Posted 11/01/04

Articles on BGCT Reorganization

Posted: 10/29/04

Emotional, spiritual support available
to parents of special-needs children

By John Hall

Texas Baptist Communications

MOUNT LEBANON–Emotional and spiritual support for parents of special-needs children is all around, but they have to take advantage of those opportunities, a chaplain who ministers to mentally challenged people stressed.

Parents can find help in universities and web sites, but particularly in churches, said Jim DeHoog, chaplain for Mission Road Ministries in San Antonio.

“Sunday school and Bible study groups are areas where (parents) can find support,” he said during the Baptist General Convention of Texas Special Friends Retreat, partially funded by the Mary Hill Davis Offering for Texas Missions.

A pair of special-needs adults take time for crafts during the Baptist General Convention of Texas Special Friends Retreat. Participants later would put together hygiene bags that will be shipped to Russian orphans.

Echoing the experiences of many parents, DeHoog explained Christians wanting to help is not the same as people doing it. Believers may wish to serve, but too often they are afraid of doing something wrong with the child. They need help understanding how to care for someone with special needs. That's where parents can help.

“We have needs for emotional support, and sometimes the church and people around us don't know how to meet the need,” he said. “We need to educate others.”

That educational process may take an extended time, but DeHoog encouraged parents to commit to it. If people are dedicated to helping, they can greatly benefit parents.

Many communities are starting groups for parents of special-needs people, he noted. Those groups can be good places for parents to network with others. If a town does not have such a group, parents may want to start one, he suggested.

Some universities have special education programs that require students to attain practical experience with special-needs people, DeHoog added. Those schools typically either work with a group or start their own efforts to provide an avenue for that service.

Numerous web sites are tailored specifically to parents of special needs children, DeHoog said. They include chat rooms, literature, book reviews and message boards that provide parents a gathering place.

“I know it doesn't express the emotion,” he said. “You can't hear the emotion, but they can be helpful.”

A pair of special-needs adults take time for crafts during the Special Friends Retreat. Participants later would put together hygiene bags that will be shipped to Russian orphans.

Posted: 10/29/04

Hardin-Simmons provides opportunities
for Boneheads who dig dinosaurs

By George Henson

Staff Writer

ABILENE–These boneheads are anything but what their name suggests.

Boneheads and Junior Boneheads are high school and middle school gifted students who are working with students and professors at Hardin-Simmons University to deepen their knowledge of paleontology.

A part of that partnership was a 500-mile trip to the Big Bend region for a dinosaur dig.

The students learned how to dig, wrap, transport and prepare specimens for casting.

Some of those specimens weigh up to 200 pounds, so they also learned the value of working as a team, organizers noted.

Kim Cheek, a teacher at Wylie Middle School in Abilene and sponsor of the Junior Boneheads, said the experience of camping out and working in the field was invaluable.

“The kids have told me that in the past when a teacher has taught on a subject, it's been read a chapter and answer the questions,” she said.

“The program gets them out of the classroom and into a hands-on experience.

“It becomes much more than print on a page.”

Working with the adults also reminded the children that learning is a lifelong experience, she added.

That is just what Mark Ouimette, associate professor and chair of the geological sciences department at Hardin-Simmons, wants to hear.

“Part of what Hardin-Simmons gets out of this program is a little exposure with the kids,” he said.

“It's a platform that area school kids might use to see what kinds of things Hardin-Simmons is involved in.

“But the most important part is to create an excitement about learning that will lead them to want to go to a university somewhere, whether it is here or somewhere else.”

The Grace Museum in Abilene has closed its “Dinosaurs of Texas” exhibit, and the Boneheads are moving their work to the paleontology lab at Hardin-Simmons.

Once everything is moved and in place, they will begin working on some of the bones they have uncovered in their digs.

The Junior Boneheads are changing their focus to minerals and will take a three-day field trip to Carlsbad Caverns National Park in southeastern New Mexico to see minerals there and learn how they are formed.

After they return to Abilene, they will work as docents for the Grace Museum's newest exhibit that features large minerals collected during the '60s and '70s by the chairman of Pennzoil.

They also will participate in museum activities such as the Rock-o-Rama, where area residents can bring in strange rocks for identification.

Posted: 10/29/04

CBF revenues top $24 million in past year

By Greg Warner

Associated Baptist Press

ATLANTA (ABP)–The Cooperative Baptist Fellowship finished its 2003-04 fiscal year with revenues of $24.26 million, the highest-ever annual total.

The record total included undesignated contributions of $8,869,883, designated gifts of $8,709,160, and a global missions offering of $5,738,222–each one an all-time high.

The Fellowship spent $19.6 million of that revenue during the fiscal year and left a revenue overage of $4.7 million, most of which is designated for global missions.

However, the undesignated contributions–which fund partner organizations like seminaries and CBF's own non-missions programs–were $136,876 below budget expectations.

Cost-cutting allowed the Fellowship to end the year with revenues $5,845 above expenses, however, finishing in the black for the first time in three years.

Rusty Brock, a pastor from Ardmore, Okla., and chair of the council's global missions team, said the Fellowship spent $12,255,636 on global missions in 2003-04, including designated and undesignated funds.

The Fellowship benefited from several large donations designated for missions–including anonymous gifts of $5 million and $1.8 million–but those funds will be depleted in 2006 and must be replaced in order to maintain the same level of missions activity, Brock said.

Speaking at the CBF Coordinating Council's fall meeting, Fellowship Coordinator Daniel Vestal called CBF's recent acceptance into membership of the Baptist World Alliance, an international fellowship of Baptist bodies, “a very important moment for us.”

The Southern Baptist Convention, historically BWA's largest member, pulled out the group in June largely because it granted membership to the Fellowship, which is comprised mostly of moderate former Southern Baptists.

Vestal pointed out there are 16 million Southern Baptists but 17 million other Baptists in North America. He called for a revitalization of the North American Baptist Fellowship, one of the BWA's regional organizations, which he said could be the focal point for “a new day for Baptists in North America.”

The Coordinating Council expects to hear a recommendation during its February meeting from the Baptist World Alliance Task Force, which is studying ways to increase CBF funding of BWA.

Also expected in February is the long-awaited report of the Partnership Study Committee, which is re-evaluating CBF's relationships with and funding of partner ministries. Committee Chair Charles Cantrell, a lawyer from Mountain View, Mo., presented the committee's statement of “guiding principles” for partnerships.

The statement says CBF is committed to ministry through partnership with autonomous organizations rather than establishing its own institutions. Those partnerships are voluntary, based on mutual trust and respect, and characterized by caring, accountability and mutual sacrifice for a shared mission.

Cantrell said the committee also is developing a set of general guidelines for partners and a specific statement on CBF's relationships with theological schools, which account for the largest portion of its partner funding.

The partnership study is expected to produce funding changes, but Cantrell said no changes will take effect until the 2006-07 fiscal year.

In his coordinator's report, Vestal voiced his desire for the Fellowship to be more ethnically diverse. While more diverse than most Baptist groups in the South, the Fellowship needs to do better, he said.

“I believe it was in the heart of this movement from the beginning, in our DNA from the beginning,” he said.

The Fellowship supports ethnic networks to involve Asians, Hispanics and African-Americans in the organization.

Vestal confessed he does not know how to increase diversity, but added: “We're going to have to take some risks. We're not going to be able to keep doing things the way we've been doing things.”

Vestal admitted to failure in making the Fellowship more diverse, but he pledged: “We're not going to quit. We're going to fund some things differently. Our staff is going to look different. But I believe much of our future is in the multiethnic area.”

Posted: 10/29/04

Baptist researcher's apartment ministry
study yields unexpected findings

By John Hall

Texas Baptist Communications

FORT WORTH–Apartment ministries may not reduce crime rates the way advocates previously expected, but that doesn't mean they are ineffective, a Baptist researcher insists.

The ministries may be giving residents hope where it didn't exist before, she maintains.

Recent doctoral research by Tomi Grover, restorative justice consultant with the Baptist General Convention of Texas Missions Equipping Center, revealed calls to the police remained steady during an 18-month period in complexes with church-sponsored ministries.

Her research also showed a decrease in phone calls to the police during an 18-month period in complexes without ministries.

This runs contrary to many people's thinking that apartment ministries decrease the number of calls to police, but does not indicate ministries are not effective, said Grover, whose work recently was named the best research project of the year by the Southern Baptist Research Fellowship.

She believes her report does not indicate crime rate fluctuations, but it shows increasingly bold residents where developed ministries are functioning. Ministries are creating an environment where people believe they can make a difference. Individuals are feeling valued and believe cooperation with each other, managers and police officers can create better lives, Grover said.

“Overall, a sense of community development helps people feel a part of the community and helps them care about their neighbors and their managers,” she said.

Conversely, residents in apartment complexes without ministries lose hope for improvement, Grover added. They do not believe the police can make a difference and are less likely to call for police assistance.

These findings have several implications for church work, Grover said. When congregations evaluate their ministry, they need to look at more than professions of faith in Christ to determine effectiveness, she insisted. It is important to bring people to Christ, but churches also need to analyze the entire situation.

Congregations should note crime rates, quality of life and worldview as well, she continued. Correctly discipling individuals will affect each of the aspects. That means outreaches should address each of those issues.

“It's not just about Bible study or social-recreational ministry,” she said. “It's about the whole person. When you start addressing the whole person, you address the whole community.”

Grover noted her research encourages further studies in this area. She would like to see a study covering a longer period of time than 18 months. Assessing the types of crime committed could be helpful, she said.

Posted: 10/29/04

After two years in a tent, church moves indoors

By John Hall

Texas Baptist Communications

FAIRLIE–Cross Trails Cowboy Church led Hunt Baptist Association in baptisms last year while meeting in a tent. Now members are imagining what can happen as they have moved into new facilities.

The congregation's ministry grew to serve about 300 people each Sunday in worship during its two-year stint beneath a tent. At times, members sweated through services. Other times they shivered.

Often they shed tears of joy as the church baptized more than 50 people, said Pastor Shannon Moreland.

“The Spirit of the Lord was there,” he said.

If the early numbers are any indication, it seems the same Spirit must be in the church's new facilities, which include a sanctuary, a roping arena for outreach events and classrooms for Bible study. About 400 people attended the first service in the new setting.

Expectant mothers, women with young children and senior adults turned out for the initial service because they could sit in the air conditioning rather than under the hot tent, Moreland noted.

“Everybody wanted to come and check it out,” he said.

The congregation looked forward to the first indoor service for more than a year as it waited for the new facilities to be completed.

The church appears to be starting in these buildings where it left off in the tent. Moreland already has conducted the church's first indoor baptism in more than two years–though he continued to use a horse trough, just as he had done when the church met under a tent.

Cross Trails sold its tent to another cowboy church developing in Brazoria County.

It worked for Cross Trails, and Moreland believes it can work in Brazoria as well.

“God will bring people,” he said. “It doesn't matter what the elements are.”

Posted: 10/29/04

Only God is worthy of worship; all else
is idolatry, music professor maintains

By Craig Bird

Baylor University

WACO–Agendas, even holy agendas, are not worthy of worship, Terry York is convinced. And when something else–anything else–takes God's place as the focus of the church's worship, it violates God's commandment against idolatry.

A secondary, but still tremendously hurtful, result of even well-intentioned idolatry is that believers can be split into warring camps in what should be a joining of hearts and minds to praise God–thus violating Jesus' prayer and commandment that Christians “be one.”

In the recent past, and still continuing today, Christians attacked each other “in a shark-feeding frenzy in the name of worship, relevance and evangelism” as they fought about the right style and emphasis and aim of the worship hour, he said.

Now, as he looks at an increasingly bitter and divided political America, he fears the day is rapidly approaching when voter preferences will divide not only congregation from congregation but generate splits within churches–when the wrong bumper sticker on your car will shut you out from fellowship with other Christians with opposing bumper stickers.

York, a professor of Christian ministry and church music at both Baylor University and Truett Seminary, challenged worship leaders to focus their church's services in accordance to the clear teaching of Scripture, both to honor God and to protect his bride, the church, as part of Baylor's “Music and Worship in an Emerging Culture” symposium.

“I want to make the parameters very clear,” he noted before leading a breakout session entitled “America's Worship Wars: The Road Behind, the Road Ahead.”

“I am a U.S. Marine who took an oath to defend my country in 1967 that has not been revoked. The names of two close friends are on the wall of the Vietnam Memorial. We were recruited by my dad the same day. We went through boot camp together, and I carry their memory with me everywhere. My family reunions look like Marine Corps rallies there are so many of us.

“That being said, we still need to admit that God meant what he said about not putting anything above him in worship. We need to speak the prophetic word to our congregations before we cease being what we were called to be–a place that contrasts the politics of heaven with the politics of the world–and becomes just another arena where the politics of the Democrats and the politics of the Republicans do battle.”

He drove his point home by holding up two items. The first was a stained-glass cross, clearly imprinted with the stars and stripes of the United States flag. The second was a paperback Bible–with an American flag cover.

“Our job is to love people who react to these things in totally different ways,” he explained. “Both those who look at them and say 'amen' and those who see them and say 'God help us' need to feel freedom to come into the house of God, stand beside each other as loving brothers and sisters and worship their Creator and Savior.”

To show that he practices what he preaches, he told of an e-mail he received asking if he could provide the words to a song titled, “God is on Our Side.” He replied, “Is that a Christian song or a Muslin song?”

Admittedly, “That was not the most polite response, but it allowed us to begin a helpful discussion.”

He repeatedly admitted he was presenting a difficult challenge, especially in the aftermath of Sept. 11 and the on-going wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. But as worship leaders, “You have been called to a task you can't do in your own strength,” he stressed.

The Sunday after the terrorist attacks on the United States, York's pastor called on him to lead one of the prayers during a special service.

“I said something like this,” he remembered, “'God, it is impossible for us to love the people who did this–please remind us that you do love them.' Afterward, one of our members, a survivor of Pearl Harbor, would have beaten me with his cane if he could have gotten up fast enough–and out of my respect for him, I would have let him. I understand the emotion and the pain. I share the emotion and the pain. But if we let the focus get off God and his love, we commit idolatry.”

One suggestion York made was to separate the issues by time.

“This year, July 4 fell on a Sunday in the middle of war time,” he said.

“You obviously need to reference that but not focus on it. Far better would be to have a separate gathering to express patriotism on the Saturday before or the Monday evening after July 4. That allows us to honor our country in a proper and respectful way while still giving God the honor due him, and only him, when we gather as his church on Sunday morning.”

Posted: 10/29/04

Emergent church signals change in
preaching, not just music, speakers say

By Craig Bird

Baylor University

WACO–Maybe the pulpit is a safe-house in the worship wars–at least for now.

In the past half-century, evangelical worship has seen a lot of changes. Music styles have morphed, orders of service have flip-flopped, chalk talks gave way to PowerPoint presentations and pew Bibles and fill-in-the-blank sermon outline forms have appeared. In some cases, the lectern has disappeared, and the speaker has “dressed down.”

But overwhelmingly, the preacher still delivers a 20- to 30-minute uninterrupted soliloquy, most often with three points. It's a lecture format, intended to inform and inspire.

However, in the postmodern-influenced emergent church–which the New York Times has called the possible “next big wave of evangelical worship”–even sermons could be changing.

“I don't think we will have master orators much longer,” predicted Chris Seay, pastor of Ecclesia in Houston and a frequent commentator on postmodern culture. “Art, dance and music are new forces that will play increasingly larger roles” if the church is to be relevant to the Millennials, today's teens and young adults.

The postmodern person “celebrates experiences” and wants to “engage all the senses,” he explained. “They have shorter attention spans, and they process information differently from earlier generations. They learn through narrative–stories–and the visual is very important.”

Pastor/author Brian McLaren agreed. “We're facing a transition from the familar/normal to something less formal. Songwriters and music publishers play important roles in the theological formation of a congregation–even more than the pastor. I'm pretty sure people don't catch themselves humming the sermon during the week.”

Two other strong emphases in postmodern Christian worship–the desire for community and the desire for contemplation–also are apt to influence the preaching, several session leaders at Baylor University's “Music and Worship in an Emerging Culture” symposium agreed.

“For a long time, church has been a place to go–but you could go and sit in the same seat for years and never know the person who sat in front of you,” said Sally Morgenthaler, author and founder of Sacra-mentis.com. “But this generation wants to be connected, to each other and to God. The preaching experiences will need to contribute to that by being about worship instead of evangelism. The gathered church worships. The scattered church is involved with its community and showing what it means to be a Christ follower.”

Contemplation and meditation may invade the sermon. “I'm convinced that sermons need intentional silences in them,” said Hulitt Gloer, professor of preaching and Christian Scripture at Baylor's Truett Seminary. “I need to invite people not just to listen to what I say but to what God is saying. It's a radical idea to listen more than we speak so they (the congregation) will know they are to be actively engaged.”

If the emergent church model is accepted, preaching will shift from the linear style to the storyteller–like Jesus, who spoke in parables.

“I pretty much preach one-point sermons,” said Louie Giglio, director of Choice Resources. “My goal is to give them one image to take away with them that will help them live their life the rest of the week. And it's all about story, inviting them into God's story, telling about others who joined God's story. They aren't hungry for information–they hunger to know that there is a God who loves them.”

The perception of pastors also will change as the role shifts from spiritual example to a fellow traveler. “I think of it as all of us going into a cave together and sharing what we've discovered with our pickaxes,” said Julie Pennington-Russell, pastor of Calvary Baptist Church in Waco. “It's not like where you tie a Scripture to a chair and beat it with a rubber hose for 20 minutes to see what you can get out of it.”

The foundation of community also allows the pastor to speak the uncomfortable prophetic word.

“We have to be double agents, amphibians who are loyal to our community but also willing, when necessary, to turn on our community when it needs to be challenged. Promoting community and harmony can't keep us from saying the hard things that need to be said,” McLaren said.

But those hard things will have a fair hearing “if we've held their hands in the hospital and been with them through hard times as well as good times,” Pennington-Russell added.

Absolute honesty also makes people more willing to hear the hard things,” Seay argued. “We do a disservice to the gospel when we make the people in the Bible out to be better than they were and we pretend to be better than we are,” he explained.

“If we're honest about Abraham pimping his wife–and teaching his son to do the same thing–then the person sitting in the pew can realize, 'Hey, I'm not as bad as Abraham, so maybe God really can love me.' If he knows his pastor uses non-theological language when he stubs his toe–but still keeps trying to follow God, then he will understand he can too–even when it's hard.”

Posted: 10/29/04

Young worshippers thrive on
relationships, crave sense of God's mystery

By Craig Bird

Baylor University

WACO–The faith of their fathers doesn't impress youth and young adults very much. But the faith of the early church fathers is a different story.

And it increasingly is their story as a generation starved for stable and genuine relationships–and entranced rather than frightened by the mysterious nature of God–“do church” their way, participants at a Baylor University symposium on “Music and Worship in an Emerging Culture” heard.

“How dare we talk about the church 'emerging' when that happened thousands of years ago?” Randall Bradley, professor of church music and director of Baylor's Center for Christian Music Studies, asked in the opening session. “Because we see that the church is obviously changing today, and it may not be recognizable to those of us who don't get out much. But there is no evidence to suggest we are ever going back to the way we were–or the way we think we were.

“In this new place, we run the risk of vastly misinterpreting our surroundings. We can take two extremes–one, that all change is evil, or two, that all change is good. Neither is accurate. We need to hear from the prophetic and learn how to ask new and bolder questions and learn how to preach and worship truth in a world that questions if there is truth.”

To that end, the second Hearn Symposium on Christian Music brought together a wide-ranging selection of musicians, authors, pastors and academics to provoke and interact with about 450 conference participants who crossed denominational, geographic and age boundaries.

Young adult “Millennials”–also tagged “the Bridge Generation” and “Mosaics” by sociologists–number between 70 million and 75 million, roughly one-fourth of the U.S. population. They have more formal education and are more racially mixed and multi-cultural than any previous generation. Heavily influenced by the Internet, they process information differently and think more globally. They have grown up in a society of broken marriages and dysfunctional institutions.

A record album cover of "Tell It Like It Is," an early Christian youth musical that helped alter the way evangelical churches sang and worshipped in the 1960s, provided a historical context for the changes in worship style showing up in the Emergent Church–the focus of the Hearn symposium on "Music and Worship in an Emerging Culture" at Baylor University.

They ignore traditional Christianity in massive and growing numbers. And when they do pay attention, it is increasingly in churches with strange names and diffused organization–congregations that stress relationships and where music and art and dance meld with short, interactive conversations about truth and the sacred.

Not surprisingly, traditional churches often are unsettled, at best, and frightened and angered, at worst, by the variations from their norm.

Which leads to an unexpected historical parallel–the reaction of the establishment church in the 1960s to the Jesus People movement and, within evangelical circles, the appearance of the first Christian youth musicals.

Ironically, many of today's church leaders who as youth battled to get guitars and drums into the sanctuary now disdain Millennial innovations as irreligious.

“The church is as rigid today as it was in the 1960s,” said Peter York, whose roster of contemporary Christian music artists include Steven Curtis Chapman, Rebecca St. James, the Newsboys and Switchfoot. “There is the same sort of fear and confusion about what young people are trying to bring into the church.”

Three bloodied veterans of the 1960s church worship wars–Ralph Carmichael, Kurt Kaiser and Billy Ray Hearn–shared their experiences. Though they good-naturedly kidded back and forth about who should get credit for originating the concept of Christian youth musicals, they agreed on the reaction.

“It was brutal,” Carmichael said. “After Kurt and I wrote 'Tell It Like It Is,' Billy Ray set up 50 workshops over the next year all across the country. And at each of those 50, right before we got started, someone would stand up and say: 'I know this young man thinks God has told him to do this, but this is of the devil, and I'm leaving. Who will leave with me?' And some would leave. And we had to do a workshop after that.”

Hearn, who later headed Word, Myrrh and Sparrow record companies, debuted “Tell It Like It Is” at Glorieta Baptist Encampment's summer music week.

“The next day in all the workshops, no matter what the planned topic, the discussion was about how evil it was,” he recalled. “No one defended it. But a year later, they were all performing it at their churches and asking for more.”

Eventually, even the bookstore at the conservative Moody Bible Institute was able to stop “selling copies of the album from under the counter and wrapping them in a plain brown paper bag lest anyone see them selling that sinful music.”

Chuck Fromm, founder and publisher of Worship Leader Magazine and a central player in the Jesus Rock that also developed in the 1960s, drew a comparison/contrast with the 1960s Christian youth music and today's emergent Christian music.

“'Tell It Like It Is' had a rebellious core to it,” he said. “Remember that chorus that said, 'Quit talking about the good old days?' Now the young people are telling the church: 'Please start talking about the good old days. But not your old days–the days of the early church.' It's a creative plundering of the past for things that communicate to them about God.”

Brian McLaren, commentator on the emergent church movement and a pastor from Washington, D.C., reminded participants that such challenges to the established church are not new–and that four of them were ultimately successful.

In A.D. 50 to 100, “the gospel was liberated from cultural Judaism and the church flourished” because of the Apostle Paul's work “of disengaging from but not rejecting” the Jewish culture, he said. In A.D. 300 to 500, the Desert Fathers and Celtic Christianity disengaged the church from the Roman Empire–and the church flourished. By A.D. 1500, Christianity and the medieval worldview were enmeshed, but the Protestant Reformation disengaged them–and the church flourished. In the 1900s, faith was enmeshed with rationalism, but evangelicals disengaged them–and the church flourished, he pointed out.

Now the church is enmeshed with modernism, he asserted. The question then becomes, “Will we be part of the fifth reformulation/rebooting/disengagement?”

“We may be far more confused about our message than we realize,” he continued. “Before we talk about marrying the postmodern culture to the church, we need to figure out what went wrong in the marriage between Christianity and modernity–a movement that was anti-Christian in many ways. We may realize we are so damaged from that earlier marriage that we need a lot of counseling before we marry anybody!”

Throughout the symposium, speakers emphasized the key role worship leaders can play both in welcoming in the healthy and Holy Spirit-inspired innovations of the emergent church and in providing balance and correction.

“We need to be both priests and prophets,” Fromm said. “As priests, we protect the institution of the church. But as prophets, we hang out with the movements. Some things need to be preserved, but some need to be examined. Remember that brass snake that Moses made at God's command so that people who looked at it in faith could be healed? Well a few hundred years later, Hezekiah had to destroy it because people were burning incense to it and worshipping it instead of God. The emergent church is asking us to check if we are worshipping the right way.”

The emergent church also can call the church back to the community it originally was, several speakers noted.

“We're not in church together because we necessarily like each other,” Marva Dawn, a teaching fellow in spiritual theology at Regent College in Vancouver, British Columbia. “We are in church together because how else are we going to practice loving our enemies? … We should all learn from each other, and that is what the emergent church does so well.”

Using her own misshapen leg as an example, Dawn noted: “Because my leg is curved, it would snap if I didn't wear this brace. But if it were straight, I could walk and run like I was created to do. In the same way, if we don't have in common a doctrinally sound 'leg bone,' then our churches will splinter. But if that bone is straight and strong, then the flesh, the different styles of worship, can grow on it in all kinds of interesting and healthy ways.”

Posted: 10/29/04

Redemptive themes reflect songwriter's spiritual pilgrimage

By Aaron Howard

Special to the Baptist Standard

NASHVILLE–Themes of redemption and hope resonate through singer-songwriter Kate Campbell's music, reflecting her own theological pilgrimage.

“We all have our own theology that we develop the older we get,” Campbell said. “For whatever reason, living in the Mississippi Delta as a child, living in that specific time and in the Baptist church, I think my music is a continual quest about (the possibility) of redemption and hope in the midst of growing up in the South.”

Campbell's CDs seldom are sold in Christian bookstores. The 42-year-old songwriter, who now lives in Nashville, didn't begin writing as a career until she was 30.

Although she recorded four CDs, she was known chiefly by word of mouth in songwriting circles until 2001. That's when she released “Wandering Strange,” an album of old Baptist hymns and originals recorded to the deep rhythm and blues sounds of the legendary Muscle Shoals studio musicians.

Then the Public Broadcasting System radio show “Morning Edition” opened a series on emerging Southern writers with a feature on Campbell. The radio feature broadened Campbell's audience, bringing in people who bought her earlier records.

It also introduced Campbell to a religious audience–ironic, since she grew up in a parsonage. Her father, Jim Henry, is pastor of First Baptist Church in Orlando, Fla., and a former president of the Southern Baptist Convention.

“Up until that time, I (performed at) very few churches,” she said. “Now a lot of my dates are tied into playing in churches, where I often do benefits for organizations like Habitat for Humanity.”

At her church venues, Campbell performs all her songs–her story songs of growing up in the South, exploring issues of race and religion.

“If (a church) contacts me, they're already either progressive or they want their congregation to open up. If they wanted to do a worship service, they'd be looking to the Christian artists,” she said.

In the music industry, “Christian” is a market term, determined by record companies and related to how records are distributed and marketed. Campbell sees herself as a singer- songwriter.

“It so happens, I am a Christian,” she adds. “But I write and sing about my own experience, where I come from. Most Christian artists are like preachers … preaching to the choir. I'm not interested in evangelizing. I'm interested in questioning through my music stories and my values.

“So I start with myself and with the individuals in my own life. I deal with difficult questions through real people, real stories. And that's frankly what Jesus did in the Gospels. He told stories, and he met people one-on-one. So I'm talking about the life of Jesus, and that's what I've been able to do in my own life.”

She believes the Great Commandment–to love God supremely and love one's neighbor as oneself–demands honest dialogue about race and religion.

“The only way to improve things is to be willing to dialogue with ourselves and our neighbors,” Campbell said. “One of the biggest problems with our country is we say we don't have race problems or say that it's a Southern problem. I believe that's an unwillingness to dialogue, and that's when things fall apart. If you don't go through the process, you're going backwards.”

That attitude explains why Campbell sings in places few other songwriters sing, particularly in the South. Many of her venues are in white Protestant churches.

Her audiences are perhaps hearing about issues they wouldn't normally hear about in the pulpit, issues they can accept in a musical format, from a person who comes from their community.

“I used to think it's kind of weird to be singing to people just like me,” Campbell said. “But I learned it was me imposing a stereotype and generalization and an unwillingness to let the music go where it needed to go.

“I always thought this was the function of art.

“Through music or painting, we can open a dialogue with others about subjects that I hope we wouldn't want to leave to politicians.”

Posted: 10/29/04

Marketplace Ministries marks
20 years as God's ambassadors

By Ken Camp

Managing Editor

DALLAS–When Gil Stricklin resigned as youth evangelism consultant with the Baptist General Convention of Texas 20 years ago to launch a new ministry providing workplace chaplains to businesses, Evangelism Director Carlos McLeod promised to pray for him.

“You'll need it,” he said.

He did. The first five business leaders he approached to offer his services as a marketplace chaplain turned him down, and they were all fellow church members.

“The first person I visited told me: 'You're going to get a lot of people sued. You cannot mix religion and work,'” Stricklin recalled.

Once he found a business that accepted his invitation, he spent more time the first couple of months "hanging around" at work, cutting grass, tagging items for sale and packing merchandise than offering spiritual counsel, he recalled.

Today, Marketplace Ministries has grown into an $8.4 million nonprofit corporation, serving employees at 250 companies in 35 states. More than 1,600 chaplains work in 900 locations, offering broad-based pastoral care to about 337,000 employees and family members. And in two decades, no one has sued Marketplace Ministries or its employees.

Stricklin's experiences as an Army Reserve chaplain inspired him to begin the ministry. In the military, he preached funerals for soldiers' family members, made hospital visits, counseled couples before they married and visited incarcerated children of Army personnel.

“It helped me see clearly that most people don't have a pastor,” he said.

Stricklin discovered 70 percent of the American workforce claims no relationship with a pastor, priest, rabbi or minister. And in 1983, only 28 Southern Baptist chaplains served in what was called “industrial chaplaincy.”

Before he resigned his BGCT post, Stricklin discussed his vision for marketplace chaplains with his pastor at First Baptist Church of Dallas, W.A. Criswell.

“If this is of God, you won't be able to get away from it,” Criswell told him. “If not, it will go away.”

The vision wouldn't go away. In fact, it became clearer to Stricklin. He became convinced he could not continue urging people to fulfill the Great Commission of making Christian disciples until he first provided a way for them to obey the Great Commandment–loving God supremely and loving one's neighbor as oneself–where people spend most of their waking hours.

“Whether people come to know the Lord or not, they need to know God cares about them,” Stricklin said. “We are in the workplace to represent God.”

Marketplace Ministries contracts with businesses that offer chaplain services as an employee benefit. Stricklin's ministry, in turn, provides trained, carefully screened chaplains who are available at no cost to employees for a wide range of pastoral care services.

Three chaplains serve the 205 employees at Town North Bank in Dallas, walking alongside the staff and their families through surgeries, cancer treatments, times of bereavement and other crisis times, said John Reap, the bank's president and chief executive officer.

“They are thankful for the love and care exhibited through the chaplains,” Reap said.

Marketplace Ministries chaplains provide an unobtrusive pastoral presence in the workplace, Stricklin emphasized. If an employee wants to talk about spiritual matters, the employee initiates the conversation.

“Our chaplains are quietly and inconspicuously in the workplace, not playing 'Just As I Am' over the PA system,” he said. “We do not come in preaching, condemning or judging. We come in with my favorite four-letter words–care, help, hope and love.”

But if employees want to know how to find peace with God, chaplains are free to present the Christian plan of salvation to them. Of those employees who initiate a conversation with a chaplain about their salvation, 80 percent come to faith in Christ, Stricklin said. In 20 years, the chaplains have recorded more than 32,000 professions of faith.

“When you love people, when you represent the Lord Jesus with love and compassion, hearts will be opened to the gospel,” Stricklin said. “When you offer a gentle, winsome witness and offer care to people when they need it, then you can share the gospel.”

Many employers also find out having a chaplain in the workplace makes good business sense. They report greater loyalty and productivity, less turnover and a safer working environment.

“Employees are our most valuable asset,” said Ray Huffines of the Dallas-area Huffines Auto Group, which has four chaplains serving its employees. “We believe we are going to be successful or not based on our employees, and the things they are dealing with–the issues they face–affect their performance.”

Offering chaplain service as an employee benefit also sends an important message, he adds. “It makes a statement that we care about our people.”

While the workplace environment at the Huffines dealerships already was positive before the chaplains arrived, Stricklin points to a business in South Carolina that had been plagued by racial problems, even to the point of knife fights breaking out in the workplace.

“Our chaplain's been there for five years, and there have been no employee disputes on the floor in four years,” he said. “It's a whole different atmosphere. There's an undergirding moral and ethical undertone.”

Twenty years ago, Marketplace Ministries was unique. Since then, at least five similar organizations have been created, and Stricklin said he has done everything possible to encourage them.

“There's no competition,” he said. “We could have 10,000 companies like ours in America and not touch the hem of the garment.”

Through the years, Stricklin was granted an honorary doctorate from Dallas Baptist University, was named a distinguished alumnus of Baylor University and most recently received the Abner McCall Humanitarian Award from the Baylor Alumni Association.

But he remains convinced the greatest honor is being God's ambassador to the workplace–“representing the Lord Jesus Christ and Almighty God in kindness and through acts of service.”

Posted: 10/29/04

New Orleans seminary trustees
OK sole membership with reservations

By Lacy Thompson

Louisiana Baptist Messager

NEW ORLEANS (ABP)–After months of sometimes pointed discussion, New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary trustees have agreed to adopt proposed charter amendments designed to tie it securely to the Southern Baptist Convention–but with some reservations.

Spending 90 minutes in a closed-door session, seminary trustees essentially acceded to the request of messengers to the 2004 national convention to adopt a sole membership model of corporate organization proposed by the SBC Executive Committee.

At the same time, however, trustees asked seminary President Chuck Kelley to report concerns regarding the sole membership model to convention messengers who must give final approval to the changes at the 2005 annual meeting next June in Nashville, Tenn.

The model makes the convention the sole member–or single controlling member–of the seminary corporation and outlines the specific rights entitled.

It is intended to prevent the seminary–and other convention entities–from arbitrarily acting to distance itself from the denomination, as some state convention entities have done in recent years.

Since 1997, Southern Baptist leaders have sought to secure its entities by having them adopt sole membership charters.

In so doing, they grant the convention ultimate and specific authority. As designed, a sole member cannot leave the denominational fold without the approval of convention messengers.

Prior to the board meeting, all convention entities had agreed to the sole membership structure except New Orleans Seminary.

Last fall, after extensive study of the matter, trustees at the New Orleans school declined to adopt the sole membership model, citing legal and Baptist polity concerns.

They argued sole membership eventually could be used by the Executive Committee to exert undue authority over the school; would be a problem because of the unique nature of Louisiana law; would increase legal liability for the convention; and violates historic Baptist polity.

Executive Committee leaders insisted the concerns are unfounded. They asserted the sole membership model can work in Louisiana, that it actually strengthens the convention's liability protection and simply represents a legal solution to a legal problem.

Seminary leaders have not been convinced. But even in rejecting the sole membership model, they committed to finding an alternative that would secure its ties to the convention. Last spring, leaders agreed to bring a pair of options–including a sole membership proposal–to the 2005 convention for messengers to decide the issue.

But Executive Committee members wanted to bring the issue to Southern Baptist Convention messengers this year, and at the annual meeting in June messengers voted 63.5 percent to 36.5 percent to ask the seminary to adopt the sole membership model as proposed by the Executive Committee.

At their meeting, seminary trustees voted to adopt the model, but the board also offered a second motion asking its executive committee and legal counsel to review a document outlining concerns. The document is to be presented to trustees for final approval before the scheduled April 2005 meeting.

Following the meeting, Kelley emphasized the trustee action is exactly what the convention messengers asked them to do.

At the same time, seminary leaders and trustees are convinced the sole membership model is flawed in regard to use in Louisiana, Kelley added.

In light of that, the seminary opted to fulfill the request of the convention–while stating its reservations–and allow messengers to the 2005 annual meeting to decide the issue, he explained.

Spending 90 minutes in a closed-door session, New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary trustees essentially acceded to the request of messengers to the 2004 Southern Baptist Convention to adopt a sole membership model of corporate organization proposed by the SBC Executive Committee.