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Texas Tidbits
Posted: 1/05/07
Texas Tidbits
CLC hires staff attorney. The Baptist General Convention of Texas has named Stephen Reeves staff attorney for the Texas Baptist Christian Life Commission. Reeves previously worked with the Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty, where he served as counsel- in-residence and then staff attorney. He also served as a CLC legislative aide from October 2003 to August 2004. He also has served as youth minister at Ravensworth Baptist Church in Annandale, Va. Reeves earned his law degree at Texas Tech University after completing his undergraduate degree at the University of Texas at Austin.
African-American ministries director named. Charles Singleton, founding pastor of First Missionary Baptist Church in Fort Worth, has been named director of African-American ministries for the Baptist General Convention of Texas. He assumed his new post Jan. 1. During Singleton’s 22-year tenure at First Missionary Baptist, the congregation started Southeast Hispanic Baptist Church, fostered an extensive youth outreach ministry and founded Miller Avenue Christian Academy, an academic and spiritual ministry to children 2 years old through second grade. Before he founded First Missionary Baptist, Singleton was pastor of Antioch Baptist Church of Fort Worth from 1981 to 1984. Singleton is president of the Tarrant Baptist Association Pastor’s Conference, and he has held numerous other offices with that organization, including moderator in 2004. He was a founding member of the African American Fellowship, and he served on the BGCT Executive Board from 2002 to 2006, the BGCT mission funding committee since 2001 and as a BGCT field representative in Tarrant County for African-American ministries since 1998. Singleton is a graduate of Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Fort Worth.
01/04/2007 - By John Rutledge
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TOGETHER: 2007: The emphasis is on missions
Posted: 1/05/07
TOGETHER:
2007: The emphasis is on missionsAs followers of Jesus Christ, we face an important question: How do we build a disciple in the 21st century?
One way you build a disciple today is by involving him or her in missions. There was a time not too long ago when missions meant sending out a person with an extraordinary call to serve across the seas in some isolated setting. Today, missions is for all of us.
Career missionaries still are important, but thanks to advances in technology and communications, more believers can be involved in missions at home and abroad.
Executive Director
BGCT Executive Board
The Atlantic and Pacific oceans are no longer great barriers. We no longer are isolated. Everything is global. Every country touches every other country, and every culture rubs up against every other culture. Missions is at the door of every church, and members in every church are connected daily with points around the world.
01/04/2007 - By John Rutledge
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CYBER COLUMN by John Duncan: Grandmother’s simple faith
Posted: 1/05/07
CYBER COLUMN:
Grandmother’s simple faithBy John Duncan
I’m sitting here under the old oak tree, anticipating the year to come. I announced to my youngest daughter on the first of January: “No New Year’s resolutions this year! I am not making any New Year’s resolutions!” I am not sure why I spoke such words. Maybe because I am weary of resolutions. Maybe because I fear I might break a resolution. Maybe because I am bored with the same old resolutions that people make—the diet, debt and discipline resolutions people set as goals every year.
John Duncan Did you know 41.3 million Americans belong to health clubs and that number increases with the resolve to diet and lose weight in a new year? Did you know the average American has credit card debt of approximately $5,000 and a new year yields a pledge to dig out of debt? Did you know Americans aim for discipline with their new resolutions? They shoot for better education or to stop drinking alcohol or to stop smoking or overeating or consuming caffeine. All in all, I think all such resolutions are wise, often necessary, especially if the diet, digging out of debt and adding discipline contribute to a higher quality of life. However, one life coach, whatever that is, noted, “Most people abandon their goals in the first 30 days.”
01/04/2007 - By John Rutledge
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Seminary president urges neighboring pastor to resign
Posted: 1/05/07
Seminary president urges
neighboring pastor to resignBy Hannah Elliott
Associated Baptist Press
CORDOVA, Tenn. (ABP)—The president of Mid-America Baptist Theological Seminary called for the senior pastor at one of the largest Southern Baptist congregations in the United States to resign.
Michael Spradlin, who leads the seminary situated across the street from Bellevue Baptist Church in suburban Memphis, said Steve Gaines should relinquish the church’s pastorate because of his deliberate silence about sex-abuse allegations against a Bellevue minister.
01/04/2007 - By John Rutledge
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Church’s flexibility helps in encounter with Hispanic seekers
Posted: 1/03/07
Church's flexibility helps in
encounter with Hispanic seekersBy George Henson
Staff Writer
WAXAHACHIE—Encounter may not have had Spanish-speaking Hispanics as its target audience, but now that a couple of dozen attend, the congregation is excited at the opportunity God has given for ministry.
Encounter exists for three types of people. The church’s website, encounterthis.com, says: “Those who have walked away from church because they have been ‘burned’ in some way. Their hurts have driven them from church, but not necessarily from God. Two, those who have grown bored with other expressions of church. They have stopped experiencing the reality of Christ in the music, message format and hunger for something more. And, three, those who are far from God.”
Encounter's Pastor Brian Treadaway 01/03/2007 - By John Rutledge
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Students provide family with extreme home makeover
Posted: 1/03/07
Max Blood, 15, felt moved by family's condition and wanted to volunteer his time to help out. "I just hope that they like it and are able to enjoy it," he said. Students provide family
with extreme home makeoverBy Jenny Pope
Buckner International
DALLAS—When Onequa Washington, 31, was laid off from her job of 13 years in early September, the first thing she thought about was Christmas.
“I always try to teach my children that it’s just a blessing to be together at Christmas,” said Washington, a single mother of three boys. “But with the little ones, it’s so hard for them to understand.”
01/03/2007 - By John Rutledge
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letters_10603
Posted: 10/6/03
TEXAS BAPTIST FORUM:
Change the subjectEnough about Baylor! There were at least six pages worth of “information” on the Baylor controversies in the Sept. 22 edition.
E-mail the editor at marvknox@baptiststandard.com
God is doing more in Texas than most people are aware. Please seek out and focus on successful ministries around the state instead of perpetuating the controversies by publicizing them, and publicizing them and publicizing them.
01/02/2007 - By John Rutledge
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Movie’s themes experienced by church that produced it
Posted: 12/29/06
Facing the Giants, a film made by Sherwood Baptist Church of Albany, Ga., has played to audiences in more than a million people in 650 theaters and is now available on DVD. Movie’s themes experienced
by church that produced itBy George Henson
Staff Writer
ALBANY, Ga.—“Nothing is impossible with God” is a recurring theme throughout Facing the Giants, a feature-length independent movie created by Sherwood Baptist Church.
Now the same theme is evident in the life of the church, where leaders plan to use proceeds from the movie’s upcoming release on DVD to fund a sports outreach facility.
12/29/2006 - By John Rutledge
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Texas Baptist Men seek to provide pure Water of Life
Posted: 12/29/06
Texas Baptist Men seek
to provide pure Water of LifeBy Barbara Bedrick
Texas Baptist Communications
ZACATECAS, Mexico—Many children in villages throughout much of the Mexican state of Zacatecas cannot drink water without swallowing arsenic and heavy metals. But Texas Baptist Men volunteers are seeking to correct that problem, one community at a time through their Agua de Vida—Water of Life—project.
Texas Baptist Men volunteers test and purify water in Zacatecas, Mexico. The men’s work in Mexico is saving the lives of people whose only source of drinking water was contaminated. Much of the water supply in central Mexico contains heavy levels of arsenic. Thousands of indigenous people live with this danger, but children are the most vulnerable because their immune systems are not fully developed. Toxins in the water can cause skin lesions, cancer, neurological damage and even death.
12/29/2006 - By John Rutledge
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UMHB student adds German flavor to Texas Christmas
Posted: 12/29/06
University of Mary Hardin-Baylor international student Kim Jobke stands between her American mother and sister decorating their Christmas tree while her host father looks on. UMHB student adds German
flavor to Texas ChristmasBy Jennifer Sicking
University of Mary Hardin-Baylor
TEMPLE—Kim Jobke knows about celebrating Christmas with her American host family. She should. The German native, an international student at the University of Mary Hardin-Baylor, has celebrated with them for five years.
In Berlin, where her parents live, they open presents on Christmas Eve.
12/29/2006 - By John Rutledge
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Volunteer builders ramp up efforts to assist the disabled
Posted: 12/29/06
Volunteer builders ramp up
efforts to assist the disabledBy George Henson
Staff Writer
PARIS—Mike Bradley and his band of volunteers enjoy building wheelchair ramps to help homebound people escape houses in which they feel imprisoned due to disability. And the builders hope the ramps become highways to heaven for some people.
Immanuel Baptist Church’s ramp-building ministry first came to mind through a study of the New Testament story of a man lowered through the roof by his friends so he might meet Jesus, Bradley noted.
Volunteers from Immanuel Baptist Church in Paris seek to offer homebound local residents freedom by building wheelchair ramps for their houses. 12/29/2006 - By John Rutledge
