Posted: 11/17/06

Church not immune from family violence

By Mike Midkiff

East Texas Baptist University

DALLAS—Domestic violence is the “elephant in the room that nobody wants to see,” Joanna Berry, director of counseling and family ministry at South Texas Children’s Home told a Texas Baptist workshop.

“I am positive that in my church, there are victims of family violence sitting in the pews on Sunday morning,” Berry said during a Baptist General Convention of Texas annual meeting workshop.

“Family violence occurs across all religions, races, cultures and socio-economic levels.”

Berry, who deals with victims of family violence frequently, encourages churches to discuss and develop a crisis intervention plan for domestic violence.

“The church is uniquely positioned to make a difference. The church can speak to the spiritual applications, because the church has resources and the trust and respect of victims who will come seeking help,” she said.

Many women stay in a marriage because they have been taught “God hates divorce” and have said vows, “for better or worse.”

“I encourage preachers to preach on the second part of Malachi 2:16,” Berry said. “The second part of the verse states, ‘I hate a man’s covering himself with violence as well as with his garment, says the Lord Almighty.’”

Suggestions Berry, a li-censed counselor, offered were:

• Train church staff members and leaders to help the abused.

• Provide literature on do-mestic abuse and available resources.

• Place information about family violence in the women’s restroom or a women’s Bible study classroom.

• Offer pre-marital counseling in which abuse is defined and condemned.

• Protect the children. “If children are involved, it is imperative for the mother to leave the abusive situation,” she said. “I see in counseling the damage that is done when the child becomes an adult.”

Posted: 11/17/06

Preaching must change to
communicate with culture

By Craig Bird

Baptist Child & Family Services

DALLAS—Culture is changing and, consequently, preaching must change as well, pulpiteer Joel Gregory told a Texas Baptist gathering.

Gregory, professor of preaching at Baylor University’s Truett Seminary, reminded participants at his workshop during the Baptist General Convention of Texas annual meeting that they had a tool never available to preachers before this generation.

He urged them to use Internet search engines as they strive to preach life-changing sermons amid a “seismic cultural shift” from the rational and linear modern age to the postmodern era.

“Nobody seems to be able to agree on a single definition of what postmodernism is, but overwhelmingly there is consensus that we are past the modern age where there were rules that applied to everybody,” Gregory pointed out.

“The way people think and process information and evaluate truth claims has changed. For the first time in 1,600 years, every level of authority in culture is under challenge—and that includes the authority of the pastor.”

Preaching to younger generations requires pastors to take a different approach than they may have in the past, Gregory said.

“People who study such things say that the typical adult today cannot follow a sustained thought or argument for more than three or four minutes, and I concur from my own experiences,” he said.

“When I preach, the over-40 crowds pretty much stay with me. But the 20-somethings tune out pretty quickly. They are text messaging each other there in the pews.

“Most of us come to the pulpit to get something said, but the reality today is that we must concentrate on getting something heard. And those are two different things. We can wind up throwing theological Frisbees over the heads of the congregation.

“If we don’t connect with them emotionally, as well as intellectually, we won’t be heard.”

Gregory insisted the solution is not, as some suggest, to abandon preaching “truth directly related to specific biblical themes” or deny that “a great number of things have changed dramatically in the lives of the people we preach to that makes the former methods of preaching unsuccessful.”

That’s where Internet search engines come in.

“At the touch of a computer keyboard, you have millions of pieces of lived experiences at your command that you can use to point out how the scriptural truth makes sense today,” Gregory said.

“Learn to use it, and if you don’t know how, announce that you want someone to teach you, and you’ll get plenty of volunteers.”

Gregory said for most of his 42-year career as a preacher, he agreed with John Stott’s position that “the proclaimer” should stand precisely halfway between the “then-ness of the text and the relevance of that text to those hearing it.”

But now he is convinced preaching must be much closer to the present—near to how the truth of Scripture is applicable to the listeners’ situation.

“The authority of a preacher begins with the exegesis of the text. If you don’t understand what it meant the day it was written, you have no chance of understanding what it means today. But we can’t stop there,” he said.

“The ‘bridge’ is telling vivid, crisp, fresh and credible narrative experiences of living people whose experiences illustrate the truth of our text.

“What we must accept is that there is no such thing as a meta-narrative anymore, which is a fancy way of saying everyone isn’t living the same story. When I grew up, everybody around me understood the world the same way. But that is no longer true.”

To that end, he encouraged “making a journey of discovery through the text with the congregation to a definite point.”

Gregory made eight suggestions about biblical preaching today:

• Get over the idea that authority is ceded on a preacher because of education, ordination, reputation or position.

• Remember that truth is proclaimed in community, not to a gaggle of Lone Ranger independents.

• Preaching needs to be more than verb parsing, noun declining and theological-term spouting pontification.

• Preaching needs to be transformative in addition to being informative.

• Preaching needs to include more lived experiences of faith.

• Preaching may be less linear but not non-linear or without form.

• Preaching still needs unity—preaching about one big idea.

• Inductive and narrative does not mean disunified and incoherent.

Posted: 11/17/06

Texas Baptists urged to
launch world missions offering

By Marv Knox

Editor

DALLAS—The Baptist General Convention of Texas must take five significant steps, which include launching its own world missions offering, if it hopes to preserve Baptist identity and advance God’s kingdom, Ken Hall told participants at the Texas Baptists Committed breakfast during the BGCT annual meeting Nov. 14.

“We stand today in a decision time for what it means to be Baptist,” insisted Hall, president of Buckner International and a former BGCT president.

Hall’s solutions for charting Texas Baptists’ course into the future clustered around expanding missions and ministries, cooperating with a broader range of Christians and taking specific steps to sustain the endeavors.

Texas Baptists’ problem does not originate in the battle with fundamentalism, which dominated their convention for the past 30 years and split the convention eight years ago, Hall said. Rather, the problem stems from lack of vision, which has produced uncertainty among “our best and brightest” and diminished enthusiasm among pastors.

“Those who fought back the fundamentalist terrorists of the past 30 years don’t seem to have a clear vision of what Baptists should be at the dawn of this new millennium,” he said.

Five “distractions and complicators” cloud vision and impede progress, he said. They include:

• Success orientation. The problem is not so much with the so-called prosperity gospel promoted by TV preachers, but “Baptists seem to believe that something must be successful to be of God,” he observed. “We see it in our church structures and in the denomination itself, with numbers often times taking precedence over doing things the right way. …

“One of the reasons we have a hard time helping people see that our work is meaningful is because we want them to see us as successful, rather than faithful.”

• Party affiliation. Baptists divide over everything from political parties, to hot-button issues such as faith-based initiatives, to worship styles, Hall said.

“Perhaps one of the reasons we have a hard time identifying what it means to be a Baptist is because we’ve blurred the lines on those kinds of issues and have forgotten what our basic principles are as free-minded followers of Christ,” he lamented. “Conformity has never been a standard for what it means to be a Baptist.”

• American nationalistic orientation. U.S. Baptists promote their viewpoints “as if Americans were the choice people of God,” he said. “It is arrogant beyond all measure to assume because we are an American and a Texan, that God must love us more than he loves other people.

“It is nonbiblical to believe that God blesses people based on their nationalistic viewpoints. … One of the reasons it is hard to recruit thinking people to be a part of us in this era is because we have decided that we are right and the rest of the world is just trying to catch up with us.”

• Media mentality. Baptists often worry about how secular and religious media will interpret them, and they take their identity cues from pollsters, Hall declared.

“Jesus gave us the standard for who we are when he stated unequivocally that we are to seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness before anything can be added to us,” he said. “The media mindset causes us to focus on public opinion rather than the scriptural admonition to seek the mind of Christ.”

• Lack of justice. “It troubles me greatly to state that there are over 140 million orphans in the world, and Baptists are doing a woefully inadequate job of serving them,” he acknowledged. “At a time when millions upon millions of people are dying, we Baptists argue about things that are seldom going to extend the kingdom’s outreach to hurting people.”

Part of the problem is Baptists “study things so long that by the time we get through studying it and talking about it, thousands of more people have died. … People don’t have time for us to work out our issues.”

Also, Baptists spend billions of dollars on themselves but give a relative pittance to others.

“Maybe one of the reasons we are not growing and we are not attracting people is because God has taken his hand off of us,” he surmised. “God loves those who ‘do justice and love mercy.’”

Looking forward, Hall proposed five steps Texas Baptists must take if they hope to advance God’s kingdom:

• Intentional missions. Professing he believes in the “cooperative missions enterprise,” Hall charged: “We have allowed the idea of mission boards, missions think-tanks and mission-sending agencies to overshadow the simple role of going into the world and serving others in Jesus’ name.”

Often, Baptists have communicated that laypeople are only expected to support missionaries and support denominational mission activities, he said.

“We should be talking to people about how they can personally be invested in the mission enterprise,” he added. “We as Texas Baptists must decide the world needs what we have in Jesus Christ today. Rather than promote systems, strategies and plans, we need to actually be doing the work of Jesus.

“If we get focused on missions as a people, those who agree with our theology and polity but are having a hard time identifying with us will come along and be a part of the team as we engage the world for Jesus.”

• Associate with Christians driven by vision. This means disassociating from divisive, harmful and mean-spirited individuals or groups, as well as mediocre enterprises, Hall said.

“We need to look for leaders, churches and ministry outlets that believe they have been placed on this earth because God has a role for them to play in the lives of people—everywhere,” he noted. “Cooperation is a mutual effort where all parties involved give their best and are willing to sacrifice for the good of everyone involved in the effort.”

• Celebrate inclusion. Similarly, Baptists should work with and among other people “who are not just like us,” he said. “It is a God thing for us to be marked by inclusion of age, gender, ethnicity, perspective, resource and history.”

“If our beloved denomination is going to make a difference in the 21st century, we are going to have to reflect the world in which we live,” he added. “For us to be what God wants us to be, we are going to have to understand that there are people in our churches and in our fellowship we call Texas Baptists who are different. … Every one of the people who participate within the Baptist family has an equal voice.”

• Fund ministries that extend the kingdom. “We must fund ministries that ‘get it’ and do it,” Hall asserted. “In this time when people expect full disclosure, we cannot find ourselves funding programs or ministries that are mediocre at best.

“We must decide as we look at our budgets, as we look at our allocations within those budgets: What are we doing to make sure God’s work is marching forward at a rapid pace? We should prioritize our expenditures so that everyone in need of the gospel today can hear the message of Christ and receive the touch that comes from the family of God. We have to ask hard, difficult, piercing questions in our churches, as a denomination and of each of us who individually sit in the pew: Are we giving to things that matter?”

• Create sustainable systems. “If we are going to claim a kingdom moment as Texas Baptists, we need to create systems that can adapt to an ever-changing world,” he said.

“God has already given us all the resources we need to do anything we can dream of in extending the kingdom of God,” he added, citing the BGCT’s universities, hospitals and human welfare ministries.

But the BGCT must not only project a vision but also set high standards for itself, he insisted.

“The rest of the world recognizes Texas Baptists have great resources, and yet too often, we allow our own lack of vision to stymie our ability to impact society,” Hall said. “Our current denominational structure often finds itself having to average down to the lowest common denominator rather than toward the greatest expansion of opportunities that we have.

“Why? Internally, we create competition rather than cooperation. Too often, it’s an ‘us’ versus ‘them’ mentality that keeps us from doing the things God wants us to do.” Texas Baptists can’t wait to resolve their problems and capitalize on their opportunities, Hall insisted, citing millions of people in need, exorbitant dropout rates among Hispanic youth, confusing immigration policies and 38,552 confirmed cases of child abuse in Texas last year.

One answer is for the BGCT to promote a Texas Baptist Missions Offering that would “engage the world,” he said, noting last year Texas Baptist churches contributed more than $15.3 million to the Southern Baptist Conven-tion’s two missions offerings.

“My question for you and your church: Is that the best way you should have spent that money?” he asked. A broad-based Texas Baptist Missions Offering would benefit not only Texas but also the world, Hall added. And an offering to raise “a huge sum of money, let’s say $100 million” to ensure educating Texas youth, meeting human need and engaging culture in the midst of pain would fire the imagination and engage Texas Baptist churches, he predicted.

“I call our Texas Baptist family to be bold. Let’s create a Texas Baptist Missions Offering that storms the gates of hell,” he said. “Our Lord has given us resources in abundance, and for us to not boldly invest in his kingdom priorities is to be an unfaithful servant. I challenge you: Let’s do it.”

Posted: 11/17/06

Internet ministry can help
churches expand their reach

By Blake Killingsworth

Dallas Baptist University

DALLAS—Many churches’ publishing ministry gave way to tape ministry, which gave way to television ministry. Will it now give way to Internet ministry?

During the 2006 Baptist General Convention of Texas annual meeting, the web broadcasting team from South Main Baptist Church in Houston gave a do-it-yourself workshop of how to build a “worship webcast.”

A pioneer in this new ministry delivery method, South Main provides live webcasting as well as archived services, Bible studies and special events such as youth retreats, baby dedications and conferences.

“Think about your potential audience,” suggested Wallie Kronzer, producer/director of the South Main broadcast ministry. From homebound church members to missionaries to families across the nation and the globe, the Internet provides an almost limitless ability to share a church’s ministry with the world.

Kronzer illustrated the potential of the medium by telling about the mother of a church pianist who tunes in once a month from thousands of miles away to hear her child play.

Churches that want to set up an Internet ministry would not have to sacrifice much to get something running, he said.

“You will need to spend some money, but you don’t need to spend Cadillac dollars,” Kronzer said.

In fact, a system can cost as little as $4,000. All that is needed is a standard video camera, a capable computer, an Internet connection and committed people to put the plan in place, he noted.

With a little trial and error, the whole service can be web-available, posing a new problem: If everyone watches it online, are they having church? As one audience member joked, “What about the offering?”

Not to worry, Kronzer replied. Online giving and stewardship programs provide a solution for this potentially tricky area.

Posted: 11/17/06

Kids Hope USA mentors make a difference

By Jenny Pope

Buckner International

DALLAS—One child in five lives in poverty. One in three lacks a significant father figure, and children without a father figure are twice as likely to drop out of school, said Scott Waller, director of program development for Buckner Children & Family Services and Kids Hope USA liaison.

Poverty, poor education and lack of parental involvement clearly are linked to crime. In fact, two states currently look to third-grade reading-level scores to determine the future number of prison cells.

Kids Hope USA, in cooperation with Buckner Children and Family Services, is a church-based initiative where churches “can make a profound impact in the lives of at-risk children if they would mobilize their members to form one-on-one relationships with children in neighborhood schools,” he said.

The ministry model is based on church members spending one hour a week with one elementary school child for a year.

“The only way to a child’s brain is through the heart,” Waller said, noting children are “hard-wired to connect” and cannot learn when their brains are constantly in the fight-or-flight mode caused by an unstable home life.

“I know that nobody in here needs more programs,” he said during a Baptist General Convention of Texas annual meeting workshop. “But this isn’t about the BGCT or Buckner or Kids Hope USA. This is about the transcendent issue of children needing God’s love.”

Kids Hope USA began as a 1995 research project that proved schools were searching for help from mentors who in turn help reduce emotional, behavioral and academic problems in children and promote self-esteem. The greatest resource for this kind of love was the local church.

More than 400 churches participate in the Kids Hope USA program in 27 states.

What makes the Kids Hope model unique, Waller said, is that the church owns and operates the program and ultimately determines how successful it can be. Although the church must respect church/state separation issues on campus, they can invite the children and their families to participate in church events.

“Teachers say that they see a noticeable difference in the attitude and behavior of these children in two weeks,” he said. “That’s just two, one-hour visits. It’s almost hard to believe that it’s that simple.

“Faithful mentoring transforms lives, and that’s what we, as Christians, are all about.”

Posted: 11/17/06

Missions workshop offers tips

By Craig Bird

Baptist Child & Family Services

DALLAS—There is no shortage of mission trip opportunities for church groups; the difficulty is in determining where to go and why, a workshop leader told Texas Baptists.

Dearing Garner, executive director for Africa for Children’s Emergency Relief International, led a breakout session on “Give Your Congregation a Mission—Choose a Place in the World and Go” during the Baptist General Convention of Texas annual meeting.

“God is very specific that we are to share his word with everyone, everywhere,” Garner said. “But we all know that some mission trips leave folks with a bad taste for missions because they are poorly organized and poorly focused. We don’t want that to happen to your church.”

The first and most important issue is determining where God is calling, he said. While that involves praying and listening, it also includes matching the talents of the group members with the needs of the target country, he explained.

Garner urged churches to investigate carefully who is leading the trip they are considering and, if possible, send one or two people on an advance trip.

The three basic types of short-term mission trips—direct evangelism, humanitarian and prayer-walking—offer distinct styles of sharing God’s love and word, each valid but each being appropriate to different gifts, he said.

Even though Garner has led all three types of trips, he said he is drawn to a humanitarian effort “that allows us to stand beside our Christian brothers and sisters in that country and meet a basic need while telling people about Jesus.”

Garner leads Children’s Emergency Relief International—the overseas arm of Baptist Child & Family Services—in its work with orphanages in Nigeria, Uganda and South Africa.

He has used his experiences in Moldova to illustrate how the process can work.

“As we were loading up the van to return to the team house, one of the doctors mentioned how surprised he had been by the number of cases of frostbite,” Garner recalled.

“As I looked over his shoulder, I saw a young girl standing in the snow. Nudged by the Spirit of God, I walked over to her and asked to see her hands. She held them out, and they were frostbitten. Suddenly and quietly, there a group of children surrounded our group, holding out their hands, all frostbitten.

“Within minutes, every glove we had was pulled off and given to them. We rode in silence for several miles before someone voiced what all of us were thinking: ‘We’ve got to do something.’ That was the beginning of Operation Knit Together, and this December, 47 volunteers from nine states will personally fit every orphan in the 66 government orphanages, all 12,000 of them, with new socks and new, warm winter boots. God showed us a need, put a desire in hour hearts to meet that need and has blessed our efforts to be faithful to that call.”

Posted: 11/17/06

Restoration of trust is vital, BGCT leaders agree

By Barbara Bedrick

Texas Baptist Communications

DALLAS—Baptist General Convention of Texas leaders agree: Restoring trust is a primary task in 2007.

“The wound is deep, and it’s still fresh,” said BGCT President Michael Bell, referring to misuse of BGCT church starting funds in the Rio Grande Valley.

“There are real people who are very hurt, and it is real important that the hurt is addressed. There’s major work to be done in the Valley, and the BGCT needs to do a lot of listening.”

Bell joined newly elected BGCT President Steve Vernon, Executive Director Charles Wade and Executive Board Chairman Bob Fowler at a news conference during the BGCT annual meeting in Dallas.

Stressing that the BGCT needs to find ways to partner with its affiliated churches in the Valley, Bell affirmed the Executive Board plan to put new procedures in place such as an internal audit and making church starting guidelines policy.

“There’s major work to be done in the Valley, and the BGCT needs to do a lot of listening,” Bell said. “We need to find out ways we can partner with them, because I know a lot of people are hurt in the Valley.”

Vernon, pastor of First Baptist Church in Levelland, echoed Bell’s sentiments, saying he realizes how the BGCT responds to the Valley investigation will be important in his term.

“I have real confidence in the reorganization of the Executive Board and think they’re prepared to handle the investigation,” Vernon said. “It will demand we listen. A lot of people have been doing good work for a lot of years. We need to affirm those pastors.”

Bell said Vernon will make an excellent president because he has made a point to meet with Texas Baptists and attend countless meetings during his tenure as first vice president.

• See complete list of Valley funds scandal articles

“I’m excited about what’s ahead for us,” Vernon said. “West Texans have a heart for missions, the BGCT and giving.”

Strategic changes in the way the BGCT operates will be a significant step in placing the organization in a better position of restoring trust, Bell and Vernon agreed.

Texas Baptists are caring people, and the developments this year have made them more concerned about how the convention does business and how the convention ought to be, Bell noted.

“We have a lot of hurt feelings, and I am asking for a chance to get it done,” Wade said.

The Executive Board considered a vote of confidence in the executive director, but Wade told the board he considered any such vote premature, Fowler reported.

“If I get it fixed, then you can express your appreciation for that,” Wade said.

While leaders must give focused attention to problems revealed by the church starting fund investigation, Vernon said, the kingdom cannot be put on hold. He urged that the BGCT move ahead in missions.

“We have got to keep our eyes on the kingdom, and we have a world to work with,” he said.

Posted: 11/17/06

Nontraditional approaches may be needed

By Craig Bird

Baptist Child & Family Services

DALLAS—In a “Dr. Phil and Oprah age,” the church doesn’t have to be traditional to be faithful, Ray Brown, pastor of Resurrection Baptist Church in Schertz, told a Texas Baptist group.

In fact, being traditional may result in being unfaithful to the command to “go and tell the world,” he asserted.

“People have choices; they don’t have to come to your church,” he reminded participants during a Baptist General Convention of Texas annual meeting workshop.

“You’ve got to keep the non-essentials, no matter how much you love them, where they belong—on the non-essentials list. Other-wise, you better tear “Just As I Am” out of every hymnal in your sanctuary,” he said.

“Our job is to save as many people as we can as fast as we can for the glory of God. But sometimes we tell people they are going to hell before we show them the beauty of heaven. We want them to look right and talk right and act right before they become part of our congregation. But that’s like trying to clean the fish before we catch it. We’ve got to start where people are—in our preaching, in our programs—and let them get to know us, so they will trust us when we talk about spiritual things.”

At his church, it has meant becoming “more visual than verbal” in worship services and offering “multiple exposures and presentations of the gospel,” Brown said.

Openness to new technology is important, he insisted. Warning against being a “cassette-tape church in a world where cars have CD-only audio systems,” he urged churches to use new communication methods people are familiar with.

Recently, he was unexpectedly unable to be in the pulpit, so he recorded a short video message.

“More people made more professions of faith that Sunday than they usually do when I preach in person,” he said. “People today can respond to that video image.”

Over the past decade, Resurrection Baptist Church has grown from 250 members to more than 3,000 after adopting a strategy Brown calls “expanding with intent.” It entails finding out what it takes to get people to seriously listen to “the truth that we have about God and being saved.”

That means being open to doing new things in new ways—and sometimes not doing things “the way we’ve always done them.”

Brown grew up in a church that wouldn’t allow women to come to church in pants, but now he leads a church that has a “dress down Sunday” once a month.

He grew up in Sunday school, and his church still has a strong Sunday school program. But he estimates 10 percent of the current members meet once a week in small groups, and “within five years, I think it will climb to 50 percent.”

“If Sunday school works, then use it. But we are finding that small groups are the key to two significant elements of evangelism,” he pointed out.

“First, the small group overcomes the danger of getting lost in a megachurch. If you worship with 3,000 other people and you miss a Sunday, you probably won’t be missed. But if you are in a group of 10 or 12 people, they know when you’re not there and will check on you.”

Brown preaches “lots of how-to sermons (because) on Monday morning those folks are going to deal with lots of stuff and they need to know what Jesus said about how to keep their joy when it’s tough,” he said.

Themed series also make it easier for members to invite non-Christian friends to hear a topic that interests visitors.

Resurrection also stresses doctrinal diversity. “We make sure we are theologically solid on the essentials, but in everything else we are open,” Brown said.

“We have folks who have been sprinkled, but instead of arguing about it, we teach about why immersion is the biblical method. We have charismatics, but instead of arguing about gifts, we make sure folks understand that Paul meant what he said when he wrote, ‘If I speak like the angels and don’t love people, I am nothing.’”

Churches fight “over institutional things, the non-essential things,” he concluded. “You don’t hear about churches fighting about how to help people get saved. We have the best message, the truth, so growth should be normal for our churches. When we aren’t growing, it’s not because the message is not powerful enough. It is because we are doing a poor job communicating it.”

Posted: 11/17/06

Warm affection, cool discipline key to parenting

By Miranda Bradley

Children at Heart Ministries

DALLAS—It takes positive attitudes and strong relationships to be a “cool” parent, said C.V. Blake, pastor to young and median adults at First Baptist Church in Abilene.

“I always tell my kids, ‘I will love you warmly and discipline you coolly,’” he said during a workshop held in conjunction with the Baptist General Convention of Texas annual meeting.

By using humorous anecdotes from his and his wife’s experience raising their two children, Blake illustrated some of the challenges parents face. And while he geared his workshop to pastors’ families, he said his practical guidelines can assist laypeople as well.

• See complete list of convention articles

He offered several tips:

• Understand and respond when teenagers do not wish to be seen with their parents in public.

• Admit your teenager is not the only person in the house with attitude.

• Let them grow up without feeling guilty.

• Replace sarcasm with something else.

Aside from managing the relationship with one’s child, Blake stressed no relationship-building can begin without the right attitude.

“An angry parent or child can do more damage than anything else,” he said. “Being constantly unhappy with your kid is as if you are standing on their neck, never letting up.”

The key, Blake pointed out, is to control the outcome. If parents lose their temper alongside their child, it escalates the problem and puts the adolescent in power.

“Then they’ve won,” he said. “Never yell unless you can be so in control you can stop and tell a joke in the middle. If you can’t do that, then you shouldn’t raise your voice.”

Blake illustrated this point by describing how he helped his then-11-year-old daughter pick out a swimsuit.

“I knew there were so many things about this that could lead to disaster,” he said. “And as I said, ‘No’ to one suit after another, I could see the anger building in her.”

They took a break, and Blake reminded her that he understood her situation.

“We have to always remind our kids that we will walk beside them to guide them, to help them,” he said. “But we will also stand in front of them to stop them from making a mistake.”

While Blake said he laid no claim to be a parenting expert and admitted to messing up a time or two himself, he said he understands what it’s like to grow up in the spotlight. As a preacher’s kid, he realized early he was a prime target for high expectations.

“Each child is expected to live up to certain standards,” Blake said. “The thing is, we place those on our children as much as anybody. We need to learn to grow up with our kids and use our influence, not our power, to develop solid relationships with them.”

Blake said he uses one measuring stick to gauge his actions and attitude with his children. “I ask myself, ‘When she looks into my eyes, what does she think I think about her?’”

When in doubt, the best piece of advice Blake has for parents is to stick to two simple tasks.

“Look at them, and love them,” he said. “Sometimes it’s as simple as that.”

Posted: 11/17/06

Piper Institute board votes to dissolve at year’s end

By Ken Camp

Managing Editor

A church planting institute founded by Otto Arango—the central figure in an investigation that revealed misuse and mismanagement of Texas Baptist church starting funds in the Rio Grande Valley—will cease to exist at the end of this year.

At a called meeting in Dallas Nov. 14, the Piper Institute for Church Planting board of directors voted unanimously to dissolve the corporation, effective Dec. 31.

“The board recognized that the institute’s ability to raise future funds has been significantly and negatively impacted by the BGCT’s recent Rio Grande Valley investigative report and the subsequent negative Baptist press,” Chairman Bill Nichols said.

“The board also voted to express their sincere appreciation to the Piper family who for years has generously supported BGCT missions projects, including church planting.”

Arango has served as president of the 2-year-old nonprofit corporation that evolved from the Institute for Church Planting he founded in South Texas. E.B. Brooks became executive director of the Piper Institute for Church Planting after he retired as leader of the Baptist General Convention of Texas church missions and evangelism area.

Brooks declined the opportunity to comment on the board’s action. Arango did not respond to an e-mail request for a statement.

A five-month independent investigation initiated by the BGCT executive director and executive board officers revealed evidence that 98 percent of the 258 church starts reported by Arango and two of his protégés in the Valley no longer exist, and some were “phantom churches” that existed only on paper. The BGCT gave at least $1.3 million support to those church starts.

Dexton Shores, director of BGCT Border/Mexico Missions, presented evidence of a similar pattern in northeastern Mexico. His survey last December of 43 pastors in North Tamaulipas—reported by the Piper Institute to have started 75 percent of the new congregations in the area—found only 12 percent, at most, could be verified.

Brooks called the survey “incomplete, inaccurate and un-audited,” but Shores said leaders of the North Tamaulipas Regional Convention confirmed a significant number of churches reported by the institute remained unknown to them.

Posted: 11/17/06

Churches can help members
deal with sexual addiction

By Teresa Young

Wayland Baptist University

DALLAS—Even though many churches might choose to believe otherwise, most congregations have members facing sexual addition issues, said Darin Griffiths, licensed professional counselor with South Texas Children’s Home family ministry in Corpus Christi.

Griffiths believes the only way healing will occur is by providing a safe haven to deal with the issue.

“We’re going to have to deal with this, because it’s not going away,” said Griffiths, who led a workshop at the Baptist General Convention of Texas annual meeting. “In fact, it’s getting worse.”

He noted studies that indicate:

• 25 million Internet users (nearly half) visit pornographic sites at least 10 hours a week, and 80 percent of porn traffic takes place between 9 a.m. and 5 p.m., the typical workday.

• 30 percent to 40 percent of churchgoing Christian men deal with strong sexual issues.

• 20 percent of the churchgoing female population struggle with pornography.

• 33 percent of clergy admitted to having visited a sexually explicit website.

If these figures are accurate, as Griffiths believes they are, then more and more pastors will see members in crisis due to the aftermath of sexual addiction and compulsion.

Griffiths defined sexual addiction as compulsive behaviors that usually include viewing pornography, masturbation, serial infidelity, and cyber and phone sex. He prefers the definition by one addiction therapist—any sexually related, compulsive behavior which interferes with normal living and causes severe stress on family, friends, loved ones and one’s work environment.

Similar to an addiction to drugs or alcohol, Griffiths said, sexually addictive behaviors cause a release of dopamine to the brain that leaves a feeling of euphoria. But the cycle, he said, begins with anything but positive feelings.

“I’ve never come across a person struggling with sex addiction who says, ‘I like what I do’ and means it,” Griffiths said, adding that addicts typically have poor self-esteem and feel they are unloved and have unmet needs, with sex being the most important of those needs.

So what should the church do with members struggling with these behaviors? Griffiths said the key is rallying around men and women who deal with addiction and provide an outlet to deal with them in healthy, biblical ways.

“We don’t need to build counseling centers all over our state,” he said. “We have counseling centers already in our churches, with Christians who can love people. You don’t have to have a counselor to do this; loving people and making them be honest with themselves is all that’s required.”

Although sexual addiction is not exclusively a male problem, Griffiths said men are more likely to come forward in churches and ask for help. He urges churches to start a group for men—even men who are not yet to the point of true addiction—to deal with their issues in a safe forum.

Calling them “Men’s Integrity Groups” helps alleviate shame and embarrassment from men and encourages them to deal with the issue among their peers. A key component of the recovery process, he added, is encouragement for the men to be brave enough to go against societal norms and actually combat the problem.

He also encourages churches to form a women’s support group for wives of men struggling with addiction. Their own issues, hurts and behaviors need to be worked through as well, Griffiths said, and they need to know they’re not dealing with these issues alone.

He recommended a book and workbook series by Ted Roberts, Pure Desire, to use in men’s groups. A workbook for women only also is available for use in support groups and works through the issues with biblical principles.

Griffiths stressed several times the importance of getting a wife on board with the recovery process for support and encouragement.

“A wife’s involvement in the recovery of a sex addict is very important,” he said. “If the partner is not in on the process, the odds are slim to none that they’ll truly recover and be restored.”

Another key to working with sexually addicted people is realizing the underlying needs and issues—many have endured traumatic experiences such as molestation or early exposure to pornography—and averting the guilt and shame so it breaks the cycle of addiction, he noted.

Because so much of these issues are related to the Internet, Griffiths recommended accountability measures for computer users such as Covenant Eyes (which sets up a partner system and sends e-mails about sites visited) and filters that block explicit websites.

Posted: 11/17/06

Mission testimonies highlight TBM rally

By Craig Bird

Baptist Child & Family Services

DALLAS—A new partnership between Texas Baptist Men and Walking In Love Ministries is revitalizing the outreach of three Baptist hospitals in Nigeria, participants at the Texas Baptist Men’s rally learned.

Six mission reports highlighted the rally, held prior to the Baptist General Convention of Texas annual meeting in Dallas.

• See complete list of convention articles

“We are already getting reports of the revivals that are starting as the hospitals begin to return to caring for the spiritual and medical needs of their areas,” said Mary Kay Posey, who was an infant in 1945 when her missionary parents began the clinic that became Eku Baptist Hospital in southeastern Nigeria.

Participants worship at the Texas Baptist Men rally.

Growing up, she saw hundreds of professions of faith in Christ every week as the hospital earned a widespread reputation that even attracted patients from other countries.

But the Southern Baptist Convention International Mission Board shifted its funding and personnel from institutions to church planting in 2000, leaving the Nigerian Baptist Convention unable to hire personnel or fund operations at the same level.

Responding to the plea of her Nigerian friends to not “let the hospital die,” Posey and her husband, Fred, began collecting medical supplies and funds. Since 2005, they have made six trips “carrying 20-plus suitcases.”

Three months ago, they linked up with Texas Baptist Men and now are helping pack two containers of equipment. Additionally, an endowment established with the IMB and designated for support of Baptist hospitals in Nigeria is being transferred to the Texas Baptist Men Foundation.

The Poseys recently returned from a six-week stay at Eku and the other two hospitals with plans to expand the work to include building projects at the seminary in Eku as well as a leper’s colony and a just-being-organized orphanage.

Other testimonies described:

• How a prisoner became a Christian after reading a copy of The Purpose Driven Life, given to him by another prisoner who had received it from a TBM criminal justice ministry volunteer.

• How the owner of a motel and a never-been-used RV park in Cross Plains “who had never given anyone anything for free” refused to give a reduced rate to the TBM crews who came to town to build houses for victims of the wildfires. “You can use it for free,” he instead told the builders.

• Eating termites while building a church “that seats 1,000 but only needs six parking places because the members are so poor.”

• How a man, after passing by a site where TBM was building a church in Bellville for several days, called the pastor at 1:30 a.m. and had him come over to his house, “because if loving Jesus will make those folks work that hard for free, there must be something to this religion thing.”