WASHINGTON (RNS)—Gospel singer and songwriter Joyce “Dottie” Rambo died in a tour bus accident May 11 in Missouri.

Rambo, 74, was in a tour bus that struck an embankment near Mount Vernon, Mo., after running off the highway, the Associated Press reported.

The Nashville, Tenn., resident published more than 2,500 songs including “We Shall Behold Him,” which was named the 1982 Gospel Music Association’s song of the year.

Others of her tunes, which have been performed by various artists, include “I Go to the Rock,” “Behold the Lamb,” “I Will Glory in the Cross” and “He Looked Beyond My Fault (and Saw my Need).” Musical luminaries such as Elvis Presley, Whitney Houston, Sandi Patty and Dolly Parton recorded her songs.

“We have lost one of the truly great poets, but her voice will only be amplified by death,” fellow gospel songwriter Gloria Gaither wrote on the website she shares with musician-husband Bill Gaither. “Songs of Dottie Rambo will more insistently than ever speak to the experiences of life bringing hope, counsel, encourgement and perspective.”

Rambo, a Grammy-winning artist, wrote her first song at age 8 in her native Kentucky and started singing and traveling from church to church at age 12. Eventually, she was a staple on Christian television, including The Dottie Rambo Magazine on the Trinity Broadcasting Network in the 1980s.

Posted: 5/13/08

TBM responds to Myanmar cyclone

By John Hall

Texas Baptist Communications

Texas Baptist Men sent a rapid-response team to Bangkok, Thailand, in response to a devastating cyclone that hit Myanmar.

The seven-person team left the United States May 11. The team hopes to enter Myanmar—also known as Burma—as soon as possible to assess needs. Once in Myanmar, the relief volunteers will look for opportunities for follow-up teams to meet needs in the country.

TBM team leader Dick Talley plans to stream another live video report Thursday at 8 a.m. Central Time on their progress from their staging area in Bangkok, Thailand. Watch it live on the BGCT website.

“We try to go wherever doors open and see how we can minister to people in need,” said Mickey Lenamon, Texas Baptist Men associate executive director. “That’s what Texas Baptist Men has been doing for 40 years.”

Official counts indicate nearly 23,000 people are dead following a cyclone that hit Myanmar. Another 42,000 people are missing. Some observers expect those totals to rise further as more information becomes available.

TBM responded to a request for help from Saddleback Church in Lake Forest, Calif., and The Fellowship of the Woodlands near Houston.

Baptists from Australia, Hungary and the United States also are currently in Bangkok, Thailand, awaiting visa application approval to enter Myanmar.

 To support TBM disaster relief efforts, visit http://texasbaptistmen.org/dnn/donate_asp_1.html.

To give through the Baptist General Convention of Texas Disaster Response Fund, visit http://texasbaptistmen.org/dnn/donate_asp_1.html.

Panel cites 11 religious freedom offenders. A federal watchdog panel announced 11 countries should be named “countries of particular concern” for their records on religious freedom, including three not currently on the State Department’s list. The U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom urged the inclusion of Vietnam—removed from the State Department’s list in 2006—along with Pakistan and Turkmenistan. The other countries recommended for the designation of “countries of particular concern” are Burma, China, Eritrea, Iran, North Korea, Saudi Arabia, Sudan and Uzbekistan, which have been on the State Department’s list since 2006. The commission also cited countries on its “Watch List” that require monitoring because of religious freedom violations permitted or implemented by the governments—Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Belarus, Cuba, Egypt, Indonesia and Nigeria.

Have a Bible question? Ask a Pole. Americans are more likely than Europeans to own and read a Bible, but Poles are most likely to have a basic knowledge of Scripture, according to a Vatican report. The statistics are among preliminary findings of a study of Bible reading in the United States and eight European countries conducted by an Italian market research firm in preparation for an international synod of Catholic bishops. More than 90 percent of American households contain at least one copy of the Bible, the highest level among the countries studied, according to the study. Three out of four Americans had read at least one passage of Scripture over the previous year, compared to only one out of four Spaniards, who ranked last in that respect. Not surprisingly, exposure paid off in familiarity with the book. When asked seven basic questions about the Bible’s contents and authorship, 17 percent of Americans were able to answer all correctly, compared to an average of 15 percent in all the countries studied. But Poles took the prize for biblical knowledge, with 20 percent earning perfect scores on the test. The lowest rank went to the Russians, only 7 percent of whom were able to answer all the questions right.

Televangelist Copeland seeks IRS review. Kenneth Copeland Ministries, one of the ministries that has refused to cooperate fully with a financial investigation by Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, has invited the Internal Revenue Service to conduct an inquiry of its own instead. Grassley’s office reported four of the six ministries he has been investigating are cooperating with requests to provide him with financial information. Creflo Dollar Ministries in College Park, Ga., has refused to submit financial records. Grassley, the panel’s top-ranking Republican, and committee Chairman Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mont., had asked ministries that weren’t cooperating fully to submit materials by March 31. Jill Gerber, a spokeswoman for the Senate Finance Committee, said both Copeland’s and Dollar’s ministries continue to decline to send the requested information. “As for the Copeland request for an audit from the IRS, Sen. Grassley has always said that the IRS enforces existing law, while Congress evaluates the adequacy of existing law,” she said. “The two functions are completely different.”

Hotel offers variety of spiritual texts. Overnight guests at one Nashville, Tenn., hotel who crave religious reading material may turn to something other than a Gideon Bible. The Hotel Preston recently started offering a “spiritual menu” to its guests, including the Quran, the Bhagavad Gita and additional versions of the Bible other than the Gideon-provided King James Version. Five boutique hotels in the Portland, Ore.-based Provenance chain have introduced the new offerings in the last few months, with the Nashville property starting them most recently. Researchers for the American Hotel & Lodging Association have found an increasing percentage of hotels provide religious materials in their rooms. In 1998, 79 percent of hotels surveyed said they carried such materials; that figured jumped to 95 percent in 2006.

Casting Crowns singer reaps Dove Awards. Casting Crowns lead singer Mark Hall and his group reaped a total of seven Dove Awards at the annual Gospel Music Association ceremony. Among his four individual awards, Hall was honored for co-writing the Song of the Year, “East to West.” Casting Crowns was honored three times, including as Group of the Year. TobyMac was named Artist of the Year, a title he claimed in 1996 as a member of dcTalk. His latest solo album, Portable Sounds, debuted at No. 10 on Billboard’s Top 200 albums chart. He was honored in two other categories for his work on that album.

Posted: 5/09/08

BCFS garners highest praise from children

By Craig Bird

Baptist Child & Family Services

LULING—The Governor’s Division of Emergency Management praised Baptist Child & Family Serives for its role in caring for children taken from a polygamist Fundamentalist Latter-Day Saints ranch in West Texas. But the highest praise came from the people whose opinions matter most—the children themselves.

“You’re nice,” a 6-year-old girl told BCFS Executive Vice President Nanci Gibbons as she walked past her on the playground at the BCFS Youth Ranch at Luling, where 75 children received care.

Gibbons thanked the child, but she asked why she believed she was nice.

“Because your shirt says BCFS,” the girl answered. “It means Best Care for Children.”

“For the children to recognize that the folks in BCFS shirts are there to help and be ‘nice’ is the best compliment we could get,” BCFS President Kevin Dinnin said.

Placing 75 of the 462 children at the Youth Ranch allowed Child Protective Services to keep many sibling groups together. It also kept BCFS in overdrive mode to staff the facility and activate support programs with local school districts. A mobile medical unit also was stationed at the ranch.

The San Antonio-based agency was alerted April 4, just as the operation to remove children from the ranch in Eldorado got under way. Officials told BCFS to be ready to receive 24 children at the Youth Ranch. But the next day, Dinnin was asked if BCFS could supervise sheltering operations in San Angelo “for up to 150 women and children.”

At its peak, the shelters housed 550 women and children. Texas Baptist Men disaster relief, Victim Relief Ministries and volunteers from churches such as First Baptist in Plains served.

As incident commander, Dinnin provided overall command and control of all responding agencies. During the three weeks the shelters operated in San Angelo until the court ordered the children placed in child care facilities across the state, about 1,000 state, county and city personnel and volunteers worked under BCFS supervision as the agency interacted daily on critical incident decisions with various governmental agencies and officials.

BCFS deployed 55 employees, including most of its senior administrative staff, and more than $1 million worth of assets. In addition to two mobile medical clinics and a mobile feeding unit, BCFS provided the communication technology for the operation.

While CPS and the state courts decided about placement of the children, BCFS ministered to emotionally stressed women and children around the clock; accommodated religious practices by providing organic, non-processed meals and acceptable toys and play activities; treated outbreaks of chicken pox and upper respiratory infections; created an alternate phone system when the cable to the shelters and command post accidentally was cut; developed contingency plans for any of the possible court rulings; processed mountains of laundry; and handled all the purchasing.

When the courts ordered the transfer of the children to facilities across the state, BCFS tracked the bus convoys dispatched around the state by global positioning system.

“To categorize the sheltering operations as ‘highly successful’ is a gross understatement,” Dinnin added. ”To quote Chief Colley of the Governor’s Division of Emergency Management, BCFS was ‘the rock star of the San Angelo operation.’ We do appreciate that—but being noted for providing Best Care for Children is the highest compliment possible.”

Posted: 5/09/08

Student worship leader keeps collegiate ties

By Leann Callaway

Special to the Baptist Standard

WACO—The Blake Bollinger Band’s roots run deep at Baylor University in Waco.

As a freshman at Baylor in 1999, Bollinger was asked to lead worship for chapel services, which put him in front of thousands of students each week.

Before long, Bollinger began responding to requests for out-of-state engagements. As the tour dates began to pile up and the miles of weekend travel kept increasing, Bollinger and his fellow band members felt pressure to drop out of school and pursue music full-time.

But after many hours of discussion and prayer, the band members decided to finish school and to turn down some offers and concert requests. 

“We all found a way to work our class schedule to always be free on Fridays,” Bollinger said. “This allowed us to play Thursday through Sunday and then drive back through the night for our classes on Monday mornings.”

In August 2007, Bollinger’s newest CD, No Holiday, was released. www.blakebollinger.com

After graduating from Baylor in December 2003, Bollinger was able to focus on music full-time. Today, he keeps a busy schedule performing concerts and leading worship at events around the country, including youth camps, retreats, conferences and Disciple Now weekends. In addition, Bollinger serves as a worship leader at Second Baptist Church of Houston’s Pearland campus and frequently performs for events at Baylor.

“I’m humbled and grateful for an opportunity to get to spread the Good News through the powerful vehicle of music,” Bollinger said. “Leading worship needs to be taken very seriously. It’s not just playing songs. It’s leading people into the throne room of the Lord. We pray each time before we lead worship that God’s face will be seen and not ours— that we’ll just be a vehicle to lead people in worship.”

Wherever Bollinger performs, his goal is to offer more than a concert. Bollinger desires to provide students and young adults a life-changing encounter, he said.

We can know our destination

Baylor University's Studio Production class produced, shot, and edited this music video for Blake Bollinger's band singing Glitter. Watch video.

“At a lot of the camps and youth events we go to, we see youth struggling and being unsure of where they’re going to spend eternity,” he said. “We want them to be sure of their salvation and a fulfilling life by having a relationship with Christ. The young people of our generation need to know that they can have a hope and a future. We want them to know that there is more to this life than the here and now and the pursuit of self. We can truly know our destination and have a purpose for life on earth.”

In August 2007, Bollinger’s newest CD, No Holiday, was released. All of the songs on the CD are about situations Bollinger either has experienced or watched others experience.

“My goal was to create songs that connect with all people, but are particularly meaningful and relevant to believers,” Bollinger said. “In order to write a song, I have to really be passionate about the subject. I love to write songs that have redemptive qualities; that start with a struggle and end with hope.

Take it All

“I think the last track, ‘Take it All,’ is my favorite. The words of the song really convey my heart to God.  The chorus says, ‘Take it all, take all of me, take it all, take everything, and take it now, I don’t want it back, take all that I have and all I lack, take it all.’ … God gives us gifts to use for his kingdom, but he also allows us to have faults and flaws that leave us totally dependent on him. When we give him the things that we consider weaknesses, he can turn them into something beautiful and complete.”

Posted: 5/09/08

2nd Opinion:
The morning of many miracles

By Doug Mendenhall

Let’s say God’s in a quirky mood, like when he created the platypus or nudged the Appalachian State football team past Michigan.

Let’s say he decides, for a few hours only, to drastically relax his standards on miracles. For this one morning, the new protocol is boiled down to:

• Requester must believe in God.

• Requester must have honorable motives.

• Request granted.

So at 6 a.m. on this special morning, unannounced, God lets the miracles begin.

At 6:03, the first prayerful soul offers up her daybreak litany of sick and dying friends and acquaintances.

At 6:05, those who are awake feel much better.

At 6:42, those in that first healed generation begin offering prayers of their own. Mostly they give thanks, but some include requests for this healing power to spread—more healings, a couple of saved marriages for friends or relatives, the payment of overdue bills piled up during a long hospital stay.

At 7:15, one of the couples whose marriage was on the rocks awaken at the same time, not on opposite sides of the bed, but cheek by cheek. Ignoring the morning breath, they share their first kiss in a long time and are late getting the kids up for school.

At 8:07, a clerk at the hospital calls to confirm payment of those bills. The clerk is told of the miracle behind the payment.

At 8:10, the clerk summons her faith and prays for a better-paying job to support her aging parents.

At 8:15, she gets a call from an old friend at a bank about a position as a loan officer.

Between 8:15 and 9, the hospital discharges most of its patients as word spreads from room to room about the potent power of prayer.

At 9:02, a bank loan officer arrives for work only to be told she has been replaced. No reason given.

At 9:07, two people die in a collision at the crowded exit from the hospital parking lot.

At 9:11, little Johnny prays that he can be one of the popular kids at school, so that everyone will stop making fun of him.

At 9:15, a single mother prays that the man she’s seeing will finally leave his wife so that her children can have the father they need.

At 9:22, the wife, on her way home from belatedly dropping off the kids at school, picks up her cell phone. It’s her husband. “Hey, sweetie,” she purrs, but he answers curtly: “I want out. I don’t love you anymore.”

By 9:30, the financial power of prayer is being broadly tapped. Loans are being forgiven, bank accounts are filling out of thin air and 401(k) portfolios are growing beyond all reason.

At 10:15, the stock markets begin reacting to news of irregularities in the banking industry.

At 10:19, a third-grader on the playground is sobbing miserably, wondering why little Johnny, his only friend, doesn’t want to play with him today.

At 10:42, the former loan officer, distraught and not knowing where to turn, turns her car off a cliff.

By 10:52, there are no more cliffs, for all of the mountains have been moved one at a time into the sea by rookie believers, just checking to see if it would really work.

At 11 a.m., God does the world a favor. He stops the morning of miracles an hour early.

He cleans up the mess.

He goes back to moving in mysterious ways.

So mysterious that even those who believe firmly that God is at work in the world are seldom certain: Did I just witness a miracle, or was it merely … one of those weird coincidences?

The power is always there if a mountain needs to be moved into the sea, but mostly God keeps a lighter touch on the controls.

Maybe we should pray that he never hands us those controls.

Not even for a single morning.

Doug Mendenhall, author of How Jesus Ended up in the Food Court, serves is a columnist for the Huntsville Times in Huntsville, Ala. His column is distributed by Religion News Service.

Services and Resources

• Mobile and PDA access

• Bible Study Resources

• Contact Us

• List of Services

• Church newsletter publishing

• Advertising rates

• 2008 Publication Dates

• Facts for pastors

• Concerned Baptists

• Baptist Distinctives

• Topical Sitemap

• Coverage of BGCT Reorganization

• Comparison of BF&M texts

• Comparison of BF&M texts in Spanish

• Links

These features will soon be moving to our new format:
• Archives

• Baptist Decision

• Impact of 9-11

Got an RSS newsreader? Subscribe to our syndicated headlines here.

Posted: 5/09/08

Baptism rates follow cycles,
Texas Baptist statistician says

By John Hall

Texas Baptist Communications

DALLAS—Dropping baptism statistics tend to refocus Baptists on evangelism, which results in growing God’s kingdom, according to Clay Price, Baptist General Convention of Texas statistician.

Historically, the number of baptisms has risen and declined in a cyclical pattern, Price said. When Baptists see a decrease in baptisms, they typically put more emphasis on outreach and examine ways they can be more effective.

The number of baptisms taking place in Baptist churches was high in the 1950s, promoted highly through the “A Million More in ’54” campaign. Baptisms dropped in the mid-1960s, but rebounded in 1972. They dropped again toward the end of that decade but rose again in the 1980s.

Baptisms dropped in the early 1990s, but increased through the Texas 2000 evangelistic emphasis. Recently-elected BGCT Executive Director Randel Everett was launching Texas Hope 2010, an effort to share the gospel with every non-Christian in Texas by Easter 2010, before the latest statistics were released that indicated baptisms across the Southern Baptist Convention are down.

Having noted the cyclical nature of baptisms statistics, Price said the recent downturn in baptisms by Southern Baptists must be taken seriously. Perhaps the most telling statistic, he said, is that baptisms in churches that consistently report were down 24 percent.

Despite a gap in reporting, LifeWay’s statistics indicate a drop in baptisms for the third year in a row, down to lows not seen since 1970, said Ed Stetzer, LifeWay’s director of research.

Membership decline

The total membership of Southern Baptist churches also has declined.

“For now, Southern Baptists are a denomination in decline. Some of you were born into an SBC church; others of us chose it of our own accord,” Stetzer wrote on his blog. “Either way, it is dear to us all. Our responsibility before God is, then, to urgently consider how we should respond. Yes, most of our response should be personal and lived out in our local churches—this is a local-church issue. But if we are choosing to partner in this network of churches, and the network is faltering, it will also take some joint action.”

Stetzer noted areas that need to be addressed within Southern Baptist life—the lack of young and ethnic leaders, public infighting within the denomination and a need to focus on the gospel, which he noted is the most serious concern.

“The third, and most important, issue is our loss of focus on the gospel,” he wrote.

“I find it difficult to even say such a thing, but, I believe it to be true. We must recover a gospel centrality and cooperate in proclaiming that gospel locally and globally.”

Posted: 5/09/08

Concern for needy people is gospel truth,
not partisan politics, CBF’s Vestal insists

By Marv Knox

Editor

WACO—God identifies with the poor and the powerless, and Christians encounter Christ when they serve the weakest of the world’s citizens, Daniel Vestal told participants in the Baylor University School of Social Work’s annual “family dinner.”

“Concern for the poor and the powerless is not partisan politics. It is central and integral to the gospel of Jesus Christ,” stressed Vestal, staff leader of the Atlanta-based Cooperative Baptist Fellowship.

Baptists haven’t always realized that truth, Vestal said, acknowledging he did not comprehend the connection between Christ and the poor when he was a young person growing up in a Texas Baptist church.

“The gospel used to be more about pie-in-the-sky than the here-and-now,” he recalled. His own “social conscience” awoke almost exactly 40 years ago, when Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated.

Vestal was a graduate student at Baylor in the spring of 1968. “I realized I bore responsibility for social and economic justice,” he remembered.

But many Baptists still have been “wandering around in the wilderness for 40 years,” while the gap widens between rich and poor Americans and between rich and poor nations, he said.

Social workers trained at Baylor are “wonderful examples of practitioners of the gospel,” as they serve the poor and powerless, Vestal said. Unfortunately, they do not represent a dominant position among Christians, he added, lamenting, “The wind of the Spirit (regarding compassion for the poor) is getting more of a hearing in the world than in the church.”

Still, throughout the Gospels, Jesus continually expressed love and concern for the poor. He even went so far as to tell his followers the criterion for their own divine judgment will be how well they cared for the poor and powerless, he said.

Since Pentecost—not long after Jesus’ ascension to heaven, when the Holy Spirit encompassed the young church—“Christ is no longer limited to time and place,” and the church’s task is to minister on behalf of Christ to the poor, for whom he cared so deeply, Vestal said.

Esther Reyes of Laredo, outstanding Bachelor of Social Work student, is congratulated by Gaynor Yancey, associate dean of the Baylor School of Social Work.

Christian social work is distinctive, because it is centered upon Christ, who is “hidden among the poor,” he said, adding Christ also is “served among the poor” when the needs of the weak and powerless are tended.

“If you want to see the face of Christ, go to the poor, the powerless, the suffering,” he advised. “As you take Christ to them, you will find he already is there.”

Baylor’s School of Social Work announced winners of its annual student awards at the dinner, held at First Baptist Church of Woodway April 24. They are:

• Christen Argueta of San Antonio, outstanding Master of Social Work student.

• Esther Reyes of Laredo, outstanding Bachelor of Social Work student.

• Flor Avellaneda of McGregor and Melissa Ishio of Tsukuba, Japan, “Spirit of Social Work” recipients.

• Sarah Bush of Carrollton; Amy Downs of Henderson, Ky.; Joyce Hull of Chicago; and Crystal Leatch of Houston, excellence in research.

• Irine Thomas of Lewisville, outstanding grant writer.

• Sally Neeley of Mineola, BSW intern of the year.

• Viviana Triana of Colombia, field intern of the year.

Posted: 5/09/08

Looking for guidelines for Christian
blogs? Start with the New Testament

By Ken Camp

Managing Editor

The New Testament book of James compares the tongue to raging fire and a wild beast that cannot be tamed. And the author of that book never was “flamed” on a blog or in a chat room.

Words have power, whether spoken or written in cyberspace. And Christians don’t get a free pass to ignore the Golden Rule when they log on to their computers, according to ethicist Bill Tillman.

Bill Tillman	David Gushee

“Basic civility and communication etiquette should always be in place for a Christian, no matter the medium,” said Tillman, the T.B. Maston professor of Christian ethics at Hardin-Simmons University’s Logsdon Seminary.

“The same guidelines such as those from James regarding discipline with our tongue should be translated over to any form of getting words to others or for others. Unfortunately, too many in the Christian circles who blog have operated with the guidelines you can find anywhere else in society. Usually, when cultural guidelines are used on format, style and word choice, things move to a lower level of style.”

While self-expression has its place, some bloggers cross the line by focusing more on themselves than on the ideas they are trying to express, Tillman observed.

“I recognize a dynamic at work in some of them that the blogger is so intent on establishing herself or himself as a person of significance and all his or her ideas are so important that the communication comes off as nearly yelling,” he said. “There is quite a bit of emotional exhibitionism going across the Ethernet.”

Not everyone who claims to be speaking prophetically—or blogging prophetically—truly bears the mantle of prophet, Tillman noted.

See Related Articles: • Blogging Baptists • Looking for guidelines for Christian blogs? Start with the New Testament • Blogs become Baptist battleground

“Being prophetic is not clearing off a space and having a fit, whatever the subject matter or the medium in which it is communicated,” he said.

Like any tool, blogging can be used for good or bad purposes, said David Gushee, distinguished professor of Christian ethics at Mercer University’s McAfee School of Theology.

“Blogging at its best represents the democratization of the media. It reflects an entrepreneurial culture in which skill and interest can override official status, title or position. An effective blogger can have more influence than the evening news or a thousand official press releases,” Gushee said.

“Blogging at its worst represents public speech unbound by public standards. It can damage both the blogger and especially the blogged-about. It can also waste enormous amounts of time and can become habitual or even addictive. It is the latest but not the last form of an addictive new technology.”

Tillman echoed that theme of time-wasting, but he also noted blogs’ potential as ministry tools.

“There are actually ministry facets that can be addressed through blogging,” he said. But he urged caution—particularly for ministers who blog during office hours.

“Pastors and other ministers often have a great deal of time that is essentially handed to them by a church for the minister’s discretionary use,” he said.

“So much is left to the individual’s conscience to handle the time and how it’s used. With that said, I have to say that from some of the blogging I have read, probably some infringement is done on churches’ good will regarding their staff’s time.”

Blogs as a communications medium are neither good nor bad—but they have the capacity for both good and bad, Tillman added.

“There is a certain neutrality about the technology and the medium. But, just like fire, it’s how it’s used that qualifies its ethicality,” he said.

Some characteristics of blogs set them apart as distinctive, such as their potential reach and their capacity to allow anonymous expression in a public place. But those traits really just demonstrate the human capacity for good or evil, Gushee observed.

“Like all things human, blogging illustrates the exalted and debased nature of the human person and human community,” he said. “Moral responsibility involves curbing the damaging dimensions of blogging while elevating those dimensions that contribute to human wellbeing and the common good.”

Posted: 5/09/08

Blogging Baptists

By John Hall

Texas Baptist Communications

For some people, blogs are like a family reunion where people barely know each other. There’s a lot of talking going on, but there’s little agreement on much of anything.

But for many of the increasing number of Baptist bloggers, that’s the beauty of it.

A blog—short for “web log”—is a website or online journal where authors regularly publish commentaries on personal and public issues. Typically, blogs allow readers to comment on posts, creating the opportunity for readers to dialogue with each other and a post’s author.

The blogosphere is the world’s online dinner table, where people from all perspectives can share their thoughts and opinions on what is going on in their lives and the world around them.

Diane Schiano, researcher at the Palo Alto Research Center in Palo Alto, Calif., said people sit at the cybertable for as many reasons as there are blogs. Some are meant to update friends and family about what’s going on in someone’s life. Some use blogs as a kind of self-validation, seeing other people reading their blog as an indication that what they’re doing or saying is important. And younger people are clamoring to have their own place in cyberspace, she added.

“There are a lot of people who want to feel in constant contact,” Schiano said. “I call it hyper-connectivity. Wherever they go, whatever they’re doing, they want to be able to reach out to someone.”

Family, evangelism

Amanda Sturgill, a journalism professor at Baylor University, blogs on media and religious issues at aejrmig.blogspot.com. She believes Baptists, in particular, blog for two reasons—they are family-oriented, creating a desire to share their family lives with others, and as evangelicals, they believe they have something important to add to the global conversation.

Baptists may be supplying information and perspectives that Internet surfers are wanting, Sturgill noted. Research indicates 25 percent of web users have looked for religious information on the Internet.

“People from evangelical faiths have classically seen new media technologies as being a great witnessing tool—allowing believers to reach all the world in an expeditious manner. This has been true for everything from print to the World Wide Web. It’s no accident that Gutenberg’s first product was a Bible. But usually it doesn’t live up to hopes. There is Christian broadcasting, but mostly existing Christians watch and listen, for example,” Sturgill said.

“Blogs have the potential to be different because they can, at the same time, be both a megaphone and an intimate conversation. But to do this requires the blogger to actually interact with readers through comments and the like.”

Iron sharpening iron

Many Baptist bloggers point to participating in the online conversation as the primary reason they write. They talk about “iron sharpening iron,” noting that thinking through blog posts and responding to comments helps them improve their ministries. They also hope it helps others.

Marty Duren, a former contributor at www.sbcoutpost.com—a prominent blog pushing for change within the Southern Baptist Convention—now blogs on missional living at www.iemissional.com.

Duren believes he has learned some lessons in ministry and hopes to help others, multiplying his spiritual influence. And he wants to bring a biblical perspective to issues.

The blog also has given him the opportunity to meet people he otherwise wouldn’t have met. Recently, he had lunch with an Atlanta atheist he met through his blog.

Melissa Rogers, director of Wake Forest University’s Center for Religion and Public Affairs who blogs at melissarogers.typepad.com, said her blog was a natural outgrowth of her regular media tracking and discussions.

“I thought since I’m tracking these things anyway, they may be of use to others as well,” she said.

Access to younger generation

Aaron Weaver, a Baylor graduate student who blogs at www.thebigdaddyweave.com, uses his blog to stay informed of Baptist issues related to politics, but he also advocates what he calls Baptist distinctives. He believes blogging is a way to connect with younger generations.

“For the most part, the young Baptists that I know don’t read Baptist publications. They don’t read denominational newspapers. But they do read blogs; they like blogs. Many even have blogs of their own. They are exchanging ideas with each other, and they are willing to read blogs from other Baptists of all ages,” Weaver said. 

“Their blogging is definitely not limited to Baptist or even religious subjects, but some young Baptists are thinking and writing about topics of interest to other Baptists. It is my hope that more younger Baptists will discover the Baptist blogosphere and become more interested in our distinctives, history and the future of Baptists. 

“In our increasingly pluralistic, post-modern, post-denominational world, what is the future of Baptists?  That is a question which Baptists—young and old—should be dialoging about. The Baptist blogosphere is the perfect place in which to have that much-needed conversation.”

Posted: 5/09/08

Blogs become Baptist battleground

By Robert Marus

Associated Baptist Press

WASHINGTON (ABP)—One classic joke about Baptists is that wherever two or three are gathered, there are four opinions among them.

The same can be said of bloggers, and Baptists seem to have taken to blogs with particular gusto, on both the institutional and individual levels. But as a democratically governed and notoriously fractious bunch, blogging Baptists also seem to have put a new virtual twist on the time-honored tradition of contentious business meetings.

For instance, the recent highly publicized spat over homosexuality, pastoral leadership and other issues at a Texas Baptist church made headlines in local and national media outlets after a handful of members wrote about it in their personal blogs.

Two years ago, reform-minded bloggers in the Southern Baptist Convention helped an outsider candidate get elected president of the denomination for the first time in more than a decade. But their critiques of the denomination’s entrenched power structure earned them the enmity of some of their fellow conservative SBC supporters, who have denounced bloggers like Wade Burleson and Benjamin Cole with the ugliest accusation possible in modern-day Southern Baptist life—calling them “liberals.”

Rancorous?

Are Baptists prone to virtual fighting, and, if so, why? Prominent bloggers said that the rancorousness associated with many Baptist blogs may simply be a reflection of the rancorousness of Baptist life in general. And such contentiousness, while aired more prominently when sent to millions of homes via the Internet, isn’t inherently evil.

“Historically, we Baptists have been dissenters,” said Aaron Weaver, a graduate student at Baylor University who operates the the Big Daddy Weave blog. “The blog is merely a new medium … Baptists use to dissent when dissent is necessary. In some ways, blogs are a form of congregationalism.”

But in an age where megachurch pastors have a strong hand in their congregations’ decision-making and where an entrenched and well-funded bureaucracy holds tight political control over the Southern Baptist Convention, such congregationalism is less common, according to bloggers.

“The blog medium has tapped into the growing sense that congregational polity is an increasingly rare commodity among Baptists,” said Cole, an associate pastor at an Oklahoma church.

Two years ago, Cole’s now-inactive Baptist Blogger site helped contribute to the election of Frank Page as SBC president. He currently is a regular contributor to the SBC Outpost blog.

Outlet for frustration

“The frustration that the disenfranchised and unempowered have sensed on account of the new Baptist magisterium has given rise to their advent in the blogosphere,” he said.

And heretofore powerless bloggers can produce results that dissenting groups couldn’t have expected in Baptist life just a few years ago, in the pre-blog era. That, he said, is because “bureaucracies on both the local-church and denominational levels are too big and too slow to coun-ter the speed with which dissident bloggers have articulated their ideas and ad-vanced their causes.”

Weaver agreed.

“The format of the blogosphere disallows coercion tactics that have been employed in the past by dictatorial church leaders,” he said. “The blog medium serves as a safe haven for those who feel that public dissent is their only option.”

Both Cole and Weaver agreed blogs can lend themselves to nastiness. But, they warned, don’t throw the baby out with the proverbial bath water.

The medium is neutral

“Blogs are not inherently bad,” Weaver said. “Negative and destructive blogs are a reflection of the blogger—not the blogosphere. I suppose anonymity can lead to people being dishonest. But if honesty is an issue, it is an issue of character and not the medium of blogging itself.”

Cole and other SBC bloggers have been criticized by their fellow conservatives for using blogs to reveal less-than-flattering information about prominent SBC leaders. But Baptist blogging’s critics are overlooking the whole of Baptist history, he said.

“Quite frankly, those who lament the ‘unhealthy’ and ‘un-Christian’ character of blogging must have been ridiculously blind or purposefully naïve for the last 400 years of Baptist bickering,” he said. “That some of the current SBC leadership weep and wail over blogging, and gather round like huddled martyrs, and yet they were the selfsame provocateurs of the fundamentalist juggernaut would be laughable if it wasn’t so pathetic.”

Cole concluded: “Would Christ blog about the malfeasance run amok in Baptist life? Probably not. Neither would he sit quietly and cover the backsides of the worst denominational offenders, as some of our convention trustees seem content to do.”