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Around the State
Posted: 9/01/06
Around the State
• Southwest Winds, from the U.S. Air Force Band of the West, will present a concert Sept. 9 at 7:30 p.m. at Hughes Recital Hall on the University of Mary Hardin-Baylor campus.
• Baylor University awarded degrees to more than 500 summer graduates last month. During the ceremony, Charles Kemp, senior lecturer at Baylor’s Louise Herrington School of Nursing and clinical director of the Agape Clinic in Dallas, was presented the Abner V. McCall Humanitarian Award, and Charles Wade, executive director of the Baptist General Convention of Texas, was presented the George W. Truett Distinguished Church Service Award.
First Church in Perryton marked its centennial celebration with a return to its roots. The church met at the site near Ochiltree where the church originated in 1906. After the service there, each person walked 100 steps toward Perryton. Also, a group of six horses and seven riders carried a Bible that once belonged to a revered member from the Ochiltree site to the current church building in Perryton in a saddlebag. The Bible originally belonged to the husband of Anna Mae Wright, who attended the Ochiltree church as an infant with her mother. The riders brought the Scripture into the service at Perryton and returned it to Wright, who along with four generations of her family, brought the Bible to the pulpit. Pictured are Caleb Miller, Mike Jackson with Asher Miller behind him, and Pastor Richard Laverty. • East Texas Baptist University nursing student Julie Parker has been named the recipient of the “Promise of Nursing” scholarship for the Dallas/Fort Worth regional area. The $5,000 scholarship is to be used for tuition, books and academic fees.
• Cameron Mason, a student at Wake Forest University Divinity School, Katherine Gil-bert, a student at the Candler School of Theology of Emory University, and Kendal Smith, a student at Baylor University’s Truett Theological Seminary, have been named a Congrega-tional Fellows by the Fund for Theological Education. The $5,000 award each received will match support they will receive from Wilshire Church in Dallas.
09/01/2006 - By John Rutledge
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Book Reviews
Posted: 9/01/06
Book Reviews
The Passion: The True Story of an Event That Changed Human History by Geza Vermes (Penguin Books)
Geza Vermes, professor emeritus of Jewish studies at Oxford University, was reared as a Roman Catholic who, as an adult, discovered and embraced his Jewish heritage and faith. He is a prolific researcher and writer about Jesus studies, and the publication of his monograph Jesus the Jew was a watershed event in the renewal of our understanding of the Jewishness of Jesus’ environment.
In The Passion, Vermes takes a more popular approach to analyzing the last days of Jesus’ life. Starting with his understanding of the legendary aspects of Mel Gibson’s movie, The Passion, Vermes proposes to tell “the true story of an event that changed human history.”
What are you reading that other Texas Baptists would find helpful? Send suggestions and reviews to books@baptiststandard.com. To that end, Vermes compares and contrasts the gospel accounts with Jewish and secular documents that were written both at the same time and later than the gospels. Using study methods familiar to most seminary students, he concludes the gospels are not trustworthy historical documents because the gospel writers are primarily interested in telling the events from particular theological perspectives. These “biases” prevent us from getting at “the true story,” he argues. Rather, “the true story” can only be told by paying close attention to the scant information about those days that are recorded in the Jewish and secular documents of the time and recently thereafter.
09/01/2006 - By John Rutledge
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Baptist Briefs
Posted: 9/01/06
Baptist Briefs
GuideStone offers help to plan staff compensation packages. GuideStone Financial Resources has launched an online presentation—along with a free workbook—to help church personnel and finance committees plan staff compensation packages. The presentation comes on the heels of the release of the 2006 SBC Compensation Study, which showed the average salary and housing allowance for full-time Southern Baptist pastors was $49,952, an increase of 7.4 percent since 2004. Income statistics for other positions, including bivocational pastors, support staff members and other positions also are reported in the bi-annual compensation study. The study and the planning financial support presentation and workbook can be accessed at the GuideStone website, www.GuideStone.org, or by calling GuideStone at (888) 984-8433.
09/01/2006 - By John Rutledge
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DOWN HOME: Just take a picture of living-room stuff
Posted: 9/01/06
DOWN HOME:
Just take a picture of living-room stuffYou probably realize husbands and wives speak a different language. Even when a couple’s words are all English or all Spanish or all Mandarin, they speak a different language.
I’ve known this for decades. But a recent development reminded me it’s a distinction that impacts a marriage significantly.
When Joanna said, “Let’s sell our house and buy a new one closer to where you work,” I thought my wife actually meant, “Let’s sell our house and buy a new one closer to where you work.”
What she really meant was, “Let’s sell our house and replace a bunch of the old furniture I don’t want and then buy a new one closer to where you work.”
09/01/2006 - By John Rutledge
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EDITORIAL: Offering touches lives across Texas
Posted: 9/01/06
EDITORIAL:
Offering touches lives across TexasThe next time you pass an offering plate or pick up your checkbook, remember your fellow Texans. Think about your brothers and sisters in Christ who are being released from state penitentiaries, struggling to remain faithful as they step back onto the mean streets of their past. Focus on the seemingly endless stream of undocumented workers in Texas who desperately need a Savior. Try to imagine African-American cowboys, living a generations-old heritage but also finding new life in Jesus. And don’t forget young mothers seeking to break the bonds of abuse while pointing their children to a better, safer future.
These are but a few beneficiaries of the Mary Hill Davis Offering for Texas Missions, which churches affiliated with the Baptist General Convention of Texas gather in the fall. The goal this year is $5.1 million, and every dollar represents a story, a very real need:
• Sie Davis took his first breath in prison, because his mother gave birth to him while she was locked up. Years later, a bruising battle with drugs put him back in the same prison where he was born.
Eventually, the power of Christ helped Davis, a four-time convict, overcome the addictions that kept landing him in prison. Then he launched Church of the Called-Out Ones for ex-offenders, and he began teaching other people to start ex-offender churches. He also partnered with the BGCT to write a manual for operating ex-offender ministries.
09/01/2006 - By John Rutledge
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Texas Baptist Forum
Posted: 9/01/06
Texas Baptist Forum
Special in God’s sight
Thank you for your 2nd Opinion column on stem-cell research (Aug. 21). Please allow me to put a personal face on an aspect of that discussion.
Letters are welcomed. Send them to marvknox@baptiststandard.com; 250 words maximum.
“While the Lord loves the Jewish people as he loves all people, the church is now the people of God. Events related to the modern state of Israel are not to be connected specifically with Revelation or other books of biblical prophecy.”
Jim Denison
Pastor of Park Cities Baptist Church in Dallas and daily blogger (GodIssues.org)“The United States, a so-called Christian country, has a double standard. With one hand, it gives bombs to Israel, and with the other, it gives milk and flour to those affected by the bombs. Is this Christian? Forget Christian, is this human?”
Albert Isteero
Editor of the Arabic-language edition of The Upper Room daily devotional guide (United Methodist News Service/RNS)“The terrorists sent bombs and bullets. … Let’s respond with Bibles.”
Johnny Hunt
National spokesman for Muslim Bible Day, a project that distributes Bibles in Muslim countries. (www.muslimbibleday.org /RNS)“In terms of a religion, it’s not the religion that is the terrorist.”
Robert Mueller
FBI director, speaking about the arrest of an alleged Islamic terrorist cell in Miami. (Congressional Quarterly/RNS)My grandson was adopted as a frozen embryo by my son and daughter-in-law. Because another couple with leftover embryos viewed these “preborn babies” as special in God’s sight, they allowed them to be adopted. As a result, our grandson was born. He has made two trips to the White House in his short life, and hopefully he will be used of God powerfully in whatever he chooses to do.
Again, thank you for the article. May we always be challenged to take the moral high road, for in so doing, we will always be right. Misunderstood, probably; considered taking our standards from another world, hopefully; achieving the only recognition that will ultimately matter, assured.
09/01/2006 - By John Rutledge
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