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CWJC graduate gains national honors
Posted: 11/17/06
CWJC graduate gains national honors
By Ken Camp
Managing Editor
DALLAS—Dallas Christian Women’s Job Corps graduate Patrice Oats recently received national recognition as recipient of the Sybil Bentley Dove Endowment Award—a financial prize from Woman’s Missionary Union intended to help determined women rebuild their lives.
Oats—who works at two Dallas hospitals and is completing her nursing degree at Texas Woman’s University in Denton—already has made strides in that direction.
Patrice Oats, a graduate of Dallas Christian Women’s Job Corps, received the national Sybil Bentley Dove Endowment Award recently at Ridgecrest Conference Center in Asheville, N.C. 11/17/2006 - By John Rutledge
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Moving On: Board ‘pre-empted’ BGCT by recommending reforms
Posted: 11/17/06
Praying for healing from financial scandal, Texas Baptists gathered for their annual meeting in Dallas. (Photo by Eric Guel) Moving On: Board ‘pre-empted’
BGCT by recommending reformsBy Ken Camp
Managing Editor
DALLAS—With “Together We are Doing More” as their stated theme and healing from financial scandal as the subtext woven through every session of their annual meeting, Texas Baptists met in Dallas to chart their course for the next year.
Messengers to the Baptist General Convention of Texas annual meeting elected officers, adopted a $50.6 million budget and went on record speaking out in favor of environmental stewardship and against human trafficking.
• See complete list of convention articles11/17/2006 - By John Rutledge
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EDITORIAL: Churches next to ‘vote’ on BGCT future
Posted: 11/17/06
EDITORIAL:
Churches next to ‘vote’ on BGCT futureNow, the real voting begins.
Each autumn, the Baptist General Convention of Texas holds an annual meeting to conduct its business. Because the folks who oppose the Southern Baptist Convention’s fundamentalist trajectory have been so effective at rallying their faithful, votes on the BGCT’s most significant actions in the past two decades have been lopsided. Year after year, convention messengers approved proposals distancing the state convention from the national convention.
However, a vote on the convention floor doesn’t necessarily translate into similar action by the churches. Year after year, the churches took “votes” that really mattered—deciding how they would respond to convention actions. Many of them exercised their convention-mandated freedom to make decisions contrary to the overwhelming will of messengers at the annual meeting.
So, now we realize the measure of an annual meeting isn’t known until the churches decide how they will respond to convention actions.
11/17/2006 - By John Rutledge
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Texas Baptist Forum
Posted: 11/17/06
Texas Baptist Forum
Business skills
The Rio Grande Valley scandal is quite a blow. I hope this incident is not symbolic of a general ineptness in Baptist General Convention of Texas Executive Board management. We probably have some people in our BGCT management who need to be replaced, but I’m not advocating a general housecleaning.
• Jump to online-only letters below Letters are welcomed. Send them to marvknox@baptiststandard.com; 250 words maximum.
“I’m not an arm-waver and a clapper and a dancer. Music doesn’t do that to me, although it stirs me inside.”
Bill Hybels
Pastor of Willow Creek Community Church, a Chicago-area megachurch, speaking about how he chooses to stand, eyes closed in contemplation, while others in his sanctuary sway and wave their arms in praise (Chicago Tribune/RNS)“God’s promise to us was that we would have entrance into the hearts of the ungodly without them knowing it.”
Matthew Crouch
Producer of the new film One Night With the King, based on the biblical story of Esther, telling Texas pastors about his efforts to use the film to influence culture (Dallas Morning News/RNS)“If we’re not willing to use it here against our fellow citizens, then we should not be willing to use it in a wartime situation.”
Michael Wynne
Air Force secretary, suggesting nonlethal weapons, such as high-power microwave devices, should be used on American citizens in crowd-control situations before being used on the battlefield (CNN.com)My experience is that most ministers, while they may be excellent pastors, are not very good business managers. They don’t want to put forth the time and effort to properly manage the business affairs of the church, or in the Valley case, the business affairs of the Valley ministry.
Good management of a multi-million-dollar budget won’t just happen. It requires managers with good business skills. I’ll state without fear of contradiction that if the BGCT had good business practices in place, that were followed by BGCT management, there is no way the Valley scandal would have occurred.
11/17/2006 - By John Rutledge
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N.C. Baptists bar gay-friendly churches
Posted: 11/17/06
N.C. Baptists bar gay-friendly churches
By Steve DeVane & Rob Marus
Biblical Recorder & Associated Baptist Press
GREENSBORO, N.C. (ABP)—Baptist churches in North Carolina will have to deny membership to gays or face expulsion from the Baptist State Convention of North Carolina.
Messengers to the convention’s annual meeting voted Nov. 14 to add language to its governing documents that will exclude from convention membership any church thought to affirm homosexual behavior.
11/17/2006 - By John Rutledge
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Religious freedom violators noted
Posted: 11/17/06
Religious freedom violators noted
By Keith Roshangar
Religion News Service
WASHINGTON (RNS)—The U.S. State Department has sent Congress its list of countries that are the worst violators of religious freedom—adding Uzbekistan but dropping Vietnam.
Seven “countries of particular concern” from last year’s list returned this year—Burma, China, North Korea, Eritrea, Iran, Saudi Arabia and Sudan. The eighth annual report on international religious freedom was released in September; its list of problem countries was issued Nov. 13.
11/17/2006 - By John Rutledge
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Theological university president moves to Buckner post
Posted: 11/17/06
Albert Reyes, president of Baptist University of the Americas since 1999, has been named president of Buckner Children & Family Services. Theological university
president moves to Buckner postDALLAS—In a move with implications for three Baptist General Convention of Texas organizations, Albert Reyes has been named president of Buckner Children & Family Services, which is being revamped to expand its ministries throughout the United States and internationally.
Reyes, 47, has been president of Baptist University of the Americas in San Antonio since 1999. He assumes his duties at Buckner International, the parent organization of Buckner Children & Family Services, Jan. 1.
Both Buckner International and Baptist University of the Americas are affiliated with the BGCT. Reyes also had been mentioned prominently as a possible eventual successor to Charles Wade, head of the BGCT Executive Board.
Buckner International President Ken Hall appointed Reyes to the new position. Hall called the selection of Reyes “one of the most strategic and vital decisions” in the 127-year history of Buckner.
11/17/2006 - By John Rutledge
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Tennessee Baptists move to the right
Posted: 11/17/06
Tennessee Baptists move to the right
By Robert Marus
Associated Baptist Press
MEMPHIS, Tenn. (ABP)—Tennessee Baptists voted overwhelmingly Nov. 14 to publicize whether nominees to leadership posts in the convention affirm the 2000 Baptist Faith & Message, a controversial confession of faith adopted by the national Southern Baptist Convention.
Messengers to Tennessee Baptist Convention’s annual meeting, held at Bellevue Baptist Church in suburban Memphis, also elected a conservative candidate as president and heard an update from a committee dealing with a dispute between the convention and one of its affiliated colleges.
11/17/2006 - By John Rutledge
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Texas Tidbits
Posted: 11/17/06
Texas Tidbits
BGCT attendance lowest in decades. The Baptist General Convention of Texas annual meeting in Dallas drew 1,990 messengers and 820 guests—the lowest attendance in more than 50 years. The last time the messenger count dipped below the 2,000 mark was the 1949 convention in El Paso, which attracted 1,667 messengers. The largest attendance was the 1991 convention in Waco, which drew 11,159 messengers and 310 visitors.
Campus competition draws blood. Students at Dallas Baptist University declared victory over the faculty and staff in a contest to donate the most blood during the 2006 Carter BloodCare-DBU Blood Drive. In total, 99 DBU students, faculty and staff donated blood—with students forming a significant majority. Last year, DBU won Carter BloodCare’s Highest Amount of Donors award for colleges and universities in the region.
11/17/2006 - By John Rutledge
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TOGETHER: ‘We will bring credibility & integrity’
Posted: 11/17/06
TOGETHER:
‘We will bring credibility & integrity’Getsemani Baptist Church in McAllen has been in the news lately, and it has not been an enjoyable experience for this committed congregation. Financial dealings of the church’s former pastor, Otto Arango, have been called into question by an independent investigation commissioned by the Baptist General Convention of Texas. Arango, however, has not been pastor of the church for about three years.
Messengers from Getsemani Church, including Pastor Thomas Whitehouse, were at the BGCT annual meeting and spoke openly to a group gathered with me for a question-and-answer time. They shared about their situation, their hurt and their desire to make sure all Texas Baptists and others are aware that the church did not know of the matters identified in the investigators’ report.
Executive Director
BGCT Executive Board
This church also gave more money through the BGCT Cooperative Program last year than any other Texas Hispanic church—$31,220.
The Executive Board and I want to express our deep appreciation for the work of the churches and pastors in the Rio Grande Valley. Our Baptist work in the Valley related to the accusations of fraud has been in the media, and our brothers and sisters in the churches there have felt wounded and embarrassed. We are working with them to help deal with the media perceptions and to tell the wonderful stories of Baptist life in the Valley.
11/17/2006 - By John Rutledge
