Posted: 12/05/07

Study links video violence
to aggressive behavior

By Ken Camp

Managing Editor

Repeated exposure to video violence—particularly interactive games—influences aggressive behavior more than drug use, poverty or domestic abuse, a University of Michigan researcher has asserted.

In fact, the correlation between media violence and aggression is at least as strong as the link between exposure to second-hand smoke and lung cancer, said Brad Bushman, psychology professor and research associate in the university’s Institute for Social Research.

Bushman, who focuses on laboratory experiments to assess the immediate effects of exposure to media violence, is collaborating with social psychologist Rowell Huesmann, who examines the long-term impact of repeated exposure, in an ongoing major study funded by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control & Prevention and the National Institutes of Health.

Their findings so far point to a clear relationship between media violence and aggression.

“A high and steady diet of TV violence in early childhood increases the risk that both females and males from all social backgrounds will become violent, aggressive adults,” Huesmann said in a statement released by the research institute. “Media violence can affect any child from any family—not just those who are violence-prone.”

Huesmann based his conclusion on analysis of studies that have tracked 846 individuals from Columbia County, N.Y., and their children more than 40 years, examining the amount of violence the subjects viewed on television when they were young and what impact it had on their behavior later.

By the time men were in their early 20s, those who had been exposed to large doses of violent TV shows between ages 6 and 9 were twice as likely as other men to become physically aggressive with their spouses and three times more likely to be convicted of crime, Huesmann and his colleagues discovered.

Women who were heavy viewers of violent TV as children were four times as likely as other women to have punched, beaten or choked another adult, the researchers found.

But violent video games appear even more pernicious than televised violence, Bushman said.

“Playing video games—particularly first-person shooter games—may be much more dangerous than watching violent television shows or movies,” he said.

“Playing games is highly active, and it requires players to identify with violent characters. It also rewards aggression, and the amount of violence is almost continuous.”

Brain function changes when players become immersed in an aggressive video game, and it desensitizes chronic players to real-life violence, Bushman has demonstrated in the laboratory.

The “compelling and common sense study” underscores the message that video images cause violent images to become embedded in the imagination, said Suzii Paynter, director Texas Baptists’ moral concerns and public policy agency.

“Violence grows into a lens and a behavioral probability that is triggered whenever the imagination is triggered. Repetition builds the habit of expecting violence and the danger of finding it familiar so that violent acts are rationalized as normal. When violence becomes normal, it prevents us from seeing ourselves and others as God intends for us to see them,” said Paynter, director of the Baptist General Convention of Texas’ Christian Life Commission.

In an interview, Bushman offered several recommendations to parents:

• Restrict access. “Most doctors recommend no more than two hours of media per day, and that’s all kinds of media—TV, video games, computers or whatever,” he said.

• Block objectionable content. Use available parental blocks on media to prevent unsupervised children from gaining access to inappropriate content.

• Communicate. “Watch the programs or play the games with the kids, and then talk about it,” he said. “Unfortunately, only about 10 percent of parents do it. And that’s a pity. … Many parents use media as a babysitter, and it’s a pretty bad one.”

• Keep it in the open. “Move the media to a public location,” he suggested. “Don’t allow kids to have televisions or game consoles in their rooms. Keep them in public places where they are easier to monitor.”

• Teach decision-making skills. “Ultimately, it comes down to teaching kids to make good choices,” he said. “You can’t watch them all the time. But when they are at a friend’s house, it is hoped that their parents will have taught them how to make the right choices, whether they are with them or not.”

In addition to shielding impressionable children from violent images, parents can help children make wise choices by exposing them to alternative images—real-life examples of peace and love, Paynter added.

“As adults, we need to model self-control and moderation. We need to talk explicitly about the decisions that we make to be self-controlled in matters of violence,” Paynter said. “These decisions are often invisible to our children, but they can learn when we share just how and why we are making choices for non-violent responses to feelings of anger or fear. 

“Jesus’ examples and teaching about violence are very relevant to today’s game generation. Don’t wait to share these parts of the gospel until adolescence, but share Jesus’ example with children of all ages, showing Jesus’ strength in the face of temptation and evil.”

Posted: 12/07/07

Family Place helps mother leave fear behind

By Analiz González

Buckner International

MIDLAND—Ambra Riley spent the night in her daughters’ room holding her baby tightly in her arms. She put something over the doorknob so she’d know if her husband tried to enter.

Her husband may have stolen her self-esteem and robbed her family of happiness, but he would not take her son, she reasoned.

“He probably wanted him because he was a boy,” Riley said. “He was verbally abusive to my oldest daughter, always telling her she was fat and to get off the trampoline because she’d break it.”

Riley, now 27, spent two years hiding in her daughters’ bedroom before she finally left the abusive household. And when she did, her world changed.

“I don’t know why I didn’t do it earlier,” she said, with steady eye contact. “I guess I was trying to keep the family together. After I left (my husband) the first time, he told me I was going to hell for breaking up the family. I felt powerless, so I took him back.

“When we’d come back from church and turn the corner to come to our trailer home, the kids would be waiting to see if his truck was there. If it wasn’t, there would be this sigh of relief. If he was, they would zip their mouths and go straight to their bedrooms.”

Riley started attending nursing school in the fall of 2006, when she and her three children were still living with her husband. He didn’t like the idea of having a wife who was more educated than he was, and he refused to help support the family.

While she and the children survived on rice and beans, and the family dog went for days without eating, he’d come in sporting new clothes. Meanwhile, Riley was taking 15 hours of classes, caring for the children and working weekends and 12-hour night shifts at a nursing home. She made straight As that semester.

After leaving the abusive situation, she sought help at Buckner Family Place in Midland, Texas, where she’s lived for the past two months.

Family Place is a self-sufficiency program where single parents who are going to school can live with their children under a rental cost based on their family income.

Since Riley came to Family Place, she’s been inspired to pass on the blessing she’s received.

“I want to help people,” she said. “I don’t know what, but something amazing.”

“They’ve really helped me out a lot. This is a wonderful program. If you want it to work out for you, it definitely will. The means are there. I never had a bed so pretty. I had a mattress that I slept on the floor before this. They furnished the apartment and if we graduate, we get to take it with us.

“When I found Buckner, I was overwhelmed that I’d finally come to something that was going to help me.

“My oldest daughter used to have anxiety attacks because she thought my husband was going to kill me,” Riley said. “She’s having fewer breakdowns and they all feel good that Mommy isn’t stressed all the time.”

Riley credits God with giving her the strength to leave her husband and for guiding her to Family Place. Before she left him, she met a friend who was going to church. She contacted the pastor and attended that Sunday.

When the service ended, the pastor’s daughter asked Riley her name. When she told her, she asked if she had a sister named Ashley.

“Apparently, the pastor’s daughter had babysat for my sister and my sister had asked her to pray for me,” Riley said. “She told me she’d been praying for me for years.”

Since then, the Rileys have learned a lot about God’s concern for them and how God will fill the hole where her father used to be.

When Riley’s middle child was celebrating her birthday, she was scheduled to attend a supervised visit with her father. But she didn’t want to see him.

“She was crying, so we got on our knees and prayed together,” Riley said. “We asked God to find a way for her to not have to see him on her birthday. Then we drove there and she started crying when we pulled into the parking lot. Right when I parked the car, we got a call from the building and the visit was canceled. She started screaming. She turned to me and said, ‘Mama, God really does hear my prayers, huh?’

“That same day, the pastor’s daughter threw her a big birthday party with a theme of Disney princess. The whole wall was filled with presents. I could not have done that for her. God did that for her.”

Her son, now 3, used to feel bad that he didn’t have a father. But not anymore, she said, straightening up in her chair.

“Just because we don’t have a Dad doesn’t mean we’re crippled. For father’s day, my son made me all this stuff and said, ‘I am so thankful that you are my Mom and my Daddy, too.’”

And Riley has grown a lot since she and her husband parted.

“I don’t fear him anymore,” she said. “I don’t fear. If he wants to do something to me, I’m ready for him. … God has healed my mind. Now I know that I’m smart. I can learn. I can do this. I can take care of these kids. I don’t need a man in my life. … I can wear whatever I want. I can come and go as I please. I can go to church all I want. My oldest daughter doesn’t have to worry about the way she looks. I tell her every day that she’s beautiful.

“Sometimes we’ll drag my mattress out and we’ll all have a campout in the living room. All of us sleep together sometimes like we used to when I was with my husband. Back then we did it out of fear. Now, we do it because we want to.”

Posted: 12/07/07

Mission workers help bring clean
water, love of Christ to Ethiopia

By Carla Wynn Davis

Cooperative Baptist Fellowship

RIFT VALLEY, Ethiopia (ABP)— Nearly 75 percent of Ethiopians—about 55 million people—lack access to clean water. It’s a crisis not discussed often enough, according to missionary workers there.

Many Ethiopians drink from rivers in areas known for famine, malnutrition and cholera outbreaks.  That “silent tsunami” is responsible for the deaths of millions around the world each year, said David Harding, a field representative with the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship.

Needless to say, a rush of fresh, drinkable water brings a rush of joy to people in Ethiopia. Harding works to make that happen.

Harding, works with Living Water Ethiopia, a group that helps churches use simple techniques to bring clean water to the Rift Valley region. Since July 2006, they have drilled nearly 30 wells that provide hundreds of people with clean water. They also use seeds and sand filter techniques to clean water. 

A working well means no more trips to the muddy river to gather water and haul it home. It means less disease, more crops and less famine. It means more time with family and greater opportunity for education.

Access to water can transform communities and unite people, Harding said. During one of his trips to Africa, the Christian and Muslim communities worked together to drill a well. When the drill bit became lodged many feet underground, both faith communities joined hands and prayed for God to intervene. 

“It was probably the first time they did anything together,” Harding said. “Water has that draw. Everybody needs water, and the church was able to use the water to say: ‘We care about you. Access to safe water is a human right for all.’”

A child of missionaries, Harding was born in Ethiopia, and he lived there 10 years. Now based in Orlando, Fla., Harding travels to Ethiopia about four times a year.

He returns often because about half the wells in Africa no longer function, he said. Most are broken because they aren’t well-maintained, Harding said, so teaching people to care for the technology is essential.

“If improving access to safe water for a billion people in the world was simply a technical problem, it would have been solved long ago,” he said. “It’s a behavioral problem where people need to see the connections between water and disease and to feel empowered to do something about it.”

It costs Living Water Ethiopia about $2,500 to dig a well that services up to 400 people initially. As more wells are established in a community, wells typically serve 50 people and their livestock.

In short, training and maintenance can translate directly into less disease, more crops and less famine—true tranformation.

In addition to working in Ethiopia, Harding serves in other developing countries as the Fellowship’s coordinator for international disaster response.

Most years, the Hardings travel to a developing country to serve as a family. Harding’s wife, Merrie, a physical therapist, uses her skills through local clinics, and their three children—Dave, Leah and Merrie Grace—help dig wells or assist in orphanages. While in Orlando, the Hardings collect hats and dresses to distribute in Ethiopia and other countries.

“Working out of what Christ has done for us is a statement of care,” David said. “People want to know why, and it’s because we are first moved by God’s love for us.”

Posted: 12/04/07

Stem-cell breakthrough may
not end debate—at least for now

By Robert Marus

Associated Baptist Press

WASHINGTON (ABP)—Although many religious conservatives cheered the recent announcement of a breakthrough in stem-cell research, the moral controversy over the practice may not end any time soon.

The announcement—made by independent teams of scientists working in Japan and Wisconsin—holds the promise of cures for a host of debilitating and terminal diseases. Scientists have studied embryonic stem cells for more than a decade because of their potential to become any one of more than 200 types of tissues in the human body.

However, such stem-cell research has proven highly controversial because human embryos are destroyed in the process. In addition, some scientists have proposed cloning human embryos from patients with certain diseases. Such cloning would prevent rejection of any new tissues or organs grown from the stem cells and used for those patients.

Religious conservatives—and many non-religious bioethicists—find both prospects ethically troubling.

But the new research has the potential to render both moral quandaries moot because, for the first time, it reprograms adult cells to act in ways that are apparently identical to embryonic stem cells.

Shinya Yamanaka of Kyoto University and a team led by James Thomson at the University of Wisconsin conducted the research. Yamanaka’s research was published online in the journal Cell, and Thomson’s was published in Science.

Both teams used four genes to “reprogram” human skin cells, which essentially reverted to the stem-cell format of their ancestors.

Religious conservatives who consider embryonic stem-cell research tantamount to abortion and who oppose cloning were ecstatic at the announcement.

Dubious “experiments involving embryo cloning and embryo destruction are being rendered obsolete. Scientists can now work with ‘embryonic-like’ stem cells without ethical concerns,” wrote Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council, in an e-mail newsletter to supporters of the activist group.

The National Catholic Bioethics Center was more reserved in its praise for the study’s potential.

“Such strategies should continue to be pursued and strongly promoted, as they should help to steer the entire field of stem-cell research in a more explicitly ethical direction by circumventing the moral quagmire associated with destroying human embryos,” a statement from the Philadelphia-based group said.

“These strategies also circumvent a second series of moral objections by providing a method for obtaining patient-matched stem cells without cloning human embryos or using women's eggs.”

But some scientists—and politicians—have said the announcement doesn’t mean embryonic stem-cell research should cease immediately.

“Even though these announcements are momentous, until a reprogrammed panacea cell is used to make stem cells that actually function properly to repair a damaged nerve, spinal cord or heart, all avenues of research must be funded and pursued,” wrote Arthur Caplan, head of the Center for Bioethics at the University of Pennsylvania, in a column for MSNBC.com.

Caplan noted that the way the researchers reprogrammed the cells could make creating new tissues or injecting them into patients problematic. Yamanaka and Thomson’s gene-therapy technique, he wrote, “uses viruses to get the reprogramming done. Those who have worked with gene therapy know that retroviruses do not always put genetic material where it is supposed to go.”

Such misplaced genetic material can lead to unintended consequences. For instance, one study on mice with spinal-cord injuries noted that stem-cell therapy caused increased mobility but also significantly increased pain due to renewed and significant nerve growth.

Other such genetic misplacement can cause tumors to grow.

“This does not obviate the need for human embryonic stem-cell research," Story Landis, the head of the National Institutes of Health’s stem-cell task force, told the Los Angeles Times.

Researchers noted that they have yet to confirm whether the cells they created really are identical to embryonic stem cells. And Thomson cautioned that embryonic stem-cell research should continue.

Several members of Congress—Republicans and Democrats alike—who have supported federal funding for embryonic stem-cell research have announced that they would continue to push for such research. A bill to lift President Bush’s ban on embryonic research funding has passed Congress twice but failed to muster the necessary support to override Bush’s vetoes.

That’s the way it should stay, the Family Research Council’s Perkins said.

“Rather than accept the fact that these new reprogramming studies show tremendous promise for basic stem-cell research, politicians plan to push their embryo-killing legislation, even though they know they don't have the votes to override the president's veto,” he wrote in a newsletter. “It would be a shame if ideology trumped the latest science.”

Posted: 12/03/07

Veteran Baptist journalist
Roy Jennings dies at age 83

By Lonnie Wilkey

Tennessee Baptist & Reflector

GERMANTOWN, Tenn. (ABP)—Veteran Southern Baptist journalist Roy Jennings died Nov. 22. He was 83.

Jennings is best known in Southern Baptist circles for his work as news editor in the newsrooms at the annual meetings of the Southern Baptist Convention. He was also instrumental in helping Southern Baptist journalists gain the respect of their secular counterparts.

“Roy Jennings was the consummate news professional, a model citizen in his community, a loyal churchman, devoted to his family, and a personal friend whose memory I shall cherish all of my days,’ said W.C. Fields, the retired director of Baptist Press, the news division of the Southern Baptist Convention.

Fields said Jennings’ work as copy chief in the newsroom was well-known and respected.

“A reporter for the New York Times once told me that if it were not for his own sense of pride, he could take Roy’s twice-daily wrap-up stories on the SBC meeting and, without reading them, attach his own byline and put them in the Times,” Fields said.

Jennings earned a journalism degree from the University of Oklahoma. He began working shortly afterwards at The Commercial Appeal in Memphis, Tenn., where he covered police and federal courts before becoming the night city editor.

Jennings left The Commercial Appeal in 1959 to begin a career in Southern Baptist communications. He joined the staff of the former Southern Baptist Convention Brotherhood Commission in 1959. During his 22-year tenure with the Memphis-based agency, Jennings organized and directed an editorial department to prepare missions materials for 600,000 men and boys throughout the United States.

In 1981, Jennings began work to establish a communications program and public relations program at Baptist Memorial Hospital in Memphis. With the establishment of the Baptist Memorial Health Care System two years later, he added the public relations functions of the system to his duties.

Dan Martin, a former news editor for Baptist Press, said Jennings was a “solid professional” during the SBC’s turmoil in the 1970s and 1980s. He exemplified one of the reasons Southern Baptist journalism did so well during that period, Martin said.

Marv Knox, editor of the Baptist Standard, worked with Jennings as a reporter in the SBC newsroom and as feature editor with Baptist Press.

“One of the first things I think about Roy is that through his work in the newsroom he lifted the quality of Baptist journalism for at least two generations of reporters and editors,” Knox said.

Knox said Jennings demonstrated that Baptist journalists had the same quality and professional standards as journalists at major daily newspapers and wire services.

“Other journalists trusted and respected the work we did in the newsroom because they trusted and respected Roy’s professionalism,” Knox said.

Knox said Jennings was a good teacher, as well.

“He had very high standards, but he also worked with the newsroom staff with a great sense of grace and respect. People who worked with him learned a tremendous amount about journalism just by being around him and seeing how he edited their stories.”

Jennings was a president of the Memphis chapter of Public Relations Society of America and the Baptist Public Relations Association (now Baptist Communications Association).

He retired from the health-care system in 1989. Jennings is survived by his wife of 63 years, Marye, and a daughter, Gail Jennings of Roswell, Ga.

Posted: 12/03/07

Baptist pastor on hit list in Turkey

Washington, D.C. (BWA)–A Baptist pastor in Turkey has been placed on a death list.

Ertan Mesut Cevik, pastor of a Baptist church in Izmir, the modern name for biblical Smyrna, and Turkey’s third largest city by population, has received increased police protection after his name was found on a list carried by three suspected terrorists. The three, who are arrested, are suspected of planning wide scale attacks after a large cache of weapons was found in their possession.

Cevik has been under police protection since April 2007 after he hosted a funeral service for one of three Christians that was killed in Turkey on April 18. Two of the murder victims, Necati Aydin, 36, and Ugur Yuksel, 32, were Turks who converted from Islam to Christianity. The third man, Tillman Geske, 46, was a German citizen.

The Baptist pastor was also protected after he and the Baptist congregation were accused in a Turkish newspaper article, published after the three murders in April, of engaging in “coercive evangelism” by using money and drugs to attract young people. These charges were denied by the church.

Cevik was ordained by the Union of Evangelical Free Churches in Germany, a member body of the Baptist World Alliance (BWA). The Izmir congregation was founded in 2001 and is an associate member of the European Baptist Federation (EBF), one of six continental federations that are part of the BWA.

EBF General Secretary Tony Peck and General Secretary of the German Baptist union, Regina Claas, are appealing for prayer for Christians in Turkey and for the Baptist congregation in Izmir in particular.

Posted: 11/30/07

Need help understanding the Old
Testament? Ask an African Christian

By Hannah Elliott

Associated Baptist Press

SAN DIEGO (ABP)—African Christians tend to understand and appreciate the Old Testament far better than their Western counterparts, author Philip Jenkins told a group of evangelical scholars.

Jenkins, a professor of religious studies and history at Pennsylvania State University, spoke in San Diego to fellow members of the Evangelical Theological Society. His speech was one of several addresses and papers presented during the body’s 59th annual meeting.

Many ideas about Christianity that are most difficult to convey to a contemporary Western audience make intuitive sense to many indigenous African audiences, as well as some Asian audiences, Jenkins asserted.

Cultures that espouse tribal identities and are intimately acquainted with animal sacrifice, dietary restrictions, polygamy, sacred rocks and the like are well-equipped to read and identify with the Hebrew Bible’s stories, Jenkins said.

“Teaching people (in the developing world) to obey the Bible if it means the Old Testament is not difficult,” he said. “In fact, for many of the new Christians in the world today the big problem is … telling people that the old law must be made subordinate, must be treated as inferior, to the new law.”

In Africa, Jenkins continued, Western missionaries often must convince people the Old Testament is not the only or primary revelation of God’s work. If Martin Luther hated it, he joked, it goes down great in Africa.

In light of that cultural context, Jenkins said, the fundamental task of Christian believers should be to determine how much of the old religion has to be done away with in order to bring in the faith of Christ and to teach hearers to obey the things Jesus commanded.

On the up side, Jenkins said, African and Asian tribes easily recognize and understand aspects of the traditional religion of the Old Testament as shaping what they should practice in light of the New Testament. And they often understand those aspects better than Christians in the Western world.

The idea of atonement, for instance, is difficult to describe to someone who does not come from a culture that embraces animal sacrifice. But it is easy to talk of the sacrifice and atonement of Jesus with someone who understands sacrificial rituals as “a continuing reality,” he said.

Most evangelicals never have seen an animal sacrifice or even a harvest, Jenkins said. “Now imagine that ideas like this are part of the fabric of your mind!”

Another aspect of the New Testament that connects easily with many indigenous African and Asian cultures, he added, involves Jesus’ subversion of his society’s class markers. Just as in Jesus’ culture, one of the clearest markers of class is what—and with whom—wealthy or powerful people are allowed to eat.

Jesus’ inclination to share meals with low-caste people like prostitutes, or his tendency to touch or spend time with people that his society considered unclean, make him an even more striking figure in African and Asian cultures than in Western ones, Jenkins said.

“Look at so many of the passages that we are used to in the West and that we don’t even read any more and which are the most explosive,” Jenkins said.

“Look at the passages which carry the most weight for women’s groups reading the Bible in the global South. Think of the story of the woman with the issue of blood. Now imagine reading that story in a society that believes in blood contamination (and) that believes in blood impurity.”

After receiving the faith of Jesus, churches should “cauterize the culture” that has grown out of Christianity over the past two millennia and leave the core message, Jenkins concluded. But that is something, he said, the new Christian communities must do for themselves.

“It is not for outsiders, for Westerners, to tell rising African and Asian churches what to do in this regard,” Jenkins said. “The best example of teaching to obey is by teaching to read—teaching to think and absorb and make relevant.”

Posted: 11/30/07

Around the State

• E-mails of support for military personnel and their families are being collected for inclusion with Christmas cards and care packages to be sent to Iraq and Afghanistan during the holiday season. The e-mails can be sent to OperationEagle@comcast.net.

• Andy and Joan Horner have been named recipients of the 2007 Russell H. Perry Free Enterprise Award by Dallas Baptist University. Gov. Rick Perry was the keynote speaker, and Bo Pilgrim, founder and CEO of Pilgrim’s Pride, was the honorary chair of the dinner, which drew more than 1,200 in attendance. The Horners are the founders of the Premier Designs direct-sales jewelry company and are members of First Church in Dallas.

• The East Texas Baptist University Office of Alumni Relations presented its J. Wesley Smith Achievement Award to Lanny Loe, executive pastor of First Church in Jonesboro, Ga., in recognition of his mobilization of more than 20 percent of the church’s members in foreign missions projects. The W.T. Tardy Service Award was presented to Jim and Janet Palmer. He taught at the school 26 years, and the couple has supported the school with their time and financial gifts. The Alumni Achievement Award was presented to Tequecie Meek and Randy Pegues in recognition of their contributions to society. Bob and Carol Braly received the Unsung Hero Award for his work as a pastor and chaplain to law enforcement agencies in Louisiana and her support of his ministry. Bonnie Kay, the university’s oldest-living alumnus at 99 years of age, received the Sallie M. Duncan Life Enrichment Award.

• Priscilla Heard, a piano teacher and music educator, has been inducted into the University of Mary Hardin-Baylor music department’s hall of fame as its 30th Distinguished Musician.

• Lanny Hall, president of Howard Payne University, has been elected to serve on the board of directors of both the National Association of Independent Colleges and Universities and the Independent Colleges and Universities of Texas.

Anniversaries

• Gene Tone, 10th, as pastor of Cibolo Valley Church in Cibolo, Nov. 4.

• Schuyler Batson, 20th, as minister of music at Lakeside Church in Dallas, Nov. 11.

• Gene Horton, 40th as pastor of First Church in Rio Hondo and 55th in ministry, Jan. 2. A celebration of his ministry will be held Jan. 20 at 9:45 a.m.

• Spicewood Church in Spicewood, 100th, Jan. 12-13. The church also has scheduled other events throughout the year in celebration of the church’s centennial of service. Former members are encouraged to send their addresses to 7903 CR 404, Spicewood 78669 or e-mail swoodbap@zeecon.com. Bill Mc-Cormick is pastor.

• First Church in Sinton, 100th, April 6. Registration and coffee will begin at 9:30 a.m. A time of fellowship will follow the morning service. Former members are asked to contact the church at P.O. Box 1056, Sinton 78387 or e-mail fbc777@sbcglobal.net. Mack Caffey is pastor.

Deaths

• Jean Childre, 77, Nov. 18 in Garland. She was a charter member of South Garland Baptist Church in Garland and served on the Executive Board of the Baptist General Convention of Texas from 2002 to 2004. She was eligible to serve from 2005 until 2007, but she resigned in 2005 when the board was restructured to facilitate it moving to only 90 members. She is survived by her husband, Bart; son, Brad; and two grandchildren.

• James Coggin, 86, Nov. 27 in Fort Worth. He was pastor emeritus of Travis Avenue Baptist Church in Fort Worth. Other churches where he was pastor include Ridgeway Church in Memphis, Tenn.; First Church in Texarkana; First Church in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil; Rosen Heights Church in Fort Worth; North Euless Church in Euless; and Crowley Church in Crowley. He served on the Executive Board of the Baptist General Convention of Texas, was a trustee of Dallas Baptist University and twice served as chairman of Southwestern Seminary’s board of trustees. He was president of the Southern Baptist Pastors’ Conference in 1965 and vice president of the Southern Baptist Convention from 1972 to 1973. He is survived by his wife of 64 years, Carolyn; daughters, Olivia Eudaly; Lyn McDonald and Rebekah Hyde; sisters, Mabel Hill and Ada McDuffie; eight grandchildren; and 10 great-grandchildren.

Ordained

• Ken Ellzey to the ministry at First Church in Sour Lake.

• Martha Kate Hall to the ministry at Northside Church in Corsicana.

• Jeffrey Burns to the ministry at Heights Church in Temple.

• Kevin Fleming and John Purswell as deacons at Memorial Church in Baytown.

Posted: 11/30/07

Musical couple begins new
phase of ministry in Australia

By Jonathan Petty

Wayland Baptist University

PLAINVIEW—After three years in Australia performing Christian concerts, Clint and Jennifer Staj are spending the holidays state-side this year before starting work in January as youth ministers at an Australian Baptist church.

Three years ago, the Stajes—along with band members and fellow Wayland Baptist University alumni Greg and Sara Howle and Salem Posey—moved to Australia where they performed Christian concerts under the name Zuigia. About a year ago, the group members decided to go their separate ways.

Staj continues to travel and bring the gospel message to Australia’s young people through music. New doors of opportunity have opened since the band downsized.

“It has freed me up, and I get to travel more places because I can fly with the acoustic (guitar) now, and I don’t have to travel with the sound system and trailer,” he said.

With his newfound freedom, Staj has traveled farther inland, sung in maximum-security prisons and visited the island state of Tazmania. What he sees in these places is a lot of people hurting and searching for answers that he believes can only be answered through a personal relationship with Christ.

“Unfortunately, teenagers in Australia really relate to my background, being an atheist, a self-harmer and suicidal, and being hopeless,” Staj said.

“I get to see things that are pretty miraculous—people coming up to me and asking me if they can accept Christ because their life is where mine used to be, and they want their life to be where mine is now.”

Staj and his wife have started out on a new adventure of their own with the birth of their first child, Makarios—a Greek name meaning “happy and blessed.”

At 9 months old, she already has been an important part of her parents’ ministry.

“I have a picture of her that I take around a lot and show it at schools and the prisons,” he said.

“And the toughest, most hurting people who try to have this tough exterior—I guess a shell or a mask—just melt and even break when they see her picture. Then I play a song I have written about her and my own life, not having a dad, and it just breaks them in a good way.”

While the last three years have seen Zuigia’s ministry bless many lives around Australia, the unsure nature of what they do also has been a growing experience. While living in Australia on a religious worker’s visa, the group was not allowed to raise funds or work at paying jobs.

Jennifer Staj, who played on Wayland’s Flying Queens women’s basketball team in college, has played basketball for the national team and Sydney’s semi-professional basketball team, but for no pay. She and her husband both say living on faith has been a blessing.

“We have had to trust God,” she said. “When we don’t have the money or there is an issue that might arise, it is easy for us to say we’ll pray about this and God will give us direction, as opposed to stressing and worrying because we can’t do it on our own anyway.”

As their ministry and lives continue to evolve, the Stajes will start a new job after the first of the year as youth ministers at Cooma Baptist Church. He will continue his concert travel, as well as serve as chaplain for the local school. It is an opportunity that is wide open for the couple to share the gospel with people who have never heard, they agreed.

The Stajes hope to change their visa status in the near future. They will switch from religious worker visas that have to be renewed regularly, to permanent resident visas that will allow them to stay and work in Australia without restriction for the long term.

Posted: 11/30/07

Baptist bell-ringer tolls for
Episcopal weddings, funerals

By Roy Hoffman

Religion News Service

OBILE, Ala. (RNS)—Solemn and intent, Irene Raymond stands in the vestibule of All Saints Episcopal Church and clutches the rope that leads through a hole in the ceiling to a 1,500-pound bell.

Slowly, methodically, she puts the whole weight of her body into the first pull—gong. Then, as the bell swings the other way high above, she pulls down again, harder. Gong!

For more than 35 years, at ceremonies joyful or sad, it has been the task of Raymond, a Baptist, to send the clang of this giant bell through the sanctuary of this nearly century-old Episcopal church.

“It’s a great honor to ring the bell,” said Raymond, 68.

On Sundays, an All Saints usher rings the bell. But for weddings and funerals, Raymond, a great-grandmother, repeats her decades-long ritual of tugging the rope until the 40-inch-diameter bell resounds through the neighborhood.

“You can ring it real light, or you can ring it real hard,” she explained.

“At a wedding, I’m clanging, and they’re coming out joyful. They’re waving at me, and the lady’s in her wedding gown. I pull it a little harder. People tell me, ‘Irene, ring it good!’”

Raymond was taught to ring her bell by a master, she said. In 1966, when she was in her 20s, she found custodial work at All Saints, and was under the guidance of the sexton of that time, Carter Smith.

“I’d see him ring the bell,” she said. “I’d see him put on his white jacket.”

Eventually Raymond succeeded Smith as sexton, a position that entails opening and closing the church, keeping it clean, readying it for events and helping organize receptions.

On one occasion while Smith was still sexton, a church member died when Smith was scheduled to go out of town. She asked who would ring the bell.

“You,” Smith told her.

“I was very nervous about it,” she said.

When she saw the casket appear on that first occasion, she felt deeply stirred at taking part in her small way in the ceremony. She still feels that way when a funeral procession begins, she said.

“When they bring … (the casket) in, I ring it two or three times to let them know their loved one is coming up through the church,” she said.

She rings slowly—clong, clong, clong—counting five beats between each ring to keep it reverent. At the end of the funeral, as the family walks behind the casket, and outside to the hearse, “I start ringing the bell again. It’s the last time they’ll be coming out of the church.”

She rings the bell at least once for every year of the departed person’s life, but she will keep ringing, she explained, no matter how long the life span, until the mourners have driven away.

Mary Robert, assistant rector at All Saints, noted Raymond brings her own sense of spirituality to the ritual.

“Irene’s got everything to do with making it solemn for funerals,” she said.

For funerals, Raymond pulls on one rope, for weddings, another. Both coil up through the ceiling to the tower, one rope moving the bell’s clapper, the other rocking the entire bell. Moving only the clapper allows for a somber, shadowed tone that sets the mood for funerals. Moving the whole bell until it is swinging enables the clapper to bang against both sides, making for a brighter, faster peel that’s good for weddings.

For all the gravity of the funeral bell—“It’s a sad thing, a moaning sound,” Raymond said—the wedding bell, by contrast, is so joyous.

“I ring the bell when the bride is getting ready to come down the aisle. I ring ‘clanga, clanga, clanga’ for the wedding.”

Raymond, who plays no other musical instrument, rings the bell from the heart.

“I have rung for people’s weddings, and then their children’s weddings,” she said.

It will sound, she knows, for many more generations to come.

“Somebody,” she said philosophically, “is going to ring it after me.”

Roy Hoffman writes for The Press-Register in Mobile, Ala.

Posted: 11/30/07

Book Reviews

Higher Ground: A Call for Christian Civility by Russell Dilday (Smyth & Helwys)

Conflict is inevitable in any relationship. Unfortunately, most Christians are ill prepared to handle conflict in a Christ-like manner.

Russell Dilday provides an insightful option to how conflict can be addressed. He uses his personal experience in the Southern Baptist Convention controversy of the 1980s to call Christians to higher ground during times of conflict.

What are you reading that other Texas Baptists would find helpful? Send suggestions and reviews to books@baptiststandard.com.

The conflict and methods of conflict that occurred in the convention easily could have names changed and possible tactics changed, but the results and motives would remain the same as the conflicts that occur within local congregations. This book is a somber reminder that by taking the name of Christ as our own, we are called to a different standard.

Conflict cannot be avoided in life. This reality is faced, but the ways in which Christians engage in conflict will determine both the outcome of the conflict and the witness of Christ. It is against this standard that we are called neither to win the war at all costs nor to ask whether “the end justify the means”; instead, we are called to seek a resolution for our conflict based upon biblical standards and Christ’s example.

This great book is a must read that will challenge any reader in the standard of conflict that has been perpetuated in most Baptist churches. The reality is that we must take the words of Dilday and not only seek to comprehend them but seek to go to the “higher ground” ourselves through the application of the principles in this book.

Jeremy Johnston, pastor

Preston Highlands Baptist Church, Dallas

The Baptist River: Essays on Many Tributaries of a Diverse Tradition, edited by Glenn Jonas (Mercer University Press)

Glenn Jonas gives us a Baptist history book looking through the lens of the denominations growing out of early Baptist teachings. Different authors have sketched the history of their people and the core theological values guiding them—past, present and future.

Jonas begins his book of essays with the observation, “I would contend that over four centuries of Baptist history, the essential quality that identifies Baptists is diversity through dissent. … Baptists have always been a contentious, restless group of Christians.”

For those of us who sometimes despair at our inability to get along, Jonas believes contentiousness and dissent are core values from which we will not easily move away. With this formulation, I would wonder if we will always be a reflexive and reactionary people instead of pioneers and innovators.

The essays are well written and readable. They are informative without be-ing tedious. For those who wonder about the “other Baptists out there,” this book is a good place to begin.

Michael Chancellor, pastor

Crescent Heights Baptist Church, Abilene

Directionally Challenged: How to Find and Follow God’s Course for Your Life by Travis Collins (New Hope Publishers)

Travis Collins’ Directionally Challenged offers a compass of guidance mapped to finding and following God’s direction on the Christian journey. He shares stories from his life and ministry that illustrate broad principles related to finding and following God’s course.

The Richmond, Va., pastor and former missionary acknowledges finding God’s will perplexes young and mature Christians alike. Using the acrostic C-O-M-P-A-S-S, Collins explores seven “directional indicators” to help find “your calling.” He illustrates Constancy, Observation by others, Motive, Peculiar passions, Aptitudes, Seasoning and Sensible decision-making with Scripture and anecdotes.

Throughout the book, Collins manages to engage the reader with illustrations that evoke emotions ranging from lavish laughter and trembling tears to nods of affirmation.

Whether a seasoned veteran or a rookie Christian, the football official’s quick read provides a practical playbook for those like me who find themselves directionally challenged and need reassurance from time to time in how to find and follow God’s course for your life.

Kathy Robinson Hillman, former president

Woman’s Missionary Union of Texas, Waco

Posted: 11/30/07

Baptist Briefs

Florida Baptists adopt alcohol abstinence policy. Messengers to the Florida Baptist State Convention annual meeting overwhelmingly approved a bylaw revision requiring all trustee nominees to sign a pledge that they will abstain from drinking alcoholic beverages and using any other recreational drugs. The bylaw revision on alcohol abstention—proposed by the Florida State Board of Missions—passed with few dissenting votes. The abstinence provision resulted from a pledge announced by Executive Director John Sullivan at the Florida convention’s 2006 annual meeting. Reacting to a prolonged debate at the 2006 Southern Baptist Convention over the use of beverage alcohol, Sullivan said he was “embarrassed” by the protracted discussion and wanted to clarify Florida Baptists’ position on the issue. Messengers to the Southern Baptists of Texas Convention annual meeting passed a similar measure binding on its staff and elected officials.

Kentucky Baptists hear ‘troubling’ report on spiritual maturity. Messengers to the Kentucky Baptist Convention’s annual meeting heard a sobering report on the theological views of average Kentucky Baptists. Scott McConnell, associate director of LifeWay Christian Resources’ research department, presented findings from a study on the level of spiritual maturity and discipleship among Kentucky Baptists. Describing some of the findings as “troubling,” McConnell said only 49 percent of respondents disagreed with the “heretical statement” that “Christians must continually work toward their salvation or risk losing it” and only 45 percent disagreed with the statement that “if a person is sincerely seeking God, he or she can obtain eternal life through religions other than Christianity.”

Alabama Baptists adopt record budget. In a quiet annual meeting, messengers to the Alabama Baptist State adopted a record budget and re-elected their officers. Messengers adopted a base budget of $44,585,000 for next year. The total is a 1.5 percent increase over this year’s budget, with a challenge budget of $1 million more.

Administrator of Baptist communicators Association dies. Keith Beene, 40-year-old administrator of a professional society for Baptist communications professionals, died unexpectedly Nov. 16. The cause of death had not been determined. Beene worked part-time as the association’s only paid employee. The body is a professional-development organization for public-relations professionals, journalists and designers who work for Baptist organizations. Beene is survived by his wife, Ellen; a son, Erik, 9; and daughter, Miranda, 5.

Former SBC President Dehoney dies. Wayne Dehoney, president of the Southern Baptist Convention from 1964 to 1966, died Nov. 15 at a health and rehabilitation center in Louisville, Ky. He was 89. He was pastor of Walnut Street Baptist Church in Louisville, Ky., from 1967 to 1985. In addition to the SBC’s presidency, Dehoney served as a member of the SBC Executive Committee and the former Christian Life Commission; and as a trustee chairman at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville. He also served as a professor of evangelism and preaching at Southern Seminary. Dehoney was preceded in death by his wife, Lealice, on Oct. 23 of this year. He is survived by two daughters and a son, Rebecca Richardson, Katherine Evitts and William Dehoney; four grandchildren; and two great-grandchildren.