Posted: 11/20/03

Mark Wingfield to join staff of
Wilshire Baptist Church in Dallas

By Ken Camp

Texas Baptist Communications

DALLAS–Baptist Standard Managing Editor Mark Wingfield is leaving denominational journalism after 21 years to join the staff of Wilshire Baptist Church in Dallas.

At a called church conference Nov. 19, the North Dallas congregation overwhelmingly voted to call Wingfield as associate pastor with specific responsibilities in communications, outreach and stewardship education. He will assume the post on Jan. 1.

His hiring is part of a transition plan as Senior Associate Pastor Preston Bright moves toward retirement in two years.

Mark Wingfield

Wingfield has been a member of Wilshire Baptist Church for five years, when he came to the Baptist Standard.

"I am passionate about our church and its vision, mission and ministry," he said. "To be able to invest my full attention on advancing the work of the church is invigorating and challenging."

Rather than retreating from action, Wingfield said he sees the move to a church staff as putting him at the heart of Baptist life.

"The reality is that the local church is the center of action for Baptist ministry. And I know of no other church that presents a better place to serve than Wilshire," he said.

"I some ways, I feel I am becoming part of a national trend that I have written about. More churches are calling out staff leadership from among their members. The proposal put together by our pastor and personnel committee is visionary, and I'm thrilled to be part of Wilshire's long tradition of stepping out on faith to fulfill the church's mission in creative ways."

Wingfield is vice chairman of deacons, an adult Sunday School teacher and a member of the strategic planning council at Wilshire, a congregation affiliated with the Baptist General Convention of Texas and the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship.

"The opportunity to call Mark to our church staff gives us someone of immense competence and confidence. His admirable courage in speaking for and to Baptists in the wider church assures us of his clarity of vision and conviction," said Pastor George Mason.

"His commitment to Wilshire's mission has been evident in everything he has done. I can't wait to see what God will do among us with the addition of Mark to our team."

Wingfield has been recognized by his peers as one of the top investigative, enterprising reporters in denominational journalism. Over the past two decades, he has reported on tumultuous changes at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary and Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, conflict at Baylor University, and the often-divergent paths taken by the BGCT and the Southern Baptist Convention.

As managing editor of the Baptist Standard, Wingfield made the paper "sparkle," according to Editor Marv Knox.

"Mark is one of the most insightful, thorough, fair and committed journalists Baptists ever produced. His insatiable curiosity, tenacity for truth and passion for people have shaped his remarkable ministry for more than two decades. Plus, his impeccable eye for design and ear for the ever-changing conversation of faith have made the Standard fun to read" he said.

Even so, to those who know him best, Wingfield's decision to join the Wilshire Baptist Church staff seemed a logical step, Knox observed.

"He has always been one of the finest, hardest-working church members anywhere. His training in ministry, experience in Baptist life and investment in the ministry of the church have shaped him for this new opportunity at Wilshire. While his departure saddens all of us who work with him, we're also excited for Mark and for his wonderful church," Knox said.

Before coming to the Baptist Standard, Wingfield was editor of the Kentucky Baptist Western Recorder, where he earlier served as news director.

Previously, he worked as associate director of news and information for the Southern Baptist Convention Home Mission Board and as director of news and information with Southwestern Seminary.

Wingfield has been a prolific contributor to the Associated Baptist Press independent news service, which recently made him the inaugural recipient of its Writer's Award.

"We knew the first award had to go to Mark," said ABP editor Greg Warner. "He has epitomized quality, truthful Baptist journalism for so long, and ABP and its readers were most often the beneficiaries of his talent."

Warner went on to say that Wingfield's move from denominational journalism to a church staff position "testifies to why Christian journalists do what we do–because we believe in God's people as firmly as we believe in God's truth."

Wingfield is a past president of the Baptist Communicators Association and has been a frequent winner in its Wilmer C. Fields Awards Competition, including the organization's top writing honor, the Frank Burkhalter Award. He also received a Katy Award from the Dallas Press Club.

Wingfield earned an undergraduate degree in journalism from the University of New Mexico and attended Southwestern Seminary. He and his wife, Alison, have 11-year-old twin sons, Luke and Garrett.

Concerning the Baptist Standard's future, Knox noted, "Since this move so obviously clarifies God's will for Mark Wingfield and Wilshire Baptist Church, I'm confident it's also God's will for the Standard. We will seek his successor and maintain the paper's commitment to inform, inspire, equip and empower Texas Baptists to follow Jesus Christ and expand God's kingdom."

Posted: 11/24/03

Around the State

Appointments

Eleven missionaries with Texas ties have been appointed by the North American Mission Board:

Joe Buck, who considers San Antonio his hometown, was appointed as a two-year resort missionary in Jackson Hole, Wy. He previously was a counselor for Laity Lodge in Leakey.

James and Claire Collins serve in Reno, Nev., where he is a church starter. He is a Howard Payne University graduate, and she is a University of Texas graduate. They previously served four years as missionaries in Mexico with the International Mission Board. They have three children, James, Marissa and Eleanor.

Kristi Dodd was appointed as a two-year multihousing church-starting missionary in Odessa. She works with Mission Odessa, a ministry of First Church there that includes apartment ministry, jail ministry and other outreach efforts.

John and Angela Herrington serve in Omaha, Neb., where he is a church starter. A Texas native, he previously was pastor of Lakepointe Community Church in Conroe and was pastor of a Nebraska church for 13 years. She also is a Texas native and a graduate of Baylor University. She was an instructor at Montgomery County Community College in Conroe, a lecturer at the University of Nebraska and a public school teacher in Arlington. They have four children, Heath, Emily, Seth and Megan.

Michelle Kendrick is a two-year missionary at the Baptist Center in Houston.

Heather Jo McIver is a two-year collegiate evangelism missionary in Syracuse, N.Y. She grew up in Spring and is a graduate of Dallas Baptist University.

Dominic Menard, a Texas native, is the collegiate evangelism missionary in Carbondale, Ill. He previously was a youth minister in Baytown.

Jamie Morgan works in collegiate and resort ministry in Ocean City, Md. A two-year missionary, she considers Glenn Heights her hometown. She previously was a youth intern at Southwest Church in DeSoto. She also has served as a student missionary in Keller, Australia and Malaysia.

Derek Yan, who considers Grand Prairie his hometown, is associate pastor of Solid Rock Fellowship, a new church in Edmonds, Wash. He previously was a pastoral intern at Rosen Heights Church in Fort Worth.

Anniversaries

Stephen Bailiff, fifth as youth minister at First Church in Navasota.

Robert Sea, 10th as pastor of Chinese Church in Lubbock, Nov. 1.

Domingo Chapa, fifth as pastor of Getsemani Church in Tahoka, Nov. 6.

S.W. Keeton, 10th as pastor of MacKenzie Terrace Church in Lubbock, Nov. 28.

Death

Joseph Underwood, 86, Oct. 15, in Richmond, Va. Born in Rising Star, he began preaching at age 15 and was ordained as a minister at 18. He began his vocational ministry at a local country church while a student at Baylor University. He and his wife, Mary Lea, were appointed as missionaries to Brazil in 1943 by the Foreign Mission Board. He resigned his appointment in 1953 to become the pastor of a New Mexico church and later worked in the offices of the state convention there. After six years, he moved to Richmond, Va., to serve as a consultant in evangelism and church development with the the mission board for more than 20 years. He retired in 1981. He is survived by his wife; sons, Wyatt, William and Charles; daughter, Judy Webb; brother, W.R.; sister, Elizabeth McAnelly; and seven grandchildren.

Ordained

Donald Sheffield to the ministry at Friendship Church in Doddridge.

Uli Baumert, Mike Causey and Steven Graf as deacons at Windsor Park Church in DeSoto.

Curtis Guidry and Terry McDaniel as deacons at Memorial Church in Baytown.

Posted: 11/24/03

Dec. 7

1 John 1:1-2:2

Jesus the only fix for broken lives

By Gary Long

Consider for a moment your favorite restaurants. No matter the cuisine, what do they have in common that makes them your favorite? The common thread between my favorite restaurants is more than the taste of the food and quality of the service–it is the experience I have there.

The word is “organoleptic.” It means that something is known and understood through multiple senses. To experience a favorite restaurant fully is to savor the food, to smell the varieties coming from the kitchen, to take in sights that stimulate the eyes, to hear the music in the background or the voice of a close friend, and to feel the textures of a nice napkin or a sturdy coffee cup.

Such was the experience of the Johannine community as they sought to describe their experience of Jesus. For the first time in history, God became touchable and seeable, as well as hearable. No longer was God narrowly accessible only through the temple and high priests. Now God was something to experience personally!

Linked closely to the gospel of John, the community from which 1 John emerged certainly would have in their corporate memory, “The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us” (John 1:14). The reality of God becoming human was something the writer of 1 John could hardly express, much less contain. It was more powerful than human comprehension could take in. Like trying to describe our favorite restaurant, they could only use words of sensory experience because God had become “really real.”

Emphasizing this reality was meant to serve a dual purpose: (1) Harkening the advent of God moving in a new way and (2) restraining the heresy that Jesus was not really human or was somehow “less” than human.

Advent of Jesus signals a new way

These two purposes offer up an applicable message for us too. Clearly, the epistle is seeking to build unity among believers around the truth of Jesus' identity as God incarnate. Moreover, not only do verses 1-4 provide boundaries for the makeup of Christian community (that is to say, Christians have the distinct belief that Jesus is God in the flesh), but the passage also informs our development as Christians.

It's like this: If we believe we should attempt to live like God, and Jesus was fully God, then we are to live in the light of Jesus' ways. It's really rather simple. If we want to live like God, we should live like Jesus lived. God's advent in the person of Jesus signaled the beginning of a new time and a new way of being the people of God, both for the Johannine community and for us. The difficulty arises in discerning how we ought to live like Jesus in our culture because certainly the ways of living in the dominant culture of American society run counter to many of the distinctly Christian ways of living.

If we seek to live in accord with Jesus' way of being light in the world, we ought to consider some things. For example, as 1 John says later, Christians are to be known by their love. Further, nearly all Christians I've met agree our love is to be patterned after Jesus' kind of loving. Yet I would submit that most of us have a poorly formed understanding of Jesus' kind of love.

We freely interchange several concepts in our use of the word “love.” I love pizza, and I love the Tar Heels, but that certainly is not the same as “I love my son, Caleb.” What's more, as Philip Kenneson suggests in his book on the fruit of the spirit titled “Life on the Vine,” we dole out and receive love as if it is a marketplace exchange. We assign values to everything in our culture, including other people, and in so doing we “love” others only to the extent that they offer us something in return.

Henlee Barnette once spoke, “Love pursues the good of 'the other.'” For us to live in the light of Jesus as fully God means we must relearn some basic teachings of Christianity, and one of those ideals is to love as Jesus loves. Instead of ending our commitments to one another in marriages, friendships or church memberships because we no longer perceive that we are getting something from the exchange (that is to say, we no longer “feel loved”), we must willingly confess we have decided to stop willing what is best for “the other” and admit we have ceased to love.

Restraining heresy

The occasion for this epistle includes the need to combat heresy. The church was struggling to understand who Jesus was in his nature as God. Was Jesus mostly human with some God-like qualities? Was Jesus fully God and not really human, only appearing phantom-like as a human? What John most wants to say in this chapter is that somehow, beyond our comprehension, Jesus was at once both “one with man, and (in some sense) one with God.”

If you can get a Christian to be honest, she will confess to struggling with this very issue. There is no way to begin to describe the perfect blending of God and humanity that we see exhibited in Jesus, yet we try. And it is important to clarify what we believe about Jesus, for I am convinced that how we answer the question of who Jesus is determines the foundation of our faith as Christians.

When Jesus asked his disciples who they thought he was, they proclaimed him the Messiah. He ordered them to keep his identity a secret at that time. However, when we arrive at the time of 1 John, it is clear it is a matter for proclamation and an issue of doctrinal debate. The conclusion one reached determined whether “fellowship” (1:3, 6, & 7) could be forged. This is because the writer viewed the individual's assent to Jesus as fully God and fully human as a sign of “fellowship” with the Father through Jesus, as well as a criteria for fellowship in the church.

Ultimately, orthodox Christianity came to confess Jesus as the messiah, the Christ. 1 John ascribes this title indirectly with the phrase “word of life” (v. 1), echoing the high Christology of the prologue to the Gospel of John (1:1-15) and making clear that Jesus as Christ was from the beginning with God and intimately related to God. Jesus existed from limitless eternity and has entered into the plane of history to dwell among us. Indeed, as the deep meaning of the haunting hymn “O Come, O Come Immanuel” proclaims: God is with us.

The “message” 1 John wants us to receive deserves special note, that “God is light and in him there is no darkness at all” (v. 5). This message serves not only as an introductory appetizer to the rest of the epistle, it also serves as the wellspring from which our Christian ethic might emerge. Take note of the use of “light” and the interconnectedness between walking in light and experiencing righteousness. God is light, we are children of the light and we should therefore walk in the light.

The Johannine community would probably have heard this message and recalled their Jewish ancestors' experiences with God as fire. In Exodus 3, Moses experiences God as fire. On the exodus from Egypt, the Israelites are guided by God's presence as a column of fire. God's presence in the tabernacle is signaled by fire. Simeon hails the birth of Jesus as “light for revelation” (Luke 2:32), John the Baptist applies the light metaphor to Jesus (John 3:19-21), and Jesus himself claims, “I am the light of the world” (John 8:12).

Walking in this “light” is a demanding thing, as already highlighted in the challenge to consider our understanding of “love” toward one another. But walking in the light also produces righteousness in us. This is not a “works-righteousness” but rather it is the effect of walking with Jesus. We strive to be more like Jesus, and in so doing recognize our sinfulness. We confess our sinfulness, and “he who is faithful will forgive us our sins” (v. 9). The point is clear: We need forgiveness. Being in the light of Jesus helps us recognize that truth, and then the abundance of grace is given us when we seek restoration.

Unlike the majority of Paul's work, which is centered on freedom from sin as freedom from the law, the debate concerning sin that 1 John addresses wasn't really about whether certain things were sinful or not. It was really about whether or not sin mattered or even existed. 1 John would have us believe sin does exist and does matter in this world. The Gnostics of that day argued sin didn't matter because the moral world of the flesh didn't matter. Sin was inconsequential.

This is not too different from our context today in which there is a deep and wide hunger for things spiritual, but not so much concern over whether the human condition must be remedied. Self-help books fly off the shelves, but few of the approaches to self help deal with the fallen nature of humans, and if they do deal with the “brokenness” of individuals, the methods of self help are supposed to be “fueled from within” by a person's own strength.

1 John would have none of this. 1 John informs us clearly that the problem is sin and no internal mechanism will fix us. Only the “atoning sacrifice” (2:2) of Jesus the Christ can redeem us and enable us to walk in the light.

Gary Long is pastor of Willow Meadows Baptist Church in Houston

Questions for discussion

Living in light of Jesus' way will call each of us ultimately to question our actions and attitudes. Would you evaluate your actions and attitudes as “other-directed” or “self-directed?” Somewhere in between?

Why do you think it was important to the writer of 1 John that there be unity around the nature of Jesus' divinity? What possible conflicts could arise when a church does not agree on who Jesus is?

How might our Christmas shopping and gift giving be changed by seeking to live in the light of Jesus' ways?

Consider the fruit of the spirit: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control (Galatians 5:22). To what degree do you bear each of these fruits toward others? How might evidence of these fruits in the life of the believer illustrate how we do or do not live in accordance with Jesus' ways?

Identify several movies or books that have as a baseline assumption that humans are intrinsically fallen or that humans are intrinsically good. For example, compare “Natural Born Killers” with “The Matrix,” or compare “The Lord of the Flies” with “Robinson Crusoe.”

Posted: 11/24/03

Dec. 14

1 John 2:3-11, 18-27

Show what you know to pass test

By Gary Long

Silly how poems and phrases stick in your head, isn't it? From my childhood, I remember a two-liner my dad would say every time I made a rhyme: “You're a poet and didn't know it. Or maybe you did and just didn't show it.”

That second line stuck with me–what do I know but just don't show in my life? What do I know about God but don't show in my life?

What are the indicators that show you know God? How does one verify the reality of the relationship between a human being and God? This is exactly where this lesson takes us. The organization of the text will offer some framework to answer the question of which indicators show we know God. There are three clear tests, first called the “tests of life” by Robert Law in 1909, that serve as the measuring stick as to how one may be assured that they know God.

The verses of this lesson can best be understood if we view them this way: 2:3-6, righteousness through obedience; 2:7-11, love for fellow Christians; and 2:18-27, right belief.

Test 1–Obey me

1 John 2:3 is the hinge pin of a doubly-pointed argument which follows in this passage. First, the word “knowing” signals a challenge to the Gnostics that would boast in their knowledge of things spiritual. Second, obedience to God's commands is promoted ahead of special forms of special enlightenment or mysticism. The writer is issuing a strong argument that a kinesthetic form of faith is an expression of intimacy with God. That is to say, we illustrate our faith by doing our faith.

It takes little effort mentally to connect ki

nesthetic and doing with the way in which many of us learn. Venture into any preschool or early elementary classroom and see how rapidly they learn when they are doing what they are being taught. Consider your own experiences with different kinds of computer software and how no matter how many times you read the instructions, you really only learn the software after you begin to work with it.

Bible teachers do well to remember that no matter what age their students, doing a Bible lesson with a class will foster more learning and in turn a deeper faith in the long run. As the old adage goes, faith is caught, not taught. Our families and friends see our faith through our acts of obedience to God, and we in turn are drawn closer to God in that obedience.

In Matthew 21:28-32, Jesus tells about two sons told by their father to go and work in the vineyard. One said he would not go and then later went and did the work. The other said he would go but never went to do the work. Jesus' listeners quickly and correctly chose the first one as the one who did his father's will. So it is in 1 John 2:4, for the one says “I know him” but does not do what the father commands.

Obedience is easier said than done. In my own life, obedience has seldom been a problem of knowledge but often a problem of the will. I often know cognitively what I should do in order to be obedient to God's direction for my life. However, I must confess I don't always have the desire or will to be obedient. Like Paul, “I desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out” (Romans 7:18).

Perhaps a solution to this struggle can be found in 1 John 2:6, pointing to the way in which Jesus walked as a worthy pattern for our own walk. We know from the gospels that Jesus struggled with his impending death on the cross. In the garden of Gethsemane, he prayed God would let the cup of death pass over him, but even in that prayer was able to say, “Yet not what I will, but what you will” (Mark 14:35-36). There was a surrender of Jesus' will to that of the Father that offers us a path today when obedience to God's command seems undesirable or undoable.

Test 2–Love for one another

This test of whether we know God is anchored in the authority and authenticity of the words and witness of Jesus. Repeatedly Jesus instructed his followers that the whole sum of the law could be boiled down to two: Love of God and love for neighbor.

The command to love was not a new one. It was as old as the Israelites could remember. Yet with Jesus came a new way of loving God and neighbor. Jesus fulfilled the law of love in a way no one had seen before, as evidenced in his ministry of hope and healing, and ultimately in his self-giving sacrificial death. But even greater, Jesus' life, death and resurrection equip his followers to embody that love through the ages to the very moment you read this ink on paper. You can love your neighbor more truly and deeply because of your faith as a Christian, and that by way of Jesus' irrepressible love for all humanity.

I believe our churches are to be the practice stages where we learn and rehearse our lines of love for neighbor. With Jesus' life as our script, we rehearse and rehearse, polishing and refining how to love one another. And if Shakespeare is correct that “all the world's a stage” then the theatre of our drama is a sold-out crowd hungry for the love we have to share and that Jesus wants to share through us.

Love for one another is a measure of the quality of fellowship in our churches, and we have some work to do here. Because we have missed the importance of love for one another as the way to strengthen the community of faith, we have a malnourished theology of fellowship that has diminished to the time for doughnuts between Bible study and worship.

The term “fellowship” has been misused often, usually with the report, “A good time was had by all.” Fellowship ought to be defined as the conscious efforts a church body makes to love one another as Christ has loved us all. This love is not a negotiable, but rather an imperative of the faith, and although we will never attain perfect fellowship, we are obligated to aim for it.

Test 3–Right belief

The real urgency and passion of the writer comes through in this passage. Strong language frames a plea for the children to realize the time, the “last hour,” and to beware of those who teach against the divinity of Jesus, the “antichrists.” Clearly the appearance of those who would oppose the church (the antichrist) and the exodus of some from the church indicated the “last hour” was near. Could John have seen this as a signal to an imminent return of Jesus? Or could this be a view that the last hours of history where a world had no chance of redemption before Christ was now coming to an end?

Ultimately, the choice in interpretation is for the reader, but either choice stresses an importance for right belief. In the church to which this letter is addressed, there had been serious questioning as to whether Jesus was the Messiah, the “anointed one.” 1 John makes clear that knowing God required belief that Jesus was indeed the Messiah.

Assurance of salvation, of knowing God, is perhaps one thing believers wish for and most seek to maintain. Christians want to “feel” saved. We have fear and anxiety that if we don't believe the right things or step into wrong doctrine, we might somehow lose touch with God and ultimately lose our salvation. This text offers a counter to that fear.

Although there are many areas within doctrine that are of debate, John's letter lays weight on one issue alone–the doctrine of Jesus Christ. When the church begins to question the identity of Jesus as Christ, as 1 John 2:22 asserts (“Who is the liar? It is the man who denies that Jesus is the Christ”), serious trouble will follow. Believers may experience assurance of salvation and knowing God by maintaining right belief in Jesus as the Christ.

John further asserts that each of the followers has received an “anointing” that will enable discernment of truth from error. The Holy Spirit, whose advent was Jesus' resurrection, gives believers guidance to discern teachings, as well as power to live the life of obedience and love. It is tempting to pass over teaching about this “anointing” for fear of sounding quirky or too “Pentecostal,” but we must not shirk away from it because our Christian discipleship is linked intimately to the Holy Spirit. Christians must cultivate their discipleship through this sense of anointing by the Spirit, thus false teachings will be less threatening.

Questions for discussion

The author of 1 John delineates some clear black and white lines between “liars,” the ones “blinded to truth” and those that “live in darkness.” Is this absolute path of classifying people healthy for a church?

To what extent does personal moral failure refute our claim to be a follower of Christ? When does a church's moral failure to follow all of God's commands cause it to cease being a church?

What is the difference between the blind obedience to a religious organization or leader and the kind of obedience that 1 John demands of believers?

If “fellowship” is defined as “loving each other as Jesus loves us,” how would you rate your congregation's health in the area of fellowship?

Posted: 11/24/03

Dec. 21

1 John 2:28-3:10

God's children imitate Jesus

By Gary Long

In my home, the evening meal is as close to heaven as I can get this side of the grave. Several nights a week, our scattered family carves out time to come together and feast. We report on school, work and church. We laugh and joke. Sometimes we have good table manners, other times we have burping contests. (I know, I know, but a preacher has to cut loose somewhere.) We ask each other where we see God at work.

We also talk openly about hard topics. Nothing is out of bounds, no topic is “shushed,” because Traci and I want the family table to be a space where all are welcomed and all can become family, freely discussing the best and worst in life. My children are coming to know who they are as individuals and as a part of the Long family.

So it is in churches that eat together often. Kate Campbell sings about grieving Christians, “Funeral food, we sure eat good when somebody dies!” Tongue in cheek? Yes. True? Definitely. We have a strong theology of food in Baptist life, not just here in Texas, but all across the Bible Belt.

What is it about eating together that strengthens our body while nourishing our identity as the family of God? I think the power of the meal is not in the grub but in the intimacy of the eating act. Eating together is healing and restorative. There is something powerful about sitting down face to face and engaging in the most basic, primitive and essential act we humans do. We forge a tie and become closer at the table. As in our homes, we come to know who we are as children of God within the context of the family of God.

Claiming our spot at God's table–obedience

In this week's text, we find a great jumping off point for what it means to be the children of God. It certainly is more than eating at the table together. The defining characteristic of God's children is their love for one another, of finding our place at God's table, as well as making places at the table for others. More practically, though, this involves understanding our need for obedience to God.

What that obedience looks like is more difficult to grapple with, but 1 John 3 makes it plain that at least part of the battle is avoiding sin. Primarily, we see obedience to God can be achieved by imitating Jesus. One might argue so far as to say that the very reality of an individual's relationship to God is verified by the quality of our imitation of Jesus.

This passage makes unmistakably clear that Jesus came to eradicate (not merely combat) evil from the world. Twice the text succinctly asserts that Jesus' purpose in coming was to defeat sin powerfully and finally. First, in 3:5, “… he was revealed to take away sins, and in him there is no sin.” And later in 3:8, “… The Son of God was revealed for this purpose, to destroy the works of the devil.”

Herein is no middle-ground solution, no compromise to the problem of humanity's complete depravity. The solution to the presence of evil in the world is Jesus utterly destroying evil. We interpret Jesus' work on the cross as well as his resurrection as doing just that–eradicating evil.

Although evil may still be present in the world, we Christians confess and profess by worship, work and witness that Jesus' kingdom shall be brought about ultimately and completely and that evil will finally have no reign in the world. It is when we obediently seek to imitate Jesus, conqueror of sin, that our lives become a part of the plan to eradicate sin and destroy the works of the devil also. Plainly, the children of God must do what is right according to God's commands.

Claiming our spot at God's table–heirs of hope

Jamie Lee Curtis wrote a children's book called “Tell Me About the Night I was Born.” In this story, an adopted child is told about how she came to be with her adoptive parents and the special place she holds in the family. I don't have any adopted children, but I do have three birth children. One night, I was reading this book to my middle child, and along the way I felt a strong need to clarify for him that I was his birth father.

Later introspection caused me to wonder why I had wanted him to know that. I think it was that I wanted him to know that he was “flesh of my flesh and bone of my bone.” But I know that would be relatively unimportant to a 6 year old. But it was important to me for him to know he was of my “seed” and he would bear the genetic imprint of his father throughout his life, for better or for worse.

Isn't that rather like 1 John 3:9? Knowing that God's seed of righteousness is within makes all the difference. And in this case, having God's seed in our spiritual DNA is for better rather than for worse because the Holy Ghost encoding we receive is flawless and contains no hint of disease. If we were to obediently follow God's spirit in our lives at all times, we would truly be like Jesus. Of course, this is not possible. Sin still has sway.

We might do well to pair our proclivity for disobedience with the hope we have as through fully understanding what it means to be the children of God. The “hope” in 3:3 is a description of the Christian experience. Especially in this passage, the writer is making clear to us that the “hope” lies in knowing we are God's children. Being a child of God won't be “undone” or “reversed.” As surely as our parents could never deny our blood ties on the genetic level, God will not let us slip out of God's hand once we have been “born of him.”

Self-help righteousness

It is abundantly clear that anything good (“righteous” 2:29) that is in humanity is there because people follow in imitation of Jesus. “… Everyone who does right has been born of him.” In the phenomena of this “self-help” age, we are told through countless books on self-improvement that the secret to change lies within us. Although I concede they have done many good things for the Christian cause, Robert Schuller and Norman Vincent Peale have misled Christians to believe we have everything we need within us to be good people.

However, Christianity is based upon the very principle that we are totally sinful without any hope of fixing or repairing this breach ourselves. This is the meaning of “sin” in 3:4. The necessary conclusion is that we need the redemptive work of Jesus. The methods of self help or the “power of positive thinking” may make our lives better in some ways, but no amount of self help will enable us to overcome the fact that we sin. We are sinners, even the best of us.

“Christian Self-Help,” a shelf we see in some Christian book stores, seems oxymoronic when viewed this way, for no amount of “self help” can we apply to make things right between us and God. These books fail most often in that they treat sin as symptoms, much like the way a doctor can treat a cold. We manage the cough or the sniffles of the cold virus, but ultimately medicine cannot kill the common cold. In the same way, self-help methods that don't deal directly with the sin nature of humans will deal only with the symptoms–like your weight problem, troubled childhood or lagging self-esteem–but won't deal with the deep-down state of your being, chiefly a state of sin.

The good news is that we have hope. Our hope is that we shall one day be like Jesus, who, while fully human, was able to discern and accomplish God's will in total obedience. And that same Jesus was accepted by God and now stands as an advocate on our behalf, an advocate for all who would believe in Jesus. I can't wait for Jesus to show me my place at the great banquet table for all of God's children. Maybe you and I will be seated together for part of that meal.

Questions for discussion

As a class, discuss the difference between seeing sin as “acts of wrong” versus seeing sin as “a state of being.” How do you “manage” sin based on the different views?

In what ways are churches susceptible to corporate sin? How might churches avoid being lead astray theologically?

What guidelines does this text suggest for maintaining fellowship in a church?

What suggestions does this text give us for choosing and training leaders in our church?

If you understand our relationship to God as “adopted heirs of hope,” how might your study group share God's love with the lost? How might your church be transformed by fully recognizing their place as “adopted” children of God?

Posted: 11/24/03

Dec. 28

1 John 3.11-18; 23-24; 4.7-21

We love because first we were loved

By Gary Long

Our family, like others, has its own vocabulary and catch phrases. We have two that are exceptionally applicable to these Scriptures. Usually when one of us says “I love you” to another the response is “I love you more,” signaling the beginning of a word-joust that may last for an hour or more. For example, I've been known to walk out the door to come to the office and shout “I love you” to Traci, my wife.

She replies, “I love you more!” The game is on.

I go out to the truck, and on my drive to church call the house on my cell phone. Whether a real person or an answering machine picks up I shout, “I love you more!” and quickly hang up before anyone who answers can respond.

An hour or two later, I'm sitting at my desk, and the phone rings. “I love you more!” is on the other end. You get the picture. It's especially difficult when trying to observe bedtimes on school nights.

The second phrase is “Love ya, mean it!” Which, being translated means, “I love you more than words can express and the usual 'I love you' won't work right now.”

Yes, it is playful, but it is a real and present reminder that the love we have for one another is unlike any other love. It is binding. It is unconditional because we are family. Much of the world seems to understand and even experience this kind of love among families, whether extended or blended. Family ties forge a deeper bond of love than most other relationships in our lives.

However, the text for today calls us to reconsider the districting of our love to tightly zoned familial boundaries. It asserts with resolve and prophetic clarity that genuine Christian love–a command and not an option–is founded on God's love in giving his Son and is characterized by a willingness to give our lives and possessions for other people. This love should provide the overarching narrative for our lives, and this love compels us to the higher righteousness oft cited by Jesus as the way we ought to love our neighbor.

The framework of this week's lesson offers us three venues to consider ways in which the drama of love might be played out as we seek to intertwine the story of our lives with the meta narrative of God as love.

First, we need to look honestly at the ways in which violence is culturally accepted in America and how it runs counter to genuine Christian love (1 John 3:11-18). Second, we should consider that the sacrificial love of a Christian is not a one-time single occurrence, but might be better lived out of the long run in countless ways and times (vv. 23-24). Finally, we need to take a long, hard look at the practical way in which God's love is “down-to-earth love” in the form of Jesus of the manger and Jesus, the Lord of our hearts (4:7-21).

Accepting violence

The first hate crime in recorded history is that of one brother's murder of another. Clearly violent and sinful, Cain's evil murder of Abel ushered in an entirely new way to sin for humanity. The chilling fact is that the violence propagated at that moment in history has been emulated countless times and, tragically, countless more times in film, television and other media.

Cain's way is the way of the world, and I submit that Christians can hardly be distinguished from their non-Christian American counterparts. We gobble up violence like a 6 year old gobbles up Pixie Sticks on All Saints Day. We watch and glaze over, anesthetized to the images of death and gore that we sear onto our brains indelibly and irreversibly. It is no surprise that international perception is that we are a gun-toting, blood-thirsty society that tolerates all sort of violence in our media, but look down our noses incongruously at nudity in art and film in other societies such as Europe. It seems a tad inconsistent.

Remarkably inconsistent in the light of this text. Christians are implored to put down the violent ways of Cain and take up ways that are loving, ways that have no malice or hatred, the seedbed for violence to grow. Ironically, Christians are reminded that true love has been made real by a death. Yet this death is a life given up willingly by Jesus, not seized recklessly like Abel's. It is only in the pattern of giving up life, rather than stealing life, that wholeness is going to be found.

Further, the writer places the sin of ignoring a brother in need (3:17) in the same class and category as the kind of hatred that drove Cain to kill Abel. Is it possible then that apathy is on equal footing with rage and anger in the sin department? The text seems to suggest so.

Laying down our lives continually

1 John further expands the thought of love. The writer claims love is not simply an absence of apathy or anger, but that love has definitive characteristics. Jesus' edict to love one another is a command, a non-negotiable that makes the papal ex cathedra seem like a bulk e-mail you could choose to either delete or forward to your closest online friends. Jesus' edict to love one another, had it been an e-mail, would demand a response. The demand wouldn't be for a response to the e-mail, but a response to humanity in the form of active love. But more importantly, that edict is not a “one time” action or thought but an ongoing way of life.

It would seem from John's writings, as well as a comprehensive look at the teachings of Jesus that discuss laying down our lives for one another, love is not only a one-time act of heroism. We are not being compelled to some sort of sacrificial suicide in order to prove our love for God and neighbor. Rather, love in this light is an ongoing “little by little” process over time.

Family life is the clearest theatre for us to see this drama played out. This might be vividly portrayed if we, as adults, were to ask our parents about the millions of little ways they laid down their lives for our future when we were children.

Just how many soccer games and piano recitals do parents attend to show their love? All of them.

Just how many dishes will a homemaker do over a lifetime, not because he or she loves doing dishes (who does?) but because he or she loves someone? All of them.

How many times does one encourage a discouraged spouse? Every time.

How often are we to give in response to a need? Every time.

It is a complete and total sacrifice of an entire life, not all at once, but an entire lifetime nonetheless. The principal of laying down our lives applies to all our relationships, not just at home, but at work, church, school and most especially in the chance meeting of a stranger. This indeed is the kind of love that involves laying down one's life for another in the name of love. We lay down our lives in love not just once, but millions of times over a lifetime.

Down-to-earth love

All of this talk is meaningless, though, if we fail to recognize the author of this “life-giving” love. It is, of course, God. And the model for this gritty kind of love is God in the form of Jesus. God looked over the expanse of history and at just the perfect time entered into the plane of human existence in a “down-to-earth” kind of way.

In the humblest of forms, a baby, God came to dwell among the chosen Israel in a surprising way. And in a similarly surprising way, we now understand the scope of his ministry, his work on the cross and in the resurrection, and in so doing, we understand God's love in a very real way. When we come to this passage, the writer makes a sudden shift from discussing discernment (4:1-6) to a soaring exhortation on love. Unequalled in its eloquence and splendor, this passage subsumes even the famous “love chapter” of Paul (1 Corinthians 13) in giving us a doctrinally sound understanding of love as modeled by God.

Thirteen times in this passage alone, we find the occurrence of “love” either as a noun or verb. The message is clear. The text dances nimbly in reminding us, yet again, that God is love and God is continually expressing that love. Awe at the nature of this love is the best human response! Not once does this passage tell us that God's love comes through following the rules of Christianity. Not once does the passage speak of God doling out love in response to our obedience or our goodness. Clearly, God is a god of love, and we are the objects and recipients of that love.

What's more, we can reason through the statement “we love because he first loved us” (4:19) and conclude that without the loving existence of God, there would not even be a human capacity for understanding love, much less actually “doing” love. In a round-about way, this text points to the reality of God in the evidence of our own human experience of love.

Questions for discussion

In what ways have you seen that God's love is real? What experiences of giving or receiving love could you tell about that point to the reality of God's love?

Read the account of Cain and Abel in Genesis 4:8-16. Do you find a measure of God's love for Cain in God's punishment? If you said yes, describe that love in single words. Now consider this: In what ways could those same words apply to God's love for you?

What view should Christians have regarding violence in movies, television, etc? What do you think drives our curiosity in violence or bloodshed? How might Christians discern what to “do” with such violence?

Think of people who have “laid down their life” for you along your life's path. Pause to give thanks to God. Then consider how you might do the same for others who need you. How might you become aware of people who need your love?

Marvel at the mystery of the cradle containing God and consider how God's “down-to-earth love” might be a model for you. How might you practice “incarnational” ministry to others by becoming God's “hands and feet”?

Posted: 11/24/03

Bus crash claims another life

By Ken Camp

Texas Baptist Communications

ELDORADO–The Louisiana bus crash that killed five members of First Baptist Church in Eldorado and three of their friends last month has claimed another life.

Billy Frank Blaylock, 78, died Nov. 17 at a San Angelo hospital from injuries sustained when the church-owned bus ran into a parked tractor-trailer rig near Tallulah, La., Oct. 13.

After the wreck, Blaylock spent about two weeks in a Jackson, Miss., hospital before being flown to San Angelo's Shannon Medical Center.

His wife, Mabel Blaylock, also was injured in the bus wreck, sustaining numerous broken bones and a punctured lung. After an extended stay at the Louisiana State University Health Sciences Center in Shreveport, she remains hospitalized at the Schleicher County Medical Center in Eldorado.

Blaylock was a World War II veteran who lost a leg in the battle of Iwo Jima. He was a retired rancher, saddle-maker and mail carrier, a deacon at First Baptist Church of Eldorado and a Boy Scout leader.

“More people considered Billy Frank Blaylock their hero than any other person I've ever met,” said Andy Anderson, pastor of First Baptist Church.

During Blaylock's 33 years as a mail carrier with the U.S. Postal Service, he kept a Bible on the front seat and memorized a verse of Scripture every day, Anderson noted.

“He could recite huge sections of the Bible from memory,” the pastor said. “One time in a Sunday School class discussion, the teacher asked the class how they would define wisdom. And one of the men said, 'Billy Frank Blaylock.'”

Other members of First Baptist Church killed in the Louisiana bus wreck were Kennith and Betty Richardson, both 81; Delia Piña, 72, and Domingo Piña, 65; and Mary Ruth Robinson, 63. Three others lost their lives: Jean Demere, 74, and Jimmy Teel, 68, of Water Valley and Laverne Shannon, 76, of San Angelo.

Ken Thomas, 66, treasurer and past chairman of deacons at First Baptist Church in Eldorado, was driving the bus at the time of the wreck. He received a misdemeanor citation for careless operation.

No criminal charges have been filed. The trucking company that owned the 18-wheeler involved in the wreck has initiated a civil lawsuit.

The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration assessed a $2,200 fine against First Baptist Church of Eldorado for failure to comply with some of that agency's regulations. The agency regulates vehicles carrying more than 15 passengers across state lines.

Posted: 11/24/03

BWA calls for reconciliation prayer

WASHINGTON–After 30 years of sometimes-violent conflict, Baptists in the Indian state of Andhra Pradesh have taken steps toward reconciliation, according to Denton Lotz, executive director of the Baptist World Alliance.

Lotz called on Baptists around the world to pray for leaders of the Samavesam Telegu of Telegu Baptist Churches: “We call upon Baptists worldwide to pray without ceasing for unity and reconciliation among the Samavesam of Telegu Baptists so that the millions who do not know Christ will hear the good news of salvation.”

The root of the conflict is over property, Lotz explained. American Baptist International Ministries made what he called a “very generous property gift” to the Telegu Baptist churches.

Subsequently, three factions emerged, each with a general secretary and president, each claiming to represent the true Samavesam Telegu of Telegu Baptist Churches.

“The conflict has been so intense that one of the presidents was murdered,” Lotz said.

The conflict has been so intense that one of the Baptist convention presidents was murdered

The Baptist group has a baptized membership of 500,000 with a worshipping community of more than 1 million. “There are significant mega-churches with a membership of more than 15,000,” he said. “Hundreds of the village churches are progressing but need new leadership. The conflict has caused the seminary and other educational facilities, as well as hospitals, to fall into neglect and misuse.”

In this context, the BWA sponsored a reconciliation gathering at the Asian Baptist Federation meeting in Manila, Philippines, in 2001. This was followed by another reconciliation meeting in Nellore, India, in 2002.

A retired Methodist bishop was accepted as the facilitator, and an interim reconciliation committee was established. However, there was little movement in this past year, Lotz said. “Deadlines were missed, agreements violated, meetings without quorums held. It seemed that there was no progress or hope.

“In desperation, I proposed that if reconciliation did not come I would recommend either probation or expulsion of the Samavesam Telegu of Telegu Baptist Churches from the BWA,” he added. In a last-ditch effort to avert expulsion, another fact-finding and reconciliation meeting was held Nov. 9-10 in Chennai, Madras.

“On Sunday evening, Nov. 9, we held a plenary session of the many people who had come to Chennai with the desire for peace and reconciliation,” Lotz reported. “These were pastors and interested laity. Since they were not members of the reconciliation committee, they could not participate in the deliberations. But their deep concern for unity and reconciliation made it very necessary for us to have an open session for all to express their hopes for the future.

“It was an amazing experience in Baptist democracy. One after another, pastors and laity expressed the desire for peace and unity. There had been enough fighting. Pastors were concerned about the future of the Church. They were concerned about evangelism and witness to Christ. They told stories of the great growth of their churches and the need for a strong and supporting convention, devoid of fighting and concentrating on glorifying Christ.”

Lotz also pleaded with the Baptists to move toward reconciliation, he said.

That evening, representatives of the three factions met on their own and ironed out a proposal for reconciliation.

“We were shocked and yet extremely pleased at this amazing step forward toward reconciliation,” Lotz said. “We met separately with each of the three factions and reviewed the document and memo of agreement, each group assuring us they accepted the document. It was an amazing sign of God's grace.”

The parties agreed to withdraw from court cases, establish a property review committee and call for elections and final reconciliation meetings.

Elections in all the field associations will be held by Dec. 15. On Jan. 10, the new General Council will be formed and an assembly called to ratify the decisions.

“We have insisted that reconciliation is a process,” Lotz said. “It is not something that happens suddenly but it is a road we must follow with Christ leading us on to make sacrifices for the good of the whole. Now the difficult part begins.”

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Posted: 11/24/03

Pastor's wife featured in Standard
recovering at home after surgery

By George Henson

Staff Writer

CORSICANA–A Texas pastor and his wife are grateful to Texas Baptists who helped them see God's hand at work.

Mark and Becky Chadwick were in a different frame of mind not too long ago because she needed a surgery the family couldn't afford. Chadwick is a full-time pastor of a church that cannot afford the expense of health insurance, and the family of four could not afford to purchase insurance on their own.

A story in the Oct. 20 edition of the Baptist Standard told how Mrs. Chadwick faced the prospect of blood transfusions to counteract the anemia she was experiencing because of gynecological illness. The problem could be solved with a hysterectomy, but the pastor's family could not afford the $20,000 cost of the surgery.

Becky and Mark Chadwick have been amazed and humbled by the outpouring of support for her medical problems.

With help from Texas Baptists, Mrs. Chadwick had the hysterectomy, preventing the need for blood transfusions and alleviating the threat to her life.

In response to the Baptist Standard story, the Chadwicks received unsolicited help from a number of sources, including the hospital where the surgery was performed.

Chadwick said he is amazed at how God worked so quickly to solve a problem that once seemed insurmountable. His wife's health and his peace of mind, he said, are the result of so many people coming to the family's rescue–including people they knew and people they still haven't met.

Response from Baptist Standard readers helped Becky Chadwick have the surgery she needed.

Central Texas Baptist Area created a fund for the Chadwicks that had received $5,276 as of Nov. 20. Additional donations will go to pay back medical expenses associated with the surgery.

One donor showed up on the Chadwicks' doorstep within two days of the Standard's publication. Mrs. Chadwick answered the door to find a woman who wanted to speak with the pastor but did not want to give her name.

“She said: 'I don't want to tell you who I am. My husband doesn't even know I'm here, but here's my mad money,'” the pastor explained. “She left an envelope with $200 in it. I still don't know who she is. I've never seen her before, but she had somehow seen the story in the Baptist Standard and wanted to help.”

Last week, as the first of the hospital bills started arriving, the first two envelopes the Chadwicks opened were bills totaling $345. The third envelope contained a gift of $350.

Highland Baptist Church in Dallas, where Mrs. Chadwick works as a secretary, was just one of the many churches that sent gifts small and large to help with the costs of the surgery. The church sent money collected in its “blessing bucket.”

One donation came from a church in the West Texas community of Cross Plains.

“There's a man there I have not met, but I've talked on the telephone with him a couple of times,” the pastor said. “The last time, he told me he had nine people come to church that Sunday, and they collected $250. He can't know how much of a difference he's made.”

The blessing that almost floored Chadwick, however, was a call from the hospital. Chadwick had borrowed money to make a down payment so the hospital would schedule the surgery. He had agreed to pay the balance over time at a high interest rate.

However, when he began to take in donations to pay on the bill at the hospital, the account representative was so moved by all the people working to help the Chadwicks that she took it upon herself to call the hospital's chief financial officer.

She asked if the rest of the bill could be forgiven. The hospital executive agreed.

“If I hadn't been sitting down, I would have fallen down in a faint,” Chadwick said.

Mrs. Chadwick agreed: “I thought someone close to him must have died. He just kept getting paler and paler, and his eyes were bugging out of his head.”

The family also has received many cards and letters from well-wishers, some from out-of-state. “All the way around, the Lord has just been blessing us tremendously,” Chadwick said.

While better days are ahead, Mrs. Chadwick has not fully recovered from the surgery. The women in her church tell her she's already looking better, she reported. Many of those same women have prepared meals to keep the family well-fed until she's back on her feet.

Living through such a situation has produced “a mixture of humility and excitement,” Chadwick said, noting he never imagined that “so many people who didn't know us from Adam cared.”

“On the six o'clock and 10 o'clock news, about all you hear is the bad news. But there are a lot of very good people in the world,” he said. “People have just blessed us more than they will ever realize.”

“A pastor's wife is a gift to a pastor, and I can't do what I need to do without her. Every one of those people who gave, gave her back to me,” he said with a tear in his eye.

He wants to emphasize, however, that their situation is not unique: “Other pastors are out there going through the same thing of not having insurance. I'd be willing right now to give the first $100 to start a fund to help pastors like us who find themselves in the same kind of situations.”

Posted: 11/24/03

ANOTHER VIEW:
African-American lessons can instruct emerging Latinos

By Samuel Atchison

In his book, “The Other Face of America,” Jorge Ramos notes Hispanics comprise the largest minority in the country and are transforming the nation, both economically and culturally.

Yet, he argues, Latinos still face enormous barriers that range from xenophobia to racism. "The real challenge for the Hispanic community, then, is to transform its astonishing growth in numbers, its importance to the economy and its cultural influence into political power.”

Thus, the situation in the Hispanic community parallels the black community a generation ago, and it signals permanent change in the nation's racial and political landscape.

African-Americans have served as the poster children for racial inequity in this country, the result of the dual legacies of chattel slavery and legal segregation.

Indeed, the black-white race dynamic has become so ingrained in our psyche that before Sept. 11, 2001, most Americans were only vaguely aware other racial and ethnic groups were emerging.

But they are emerging.

As late as 1998, the President's Initiative on Race estimated in 2050, the population in the United States will be about 53 percent white, 25 percent Hispanic, 14 percent black, 8 percent Asian/Pacific Islander and 1 percent American Indian.

In fact, however, the 2000 Census showed the population is shifting even faster. The Census Bureau found, due largely to immigration, more than 35 million Hispanics–12.5 percent of the overall population–live in this country. By contrast, African-Americans total 34.6 million, or 12.3 percent of the population.

This suggests that while population growth among African-Americans is more or less keeping pace with the overall growth of the nation, Latinos are experiencing a population surge well ahead of the national curve.

Consider as well, Ramos writes, that the Hispanic community is becoming increasingly mobile, with remarkable growth in states like North Carolina, Iowa and Arkansas; Spanish-language media–newspapers, radio and television–are emerging as a major power in a number of American cities; and according to estimates, the purchasing power of Hispanics will reach $1 trillion by 2010.

The net effect is that even as Latinos wrestle with the myriad problems facing their community–treatment of undocumented workers, racism, poverty in the lower classes, unfavorable American policies toward Latin America–they are poised to address these issues in ways designed to get results.

They possess the cultural, economic and technological means necessary to obtain the political power needed to affect change.

By contrast, the African-American community is in danger of having the world pass it by. Thirty years after the civil rights and black power movements, many blacks still are chanting the same mantra of reparations and set-asides of a generation ago.

Moreover, as Khallid al-Mansour notes in his book, “Betrayal by Any Other Name,” some black leaders played a deceptive shell game by enriching themselves and their cronies in the name of the poor. In so doing, they compromised their moral authority, offending those they purported to represent.

Today, as Hispanic leaders give voice to the hopes of a diverse and needy people, they would do well to learn from the failures of some of their black counterparts: Never forget where you came from, and don't forget where you're going.

Samuel Atchison is a fellow of the George H. Gallup International Institute in Princeton, N.J. His column is distributed by Religion News Service

Posted: 11/24/03

DOWN HOME:
Cranberry sauce or spicy salsa?

Here's a Thanksgiving quiz for you:

Question #1: Who celebrated the first Thanksgiving in North America?

Question #2: Where did they celebrate?

Question #3: In what year did this celebration occur?

If you answered (1) the Pilgrims, (2) Plymouth and (3) 1621, do not pass “Go,” do not help yourself to another piece of pecan pie. Sit down and write a letter to your first-grade teacher, thanking her for misinforming you about this singular event in American history.

The first Thanksgiving celebration had a distinctively Tex-Mex (really Mex-Tex) flavor.

In 1598, Don Juan de Onate, scion of a respected Spanish family, led a band of 500 colonists from Santa Barbara, Mexico, through the desert toward New Mexico, where they hoped to mine gold and get rich.

Well, the desert must've been rougher than they expected. Shortly after they journeyed through El Paso Del Rio Del Norte (“The Pass Across the River of the North”), they stopped to rest. And to claim the land for the king of Spain, who thought Europe was too small.

Onate stood in Texas–near present-day Socorro–and he was so happy to be here, he declared a Feast of Thanksgiving. While his servants cooked, he painted a sign on the back of his wagon that said, “I wasn't born in Texas, but I got here as fast as I could” and another that read, “Spanish scion by birth; Texan by the grace of God.” (OK, that part's not true.)

And so, the Spanish Catholics beat the English Pilgrims to Thanksgiving by 23 years and half a continent.

Experts say “the victors” write the history. For the last 400 years of American history, the Anglos have been “the victors.” (That's about to change, but that's another story.) And that's why we've always talked about Miles Standish instead of Don Juan de Onate this time of year.

But let's be honest: Don't you wish somebody besides the English Pilgrims had obtained the copyright, trademark, brand or at least cookbook for Thanksgiving?

If we followed history more closely, we'd spend Thanksgiving afternoon watching soccer instead of football. But what a small price to pay.

Instead of gnawing on turkey, we'd feast on enchiladas, chile rellenos, tamales and fajitas. Who'd miss that sweet potato dish with the little marshmallows on top when you could have guacamole, salsa and chips? And forget pumpkin pie; we'd polish off our meal with sopapillas and flan.

Whatever you place on your table this Thanksgiving, may you circle it with love. May the laughter of family and friends provide the soundtrack for your holiday. And no matter what else has happened this year, may you recall 10 things for which you look to heaven and thank the God of all good gifts. Even turkey.