quoting the Shema (Deuteronomy 6:4, 5): “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all our mind, and love your neighbor as yourself.” To love God means God must be first in our loyalty and obedience. No other person, philosophy or ideology is to replace God.

But God is more than a commandment. God offers us a relationship. If we are in true relationship with God, our only desire is to follow God’s leading. To love God is to love the ways of God and trust God to be always right.

The second principle Jesus affirms is to “love our neighbor as we do ourselves.” When asked about how to define “neighbor,” Jesus told the story of the man beaten by thugs and left for dead. The “true” neighbors were not those who religiously ignored him, but the man who humbled himself to serve him. “Neighbor” is an active word that expresses compassion to the next person one meets that needs it. A compassionate person puts the well-being of others next to their own. Love always must be lived out “to win.” Victory is not in getting what you want, but in living God’s love in God’s strength. We cannot “win” on our own, but God can “win” through us.

The words in 1 John 4:7, 8 and 12 also are appropriate here: “Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love. … No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God lives in us, and his love is made complete in us.”

To “hang in there,” just keep loving and showing love. Love is contagious. Love them until you love the evil out of them. It works. I am a witness. It works.

Emmanuel McCall, pastor

Fellowship Group Baptist Church, East Point, Ga.

Adjunct faculty, McAfee School of Theology,

Mercer University, Atlanta

Right or Wrong? is sponsored by the T.B. Maston Chair of Christian Ethics at Hardin-Simmons University's Logsdon School of Theology. Send your questions about how to apply your faith to btillman@hsutx.edu.

Posted: 1/30/08

Evangelism requires commitment–
even if it means holding church under a tree

By 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.

Shortly after, he was drawn to Haggard Park in Plano, where teenagers and young adults from all over the Dallas area gather to hang out. Many of them come from broken homes, battle substance-abuse issues or are sexually promiscuous.

The gathering meets on Friday nights and Sunday afternoons.

Later that summer, Evans and his three teenage daughters took a guitar, Bible and their Labrador puppy with them to the park. They worked their way through the crowd, claimed a picnic table and began singing praise songs, hoping to draw people into conversation. In the end, the puppy was the draw.

Evans and his family put down the guitar and spent the next six weeks building relationships with the young people.

“You’ve got to get in their heart,” Evans said during Engage, a Baptist General Convention of Texas-sponsored conference on evangelism. “You’ve got to become their friend. It’s relationship ministry, and that’s all it is.”

They still hang out every Friday night, but they also started meeting more formally on Sunday afternoons. They gather for lunch and transition into a time of prayer and preaching. In the beginning, attendance was lackluster at best. One or two scouts were sent to see if Evans and his group were authentic, but the more they proved themselves, the greater the response.

On a typical Sunday in recent months, dozens of young people will gather in the park for worship.

The group has become a church of its own, but a church of members who never would darken the doorstep of a traditional house of worship.

On any given Sunday afternoon, people ages 15 to 50, ranging from wealthy families to homeless youths and drug addicts gather to hear about God.

“They come here because they’ve been to a church or they’ve met church people. And when they came in all dressed in black with tattoos and piercing, no one would talk to them, and no one acted like they cared about them. But they come here because we did,” Evans said.

Evans and his group have challenged the Church Under the Tree family to seek depth in their faith. The group shares a prayer journal they call “The Book of Life,” which is passed around each Sunday for people to share or update prayer requests or what God is teaching them. Evans scans it into his computer and e-mails a file of the updated pages to supporters each week.

Accountability groups have started on Thursday nights and Saturday mornings. Evans hopes similar groups will multiply throughout the Dallas area.

“What we’re praying for are small groups that meet all over the Metroplex, and then we get together on Sunday afternoons,” Evans said.

Evans is quick to attribute the success of Church Under the Tree to God. He is just trying to do ministry the way Jesus did, by going to the places where people already are gathering.

“One hundred percent commitment to the students and to God’s word—that’s the only combination that accomplishes anything,” he said.

Posted: 1/30/08

Around the State

• East Texas Baptist University will hold “shadow days” Feb. 7-8 for high school seniors and college transfer students. The event offers visiting students an opportunity to attend classes, spend the night in the dorm, socialize with current students and meet professors. Preregistration is required, and a $15 fee must be paid. For more information, call (800) 804-3828.

• The baseball team of East Texas Baptist University will host a canned food drive Feb. 8 when it opens the season with a doubleheader against Jarvis Christian College at 4 p.m. All fans are asked to bring a minimum of two cans as their admission to the games. The drive will benefit local families.

• Dallas Baptist University will hold a preview for prospective students Feb. 9 from 8:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. Included is breakfast with current students, a Patriot rally and interaction with faculty members. Students also will tour the campus. Parents will learn about financial aid, campus life, parent services and the application process. A second preview is slated for April 26. For more information, call (214) 333-5360.

• The University of Mary Hardin-Baylor’s McLane Lecture will be held Feb. 14 at 11 a.m. in the Lord Conference Center. Kirbyjon Caldwell, pastor of Windsor Village United Meth-odist Church in Houston, will be the guest speaker. Caldwell started the church in 1982 with 25 members, and today the 14,000-member church is the largest United Methodist church in the nation. The lecture is free and open to the public.

• The Paul and Jane Meyer Family Foundation has awarded a $500,000 grant to Howard Payne University to support the university’s Faith and Learning Leadership Center. When completed, the center will provide facilities to attract a variety of leadership development seminars and workshops and serve as the foundation to the school’s commitment to Christian leadership development.

• Howard Payne University has announced that 271 students earned academic honors for the 2007 fall semester. One hundred thirteen students were named to the President’s List, 92 students were named to the Dean’s List and 66 students earned placement on the honor roll.

• Jim Wesson, chief executive officer of Valley Baptist Health Center-Harlingen, has an-nounced he will become chief operating officer and step down from the CEO position.

Events

• Woodrow Church in Covington celebrated Pastor Sam Houston’s 57th year in ministry Jan. 19. Houston will celebrate his 24th anniversary as pastor of the church May 20.

Ordained

• Aimee Hobbs, to the ministry at Broadway Church in Fort Worth.

• Christopher Keefer to the ministry at First Church in Poolville.

• Ronald Feagins to the ministry at Orchard Road Church in Lewisville.

• Kim Pond to the chaplaincy at First Church in Tulia.

• Daniel McBurney, Ricky O’Banon, Rick Skaggs and Ed Thomas as deacons at First Church in Belton.

• Robert Chadwick, Rick Crownover, Brian Hill, Clint Lewis, Jeff Mabry, David Martinez and Donnie Prater as deacons at First Church in Tulia.

Death

• L. Russ Bush III, 63, Jan. 22 in Wake Forest, N.C. He died following a two-year battle with cancer. His church service included a stint as assistant minister to senior adults at First Church in Dallas. He was a professor of philosophy of religion at Southwestern Seminary from 1973 until 1989, and was academic vice president and dean of the faculty of Southeastern Seminary from 1989 until 2006. Most recently, he was director of the L. Russ Bush Center for Faith and Culture and a distinguished professor of religion at Southeastern. He also was co-author of Baptists and the Bible—a book that was key to the so-called conservative resurgence in the Southern Baptist Convention. He is survived by his wife of 39 years, Cynthia; son, Joshua; and daughter, Bethany.

Posted: 1/30/08

2nd Opinion:
Political truth: Rhetoric or conduct?

By Randall Balmer

Eight years ago, when George W. Bush declared Jesus was his favorite philosopher, suppose someone had asked a follow-up question: “Mr. Bush, Jesus invited his followers to love their enemies and to turn the other cheek. How will that guide your foreign policy, especially in the event, say, of an attack on the United States?”

Or: “Gov. Bush, your favorite philosopher expressed concern for the tiniest sparrow. How will that sentiment be reflected in your administration’s environmental policies?”

Or: “Jesus called his followers to care for ‘the least of these.’ How does that teaching inform your views on tax policy or welfare reform?”

For the past several decades, we Americans have evinced more than passing curiosity about the religious views of our presidential candidates, and they feel obliged to talk about their faith. The news media almost invariably identify Mike Huckabee as a former Baptist minister and report Mitt Romney is a Mormon.

So, too, with the Democratic candidates. They show up in churches on Sunday morning in an apparent effort to demonstrate they are people of faith.

But a review of the last 40-plus years suggests a candidate’s apparent piety finds scant expression in his comportment as president. There’s little evidence to suggest John F. Kennedy, the nation’s first—and still the only—Roman Catholic to serve as president, inflected his faith into his administration’s policies. Ronald Reagan insisted abortion was the defining moral issue of his time and campaigned twice promising to outlaw it. Yet, as even his supporters now acknowledge, he made no serious effort to outlaw abortion.

On the other hand, no one could accuse Lyndon Johnson of being a demonstrably pious or religious man. Yet he learned—and sought to live by—a simple maxim he attributed to his mother: The strong have an obligation to look after the weak. That principle led him, a white Southerner, to push for civil rights, and it also animated his quest for the Great Society. Tragically, Johnson used the same principle to justify American involvement in Vietnam.

Billy Graham detected vast reservoirs of faith and piety in his friend Richard Nixon, who hosted worship services in the White House. Probity, however, is not the first word that comes to mind in recalling the Nixon administration. And Bill Clinton’s many critics would be justified in pointing out the disconnect between his professions of faith and his conduct in the Oval Office.

Arguably, the only exception to this litany proves the rule.

Jimmy Carter ran for office promising a government as “good and decent as the American people” and pledging never to “knowingly lie.” After he sought actually to govern according to his moral principles—revising the Pana-ma Canal treaties, seeking peace in the Middle East—the American people denied him a second term.

Does a candidate’s declaration of faith provide any indication of how she or he would govern as president? The past half century suggests strongly the answer is no.

We Americans think of ourselves as a religious people, so it shouldn’t be a surprise when politicians clamor to speak the language of faith. Those affirmations turn out to be, more often than not, shallow and perfunctory.

But placing the blame on the candidates misses the point. We the voters settle for shallow, perfunctory bromides about faith and piety. We allow candidates to lull us into believing they are moral and virtuous simply because they say they are.

At the very least, we should question whether those claims reflect any real substance. Do the principles the candidates purport to affirm find any expression whatsoever in their policies? Jesus, for example, instructed his followers to welcome the stranger in their midst; how would that affect a Christian candidate’s views on immigration?

If we’re not willing to probe the depth and the sincerity of politicians’ declarations of faith, then we shouldn’t bother to ask the question. The history of the past half century suggests a president’s conduct in office bears little resemblance to his campaign rhetoric.

Randall Balmer is professor of American religious history at Barnard College at Columbia University and a visiting professor at Yale Divinity School. His most recent book is God in the White House: A History: How Faith Shaped the Presidency From John F. Kennedy to George W. Bush. His column is distributed by Religion News Service.

Posted: 1/30/08

DOWN HOME:
Talk about your gridiron miracle

This 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.

Folks down in Houston, embroiled in a quarterback controversy, entered the season in the best frame of mind—no expectations. Nobody ever went on Sports Center or any of the pigskin prognosticators’ programs guessing the Texans had a chance of going “all the way.”

Up in Dallas, when the season started, nobody but maybe Jerry Jones dreamed of Super Bowl victories for the Cowboys.

Then things got all fouled up. The Cowboys played great. We got our hopes up. Not good.

Through most of the season, young Tony Romo could do no wrong. The center hikes the ball over his head. Looks like a long loss. No worries. The ball bounces right into hands. He scrambles around and throws for a first down.

Other Cowboys played extremely well, too. Like Terrell Owens, known recently as an aging complainer, who had a career year. Same for tight end Jason Witten, and running back Marion Barber, and a bunch of guys on the line and on defense whose names you wouldn’t know unless you read the fine print in the sports section.

So, we all started thinking about how fine we’d look wearing our Super Bowl XLII caps.

Ironically—for the Cowboys, at least—the NFL requires teams to actually play games before they declare a winner. And so, when the Giants flew down to Texas Stadium for the second round of the playoffs, the Cowboys crawled out (and it really, really hurts to admit this) losers.

How the mighty have fallen. No world championship parade snaking through the streets of downtown Dallas. No Super Bowl XLII caps.

That’s not how it’s supposed to be. Here’s a perfect sports world: Every year, the Cowboys win the Super Bowl, the Astros win the World Series, the Mavericks win the NBA championship.

And—for evangelistic purposes and the good of global missions—the Baylor Bears win the NCAA Bowl Championship Series national championship. This would prove several things:

• Yes, there is a God.

• Miracles still happen.

• Jesus is a Baptist.

• He still loves Texas Baptists.

–Marv Knox

Posted: 1/30/08

EDITORIAL:
The BGCT’s opportunity for success

Like 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.

A search committee has nominated Randel Everett, pastor of First Baptist Church in Newport News, Va., and a former Texan, to be the next executive director. The Executive Board will vote on this recommendation Feb. 24-25. (By way of disclosure, I should note I was nominated for the position. I always considered myself the longest shot imaginable.)

Not surprisingly, the bloggers already have begun to weigh in on their assessment of Everett’s fitness for the task. No doubt, coffee-shop debaters will follow along. But the decision is not theirs to make.

That’s the Executive Board’s job. It’s especially crucial, because Everett has been gone from Texas for so long, and we don’t know him well. The board must study Everett’s resume, examine his history and leadership style, listen to the search committee’s rationale for recommending him and analyze his responses to the many questions board members will ask him. Then, they must evaluate all they know. They must determine if his training, experience, skills, character and spiritual demeanor add up to the right fit for Texas Baptists.

If the board elects Everett, Texas Baptists’ responsibility will be to lift him up in prayer. Encourage him to provide leadership for all the BGCT. Tell him our aspirations for what our convention can and must be if we are to fulfill our mandate to succeed in “evangelism, missions, Christian education and benevolent work and enterprises.”

We need our next executive director to succeed so that our convention has a chance for success.

Marv Knox is editor of the Baptist Standard.