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Female ex-offenders find ‘Grace’
Posted: 9/29/06
Billy and Jacqueline Thornton provide a transitional home for previously incarcerated women. Female ex-offenders find ‘Grace’
By Lauren Kirk
Special to the Baptist Standard
SAN ANTONIO—Billy and Jacqueline Thornton may be retired, but their lives have been far from leisurely since they founded Grace House—a transitional residence for previously incarcerated women.
The Thorntons have taught Bible classes at Bexar County Adult Detention Center 15 years. Mrs. Thornton realized the women in her class needed help once they left the facility. Women made professions of faith in Christ and left thinking they had their lives together, but within six months, they would be back in the class because they lacked support, stability and spiritual guidance.
Jacqueline Thornton (right) offers guidance to female ex-offenders at Grace House. 09/29/2006 - By John Rutledge
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Texas Baptist Forum
Posted: 9/29/06
Texas Baptist Forum
College football on Sunday
Regarding Bruce Parsons’ protest of the recent Sunday evening football contest between Baylor and TCU (Sept. 18): My alma mater, Baylor, and many other church-affiliated institutions nationwide have competed regularly on Sundays for decades in a variety of other intercollegiate sports, including baseball, men’s and women’s basketball, and tennis, among others.
• Jump to online-only letters below Letters are welcomed. Send them to marvknox@baptiststandard.com; 250 words maximum.
“I’m not the Christ. I’m just a donkey the Christ rides on.”T.D. Jakes
Pastor of The Potter’s House in Dallas (Texas Monthly/RNS)“This idea that God wants everybody to be wealthy. There is a word for that—baloney. It’s creating a false idol. You don’t measure your self-worth by your net worth. I can show you millions of faithful followers of Christ who live in poverty. Why isn’t everyone in the church a millionaire?”
Rick Warren
Author and pastor of Saddleback Valley Church in California (Time magazine/RNS)“When we present Jesus as a pro-war, anti-poor, anti-homosexual, anti-environment, pro-nuclear weapons authority figure draped in an American flag, I think we are making a travesty of the portrait of Jesus we find in the gospels.”
Brian McLaren
Leader of the “emerging church” movement and pastor of Cedar Ridge Community Church in Montgomery County, Md. (The Washington Post/RNS)“Amid a culture inundated with bigness and cellular technology, iPods and TiVo, the technologized megachurch is no longer impressive. In fact, many young Christians come to church to get asylum from this worldliness. Infinitely more than the megachurch’s ‘stuff,’ my generation wants religion. We want everything our parents didn’t, and that seems increasingly to be summed up in the word ‘meaning.’”
Clint Rainey
Student at the University of Texas at Austin“It is no use saying, ‘We are doing our best.’ You have got to succeed in doing what is necessary.”
Winston Churchill
British orator, author and prime minister during World War II (Thinkexist.com)The fact a football game on Sunday draws objection says, I think, more about the exalted position football enjoys in our state than it suggests a recent cultural abandonment of a religious tradition surrounding Sunday nights.
Moreover, Baylor football on Sunday is neither recent nor unprecedented. Baylor played Sunday football games seven times between 1900 and 1933, including two games won over our fellow Texas Baptists at Howard Payne University.
09/29/2006 - By John Rutledge
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Pastor’s wife finds her service niche in literacy missions
Posted: 9/29/06
Pastor’s wife finds her service
niche in literacy missionsBy Carol Gene Graves
Baylor Center for Literacy
WACO—Despite growing up a pastor’s daughter and becoming a preacher’s wife, Judy Hughes of Emmanuel Baptist Church in Waco never found her niche for Christian service until she discovered literacy ministries.
She found literacy missions 14 years ago, but her passion to share Christ with others while teaching them English continues to grow, she insists.
Judy Hughes of Emmanuel Baptist Church in Waco teaches English to Silvia Hernandez (left) and Juana Loredo. (Photo by Carol Gene Graves/Baylor Center for Literacy) 09/29/2006 - By John Rutledge
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Technology links ministers to church members
Posted: 9/29/06
Technology links ministers to church members
By Angela Best
Communications Intern
MARSHALL—Technological innovations leave ministers without excuse for keeping church members informed, said Brian Pearce, minister of youth and recreation at First Baptist Church in Marshall.
09/29/2006 - By John Rutledge
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TOGETHER: Real missions makes us more like Jesus
Posted: 9/29/06
TOGETHER:
Real missions makes us more like JesusCan missions work ever be wrong? Does some kind of mission activity make God sick at heart? Apparently so.
Jesus spoke seven woes (Matthew 23) upon the Pharisees and other religious scholars and leaders of his day. They were more knowledgeable regarding the Bible than any other people. They were credentialed, admired, but haughty and self-righteous as well. And the second of the seven woes (in this word “woes” is the pathos of God’s heart including wrath and pain, anger and sorrow) is this surprising word: “Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You travel over land and sea to win a single convert, and when he becomes one, you make him twice as much a son of hell as you are” (Matthew 23:15).
Executive Director
BGCT Executive Board
The Judaism of Jesus’ time was vigorous in its missionary efforts. This mission zeal abated after the destruction of the temple some 30 years after Jesus’ death and resurrection. What is on Jesus’ mind here? Could he mean that when converts are made by men, rather than by the power of God’s Holy Spirit, they still are unconverted?
On one occasion, Billy Graham met a man on a downtown street who clearly was drunk and wasted by his sin. “Oh, Mr. Graham, I am so glad to see you. You converted me in one of your meetings.”
09/29/2006 - By John Rutledge
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UMHB students invest time in neighborhood children
Posted: 9/29/06
Students from the University of Mary Hardin-Baylor teach neighborhood children a biblical story about sowing good seed. UMHB students invest time
in neighborhood childrenBy Jennifer Sicking
University of Mary Hardin-Baylor
BELTON—Business management student Felicia Cano sees her Tuesday and Thursday afternoons as an investment.
“It really gives us the opportunity to invest in kids’ lives,” said Cano, a University of Mary Hardin-Baylor junior from Bay City.
09/29/2006 - By John Rutledge
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Waco church for homeless inspires others
Posted: 9/29/06
About 20 Lexington, Ky.,-area churches, including six congregations in the Kentucky Baptist Convention, have helped conduct services for homeless people inspired by Waco's Church Under The Bridge. Waco church for homeless inspires others
By Ken Walker
Special to the Baptist Standard
LEXINGTON, Ky.—The Church Under the Bridge in the Lexington, Ky., serves the same type of homeless and low-income people as a Waco congregation that inspired it—even though the Kentucky congregation never has met under a bridge.
09/29/2006 - By John Rutledge
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Valley investigation could cost $150,000
Posted: 9/29/06
Valley investigation could cost $150,000
By Ken Camp
Managing Editor
DALLAS—The Baptist General Convention of Texas Executive Board will learn Oct. 31 the results of an investigation into alleged mismanagement of church-starting funds in the Rio Grande Valley—a probe that could cost up to $150,000.
At the board’s Sept. 25-26 meeting, Chairman Bob Fowler of Houston announced a called board meeting from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. Oct. 31 at the Baptist Building in Dallas. At that time, Brownsville Attorney Diane Dillard will present findings from the five-month investigation she has headed.
09/29/2006 - By John Rutledge
