Posted: 5/14/04

Authentic Christian lives convince
postmoderns gospel is true, pastor says

By Ken Camp

Managing Editor

ARLINGTON–In a culture where spirituality is more about human gratification than relationship with God, Christians should follow the example of the first century church, a Dallas pastor suggested.

“I believe the 21st century will look more like the first century than any time in-between,” said Jim Denison, pastor of Park Cities Baptist Church in Dallas.

“The apostolic Christians were where we are. We must live so authentically that others want what they see in us.”

Denison participated in a recent panel discussion on world religions and worldviews competing with Christianity.

The seminar was part of a national leadership conference on “ultimate questions,” sponsored by the John Newport Foundation.

World religions and “new consciousness” worldviews are gaining popularity–particularly in the United States–because authority structures have changed radically, said Denison, who first was Newport's student and later his colleague on the philosophy of religion faculty at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary.

Denison traced a shift from belief in the church as the arbiter of truth to a postmodern worldview that denies the possibility of knowing objective truth.

For the first 1,000 years after Christianity became Rome's official religion, the source of authority for faith and practice was the Scripture as interpreted by the church, he noted.

With the Reformation, the source of authority became the Bible as interpreted by the individual.

Later, philosophers exalted human reason as the basis for authority, until other philosophers pointed to personal sensory experience as its foundation. That led to the postmodern belief in truth as relative and individual, rather than as absolute and objective, he said.

Denison compared it to the claim of ancient skeptics who said: “There is no such thing as certainty, and we're sure of it.”

Christians need to change their strategy for presenting the gospel to people who hold this postmodern worldview, Denison said.

"In modernity, we told our culture: 'Christianity is true; it is therefore relevant and attractive.' … In the postmodern culture, we must use exactly the opposite strategy," Denison said. "Our faith must be attractive. Then it might be relevant; then it might be true."

Twenty-first century Christians should show postmodern seekers lives transformed by the gospel and invite them to “try it” for themselves–the same approach taken by first century Christians who lived in pre-modern, pre-Christian world, he said.

“We must live authentic lives that are so attractive, we earn the right to share the good news,” Denison said.

Panelist Stan Parks, who served with Cooperative Baptist Fellowship Global Missions before joining Texas Baptists' WorldconneX network, noted world religions and competing worldviews no longer are the sole domain of foreign missionaries. “While we slept, the world came to us,” Parks said.

Christians can find a common ground for dialogue by holding to a holistic, genuinely biblical worldview, rather than accepting the ideas of Plato, the Greek philosopher who divided reality into the supernatural and natural worlds, he said.

“In the biblical worldview, the only distinction is between the Creator and the created,” Parks said.

Albert Reyes, president of the Baptist University of the Americas, also underscored the missions implications of demographic changes in the United States–particularly regarding Hispanic growth in Texas.

“Migration will marginalize postmodernism” in the United States over the next few decades, he predicted.

Denison, who identified postmodernism as a “parenthesis” worldview that would be supplanted by something else, agreed, pointing out that Latinos, in particular, tend more toward pragmaticism than postmodernism.

Christians should model “transformational living” and develop “cross-cultural competency” to respond effectively to the “new demographic reality,” Reyes said.

Posted: 5/14/04

Real interfaith dialogue demands honesty, understanding

By Ken Camp

Managing Editor

ARLINGTON–Rather than retreating from the challenge of proliferating world religions in an increasingly pluralistic society, Christians should enter into honest dialogue with people who hold different beliefs, a Dallas pastor told a national conference examining “ultimate questions.”

“We seek to know those we are seeking to persuade,” said Jim Denison, pastor of Park Cities Baptist Church in Dallas.

Denison spoke on world religions at a national leadership conference on the biblical worldview, sponsored by the John Newport Foundation. The foundation is committed to carrying on the legacy of Newport, who served more than 40 years as a philosophy of religion professor and administrator at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary.

Newport taught a three-step approach to cross-cultural evangelism–seek to understand different worldviews, find common ground while maintaining distinctive beliefs and proclaim the gospel in both word and deed, said Denison, who was first a student and later a colleague of Newport's at Southwestern Seminary.

That approach matched the method Jesus modeled in his encounter with the Samaritan woman at the well, as recorded in John's Gospel, he noted.

“First, exegete the culture,” Denison said.

Jesus understood the woman he met at the well was a social outcast, and he understood her Samaritan belief system better than she did.

Similarly, Christians need to understand before seeking to be understood, and they need to get to know people before they try to persuade them to consider Christ's claims, Denison said.

“So how do we confront our pluralistic and relativistic age in the context of world religions? First, we seek to understand the worldview we are attempting to change. We understand the question and the person asking it. We learn why they are asking their question. We exegete the culture before we seek to address it with the gospel,” he said.

Next, Christians should engage in respectful dialogue with people who hold different worldviews, looking for points of commonality without surrendering distinctive beliefs.

Both Jesus and the Samaritan woman came to the well seeking water, and Jesus used that shared desire to point the woman to “living water.”

While Christians need to find common ground for dialogue, they have a responsibility to “explode the myth” that all religions teach essentially the same truth, Denison added. “Various world religions are not different roads up the same mountain. They are, indeed, different mountains,” he said.

Finally, Christians need to “witness with works and words,” Denison said. “We must be what we ask the other person to become.”

Milton Ferguson, former president of Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, similarly emphasized the importance of authentic dialogue with people from other world religions.

Based particularly on his experiences ministering among international students, Ferguson said dialogue is “not only appropriate, but really is essential” if Christians genuinely believe the exclusive claims of Christianity.

Honest, open dialogue does not “ease the conflicts and blur the distinctions” between worldviews, he noted. Rather, it establishes a foundation of integrity on which Christians can present Jesus Christ as the way of salvation.

Looking to Newport's example, Ferguson offered four suggestions for dialogue:

Acknowledge limitations. Finite human understanding is conditioned by personal experience.

“Our knowledge is finite; it is partial. We don't know the whole story. We don't see as God sees,” he said.

Affirm personal beliefs. Christians need to clarify their own personal faith commitments, understanding why they believe as they do, Ferguson noted. And they need to hold fast to those faith commitments when engaged in dialogue with people who do not share them, he said.

Seek to see people as God does. Christians should recognize every person as created in the image of God, with the potential for a spiritual relationship with him. “No one is hopeless. Every person is potentially a redeemed child of God,” he said.

Proclaim and practice religious freedom. God does not coerce faith, and Christians must resist any attempts to force expressions of belief, he said.

“We are called to bear witness to the truth,” Ferguson said. “Let us celebrate the good news, tell the story and trust the truth.”

Posted: 5/14/04

For Christians, the real question
of suffering is 'how,' not 'why'

By Ken Camp

Managing Editor

ARLINGTON–For Christians, the question of evil and suffering is “how” rather than “why,” panelists told a national leadership conference.

“There is no ultimate answer to the question, 'Why?'” said Milton Ferguson, former president of Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary.

But, he added, a biblical worldview provides answers to the more pressing question: “How do I get through this? How do I learn to walk, but with a limp, and how do I learn to sing again with a lump in my throat.”

Ferguson joined Randall Lolley, former president of Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary, and Gerald Mann, pastor of Riverbend Church in Austin, in a panel discussion at a national leadership conference on “ultimate questions,” sponsored by the John Newport Foundation.

After years of scholarly inquiry, seeking to reconcile God's goodness and power with the existence of evil and suffering, Ferguson concluded the best answer he found was offered by a poorly educated oil-field driller.

The man attended a country church where Ferguson was pastor during his seminary studies. His daughter asked why she had to suffer from an intensely pain-ful malignancy.

The father replied: “I don't know why you have to hurt so, but I know it doesn't mean God has quit loving you.”

Ferguson acknowledged Christians can mature and learn important lessons from suffering.

But he flatly rejected the idea that God is “punching buttons and pulling levers” to orchestrate suffering as some sort of teaching experience.

“I don't believe God works evil with one hand in order to do good with his other hand,” he said.

Part of the problem in trying to understand the problem is “we'll never be able to put a single face on evil and suffering,” Lolley added.

Pointing to lessons he learned from Newport, who served more than 40 years at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary as a philosophy of religion professor and administrator, Lolley said suffering may be punitive, probationary, disciplinary, revelational, redemptive or demonic. And it is mysterious.

Mann described some of his own experiences with suffering–rearing a deaf daughter and personally struggling with Parkinson's disease.

“Why do good people suffer? It's a good question. We must not tell people not to ask it,” Mann said.

“I have no rational answer. But there is another way of knowing that is trans-rational.”

Ultimately, he concluded, that way of “knowing” is a step of faith.

Posted: 5/14/04

Low-power Spanish radio station directed
by Higher Power, pastor insists

By Terri Jo Ryan

Special to the Standard

WACO–By Federal Communications Commission standards, Radio Amistad is a “low-power” station. But ask the pastor of Amistad Baptist Church in Waco what fuels his new venture into ethnic Christian broadcasting, and he'll tell you he is “higher-powered.”

Jesus Garnica, pastor of Amistad since August 1993, was a disc jockey in Edinburg when he had the vision of starting an all-Spanish Christian radio station.

Radio Amistad began broadcasting about three months ago as Waco's only Hispanic Christian station, opening doors for a whole new ministry in Central Texas.

Amistad Church has been saving money more than four years to collect the $40,000 needed to get on the air, Garnica said.

Radio Amistad is heard on 96.7 FM in a six- to seven-mile radius around the church.

Within a week of signing on and conducting the necessary testing of the new equipment, station KRWA LP began offering Christian programming in Spanish 24 hours a day, “allowing those in the Hispanic community who do not have a regular church home to … listen to quality Christian programs in Spanish any time that they want and be ministered to around the clock,” Garnica said.

Radio Amistad has a two-studio hub, so shows can be produced while others are airing. Much of the station's operations can be automated so Garnica will not have to be on duty all night. On-air personalities from the church and community will pre-record segments to be played on the overnight shift.

Garnica is offering air time to pastors of other Spanish-speaking evangelical Christian churches in the Waco area. Preachers can do guest sermons and promote their own church-sponsored events and community programs.

He has plans for interview shows with Spanish-speaking experts on health, family counseling and immigration. Spanish-speaking representatives of community groups such as Habitat for Humanity, Caritas and the Heart of Texas Financial Literacy Coalition will be invited to record public service announcements.

English as a Second Language, GED classes or special drives at health clinics will be emphasized in the public service announcements, he said.

“I am interested in people hearing something good,” the pastor said. “I want to put a clean message on the air.”

Garnica sees the need for a Christian station with Spanish programming. About 40 percent of the students in the Waco Independent School District are Hispanic, he said, and Hispanics are the fastest-growing population in Texas.

Pastors will be invited to pray on the air for the needs of the community, Garnica said. Waco Baptist Association has 20 Hispanic churches, he noted.

Radio Amistad will feature syndicated Bible studies, translations of Billy Graham sermons and contemporary Christian music geared to the Spanish-speaking market.

Texas Baptists help support the ministry through their gifts to the Mary Hill Davis Offering for Texas Missions.

By offering family-friendly fare, the station will be a more positive alternative to the abundance of Spanish music offered that has no spiritual core, he said.

“We want to do as much as we can to help the Hispanic community here grow in the Lord,” Garnica said.

Posted: 5/14/04

Proposed SBC resolution calls for
withdrawal from public education

By Bob Allen

EthicsDaily.com

The Southern Baptist Convention may consider a resolution urging parents to pull their children out of public schools and educate them either by home schooling or sending them to Christian private schools.

T.C. Pinckney, long-time conservative leader from Virginia, has jointly submitted a resolution on Christian education to the SBC Resolutions Committee. The committee will consider whether to present it for a vote when the convention meets June 15-16 in Indianapolis.

The resolution urges all officers and members of the Southern Baptist Convention “to remove their children from the government schools and see to it that they receive a thoroughly Christian education.”

It encourages churches to “counsel parents regarding their obligation to provide their children with a Christian education” and to “provide all of their children with Christian alternatives to government school education, either through home schooling or thoroughly Christian private schools.”

The resolution's co-sponsor, Bruce Shortt, an attorney and member of North Oaks Baptist Church in Spring, told the conservative Web site WorldNetDaily.com many Christian parents are in denial about the dangers of government schools.

The time has come “to focus on rescuing our children from Pharaoh's schools,” Shortt maintained.

The resolution does not disparage adults who “labor as missionaries” by working or teaching in public schools. Rather, “they should be commended and encouraged to be salt and light in a dark and decaying government school system,” it says.

The convention previously passed resolutions favoring home schooling in 1997 and Christian schools in 1999 as alternatives to public education. But the new resolution, should it win approval, would be the first to label it a Christian duty to abandon public schools.

Shortt is Texas coordinator for Exodus Mandate, an anti-public school movement started in 1997 with the mantra, “Every church a school, every parent a teacher.”

The new resolution submitted by Pinckney and Shortt says the public school system, while claiming to be neutral toward religion, “is actually anti-Christian, so that children taught in the government schools are receiving an anti-Christian education.”

Education offered by state-run schools “is officially godless,” the resolution says, and public schools are adopting curricula and policies “teaching that a homosexual lifestyle is acceptable.”

“Whereas the Bible says children are like arrows in the hand of a warrior (Psalm 127:3-5), we must understand that children are weapons (arrows) to be aimed for the greatest impact in the kingdom of God,” the proposed resolution states.

“Just as it would be foolish for the warrior to give his arrows to his enemies, it is foolish for Christians to give their children to be trained in schools run by the enemies of God.”

The resolution says the Bible gives parents the responsibility for educating their children, yet Christian children in public schools “are converted to an anti-Christian worldview rather than evangelizing their schoolmates.”

That is one factor, the resolution claims, behind the statistic that 88 percent of children raised in evangelical homes leave church by age 18, never to return.

Pinckney said the SBC needs to adopt the resolution for three reasons: “Because God's word assigns responsibility for the children's education to the parents, not the government; because Southern Baptists are the largest Protestant denomination in America and so our decisions carry considerable influence not just for Southern Baptists but for the country at large;” and because “government schools are fatally flawed academically, morally, fiscally and are anti-Christian.”

Shortt said many parents have been “spiritually blind” not only to their responsibility to see to their children's education but also to the dangers of turning that task over to “government” schools, he said.

Baptists who object that Christians shouldn't “turn their back” on public education fall prey to “a mistaken application of … (being) salt and light,” he said.

While Jesus sent his disciples into the world, Shortt said, they were adults and spiritually prepared.

While he has no problem with adults who want to teach in public schools to bring a Christian witness to bear, Shortt said, youth are not ready for such a responsibility.

Robert Parham with the Baptist Center for Ethics criticized the anti-public school movement as “racist in its roots” and bearing “false witness with its agenda.”

The anti-public school movement in the 1960s “was fed from pulpits that used the Bible to support segregation,” Parham said.

“Not surprisingly, churches planted white race academies, which sought racial purity.”

Today's “spiritual heirs of the race academies now advance the cause of religious purity,” Parham said.

“The first generation bore false witness against public schools with the demonization of African-Americans,” Parham said.

“The latter bears false witness with utterly malicious charges of godlessness in our community schools.”

Shortt disputed Parham's allegations, noting African Americans are the fastest growing demographic in the home schooling movement.

He pointed to a Tennessee university survey showing ethnic minorities are almost twice as likely as Anglos to say they would consider home schooling their children.

“Perhaps Mr. Parham is unacquainted with the fact that government schools do their greatest damage to black students,” Shortt said.

Social progressives and Ku Klux Klan members alike were advocates of church-state separation and “strong proponents of government schools well into the 20th century,” he said.

“Perhaps Mr. Parham needs to apply himself to some serious research and thinking rather than engaging in name-calling with respect to someone he does not know,” said Shortt, who noted his three sons are biracial. “I don't mind fair comment and disagreement, but the decent thing to do would be to retract the attempted smear.”

Southern Baptist Convention President Jack Graham says he supports Christian education but doubts Southern Baptists will adopt the proposed resolution urging parents to pull their children out of public schools.

Parents should make a “fully informed decision” about their children's education, said Graham, pastor of Prestonwood Baptist Church in Plano.

“I doubt the SBC will approve a statement which urges parents to remove their children from public schools,” Graham said.

Should the resolutions committee decide not to bring the resolution forward, Pinckey said either he or Shortt probably would request from the floor that messengers be allowed to debate and vote on the measure. Such a motion would have to pass by a two-thirds majority.

But Shortt said whether the resolution passes is less important to him than drawing attention to an already-growing movement of home schooling and starting Christian schools.

“We're trying to raise the issue in a general way, because this issue needs to come full front-and-center, not just among leadership, but among the laity as well,” he said. “That's the reason why this resolution ought to get to the floor.”

Posted: 5/14/04

Moral shortsightedness common in business, research says

By Ken Camp

Managing Editor

ARLINGTON–Many advertising executives fail to see any ethical implications of their work, and if they do see moral problems, they refuse to talk about them, a University of Texas professor has discovered.

And she firmly believes that “see-no-evil, speak-no-evil” attitude permeates much of the corporate world.

“Our thinking is that the problem extends to other industries as well,” said Meme Drumwright, chair of the bridging disciplines program in ethics and leadership at the University of Texas at Austin.

Drumwright, associate professor of advertising at UT, and Patrick Murphy, a marketing professor at the University of Notre Dame, interviewed more than 50 advertising practitioners at 29 agencies in eight cities to discover how they perceive ethical issues.

The researchers found most of the people they interviewed suffered from “moral myopia”–a distorted moral vision that keeps ethical issues from coming into focus–and “moral muteness”–an unwillingness to talk about moral concerns.

In an article to be published in an upcoming issue of the Journal of Advertising, they wrote: “We do not believe that moral myopia or moral muteness is unique to advertising or marketing. Indeed, the recent round of corporate scandals suggests that moral myopia and moral muteness are apparent in many industries. Our data were collected before the Enron debacle, and as we watched it unfold, we saw evidence of rampant moral muteness and moral myopia, which paved the way for serious ethical breaches by people of good and ill intent.”

Drumwright, whose father was dean at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary and whose mother has been a Baptist missions prayer strategist, presented many of her key findings as part of a panel discussion on morality and relativism during a recent national leadership conference sponsored by the John Newport Foundation.

Ethical issues seldom are discussed at either the corporate or individual level in most major-market ad agencies, Drum-wright observed.

Generally, they are not talked about because they are not seen, her research revealed.

“They don't see the ethical issues unless they are tied to their own self-interests, such as when they think someone is stealing their idea,” she said

Drumwright and her colleague concluded advertising executives–and by implication other business people–may be affected by moral myopia to varying degrees.

Some are morally shortsighted, and others may be practically blind to ethical issues, she observed. Often, moral vision is distorted by rationalization.

“A common rationalization we heard was: If it's legal, it must be moral,” she said.

Drumwright quoted an agency president who told the interviewers advertising is “one of the most ethical businesses there is (because) it is so regulated. Everything that we do has to go through our lawyers to make sure it's conforming to the law, and then our client's lawyers, and then we have to send it through the networks and their lawyers. … It's really hard to be unethical in this business even if you wanted to.”

Rather than seeing legal requirements as the “moral minimum,” many advertisers equate legality with morality, setting the bar no higher than what the law demands, she said.

Another problem advertisers face is becoming so immersed in their clients' corporate culture they lose all objectivity.

“Anthropologists refer to this as 'going native,'” Drumwright said.

For ad agency representatives, “going native” means becoming so identified with their clients' perspective and product claims they lose the ability to make critical moral judgments. They believe their own lies without recognizing them as such.

Another way advertisers rationalize unethical behavior is by compartmentalizing–“separating work life from personal life,” Drumwright said.

She pointed to the example of an ad agency executive who had a young daughter. As a mother, she expressed concern about the potential influence waif-thin models could have on her daughter's concept of beauty and self-esteem. But as an advertising practitioner, she told herself clients have the right to run their businesses the way they want to and project any image they wish.

Other advertising professionals displayed ethical concern by refusing to work for clients representing certain businesses, such as cigarette-makers.

But they saw no problem accepting bonus money from their employer if the agency that employed them benefited from cigarette accounts.

Drumwright saw that as “a form of compartmentalization.”

Research did uncover isolated examples of advertisers with moral vision who were willing to talk to coworkers and clients about ethical concerns, she noted.

Some even displayed what she called “moral imagination”–the ability to “think outside the box” to generate moral alternatives beyond simplistic answers.

These individuals differed from their industry peers primarily in one respect: They worked in a corporate culture that valued ethical behavior.

“It matters what kind of organization you are in. The corporate culture and community make a difference,” Drumwright said.

She drew several conclusions about how to foster ethics in ad agencies–and by implication, in the general workplace:

Leaders set the tone.

Leading both by word and example, people in authority can create a workplace context where moral imagination can flourish.

They also can create systems in the workplace that reward rather than punish workers who “blow the whistle” on unethical conduct.

Good communication fosters good ethics.

Researchers found a correlation between high levels of communication in the corporate culture and high levels of ethical sensitivity.

Community matters.

When good habits are cultivated and nurtured in the workplace, ethical behavior becomes the norm rather than the exception.

“There is a huge role for the church to play,” Drumwright observed. “When there is not a supportive community in the workplace, the church can be that nurturing community with respect to teaching and encouraging virtue.”

In addition to teaching ethical decision-making skills, church also offers a place where Christians can interact with people who work in a variety of jobs, providing the opportunity for dialogue with people outside their own narrow vocational fields, she said.

“Churches can make a huge difference by helping people translate what they learn on Sunday into what it means being a Christian in the world–in their Monday-through-Friday work life,” she said.

Posted: 5/14/04

Debate about same-sex marriage continues across country

By Robert Marus

ABP Washington Bureau

WASHINGTON (ABP)–As the battle over same-sex marriage and other gay-rights issues rages across the country, both supporters and opponents of gay rights logged several important victories in recent weeks.

Since late April, gays and their allies won legislative victories in Maine and California, while legislation restricting gay rights passed in Oklahoma and Virginia.

A judge in Oregon issued a mixed ruling halting gay marriages that one county had been performing but ordering the state to recognize the marriages already performed.

That same day, a California legislative committee gave initial approval to a bill that would legalize same-sex marriages in that state. The California State Assembly's judiciary committee voted 8-3 to pass the Marriage License Non-Discrimination Act.

That bill would change language in state law back to define marriage as a contract between “two people” rather than “a man and a woman.” The change would return the law to its pre-1977 formulation, when it was changed to specify heterosexual unions.

If approved by the legislature's appropriations committee and then the whole legislature, it would mark the first legislative legalization of gay marriage in the nation.

On the other hand, Virginia legislators passed a bill that the gay-rights group Human Rights Campaign called “one of the most discriminatory and restrictive anti-family and anti-marriage bills in the country.” Over Democratic Gov. Mark Warner's objections, the assembly gave approval–with a veto-proof majority–to a bill that would outlaw any marriage-like relationship or legal contract between same-sex partners in the commonwealth. Virginia law already explicitly bans same-sex marriages.

The law, which will take effect July 1, means any legal agreement between same-sex couples–such as privately-arranged contracts guaranteeing inheritance or hospital-visitation rights–resembling the rights given to married couples would be banned.

In a statement on the bill, Warner said he harbored “grave doubts about the constitutionality of this broad wording,” and noted it could have “unintended consequences,” including nullifying business-partnership arrangements between people of the same sex regardless of their sexual orientation.

“I believe it would be regrettable and wrong if Virginia were to go further than any other state in its efforts to restrict the rights of people to enter into legal relationships,” he said.

Meanwhile, the Oklahoma House of Representatives overwhelmingly approved an amendment to that state's constitution banning same-sex marriage. The state senate already had approved the amendment. The vote means it will be sent to Oklahoma voters for final approval in the fall.

But Maine legislators passed a bill creating state-recognized domestic partnerships that offer many of the same benefits as marriage. If, as expected, Gov. John Baldacci (D) signs the bill into law, Maine will become the fifth state in the union to offer state recognition of same-sex couples.

The issue of same-sex marriage and other gay rights has been thrust into the spotlight as Massachusetts counts down to May 17, the date by which the state's Supreme Judicial Court has ordered it to begin issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples. The court initially issued its ruling in November, setting off a nationwide controversy.

Massachusetts legislators have since given initial approval to an amendment to the commonwealth's constitution outlawing same-sex marriage. However, that amendment still must be approved a second time by the legislature and then voters. That means it couldn't take effect for at least a year, during which time thousands of same-sex couples will likely be legally wed in Massachusetts.

Gov. Mitt Romney (R) has said he will not allow same-sex couples from outside the commonwealth to marry there. And a group of Massachusetts legislators asked the court to delay implementation of its ruling. However, few observers expect the court's justices to do so.

Posted: 5/14/04

Freedoms form foundation for Baptist group

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (ABP)–At their recent semi-annual meeting, directors of Associated Baptist Press agreed to enter into a new educational and fund-raising partnership with two sister Baptist organizations.

Board members approved entering into a partnership with the Washington, D.C.-based Baptist Joint Committee on Public Affairs and the Georgia-based Baptists Today news journal, pending final approval by both of those organizations.

The agencies would provide churches with educational materials about the historical Baptist and biblical emphasis on religious freedom and freedom of speech. The effort would include joint appeals to Baptist congregations for annual offerings or church budget line-item contributions that the three agencies would then divide evenly.

The plan has been dubbed the First Freedoms Project, in reference to the two freedoms enshrined in the First Amendment–freedom of the press and freedom of religion–for which the three agencies advocate.

The board also voted to suspend publication of FaithWorks, a lifestyle magazine for young Christians, while ABP negotiates with an ecumenical network of young leaders to create a new magazine with a broader potential subscriber base.

Associated Baptist Press created FaithWorks in 1998 as a way to reach beyond the wire service's traditional constituency of denominational publications and secular newspaper religion editors.

The directors' motion authorized ABP to entertain a proposal from the Emergent network on transitioning FaithWorks into Emergent's official publication. Emergent is a nationwide network of young evangelical Christian leaders from several denominational and nondenominational backgrounds that bills itself as “the leading network of the emerging church.”

Last year, Emergent's leaders initiated discussions with ABP's executive editor, Greg Warner, about using FaithWorks' existing production staff and subscriber list to create a new magazine for the movement. An executive summary describes the project–tentatively titled This magazine–as “a new lifestyle magazine for Christians who are engaging the emerging culture” and says its target audience will be adults age 25 to 40.

In other action at the meeting, directors bestowed their 10th annual Religious Freedom Award on Charles Haynes, a First Amendment expert at the Arlington, Va.-based Freedom Forum.

Posted: 5/14/04

Baptist student ministries seeking contact
with armed service academy new arrivals

Baptist student ministries at the United States armed service academies want to contact incoming cadets and midshipmen, campus ministry leaders emphasize.

At the U.S. Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs, Baptist Student Union representatives are willing to provide special services to men and women who arrive early.

“For those arriving June 30, we will meet them at the airport, provide free lodging, meals, transportation, and take them to the academy at the appointed time on July 1. For those arriving July 1, the Air Force Academy buses will meet them, but we would like to know of their coming so we can make contact once they have arrived,” said Dwain Gregory, director of Baptist Collegiate Ministries at the Air Force Academy.

“This is an opportunity to meet smiling faces and make new Christian friends before beginning basic cadet training. If pastors, parents, relatives, friends or new cadets will contact us with name, address, telephone and e-mail address, we will contact them to secure flight arrival times and provide further information.”

Cadets arriving at the U.S. Air Force Academy can contact Gregory at (719) 599-9094 or leedgreg@aol.com or Tom Clemmons at (719) 659-1525 or Clemmonsfam@adelphia.net.

Similar ministries are available to new arrivals at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point and to the U.S. Naval Academy at Annapolis.

At West Point, contact Bill Blackwell at (845) 534-3944 or yb8731@usma.edu.

At the Naval Academy, contact Kirk Ritchey at (410) 263-0963 or ritchey@usna.edu.