Posted: 2/01/08
• David Gruhn to Trinity Church in Watseka, Ill., as pastor from First Church in Palacios.
• Matt Homeyer to Fellowship Church in Marble Falls as pastor.
• James Lane to First Church in Markham as pastor.
Posted: 1/31/08
By Hannah Elliott
Associated Baptist Press
GAINESVILLE, Fla. (ABP)— Wade Burleson, the pastor/blogger who railed against what he saw as an excessive narrowing of parameters within the Southern Baptist Convention, has resigned from his position as a trustee of the SBC’s International Mission Board.
Burleson, pastor of Emmanuel Baptist Church in Enid, Okla., said he also plans to write a book “to tell everything that has not been told” about recent disputes in the denomination. He said he hopes to have it published before the SBC annual meeting in June.
His resignation came after a Jan. 29 plenary session at the board’s meeting in Gainesville, Fla. At the meeting, Burleson read a letter he had originally sent to IMB Chairman John Floyd in December. The letter was an apology for violating a rule against board members publicly criticizing IMB policies.
| IMB trustee chairman John Floyd (right) talks with Wade Burleson after the board's meeting in Springfield, Ill., Nov. 7, 2007. (BP Photo) |
Burleson said the letter was a “good-faith effort” to “apologize for people being offended” and to “live at peace with everyone.” But, he said, it became clear during the meeting that the apology would not work, and he quit on the spot.
“I am resigning because I am a distraction to the work of the IMB board,” he said Jan. 30. “It was the work of last night’s letter to the IMB board to [allow me to] stop being a distraction, and it was not accepted. But I will not go away. I will continue to work to effect change in the Southern Baptist Convention.”
The resignation was not planned long in advance, Burleson said, was prompted by the events of the meeting. Soon after receiving the letter last December, Burleson said, Floyd told him it was an insufficient apology, but board leaders would present it to the full panel at the Gainesville meeting.
When the IMB executive committee did not report the letter during the Jan. 29 session, Burleson requested and was allowed to read it to the full board.
“I do admit that I have in the past intentionally violated our newly revised internal standards of conduct,” Burleson said in the letter.
“In particular, I publicly disagreed with certain actions taken by this board, rather than speaking in supportive terms or staying silent on matters about which I disagreed. … I want you to know that I never expressed my dissent out of a desire to harm the work of the IMB or any of you, my fellow trustees and brothers and sisters in Christ. Instead, I did so out of an exercise of my conscience.”
Burleson said in the letter that he wanted to get along with trustees and would “no longer violate, intentionally or otherwise, our new trustee standards of conduct. If I find myself in disagreement with a policy or proposed policy of the board, I will express my disagreement using the channels that are available—for example, plenary-forum sessions, trustee-forum sessions, and private communication with fellow trustees—but will not take my disagreement outside of those confines to the blogosphere or world at large.”
Burleson has long clashed with some of his colleagues on the board. In 2005, IMB trustees decided voted not to appoint missionary candidates who said they practice “private prayer language” or who have not received “biblical baptism.” Burleson protested, saying the board should not create doctrinal requirements for missionaries narrower than the strictures in the SBC’s Baptist Faith & Message doctrinal statement. He also wrote on his blog that some trustees should not conduct secret meetings to plan the board’s formal sessions.
Then, in January of 2006, several trustees requested that Burleson be removed from the mission board. They later rescinded their motion but placed limitations on his involvement with the board, effectively barring him from executive sessions and committee meetings. Other trustees complained Burleson had broken confidentiality agreements by blogging about IMB business.
Burleson said in the December letter that if the apology was accepted, he would shut down his blog, and if he disagreed with an IMB policy in the future, he would resign.
After allowing Burleson to read the letter Jan. 29, Burleson said, Floyd told the group the executive committee did not accept the apology. He then dismissed all non-board members to enter a closed session.
Floyd reportedly then told the board the apology was insufficient because Burleson did not apologize for violating the newer standards of trustee conduct that prohibited any public dissent of board-approved actions. Those standards were adopted in 2006, and Burleson has said he intentionally violated them by blogging about his disapproval of the new restrictions on missionaries.
“I intentionally violated that policy for a higher moral good. It is a matter of conscience for me,” he said. “I said, ‘I will always apologize for people being offended— I want to be at peace with everyone—but I cannot apologize for breaking that policy.’”
It was “the worst policy in the history of the SBC,” he added.
“The narrowing of these doctrinal parameters of cooperative mission work is dangerous to our convention and threatens our belief in the historic Baptist principles of the sufficiency of Scripture, cooperative missions, and religious liberty,” he said in his resignation letter, posted on his blog (kerussocharis.blogspot.com).
“Worse, the 2006 revised trustee standard of conduct that prohibits public dissent is unconscionable, unbaptistic, and will one day be viewed by Baptist historians as a tragic mistake.”
Burleson said he plans to spend the time he’ll gain from not participating as an IMB trustee by documenting other missteps by convention leaders.
“The point of the book is not a tell-all of the IMB, though there will be illustrations from the dangerous effects of stifling dissent, moving beyond the (Baptist Faith & Message) on doctrinal policy and attacking people who disagree,” he said. “It is a wake-up call to Southern Baptists that we better start cooperating despite our differences, or we will dry up and shrivel away as a convention.”
Burleson said he plans to tell the stories of Dwight McKissic, a Texas pastor who was censored after telling students at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in a chapel sermon that he used a “private prayer language,” and Sheri Klouda, a former Southwestern Hebrew professor who is suing the seminary for firing her because of her gender. He said he will highlight other “anecdotes, personal histories and narratives of how many people are affected by the actions of the trustees at our largest agency,” the IMB.
Burleson said he looks forward to having “a platform where I am not continually placed in a position of having to defend myself.”
“I feel really good about what happened,” he said. “It’s just the next step.”
An IMB spokesperson said on the afternoon of Jan. 30 that Floyd and other board leaders were preparing for a missionary-appointment ceremony and would not be available for comment.
Robert Marus contributed to this story.
Posted: 1/30/08
Years ago, I was taught church members should be able to work out their differences with patience and respect. Now, most Christians seem to prefer fighting and winning to reconciliation. This is about to drive me out of my church. What can I do to “hang in there” and make a difference?
An ethic has been around a long while—the ethic of “win/win” at all cost. Business training has emphasized it. Stress-management programs have adapted it. Financial planners use it. The airwaves bombard us with advertisements from consultants, trainers and promoters who offer “win/win” solutions.
Even “prosperity gospelers” proclaim this philosophy as God’s will for our lives. No one wants to be considered a “loser.” Winning is supposed to show superior wit, good contacts and success. In religious circles, some use it to prove God’s divine favor.
Turn to God’s word for guidance to this situation.
When asked about the qualifications for entrance into God’s kingdom (Luke 10:25), Jesus began by quoting the Shema (Deuteronomy 6:4, 5): “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all our mind, and love your neighbor as yourself.” To love God means God must be first in our loyalty and obedience. No other person, philosophy or ideology is to replace God.
But God is more than a commandment. God offers us a relationship. If we are in true relationship with God, our only desire is to follow God’s leading. To love God is to love the ways of God and trust God to be always right.
The second principle Jesus affirms is to “love our neighbor as we do ourselves.” When asked about how to define “neighbor,” Jesus told the story of the man beaten by thugs and left for dead. The “true” neighbors were not those who religiously ignored him, but the man who humbled himself to serve him. “Neighbor” is an active word that expresses compassion to the next person one meets that needs it. A compassionate person puts the well-being of others next to their own. Love always must be lived out “to win.” Victory is not in getting what you want, but in living God’s love in God’s strength. We cannot “win” on our own, but God can “win” through us.
The words in 1 John 4:7, 8 and 12 also are appropriate here: “Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love. … No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God lives in us, and his love is made complete in us.”
To “hang in there,” just keep loving and showing love. Love is contagious. Love them until you love the evil out of them. It works. I am a witness. It works.
Emmanuel McCall, pastor
Fellowship Group Baptist Church, East Point, Ga.
Adjunct faculty, McAfee School of Theology,
Mercer University, Atlanta
Right or Wrong? is sponsored by the T.B. Maston Chair of Christian Ethics at Hardin-Simmons University's Logsdon School of Theology. Send your questions about how to apply your faith to btillman@hsutx.edu.
Posted: 1/30/08
| Youth who have never fit in at church are drawn to Ron Evans' Church Under the Tree in a Plano park. |
By Loni Fancher
Texas Baptist Communications
ROCKWALL—Commitment is the key to a fruitful ministry, said Ron Evans. He should know. He’s persistently followed God’s calling to break through barriers and reach a group of disenfranchised young people as pastor of Plano’s Church Under the Tree.
During Super Summer in 2006, the youth pastor of Brown Street Baptist Fellowship in Wylie felt God calling him to reach out to unchurched and disenfranchised youth.
Shortly after, he was drawn to Haggard Park in Plano, where teenagers and young adults from all over the Dallas area gather to hang out. Many of them come from broken homes, battle substance-abuse issues or are sexually promiscuous.
 |
| The gathering meets on Friday nights and Sunday afternoons. |
Later that summer, Evans and his three teenage daughters took a guitar, Bible and their Labrador puppy with them to the park. They worked their way through the crowd, claimed a picnic table and began singing praise songs, hoping to draw people into conversation. In the end, the puppy was the draw.
Evans and his family put down the guitar and spent the next six weeks building relationships with the young people.
“You’ve got to get in their heart,” Evans said during Engage, a Baptist General Convention of Texas-sponsored conference on evangelism. “You’ve got to become their friend. It’s relationship ministry, and that’s all it is.”
They still hang out every Friday night, but they also started meeting more formally on Sunday afternoons. They gather for lunch and transition into a time of prayer and preaching. In the beginning, attendance was lackluster at best. One or two scouts were sent to see if Evans and his group were authentic, but the more they proved themselves, the greater the response.
On a typical Sunday in recent months, dozens of young people will gather in the park for worship.
The group has become a church of its own, but a church of members who never would darken the doorstep of a traditional house of worship.
On any given Sunday afternoon, people ages 15 to 50, ranging from wealthy families to homeless youths and drug addicts gather to hear about God.
 |
“They come here because they’ve been to a church or they’ve met church people. And when they came in all dressed in black with tattoos and piercing, no one would talk to them, and no one acted like they cared about them. But they come here because we did,” Evans said.
Evans and his group have challenged the Church Under the Tree family to seek depth in their faith. The group shares a prayer journal they call “The Book of Life,” which is passed around each Sunday for people to share or update prayer requests or what God is teaching them. Evans scans it into his computer and e-mails a file of the updated pages to supporters each week.
Accountability groups have started on Thursday nights and Saturday mornings. Evans hopes similar groups will multiply throughout the Dallas area.
“What we’re praying for are small groups that meet all over the Metroplex, and then we get together on Sunday afternoons,” Evans said.
Evans is quick to attribute the success of Church Under the Tree to God. He is just trying to do ministry the way Jesus did, by going to the places where people already are gathering.
“One hundred percent commitment to the students and to God’s word—that’s the only combination that accomplishes anything,” he said.
Posted: 1/30/08
• East Texas Baptist University will hold “shadow days” Feb. 7-8 for high school seniors and college transfer students. The event offers visiting students an opportunity to attend classes, spend the night in the dorm, socialize with current students and meet professors. Preregistration is required, and a $15 fee must be paid. For more information, call (800) 804-3828.
• The baseball team of East Texas Baptist University will host a canned food drive Feb. 8 when it opens the season with a doubleheader against Jarvis Christian College at 4 p.m. All fans are asked to bring a minimum of two cans as their admission to the games. The drive will benefit local families.
• Dallas Baptist University will hold a preview for prospective students Feb. 9 from 8:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. Included is breakfast with current students, a Patriot rally and interaction with faculty members. Students also will tour the campus. Parents will learn about financial aid, campus life, parent services and the application process. A second preview is slated for April 26. For more information, call (214) 333-5360.
• The University of Mary Hardin-Baylor’s McLane Lecture will be held Feb. 14 at 11 a.m. in the Lord Conference Center. Kirbyjon Caldwell, pastor of Windsor Village United Meth-odist Church in Houston, will be the guest speaker. Caldwell started the church in 1982 with 25 members, and today the 14,000-member church is the largest United Methodist church in the nation. The lecture is free and open to the public.
• The Paul and Jane Meyer Family Foundation has awarded a $500,000 grant to Howard Payne University to support the university’s Faith and Learning Leadership Center. When completed, the center will provide facilities to attract a variety of leadership development seminars and workshops and serve as the foundation to the school’s commitment to Christian leadership development.
• Howard Payne University has announced that 271 students earned academic honors for the 2007 fall semester. One hundred thirteen students were named to the President’s List, 92 students were named to the Dean’s List and 66 students earned placement on the honor roll.
• Jim Wesson, chief executive officer of Valley Baptist Health Center-Harlingen, has an-nounced he will become chief operating officer and step down from the CEO position.
Events
• Woodrow Church in Covington celebrated Pastor Sam Houston’s 57th year in ministry Jan. 19. Houston will celebrate his 24th anniversary as pastor of the church May 20.
Ordained
• Aimee Hobbs, to the ministry at Broadway Church in Fort Worth.
• Christopher Keefer to the ministry at First Church in Poolville.
• Ronald Feagins to the ministry at Orchard Road Church in Lewisville.
• Kim Pond to the chaplaincy at First Church in Tulia.
• Daniel McBurney, Ricky O’Banon, Rick Skaggs and Ed Thomas as deacons at First Church in Belton.
• Robert Chadwick, Rick Crownover, Brian Hill, Clint Lewis, Jeff Mabry, David Martinez and Donnie Prater as deacons at First Church in Tulia.
Death
• L. Russ Bush III, 63, Jan. 22 in Wake Forest, N.C. He died following a two-year battle with cancer. His church service included a stint as assistant minister to senior adults at First Church in Dallas. He was a professor of philosophy of religion at Southwestern Seminary from 1973 until 1989, and was academic vice president and dean of the faculty of Southeastern Seminary from 1989 until 2006. Most recently, he was director of the L. Russ Bush Center for Faith and Culture and a distinguished professor of religion at Southeastern. He also was co-author of Baptists and the Bible—a book that was key to the so-called conservative resurgence in the Southern Baptist Convention. He is survived by his wife of 39 years, Cynthia; son, Joshua; and daughter, Bethany.
Posted: 1/30/08
By Randall Balmer
Eight years ago, when George W. Bush declared Jesus was his favorite philosopher, suppose someone had asked a follow-up question: “Mr. Bush, Jesus invited his followers to love their enemies and to turn the other cheek. How will that guide your foreign policy, especially in the event, say, of an attack on the United States?”
Or: “Gov. Bush, your favorite philosopher expressed concern for the tiniest sparrow. How will that sentiment be reflected in your administration’s environmental policies?”
Or: “Jesus called his followers to care for ‘the least of these.’ How does that teaching inform your views on tax policy or welfare reform?”
For the past several decades, we Americans have evinced more than passing curiosity about the religious views of our presidential candidates, and they feel obliged to talk about their faith. The news media almost invariably identify Mike Huckabee as a former Baptist minister and report Mitt Romney is a Mormon.
So, too, with the Democratic candidates. They show up in churches on Sunday morning in an apparent effort to demonstrate they are people of faith.
But a review of the last 40-plus years suggests a candidate’s apparent piety finds scant expression in his comportment as president. There’s little evidence to suggest John F. Kennedy, the nation’s first—and still the only—Roman Catholic to serve as president, inflected his faith into his administration’s policies. Ronald Reagan insisted abortion was the defining moral issue of his time and campaigned twice promising to outlaw it. Yet, as even his supporters now acknowledge, he made no serious effort to outlaw abortion.
On the other hand, no one could accuse Lyndon Johnson of being a demonstrably pious or religious man. Yet he learned—and sought to live by—a simple maxim he attributed to his mother: The strong have an obligation to look after the weak. That principle led him, a white Southerner, to push for civil rights, and it also animated his quest for the Great Society. Tragically, Johnson used the same principle to justify American involvement in Vietnam.
Billy Graham detected vast reservoirs of faith and piety in his friend Richard Nixon, who hosted worship services in the White House. Probity, however, is not the first word that comes to mind in recalling the Nixon administration. And Bill Clinton’s many critics would be justified in pointing out the disconnect between his professions of faith and his conduct in the Oval Office.
Arguably, the only exception to this litany proves the rule.
Jimmy Carter ran for office promising a government as “good and decent as the American people” and pledging never to “knowingly lie.” After he sought actually to govern according to his moral principles—revising the Pana-ma Canal treaties, seeking peace in the Middle East—the American people denied him a second term.
Does a candidate’s declaration of faith provide any indication of how she or he would govern as president? The past half century suggests strongly the answer is no.
We Americans think of ourselves as a religious people, so it shouldn’t be a surprise when politicians clamor to speak the language of faith. Those affirmations turn out to be, more often than not, shallow and perfunctory.
But placing the blame on the candidates misses the point. We the voters settle for shallow, perfunctory bromides about faith and piety. We allow candidates to lull us into believing they are moral and virtuous simply because they say they are.
At the very least, we should question whether those claims reflect any real substance. Do the principles the candidates purport to affirm find any expression whatsoever in their policies? Jesus, for example, instructed his followers to welcome the stranger in their midst; how would that affect a Christian candidate’s views on immigration?
If we’re not willing to probe the depth and the sincerity of politicians’ declarations of faith, then we shouldn’t bother to ask the question. The history of the past half century suggests a president’s conduct in office bears little resemblance to his campaign rhetoric.
Randall Balmer is professor of American religious history at Barnard College at Columbia University and a visiting professor at Yale Divinity School. His most recent book is God in the White House: A History: How Faith Shaped the Presidency From John F. Kennedy to George W. Bush. His column is distributed by Religion News Service.
Posted: 1/30/08
This season, the National Football League once again demonstrated an old adage passed down from generation unto generation: Football will break your heart.
Unless, inexplicably, you are a New England Patriots’ fan (like my son-in-law, Aaron), or, even more incomprehensibly, you favor the New York Giants, you got your heart broken weeks—maybe even months—ago.
Well, that’s not exactly true.
I haven’t polled Houston Texans fans to see if they’ve suffered like all of us who root, root, root for the Dallas Cowboys. We were disturbed when the Cowboys lost their Mojo in December. And we were crushed when the despised Giants knocked them out of contention for the Super Bowl.
Folks down in Houston, embroiled in a quarterback controversy, entered the season in the best frame of mind—no expectations. Nobody ever went on Sports Center or any of the pigskin prognosticators’ programs guessing the Texans had a chance of going “all the way.”
Up in Dallas, when the season started, nobody but maybe Jerry Jones dreamed of Super Bowl victories for the Cowboys.
Then things got all fouled up. The Cowboys played great. We got our hopes up. Not good.
Through most of the season, young Tony Romo could do no wrong. The center hikes the ball over his head. Looks like a long loss. No worries. The ball bounces right into hands. He scrambles around and throws for a first down.
Other Cowboys played extremely well, too. Like Terrell Owens, known recently as an aging complainer, who had a career year. Same for tight end Jason Witten, and running back Marion Barber, and a bunch of guys on the line and on defense whose names you wouldn’t know unless you read the fine print in the sports section.
So, we all started thinking about how fine we’d look wearing our Super Bowl XLII caps.
Ironically—for the Cowboys, at least—the NFL requires teams to actually play games before they declare a winner. And so, when the Giants flew down to Texas Stadium for the second round of the playoffs, the Cowboys crawled out (and it really, really hurts to admit this) losers.
How the mighty have fallen. No world championship parade snaking through the streets of downtown Dallas. No Super Bowl XLII caps.
That’s not how it’s supposed to be. Here’s a perfect sports world: Every year, the Cowboys win the Super Bowl, the Astros win the World Series, the Mavericks win the NBA championship.
And—for evangelistic purposes and the good of global missions—the Baylor Bears win the NCAA Bowl Championship Series national championship. This would prove several things:
• Yes, there is a God.
• Miracles still happen.
• Jesus is a Baptist.
• He still loves Texas Baptists.
–Marv Knox
Posted: 1/30/08
Like few decisions in the past 100 years, the Baptist General Convention of Texas Executive Board must make a correct call on the election of its next executive director.
 |
Although the BGCT is composed of about 5,500 churches, more than 100 associations, 27 agencies and institutions, and more than a million Baptist Christians, the executive director wields unparalleled influence in shaping the overall direction of the convention. That’s because the Executive Board stands at the visible “center” of the BGCT. It supplies the connective tissue between Texas Baptist churches and the institutions and convention ministries. It provides most of the conventionwide promotion, receives and allocates the BGCT’s Cooperative Program unified budget, and helps coordinate overall strategy and tactics for making an impact on our state, nation and the world with the gospel.
During the last few years, for a variety of reasons, the BGCT has been in a funk. We have lost churches to a competing state convention. More tragically, churches have distanced themselves from our convention because of apathy and a sense the convention is irrelevant to them and to their ministries. Cooperative Program receipts have suffered. The Executive Board has endured rounds of staff cutbacks and reorganizations. Support for institutions has not been satisfactory. Attendance at vital events, such as the BGCT annual meeting, has been disappointing. Factions have pointed fingers of blame at each other. Morale has suffered, both in the Baptist Building and across the state.
The next person to occupy the executive director’s chair—which became vacant Feb. 1—must restore a spirit of purpose and unity to our beloved BGCT. This will be more difficult and demanding than we can imagine. For one thing, the Cooperative Program is expected to decline, most likely necessitating further staff cutbacks and possibly curtailing institutional and missions/ministry support. These moves will bruise morale. For another, some aspects of factionalism have had time to set up and harden, so bringing our disparate constituencies back together will require patience, persistence and sacrificial, selfless integrity. The person who steps into that breach will feel as if he’s being pressured and questioned from every direction, an excruciatingly lonely assignment.
A search committee has nominated Randel Everett, pastor of First Baptist Church in Newport News, Va., and a former Texan, to be the next executive director. The Executive Board will vote on this recommendation Feb. 24-25. (By way of disclosure, I should note I was nominated for the position. I always considered myself the longest shot imaginable.)
Not surprisingly, the bloggers already have begun to weigh in on their assessment of Everett’s fitness for the task. No doubt, coffee-shop debaters will follow along. But the decision is not theirs to make.
That’s the Executive Board’s job. It’s especially crucial, because Everett has been gone from Texas for so long, and we don’t know him well. The board must study Everett’s resume, examine his history and leadership style, listen to the search committee’s rationale for recommending him and analyze his responses to the many questions board members will ask him. Then, they must evaluate all they know. They must determine if his training, experience, skills, character and spiritual demeanor add up to the right fit for Texas Baptists.
If the board elects Everett, Texas Baptists’ responsibility will be to lift him up in prayer. Encourage him to provide leadership for all the BGCT. Tell him our aspirations for what our convention can and must be if we are to fulfill our mandate to succeed in “evangelism, missions, Christian education and benevolent work and enterprises.”
We need our next executive director to succeed so that our convention has a chance for success.
Marv Knox is editor of the Baptist Standard.
Posted: 1/30/08
| Youth who have never fit in at church are drawn to Ron Evans' Church Under a Tree in a Plano park. |
By Loni Fancher
Texas Baptist Communications
ROCKWALL—Commitment is the key to a fruitful ministry, said Ron Evans. He should know. He’s persistently followed God’s calling to break through barriers and reach a group of disenfranchised young people as pastor of Plano’s Church Under the Tree.
During Super Summer in 2006, the youth pastor of Brown Street Baptist Fellowship in Wylie felt God calling him to reach out to unchurched and disenfranchised youth.
Shortly after, he was drawn to Haggard Park in Plano, where teenagers and young adults from all over the Dallas area gather to hang out. Many of them come from broken homes, battle substance-abuse issues or are sexually promiscuous.
|
| The gathering meets on Friday nights and Sunday afternoons. |
Later that summer, Evans and his three teenage daughters took a guitar, Bible and their Labrador puppy with them to the park. They worked their way through the crowd, claimed a picnic table and began singing praise songs, hoping to draw people into conversation. In the end, the puppy was the draw.
Evans and his family put down the guitar and spent the next six weeks building relationships with the young people.
“You’ve got to get in their heart,” Evans said during Engage, a Baptist General Convention of Texas-sponsored conference on evangelism. “You’ve got to become their friend. It’s relationship ministry, and that’s all it is.”
They still hang out every Friday night, but they also started meeting more formally on Sunday afternoons. They gather for lunch and transition into a time of prayer and preaching. In the beginning, attendance was lackluster at best. One or two scouts were sent to see if Evans and his group were authentic, but the more they proved themselves, the greater the response.
On a typical Sunday in recent months, dozens of young people will gather in the park for worship.
The group has become a church of its own, but a church of members who never would darken the doorstep of a traditional house of worship.
On any given Sunday afternoon, people ages 15 to 50, ranging from wealthy families to homeless youths and drug addicts gather to hear about God.
|
“They come here because they’ve been to a church or they’ve met church people. And when they came in all dressed in black with tattoos and piercing, no one would talk to them, and no one acted like they cared about them. But they come here because we did,” Evans said.
Evans and his group have challenged the Church Under the Tree family to seek depth in their faith. The group shares a prayer journal they call “The Book of Life,” which is passed around each Sunday for people to share or update prayer requests or what God is teaching them. Evans scans it into his computer and e-mails a file of the updated pages to supporters each week.
Accountability groups have started on Thursday nights and Saturday mornings. Evans hopes similar groups will multiply throughout the Dallas area.
“What we’re praying for are small groups that meet all over the Metroplex, and then we get together on Sunday afternoons,” Evans said.
Evans is quick to attribute the success of Church Under the Tree to God. He is just trying to do ministry the way Jesus did, by going to the places where people already are gathering.
“One hundred percent commitment to the students and to God’s word—that’s the only combination that accomplishes anything,” he said.
Posted: 1/30/08
Catholic Charities study links poverty and racism. Poverty and race remain integrally linked in the United States, and continuing racism contributes to that linkage, according to a recently released study by Catholic Charities. The study cites evidence the poverty rate for African- Americans in the U.S. is 24 percent—three times the rate for whites. Latinos and Native Americans also suffer from poverty rates above 20 percent. On average, white families are 10 times richer than minority families, the study says. And while white families’ wealth grew 20 percent between 1998 and 2001, the net worth of African-American households decreased during that period. At the same time, “the ghosts of our legacy of racial inequality continue to haunt us,” the study says, citing racial violence as well as discrimination in housing and health care. The study, “Poverty and Racism: Overlapping Threats to the Common Good,” is part of Catholic Charities’ campaign to cut the U.S. poverty rate in half by 2020.
Creationists launch online journal. Answers in Genesis, the Christian ministry that founded the $27 million Creation Museum in Kentucky last year, has launched an online technical journal to publish studies consistent with its biblical views. The Answers Research Journal will disseminate research conducted by creationist theologians and scientists who follow a literal reading of the Creation account in Genesis. Ken Hamm, president of Answers in Genesis, said submissions will be peer-reviewed, but the journal’s guidelines discourage asking non-creationists to conduct those reviews. The journal is needed because of academic bias in most scientific journals against creationists, Hamm said.
Supreme Court rules against Muslim inmate. An inmate claiming widespread harassment of Muslims in U.S. prisons cannot sue prison guards who he says took his Qurans and prayer rug, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled. Abdus-Shahid M.S. Ali, a convicted murderer serving a sentence of 20 years to life, asserted the alleged confiscation of his religious items is part of a campaign waged against Muslim inmates since the 9/11 terrorist attacks. But in a 5-4 ruling, the Supreme Court said the Federal Tort Claims Act blocks suits regarding property detained by law enforcement officers, including prison guards. Justice Clarence Thomas, writing for the majority, said the law applies to all law enforcement officers.
Churches on potential heritage sites list. Two Birmingham churches significant to the civil rights movement are under consideration as World Heritage sites, the National Park Service announced. Bethel Baptist Church and Sixteenth Street Baptist Church are on a tentative list that will be nominated over the next 10 years under a new category, “Civil Rights Sites in the Southern United States.” A 1963 bombing at Sixteenth Street Baptist killed four young girls and helped galvanize the civil rights movement. Bethel Baptist was bombed three times between 1956 and 1962 and served as a staging ground for civil rights leaders. There are 830 places in the world—including 20 in the United States—that have achieved recognition on the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization’s World Heritage list.
Posted: 1/30/08
| Sheikh Raed Salah (center), head of the Islamic Movement in northern Israel, prays during a protest against Israel's blockade of Gaza, at the Erez crossing just outside the northern Gaza Strip. Israel recently resumed fuel supplies to the Gaza Strip's main power plant, offering limited respite from a blockade that plunged much of the Hamas-ruled territory into darkness and touched off international protests. (REUTERS/Ammar Awad) |
By Michele Chabin
Religion News Service
JERUSALEM (RNS)—Christian leaders from the Holy Land are demanding that Israel, President Bush and the world community “put an end to this suffering” of Gaza residents caught in the crossfire between Israel and the Hamas militants who rule the Gaza Strip.
“There is no time to waste when human life is endangered,” said the heads of the churches in Jerusalem and the Holy Land.
The clerics, many of them Palestinians, called on Israel to put the control of Gaza’s borders under Palestinian responsibility to ensure that fuel, food and medicine reaches those who need it.
Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert sealed Gaza’s borders in order to pressure Hamas to stop shelling the Israeli town of Sderot and nearby communities. In recent days, Hamas has fired hundreds of rockets into Israel from the Gaza Strip, which Israel evacuated 2 1/2 years ago.
The situation in Gaza became desperate when fuel shortages led the Hamas-led government to shut Gaza City’s main power station. Much of Gaza City, including hospitals, was without electricity until Olmert, under international pressure, permitted the import of fuel and some humanitarian aid.
“There are a half million people imprisoned and without proper food or medicine; 800,000 without electricity supply. This is illegal collective punishment, an immoral act in violation of the basic human and natural laws as well as international law. It cannot be tolerated anymore. The siege over Gaza should end now,” the church leaders said.
“This siege will not guarantee the end to rocket firing, but will only increase the bitterness and suffering and invite more revenge, while the innocents keep dying. True peace building is the only way to bring the desired security.”
The clerics also urged the warring Palestinian factions of Hamas and Fatah “to unite in ending their differences for the sake of their people in Gaza.”
By firing rockets into Israel, they added, “you encourage public opinion outside this land to feel there is a justification for this siege.”
Posted: 1/30/08
By Bruce Nolan
Religion News Service
NEW ORLEANS (RNS)—A months-long effort by Habitat for Humanity International to retool relations with its 1,600 local affiliates has raised concerns in Habitat’s operation in southern Louisiana, where volunteers have built more than 100 low-cost replacement homes since Hurricane Katrina.
The dispute recently surfaced when the San Antonio affiliate—the oldest in a far-flung Habitat organization—charged in federal court that Habitat for Humanity International sought to impose unprecedented controls on the local organizations.
| Texan Alison Cagle from Clayborne hammers a nail while working at a Habitat for Humanity site in New Orleans in this 2006 file photo. Some participants in the rebuilding effort in southern Louisiana fear Habitat International’s dispute with its domestic affiliates could derail the ongoing Katrina rebuilding effort. |
The suit said the international office warned affiliates they could be stripped of the valuable “Habitat for Humanity” brand if they didn’t agree to a new U.S. affiliate agreement.
Aleis Tusa, a spokesman for the New Orleans Area Habitat for Humanity, said: “We do have concerns about the effects it has on us as an affiliate. We’re talking with International. We’re asking them to clarify some things so we can have a greater comfort level with the new agreement.”
The local Habitat chapter is perhaps the most visible housing nonprofit in the area—a major partner in Musicians Village, a cluster of volunteer-built, $75,000 homes in the Upper 9th Ward that has attracted thousands of volunteer builders and celebrity visitors.
The organization has built 101 homes around the New Orleans area since Katrina hit in 2005—as many as had been built in the previous 21 years—and has 147 in various stages of construction now, Tusa said.
She declined to describe which elements of the proposed agreement local Habitat officials object to, but said she felt sure a rupture could be avoided.
“We have every hope they’re going to address our concerns before we sign it,” she said.
Founded in 1977, Habitat for Humanity is a confederation of Christian nonprofit ministries dedicated to building low-cost homes for the poor.
Until now, local affiliates previously have been almost completely autonomous. They do their own fund-raising, plan their own operations and are governed by their own boards of directors. The international office provides training and valuable marketing muscle that boosts donations.
The San Antonio lawsuit, the only window into the dispute so far, describes the historic relationship between affiliates and the international office as loose and highly decentralized. The Texans said they had been linked only by a brief written “covenant” that set forth broad Christian operating principles.
Under that arrangement, local groups always have been able to use the Habitat name, the San Antonio builders said. And although they were encouraged to tithe 10 percent of their income to the international office, many did not, keeping the money locally to build more homes.
The Texans said after a leadership change in 2006, Habitat International has embarked on a drive to centralize authority and redefine its relationships with affiliates. They said it is using a “commercial franchise” approach that could strip locals of control of their operations or risk loss of the potent Habitat name.
Duane Bates, a spokesman for Habitat International, said the ministry’s increasing sophistication required a detailed new affiliate agreement to supplement the basic covenant once sufficient for a younger organization.
He denied the new agreement would redistribute authority. Instead “it seeks to codify existing relationships between International and the affiliates,” Bates said.
Most of Habitat’s affiliates have agreed to sign the document, he said.
Since Katrina, Habitat for Humanity International has funneled about $20 million into New Orleans, while the local organization has raised another $20 million, Tusa said.
Bates said no matter what the outcome of talks between Habitat International and the local affiliate, the international office will send New Orleans every dollar earmarked for Katrina relief.
“Habitat International, as a matter of standard policy, honors the wishes of its donors,” he said.