FRANKFORT, Ky. (ABP)—When churches fall on hard economic times, some congregations reduce the amount they give to missions. A Kentucky Baptist pastor believes they should do the opposite.

“I think churches are in a survival mentality right now, and it is harming the spread of the gospel,” said David Hinson, pastor of First Baptist Church in Frankfort, Ky. “We have got to trust that the Lord will provide for our future, and we can be practical in our economic decisions but faithful in trusting that God will give us a vision for helping people in need at the same time.”

Hinson came to the historic downtown Frankfort church in 1998 and led the congregation to develop a strategic plan that included a strong missions component.

“We really wanted to have a strategy that moved outside the walls of the church,” he said. “That was very critical for us, because a church can just sometimes look inward, and they become so concerned about themselves they forget that their call to Christ is a call to lose yourself in the needs of others.”

One result was Mission Frankfort, a comprehensive mission enterprise encompassing local, state, national and international ministry partnerships.

The key component of Mission Frankfort is funding. First Baptist Church does not include missions in its annual operating budget of $574,000. Instead, it assigns a separate budget for Mission Frankfort that is 100 percent designated line items for community and statewide ministries and global relationships, including the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship, the Baptist World Alliance and a school in Liberia.

Designated funding is the biggest obstacle for most Baptists Hinson knows who are familiar with the strategy, he said. Raised in a era of unified denominational work where dollars are pooled and divided like a pie between church and mission programs, they fear that given the choice, many church members would support missions but neglect other costs associated with running a church.

Hinson’s experience has been the opposite. One Sunday after challenging the congregation to divide the day’s offering 50/50 between the church budget and missions, he said, the church responded with a large offering. After the service, several members told him they supported missions, but they also didn’t want to see other areas of the church suffer.

Members of the church have taken the challenge. When Hinson first came, they were budgeting $35,000 for cooperative missions, about 7 percent of its total receipts. Today, more than one dollar out of every three dropped in the offering plate is designated for missions.

“We have had 11 consecutive years of increase in percentage as well as dollar gifts toward missions, which I think is fairly remarkable,” Hinson said.

In 2005, the church paid $85,000 for a vacant motel in eastern Kentucky to remodel for use as a dormitory for volunteer mission teams. Today the Emma Quire Mission Center in Owsley County is filled up every summer with church groups from all over the country. The mission center is 110 miles from the church, so the decision to buy and remodel a facility that hadn’t been renovated in 40 years was “a leap of faith” on the part of First Baptist Church, Hinson said.

More recently, the congregation paid $50,000 for 88 acres of mountain land not far from the Emma Quire center called Hope Mountain. Now Hinson is looking for other churches interested in partnering with First Baptist to develop the property into a Habitat for Humanity-style community on the banks of the Kentucky River.

Hinson promotes the Mission Frankfort model with an evangelist’s zeal.

“I believe every town needs to have ‘Mission Your Town,’ and from your church in your town you need to develop a global missions initiative,” he said. “The idea has been that I can’t help everybody, but I can help one person. If every Christian can recognize that we have an individual responsibility to allow God’s Spirit to work in us in a manner where we can impact a person’s life, then we need to be about that task.”

Baptists need new models to prosper in the 21st century, and First Baptist has been intentional about developing one model for downtown county seat churches, Hinson said.

“What I’ve tried to do is take a church of 500 members and say ‘What can we do to change the world?’ And that’s what we try to do here.

“There are churches far bigger than us who could accomplish similar goals if they chose to do so.”

Hinson acknowledged Frankfort hasn’t been hit as hard by the economy as some communities dependent on manufacturing that have seen major employers close, but his church is also doing more than less. He said he is not trying to make other churches feel guilty, but simply offering a model that has worked for him.

“This church has not been afraid to fail,” Hinson said. “They have given themselves enough rope to hang themselves many, many times over again, but we have discovered that we’re on a pathway to help people. That has brought great hope to me.”

“I have people come into my office on a regular basis, ‘Thank you, you’re keeping me alive.’ How can you not help but be moved by that?”

FRANKFORT, Ky. (ABP)—Mission Frankfort Clinic is a godsend for an average of 40 to 50 uninsured patients who come through its doors between 6:30 and 8:30 on Wednesday nights to see a doctor or dentist or to get a prescription medicine.

First Baptist Church of Frankfort, Ky., first opened a dental clinic in October 2002 with a single dentist. Last year, medical professionals from throughout the community volunteered after hours to see more than 800 patients last year. Pastor David Hinson estimates it at half a million dollars in free medical care.

“Persons of all denominations come here and help us in ministry,” he said. “We do not put up artificial barriers of being a member in order to work in our clinic.”

Pat Hinson, the pastor’s wife and a registered nurse, serves as the clinic’s health services coordinator. She described the clinic as a “real community effort involving the social services, medical and faith communities.

“You have the local health department. They have the indigent people already,” she said. “You have the local hospital. They see so many people through their emergency room, because the emergency room for many of these folks is their medical home. And that’s the wrong way to have a medical home. It’s expensive for everybody. So, the hospital has been a tremendous helper, and they understand the value of this free clinic and helped us with dollars as well. So, I see us in a triangular relationship and then all these other people trickle in, community members who have professional abilities to be here. I think it’s a nice combination.”

The clinic is not equipped to handle acute care. The focus is on helping patients with chronic health problems like hypertension and diabetes get treatment that keeps them out of the emergency room.

One important part of that is education. A lot of the patients are obese, Pat Hinson said, and many are smokers—conditions that can contribute to their health problems. Hinson, who has experience in both health care and social services and has a degree in psychology, tries to change those behaviors through programs like nutrition, managing diabetes and smoking-cessation classes.

Larry Hadley, a member of First Baptist Church and a pharmacist, fills prescriptions in the Mission Frankfort Clinic’s free pharmacy.

“We have people coming here with very compromised lungs, already using oxygen, still smoking,” she said. “It just doesn’t make sense. So, we just try to lay it on the line for them, with no apology. We’re always kind, but no excuses and no apologies for our expectation that they begin to change those behaviors.”

The clinic is just one of a number of innovative missions programs at First Baptist Church. A historic downtown congregation that celebrates its 200th anniversary in 2012, First Baptist shatters the stereotype that such churches are mired in tradition and resistant to change.

“It’s outside the box for normal church life,” said Mark Howell, minister of missions at First Baptist Church. “It’s great to have people coming here to the church building and having church members show hospitality.”

WASHINGTON (RNS)—Even though he always was taught religion and politics shouldn’t be discussed in polite company, Dan Merchant decided someone needed to start the conversation.

In his documentary-style film, Lord, Save Us from Your Followers, which hits theaters nationwide Sept. 25, Merchant marches around the country asking everyone he meets why what he calls the “Gospel of Love” is dividing the nation.

Wearing a painter-suit covered in bumper stickers that illustrates various sides of the “Christian issue,” Merchant travels the country asking tough questions. What Merchant really wants to know: How are Christians supposed to act, and how are they really acting? In short, does following Jesus mean loving others or being right?

“The goal is to try and understand,” Merchant said in an interview. “Am I the only person asking these questions?”

The film has been circulating on DVD for at least a year and has attracted a loyal underground fan base. Now, Merchant hopes the nationwide theater release will help spread the film’s message.

An evangelical Christian with a background in the entertainment field, Merchant was inspired to explore American Christianity after traveling to Ethiopia and meeting Christians there who sounded and acted nothing like the Christians back home.

“There’s one voice that reminds me of Jesus,” Merchant said, comparing Christian voices on American TV to those in small Ethiopian huts. “And it’s the voice in the hut.”

So, he set off to figure out if he was the only one concerned about how Christians in the United States are perceived. By interviewing everyone from church-goers to atheists, politicians to scholars, Katrina victims to drag queens dressed as nuns, Merchant looks for everyone to find their voice in this dialogue.

Merchant’s camera captures a range of opinions, because it seems that everybody has something to say. “Everyone has a dog in this fight,” Merchant says at the beginning of his film.

What worries Merchant, however, is that everyone seems to be talking at the same time.

“Outrage is way more exciting than humility,” says Merchant.

In his bumper sticker get-up, Merchant patrols the streets of Times Square and nationwide asking people what Christians are known for versus what Jesus is known for. Big surprise: the answers are often quite different.

After seriously considering issues where the secular world and the Christian world often butt heads—same-sex marriage, abortion, the “Hollywood agenda,” poverty, war, pornography and consumerism—the film takes a more hopeful turn.

From volunteers washing the feet of homeless people to a confessional booth at a Gay Pride event where people are invited in to hear Merchant’s own confessions, the film offers a glimpse into a kinder, gentler America. Those images and stories, which Merchant cites as the most important, suggest that we are all one in our humanity.

“Life and people are complicated, compassion should be given and not earned,” Merchant offers at the end of the film. And dialogue should never be cut off, he said, because everybody has a piece of the “rest of the story.”

MINNEAPOLIS (ABP) — A Baptist pastor and popular Calvinist author says it was no accident that tornado-force winds hit downtown Minneapolis the same week that the nation's largest Lutheran group was meeting there to debate liberalizing its policies toward gays.

John Piper, pastor of Bethlehem Baptist Church in Minneapolis, wrote in an Aug. 20 blog that powerful winds that ripped through the city Aug. 19 were "a gentle but firm warning" to the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America.

John Piper

The storm, which has not yet been confirmed as a tornado, caused roof and water damage to the Minneapolis Convention Center, where the ELCA was holding its national convention. About 2,200 people were registered for the convention. People inside the building were taken to a safe location, and there were no reports of injury, according to the Associated Press.

Just across the street, winds damaged the steeple and shattered windows at Minneapolis' Central Lutheran Church, which was also being used as an ELCA meeting venue. About 120 people were inside, a church spokesman told the AP.

Piper cited Bible passages to make the case that official church statements condoning sin dishonor God, Jesus Christ controls the wind and that everyone faces calamity unless they all repent.

Piper said God's message to Lutherans is: "Turn from the approval of sin. Turn from the promotion of behaviors that lead to destruction. Reaffirm the great Lutheran heritage of allegiance to the truth and authority of Scripture. Turn back from distorting the grace of God into sensuality. Rejoice in the pardon of the cross of Christ and its power to transform left- and right-wing sinners."

On Aug. 19 the ELCA assembly adopted a statement agreeing to disagree on the morality of "lifelong monogamous same-gender relationships."

John Piper is chief spokesman for a renewed interest in Calvinism, which is taking root on evangelical campuses around the country. (Desiring God Ministries)

On Aug. 21, delegates were expected to take up another volatile issue: whether to change the church's existing policy that requires gays and lesbians in the ministry to remain celibate.

Piper, 63, is considered a chief spokesman for the resurgence of Calvinism among Baptists. Calvinism is the a name given toa Reformation set of doctrines emphasizing God's sovereignty over human free will. He is a popular speaker and author of more than 30 books. His best-selling Desiring God has sold more than 275,000 copies. 

Piper's Desiring God Ministries conducts four annual conferences: A fall national conference in Minneapolis, a winter pastor's conference and two regional conferences in other cities. 

Piper has led Bethlehem Baptist Church, which is affiliated with the Baptist General Conference, since 1980.

Piper's resurgent Calvinism is popular on a number of conservative evangelical campuses, including Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Ky.

–Bob Allen is senior writer for Associated Baptist Press.

ORLANDO, Fla.—For centuries, missionaries have ventured to the farthest reaches of the globe to share the gospel. Today, the new mission field is just a mouse click away.

Some 2 million Web surfers a day type keywords like “God” and “Jesus” into search engines, and hundreds of thousands of them end up at one of 91 websites operated by Global Media Outreach, a ministry of the Orlando-based Campus Crusade for Christ that dispatches domestic missionaries to the far corners of the World Wide Web.

The sites describe the basics of Christianity, such as who is Jesus, and provide forms where surfers can submit questions and share personal stories with one of the ministry’s 3,000 missionaries. The missionaries, in turn, respond via e-mail with personal messages, Bible passages and prayers.

It is the newest way to reach out, said Allan Beeber, the Orlando director of Global Media Outreach, which also has offices in Silicon Valley.

“The paradigm of evangelism is changing. In the past, various Christian groups would go door-to-door, or they would hold citywide crusades,” he said. “The paradigm change is that people are now coming to us.”

The number of these spiritual surfers has grown so much since the ministry launched less than a decade ago that officials now hope to double the number of missionaries by the year’s end. In the last year alone, traffic on the ministry’s websites more than doubled. 

Campus Crusade is among the nation’s largest nondenominational campus ministries, with some 55,000 students involved at more than 1,090 colleges and universities nationwide. Worldwide, the organization offers 29 ministries in 191 countries.

Global Media Outreach has partnered with Northland Church—an Orlando-area megachurch—and Pastor Joel Hunter to add missionaries and a church-planting effort to the ministry. Now, when surfers e-mail about how to start a church, Northland can respond with church-planting resources.

The partnership is a fit for Northland, which subscribes to the philosophy that a church is defined by its people and can be as small as three people gathered around a dinner table, said Dan Lacich, a minister at Northland. Some 10,000 people worship each Sundays at one of Northland’s multiple locations, including 1,000 online. 

“It’s another tool,” Lacich said. “What we’re hoping happens is that missionaries who are in field … will get encouragement and support from this ministry as we’re able to connect them with people who are near them.”

Technology now is at a point where Christian leader can track how many people worldwide are exposed to Christianity, and how many want to become Christians, Beeber said. It also is the first time missionaries can reach into dangerous countries and other hard-to-reach populations, such as teenagers here at home, without ever leaving their desks. What’s more, online outreach can be specialized to target a variety of groups, from members of the military to hurricane victims. 

One group of pastors handles especially difficult theological questions. Most missionaries respond within 24 hours, Beeber said.

“Absolutely, it’s the new frontier,” said Lee Rainie, director of the Pew Internet and American Life Project. “In advanced economies, the majority of people are online, and … they begin to think of the Internet as the default starting place for all kinds of information searches. 

“So, it’s not surprising that when people have spiritual questions or have concerns about the direction of their lives, a lot of them now sort of start their search for answers online.”

Maria Rodriguez, a Campus Crusade accountant who heard about the project around the office, said sharing the gospel is now akin to “going on a mission trip without stepping out of the house.” 

Rodriguez helps oversee the ministry’s Spanish speakers and enjoys developing online relationships with those who write in, including a woman from Peru who is moving to Canada but worries about leaving her mother, who is in poor health, behind.

“We go back and forth, praying for each other, praying for her mother and her decision,” said Rodriguez, 48. “Mostly people want to be heard. They want to tell their stories. … The family of God is so huge that we can reach others from such a distance.”

“If you know what hymns a congregation is most addicted to, you will be able to infer what, in Christianity, means most to that church.”

When the late hymnist Erik Routley wrote that in 1982, worship wars in the United States had reached fever pitch.

More than a quarter-century later, the clash—especially between advocates of hymns on the one hand and praise and worship choruses on the other—essentially has stalemated. While worshippers still maintain strong stylistic preferences, and often voice them aggressively, church musicians today seem to be focusing less on stylistic disagreements and more on content.

Even so, Routley’s words still ring true—and for good reason. Centuries after the first Christians crafted simple hymns to express their faith, music sung and heard in congregations continues to shape Christians’ theological outlook.

Solid content—undergirded by compatible music—is crucial, many church musicians insist.

In evaluating Christian choral music, music directors should ask, “Is the text of a particular (worship song) really worth remembering?” said Deborah Carlton Loftis, executive director of the Hymn Society in the United States and Canada. “Considering that repeating the words of many songs will plant the text deep in a congregation’s memory, is it worth it?”

Loftis, who also is visiting professor of church music at Baptist Theological Seminary at Richmond (Va.), is one of many contemporary musicians and composers prepared to “give a great deal of stylistic leeway, depending on the particular context,” while keeping a sharp eye on the message communicated.

“If the text communicates the gospel accurately, that would be a first step in passing muster,” said Loftis, who is helping to develop Celebrating Grace, a new hymnal to be released next year by Mercer University in Macon, Ga.

“If the words don’t communicate an accurate and true picture of the gospel, then that song is inappropriate.”

The waning—or at least diminishing—of the worship wars is due at least in part to the maturation of praise and chorus songs, some church musicians noted. While plenty of composers still churn out repetitive choruses with little staying power, others—like Keith Getty and Stuart Townend—are crafting careful texts with hymn-like musical structures.

“They (Getty and Townend) are writing contemporary hymns that sound like praise and chorus,” said Mark Hayes, a Kansas City, Mo., composer whose anthems are widely sung in churches across the country. “They … have four to five verses, are solidly theological but not in such a high poetic form that people can’t get at them.

“They’re not choruses that you repeat over and over. And they’re making their way into hymnals.”

Hayes, who studied music at Baylor University, said the mission of composers like Getty and Townend is “to bring back contemporary hymnody in a different way from, say, Fred Pratt Green,” a 20th-century British hymnist whose work often is sung in liturgical churches.

But the less polarized worship environment also can be attributed to the emergence of hymn writers influenced by Green—like Brian Wren and Thomas Troeger—in the last two decades of the 20th century, which reinvigorated traditional hymn forms. They attempted, Wren wrote, to “combine theological freshness and depth with simple language, to express people’s theology, and at times stretch or re-articulate it.”

Combining simple language, theological substance and poetic richness “is a challenging task,” said Tim Sharp, executive director of the Oklahoma City-based American Choral Directors Association, the national professional association of choral conductors and others in the choral music industry. “Hymns were meant to pack theology into a tight, memorable suitcase that Christians could take with them.”

Sharp, a graduate of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Ky., is struck by an irony.

“The great hymnists of the 19th century were always sort of apologetic about hymnody, because a hymn is one of the simplest musical compositions that exists,” he said.

“Actually, when you look at the profound nature of the text and the meters you realize it’s a complicated thing to write a good one, but they were always saying it was simple, was easily accessible to a congregation and the text was memorable in the way that the mind tracks it.

“It’s kind of scary that in the following century we had to get even more simple in praise and worship choruses.”

Worshippers want more than simplistic words, Sharp said, noting recent surveys indicate Americans are becoming more literate, not less. But worshippers still long for spiritual depth.

“I think congregations are more engaged than some composers assume,” he said. “I’m seeing in people a hunger for thought-provoking text work. A mantra doesn’t seem to be satisfying them.”

Hayes warns against music that undercuts the words.

“You really want to avoid an ‘entertainment’ quality, because if it goes too far with jazzy rhythms— and I’ve done this myself—then it gets in the way of connecting people with God,” he said. “The music overwhelms the text.

“That’s not to say that there aren’t times when you want to feel (in music) the full force of God’s majesty. But the style, groove, vibe—whatever you want to call it—can’t supersede what the words say. That kind of music doesn’t instruct.”

One way to test it? “Set those lyrics in strophic (stanza) form and accompany them with a pipe organ, and see what impact they have.”

University of Chicago Divinity School professor Frank Burch Brown recently highlighted the key connection between text and music with a paraphrase of the 23rd Psalm—set to the tune of “Rudolph, the Red-Nosed Reindeer.” Over several years, he tested his composition—called “I Know the Lord’s My Shepherd”—with church groups and seminary classes.”

It “has come as a surprise to me, and frankly something of a shock, to find that, with every passing year, a larger and larger proportion of the good Christian folk end up wanting to embrace both the words and the music of ‘I Know the Lord’s My Shepherd,’” Brown writes in Inclusive and Discerning: Navigating Worship Artfully, published earlier this year.

He attributes that to an increase of what he calls “irrepressible optimism—the sense that to acknowledge the deep darkness of the shadows or the possible starkness of death itself is to be fundamentally unfaithful; the sense that praise is the alpha and omega of worship, and that the only proper praise is happy praise.”

Sharp detects that “quick resolution and gentle emotional approaches are more popular than other kinds of religious experience,” and that theological inclination is reflected in the texts and tunes of many worship songs.

“I think that’s what divides us more than anything else,” Sharp said. “Some of us want mystery. Some want everything resolved.”

Worship songs written in a pop music genre lend themselves to texts with easy resolution, he said.

“I don’t want to put down pop music,” he added. “I love pop music. I celebrate anyone who can get a hook in a four-line thing and come up with something memorable. … But my relationship with God is one that I can’t always find easy answers for. And I would embrace that struggle.”

Finding a musical setting that undergirds the text and fits in a variety of worship styles is daunting but necessary, said Hayes.

“It’s really good for worship planners to think about the arc of people’s emotions in worship and how they are meeting and experiencing God,” he said.

Rather than ask what kinds of songs are appropriate in worship—choruses or hymns, for instance—it’s better to reflect on the function of songs, Loftis said.

“Songs can be seen as being on a spectrum, from sequential songs at one end to cyclical songs at the other,” she said, attributing the concept to Michael Hawn, professor of sacred music at Southern Methodist University in Dallas.

Sequential songs—many of which are traditional hymns—are linear, taking a theological concept and developing it in each stanza until the conclusion.

“They tend to be didactic. They teach something, explain something,” Loftis said. “They reflect on an idea and they’re pretty content heavy. You need to read it off a page because it’s not easily memorized.”

Cyclical songs tend to be “theme and variation”—few words, easily memorized, often repeated. “Spirituals sometimes fall into this category; so does Taize chant, as well as most praise and worship songs,” she said. “These songs allow the congregation to reflect on whatever it is they’re singing about, and they can do it with their hands free from holding a book.”

Thinking of a song’s function instead of category, Loftis said, might lead a worship planner in, for instance, a baptism service to offer a sequential hymn before the ordinance, explaining what baptism is, while following it with a cyclical song which would draw the congregation together while still focusing on the ceremony and without the need for written words on paper or screens.

“Being open and being humble about your choices is key,” said Hayes. “You have to realize you aren’t going to please everyone all the time. You have to ask: ‘Does it ring true? Does it ring true to the doctrines and faith that we want to instill in our churches?’”

WACO—Terry York is willing to bet that if he goes into a Baptist church, sits down and listens, he can tell—long before the preacher speaks—whether the congregation is theologically conservative or moderate.

The tip-off is in the tunes, said York, associate professor of Christian ministry and church music at Baylor University’s Truett Theological Seminary.

“It’s a little insider family secret—a signal, although it’s not foolproof,” York said. “The hymnal serves as a statement of faith. It matters, even if they don’t use it.”

Throughout their history, Baptists have resisted having a written creed or book of common prayer, said York, who has written hymns for Baptist hymnals and was project coordinator of the 1991 Baptist Hymnal.

“When Baptists get crosswise, they either have to admit they’re singing from the same statement of faith or go to different books,” York said. “You know they all want to sing ‘Amazing Grace,’ but it gets hairy after that.”

So, it’s significant an alternative songbook to the Baptist Hymnal— the first in recent history — will be published in 2010, York said. The songbook—Celebrating Grace—will be heavier on hymns than on praise choruses that have become popular in churches in the past several years.

Center and right Baptists in the 15-million-member denomination likely will use the Baptist Hymnal, put out by LifeWay Christian Resources in Nashville; center and left will probably use Celebrating Grace, produced by Mercer University in Atlanta, York predicted.

That’s because churches that are more conservative theologically generally are more liberal musically, with services heavy on praise choruses. Meanwhile, traditional hymns typically are staples in moderate congregations, York said.

Celebrating Grace

“It doesn’t compute, but the conservatives tend to be more populist, painting with a broader brush, wanting you to feel a certain thing,” said David Music, professor of church music and graduate program director of Baylor’s School of Music. “More moderate churches want you to leave thinking a certain way.

“Of course, you also can have very conservative congregations that, come heck or high water, are only going to use the good old hymns, the old gospels.”

Traditionally, hymns consist of stanzas in which the words vary but the music stays the same. They are sometimes punctuated by repetitive choruses in which words and music remain consistent.

Praise choruses, often projected on a screen rather than in a hymnal’s musical score, tend to be simpler and more repetitive.

Then there are modern worship songs, often including a solo. Because of the greater musical range and intricacy, they can be tough for worshippers, York said.

Despite the two hymnals’ varying emphases on musical styles, “they’ll have more in common than different,” he said. “‘Blessed Assurance’ and ‘Just As I Am’ show they are indeed still Baptists. The differences are over interpretation of doctrine, although some of the split is purely musical preference.”

Some hot-button theological debates—such as whether Scripture is inerrant and whether women should be ordained—will not be blatant in the hymnals.

“I don’t think you’ll find any that are pro or con inerrancy,” Music said. “And I can’t think of a single hymn that speaks of the ordination of women. You want to avoid partisanship, even if you’re aiming at a niche.”

What’s telling is how a song holds up over time. William May, dean of Baylor’s School of Music, said that throughout history, “when you engaged with God, it was an offering of your very best—best clothes, best attitude and even, in the Old Testament, the best animal you sacrificed.

“Today, the philosophical notion is that made it elitist,” he said. “Now we want everyone to be comfortable, visit with friends, get a cup of coffee. . . . But if I don’t know the tunes and I have to sit through five repetitions to learn, that’s just as elitist as people who said Bach in church was elitist.

“If the music in the church is only the slide on the wall that says, ‘God is awesome’ and ‘Jesus is cool,’ then some may be prepared to worship, but others, like me, may not be so moved.”

York said that hymns “keep on trucking. There have been challengers, like the praise choruses of the 1970s and 1980s, often played by younger generations who want to make current worship songs.

“Challengers usually fail,” York said. “But the best of those stick and get the name ‘hymn.’”

Examples include “Since Jesus Came into My Heart,” initially scorned for being too much like “dance music,” and “I Love You, Lord,” criticized for having too few words, too few chords and too much repetition.

Whatever Baptists believe church music should be, compiling a hymnal is a huge task.

Revisions of the Baptist Hymnal, with more than 600 songs, are done about every 15 years after massive surveys of church leaders and members about hymns they sing, hymns they do not and hymns they want to add.

Equally difficult was the task for Celebrating Grace. Those who selected hymns included pastors, theologians, music ministers, laity and professors of church music, said Music, one of five editors.

“We want it to be a practical book that people will actually use, but also challenging so people can grow into it, not out of it,” he said.

“I think hymns are more effective than almost any means of teaching Scripture. We’re more likely to remember words and concepts when they’re set to music. There’s a blend of emotion and passion, rhyme and meter with repetition.

“If a preacher preaches the same sermon repeatedly, the preacher is going to be looking for a new job. But people don’t mind singing a hymn again and again.”

‘Tweet’ prayers to Western Wall. People of all faiths can now send their prayers to the Western Wall, one of Judaism’s most sacred sites, by Twitter. Since the beginning of July, more than 1,000 people have sent tweets to Alon Nir, the Israeli who came up with the Wall Twitter initiative. Nir prints out every message and brings them to the wall, a remnant of the Jewish Temple. Many Jews and others believe their prayers will be answered if they are placed in the narrow cracks between the ancient stones. Twitter is just one of the ways believers can send their prayers. It also is possible to fax, e-mail and text-message to services based in Jerusalem. Jerusalem’s main post office also receives thousands of “snail-mailed” prayers every year that are hand-delivered to the wall. Nir reportedly is seeking a sponsor to help maintain the service.

Anglicans offers ‘hatch and match’ service. The Church of England has begun promoting a “two-for-one” service that allows cohabitating couples to combine a marriage ceremony with the baptism of their children born out of wedlock. Guidelines for the controversial “hatch and match” liturgy were distributed to the church’s 16,000 parishes recently. In Britain, new government figures show about 44 percent of children are being born to unmarried mothers. The Church of England said its own research found “one in five couples who come to church for a wedding already have children, together or from a previous relationship.” But in a report in The Times of London, Bishop John Broadhurst of Fulham appeared considerably less pleased, commenting sarcastically, “It is a pity they have not put in a funeral for grandma as well.”

Identity theft concerns trump religious exemption. A group of Hutterites in the Canadian province of Alberta have lost their bid to be issued special driver’s licenses without photographs. The Supreme Court of Canada ruled 4-3 to uphold provincial rules making a digital photo mandatory for all new licenses. Two Alberta Hutterite colonies had argued for an exemption for religious reasons, claiming that being photographed violates the Second Commandment, which prohibits graven images. Combating identity theft “is a pressing and important public goal,” Chief Justice Beverley McLachlin wrote for the majority, and trumps religious beliefs. The Hutterites, spiritual cousins of Mennonites and the Amish, are an Anabaptist Christian group that fled from Russia to the United States in the late 1800s and finally to Canada in 1918. Today, they number about 30,000 in Canada.

Bad time to be a Christian retailer. Attendance dropped by one-fifth at this year’s CBA—formerly Christian Booksellers Association—convention. Attendance of Christian retail professionals totaled 1,903, a drop of 20 percent from 2008 figures. International visitors at the Denver convention also dropped by 28 percent, to 534 attending from 56 countries. The organization also reported overall Christian retail sales plunged 10.75 percent from the previous year. During 2008, at least 91 stores closed, while 54 new ones opened.

WASHINGTON (ABP) — The head of the Interfaith Alliance has called for a new national discussion about marriage not as a religious institution but a civil right.

Welton Gaddy, president of the Interfaith Alliance and an ordained Baptist minister, says arguments about same-sex marriage that begin with religious viewpoints seldom change anyone's mind.

Gaddy, preaching pastor at Northminster Church in Monroe, La., says one way to move forward is to agree that America is governed by laws that treat everyone equally and not by religion.

Gaddy

"If government officials and religious leaders distinguished the differences between legal marriage and religious marriage, they could greatly reduce the amount of conflict in public discussions on same-gender marriage," Gaddy wrote in the "On Faith" blog in the Washington Post.

In a longer paper, Gaddy says the only marriages legally recognized in the United States are those based on a government-issued marriage license. He says any religious ritual performed by a minister to consecrate that union is irrelevant to whether the marriage is legal.

"To confuse the civil institution of marriage with a religious institution to be protected by the government is to seriously misunderstand marriage and its relationship to government in the United States," Gaddy writes. "Civil law determines the formation and dissolution of a marriage as well as the duties, responsibilities, rights and benefits of married people: rights related to property, insurance, inheritance, bankruptcy, social security and more; duties related to mutual support, payment of taxes and more; and a variety of privileges."

Gaddy says religious leaders already recognize that governance of marriage belongs to the state when they comply with state requirements for those who officiate at marriages — even those performed in a house of worship. Ministers also continue to look to the state to determine when a marriage is dissolved.

Gaddy says it is unnecessarily polarizing to inject words like "sanctity" and "sacred" into secular debate about marriage, because the government has no business in dictating what is holy.

Gaddy argues that gays and lesbians should have at least as much right to marry as people who are in prison. He says there are at least 1,138 statutory provisions available to people who can marry that are unavailable to same-sex couples who are denied marriage. They relate to matters including housing, employment practices, public accommodation and medical and pharmaceutical care.

Along with equal benefits, Gaddy says same-sex marriages should be afforded the same recognition and respect extended to marriage between a man and woman. He acknowledged that would be difficult for people who believe legalizing gay marriage will erode the stability of the home.

Third, Gaddy says, legalization of gay marriage should be done in a way that poses no threat to religious bodies that oppose it.

"At a minimum this guarantee must assure houses of worship that they will not have to offer rituals or blessings for marriages they do not condone," he says. "Consideration also must be given to the advisability of religious exemptions related to fair-housing laws, public accommodation laws, and employment laws to name only a few realms of challenge."

Gaddy says movement toward same-gender marriage could provide an opportunity for Americans to seriously reconsider the place of marriage in government and religion. He also says a marriage recognized in one state should also be recognized in every other state.

Gaddy says that he personally believes all citizens would be best served by the government getting completely out of the business of marriage. In that scenario the government would be responsible for issuing licenses for civil unions for any couple seeking a legal relationship. The matter of marriage would be left up to houses of worship. The danger of that, he admits, is that civil unions might be considered a status secondary to that of marriage.

Gaddy says his reason for writing the paper is to engage discussion among people who want to be "religiously faithful, politically responsible, socially compassionate, and appropriately influential as a patriotic citizen."

He says Interfaith Alliance "is eager to help facilitate such discussions."

–Bob Allen is senior writer for Associated Baptist Press.

DEARBORN, Mich. (ABP) — A legendary high school wrestling coach in Michigan has filed a federal lawsuit claiming he was fired by a Muslim principal for his Christian beliefs.

Gerald Marszalek, 64, accuses Dearborn schools and Principal Imad Fadlallah of violating his constitutional rights of free speech and free exercise of religion under the First Amendment and due process and equal protection under the 14th Amendment. He also claims religious discrimination and violation of civil rights under Michigan law.

Marszalek, a 35-year wrestling coach at Dearborn's Fordson High School and member of the Michigan High School Athletic Association Hall of Fame, says he was informed in 2008 that his coaching contract would not be renewed for another year. He claims that is because Fadlallah, a Muslim, was upset with his Christian beliefs and his close ties to an Assembly of God missionary controversial in Dearborn's large Muslim community.

Trey Hancock, pastor of Dearborn Assembly of God, was a volunteer assistant coach for the wrestling team until 2005, when Fadlallah ordered him fired after he baptized a Muslim student introduced to Christ at a non-school sanctioned and independent summer wrestling camp.

Hancock later complained in an e-mail that Fadallah had slapped a student during an ensuing controversy, but the Dearborn Public Schools Board of Education found him innocent. More than 200 concerned students and citizens showed up at the meeting to show their support for Fadlallah, the first Muslim principal at the school where more than 80 percent of students are of Arab descent.

The lawsuit says Fadlallah ordered Marszalek to keep Hancock away from the wrestling program. Marszalek says that was impossible, because Hancock's son was a member of the team who won a state championship this spring.

Fadlallah accused Hancock of using his access to the wrestling team to proselytize, a charge that both Marszalek and Hancock deny.

Hancock says in five years as an assistant coach, he never mixed religion and sports. He says the youth he baptized is a friend of his son and had been attending Dearborn Assembly two years before he joined the wrestling team.

Hancock, who is listed as a home missionary for "intercultural ministries" by the Assemblies of God Michigan District, is viewed with suspicion by critics in Dearborn's Muslim community who accuse him of using manipulative and overzealous evangelistic methods targeting youth.  Hancock's supporters say there is nothing sneaky about his practices, and everyone knew he was a minister before he volunteered to be a coach.

Christian Freedom International, a Michigan-based organization, said the controversy "reflects a growing hostility towards Christianity throughout the country, and not just among members of the growing Muslim population."

The Thomas Moore Law Center, which is handling Marszalek's lawsuit, said failure to renew the coach's contract had nothing to do with wrestling and everything to do with religion.

"We are getting a glimpse of what happens when Muslims who refuse to accept American values and principles gain political power in an American community," said Richard Thompson, president and chief counsel of the private firm that specializes in religious freedom for Christians and other issues related to "America's Christian heritage and moral values."

This isn't Hancock's first brush with local celebrity. In 2007 a Muslim father filed a lawsuit claiming that the state's Department of Human Services and Hancock's church were conspiring to prohibit his daughter from practicing Islam.

Hancock said it was part of a larger custody battle in a divorce case in which the girl's mother complained of abuse by her husband. He said it had nothing to do with coaching or the school.

According to the Arab-American News, supporters of Principal Fadlallah blame the controversy on a few staff members who want to drive him out of the school and "an outside group of Christian evangelizers who proudly boast about converting Muslim students."

–Bob Allen is senior writer for Associated Baptist Press.

When the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship held its general assembly recently in Houston, leaders documented a quiet shift that went almost unnoticed among the 2,000 people attending the annual meeting.

For the first time, participants from the theological schools that partner with the CBF outnumbered graduates of the six Southern Baptist Convention seminaries, which once provided the vast majority of church leaders for moderate Baptist churches in the South. Most of those schools are less than 20 years old.

At a meeting earlier this year, directors of the Baptist General Convention of Texas Executive Board heard a report that at spring commencent, Baylor University’s Truett Theological Seminary and Hardin-Simmons University’s Logsdon Sem-inary graduated more Texas students with master of divinity degrees than Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary.

The change points to what theological educators around the country maintain. The way congregations discover and train their ministers is in transition, and local churches are driving that change, particularly as they reclaim their role in calling out and mentoring potential church leaders.

“The whole question of the way we train ministers is under negotiation,” said Curtis Freeman, director of the Baptist House of Studies at Duke Divinity School in Durham, N.C. Ron Crawford, president of Baptist Theological Seminary at Richmond (Va.), agrees: “Theological training is going through a great transition.”

For churches, the question is critical. Many observers say the formulaic approach to seeking ministerial leadership—turning to graduates of a trusted pool of seminaries, with master of divinity degrees for small and medium-sized churches, doctor of philosophy degrees for “big steeple” churches—has broken down, in part because of changing expectations among congregations.

In the past 25 years, diminished denominational ties and the growth of movements such as the emerging church have created a demand for new kinds of ministers—and new ways to train them.

“We need a new type of theological education,” said Bruce Corley, president of the B.H. Carroll Theological Institute in Arlington. “We need a new generation of ministers trained in a church-based theological education that will bring academia and the people together.”

Statistics bear that out, Corley noted. There’s been a “sea change,” he says, in the age students begin seminary studies—35 years on average. Meanwhile, only 15 percent of Baptist pastors under the age of 35 have seminary degrees.

Not only are seminary students older; fewer of them are aiming for ministry in local churches. Only 25 percent of graduates of seminaries accredited by the Association of Theological Schools—the primary accrediting agency in the United States—enter local church ministry. In Baptist circles, the figure is 15 percent, Corley said.

“There are lots of ways to explain this,” Corley said. “Part of it has to do with crisis management in churches, burnout, dismissals, conflict—those sorts of things. But I also think the younger generation is on the cusp of a totally different way of learning. That’s where the training process needs a radical overhaul.”

Some churches aren’t waiting. Instead, they’re taking seminary graduates and mentoring them for one or two years, sometimes in conjunction with an established seminary program, often on their own.

Since 2002, Wilshire Baptist Church in Dallas has maintained a two-year pastoral residency program that has graduated 13 ministers. Funded in part by the Lilly Foundation, Wilshire’s program mentors four potential pastors at a time, each receiving a stipend of about $40,000 a year plus benefits, to provide “confidence and skills necessary to become effective pastors,” said George Mason, senior pastor at the church.

“The residents are part of our staff, but they don’t have a program assignment,” Mason said. “They participate in all kinds of things like hospital rotations and worship planning, preach on a regular basis and take Wednesday night prayer times. We largely teach them what is involved in the pastoral life, so that when they leave us and go to a senior pastorate, the goal is that nothing will surprise them. They know how to exegete a congregation, how to develop a budget, how to hire and fire staff, if they need to do that.”

For Andrew Daugherty, a graduate of the divinity school at Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, N.C., who spent two years at Wilshire, “The residency helped me gain confidence in and deepened the (ministry) skills I have.”

Daugherty now is pastor of Christ Church, a new Baptist congregation in Rockwall.

“It confirmed that, yes, I do have gifts and graces for ministry,” he said.

Daugherty said he also gained competence in ministry “blind spots.”

“The great gift of the residency was, the buck didn’t stop with me,” Daugherty said. “So, I had freedom to take risks and be more honest than if I had gone straight to a church (after graduation). I learned how to be gracious, how to be agile and to do it in a way that honored the people in the congregation—not steamrolling through the congregation because I think I’m the answer to all the problems. I learned confidence and humility in navigating the challenges of leadership in a church.”

A recurring question that guided his residency, Daugherty said, was: What if a pastor’s first church actually was his or her second church? Residency allowed him to “learn the ropes” in a safe environment.

“There are inevitably certain aspects of church leadership that you just can’t know,” he said. “We need to create an environment in which (potential ministers) can try new things in ministry without costing them a job.”

Wilshire’s residency program has shown results, Mason said, because “we are always working on what makes a successful senior pastor. Churches whose real goal is to get an inexpensive staff member don’t really have a pastoral residency program.”

Other necessary components of a successful residency program, Mason said, include:

•A healthy congregation. “No one wants to get into a conflicted situation. That’s not going to be a generative experience.”

•An established relationship between the church and its senior pastor. “A new pastor shouldn’t undertake it. Trust needs to have been built up.”

•Adequate resources. “It’s a fairly capital-intensive program. A lot of churches can do this—the question is, what financial resources are available? We pay a stipend that’s the equivalent of a public school teacher.”

In attempting to meet congregations’ leadership needs, some seminaries are diversifying their degree offerings. At the John Leland Center for Theological Studies in Washington, D.C.’s Northern Virginia suburbs, the master of arts in Christian leadership is attracting increasing numbers of students.

“The Association of Theological Schools says enrollment in the (traditional) master of divinity degree has been in decline,” said Mark Olson, Leland’s president. “The only seminary degree enrollments that are growing are other kinds of master’s degrees.”

Leland—which offers classes not only at its main Falls Church, Va., headquarters but also in Roanoke, Va., and Virginia’s coastal Hampton Roads area—maintains a core curriculum of theology, biblical studies and church history but is expanding training in practical ministry.

“We still think it’s important to have a biblical and theological foundation, but we do feel that students need a greater focus on how to lead,” Olson said. “A significant portion of ministry is not just head knowledge but how to move people in a particular direction, how to get people dedicated to a vision, to give generously, to encourage a congregation to, say, form a Bible study that draws people and welcomes newcomers. These all require a knowledge of leadership, as well as knowledge of the Bible.”

Modifying degree offerings in response to churches’ needs is crucial, said Freeman of Duke Divinity School. “I’m not sure every congregation needs an M.Div. pastor,” he said. “I definitely don’t think every ‘big steeple’ church needs a Ph.D. pastor.”

“Congregations need to be talking and thinking more about what they need for leadership,” Freeman said. “One of the things I think happened in our tight Baptist denominational system in the South is that the whole question of calling for ministry, of preparation for ministry, became institutionalized. It was something only done by seminaries. Local churches stepped out of that or they played a minor role.

“One thing I see happening is congregations taking back a more active role of deciding who is called to ministry—to put candidates in the life of ministry and test them out.”

By making classes more accessible, seminaries increasingly are enhancing that discernment process. Some—like Leland with multiple Virginia sites or B.H. Carroll with approximately 22 “teaching churches” scattered across Texas—are avoiding costly campuses in favor of leased or borrowed space.

Historically, “our investments have been in buildings and large campuses,” Corley said. “It’s going to be very difficult to justify campuses with the high cost of maintenance and personnel in relation to the cost of students.

“Right now, accessibility and affordability are the two biggest issues in theological education,” he added.

And for most seminaries, that inevitably will mean leaps into the digital world.

“The most popular form of higher education in this country is blended learning—face-to-face class time with support in the electronic world,” Corley said.

“Theological education needs a mix of both those things,” Freeman agreed. “Ideally, if you want to educate someone, actually form them, you need to have time with the student, one-on-one discussion times. But online education, when it’s mixed with face- to-face can be done very productively.

Crawford, of Baptist Theological Seminary at Richmond, is a recent convert to online learning.

“I wasn’t two years ago, but I am now,” he said. “I changed because I realized more and more can be done online and most seminary students are extremely comfortable with it. … The truth is, based on student evaluations, online classes are ranked higher than face-to-face ones. Part of that is probably because the students who choose online prefer to study online, so that’s right up their alley. But even so, it suggests that online education can be done as well as face-to-face.”

Online learning will help churches retain leaders they call out, rather than send them off to distant campuses. “One of our purposes is to call out ministers in their settings,” Corley said.

But, Crawford warns, churches should be careful not to trade convenience for quality. “In my mind, there is always going to need to be high quality in the training of ministers,” he said.

And while he acknowledges that free-standing theological institutions like BTSR will need “to work extra hard” in the future to survive, their success will depend on the extent that they maintain close links to the local church.

Mason agrees and believes churches can enhance the training done in the academy. “Frankly, we ask too much of seminaries,” he said. “We kind of lay all the blame at seminaries’ feet when they don’t prepare a pastor well enough to succeed.

“There was a time when pastors were always trained at the feet of other pastors. They lived in pastors’ studies and read their books and learned ministry that way. … Seminaries and divinity schools can do things better than churches when it comes to the intellectual aspect of training. … But the practical dimensions of ministry—exegeting a culture or a church, not a text—are better learned in practice and in a church setting.”

Resources

Association of Theological Schools

Center for Congregational Health

Lilly Endowment

Theological institutions
with a Baptist tie provide firm foundation

Baptist Seminary of Kentucky

Baptist Theological Seminary at Richmond

Baptist University of the Americas

Beeson Divinity School, Samford University

Baptist Studies Program, Brite Divinity School, Texas Christian University

B.H. Carroll Theological Institute

Campbell University Divinity School

Baptist Studies Program, Candler School of Theology, Emory University

Central Baptist Theological Seminary

Baptist House of Studies, Duke Divinity School, Duke University

George W. Truett Theological Seminary, Baylor University

Logsdon School of Theology, Hardin-Simmons University

John Leland Center for Theological Studies

M. Christopher White School of Divinity, Gardner Webb University

McAfee School of Theology, Mercer University

Palmer Theological Seminary, Eastern University

Wake Forest University Divinity School

Samuel DeWitt Proctor School of Theology, Virginia Union University

Southern Baptist Theological Seminary

Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary

Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary

New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary

Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary

Golden Gate Baptist Theological Seminary

CINCINNATI—By successfully balancing dual roles as a Christian musician and NFL player, Cincinnati Bengals’ tight-end Ben Utecht desires to spread the gospel by the example he sets on and off the field.

Whether he is on the gridiron in front of thousands of cheering fans or performing concerts, Utecht says his priority is to “play for an audience of One.” 

In 2007, Utecht helped lead the Indianapolis Colts to victory over the Chicago Bears in Super Bowl XLI. In 2008, he became a free agent and signed with the Bengals. 

“My primary identity is as a Christian, not a football player or musician,” Utecht said.

“In music and sports, the things people are doing become who they are. When people come to hear my testimony as a professional athlete, or see me as a musician, it is who I am as a believer in Christ that I want people to see.”

The son of a pastor, Utecht grew up singing songs in church but said he didn’t pursue music in college because of scheduling conflicts with athletics.

“Before my dad became a pastor, he was a music major in college. I grew up in a really musical family and also a very athletic family. That’s really where the two passions came from,” he said. 

“Most pastor’s kids get stereotyped one of two ways—you’re either going to follow in the faithful footsteps or you’re going to be the rebel. I was very fortunate that I saw the love of Christ in my parents’ relationship and became a Christian at a young age.”

Faith, family, football and music became central to Utecht early in life.

“It’s something that I took into college, and it’s really something that the Lord is continuing to bless today,” he said.

After being signed by the Indianapolis Colts, Utecht was asked to sing at several events in the area—which led him to pray about more opportunities.

“I started to pray, ‘Lord, if music is an avenue that you would like me to go into, I pray that you would open doors and bring people into my life.’ That was a huge part of the prayer—that people would come into my life to mentor, encourage and motivate me to take that step,” he said.

Within a couple of years, Utecht developed a friendship with Christian musicians Bill and Gloria Gaither, Sandi Patty and Jeremy Camp. “They’ve opened so many doors for me,” he said.

This spring, Utecht released his debut album. He wrote the lyrics and music for the majority of the album, and he also collaborated with songwriting friends.

“My inspiration for songs comes from life experiences and my testimony—going through different times of joy, trials and suffering,” Utecht explained.

“I want to be vulnerable in songwriting so people can see mistakes I’ve made, and they can learn from those mistakes and take wisdom from those experiences. 

“I want to be very open with my feelings and my heart, and that’s kind of what I pour into my music. By sharing these experiences in songs, my desire is for people to see how Christ shines through and how he is stronger than any obstacle or situation. 

“When I get a chance to perform concerts, it’s with the sole purpose and desire of drawing people closer to God. That is really exciting to me and fills me with emotions that I don’t get anywhere else. It’s so exciting for me to be on stage and really trying to create an environment where people can experience the heart of Jesus.

“Whether I’m on stage or on the field, my focus remains on playing for God and always remembering that his purpose is greater.

“I want to be a vessel that the Lord can use to impact hearts and bring people closer to him.”