Posted: 7/06/07

Women in ministry report
highlights progress & obstacles

By Robert Marus

Associated Baptist Press

WASHINGTON (ABP)—Moderate and progressive Baptists continue to grow in their theoretical support for women as pastors, but their churches remain far behind in practice. That’s one conclusion from the second annual “State of Women in Baptist Life” report, releasedby Baptist Women in Ministry.

Authors Pam Durso and Eileen Campbell-Reed released the report at the organization’s annual meeting, held in conjunction with the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship general assembly in Washington.

The authors used a wide variety of data to estimate that as many as 1,825 women have been ordained to the gospel ministry by churches of Southern Baptist heritage or that grew out of controversies in the Southern Baptist Convention.

That figure has grown substantially since 1997, when Baptist sociologist Sarah Frances Anders first estimated that more than 1,200 Baptist women were ordained in the South.

However, the report found, only about 600 women serve as senior pastors of Baptist churches in the United States, and most are American Baptist, Durso noted.

Durso said Baptist Women in Ministry had identified only 117 women serving as senior pastors of congregations of Southern Baptist heritage. And, she added, “Some of those are just recently discovered by our research”—not necessarily reflecting an overall increase in the numbers of senior pastors.

The report estimated that, “at best, 6.2 percent of Cooperative Baptist Fellowship churches and 9.1 percent of American Baptist Churches USA churches are pastored by women.”

Durso also noted that women “don’t fare as well (as men) in executive positions … in Baptist agencies.”

Those figures, Campbell-Reed said, showed that, “Despite some marginal increases, women are still not making dramatic advances. So, we wanted to check out attitudes.”

To do that, the authors devised a non-scientific online survey aimed at Baptist Women in Ministry supporters and others in moderate Baptist churches.

Campbell-Reid said 1,464 people responded to the survey. She and Durso compared its results to earlier, scientific surveys about societal attitudes toward women, beginning with a 1970 Harris poll.

The results showed dramatic increases in support for women in ministry. Even among respondents who said their churches’ primary identity was with the Southern Baptist Convention, about 80 percent supported women’s ordination.

In comparison, the study noted, a 1977 poll showed 80 percent of respondents disapproved of female ministers.

“Support and attitude is high, and yet practical reality remains very low,” Campbell-Reed said.

Baptist Women in Ministry officials have instituted several new programs and events to help raise congregations’ comfort level with the idea of having a woman in the pulpit. Rachel Gunter Shapard, the organization’s outgoing coordinator, said the group would make an annual tradition of its Martha Stearns Marshall Day of Preaching.

The event—named for an early Baptist woman preacher—will take place annually on the first Sunday in February, Shapard said. In it, congregations invite a woman to preach in morning worship services. Last year, 55 churches participated, and Shapard said they hope for more this year.

The group has also started an official registry of Baptist women who are working as pastors or in other professional ministerial roles, Durso noted. Records and statistics for female ministers in Baptist life are difficult to get because of the panoply of Baptist organizations and the lack of any central denominational or educational agency that keeps statistics on Baptists of Southern heritage.

The registry includes pastors and other females in ministerial roles who are not ordained, Durso said. As of May 10, 617 women had registered.

“We have a lot of work to do to get the word out about this registry,” she said. It is accessible on the organization’s website, www.bwim.info.

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Posted: 7/06/07

Historian urges ‘true Baptists’
to reclaim prophetic role

By Robert Marus

Associated Baptist Press

WASHINGTON (ABP)—One of the most prominent historians of American evangelicalism called on “true Baptists” to re-assert their prophetic role “as watchmen on the wall of separation between church and state.”

Randall Ballmer, a history professor at Columbia University, told more than 550 supporters of the Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty that many of America’s Baptists, in recent decades, have “lost their way.”

“They have been seduced by leaders of the Religious Right into thinking that the way to advance the gospel in this country is to abandon Baptist principles,” he said.

Among the examples he listed were former Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore, a Southern Baptist. Moore’s controversial decision to place a massive monument to the Protestant translation of the Ten Commandments at the center of the rotunda in the Alabama Supreme Court building ultimately cost him his job, but it also made him a folk hero among many of the nation’s conservative Christians.

Moore argued that his oath to defend the United States and Alabama constitutions required him to “acknowledge God” as “the source of law” by creating the monument.

“Why not post the Decalogue in public places? Because, quite simply, it trivializes the faith and makes the Ten Commandments into a fetish,” Ballmer said. “What Roy Moore was peddling was idolatry, pure and simple—a conflation of the gospel with the American political order.”

Ballmer also assailed Baptists who have, he argued, so aligned themselves with political movements, they have diminished their ability to call the very officials they helped elect to moral account.

“The identification of the Religious Right with the Republican Party has deprived the faith of its prophetic voice. Where are the Baptist voices of conscience decrying this administration’s immoral war in Iraq, the relentless assault on civil liberties and the abomination of torture?” he said.

“In too many cases, the answer is that those voices have been co-opted by the promise—often the mirage—of access to political power,” he said. He added, referring to President Bush’s chief political adviser, “It is hard to escape the conclusion that the Religious Right has abandoned the faith for a conference call with Karl Rove in return.”

Ballmer argued that Baptists who oppose such entanglements between religion and government need to bring their wayward brethren back into the fold.

“Every true Baptist understands that any attempt to baptize the faith with the imprimatur of the state … ultimately diminishes the integrity of the faith,” Ballmer said. “I’m asking Baptists to reaffirm their heritage. I’m asking them to rededicate themselves to the importance of liberty of conscience. Baptists were once a minority themselves, so they should know better than most the importance of protecting the rights of minorities, religious and otherwise.”

The speech came during the 17th annual meeting of the BJC’s Religious Liberty Council, held in conjunction with the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship General Assembly and the American Baptist Churches USA Biennial in Washington.

The council is comprised of the individual donors who contribute to BJC, a Washington-based advocacy group supported by CBF, ABC and all of the nation’s other large Baptist denominations except for the Southern Baptist Convention.

The council re-elected its three officers to second one-year terms. Co-chairs are Hal Bass, a professor at Ouachita Baptist University in Arkadelphia, Ark., and a member of First Baptist Church of Arkadelphia; and Cynthia Holmes, a St. Louis attorney and member of Overland Baptist Church in Overland, Mo. Henry Green, pastor of Heritage Baptist Church in Annapolis, Md., was re-elected as secretary.

Posted: 7/06/07

CBF panelists urge Baptists
to see ‘humanity’ of AIDS crisis

By Jennifer Harris

Missouri Word & Way

WASHINGTON (ABP)—AIDS asks one question: Are you human? That’s what Genie Hargrove told participants in a Cooperative Baptist Fellowship panel discussion on HIV/AIDS. Churches must see the humanity behind the crisis, she said.

Hargrove, pastor of Beulah Baptist Church in Devereux, Ga., said she gained that perspective when she saw the AIDS memorial quilt. The quilt, an ongoing community art project, is a series of 12-foot “blocks” made of three-foot-by-eight-foot panels. Each panel memorializes the life of someone who died of AIDS.

“This panel is a person,” Hargrove said. “We need to go into the world and let people see this is a human thing. They are all people—God’s children.”

Hargrove emphasizes that her church is in a small town, but a lack of resources hasn’t stopped the church from being active in the lives of those with HIV/AIDS. The church supports various organizations financially, including the Samaritan Ministry, based in Tennessee. The church also provides phone cards to a local prison when prisoners with HIV/AIDS are released. The phone cards allow people to reconnect with their families or secure a job.

“It is simple but necessary,” she said.

Mike Bergman, worship pastor at Hope Community Church in Belton, said his local HIV/AIDS support center was skeptical of his church’s interest. At the time, no other churches had provided help.

After consistent urging, his new church, with a total of 40 members, produced 26 people interested in beginning a pals program, a one-on-one connection between a member of the church and a person with HIV/AIDS. At this point, only 3 clients are part of the program.

Support center personnel “have been reserved about pushing it because they weren’t sure how the church would handle it,” Bergman said.

Bergman’s interest in HIV/AIDS ministry began a year ago at CBF’s HIV/AIDS summit. While a woman introduced as “Ann” was speaking, Bergman felt an urge to give her a hug. According to Bergman, this is an unusual experience for him. “I’m a hugger of people I know, but I never hug strangers,” he said.

Ann left the session early, but Bergman ran into her again during a panel discussion the next day. He tried to talk himself out of approaching her, assuming others would want to talk to her. But after the panel, he approached her and asked if he could give her a hug.

During the hug, he broke into tears. “It was the first time I knowingly touched someone who had AIDS,” he said. “It was like getting over a fear I didn’t know I had.”

Karen Estle never planned to do HIV ministry. “The good Lord had different plans,” she said. Estle works on a palliative care team for a hospital in Indianapolis. Palliative care is a service to help individuals and families deal with a terminal disease before hospice care is necessary.

Estle began seeing a need for HIV ministry while working at the Baptist center. She started an HIV group but noticed the “Baptist” sign kept people away. With some encouragement, she moved the group to a local 24-unit housing building full of people with HIV/AIDS.

Instead of limiting religious discussion, the move actually increased the conversation. People began asking to meet with her one-on-one, so she decided to attend seminary.

“I’ve had people tell me ‘I never understood unconditional love, but you’ve kept coming. I know what unconditional love is because you never gave up,’” she said.

Estle began inviting her church to help. A women’s group holds dinner once a week. The church also sponsors monthly birthday parties, where each person is given a gift from the dollar store. For some of these people, this gift is the only thing they receive.

Posted: 7/06/07

Baptist sex-traffic mission worker
urges others to ‘show up’ for ministry

By Marv Knox

Editor

WASHINGTON (ABP)—The key to ministry in Jesus’ name—even in difficult and dangerous places—is to “show up,” Lauran Bethell told participants in the William H. Whitsitt Baptist Heritage Society annual meeting.

Bethell, an American Baptist missionary who has spent most of her adult life ministering to and rescuing women from prostitution and sexual trafficking, received the Whitsitt Society’s annual Courage Award. The group met during the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship general assembly in Washington, June 28.

“I don’t feel very courageous. … The word ‘fool’ describes it,” Bethell said as she accepted the award. “I did not ever plan or prepare to be hanging out with prostitutes and to be involved in trafficking.”

But she became burdened for the physical and spiritual needs of prostitutes when she moved to Thailand for missionary language school more than 20 yeas ago, she recalled. There, Bethell first saw, then met, young women who worked as prostitutes. She learned many of them were victims of sexual trafficking. Some literally were sold as sexual slaves.

Others were tricked into the trade when they accepted what they thought were respectable jobs and moved far from their homes, only to find they had no escape. Still others sold their bodies as the only way to support their families.

“I was unprepared to encounter this. It’s unrealistic,” Bethell acknowledged. “But I knew I wasn’t going to be happy in this country without helping these women, who were sacrificing themselves for their mothers, fathers, brothers and sisters, and sometimes even their own children.”

At first, she felt all alone in her calling. “The church response to this issue was silence,” she recalled. So, she prayed, expressing her shock and anger to God.

Six weeks later, fellow missionaries told her they were starting a ministry to rural Thai women who were leaving the countryside for big-city brothels. Although Bethell had “no qualifications, no training, no funding,” the call changed her life and, ultimately, the lives of many others. “I knew in that moment why I was in that country,” she said.

They started New Life Center in Chiang Mai, Thailand. Although Bethell was the director, she said tribal women from Thailand primarily staffed the center. “These women were smart, fun, incredible—my guides,” she reported.

They listened to girls who came looking for work to support their families and wound up in prostitution. They sought to meet the women’s most pressing needs by providing education and vocational training.

Within a few years, five Christian groups were operating ministries to Thai women trapped in the country’s notorious sex trade. And then the media wanted to know about the “sexy story.” Eventually, the government started to get embarrassed about people being trafficked, being forced into prostitution across borders.

“This was God’s moment to reach the darkest places—constant and unrelenting abuse,” Bethell said.

Later, Bethell became a full-time consultant, traveling the globe to help groups of Christians who want to minister to victims of sexual trafficking. She lives at the International Baptist Theological Seminary in Prague, Czech Republic. Although she travels often, she also leads a ministry to prostitutes in Prague, many of whom are young Eastern European women who have been trafficked into the sex trade, trapped far from home.

When the ministry started, Bethell and seminary students encountered 30 to 40 prostitutes on the streets. They sat with the women in the smoky bars, sipping coffee and soft drinks and, at the prostitutes’ request, singing Gypsy praise music, while pornography played on the television and other prostitutes turned tricks in the bathrooms.

In time, two bars that were the center of significant prostitution closed down, and the number of prostitutes has diminished.

Bethell credited prayer as the key to ministry, noting she and her Christian friends prayed for a year before they went out into the streets of Prague. “What we have felt most profoundly is we are called to pray. So we go out every week and pray,” she said. Even after years of ministry to prostitutes, Bethell sees “no formulas or models; every situation, city or country is different.”

Lest they get too comfortable, Bethell reminded the Whitsitt audience that the United States is not immune to sex trafficking, noting 15,000 to 20,000 people are trafficked into the United States each year. “Most end up in prostitution,” she lamented.

The lesson Bethell has learned through her ministry is simple, she said.

“Doing new things doesn’t mean we have to have all knowledge first. We have to show up,” she said. “God takes control and does surprising things. …We don’t have to do God’s work. We just have to show up. God will do God’s work.”

The Whitsitt Society is named for William Whitsitt, president and church history professor at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in the late 1800s. He was hounded from office after he proposed that Baptists could not trace their lineage in unbroken succession all the way back to the first century church and Jesus. Eventually, all reputable church historians backed Whitsitt’s view.

Bethell is the 16th recipient of the society’s Courage Award.

Posted: 7/03/07

CBF considers UN campaign
to fight poverty, hunger & disease

By Greg Warner & Matt Kennedy

Associated Baptist Press

WASHINGTON (ABP)—The Cooperative Baptist Fellowship at its general assembly took the first step toward joining the United Nations’ campaign against global poverty and disease, called the Millennium Development goals.

In a break from business-as-usual during the Fellowship’s national meeting, participants voted overwhelmingly to instruct their governing body to consider ways CBF can join other Christian groups to reach the United Nations’ Millennium Development goals.

The Fellowship’s Coordinating Council will spend the next year investigating “the feasibility and means by which CBF might be involved” with other religious and non-governmental groups rallying behind the U.N.’s long-term and comprehensive campaign to eradicate hunger, poverty, AIDS, and crushing Third World debt.

Colleen Burroughs of Birmingham, Ala., executive vice president of the mission-focused Passport Camps and founder of the development project Watering Malawi, introduced the motion from the floor of the assembly.

Motions from the floor of the assembly rarely result in action. Often they are referred to the Coordinating Council, the 68-member representative body that meets three times a year. Virtually all business in the 17-year-old Fellowship is funneled through the Coordinating Council. The Fellowship’s bylaws disallow resolutions and discourage debate during the plenary sessions.

But CBF Moderator Emmanuel McCall referred Burroughs’ motion to a business breakout session, where it quickly garnered the support of other participants, including CBF missions and programming staffers.

The eight Millennium Development Goals, intended to eradicate extreme global poverty by 2015, are:

• Reduce by half extreme poverty and hunger.

• Achieve universal primary education.

• Promote gender equality and empower women.

• Reduce child mortality by two-thirds.

• Reduce maternal mortality by three-fourths.

• Reverse the spread of HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases.

• Ensure environmental sustainability.

• Develop a global partnership for development.

Council leaders declined to consider the Millennium Development goals prior to the assembly, deferring instead to the CBF’s partner organizations that deal with public policy and global ministry.

Meanwhile, many other Christian denominational groups have endorsed the U.N. goals since they were introduced in 2000, among them American Baptists, United Methodists, Evangelical Lutherans, Church of the Brethren, the Episcopal Church and the Mennonite Central Committee.

CBF of Virginia also voted to allocate half of the “emerging opportunities” line item in their budget for the development goals. That initial allocation was $5,000, totaling $2,500 to the U.N. goals. The Virginia group also collected an offering of $2,400 that went toward providing water in Malawi, which Virginia leaders also counted toward the development goals.

During the breakout session, supporters argued for asking the general assembly to act.

“I understand why you don’t want people popping up and making resolutions on every issue under the sun,” said David Breckenridge, pastor of Rivermont Avenue Baptist Church in Lynchburg, Va. “But, that being said, I wonder if we overreacted just a bit. Maybe we have some procedures that are so ironclad that it makes it very tough to act decisively in a timely manner.”

Others said endorsing the goals does not commit the Fellowship to rearranging its ministry strategy.

Harriet Harral, CBF’s incoming moderator from Fort Worth, said the Fellowship is already engaged in addressing some of the U.N.’s concerns.

“CBF is already doing a number of things that are consistent with these goals—for example, our involvement with Christian Churches Together to confront issues of hunger and families in need,” Harral said. It also includes “our work with Together with Hope and Buckner International.”

Rather than referring Burroughs’ motion to the council, most breakout participants favored asking the full general assembly to act on it.

“I don’t think we have to wait for the Coordinating council to take that action,” said Jack Glasgow, CBF moderator-elect and a pastor from Zebulon, N.C. “I’m really in favor of this motion because it’s doing more than just asking for endorsements. It is also asking for action.”

Breakout participants, who are empowered to make a recommendation to the general assembly, amended the motion to “instruct” rather than “request” the Coordinating Council to consider a response to the U.N.’s goals.

The motion was presented to the general assembly June 29 and approved without opposition.

Posted: 7/01/07

CBF leaders endorse New Baptist Covenant

By Greg Warner

Associated Baptist Press

WASHINGTON, D.C. (ABP)—Leaders of the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship endorsed the New Baptist Covenant June 27, saying the mission of the diverse Covenant coalition is consistent with the Fellowship’s core values.

The New Baptist Covenant, launched by former president and Baptist layman Jimmy Carter last April, is a broad-based initiative to improve the image of Baptists in North America and unite the majority of those Baptists across racial lines into a loose-knit network committed to the gospel message of Jesus and to addressing social ills.

The six-paragraph CBF statement was adopted without opposition by the Coordinating Council, the Fellowship’s top decision-making body, June 27, one day prior to the Fellowship’s annual general assembly. The council also approved a budget 3.3 percent smaller than the current spending plan.

Covenant program chairman Jimmy Allen of Big Canoe, Ga., urged people gathered for the general assembly’s opening session to participate in the inaugural Covenant event Jan. 30-Feb. 1, which organizers hope will draw 20,000 people to Atlanta and launch an unprecedented ministry collaboration among the famously independent-minded Baptists.

Allen called the January event “the most significant meeting (Baptists) have had in a hundred years.” Baptists have eschewed such broad-based cooperation since before the Civil War, historians have noted.

The Coordinating Council statement said, “It is hard to imagine any development among Baptists more consistent with the spirit, ideals and core values of the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship than the creation of the New Baptist Covenant.”

Paraphrasing the Covenant mission statement, the Coordinating Council said: “Our Fellowship desires to bring persons and congregations together for Christ-centered ministry. We strive to be a catalyst for renewal among the body of Christ. We seek to be the presence of Christ in ministry with the poorest and most neglected persons. We attempt to be a voice that champions historic Baptist principles of freedom and liberty.’

“How marvelous is the opportunity before us—to carry out our deepest sense of mission in covenant with a diverse group of North American Baptists,” it concluded.

So far, 40 Baptist denominations and organizations in the United States and Canada have indicated a willingness to participate in the Covenant. The organizations, which include most of the Baptist denominations in North America except the Southern Baptist Convention, encompass about 20 million Baptists.

That’s more than the 16 million members claimed by the SBC, the largest Baptist group in the world. SBC leaders, who have moved sharply to the political and theological right in the last 25 years, have already cut off relations with most of the Covenant organizations and criticized the Carter initiative as a political effort.

Although the January meeting boasts some of the United States’ most prominent Baptist politicians as speakers—including Carter and former President Bill Clinton—organizers insist it is a non-partisan and apolitical event to inspire gospel-based ministry.

The Coordinating Council statement was written by Jack Glasgow, pastor of Zebulon Baptist Church in Zebulon, N.C. Glasgow is expected to be voted in as Fellowship moderator-elect June 29, which puts him next in line for the Fellowship’s top elected office. In that capacity, he will lead both the council and the larger Fellowship body.

Current moderator Emmanuel McCall, a seminary professor and pastor in the Atlanta area, is the first African-American to serve in that role. He will be succeeded this year by Harriet Harral, an organizational consultant from Fort Worth, and then Glasgow.

The Washington meeting of the Fellowship is historic also because it is the first joint meeting of CBF and the American Baptist Churches, USA, The groups will hold a combined worship service June 29, in which they will commission their first jointly appointed missionaries.

In his report to the council, Executive Coordinator Daniel Vestal, CBF’s chief executive, celebrated the growth of the Fellowship’s ministry partnerships, particularly internationally. “These Baptist bodies around the world want to work with us, not because they want money; they just want to be treated with respect, treated as brothers and sisters,” he said.

He cited five “challenges” CBF faces: 1) “codifying” those partnerships, 2) “strategic prioritizing” of CBF’s many ministries and partnerships, 3) reviving slumping contributions and fund-raising, 4) enhancing Web-based communications, and 5) increasing collaboration with CBF’s partners and state affiliates.

The council approved a $16,481,000 budget for 2007-08 that is a 3.3 percent reduction from the current budget of $17,050,000. The proposed budget, which still requires approval of the general assembly June 29, cuts funding for most ministry areas, including global missions.

Only two ministry areas receive increases: “faith formation,” primarily for spiritual and “missional-church” training for congregational leaders, and “building community,” primarily for Hispanic church-planting and networking among Christian educators. Most traditional partner organizations receive cuts in the proposed budget.

Vestal said he is “not happy with” the organization’s current revenues and warned that making additional cuts in CBF spending would require difficult choices.

In concluding his report, Vestal said his primary concern is communicating the gospel of Jesus. “There are still a billion people in this world who have no access to the gospel,” he said. “… My heart yearns to see people come to faith in Christ.”

Posted: 7/01/07

CBF moderator McCall says God’s
covenant gives Christians responsibility

By Marv Knox

Editor

WASHINGTON (ABP)—God’s covenant with Christians “places the responsibility for being the presence of Christ squarely on our shoulders,” Emmanuel McCall told participants at the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship general assembly June 28.

God is a covenant-keeping God, insisted McCall, the Fellowship’s moderator and pastor of The Fellowship Baptist Group in suburban Atlanta. He cited several covenants recorded in the Old Testament but stressed God sealed the “new covenant”—God’s most precious pact—with the life and atoning death of Jesus.

Since the nature of covenants calls for mutual accountability as well as mutual rewards and benefits, God’s new covenant places demands upon Christians, McCall added.

“Our part in the covenant is our repentance for our sins and a commitment to follow Jesus’ way of living,” he explained. “A changed, new way of living is called for on our part. On God’s part, it is the covenant of life beyond life for all eternity.”

That’s why this covenant places high demands upon those who accept it, he said.

“God’s new covenant has no room for excuses, no room for blaming others, no harboring resentments for past mistakes or failures,” he declared. “Unlike the covenant of old, it is not etched in stone. … It was placed in fluid, living vessels, in the hearts and minds of transformed people.

“Transformed people are God’s work through his Holy Spirit. We are transformed, not for the sake of transformation, but to be the very presence of Christ in this world.”

The Fellowship is familiar with covenants, McCall observed. He cited covenants with affiliated seminaries, institutions, and state and regional organizations, as well as Christian Churches Together, a coalition of 36 Catholic, Orthodox, Evangelical, Protestant and Pentecostal denominations. In addition, the Fellowship is one of the principle organizations involved in the New Baptist Covenant, which is pulling together numerous Baptist organizations representing about 20 million Christians.

But keeping the most significant covenant—God’s new covenant —means the Fellowship will be “the presence of Christ in this world,” he repeated, echoing the general assembly’s theme, “Free to be the Presence of Christ.”

“Because we are his presence, people will come to know the Lord,” McCall maintained. “Not by gimmicks. Not by rules and regulations. Not by manipulations. Not by schemes and crafty advertisements. Not by sleight of hand or trickery of spirit. But they shall come to know the Lord. … No human sociological boundary will separate us from the love of God through Christ Jesus our Lord.”

The Fellowship fulfills its covenant with God in three key areas, he said:

• “We are evangelizing by loving people into a relationship with God,” he said. “We are evangelizing by dealing with the needs people have, which if not addressed, will obscure our message.”

These needs include “challenging unjust situations — the disparities and inequities of life,” he explained.

Acknowledging some people dismiss that task by claiming it’s “just social action,” McCall begged to differ. “It is far more than that,” he stressed, pointing to the Gospels. Challenging injustice and inequity is “just what Jesus did,” he said. “Can we dare do less?”

• “We are … loving the unloveable, those who have been marred by life,” he reported. “There are people marred by addictions of all kinds,” he insisted, citing not only alcohol and chemicals, but ego, arrogance, loneliness and “spiritual snobbery” as sources of addiction.

The Fellowship’s task is to “find people out of covenant with God,” whose bodies or souls are disfigured by their sin, and to bring them back into covenant with God, he said.

• “We are fulfilling God’s covenant when we reach out to teach, to nurture, to develop, train or to support those who are involved in these ministries,” McCall added.

“Covenant people take seriously the Great Commission of our Lord. We are not only to preach and proclaim, but to help in spiritual formation, to aid in the development of the mind, spirit, heart or however you prefer to refer to the inner being.

“People are not just souls to become the objects of evangelists’ head-counting. Every person is a person made in God’s image and likeness. We must ourselves strive to be the presence of Christ and to help others also become like Christ.”

Although keeping the covenant is not easy, the Fellowship doesn’t have to advance under its own strength, McCall reminded.

“Christ-bearing is a daunting task,” he said. But “we have not been called to a Royal Caribbean cruise into eternity. No, despite the prosperity garbage, Jesus calls us to take up a cross and to follow him.

“Even though we take up a cross, he does not leave us to bear it alone. He promises his presence. … We can trust him to see us through, even the most difficult crises of life and the challenges of servanthood.”

Posted: 6/29/07

Rockwall prayer advocate
feels drawn to West Africa

By Jesse Lyautey

International Mission Board

DAKAR, Senegal—Each summer for the past eight years, Lance Bedford has walked the beaches of Africa’s westernmost point.

He watches his step to avoid sharp objects, trash or fish heads thrown from the boats lining the beach after the day’s haul. But Bedford really watches the people, the Lebou fisherman of Senegal, and prays they will have an openness to hear the gospel. They are the reason he returns, year after year.

Cal MaCintire (left) and Lance Bedford (center) prepare a meal for Lebou believers during a worship gathering.

“I felt drawn to it here,” Bedford said. “There is something about when I am here. I feel the presence of God.”

There wasn’t a missionary working among the Lebou during his first visit. So, he went home and started praying.

The next year, Bedford returned with a group from Lake Pointe Church in Rockwall to run a dental clinic. He continued to pray for a permanent worker among the people.

By the time he returned in 2000, God had answered his prayers by sending Cal and Patty McIntire to serve as full-time missionaries among the Lebou.

But Bedford knew he wasn’t done with the Lebou people. God had called him, too.

As the McIntires started their work among the Lebou, they needed prayer—and a lot of it. Bedford was the natural choice to become the Lebou team’s stateside prayer advocate.

As a prayer advocate, Bedford recruits individuals, churches, associations, and organizations to pray for the Lebou people. “I started getting all the people I could think of to pray for them,” Bedford says. “I make every effort to get more people to pray for the Lebou.”

The Lebou prayer team is more than 6,000 people strong.

Another part of his job is to send out resource CDs to volunteer teams with “all you need to know about West Africa.”

He also meets once a month with other Lake Pointe members who have visited the Lebou people to pray they will hear the gospel and believe.

“I have seen results among the Lebou because of prayer and God,” Bedford said.

Two more missionary couples have joined the McIntires in Senegal. In 2006, Bedford saw the first church worship together and read the Bible in their own language.

All the Lebou Christians recognize Bedford—the man with the bushy, grayish-white beard wrapped around a huge, warm smile. They know he has a heart for them and always is carrying a camera. He takes pictures of the Lebou people to send out so Americans can put a face with the prayer requests—anything to help people pray.

His dream is to see all the Lebou come to Christ, start churches all along the coast of Senegal and become missionaries to the other people groups around them.

“Someone drew me a picture one time of Cal (McIntire) fishing with the fishermen,” Bedford said. “All the fish swimming in the ocean had the names of other people groups in Senegal. The Lebou were fishing for other people groups.”

Read more about the Lebou people at www.fabulousfishtales.blogspot.com.

Posted: 6/29/07

After years of decline, West Africa
missions picks up momentum

By Shawn Hendricks

International Mission Board

RICHMOND, Va. (BP)—The image was as clear as a photograph.

Several years ago, Dorothea Lee was sitting on a tour bus with her college choir group when she had a vision of an African boy. She blinked and turned her head, but she couldn’t shake the image. She prayed, “Lord, what does this mean?”

“And God told me, ‘You will go,’” said Lee, a new Southern Baptist missionary.

Flash forward to last year. As Lee and her husband, Jason, were deciding where they would serve, the International Mission Board began a yearlong focus on West Africa—regional summits at churches, bulletins, brochures, magazine articles and other promotional materials.

Several years ago, Dorothea Lee saw a vision of an African boy. She said that vision, along with the International Mission Board’s yearlong emphasis on West Africa, helped lead her family to the mission field.

 “What the West Africa emphasis did for us is clarify the needs,” Jason Lee said. The emphasis “put in the forefront, not only for us, but others across the denomination to be praying for this region. And, I know it (clarified) where God wanted us to go.”

The Lees, members of First Baptist Church of Highlands, go to West Africa this summer to help start churches among a Muslim people group with no access to the gospel. They were one of three couples appointed by the International Mission Board to the region in March and are part of an emerging trend in a once-struggling region.

In the late ’90s, the number of missionaries in West Africa took a freefall, tumbling from 400 to 250. Regional leader Randy Arnett describes the number of outreach groups as “an embarrassment.”

“When we first started talking about an emphasis, West Africa was in a sorry shape,” Arnett said. “Things weren’t going real well.”

West Africa regional leadership hoped the yearlong emphasis would help turn things around.

“Things are changing,” he added. As of last fall, the number of personnel had risen 11 percent—the largest percentage increase since the region began tracking that number in 1997. The region expects to appoint more missionaries—eight couples and three singles—this year than in the last three years combined.

“The response has been phenomenal,” said Roger Haun, West Africa’s regional associate.

“We’ve been very pleased by the number of Southern Baptists who have responded. It’s been beyond our wildest expectations.”

Other highlights include:

• 20 churches have signed on as “engaging churches,” or what is sometimes referred to as a “strategy coordinator churches.”  These churches accept the responsibility of adopting an unreached people group and developing a strategy to start churches among them. Before the emphasis, the region didn’t have any engaging churches.

• More than 120 other churches have made some type of commitment to help missionary work in the region.

• The number of prayer partners for the region has leapt from about 100,000, reported two years ago, to 400,000 today.

“I realize so much of the results have really been founded in prayer,” Arnett said. “I believe we can see a direct correlation between the increasing numbers of people praying for West Africa and the results we are seeing.”

• The number of new outreach groups and responses to the gospel also has risen in the last 12 months and “pockets of believers” are emerging.

“We are seeing pockets of response like we have never seen before,” Arnett said. “Not just one or two here and there, but 15 over here and 20 over here and 30 over here and here’s a dozen over here.

“When you hear about 12 Muslim women coming up to a volunteer team and saying, ‘We want to receive Jesus,’ that’s cause for celebration. That kind of stuff has not happened in the past.”

But West Africa still has a long way to go.

More missionaries are needed in this vast region that continues to explode with growth. In Nigeria, only one couple is working among the Hausa, a people group of 28 million.

West Africa also needs more single male missionaries. Right now, there are 47 single women missionaries working in the region, compared to three men.

God is “opening the doors of opportunity for witness” for the women, Arnett said. “This … is a tribute to their courage, to their stamina, to their dedication, to their strength of character.”

The region remains optimistic that great things are on the horizon for West Africa.

“Our people, our missionaries, they are bolder today than they’ve been before,” he says. “And we’re seeing results. There is momentum.”

Posted: 6/29/07

Vernon church combines work
and worship, putting faith in action

By Barbara Bedrick

Texas Baptist Communications

VERNON—As a former church organist, Gwendolyn Wolf has played her favorite hymn—“Blest Be the Tie That Binds”—hundreds of times, but it resonates in her heart more deeply now. She says she’s been touched by the willingness of First Baptist Church in Vernon to put its faith into action.

A month ago, Wolf sat on her old front porch, worrying the rotten wood planks would collapse under the weight of her wheelchair. Those days are gone, and she’s admiring the fresh coat of paint on the porch floor.

“It means a lot … ever since I been here I’ve been trying to fix the floor of this porch,” Wolf said.

Members of First Baptist Church in Vernon worship on “Faith in Action” Sunday by working. This group installed a new tin roof while others built a front porch, painted houses and mowed yards.

 Armed with hammers, nails and new lumber, five members of First Baptist Church in Vernon rebuilt her porch. Several women finished the painting. Wolf is so grateful she urged them to stop by, saying she would be glad “to play their favorite hymns.”

Wolf’s porch project was part of Faith in Action Sunday, when 370 First Baptist Church members worked all over Vernon. The day of labor culminated a four-week Bible study and sermon emphasis on serving other people.

When other congregations gathered for worship, hundreds of First Baptist members cleaned up yards for the disabled and elderly, installed a new tin roof and did construction projects for others and carted off dozens of trailer loads of brush to dump sites.

At the same time, other church members led worship services at eight sites, and about 70 members visited more than 200 homes. Backyard Bible clubs reached more than 150 children—none of whom were going to church on Sunday. Church leaders discovered about 80 prospect families who weren’t attending church, so they anticipate growth through baptism.

“The greatest blessing was seeing the church involved in missions and ministry on a large scale,” said Pastor Ben Macklin. “A sense of amazement was left with people leaving that Sunday evening worship service that had been filled with testimonies of God’s work through our efforts.”

So many times, Macklin added, “preachers preach and teachers teach, and only a few people put their Christianity to practical application in ministry.”

Faith in Action Sunday allowed the church to bring together young and old, mature Christian and new believer, into a collective mission experience that Macklin believes will have a long lasting impact on First Baptist Church. Doing the ministry on a Sunday was important, he added.

“We proved our faith today. We sent a message to Vernon that was far louder than words; we put our faith in action,” Macklin said.

Church member Pat Luttrell emphasized the mission was “bathed in prayer” since its inception. Church bulletins illustrated a prayer guide, and a prayer room was designated where people could pray in one-hour commitments for Faith in Action Sunday. Team members even enlisted inactive members and unchurched friends to participate.

Thirty-eight members prayed throughout the day for the mission effort, volunteers prepared meals for teams, groups held worship services in nursing homes and more than a dozen people helped with children’s activities.

“It was an incredible experience from Day One, Luttrell said. “It opened our eyes to the needs of the community and helped us see things we couldn’t have if we hadn’t done Faith in Action,” Luttrell said. “It opened the eyes of church members to see what they needed to be doing … that as individuals we need to put faith in action every day.”

Now that members have seen the needs for ministry from direct contact, church leaders believe they will realize there are endless possibilities to do kingdom-oriented work.

“Rather than doing missions work by proxy through the mission boards, Faith In Action helps us start a missionary perspective right outside our door and makes foreign missions something we can do as an extension of our local efforts,” Macklin said.

“The day is dawning when missions returns to the fabric of who we are as Baptists, and perhaps the sun is setting on the mentality that missions is something we write a check to support professionals to do in our stead.”

Joyce and Don Maroney are grateful First Baptist reached out to touch their lives. Maroney recently learned he has cancer, suffered several strokes and then overheated while working in the yard and was taken by ambulance to the hospital. His wife couldn’t take care of the yard work, and to top it off, their son is headed back to Kosovo.

First Baptist came to her rescue on Faith in Action Sunday. Mrs. Maroney broke down in tears as she talked about how their ministry made an impact on her.

“There used to be a little song, a love song, about ‘my cup runneth over with love,’ and that kind of expresses it,” she said.

Posted: 6/29/07

For 60 years: ‘Get in touch
with God. Turn your radio on’

By George Henson

Staff Writer

SULPHUR SPRINGS—The radio Bible class from First Baptist Church in Sulphur Springs recently marked 60 years on the air, teaching a weekly Sunday school lesson to listeners throughout Northeast Texas.

The church first broadcasted its worship service on KSST radio in 1947. A group of laymen in the congregation were so excited about the venture that one week later, the “Busy Men’s Class” decided to go on the air, as well.

Shortly thereafter, another men’s class wanted to also broadcast their lessons, but since they both met at the same time, there was a conflict. In short order, they worked out a deal where the classes would alternate Sundays on the air. Each class paid the $12.24 required for the airtime on their Sunday. Every class member donated a quarter—a sum later increased to $1.

The classes later merged into one department, but they each retained their identities.

Charlie Charles, a class president for a time, said the broadcast has not missed a single Sunday in 60 years.

One Sunday decades ago, an ice storm was so severe that the church cancelled worship services. The church had tapes of past Sundays on hand in case of emergencies such as this, but the radio Bible class had not a similar provision. Charles and the teacher for the week met at the church, and the pair made sure that their faithful listeners still got their weekly dose of Bible study.

The class still has many faithful listeners within the bandwidth’s reach. “That class reaches out to so many people,” Charles said. “I visit so many nursing homes on Saturday mornings, and those people look forward to seeing me and talking about the broadcasts.”

John Sharber, one of the three teachers currently rotating for the Sunday morning broadcasts, concurred. “We minister to the people who are sick, those who can’t go to church and sit in a pew for an hour, and those who can’t come for any number of reasons,” he said.

Since 2005, the class also has broadcasted on local cable television. The class bought all the equipment necessary for the broadcast, and at that time the church began paying for the airtime. Until that time, the class had paid all its own expenses.

Charles and Gordon Ford, director of the class more than 20 years, say that while those involved are serious about the broadcasts, it is not a polished production.

“There’s no practice, so mistakes are made,” Gordon admitted.

“But I think that’s why people like to watch and listen—they know nothing is staged,” Charles added.

The class—which once drew up to 100—now numbers about 40, and that includes wives, who were allowed to join about five years ago. Some who used to attend are now listeners, but they retained the desire to keep the ministry going.

“Some are not able to come anymore because of health reasons, but they send money up here to support the ministry,” Gordon said.

The ministry is a reflection of that desire to reach out, he added.

“This church is sort of unusual. It’s 150 years old, and all through that time, it’s been blessed financially, been blessed with leadership and with talent, and it’s been very mission-minded. And I think that mission-mindedness is why it’s been blessed the way it has,” he said.

For as long as anyone can remember, “Every Day with Jesus” has been the class theme song, and it is sung every Sunday.

“We sing old songs, and people still like those,” Sharber said.

“It’s amazing the people you see around town that can’t wait ’til that broadcast comes on on Sunday,” he said.

The television broadcast added a new element to things, he added.

“Some waited for years to see the people they had been listening to for so many years,” Sharber said.

Buel Berry, a teacher in the class for 24 years, concurred that the class gave the class and church a wider scope than they could have imagined. When he helped with the census in 1990 and 2000, he recalled knocking on a door and starting to introduce himself, only to be stopped in mid-sentence with: “I know who you are; I listen to you every Sunday.”

Berry also knew of dairy farmers who had radios tuned to the class each week so that their milkers still heard Bible teaching.

Now many of the dairies have closed, but a trip to a restaurant is often met with “I listened to you on Sunday,” many times from people who attend other churches.

“That’s what makes this class keep on keeping on,” Sharber said. “People need encouragement and hope, and they find it in that radio or TV broadcast.”

Posted: 6/29/07

Grown-up MK renews French connection

By Rebekah Hardage

Communications Intern

CARROLLTON—Stephen Marshall’s life has been filled with one French connection after another.

Marshall grew up as a child of missionaries to France, and he married a French woman.

But just when he thought his time living in France were behind him, God opened doors for him to become a church planter in the land of his youth.

Marshall, a staff member at Trinity Valley Baptist Church in Carrollton, will relocate to France by the end of this year along with his wife, Sabrina, who is expecting their second child, and their son Alexi. Next January, he hopes to launch a multi-cultural church in Lyon as Trinity Valley’s staff missionary to France.

Stephen and Sabrina Marshall,along with their son, Alexi, will relocate to France later this year. Marshall will serve as staff missionary for Trinity Valley Baptist Church in Carrollton and help start a multi-cultural congregation in Lyon.

Marshall joined the Trinity Valley staff as children’s minister about three years ago while he was attending Dallas Theological Seminary. His responsibilities have since expanded to youth.

Trinity Valley had planned to plant a church in Vancouver, Canada, through an established partnership with the Denton Baptist Association, but those plans began to fizzle.

After sending seven members to France in January, the church became convinced a church plant there was what God had planned. Marshall knew it too. “God just confirmed that this is what he wanted us to do,” he said. But he had to overcome some serious reservations.

“I didn’t want to go back, because I know what it’s going to take, and I didn’t think I could make it,” Marshall said.

Evangelicals in France make up only 1 percent of the French population of 60 million, he noted. Muslims, in comparison, represent about 8 percent of the population.

Christians of any stripe are the minority in France. Marshall’s wife, Sabrina, is the only Christian in her family, he pointed out.

Growing up the child of missionaries to France, Marshall has seen countless missionaries move overseas, learn the language and culture, and then give up and come home after just a few years.

But Marshall and his wife have made a lifetime commitment to mission work in France. Missionaries—particularly in a non-Christian culture like France—first must build trust with the people they are working with so they can be sure “you’re not just another cult,” he said. If missionaries will build relationships, after years of trust and teaching, many people will come to know God, he added.

Though the work will be challenging, Marshall knows he is not alone. Since he and his family decided to move to France, they have received prayer and financial support from Denton Baptist Association.

Gary Loudermilk, executive director of the association, explained, “We discussed the idea of having more of a global presence and thought this was a good opportunity to explore that avenue a little more in depth.”

The association offered Marshall financial support, as well as a chance to network through other churches. Loudermilk also hopes in the future, the association will be able to send mission teams to work with Marshall and his family.

Marshall and his family will seek to start an intentionally multi-cultural congregation in Lyon. France is filled with people from North Africa, Vietnam, Cambodia and China, as well as an abundance of Eastern Europeans, and “we hope that the beauty of the gospel will transcend all of these cultures.”

Marshall and his wife are both fluent in French and familiar with the culture, so they won’t experience the shock most missionaries do when they first arrive overseas. After his arrival, Marshall will begin to take a class to help him improve his writing, especially in respect to legal documentation.

Trinity Valley Pastor David Bird feels confident France was the right place for Marshall and his family to serve. “Everywhere we turn around we find another French connection,” he said.

For example, the Trinity Valley youth met a 16-year-old French exchange student who was attending summer camp with a Houston church. Marshall was able to lead the young man to faith in Christ. They have kept in touch, and Marshall has contacted churches in the young man’s hometown so they can continue to minister to him after he returns home next month.

As he and his family prepare to move to France, Marshall is praying for the lives he hopes the church plant will be able to touch.

He also is praying for the country as a whole. The newly elected French President Nicolas Sarkozy met with French evangelicals—a historic first. Marshall prays the meeting signals a positive relationship between evangelicals and the French government.

Marshall is also praying for his family. He realizes his children may be the only ones in their school from a strong Christian home, and he prays they will stand firm. “They will be bombarded with opinions and theories, and I pray that they will be able to see the truth through that.”