Posted: 2/01/08

Baptists challenged to advocate for reform
of a broken criminal justice system

By Bob Perkins

ATLANTA—It’s imperative that Baptists ask tough questions in order to spark reform of the U.S. criminal justice system, according to panelists engaging the criminal justice system breakout session Feb. 1 at the New Baptist Covenant Celebration.

Wendell Griffen, judge in the Arkansas Court of Appeals, said its time for Baptists to speak out about a broken system.

“Baptists should demand that the criminal justice system stop wrongful prosecutions,” Griffen said. “We who believe that Jesus was tried and punished wrongly should demand transparency in the criminal justice system.”

Griffen said the recent trend has been to hire more police officers and build more prisons, but that’s not a good solution.

“Just as it is ludicrous to suggest that we hire more morticians to treat cancer and AIDS, it is ludicrous to hire more police and jailors and to build more prisons to handle nonviolent drug offenders,” he said. “Most of the people in prison today are not there because of violent offenses. They are there for offenses against property and nonviolent drug offenses.”

Griffen said in some nonviolent felony cases, a judge has leeway in sentencing.

“Judges have the decision to fine a person instead of sentencing them to prison,” he said. “For example, women whose children live in the free world and the women live in prison because of a drug offense. They could be fined, they would not lose their jobs and they would not be taken from their children. This would be a whole lot more economical to do than to house a woman in a lock-up. If I told you I could do this for one-fifth of the cost of incarceration, you’d think I would be insane not to do it.”

Another place Baptists have a unique opportunity to have great impact is when prisoners are returned to the community. Dee Dee Coleman, pastor of Russell Street Missionary Baptist Church in Detroit, created Wings of Faith in 2002 with the goal of returning these people to society and limiting the odds that they would go back to prison.

“Last year in our country, we had more than 7 million people who received some sort of adjudication in the court system,” Coleman said. “We are in a crisis. The faith community glorifies God when we provide services to the least of these.”

Coleman said too many churches act like they don’t want to know who the offenders in prison are.

“We have no problem going to see the sick. But if someone says it’s time to go visit a person who is incarcerated, we don’t want to do it. But there are grandparents in the congregation that are raising their grandkids because one or more of the parents are in prison. There are wives whose husbands are jailed, or others in the church whose family members aren’t free.”

Coleman said when family members are set free, the work is just beginning.

“Not everybody is pleased when daddy comes home,” she said. “If a teenage child is in the house, and he has been playing the role as head of the family, the teen will deliberately get into an argument with the father in order to get him to violate his parole.”

Coleman said it’s important for churches to begin the reintegration process before the person gets out. Church member volunteers begin building relationships while the people are incarcerated to start identifying their needs and the needs of their family.

“When they re-enter the community, we provide a resource center designed for the offender population,” Coleman said. “For example, an ordinary service person cannot place an offender in just any job. Many times, people get out and they don’t know how they are going to eat. There are special taxes and special benefits available to help but they have to be educated to find these.”

Coleman encouraged the attendees by saying everyone in the church can help.

“Not everybody can do this work, but there is something for everybody to do. If you can offer a prayer, you can do this work. We want to be challenged and pushed to the limit to provide services to the least of these. It’s my belief that people will do better if they knew better.”

Pat Anderson is a missions advocate for Cooperative Baptist Fellowship Global Missions. He said he had been isolated growing up and wasn’t confronted with the entire drama of the criminal justice system until items had been stolen from him and his wife.

“As a Baptist Christian, a lifelong church person, it still amazes me that it wasn’t until I was a young adult that I didn’t have any contact with someone in prison,” Anderson said. “It was a new and different world. Turned to the Bible to get context and found out I had missed a lot.”

Anderson said he was inspired by the stories of Joseph, Daniel and Jeremiah.

“There are stories of prisoners who inspire throughout the biblical record,” he said. “It seemed like everyone in the New Testament did time. As I look at the biblical record, I cannot help but be encouraged by the people who were imprisoned.”

Posted: 2/01/08

Any church can participate in
disaster relief, Baptists are told

By Bob Perkins

ATLANTA—To test how prepared churches are to face natural disasters, panels offered suggestions for participants during a special interest session at the Celebration of a New Baptist Covenant meeting Feb. 1.

For example, conference leaders asked participants if they have “go bags” in their churches that are easily accessible for church members in the event of an immediate forced evacuation.

From New York City following Sept. 11, 2001, to the Gulf Coast following Hurricane Katrina, panelists shared their experiences organizing church responses to disasters. Willard Ashley, founding pastor of Abundant Joy Community Church in New York, said disaster can strike at any time and churches should be prepared.

“Go bags” are a collection of items a person might need in the event of an evacuation during a disaster. New York City residents are strongly encouraged to prepare one for every household, and each should include clothing, important documents, bottled water or nonperishable food items.

“We live in the retailing capital of the world, but no one bothered to ask the people who make these items how they would design one,” Ashley said. They developed the idea of a “go bag” with a built-in solar-panel that could recharge a radio or cell phone so people can help to protect the environment.

Richard Brunson, executive director of North Carolina Baptist Men, told participants any willing church can participate in disaster relief. As part of the North American Baptist Fellowship Disaster Relief Network, more than 30 different conventions and organizations are all organized. In the case of Katrina, his organization was heavily involved in aid to Gulfport, Miss.

There are three phases of relief that include mass care, recovery and long-term building. While mass care involves immediate needs such as food, water and shelter, it mostly involves trained volunteers and heavy equipment.

“State or national organizations are best-suited for this phase because of the training requirements for volunteers, and the equipment needed, such as water tankers,” Brunson said. “But the recovery phase can be handled very well by local churches.”

Brunson said the best way for a church to participate is to put together a disaster recovery trailer stocked with a generator, hand tools, power tools and other items. Churches can have an event where they accept donations for the items or purchase them outright, usually for about $1,000.

“Using the trailer, volunteers can help clean up after floods—do what they call ‘mud outs’ or tear outs,” Brunson said. “Some disaster victims have to rely on unscrupulous contractors who charge a fortune just to remove fallen trees. If volunteers can come in and do these things in the name of Jesus, it makes a big difference.”

Brunson said one of the biggest requirements for church disaster volunteers is being self contained. In many of the natural disaster areas, there is no electricity and no water.

“If you are not self-contained, you can’t help,” he said. “You really can’t depend upon anybody else. Working in Gulfport, we had to ship food in from North Carolina because they ran out of food and there was no refrigeration.”

Mary Landon Darden lives in Waco, Tex., but she felt a calling from God to open a shelter in her church, Seventh and James Baptist Church, for Katrina survivors. Although she said it’s a 10-hour drive to New Orleans, she convinced her pastor and other church members that they needed to begin work.

“Volunteers from our church converted Sunday School classrooms into place for families to live,” Darden said. “Within 24 hours, we had 56 people in our church.”

Darden became a catalyst for action in her city. Seeing that the need was far greater than the capacity of her church, she helped organize a meeting where 10 other churches agreed to open shelters, and other churches sent support and donations. They found housing for more than 510 people.

“We would have never made it without our partnerships,” Darden said. “We got help from many places, but the church is the only institution that could help with a disaster like this.”

Darden said the experience forever changed her and her church. “It built a fire in our church with the Holy Spirit and bonded us all closer together.”

Posted: 2/01/08

Pastors: World waits for authentic messengers

By Norman Jameson

Biblical Recorder

ATLANTA—People outside the church will hear a gospel message only from a passionate messenger who lives an authentic, transformed life, said two pastors leading a special interest session on evangelism at the celebration of a New Baptist Covenant in Atlanta Feb. 1.

“The proclaimer of the good news must be gripped and transformed by the presence of the living word of God and the power of the Holy Spirit,” said Brenda Little, pastor of Bethany Baptist Church of Christ in Evanston, Ill. “Saved and satisfied is not going to work.”

In a session intended to give participants handles on evangelism in their communities, Little, who said her church was “ice cold” when she was elected pastor in 1990 after 25 years as a pediatric nurse, said prayer is the starting point for witness.

Then, the church must embrace evangelism as its primary ministry or it “will never do evangelism or other missions with integrity and effectively,” she said. “Every ministry in the local church should be a concrete reflection of the life and ministry of Jesus Christ.”

Effective evangelism must be a lifestyle, Little said. “Somebody other than you ought to know that you are a believer.”

She said authentic ministry leads to people finding saving grace among believers. “Find a need and fill it, find a hurt and heal it,” she said.

Ronald Bobo, pastor of West Side Missionary Baptist Church in St. Louis, Mo., found feeding the hungry in the area surrounding the church “has been a good side door,” to reaching people.

“We were in the neighborhood all these years and didn’t realize how many hungry people there were,” Bobo said. It was not in the budget “but we just knew we had to get it done.”

Church men sponsored boys who enrolled in Boy Scouts and bought their uniforms. They formed relationships and started to meet physical and social needs.

“You can’t be afraid to go into the homes in these areas and neighborhoods that may not be middle class,” Bobo said. “To have the boldness to go to people where they are is important.”

While some participants complained that the evangelical message fails with youth consumed in the hip hop culture, West Side utilizes hip-hop methods in such areas as dance, mime, a contemporary choir and rappers.

“Sometimes people get upset,” Bobo said. “But you can use the method without using their message.”

He drew laughter when he said, “You can’t clean a fish until you catch it. Sometimes we try to clean ’em before we catch ’em.”

To win people in hostile neighborhoods, where unemployed or truant youth claim street corners and cut strangers no slack, Bobo said a potential evangelist must have an incarnational ministry.

Bobo wore a suit and tie every day in an area other professionals had abandoned, to get residents’ attention and “to present a different set of values,” he said. It took years, but over time “it turned around and we saw young people come. Your job is to be Jesus among them.”

Bobo said Christians in America are like Rip Van Winkle, who slept through a revolution. Jonah’s call to Nineveh was a wake-up call, he said.

“The world is coming to God and America is going in the opposite direction,” Bobo said. “America is a zombie—a sleeping, walking, talking nation.”

There is a revolution going on, he said, and Christians in America are going to miss it, unless we “learn to love people enough to seek their best good, their soul’s salvation.”

Posted: 2/01/08

Sexual exploitation alive in
America; churches can end it

By Hannah Elliott

Associated Baptist Press

ATLANTA (ABP)—Many churchgoers know human trafficking and sexual exploitation are global issues. But more than 200,000 children in the United States have become “sex commodities” as well, Baptist social workers say.

Ellyn Waller and Brenda Troy led a discussion about exploitive sex at the New Baptist Covenant meeting Feb. 1 in Atlanta—a city with the nation’s second-highest rate of human trafficking, they said.

The seeds of exploitation start early, and men have a large role in exacerbating it, they told a room of about 30 people attending the three-day event.

“The exploitation of women doesn’t just happen when they become women,” Waller said. “The intent is encouraged starting when they’re young. We also need to be thinking differently about what exploitation really is. It’s not necessarily the thing with sex acts. You can exploit women and children in the mind first.

“It should be [required in] men’s ministry to talk about how to treat women—and just the little things and the subtle thing we teach boys. It’s all cool when boys go out and sow their oats. We have to come to a position where we become equitable” with how boys and girls are socialized.

Both women lead outreach ministries in their church to women and men who work as prostitutes. The victims—as do the pimps—come from every race, age, gender, ethnicity and religion, they said.

Most “church folk” do not understand that many different circumstances can push someone into prostitution. The women called on congregants to recognize the fact that pimps or sexually exploited women and children may actually be within their numbers. And they challenged Baptists in particular to take note.

“This is a wake-up call to any of us—anyone who benefits from the child prostitution is guilty,” Waller, who attends Enon Tabernacle Baptist Church in Philadelphia, said. “When you go play the lottery, gambling money is all tied up in child prostitution.”

But when Christians work with people who are sexually exploited, “your perception changes about the lifestyle,” said Troy, who attends New Salem Baptist Church in Columbus, Ohio. “Not all of them were poor. Not all of them were homeless. A lot of them were successful people who just got dealt a bad deck of cards.”

Many of the people first lured into commercial sex acts—prostitution, exotic dancing, stripping and pornography—are children. One out of every three teens living on the street will be lured to prostitute within 48 hours of leaving home, Waller said. In the last eight years, 150,000 minors were lured into prostitution, with an average age of 12.

Troy works with New Salem Baptist members on Friday nights, talking with women who they find on the street. They tell them that God loves them no matter what they do.

“We tell the young ladies that they can trust us,” Troy said. “Second, we want them to learn the truth, which is in the Bible. We let them know we’re not here to judge you; we’re not here to tear you down—we just want to lend a helping hand. We want to help them break the stronghold of this lifestyle.”

The lifestyle can be a tough habit to break—even though 99.8 percent of the women who live it want out, Waller said. Women and children lured to a life on the street are often promised love and safety, which they desperately lack.

“A lot of things are promised to them,” Troy said. Pimps tell them, “Your family will be taken care of. Your family will never want for anything. Don’t tell anyone … but I’ll make sure your family is taken care of.”

Churches wanting to reach out to men, women and children who are exploited should take the time to get to know strangers who attend services, earn their trust and be aware of the warning signs of sexual coercion.

Look for physical and psychological control, because victims are trained to lie about pimps, Waller urged. Many victims are deliberately kept transient, distrust law enforcement officials (more than 90 percent of the arrests in relation to the sex trade are of the victims, not the purchasers or the pimps), have their names changed and are subjected to isolation and physical or emotional abuse. Others have been convinced they will be cut loose from their servitude after they pay off a debt or favor.

Someone who is being exploited may have excessive amounts of cash, hotel room keys, chronic homelessness, signs of branding like tattoos and jewelry, false IDs, a tendency to life about their age, and the presence of “an overly controlling, possessive and abusive individual,” Waller said.

One problem Troy and Waller said they face is overcrowding in women’s shelters and a refusal to take in women who work as prostitutes—“they come with a lot of junk,” one shelter leader told Waller. In Philadelphia, only the hospital will take in a woman during the night without an ID.

Besides providing shelter or counseling for the women, churches have multiple options to start a ministry for the sexually exploited. Troy said night evangelism by small groups of church members has proved a strong tool to stop the “epidemic.” Church leaders can also contact local attorneys, community activists, health-care providers and even postal employees for advice on reaching potential victims.

Troy said her church had to insist that something be done to effect change in her community. They work closely with policemen in unmarked cars to monitor the neighborhood for suspicious activity.

“We demanded, ‘You need to help us clean up this community. We’ve got babies walking in and out of here. We want this cleaned up and now,’” she said. “You’ve got to find someone who is willing to make a difference in your community. Once people begin to see that you’re serious, you’ll begin to make a difference.”

Posted: 2/01/08

Panelists offer practical
suggestions for peacemaking

By Patricia Heys

Cooperative Baptist Fellowship

ATLANTA—David Gushee and Stan Hastey offered Baptists ways to promote peacemaking during a special interest session Feb. 1 at the celebration of a New Baptist Covenant.

Gushee, a professor at Mercer University’s McAfee School of Theology in Atlanta and recent author of The Future of Faith in American Politics, talked about just war theory and its seven criteria. He also outlined the 10 best practices of peacemaking from Glen Stassen’s book Just Peacemaking.

“The hidden assumption I want to put on the table is peace is what God wants, because Jesus renounced violence, founded a movement of peace, said, ‘Blessed are the peacemakers,’ ” Gushee said. “Peace is normative. It is what we should be working for. War is a reflection of sin, expresses sin, advances sin. War is organized murder. It may sometimes be a necessary evil. It is never something to be celebrated.”

Gushee offered five things Christians could do to promote peacemaking—learn the criteria of just war theory, teach about the issues in church, establish a peacemaking group in church or add a dimension to current group, read and listen to diverse news sources and sharpen your critical edge as a follower of Christ.

“I think it is our responsibility to get out of our information niches, where we only listen to media we agree with,” Gushee said. “I think we also need to read international news sources. Pay attention to what the U.N. is saying, pay attention to what missionaries and people on the ground are saying. Start with a bias for peace and against war.”

Gushee acknowledged the historic nature of the Celebration in recognizing peacemaking as a moral issue and challenged people from all political parties to work together.

“We Baptists have a high view of the authority of the Bible, but we have lost the practice of dozen of passages about how you treat other people,” Gushee said.

“The Bible teaches all kind of things about how we should pray for others, forgive others, love others. But we forgot how to love, especially those that are different from ourselves politically. I think that moral collapse is one of the legacies we are trying to undo at this meeting. I think recognizing the basic humanity of all people, caring for them, loving them, is not negotiable. It is who we are in Christ.”

Stan Hastey, executive director of the Alliance of Baptists, focused on practical ways congregations can be involved in peacemaking. He mentioned 24 U.S. congregations that have established sister congregations in Cuba.

“It’s an excellent example of citizen diplomacy,” Hastey said. “It is one of the best ways of peacemaking—people to people, getting to know one other personally, getting to know one another’s families, and—in our case—churches.”

Hastey addressed the U.S. trade embargo with Cuba, calling it “economic warfare.” He also encouraged other churches to establish relationships with congregations in Cuba and offered the resources of the Alliance of Baptists.

“The U.S. alone maintains this position of economic war against Cuba, with the objective of bringing such economic strain to the country that it brings an end to the regime,” Hastey said. “What I want to suggest is that much more good is being done by those two dozen churches who are together bringing to bear citizen diplomacy.”

Posted: 2/01/08

Rogers challenges churches
to engage in justice issues

By Jeff Huett

Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty

ATLANTA—Participants at a session held in conjunction with the New Baptist Covenant celebration in Atlanta received a lesson in “going upstream” to address the root causes of injustice.

Melissa Rogers, a visiting professor of religion and public policy at the Wake Forest University Divinity School in Winston-Salem, N.C., led a special interest session that focused on matters at the intersection of faith and public policy.

To illustrate the distinction between one-on-one church ministries, which many churches engage, and seeking justice, Rogers told a story about a man standing on the side of a river and saving people one-by-one until finally deciding to go upriver to figure out who was throwing the people in the river.

“The discussion today is about going upstream,” Rogers said.

Just like food pantry, soup kitchen and other ministries that churches undertake, Rogers said it was important to be heard on issues such as advocating just economic policy, reforming the criminal justice system and pushing for sound environment polices.

“We should certainly bring our faith to bear on these questions,” Rogers said.

The Old Testament prophets Micah and Amos—as well as Jesus Christ’s example in the Gospels—demonstrate the biblical justification for personal involvement in the justice issues, she said. Prophets confront unjust social structures, she noted.

In addressing what she calls a false dichotomy fostered by those suggesting that ministers must choose between one-on-one ministries and justice issues, Rogers highlighted the African-American church, which she said has shown that there need not be a choice.

On the decision to enter the public policy arena, Rogers quoted religion scholar Martin Marty: “In the political world, not to be political is political.”

“That is to say, if you are silent, you create a political vacuum and that vacuum will be filled by something,” Rogers said. “We need voices from a perspective of a cause that is greater than ourselves to fill the vacuum.”

Rogers then offered principles to help participants navigate the sometimes perilous faith and politics intersection.

“While Christians can have disagreements about public policy issues,” she said, “we would be blind, deaf and dumb in today’s politics not to see the risks of religious engagement in public policy.”

In quoting former Representative Barbara Jordan of Texas, Rogers warned that “we are God’s servants, not his spokespeople.” Secondly she said religious groups should practice prophetic politics, not partisan politics.

“Is it really so difficult to see that no political party conducts itself in a manner that Jesus would?” she asked.

Additionally, “we must not let our faith be used,” Rogers said, drawing on a sermon by Martin Luther King, Jr., when he said that “the church must be the conscious of the state, not its tool.”

She also suggested that the separation of church and state and religious liberty should be at the forefront. “When we work on public policy issues, we should work for the common good and not for the establishment of Christendom,” she said.

After all, “the only faith that can call government to account … is the one that is seriously independent from government,” she said.

Posted: 2/02/08

Baptists wrestle with ways to find
common ground with other faiths

By Sue H. Poss

CBF of South Carolina

ATLANTA—As Baptists seek common ground to work with people of other faiths, they face the challenge of finding ways to be relevant in an interfaith context while retaining their own distinctive identity.

“We often don’t reach out to other faiths because we are scared of losing what’s essential about our Baptist faith,” said Noel Erskine, associate professor of theology and ethics at Candler School of Theology in Atlanta, Ga. “We are so afraid of losing our identity that we are not relevant in a multi-faith context.”

Erskine was one of three participants on a panel that discussed “Can we all get along? Finding common ground with other faiths.” Others on the panel were: Faysel Sharif, People of the Book Ministry; Virginia Baptist Mission Board in Falls Church, Va., a former Muslim who converted to Christianity 28 years ago; and Welton Gaddy, president of the Interfaith Alliance in Washington, D.C.

“Many Baptists have not been good at dialogue in the interfaith context,” Erskine said, “because you cannot have dialogue if you start from the idea that others are religions of unbelief.”

“We better act the way Jesus Christ has called upon us to act,” Sharif said. “We need to practice true faith—not Christianity as a religion but Christianity as a true relationship with God.”

Cultural differences play a part in understanding religious differences, Sharif stressed.

“Before you try to develop a relationship with a Muslim or Hindu, you must break down the barrier of stereotypes,” he said. “What we need to do to go forward and meet our neighbors is to establish a bridge on which we can communicate. Without that, we cannot reach out to Muslims, and Muslims cannot reach out to us.”

Gaddy, who works daily with 75 different religious traditions in the United States, said he believes the future of the church will be interreligious in nature.

“In that future, distinctions of diversity must be preserved,” he said. “We do not need a religious community shaped by the lowest common denominator. That would rob us of the symphonic-like nature of the people who make up this nation.”

Gaddy said that differences should not be ignored but should be recognized and respected if possible. One value that Gaddy said is shared among virtually all religions in the United States is religious freedom.

“Religious freedom is what has made the U.S. the most religiously pluralistic country in the world,” he said, noting that he subscribes to the motto “Out of many, cooperation,” not “out of many, one.”

Some specific suggestions the three panelists offered for churches and individuals who want to understand other religions better include:

• Have someone in the church, either staff or a volunteer, whose primary responsibility it is to help the congregation understand and reach out to other religions, giving particular attention to religious groups that may worship nearby.

• Educate yourself about the social practices of others.

• Listen to the stories of others.

• Begin to understand other faiths by first coming together in the civic realm (for example, to discuss a local school issue).

• Recognize that one culture is not superior to another.

• Learn to differentiate between what is cultural and what is spiritual.

• Demonstrate your Christian beliefs by your actions, not by preaching.

• Recognize in some tangible way a special day in the religion of a neighbor whose religion is different from yours.

• Get to know better a co-worker, neighbor or schoolmate of another religion.

• Study a book on another religion in Sunday school or on Wednesday night.

• Dream a new church—one not only focused on its own internal life but one that wants to reach out in dialogue.

• Recognize that God’s call to us is to love our neighbors.

• Begin with the common values that most people share: the dignity and worth of every person, the importance of compassion and of community.

Sharif said the secret to good interfaith relations is not complicated. “Just be a true Christian in the way that Jesus Christ modeled for us.”

Posted: 2/02/08

Relationships needed
to break poverty cycle

By John Pierce

Baptists Today

ATLANTA—While soup kitchens and clothes closets meet some basic human needs, something more personal is needed to counter poverty, said one who lives and works among the poor.

“We need football games, where we can play together,” said Jimmy Dorrell of Mission Waco, a multifaceted ministry with impoverished persons in Central Texas.

Relationship-building is the first and most important step in discovering ways to help break the cycle of poverty, he told participants in a special interest session Feb. 1 during the New Baptist Covenant celebration.

“You should have friends who are poor,” said Dorrell, who along with his wife, Janet, bought a home in an economically deprived north Waco community 28 years ago, raised four children and built long-term relationships with neighbors.

Mentors, who build relationships with and help guide those seeking to improve their lives, are an essential part of the decade-old Christian Women’s Job Corps and its counterpart, Christian Men’s Job Corps, said Cara Lynn Vogel of Woman’s Missionary Union of North Carolina.

The job-training ministry sites are separate by gender and vary in emphasis by location, Vogel said of the WMU ministry efforts in which “women mentor women and men mentor men.”

“The issue of poverty can be overwhelming,” said Vogel. “But more importantly, we need to talk about solutions.”

The solutions found in the Christian Jobs Corps efforts are built on mentors encouraging and enabling participants to develop through spiritual nurture, health and nutrition, education and job skills training.

Vogel told of an African-American woman, pregnant as a teen, whose experience in the program led to setting and repeating new goals. Today she is a pharmacist serving as a mentor to another woman at one of the sites in North Carolina.

“No two (job sites) are identical,” said Vogel, noting more than 2,100 persons participated in the programs for women and men in 2006.

Dorrell described his work in Waco as a holistic ministry that focuses on building relationships with the poor as well as mobilizing middle-class Christians to get involved.

Mission Waco offers numerous services such as job training, a health clinic, literacy, housing and economic development. Economic development is the hardest piece, Dorrell said.

An intense simulation experience gives volunteers a close encounter with poverty and better equips them for relating effectively with poor people, he said.

“People pay $45 to be poor,” he said of those participating in his “Plunge2Poverty” simulation experience.

Dorrell is also pastor of the Church Under the Bridge, a congregation that began when he and five homeless people got together to discuss faith. Worship now draws as many as 300 some Sundays, he said, including numerous homeless persons, as well as doctoral students from nearby Baylor University.

“I’ve learned more about the kingdom of God from the poor than I learned in seminary or anywhere else,” said Dorrell. “We have people who don’t fit—and we make room for them.”

One of the more challenging aspects of urban ministry is dealing with systemic issues and obstacles that make breaking the cycle of poverty more difficult, Dorrell said.

Mike Queen, pastor of the First Baptist Church of Wilmington, N.C., moderated the presentations and discussions. His congregation recently purchased an adjacent jail that is being converted into a ministry center despite some public resistance.

“When we talk about the systems, we’re talking about our local governments, largely,” he said. “You just have to be persistent (to bring about needed changes).”

Dorrell warned participants in the session on “Breaking the Cycle of Poverty” that sorrow and disappointment are present in ministry with the poor. He spoke of losing friends to early deaths, seeing them fall into addiction relapses or fail to show up for their jobs.

“If you dive into this seriously, you are going to have a lot of pain,” he said.

However, both Dorrell and Vogel shared words of hope as well as practical advice on ministry with impoverished persons.

“But it’s a long-haul ministry,” said Vogel. “It is not a quick fix or a Band-Aid.”

Posted: 2/02/08

Prophetic preaching breaks down
barriers, builds up God’s kingdom

By Jennifer Harris and Ken Camp

Word & Way and Baptist Standard

ATLANTA—Breaking down barriers, healing the hurting, challenging Christians to transcend categories of “us and them” and announcing the coming kingdom of God are just a few of the roles prophetic preachers must fill, according to speakers at a Baptist preaching conference.

Four preachers representative of varied traditions delivered sermons during a seminar on prophetic preaching held in conjunction with the Celebration of a New Baptist Covenant in Atlanta, Feb. 1.

While other children played house, Joan Parrott and her brothers grew up playing church. The 54-year-old executive minister of University Park Baptist Church in Charlotte, N.C., fought to be the one to sit in the center chair of their makeshift sanctuary and preach.

Even as a child, she struggled with the texts from which she preached. One such experience as preacher led her to Matthew 15:21-28, in which a woman pleads with Jesus for mercy and asks him to heal her daughter.

“I struggled with the text,” Parrott said. “I couldn’t understand why Jesus calls the woman a dog. The Jesus we knew fed the 5,000, plus women and children. He came to Mary and Martha—even when they thought he was late to heal Lazarus. The Jesus we knew had compassion.”

The word “dog” referred to the fact that the woman was not a Jew, Parrott explained. The woman was considered a heathen—a Canaanite.

“Some things don’t happen in our lives until we get desperate enough,” she said. “She’s not a part of the church; she is a woman coming out in a man’s world and has the audacity to ask Jesus for help.”

Jesus says nothing initially in the story.

“We’ve got some serious problems, but Jesus says nothing,” said Parrott, alluding to social problems in today’s world. “When we are pushed to the limit and have nothing to lose, we will speak truth to power regardless of consequence. She had nothing to lose, but she was going to move past the silence of God.”

Parrott suggests Jesus was waiting to see what the disciples would do—just as he is waiting to see what we will do now.

“You have a responsibility to make the world a better place,” said Parrott. “Many of us who want to do social justice—feed the hungry, clothe the naked, visit the prisoner—we are afraid. The Lord seems to be silent. This woman moves past all fear, moves past the tradition of her time. She falls on her knees with everything in her and worships him.”

“There is a ‘yes’ that goes beyond your understanding, statistics, agenda, denomination, social-economic status,” said Parrott. “Lord, I don’t understand. I don’t know the protocol. All I know is I have a need, and I need you to touch it. If I’m a dog, I’m your dog. Give me what the children don’t want.”

God is waiting for people to drop their prejudices and barriers—those things that isolate people from each other.

“The quintessential yes means I have the power to go into the world,” Parrott said. “Jesus sees you and wants you to say, ‘Yes!’”

“When barriers fall which have separated the people of God for a long time, there is excitement in heaven,” said James Forbes, founding president of Healing of the Nations Foundation and retired professor of homiletics at Union Theological Seminary and Auburn Theological Seminary in New York.

“God blesses such convocations with special grace. So the Spirit comes. Do you feel it? Have you felt it walking up and down these halls? You’ve almost feel like singing, ‘There’s a sweet, sweet spirit in this place.’”

Forbes warned that the Holy Spirit is much too efficient to use a gathering like the New Baptist Covenant “just for congratulations for past duties.” Instead, God will use the time to share what is on God’s heart.

“When God gets mad about something—or you would prefer provoked, right? Upset. When God’s heart is pulsing with an extraordinary urging to do something about what is insulting to God, if you’re not careful—a prophet! Out of nowhere, God comes,” Forbes said.

From the beginning, God has invested in having his children be whole and well, Forbes said. The human body is even designed with an immune system to help keep it healthy.

“My ministry isn’t just about talking, it’s about healing,” he said. “When you get it, you’re supposed to pass it on.”

Instead of healing being the specialty of select individuals or denominations, every child of God is a healer, Forbes emphasized. “You got healing powers inside yourself. If you don’t use the power to heal somebody else, that same power will make you sick. That’s why there is so much division, so much separation.”

“Look around,” said Forbes, instructing everyone in attendance to raise their hands. “All of these hands can go back home and begin to heal.”

But for healing and wholeness to happen, people must move beyond categories of “us and them,” said George Mason, pastor of Wilshire Baptist Church in Dallas.

“There are two kinds of people in the world—those who view the glass as half-full and those who see it as half-empty. There are two kinds of people, said Robert Frost—those who are willing to work, and those who are willing to let them. There are two kinds of people—the ones who suck the life out of every day, and the ones who let the day suck the life out of them. …There are two kinds of people in your church—those who agree with you and the bigots.

“OK, you get the idea. It could go on and on. But that’s also the problem. Any time you go down that trail of dividing up the world into two kinds of people, it goes on and on.”

The underlying problem with “us and them” is that “it starts to sound a lot more like us versus them,” Mason said.

The division of people into clear-cut categories leads far too easily to armed conflict, as in the United States’ occupation of Iraq, he asserted.

“We are the good; they are the bad. We are the righteous; they are the unrighteous. We are the do-gooders; they are the evildoers. We are told that nations are either with us or with our enemies—us against them,” he said. “Isn’t this just a mirror image of the very thinking of those who flew planes into the World Trade Center buildings?”

“We questioning whether Islam is a religion of peace. Perhaps we, as Christians, ought to be asking ourselves if others can believe by our witness whether Christianity is a religion of peace.”

Evil must be acknowledged and confronted, Mason said. The challenge Christians face is to “oppose evil utterly without disposing of the people under its sway.”

The kingdom of God—where the lion and the lamb live together in peace and there is no division of “us and them”—is both a present reality and a future hope, said Julius Scruggs, pastor of First Missionary Baptist Church in Huntsville, Ala.

“We pray for the ideal in the face of the real,” Scruggs said. “We behold what is while we work and pray for what ought to be.”

God’s kingdom—the rule and reign of God in the lives of people—became a present reality in Jesus Christ, he insisted. “The kingdom is in our midst—a present reality.”

But not all recognize God’s rule or obey his reign, so in a real sense, the kingdom remains a yet-to-be-fulfilled future hope, he added.

“Even in the local church, the kingdom of God has not come in fullness,” he said. “We are afflicted with Burger King theology. We want to have it our way, not God’s way.”

Posted: 2/02/08

Panelists urge New Covenant
Baptists to fight institutional racism

By Bob Allen

EthicsDaily.com

ATLANTA—The church’s struggle against racism no longer is primarily about skin color but about institutions that bestow privilege on some and penalties on others, an activist, denominational leader and scholar said in a special-interest session Friday at the New Baptist Covenant Celebration in Atlanta.

“While I applaud the organizers of our event in coming together and asking the question of how do we move forward beyond race, I think the real challenge for us is to deal with that insidious cancer that is within the very fabric of our society, that I would term racism,” said Aidsand Wright-Riggins, executive director of National Ministries, American Baptist Churches in the U.S.A.

Wright-Riggins, who is African-American, said there is room to discuss issues of multiculturalism and diversity.

“I think that’s a wonderful thing that we need to be engaged in,” he said, but he added, “I think that we need to realize that here in the United States of America we still live in very much a racialized society.”

About 10 percent of white children in the U.S. live in poverty, he said. That compares to 27 percent of Native American children, 28 percent of Latino children and 33 percent of African-American youth.

“There seems to be a correlation between social policies and race in this country,” he said.

Looking to the plight of African-American men with regard to issues of criminal and racial justice, Wright-Riggins noted there are more black young men in prisons than in colleges and universities.

Miguel De La Torre, associate professor of social ethics and director of the Justice and Peace Institute at Iliff School of Theology in Denver, Colo., said it isn’t enough for white churches to want to diversify.

“What is the best advice that can be given to white ministers wishing to diversify their churches?” De La Torre asked. “No church should consider diversifying unless they first get saved.”

“That is, the congregation as a whole must crucify their sin upon the cross of Jesus Christ,” he explained. “They must nail their white supremacy and class privilege on the cross so that they can become a new creature in Christ. Becoming a new creature in Christ is not to be taken figuratively but literally.”

Forcing the issue without first dismantling societal and institutional forms of segregation that still exist, De La Torre said, “will reduce diversity to tokenism.”

“Centuries of normalizing and legitimizing segregation cannot merely be washed away within a generation because those in power had an ‘ah-hah’ moment,” he said. “Such a proposition would only continue the arrogance of those who confuse their power with the power of God.”

Alan Bean, executive director of Friends of Justice, a faith-based organization that works on criminal-justice reform, identified a new form of racism “based on color blindness and normalcy of whiteness” that he calls the “New Jim Crow.”

Bean said the new Jim Crow accepts people of color as long as they can assimilate to white attitudes, traditions and speaking patterns. While the old Jim Crow applied everyone but whites, he said, the new Jim Crow is cut from a different cloth.

“It is a reality that does not impact all people of color the same way, like the old Jim Crow did,” he said. “If you were black you were black, and the Jim Crow regime applied to you. When we talk about the new Jim Crow, we are basically talking about low economic people, people who have not been able to make the jump to our high-tech, highly educated society.”

“If you want to see the new Jim Crow in action, you go down to your local county courthouse and you see who is on the docket,” Bean said. “They will be overwhelmingly people of color. They will be overwhelmingly poor, and they will be overwhelmingly people who have problems with mental illness.”

Bean, a white American Baptist minister credited with bringing international attention to a civil-rights case in a small Louisiana town known worldwide as the Jena 6, said the thousands of people who demonstrated in Jena last fall were 99 percent black and appeared to be mostly middle class. Lacking cell-phone reception, Bean circulated among the throngs and asked people why they were there.

“Every person said, ‘Well I have this brother,’ ‘I have this grandchild’ or ‘I have this niece or nephew who got caught up in the criminal justice system like these boys in Jena, and enough is enough,” Bean said.

“When I looked at the way white America and black America have responded to Jena, I realize that there is a huge perception gap on issues of race and fairness and the problem in the criminal justice system that we need to start talking about,” Bean said. “And we need to start talking about it in the context of faith.”

Posted: 2/02/08

Separation of church & state can be complex,
but it’s worth the effort, speakers insist

By Robert Marus

ATLANTA (ABP)—Although often difficult to negotiate, drawing the proper line between church and state is worth it for both institutions, according to experts in the topic.

A panel of religious-liberty advocates addressed a small-group session of the Celebration of a New Baptist Covenant Feb. 1. They said that religious is Baptists’ birthright—but that the church-state separation that protects religious freedom is imperiled and need Baptists’ advocacy.

“Whether we have a wall or a zone or a rickety fence or whatever, we must continue to have at least a strand or two of barb-wire to keep the institutions of religion from cozying up to the institutions of government,” said James Dunn, a professor at Wake Forest University Divinity School..”

While some evangelicals promote the idea that the separation of church and state is a “myth,” Dunn said, there are four reasons why it is not.

The church and the state should be separate because both have separate constituencies, separate purposes, separate sources of funding and separate methodologies, he said.

“The Constitution is indeed godless, thank goodness!” said Dunn, who is also the retired executive director of the Washington-based Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty.

But drawing proper lines between church and state can be difficult for Baptists, according to Jeffrey Haggray, executive director-minister of the District of Columbia Baptist Convention. Baptists, in particular, sometimes have difficulty defending their birthright because of other strong characteristics of their own tradition.

“Our prophetic tendencies give rise to activism—activism within the public square,” he said. Due to that tendency, he noted, Baptists can sometimes succumb to the temptation to involve themselves in electioneering from the pulpit.

Second, Haggray said, “Baptists are missional people,” and as a result start ministries and social programs that politicians point to as models for the delivery of social services. In recent years, political leaders at the state and federal levels have attempted to change laws to allow churches and other houses of worship to receive government funding for such services.

Finally, he added, Baptists have a strong evangelical strain and “we love to share the good news about Jesus Christ—and that evangelical strand gives rise to strong preferences in the public arena for the Christian faith.”

But all three temptations ultimately hurt the church if indulged, Haggray said.

While prophetic preaching is important in calling the state to account—Haggray noted that a Baptist preacher from Atlanta and his ministerial colleagues fomented the Civil Rights Movement along—Haggray said giving in to partisan politics actually causes Christians to forfeit their prophetic role.

“When we align ourselves and our credibility and influence” with one political party or candidate, he said, the entanglement that ensues can cause the church of Jesus Christ to end up appearing like just another special-interest group. “Ultimately our credibility and influence are more important than any one endorsement.”

Posted: 2/02/08

Medical professionals urge
congregational health advocacy

By Brian Kaylor

Baptist General Convention of Missouri

ATLANTA—Medical professionals explained how the biblical calling to take care of the sick could be met by churches offering medical treatment and information Feb. 1 during a New Baptist Covenant special interest session titled “Reaching Out to the Sick.”

Offering advice, resources, contacts and a strong challenge, panelists addressed the health needs of people and how churches can help.

Retired physician Drayton Sanders outlined the problems he sees with the current medical system and ways that churches could be part of the solution. He charged that the medical field has turned from being a calling—as it was for him—to a business.

He cited a litany of medical problems that include rising costs; lack of access to care for 15 percent of Americans, 80 percent of them in working families; a lack of fairness as medical costs are shifted from uninsured to insured; and ineffectiveness as a result of declining patient choice, increase in demand and a shortage of healthcare workers.

Sanders briefly argued for some form of universal healthcare system to ensure that “no one is left out.” He noted that strong resistance to the notion from businesses and legislators—along with an apathetic public—makes such proposals unlikely. He urged churches to help fill the void by voting and lobbying for medical reform and through congregational health advocacy.

Sanders pointed to the Parish Nurse Program, where a church staffer or volunteer leads the effort in caring for the congregation. This approach combines the physical with the spiritual in order to provide holistic care.

Sanders argued that church health advocates should teach wellness to their congregants, serve as an advocate by providing resources and information about medical issues and options, and train home caregivers. Sanders also urged churches to view the health advocate as a minister instead of support staff because of the strong connection between the physical and spiritual.

Finally, Sanders suggested that churches should set up free clinics to help “the underserved in the community.” Although clinics can be complicated and expensive, he said, they provide an opportunity “to serve out what God has called us to do—to minister to others” and “to bring others to Jesus.” When people are sick, they are often more receptive to the gospel than usual, he added.

Other panelists echoed the call by Sanders for church health advocates to provide resources and assistance on important health issues.

LaRue Wilson, a certified nurse, emphasized the importance of helping church members understand Medicare, Medicaid and other programs. She suggested that congregation have a “church nurse” who can educate the members about the medical process and options.

To help answer questions and provide resources for those present at the panel, Wilson introduced Judy Weaver and Maxine Turnipseed, both health insurance specialists with the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services. They noted the importance of working with churches and other faith-based organizations to make information on Medicaid and Medicare available to more people.

Physician Fred Loper, executive director of the Baptist Medical Dental Fellowship, told how churches can offer free clinics and encouraged attendees to pick up information.