Baptist Briefs: Baptists minister in aftermath of Alabama shooting

Baptists reached out in Samson, Ala., a normally sleepy town marred by violence recently when 28-year-old Michael McLendon allegedly went on a 10-victim killing spree before turning a gun on himself. “For this small town to have that type of trauma, it’s devastating and overwhelming for people,” said Alisha Lewis, a counselor with Pathways Professional Counseling of the Alabama Baptist Children’s Homes & Family Ministries. In the hours and days after the shooting, Lewis made herself available to the community, offering counseling time to the local high school where one of the victims was a student and walking from local business to local business handing out her card. Two other representatives from the children’s homes—Church-relations Manager Steve Sellers and Regional Director Kim McGainey—also responded after the shootings, assisting First Baptist Church in Samson with a prayer service held for the broken community. Other churches in the area held services, planned prayerwalks and sought other ways to minister to grieving families.

Texas family foundation pledges $2 million for seminary chapel. Central Baptist Theological Seminary will be able to build a chapel on its new Shawnee, Kan., campus thanks to a $2 million gift from the John and Eula Mae Baugh Foundation of San Antonio. The family foundation pledged the money toward the seminary’s $8 million “Cultivating Excellence” campaign, bringing total pledges in the campaign to $6.2 million. The gift will fund Central’s proposed Baugh-Marshall Chapel. The building’s name follows Baugh Foundation practice in memorializing the charity’s founders and honoring the president of the institution to which the building is donated, in this case Central President Molly Marshall.

WMU sets annual meeting. “Change a Life, Change the World” is the theme of the national Woman’s Missionary Union Missions Celebration, June 21-22 at St. Matthews Baptist Church in Louisville, Ky. The event is scheduled prior to the Southern Baptist Convention annual meeting. The missions celebration includes worship, interactive breakout sessions, dialogue with international and North American field personnel and a Kentucky missions fair. Participants are being encouraged to help the Baptist Fellowship Center in Louisville by bringing school supplies and backpacks for underprivileged children served by the center. For more information, visit www.wmu.com/events/annual.

Spankings earn Baptist pastor battery conviction. A Chicago-area Baptist preacher avoided jail time after being found guilty of battery for spanking a girl he thought was lying about sexual abuse. Daryl P. Bujak, 33, was sentenced to a year of supervision, 80 hours of community service and $350 in fines after his conviction of two counts of misdemeanor battery at a two-day bench trial that ended March 18. A judge cleared him of another charge of failing to report sexual abuse. Police arrested Bujak in May 2006 for allegedly spanking a 12-year-old girl brought to him for counseling by parents who doubted her story that she was being sexually abused. Bujak is said to have beaten the girl with a piece of wooden molding hard enough to leave bruises and welts on her legs and buttocks. During the trial the girl, now 16, testified that spankings were a regular part of weekly meetings with her pastor beginning in March 2005 after she gave her mother a note containing vague allegations of sexual abuse. Bujak is former pastor of First Missionary Baptist Church in Elgin, Ill., an Independent Fundamental Baptist congregation.