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Cyber Column by Brett Younger: Learning trust from tragedy
Posted: 9/13/05
CYBER COLUMN:
Learning trust from tragedyBy Brett Younger
When we began seeing the first horrific images from Hurricane Katrina, I thought about Max. On a mission trip to New Orleans in 1997, my job was leading a daily Bible study for 15 homeless men with drug or alcohol addictions. Ex-convicts, victims of abuse, and only a few high school graduates made it a Saturday night crowd rather than one of the Sunday morning crews with whom I usually share Bible study. On the first day, while discussing the parable of the Good Samaritan, I said something like: “It’s hard to know what to teach my children about strangers. I don’t want them to trust everyone, but if I teach them to be afraid, I may also be teaching them to hate.”
Brett Younger Max reacted angrily, shouting: “You don’t know what it’s like in my world. I was 8 years old the first time I saw a man murdered. I’ve lost count of how many murders I’ve seen since then. I have an 11-year-old daughter. I’m going to teach her to fear everyone. If hating them keeps her alive, then I hope she hates them.”
09/13/2005 - By John Rutledge
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Baptism goes on, even after total immersion of church
Posted: 9/09/05
Baptist disaster-relief volunteers from Mississippi, Virginia and other states gather for prayer at First Baptist Church in Biloxi, Miss., soon after dawn Sept. 5, readying for another day preparing meals for victims of hurricane Katrina. (ABP photo by Stretch Ledford)
Baptism goes on, even after
'total immersion' of churchBy Dee Ann Campbell
Associated Baptist Press
GULFPORT, Miss. (ABP)—When Tom MacIntosh baptized his two oldest daughters, it was in the war-torn islands of the Philippines, with destruction and chaos all around. He had hoped the baptisms of his youngest two children would be under more tranquil circumstances.
09/09/2005 - By John Rutledge
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Texas Baptist Forum
Posted: 9/02/05
Texas Baptist Forum
Signs of Jesus
In my congregation on any given Sunday morning, I can see at least two of the three indicators Mike McNamara offers up as evidence that Christian culture has been lost within the church: Some women wear hair styles shorter than men, and a few women have tattoos (Aug. 22). The saints in my congregation are too poor to afford breast augmentation surgery or–who knows –I might see examples of that, too.
Funny, though, until he mentioned it, I never realized the absence of those things indicated one's status as a Christ-follower. But I distinctly remember Jesus' saying the world would know us, instead, by how we love one another.
• Jump to online-only letters below Letters are welcomed. Send them to marvknox@baptiststandard.com; 250 words maximum.
"We have the ability to take (Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez) out, and I think the time has come to exercise that ability."
Pat Robertson
Televangelist, on his 700 Club program"The Southern Baptist Convention does not support or endorse public statements concerning assassinations of persons, even if they are despicable despots of foreign countries, and neither do I."
Bobby Welch
SBC president and pastor of First Baptist Church in Daytona Beach, Fla., responding to Robertson (BP)"Religious citizens have the same rights as nonreligious citizens to argue their side. But disagreement with those positions is not automatically anti- religious bigotry or hostility to faith."
Melissa Rogers
First Amendment attorney and visiting professor of religion and public policy at Wake Forest University Divinity School in Winston-Salem, N.C. (RNS)"The church is not the four walls. The church is like Home Depot. You go there to get what you need to return home and fix what's in disrepair."
Tom Fortson Jr.
Promise Keepers president (The Tennessean/RNS)09/06/2005 - By John Rutledge
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Gulf coast residents dazed by fury of Katrina
Posted: 9/06/05
St. Michael's Catholic Church in Biloxi, Miss., though significantly damaged from the effects of Hurricane Katrina, survived in the location where it was built to stand. To the left of the church, not where it was ever intended to be, is one of at least three floating barge casinos that were torn from their moorings by Katrina's storm surge and now sit on dry ground some 200 yards inland from the water. (ABP photo by Greg Warner) Gulf coast residents dazed by fury of Katrina
By Greg Warner
Associated Baptist Press
BILOXI, Miss. (ABP)—Hurricane Katrina punished the sacred and profane alike as it came ashore on the Mississippi Coast Aug. 29, gutting sturdy brick churches and glittering casinos, historic oceanside homes and modest tin-roofed bungalows.
09/06/2005 - By John Rutledge
