Posted: 12/10/04

Court dismisses most of legal
challenges to faith-based initiatives

By Robert Marus

ABP Washington Bureau

WASHINGTON (ABP)—A federal judge has dismissed the most sweeping portions of a lawsuit that challenged President Bush's faith-based initiative as unconstitutional.

Judge John Shabaz of the U.S. District Court of Western Wisconsin dismissed most of the claims in Freedom From Religion Foundation vs. Towey, the suit filed in June by the Wisconsin-based foundation.

It launched a broad assault on the philosophy and specifics of Bush's program to provide more government funding to churches and other religious charities for social services.

A few days before Shabaz's ruling, the Freedom From Religion Foundation voluntarily narrowed the scope of the lawsuit to two programs funded through grants from the federal Department of Health and Human Services.

The suit originally claimed that Jim Towey, the director of the White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives and other administration officials violated the First Amendment's ban on government endorsement of religion "by using federal taxpayer appropriations to support activities that endorse religion and give faith-based organizations preferred positions as political insiders."

The complaint cited speeches given at the dozens of conferences for providers of faith-based social services that the White House has hosted in various parts of the country.

It also claimed the agencies showed favoritism toward religion by providing "capacity- building" assistance to churches and other religious groups to enable them to better compete with secular groups for government grants.

The complaint also said the guidelines the administration provides to religious service providers—that they may not use government funds for "inherently religious" activities —are insufficient to prevent public funds from subsidizing ostensibly "secular" services pervaded by religious components.

But Shabaz ruled the Wisconsin group, which has about 5,000 members and advocates for strict church-state separation, does not have standing to challenge the perceived violations of the First Amendment by the executive branch.

The result of the ruling "is that the complaint has been narrowed to two particular federal grants made by the Department of Health and Human Services—and, at least for now, has been reduced to a small thorn in the (faith-based) initiative's side rather than the large threat it initially appeared to be," according to a legal analysis by George Washington University law professors Chip Lupu and Bob Tuttle.

The two have been tracking the lawsuit and other legal developments involving the faith-based initiative for the non-partisan Roundtable on Religion and Social Welfare Policy.

Posted: 12/10/04

BUA students spent fall in India mission service

By Ken Camp

Managing Editor

SAN ANTONIO—Two Baptist University of the Americas students—one from Mexico, the other from Nicaragua—spent the fall semester working with Banjara Gypsies in India.

Leaders of the Texas Baptist theological university hope all their students have the opportunity for a similar short-term, cross-cultural missions experience before they graduate, said Javier Elizondo, dean of academic affairs at Baptist University of the Americas.

He worked with two former BUA students, Eddie and Macarena Aldape, and their Cooperative Baptist Fellowship colleagues in India, James and Robbi Francovich, to plan the semester-long missions immersion program.

As he learned about the Aldapes’ and Francoviches’ work with the Banjara Gypsy people-group in India and their desire to have students serve alongside them for a short-term internship, Elizondo grew intrigued by the possibility of placing BUA students in India for a semester.

At a church service among the Christian Banjara Gypsies.

“India, Africa and the Arab world are exactly where we’d like to place some of our students for missions service,” he said.

That’s true, at least in part, because Hispanics share many physical characteristics with people in that part of the world and can blend in with the general population, he explained.

Elizondo had a clear idea of what kind of student he wanted to enlist for the pilot project in India.

“I wanted somebody who was bicultural, bilingual and self-motivated,” he said.

He also wanted somebody with roots in Latin America, who would not be so overwhelmed by Third World poverty that he would be unable to serve effectively.

The idea of placing a student from Catholic-dominated Latin America in a culture permeated by non-Christian religions also captivated Elizondo.

“I wanted the students to have the challenging task of reaching a group of people who are not easy to reach,” he said.

“In Latin America, there is still a Christian influence. I wanted them to see how to evangelize in an unreached place like India and to see how much distance there is to bridge there, as opposed to bridging the distance from Catholic non-born-again to evangelical born-again.”

Elizondo enlisted Juan Acuña, a Californian who was born in Monterrey, Mexico, and Allan Escobar, who lived in Nicaragua until age 16, when he moved to Fort Worth.

The students served through the CBF Student.Go program.

Francovich served as field supervisor and professor-of-record for the students’ fall semester, and they received credit at BUA for the work they did in India. He directed their studies as they read a book a week, and he provided mentorship for their cross-cultural learning experience.

Acuña and Escobar spent the first half of their semester in India with the Francoviches, visiting Banjara Gypsy villages, learning about the people and sharing their faith when given the opportunity.

The Texas students experienced some culture shock upon arriving in India.

Escobar acknowledged the first challenge he faced on arriving in India was to “see beyond the poverty.”

The students learned British English spoken with an Indian accent and Texas English spoken with a Spanish accent bear little resemblance to each other. Slang acceptable to one group could be offensive to a different group, they discovered.

Escobar was taken aback when he saw Indian men holding hands and embracing each other closely until he recognized it as a cultural characteristic.

Even so, Acuña insisted the greatest surprise for him was not the differences he observed but the similarities.

“Indian culture has a lot of similarities with Hispanic culture,” he noted. “Both are very family-oriented.”

During the second half of their time in India, the students worked with the Aldapes and focused primarily on youth. They visited clinics, preached in several churches and taught at a conference for youth leaders.

At one clinic, Acuña performed a sleight-of-hand illusion to capture the attention of young people who were waiting in line.

“Once I grabbed their attention, I was able to share Christ with them,” he recalled.

Acuña noted Indian young people in the cities are more westernized than their rural peers, and their curiosity about all things American provided the Texas students an open door to sharing their faith.

“They’re interested in talking with people from the United States, and we had several opportunities to share Christ,” he said.

He recalled an encounter with two girls in a coffee shop who initially started talking with him about movies. In time, the conversation shifted to a school project one of the girls was researching about the causes of depression among young people.

Acuña explained his belief that many young people experience depression because they lack a relationship with God. He gave one of the young women a copy of Philip Yancey’s book, “Disappointment with God.”

“She wrote an e-mail to me, and she said she’s reading it,” Acuña said, adding he has continued to stay in e-mail contact with several young people he met in India.

Elizondo already has made arrangements for Escobar and Acuña to share their insights with students at BUA in a variety of venues, including a chapel service and several classes. He hopes they will be “the first of many” BUA students who will have similar semester-long missions experiences.

“We are really excited about the mission of BUA to provide cross-cultural mission experiences for their students and for the great opportunity to guide students through first-hand experiences among an unreached people group in a Third World country,” Francovich wrote in an e-mail.

“Many Latin Americans have responded to the call to missions and are living in our country, and we pray that through this partnership between BUA and CBF, many more Hispanic Americans and Latin American students will be challenged to find their place of service in making disciples of all nations.”

Posted: 12/10/04

Rebekah Naylor's ministry has made mark on Bangalore

BANGALORE, India—Ask people around Bangalore, India, what a Christian looks like and many would describe Rebekah Naylor, the Southern Baptist missionary surgeon who has labored at Bangalore Baptist Hospital for the past 30 years.

Some have seen Naylor as a cool, precise, professional medical doctor who has performed countless surgeries and other medical procedures. She has saved lives, delivered babies and relieved suffering for thousands of people over the years.

But others know Naylor through her soft-spoken but persistent sharing of the gospel, her training and encouragement of Indian Baptists in how to witness and plant churches. In this role she has helped thousands of people find eternal life in Christ.

For Naylor, the missionary calling and the drive to become a physician were one calling.

“I experienced a call to missions specifically when I was 13 years old,” she said. “God spoke to me very clearly about personal involvement in foreign missions service.” That calling combined with her interest in medicine.

“My ambition in medicine was basically to use it as an avenue to share my faith in Jesus Christ,” she said, summing up a vision for her life she pursued with steadfast devotion over the following decades. Already she had plowed new ground. Few women became physicians, much less surgeons, in the 1960s.

By the time she arrived in India as a newly appointed missionary in 1974, she had managed to get through university, medical school and related training. From a comfortable home in Fort Worth, the medical and missionary newbie found herself stepping through India’s poor who slept on sidewalks for want of homes.

She arrived at Bangalore Baptist Hospital when it had been open for just six months. The building sat then on a bare, 15-acre site outside the city. Although she was anxious, the Indian staff and the 12 patients welcomed the American warmly.

India boasts nearly 20 million evangelicals, such as this member of Andheri Baptist Church. Yet the country's 1.05 billion people are 80 percent Hindu. (Matt Jones Photo)

“The foreign doctors were supposed to know something more than others, so they came hoping that they would find excellent care. They did find excellent care, but they also found people who really cared about them,” she said.

As years passed, the city grew out to surround the hospital compound, and the hospital also grew, from 80 beds to 160. The hospital began to help educate doctors and train Indians to become X-ray and lab technicians.

Today the hospital delivers 1,500 babies a year—average of about four babies a day. Doctors there treat more than 100,000 patients a year and impact five times that many for the gospel.

Naylor served in several key roles at the hospital, including administrator, coming to be accepted more as family than foreign staffer. She also became honorary “Auntie” to hundreds and hundreds of Indian young people and children.

From its inception, the hospital maintained pastoral ministry and outreach. “Its reason to exist was to tell people about Jesus Christ,” she said.

Today Indian Baptists point to a map of Bangalore that is dotted with Baptist churches, most the result of the hospital’s outreach. When workers went to one community a couple of miles from the hospital years ago, there were no Christians and no churches. Within a year, there were 20 baptized believers. Today Trinity Baptist Church is a thriving congregation that has started 18 other churches and is working in many other communities to start more.

When a man died at Baptist Hospital some years ago, the staff gave the man’s wife and family a Bible. Though they grieved, they began reading this strange book they had never seen before.

Years later, the hospital staff learned the family had turned to Christ and all the children had become ministers. Naylor has a treasury of such stories.

One family she ministered to was that of Mutes Khan, a Muslim social worker and community leader. Naylor got to know the Khan family when his first wife developed breast cancer. After his wife died and he remarried, Naylor delivered his new son.

As Baptist Hospital was looking to extend its medical care to villages outside Bangalore, Khan wanted someone else to take over a small medical clinic he had developed. Because he had come to know and trust the hospital through Naylor, he donated the clinic to the hospital in 2003.

Although Khan remains Muslim, he has heard the gospel from Naylor and works to maintain good relations between the two faiths. That’s important in India, where militant Hindus, Indian Muslims and Christians often have clashed in recent years.

Despite a career most missionaries and physicians would envy, in recent years Naylor has realized that even the many churches started through the hospital’s ministry never will be enough to reach all of India. In Karnataka state alone, 52 million people represent 300 language/cultural groups. Missionaries have learned that when a group begins to respond to the gospel and start new churches, the growth stays within the group and only rarely crosses into another.

To reach the spiritually lost people in this one state, Christians must deliver the gospel in 300 languages and in 33,000 villages, towns and cities linked by few roads.

“I think this gives you just a small picture of one part of India as to how difficult it is and challenging it is to access all these different communities and people groups and languages and to communicate effectively,” Naylor said.

Beyond the people group divisions, India’s social castes create still more barriers. “It is difficult for a person of one caste to reach into another, but I firmly believe that this can happen,” she said.

Her experience has made Naylor into a cheerleader for the whole nation and its peoples. “When we think of all of India, our vision is that we would like to see at least 1,000 workers come into India,” she said. Southern Baptist workers have identified 50 megacities (with populations of more than 1 million) and 1,100 unreached people-groups in South Asia, most in India.

“In order to engage them with the gospel, I think it’s evident that many, many, many workers are needed,” she urged.

India’s millions are open to the gospel, Naylor insists, and they constitute an open door. “They are waiting to hear. They are ready to respond.”

Article courtesy of the Southern Baptist International Mission Board, www.imb.org.

Posted: 12/10/04

Louisiana College placed on probation

By Robert Marus

Associated Baptist Press

PINEVILLE, La. (ABP)—The South’s major accrediting agency for schools has placed a Louisiana Baptist college on probation for a year for violating the agency's standards.

Louisiana College officials announced the Pineville, La., school was placed on probation by the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools. Members of the association's Commission on Colleges voted to make the change at their regularly scheduled December meeting in Atlanta.

Probation from the accrediting agency is a more serious sanction than a warning or "notation" on the school's record, but less severe than the full removal of accreditation. The school will have 12 months to prove it is in compliance with the agency's standards.

Louisiana College has been roiled by controversy for several years, with much of it coming to a head in the past two years as a group of fundamentalists gained a majority on the institution's board of directors. All board members are appointed by the Louisiana Baptist Convention.

In the past few months, the college's president, chief academic administrator and board chairman have resigned. Last month—only a week after being introduced to the Louisiana Baptist Convention—the college's newly called president unexpectedly withdrew his application for the job, citing "governance issues."

Earlier this year, a special committee from the accrediting agency visited the college's campus on a fact-finding mission. Committee members determined Louisiana College was not in compliance with several of the association's standards regarding academic freedom and proper board governance.

"The committee concluded, based upon extensive interviews with members of the board of trustees, senior staff and faculty that a significant portion of the board of trustees of Louisiana College are influenced if not controlled by the agenda of the Louisiana Inerrancy Fellowship and the Louisiana Baptist Convention," the SACS report read.

The study team said an agenda from the inerrancy group—established as a political movement within the Louisiana Baptist Convention—had unduly influenced the board's work.

Among the controversies on campus were two trustee-initiated policies that many professors said violated academic freedom—a 2003 move to require prior approval of class texts and materials by administrators and more recent actions that made the board more closely involved in faculty hiring and that required new faculty hires to be in agreement with the Southern Baptist Convention's 2000 Baptist Faith & Message statement.

According to a statement released by Louisiana College, Interim President John Traylor said the school will meet that goal.

"It is my opinion that SACS is calling on the institution to recognize the seriousness of the accrediting standards. Trustees, administration and faculty must take the steps necessary to move the college into full compliance, lest we lose membership in SACS," the statement read.

"The entire college community—trustees, administration, faculty—have committed themselves to the actions necessary to bring Louisiana College into compliance with the standards of accreditation."

Posted: 12/10/04

Church hopes other churches adopt Operation
Inasmuch to minister to the 'least of these'

By Wayne Grinstead

Associated Baptist Press

FAYETTEVILLE, N.C. (ABP)—Ten years ago, Snyder Memorial Baptist Church in Fayetteville, N.C., was a church ready for a new challenge. To revitalize the congregation, staff members envisioned a brief local-missions blitz with the ambitious goal of involving more than half of the people attending Sunday morning services.

What resulted was a one-day effort to minister to "the least of these" in and around Fayetteville, a military town. Blending military and biblical terminology, they called the project "Operation Inasmuch," taking inspiration from Jesus' parable in Matthew 25.

The first event drew 450 participants from the church—two-thirds of the average Sunday attendance.

"The day after, … some members came to me and said, 'That's our idea of missions,'" recalled David Crocker, at the time the church's new pastor. "Operation Inasmuch became the heart of the church's mission statement. It changed the identity of the church in the community. From that point on, the church was sold on it."

So, apparently, were a lot of others.

A decade later, more than 300 churches representing many denominations now participate, as the idea has spread from North Carolina into Tennessee, Georgia, Alabama, Florida, and even across the Atlantic. Burton Latimer Baptist Church in England held an Operation Inasmuch last year.

"When you start something like this," Crocker said, "you have no idea where it's going."

People of all ages gravitate toward expressing their concern for missions in local and personal ways, he noted. "They want hands-on involvement," he said.

Operation Inasmuch attempts to get church members outside of the church and into the community. But it's not about church image. "It's about doing what Jesus said," Crocker explained. "It's practicing what we say we believe. I grow weary of how often we gather in comfortable places and talk about doing missions. And I know that when you offer a way to do missions, laypeople in particular are very enthusiastic about it."

An event last spring in Knoxville, Tenn., where Crocker now is pastor of Central Baptist Church in Fountain City, included Presbyterians and Methodists and provided hands-on missions activities for almost all age groups.

That is a key to involvement, said Martha Johnson, a registered nurse who has been Central's volunteer coordinator for three Operation Inasmuch efforts.

During the April event, children in the church were part of a pizza party given for guests at a Ronald McDonald House, which offers temporary housing for families of ill children. The church children also packed personal-care kits that were distributed to people in local homeless shelters. Senior adults participated in light assembly projects.

Other church members prepared and froze 112 casseroles for the Fellowship Center, another organization that houses out-of-town families of local hospital patients. Central sponsored a baby shower, with all gifts donated to a home for unwed mothers. They prepared 500 "compassion bags." Each item inside had a Bible verse attached. Church members sorted food and clothes that had been donated to the Fountain City Ministry Center, an interdenominational project of eight churches housed at Central Baptist.

Youth and adults, working under the direction of project leaders, completed 20 construction-related projects during the one-day event, including painting, roofing, landscaping and installation of a wheelchair ramp in a home.

Even when construction is involved, the costs are kept to a minimum, Crocker said. It's often possible to partner with local groups that are "pass-through organizations" for projects funded by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.

"HUD makes money available to almost every community in the nation for repair of resident-owned property for people who are unable to do the repairs themselves," Crocker said. "These organizations are looking for volunteers. Our proposal is: 'You provide the materials. We provide the volunteers.'"

The Operation Inasmuch churches provide lunches for all participating volunteers. And churches must purchase items to be used in the personal-care kits. But the average out-of-pocket cost for Central Baptist for an Operation Inasmuch with approximately 500 volunteers is only $3,000. "So often people are willing to donate things," Crocker said. "Lots of businesses are eager to help out when they understand what this is."

In many Operation Inasmuch projects, those ministering and those ministered to are in direct contact. Does this then become an evangelism effort? And, Crocker was asked, how do you keep the recipients from feeling patronized?

In home-repair projects, volunteers are asked to take time to visit with homeowners, get to know them, share with them, and pray with and for them. Operation Inasmuch gives homeowners a Bible with the names of the volunteers listed inside.

"While volunteers are putting on a new roof, other volunteers are meeting and talking with the owners," Crocker said. "We do ask volunteers to inquire about their spiritual situation and, to whatever extent they will allow, to share with them. But we don't want it done in a heavy-handed way."

Operation Inasmuch has contributed to church growth at Central Baptist. "We've had people join the church because they were impressed that people would do such things," Crocker said.

But public relations and church growth are not the goals of Operation Inasmuch, Johnson emphasized.

"You have to be careful about the image you want to project," she said. "We don't want to imply that we're doing something that nobody else is doing.

"It's not an opportunity to brag about your church. It should be done more quietly than that. It's an opportunity to know that our church has a presence in the community. And people know that we are out there helping other people. Not that it's something great. It's just something that we are supposed to do. With just a little bit of effort," she said, "you can help a lot of people."

A manual for Operation Inasmuch is available for a nominal charge from the ministry’s website, www.operationinasmuch.com.

Posted: 12/10/04

Abilene church encouraging members
to use skills to live 'missionally'

By John Hall

Texas Baptist Communications

ABILENE—At Pioneer Drive Baptist Church, any member who can sweep a floor has a skill that can be used to honor Christ. Church leaders emphasize Christians should live “missionally”—using their talents and abilities to glorify God and share Christ.

This means each person, whether a banker, construction worker, writer or businessperson, answers the same calling of expanding God’s kingdom, said Randy Perkins, the church’s minister of missions and outreach.

Christians are called to examine the community and meet needs, Perkins said. Each person has a skill set that can help people. They must engage and intentionally serve Christ through it.

A member of Pioneer Drive Baptist Church in Abilene hugs a young girl during a recent mission trip to New York City.

“If you see a need, let’s meet that need,” Perkins said. “And while we’re meeting that need, let’s share Christ.”

Members have started ministries that match their skills and gifts, from roof repairs and church building ministries to volunteering in a crisis pregnancy center or a service that provides showers to the homeless. The congregation also has started two churches.

Perkins is quick to note these are not programs of the church in the traditional sense but congregationwide efforts to “empty” itself into neighborhoods. Members use their skills and passions to serve where they want, rather than functioning through artificially designated areas of ministry.

“Meet people where they are,” he encourages Christians. “Get involved in life. Get involved in reality.”

A prime example of ministry growing out of missional living is House of Faith, a Pioneer Drive-sponsored work to poor children, Perkins said. It began with a group of people seeing the need for ministry along streets they traveled regularly.

They began going up and down streets, inviting youth to events such as Bible clubs. At first, parents were reluctant to let them in their yards. Now they welcome church members into their homes.

Denise Davidson, who leads this effort, said volunteers have ministered to about 300 children in three years and have seen 50 children make faith professions through weekly Bible clubs. A grandmother and mother also made the same declaration.

The clubs and volunteers provide some consistency for the children, many of whom come from unstable backgrounds, Davidson said. Workers show the children love and give them a place they feel they belong.

Davidson now is trying to replicate the ministry in several different points in Abilene. House of Faith is active in several West Texas cities.

“I love it when you start the club and you see kids walking down the street,” she said. “They come up and give you a big hug.”

This model of missions with people investing their lives in other people follows Jesus’ example of meeting needs, Perkins noted. Pioneer Drive staff encourage members to stop in their daily work to act as Christ did. “When you put yourself out there, the Lord will use you.”

Posted: 12/10/04

Christmas Bible School teaches true meaning of the season

By George Henson

Staff Writer

PRINCETON—No star above a stable guided them, but the story of the Christ-child still drew people to worship as a North Texas church reminded area families about the true meaning of Christmas.

Each year since 1998, Faith Baptist Church in Princeton has held Christmas Bible School. It began when some members of the church decided to set aside one Saturday in early December to celebrate and teach children about Christ. This year, the event fell on Dec. 4, with 69 children and 39 volunteers attending.

Beginning at 9 a.m. and ending at 2 p.m., Christmas Bible School has many elements of Vacation Bible School, a mainstay of summer children’s ministries in Baptist churches. Like VBS, children at Christmas Bible School are divided into age-graded classrooms and led by volunteers in Bible study, crafts, music and recreation.

The last couple of years, the children’s choir has performed its Christmas musical during the assembly time, Pastor Stan Fike said.

Everything, whether the games or the Bible story, is meant to illuminate the true meaning of Christmas, he explained.

Children listen ontently to lessons during a one-day Christmas Bible School at Faith Baptist Church in Princeton.

Over the years, Faith has chosen a variety of memorable methods to teach the Christmas story. One year, a family set up a pen full of sheep and dressed as shepherds to tell the children about the night the angels shared the message of Jesus’ birth.

This year, for recreation, they opted to use Collin Baptist Association’s new ministry trailer. The trailer includes a bounce house, a cotton candy machine and other equipment to entertain and excite the children during their recreation and snack time.

While individual activities have changed to keep things fresh for children who return year after year, the day always concludes with a special birthday party for Jesus. The party includes the children singing “Happy Birthday” to Jesus before enjoying cupcakes and games. The party reminds the children that behind the fun and games, Jesus is the focus of the day—and Christmas.

Three children made professions of faith in Jesus Christ through this year’s event, and about 30 of the children who participated don’t usually attend church at Faith Baptist, Fike said.

While everything is planned to share God’s love with children, it also is an effective outreach to parents as well, he added.

“We have many unchurched families who take advantage of the opportunity for free babysitting while they go Christmas shopping,” he said. “We don’t mind that at all, because it gives us the opportunity to tell their children about the true meaning of Christmas—the birth of our Savior and Lord, Jesus Christ.”

And it doesn’t stop with the children, Fike added.

“We have a couple of families whose first contact with our church came through Christmas Bible School,” he said. “The children had such a good time, they made their parents bring them to church the following Sunday, and they’ve been here ever since. I got to baptize three children and their mother and father as a result of the gospel being shared through Christmas Bible School.”

This year yielded similar results, with three families without a church home visiting the day after their children attended Christmas Bible School, he said.

Other churches are beginning to contact Faith Baptist Church after sharing their curriculum, all of which is designed by members.

The amount of preparation and time spent by volunteers is not lost on Fike.

“It’s amazing to me how many of our members, youth and adults, will take a Saturday out of this busy holiday season to serve the Lord by ministering to children,” he said.

Many members who cannot participate on Saturday help by baking cupcakes, donating craft supplies and praying for the children and their families, he said.

“It ends up being a fantastic blessing for everyone involved, whether it’s the kids and their families or our teachers and helpers,” Fike asserted.

“Not only has Christmas Bible School been a great opportunity for us as a church to reach the community with Christ’s love, but it has been a special time to honor the real reason behind the holidays, the birth of Jesus Christ.”

For more information on Christmas Bible School, contact Faith Baptist Church at (972) 736-3733 or faithbaptistprinceton@juno.com

Jennifer Fike, a junior at Hardin-Simmons University in Abilene, contributed to this article.

Posted: 12/10/04

Emeritus missionary Alma Rohm retires after 54 years in Nigeria

By Mark Kelly

International Mission Board

RICHMOND, Va. (BP)—When King S.O. Abimola II bestowed an African chief's title on a 56-year-old woman from Texas, young people danced in procession to the palace and hundreds assembled for the ceremony.

The honoree, Southern Baptist missionary Alma Rohm, donned a traditional hand-woven Yoruba dress, coral jewelry and a headdress adorned with akoko leaves.

The king had planned to give her the title "Iya Nisin," often used of Christian women to mean "mother of those who worship." But one of the area's Muslim chiefs objected.

"No, we want her to be 'Iya Nisin Ilu’” or ‘mother in service of the whole community,’ he said.

It was, in 1982, a fitting tribute to a woman who had poured out 32 years of her life for Christ among the people of Iwo, Nigeria.

But Alma Rohm was far from finished with her service in Iwo.

The Southern Baptist International Mission Board honored Rohm at her retirement this year with the title, “emeritus missionary.” She was one of 37 veteran missionaries receiving the honor, and her 54 years in Nigeria was the longest tenure in a group with 1,172 years of overseas service among them.

Only three missionaries have had longer tenures in the mission board’s 159-year history—China missionary doctor Rosewell H. Graves, who served 57 years, and Brazil missionary legends William "Buck" and Anne Bagby of Texas, who served 56 years. Only three other missionaries have had tenures longer than 50 years.

A Waco native, Rohm was only 12 when she committed her life to missionary service in Africa. But it wasn't a child's decision lightly made.

"Not long after I was saved at age 9, the Holy Spirit told me I was to be a single woman missionary teacher in Africa," Rohm said. "I objected vehemently. I wanted to get married, have a lovely home and four children.

"When I could not escape the voice of the Holy Spirit, I finally told God I would be a missionary if I could go to China or Japan and serve as a doctor or a nurse. But that was not the task God had for me. When he kept repeating the same call, I stubbornly told God I would not be a missionary.

"When I was 12 years old, our church choir sang an Easter cantata on the seven last words of Christ on the cross," she said. "Between each anthem, the lights were dimmed except for a lighted cross in the baptistery, and the choir director read one of the seven last sayings of Jesus on the cross.

"As I heard those words, my heart was touched, and I said to myself, ‘If Jesus could die for me, surely I should be able to live for him.’"

After graduation from Baylor University in Waco and Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Fort Worth, Rohm was among six new missionaries appointed May 4, 1950. She set sail for Nigeria July 5.

She arrived in Lagos in time to attend a celebration of the Nigeria Baptist Convention's 100th anniversary.

Rohm was sent to teach briefly in a girls' school in Yaba and then had three months of language study in Ire while serving as companion to a missionary nurse who was alone in the town. A year after arriving in Nigeria, she was transferred to a Baptist teacher-training college in Iwo, a Muslim town in southwestern Nigeria.

It was a time, according to Nigerian journalist Seyi Odewale, when most of Nigeria was "no more than thick jungles, lined by scanty footpaths, and the hinterland, dotted by hamlets of mud houses."

At the Baptist college, Rohm taught English literature, education and organ classes, served as school librarian, played piano for the church, led the choir, directed Shakespearean plays and organized an annual nationwide Baptist music workshop.

When Nigeria gained its independence from Britain in 1960, her choir was called on to sing the country's new anthem as its flag was raised over the capital for the first time.

On Sundays, Rohm went out with students who preached on the town's streets.

"Iwo was one of the most solidly Muslim towns in Nigeria," Rohm recalled. "There was one Baptist church in the town and two small churches that had been started by student preachers, as well as a Baptist church at the college.

"In those early years, I saw two more Baptist churches established by our street preachers. One of those churches is now the largest in Iwo."

Africans were responsive to the gospel message of God's love and salvation in Jesus Christ.

For 100 years, Nigeria was the only African country where Southern Baptist missionaries were serving. As Rohm arrived in the country, the very first Southern Baptist missionaries were just entering Ghana—then called the Gold Coast.

Whereas Southern Baptists had 131 missionaries in Nigeria in 1950, "now we have more than a thousand serving all over Africa," said International Mission Board President Jerry Rankin.

In Nigeria, Baptist churches now number more than 7,000 and report more than 1 million members, a remarkable contrast to the 340 churches and 25,343 members counted in 1950, Rankin said.

Countrywide, Christians account for about 40 percent of Nigeria's 137 million people. In Iwo itself, some estimate the city of 300,000 is now as much as 60 percent Christian.

"Prayer meetings in the churches are crowded," Rohm said, "not only by church members, but also by prominent Muslims."

In a country where tensions between Christians and Muslims at times flare into violence, Rohm's tireless service and genuinely Christian spirit earned her the title "Chief Doctor Mama."

She is chief by a king's decree. A doctor because the Baptist seminary in Ogbomosho wanted to honor her music work in churches all over the country. "Mama" is a title of respect bestowed affectionately on those the Yoruba love.

The church at the college named a new primary school in her honor. A few years later, the congregation changed its name to Alma Rohm Baptist Church. In 1992, the school erected a statue of the diminutive missionary in front of its library.

At the thanksgiving ceremony after receiving the chief's title, Rohm acknowledged that she had found God faithful in her obedience.

"In the Bible, Jesus promised that 'everyone who has left houses or brothers or sisters or father or mother or wife or children or lands, for my name's sake, shall receive a hundredfold,'" Rohm said.
"I thought I was leaving all that, but here I am, living in the largest mission house in Nigeria. More than a thousand people call me 'Mama.' At least 28 I can name call me 'Grandma.' Ten call me 'Great Grandma.' And now you have given me the land."

At her retirement service, her testimony was simple: "How blessed I have been! How undeserving I am!"

With additional reporting by Mary Jane Welch.

Posted: 12/10/04

HOPE ministry helps fill Christmas
stockings for needy Round Rock children

By Miranda Bradley

Texas Baptist Children’s Home

ROUND ROCK—More than 50 children waited impatiently in a line outside the Chisholm Trail Apartments community center, eager to catch a glimpse of Santa and the toys he had just for them.

The HOPE—Healthy Opportunities that Protect and Empower—program, a community outreach ministry through Texas Baptist Children’s Home, sponsored the event that provided stockings to children who otherwise would not have them.

“It’s just great for the kids,” said Lisa Gallardo, a Chisholm Trail resident and former client of the children’s home’s family care program. “My son didn’t have a stocking, so this really helps for the holidays.”

But these were more than plain stockings. They were handmade by volunteers and embroidered with each child’s name.

“These things are just jam-packed with stuff,” said Melanie Martinez, HOPE program supervisor. “For the babies, they have rattles and teethers. For the older girls, they are filled with hairspray and perfume. Everyone just put a lot of thought into this.”

Teaming up with HOPE for the first time was Austin Young Women’s League, a Christian service organization that helped coordinate the event.

“I feel awesome,” said Cindy Hathaway, president of the league. “There’s nothing better than doing something like this for kids who need it.”

Once inside the doors of the community center, children were given a cookie and a Bible. Then they decorated their own sugar cookies while watching a puppet show about the true story of Christmas.

“We wanted to find a way to share Christ with the children that they could relate to and understand,” Hathaway said.

Before leaving, children spent some time with Santa and received their personalized stockings.

Christy Hackney, a former TBCH family care program client, let her 6-month-old open his stocking early.

“He really likes the rattle that was inside,” she said. “I like the stockings a lot.”

“Yeah, it’s great to have the extra support,” said Gallardo, who met Hackney while they were in family care together. “It makes it easier when you don’t feel like you’re all alone.”

Many organizations pitched in to help with the event, and Hathaway believes they were God’s instruments.

“God is good,” she said. “What has happened here today is people are sincerely giving from the heart, and that comes from their love of Christ.”

Posted: 12/10/04

At Seaman's Center, the world comes to Santa

By John Hall

Texas Baptist Communications

FREEPORT—The Seaman’s Center might be able to teach Santa a thing or two.

Children believe St. Nick travels the globe in one night, delivering presents to good boys and girls. But the Gulf Coast Baptist Association-sponsored ministry never even has to leave the city limits to reach much of the planet.

The center provides gifts for nearly 1,500 sailors from more than 30 countries who come through the port between Thanksgiving and Christmas.

Each seaman receives a canvas bag of presents that includes two Christian tracts and $20 in personal items such as socks, gum and handkerchiefs. Those presents serve as launching points for conversations about sailors’ families, jobs and spiritual lives.

Sailors “come out of the woodwork” when Christopher Dale, a missionary serving at the Seaman’s Center, steps on board a ship with the gift bags, he said.

He normally makes six or seven contacts per ship during the year, but he meets to up 25 sailors per boat during the holiday season.

“Kindness is a very good way of talking with them and sharing Christ,” Dale said.

The gifts are meant to be a sign of compassion, Dale said. Not all sailors make a faith profession the day a gift is received, but they have tangible reminders Christians are concerned about people. The presents make lasting impressions on the men.

“We hope it helps them out—shows them someone out there cares about them,” he said.

Posted: 12/03/04

'Noose of conformity' tightens in Baptist life, observers assert

By Greg Warner

(ABP) — Those who look for denominational trends are disturbed by several recent actions they say are tightening “the noose of conformity” in Baptist life.

In a smattering of actions across the Baptist map, several state conventions are narrowing the requirements for membership or the parameters of acceptable theology.

In Florida, Baptists enacted guidelines to enforce the “theological integrity” of member churches. In Missouri, the state's largest Baptist convention took the first steps toward excluding all churches that don't support the Southern Baptist Convention wholeheartedly.

In the North Carolina convention, traditionally considered a moderate stronghold, a move to restrict church mission funding to SBC causes alone is gaining support. And Kentucky Baptists elected as their president a professor from the flagship SBC seminary over the pastor of the flagship moderate church.

Several other state conventions are flirting with adopting the conservative revision of the “Baptist Faith and Message” as their primary or sole doctrinal statement. And in Tennessee, where Baptists have studiously avoided theological controversy, Baptists will investigate the biblical views taught in their three affiliated Baptist colleges.

Some of the changes are subtle and others are piecemeal. But to some observers, the trend is obvious — and ominous.

“The results of this year's state convention meetings certainly must be discouraging for Baptists who thought they could avoid SBC fundamentalism by investing themselves and their energies in the states,” said Marv Knox, editor of the Baptist Standard of Texas.

“From affirmations of the 'conservative resurgence,' to demands for loyalty to the SBC's creed, to professor-presidents, to rebukes of whatever the SBC condemns, the noose of conformity is tightening,” Knox told Associated Baptist Press. “The 2004 meetings illustrate an important truth: SBC fundamentalists won't rest until they control a convention in every state.”

Moderate Baptists, who were pushed out of leadership in the national Southern Baptist Convention during a two-decade fight with conservatives, have long feared the battle would shift to state conventions, independent organizations that participate voluntarily — and with differing degrees of enthusiasm — in the national convention.

Some state conventions have remained a refuge for moderates, such as Virginia and Texas, prompting conservatives to set up alternative conventions of their own in those two states. Other state conventions, such as Florida and Missouri have become increasingly hostile to moderates.

“This is the next turn of the screw,” said Bruce Prescott, executive director of Mainstream Oklahoma Baptists and a leader in the Mainstream Baptist Network, which has fought the rising influence of conservatives in the state conventions. “The fundamentalists have done everything they can do at the national level, so now they are doing it state by state.”

The tightening of standards is “a good thing,” countered Gregory Wills, who teaches church history at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Ky. For much of the last century, Baptist associations and conventions have shied away from enforcing standards of faith and practice, the conservative professor said. “What that has meant is you don't always know what denominational fellowship and union means.”

“The right of association includes the right to determine membership,” said Wills, who has written about church discipline. Denying conventions that right “would force them to accept churches whose belief and practice they consider to be inimical to Christ and his gospel,” he said.

Church historian Bill Leonard, dean of the moderate Divinity School at Wake Forest University, agreed, adding no one should be surprised by the tightening standards.

“I'm an old-timey Baptist about this,” Leonard said. “Baptist organizations have every right to shape their policies as they choose. … If the majority decides to change those rules and set limits on membership, then the people who stay choose to live in those boundaries.”

The surprising factor, Leonard said, is that dissenting Baptists have put up with the restrictive changes for so long without leaving the SBC.

After conservatives solidified control of the Southern Baptist Convention and its agencies in the 1990s, they moved cautiously on the state level. But in recent years, state leaders sympathetic to the national SBC direction have gotten bolder.

The most dramatic change — although it would not take effect for a year — came in Missouri. The conservative-oriented Missouri Baptist Convention agreed to vote next year on four constitutional changes that would limit membership to churches which are identified as “Southern Baptist” and which are affiliated solely with the Missouri Baptist Convention.

If approved, the changes would exclude congregations that support the alternative state convention established by moderates, the Baptist General Convention of Missouri. Likewise, congregations that support the state and national Cooperative Baptist Fellowship would not be allowed to participate.

No congregation could be a Missouri Baptist Convention church without cooperating with the Southern Baptist Convention, a move that departs from Baptist tradition.

The convention would have the right to examine churches' contributions to determine whether those congregations support other national or state conventions or other bodies that act like national or state conventions, such as the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship.

Meanwhile, the Florida Baptist Convention tightened its bylaws to enforce the “theological integrity” of member churches and associations. The change requires each Florida Baptist church to adhere to the 2000 “Baptist Faith and Message” doctrinal statement “or any other declaration of faith which parallels the tenets of our historic Baptist faith.”

“Any church or association which undertakes questionable theology, faith, practice or polity shall be subject to having fellowship withdrawn by the Florida Baptist State Convention,” the bylaw amendment reads.

Another revision requires member churches to file a standardized statistical report each year and contribute at least $250 to the Cooperative Program. A church that violates either requirement for three consecutive years can be expelled.

And at the Tennessee Baptist Convention, messengers asked a committee to investigate what is taught at Carson-Newman College in Jefferson City, Belmont University in Nashville and Union University in Jackson. A current Carson-Newman student alleged some of that college's professors — particularly in the religion and science departments — teach that the Bible has errors and contradictions.

In North Carolina, Mississippi, Alabama and Texas, messengers considered but declined restrictive measures.

The Baptist State Convention of North Carolina considered a motion to abolish its alternative giving plans that allow churches to pick which mission organizations to fund. The motion would have deleted money for the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship, Baptist World Alliance and other moderate causes. Messengers voted to keep the convention's four giving plans intact, but observers say a similar action is likely to pass in the future.

The Mississippi Baptist Convention avoided an effort to make the “Baptist Faith and Message” — revised in 2000 to incorporate more conservative views — the convention's doctrinal statement. Instead, messengers voted to make the 2000 statement “a guide for understanding and teaching Baptist doctrine.”

In Alabama, a motion was introduced that would have called for each Alabama Baptist agency to stipulate the Alabama Baptist State Convention as its “sole member,” an action already taken by Southern Baptist agencies to prevent trustees from breaking away from the SBC. The motion was ruled out of order, since convention bylaws say charter changes can come only from those trustees.

In a role reversal in Texas, it was the moderate-controlled Baptist General Convention of Texas that considered, then rejected, an amendment to limit Executive Board representation to churches affiliated solely with the BGCT. The action was aimed at churches dually aligned with the BGCT and the conservative Southern Baptists of Texas Convention.

Prescott, the Mainstream leader from Oklahoma, said the state-level actions by conservatives have been long expected. “Those who have denied it would happen now just don't want to hear about it,” he said. “It's just a matter of how long it will take people to get fed up.”

Prescott said he didn't expect Baptists to tolerate the new restrictions as long as they have. But rather than flocking to alternative groups like Mainstream Baptists and the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship, he said, most Baptists have simply chosen to be less involved in denominational life.

He said the restrictive trend is a departure from historical Baptist practice, which has favored congregational autonomy.

But Wills, director of Southern Seminary's Center for the Study of the Southern Baptist Convention, said that deference toward congregational freedom has occurred mostly in the 20th century. “The right for an association or convention to expel churches … has only been questioned at times in the 20th century,” he said.

Local Baptist associations used to enforce doctrinal parameters in the 19th century but are less inclined to now, he said. More recently state and national conventions have taken over that role “by default,” he said.

Wills said the constitutional change in the Florida convention requiring theological integrity is appropriate. But he is “uncertain” about the membership changes proposed in Missouri, which require affiliation with the SBC but prohibit affiliation with the CBF. “I don't think that has any precedent,” he said. “It has some merit, but it may be wrong.”

Wake Forest's Leonard agreed the practice of setting parameters “permeates Baptist life” through the years. The result is fragmentation has been an undeniable part of the Baptist legacy.

Those parameters can be theological or even political, as in the birth of the SBC. The Southern Baptist Convention got its start when Baptists in the North decided slave owners could not be missionaries, causing Baptists in the South to split, Leonard said.

Then and now, “churches have to decide how far they can go with those groups in participating in a certain kind of regimentation,” Leonard said.

Baptists have always been more apt to fragment than split, he said. In recent years, for instance, “small pieces” of the old denominational system have splintered off — such as the colleges that have broken away from state convention control and the new non-SBC seminaries that have emerged, he said. “These are ways in which the system has responded.”

“Everybody is disengaging from the denominational system,” he concluded. “Even people sympathetic [to the conservative direction of the SBC] are not paying attention to their system anymore.”

But rank-and-file Southern Baptists remain reluctant to break away from the Southern Baptist Convention, Leonard acknowledged. What would it take for that to happen?

“Each community has to decide when their community … ceases to be Baptist,” Leonard said.

But is there a point where a convention clearly crosses the line?

“If they started baptizing infants or they start having real bishops instead of de facto ones, then they cease to be Baptist.”

Storylist for 12/06/04 issue