DALLAS—In a ceremony filled with prayer and encouragement, the Baptist General Convention of Texas Executive Board installed Randel Everett as executive director May 19.

Texas Baptist leaders and family from across the state came together to pray over and encourage the new executive director and his wife, Sheila.

Their son, Jeremy, and daughter, Rachel, encouraged their father to remain true to the principles he showed raising them—honesty, fairness, humor and an ability to lead.

Bruce Webb, pastor of First Baptist Church in The Woodlands, encouraged Everett to remain faithful to who he is and to his God. Everett hired him on the staff of University Baptist Church in Fort Worth when Webb was a student at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary.

“I think Christianity in some ways is defined by how you treat people who have nothing to give you back,” Webb said. “I can tell you Sheila and Randel treated me with kindness when I had nothing to offer them back.”

Mary Carpenter, former missionary to Albania and Christian studies professor at Howard Payne University, praised the Everetts as people of action.

“These are not people who say ‘This needs to happen.’ They say, ‘This needs to happen, and let’s do it.’“

Staying true to Carpenter’s words, Everett challenged Texas Baptists to give every person in their state an opportunity to respond to the gospel by Easter 2010 and to feed the hungry throughout the state.

By working together, Texas Baptists—who make up 10 percent of the population—can have a powerful impact in the name of Christ, he stressed. Concentrated Baptist outreach could transform the state, he insisted.

“Let’s make sure people in our state have enough to eat,” he said. “And make sure everyone has an opportunity to respond to the hope of Christ.”

By giving people the opportunity to respond to the gospel, Texas Baptists are giving individuals opportunities to change their lives, Everett said. Texans are seeking answers to life’s most profound questions. They are looking for the positive in what for many seems to be a grim and meaningless existence.

“There are millions of people living in Texas who have yet to understand the hope of Christ,” he said.

WICHITA FALLS—Baldemar Borrego will seek a third term as president of the Hispanic Baptist Convention of Texas when it meets in Wichita Falls June 22-24.

Borrego decided to run for another term “after praying to seek God’s direction in my life and in the life of our Hispanic Baptist Convention of Texas,” he said. He also considered the encouragement of “so many calls and e-mails from a lot of people” who asked him to continue, he added.

If re-elected, he will focus on strengthening the convention, which is the Hispanic affiliate of the Baptist General Convention of Texas, he said.

“There are things that still need to be fulfilled,” he stressed. “I look forward to continuing to promote unity and dignity among all leaders in the state of Texas. I recognize the convention is not yet in the position we need to be, but we are in a better position than we used to be. …

“The better is about to come, if we have the opportunity to start the implementation process in evangelism and missions that will turn upside down the state of Texas with the gospel of Christ.”

Borrego described his leadership style as “transparent and genuine.” He thanked messengers to last year’s Hispanic Baptist Convention annual meeting for re-electing the entire slate of officers, which now have worked together two years. That decision provided the convention with continuity to face its challenges and achieve its goals, he noted.

He asked Texas Baptists to pray for the Hispanic Baptist Convention and pleaded with his fellow Hispanic Baptists to attend the convention’s annual meeting this summer.

“Please come and join us, and bring your family and congregation,” he said. “You will not regret that you did.”

Hispanic Baptist Convention leaders hope their 2008 annual meeting will set an attendance record, with 5,000 participants, he said.

Borrego is pastor of Nueva Esperanza Baptist Church in Wichita Falls. He is a former first vice president of the Hispanic Baptist Convention and member of its strategic planning committee. He also has been president of the Hispanic Ministers’ Conference and has been a minister more than 30 years.

He has been host of a radio program, “Jesus is the Answer,” and is a member of the American Association of Christian Counselors.

INDIANAPOLIS (ABP)—Candidates are lining up two-by-two for this year’s Southern Baptist Convention presidency, like animals filing into Noah’s Ark—two big-church pastors, two small-church pastors, two former missionaries.

For the first time in almost three decades, six men will be nominated for the presidency of the Southern Baptist Convention, to be held June 10-11 in Indianapolis.

Avery Willis

Not since the first year of the SBC’s fundamentalist movement in 1979 have six nominees been offered for the annual presidential election, which for the subsequent 12 years was a showdown between two warring factions and later was dominated by the victorious conservatives.

In their first victory in that succession, fundamentalists nominated one candidate—Memphis megachurch pastor Adrian Rogers—against five moderate or local candidates.

This year, all six candidates support the three-decade-long movement.

Nature of election has changed

But the nature of the election has changed, said Oklahoma pastor and prominent Baptist blogger Wade Burleson.

“In the past, the presidency was all about prestige,” Burleson said. “If you had prestige, were a megachurch pastor, and waited your turn, you could be elected. Those days are over.”

• Two of the 2008 candidates fit the mold of most presidents since 1979—well-known megachurch pastors, although in recent years the megachurches have gotten smaller and the pastors less famous.

In this case, both are from metro Atlanta. Frank Cox, pastor of North Metro Baptist Church in Lawrenceville, Ga., and Johnny Hunt, senior pastor of First Baptist Church in Woodstock, Ga., are both closely associated with the SBC’s power structure. Cox and Hunt were on trips to Israel and unavailable for comment for this story.

• Two candidates are small-church pastors who would qualify as SBC outsiders and—if history is a guide—long-shots for the presidency. Wiley Drake is pastor of the 75-member First Southern Baptist Church in Buena Park, Calif. Les Puryear, a North Carolina native who was a telecommunications executive for 25 years before entering the pastorate in 1996, serves Lewisville (N.C.) Baptist Church, with an average attendance of 195.

William Wagner

Wiley Drake

Both Drake and Puryear are better known than most small-church pastors. Drake served as SBC second vice president and is a mainstay at the annual meeting, proposing the famous boycott of Disney because of questionable programming and support of gay rights. Puryear was organizer of the SBC’s first Small Church Leadership Conference in March.

• Two candidates were career Southern Baptist missionaries. Bill Wagner, a 72-year-old seminary professor and current president of Olivet University International in San Francisco, served the SBC International Mission Board from 1965 to 1996. Avery Willis, former senior vice president of overseas operations for the IMB and author of the popular MasterLife discipleship curriculum, served 15 years as head of adult discipleship for LifeWay Christian Resources before retiring to Arkansas.

Like Drake, Wagner served as SBC second vice president, in 2004.

The unusual election this year is being played out against a backdrop of decline in the country’s second-largest religious group. For the first time in history, the 16 million-member Southern Baptist Convention posted a decline in membership last year, after several years of baptism losses and other signs of slumping vitality.

The statistics belie the battle cry of conservatives, that seizing control of the denominational hierarchy would prevent a slide into liberal-inspired lethargy, the graveyard of mainline denominations.

Less concern about control?

The abundant field of candidates—and their less-than-obvious political alignment—has prompted speculation that Southern Baptist conservatives are now so comfortable with their hold on the convention that they are less concerned about who holds the powerful office, which was the centerpiece of the strategy used to steer the SBC onto a rightward course.

Frank Cox

Les Puryear

Another interpretation, however, suggests that the convention’s powerbrokers are promoting a more-the-merrier strategy in hopes of assuring at least one sympathetic candidate makes it into a runoff.

Burleson, a leader among younger SBC conservatives, took the less cynical interpretation, welcoming the burgeoning field.

“I think it’s healthy when there are a lot of different candidates,” said the pastor of Emmanuel Baptist Church in Enid. He said there are “good choices” among the six announced candidates.

And he hinted the field may grow even larger. “When was the last time there were six, maybe seven, maybe eight candidates for president?” he asked. “There is a possibility [of more nominees], but it’s not for certain.”

The presidential winner will succeed South Carolina pastor Frank Page, who was elected with help from Burleson and other bloggers who advocated relaxing denominational control and spreading leadership around. Their goal is to broaden SBC involvement, innovation and inclusiveness in order to increase cooperation and turn around declining statistics.

The issues

“The issue is no longer who is president, but what are the issues?” Burleson continued. The issues are denominational cooperation, local-church autonomy and “resurgence of the gospel,” said Burleson.

The pastor promised there would be motions introduced at the June convention related to those issues—“either to stop progress or move it along.”

Burleson did not announce his favorite among the six nominees but said electing a small-church pastor “would represent a voice in the SBC that has not been heard.”

Puryear is an advocate for the SBC’s helping small churches, which he said represent 83 percent of the convention’s churches.

“Historically, the SBC has been a convention of small churches led by megachurch leaders,” he said in an e-mail interview. “I have nothing against those in megachurches. However, I don't think they understand the needs of the small church and its members and leaders as well as someone who ministers in that environment each day.”

Smaller churches being heard

Puryear admitted small-church pastors have not fared well in previous presidential elections. “I do know that now more than ever before I am hearing the small church included in convention discussions,” he said.

Puryear likewise welcomed the multitude of nominees. And he added, “Indianapolis will reveal whether the election of Frank Page was a true shift in the SBC or just a bump in the road for the establishment.”

In what has to be a first in SBC history, one candidate interviewed another about the SBC election on live radio May 15.

Drake, who hosts a daily radio show in Southern California that is also webcast on the Internet, interviewed fellow Californian Wagner.

The interview focused more on the candidates’ agreements than differences, and Drake pledged to support Wagner if the mission leader is elected. Wagner said the SBC should develop a program to recruit and send out college students for two-year stints as missionaries, with the individuals, their families and their churches supporting them financially.

He also advocated creating a convention department to relate to the secular media. Baptist Press, the denomination’s information arm, “does an outstanding job” of communicating with Southern Baptists but “a miserable job” with secular media, Wagner said.

“There is no apparatus to let people know who we are and the tremendous things we’re doing,” Wagner said, to Drake’s “amens.” Wagner, who has a website promoting his candidacy, added Southern Baptists are “behind on using the Internet.”

At the interview’s conclusion, Drake said of Wagner: “I agree with his presidential platform and will do everything I can to assist him … if he is elected.”

"Contract with Southern Baptists"

Wagner, on his website (www.williamwagner.org ), offers a “Contract with Southern Baptists” that advocates the “conservative resurgence,” expanding SBC involvement to include all conservatives, supporting the SBC mission boards, learning about world religions, deploying college students in missions, rebuilding relationships with national Baptist unions around the world, and involving younger Baptists, small churches and minority churches in SBC life.

Drake is emphasizing the spiritual dimension of his presidency, promising to promote “repentance and revival” in SBC churches and in America and to lead Southern Baptists to increase denominational cooperation and influence the social order – particularly as it concerns government “intimidation” of preachers.

“Win, lose or draw, I’m going to take on” the American Civil Liberties Union, he pledged in an interview.

Drake, who supported Page’s election, said he is “one of the few candidates who can make changes” needed in the SBC. “If we don’t make those changes, we’re going to be in deep, deep trouble.”

Avery Willis, who also promotes his candidacy on a website (www.averywillis.com ), said his presidency will stress the spiritual needs of Southern Baptists.

“The thing I see missing most in the churches I visit is God,” he said.

If elected, he would “talk about whatever it means to be a disciple,” said the longtime proponent of personal discipleship. Denominational emphasis on revival and evangelism is important, he said, “but it’s not going to turn around the situation of 70 percent of our churches being stagnant or declining.”

“I will be calling for a spiritual returning to God on a personal level and a congregational level.”

WASHINGTON (ABP)—While China has accepted a very limited number of foreign-aid workers in the wake of the disastrous earthquake that devastated much of Sichuan province, Baptists and other Christians from the United States already were situated to help.

According to the latest published reports, the quake had claimed nearly 20,000 lives—a toll that could go as high as 50,000.

At least 10,000 people were buried beneath debris in Mianyang, a city near the quake’s epicenter. Bill and Michelle Cayard, Cooperative Baptist Fellowship representatives in China, had just started a partnership with a laity training center in that city, according to CBF officials. The workers also have connections with pastors in Dujiangyan, another city severely damaged.

Southern Baptist Convention relief workers also are in touch with partners in central China to assess needs.

“We have been in contact with partners in the country and have offered help,” said Jeff Palmer, executive director of Baptist Global Response . “Assessments are being made as to what the response should be.”

Franklin Graham, son of famed evangelist Billy Graham and head of the Samaritan’s Purse Christian aid organization, was already on a 10-day trip to China when the massive temblor struck. He met May 13 with officers of China’s government-sanctioned Protestant organization, representing thousands of officially registered churches across the country.

“We want to do anything we can to assist with this crisis so we are committing these funds for initial support of the local church as they assist with the relief efforts,” Graham said, according to a Samaritan’s Purse press release. “I've been impressed with the effective and immediate response of the Chinese government and how they’ve responded to this devastating earthquake. Each day I’m here in China I am meeting with officials to assess the need and offer our assistance.”

The organization has already committed $1 million to assist with the immediate response. Following their meeting in Shanghai, China Christian Council President Gao Feng thanked Samaritan’s Purse for the help.

“This donation is very important to the people of China because it shows the love of God for all people,” Gao said, according to the release. “This will encourage more Chinese people to do the same and to reach out to their neighbors in need. Franklin Graham's visit is bringing us much more understanding and encouragement for each other.”

CBF committed an initial $5,000 toward meeting immediate needs for water, food and tents in Jiangyou, another small city in the earthquake zone. Its only officially recognized church building was destroyed by the quake.

“That was the only registered church building in a city of over 100,000,” Michelle Cayard said. “The pastor there urgently requested tents, as people are sleeping outside without shelter and it has been raining now for almost 24 hours.”

“Though this is a small effort, it encourages those facing such a difficult time and provides a witness to the community,” Cayard said. “After immediate needs are met, we will work with local partners to identify longer-term needs.”

With additional information from Baptist Press

SAN FRANCISCO (ABP)— California Supreme Court justices overturned a statewide ban on same-sex marriages.

The decision paves the way for the Golden State to become the second jurisdiction in the union with fully legalized gay marriage. However, it likely will have little effect, legally speaking, on same-sex couples in the state, which already offers such couples domestic partnerships with rights and obligations virtually identical to those provided by marriage.

Nonetheless, the court’s majority decided that denying the use of the term “marriage” to such couples violates their rights under the state’s charter.

“The question we must address is whether, under these circumstances, the failure to designate the official relationship of same-sex couples as marriage violates the California Constitution,” said the court’s majority opinion, written by Chief Justice Ronald George.

Interracial marriage ban struck down in 1948

The majority referred to the court’s historic 1948 Perez v. Sharp ruling, which similarly said a California ban on interracial marriage violated the state constitution’s equal-protection provisions—even though such a ban had existed since California’s founding.

It was the first state high court in the United States to issue a ruling on interracial marriage, and it predated by nearly two decades the U.S. Supreme Court’s 1967 Loving v. Virginia decision overturning such anti-miscegenation laws nationwide.

The Perez decision, the current California court’s majority said, “makes clear that history alone is not invariably an appropriate guide for determining the meaning and scope of this fundamental constitutional guarantee. The decision in Perez, although rendered by a deeply divided court, is a judicial opinion whose legitimacy and constitutional soundness are by now universally recognized.”

The ruling overturns a 2000 statewide ballot initiative, called Proposition 22 , that defined marriage exclusively in heterosexual terms. It passed with 61 percent of the vote. But recent polls have suggested opinions are quickly changing in favor of gay marriage in California.

Justice Marvin Baxter, in a dissenting opinion, said the court’s majority was not justified in overruling the proposition.

“Nothing in our Constitution, express or implicit, compels the majority’s startling conclusion that the age-old understanding of marriage—an understanding recently confirmed by an initiative law—is no longer valid,” he wrote. “California statutes already recognize same-sex unions and grant them all the substantive legal rights this state can bestow. If there is to be a further sea change in the social and legal understanding of marriage itself, that evolution should occur by similar democratic means.”

San Francisco 2004 gay marriages

The case stemmed from 2004, when San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom and other city officials began performing same-sex marriages despite the Proposition 22 ban. Hundreds of couples were wed before the California Supreme Court stepped in to halt the marriages.

The justices, six appointed by Republican governors, found that Newsom had overstepped his authority. They put a halt to the marriages, invalidating the ones that already had taken place.

Gay couples married under his edict sued, first challenging the state law banning same-sex marriage, then challenging the new state law that created domestic partnerships. They were joined by gay-rights and civil-liberties groups. The court consolidated several cases that dealt with the constitutionality of the two-tiered scheme of marriage and domestic partnership.

Conservative groups in the state have vowed to push harder for an amendment that is likely to appear on the November ballot to reinstitute the marriage ban. Since it would be a constitutional amendment, it would invalidate the court’s ruling.

“The voters realize that defining marriage as one man and one woman is important because the government should not, by design, deny a child both a mother and father,” said a statement from Glen Lavy, a senior counsel for the conservative Alliance Defense Fund, who argued the case before the court.

Marriage "not safe from tampering"

“The court’s decision clearly demonstrates that marriage is not ultimately safe from tampering by activists and others in government until the voters have amended the constitution.”

The organization will ask the court to stay their decision—slated to take effect in a month —until after the election.

But Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger (R), who vetoed legislative attempts to legalize same-sex marriage twice in as many years, said May 15 he would uphold and enforce the latest decision. He has previously said he would oppose the proposed constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage permanently.

The case is City and County of San Francisco v. California.

DALLAS—A search committee will recommend to the Baptist General Convention of Texas Executive Board that Jill Larsen be elected treasurer/chief financial officer, according to Randel Everett, BGCT executive director.

Larsen, a certified public accountant and member of The Heights Baptist Church in Richardson, has served as controller/assistant treasurer for the BGCT since July 2004. If elected, she will become treasurer June 1.

The board was notified by e-mail Wednesday, May 14, and will consider the recommendation during its May 19-20 meeting in Dallas. If elected, Larsen will succeed David Nabors, who resigned from the post effective April 15.

“We had interviews with other excellent candidates, but it was clear to us that Jill had the skills, the experience and the relationship with the BGCT that equipped her to lead us in this strategic role,” Everett said.

“Jill’s heart for the Lord and her commitment to the local church, where she teaches Sunday school, fuels her passion for us to be good stewards of the resources entrusted to us.”

Treasurer is one of three positions called for by the BGCT Constitution. The treasurer reports to the executive director of the BGCT Executive Board. The treasurer also serves as recording secretary, which is a convention officer position.

The search committee includes Everett; board Executive Board Chair John Petty, board Vice Chair Steve Dominy, BGCT President Joy Fenner; and board members Elizabeth Hanna, Harold Richardson and Fred Roach.

As BGCT controller, Larsen directed accounting, budgeting and reporting for the 42 departments and more than 300 employees of the BGCT Executive Board. She also supervised a major software conversion for handling the BGCT’s finances.

Prior to joining the BGCT Executive Board staff, Larsen worked in Oklahoma with Deloitte Consulting Outsourcing, VIP Sales Co. and PennWell. Prior to her move north, she worked with the Southern Baptist Annuity Board (now GuideStone Financial Resources) 1994 to 2000, where in her final position she led the agency’s largest operational department.

Larsen is a summa cum laude graduate of Midwestern State University in Wichita Falls, and she teaches an adult Bible study class at her church. She and her husband, Kent, have two children, Phillip, 25, and Mark, 18.

SAN ANGELO—Alan Wilson of Templeton Construction didn’t like the idea of destroying new shoes. So, when he was given the job of taking shoes out of the tornado-wrecked R.G. Barry Corporation distribution center to the city dump, he became the first in a series of heroes to help bring 180,000 pairs of shoes to needy children.

Due to insurance regulations, the shoes were declared unavailable for sale or in-country distribution after a tornado hit the warehouse. When Wilson was asked to dispose of the undamaged shoes, he decided to seek out charity organizations instead. He ended up at a military base, where he met Carmen Nila, who remembered the Shoes of Orphan Souls collection drive last year at her church—PaulAnn Baptist in San Angelo.

“If Alan Wilson hadn’t made contact with Carmen Nila, and if PaulAnn Baptist Church hadn’t done a shoe drive the year before, and if the tornado never even hit… well, then we wouldn’t be here today,” said Rachel Garton, director of Shoes for Orphan Souls, a ministry of Buckner International.

“There are a lot of heroes in this story. A lot of people came together to make this donation happen. And a lot of kids will benefit because of it.”

Greg Tunney, president and chief executive officer at R.G. Barry Corporation, said his company regularly works with footwear-based charities including Soles for Souls and the Two Ten Foundation.

“But the aftermath of the San Angelo tornado was an unusual situation,” Tunney said. “Our insurance called for all products damaged in the tornado to be destroyed to prevent possible resale.

“Fortunately, they agreed to let us to donate these shoes and slippers to the Shoes for Orphan Souls organization rather than sending them to the landfill. We could not be happier.”

Samantha Batten, 26, called the R.G. Barry donation a “God thing.”

Batten, a member of PaulAnn Baptist Church, coordinated a Shoes for Orphan Souls drive with her friend Kirby Winchester in 2007.

They made fliers, called radio stations, talked to the city newspaper, spoke from PaulAnn, designed posters, went on air in their local TV station and contacted just about everyone they knew. They collected 300 pair of shoes.

A team of volunteers from PaulAnn Baptist Church and the San Angelo community worked to load two 18-wheeler trucks from Wal-Mart to deliver shoes to the Buckner Center for Humanitarian Aid in Dallas. It's the first of 15 expected trucks to be filled with shoes for delivery.

So when Garton told Batten that up to 10,000 shoes were going to be donated (unaware the actual number was more than 10 times that amount), Batten cried.

“Are you joking?” she asked.

No, Garton wasn’t joking. But she was smiling—broadly.

“It’s amazing how God can take something bad and make something good out of it,” she said.

More than 30 volunteers from PaulAnn Baptist Church sorted and boxed shoes earlier this month in a lot behind the R.G. Barry warehouse. Wal-Mart offered to provide up to 15 tractor-trailer rigs to transport the shoes to the Buckner Center for Humanitarian Aid in Dallas.

The volunteers downed bottles of water in minutes, and their faces reddened as PaulAnn Pastor Kirt Dauphin reminded them of a simple truth.

“Just remember, each time you toss a box into that truck, you’re putting shoes on the feet of an orphan,” he said.

Kelsy Emmons, 20, volunteered because one of her friends is a member of PaulAnn Baptist and called her about the need for volunteers.

A team of volunteers from PaulAnn Baptist Church and the San Angelo community worked to load two 18-wheeler trucks from Wal-Mart to deliver shoes to the Buckner Center for Humanitarian Aid in Dallas. It's the first of 15 expected trucks to be filled with shoes for delivery.

“I came out because I saw an opportunity to serve and that’s what Christ would do,” Emmons said. “I called in to work and said I’d be late.”

“It has been remarkable to watch God bring these shoes to Buckner,” said Ken Hall, president of Buckner International. “The people of San Angelo really came together on behalf of the children who will receive these shoes. Buckner is so grateful to R.G. Barry for allowing us to distribute the shoes. And we could have never done this without the work of the members of PaulAnn Baptist Church and Wal-Mart.”

Hall said the blessing of receiving so many shoes also comes with the responsibility to distribute them.

"We're definitely going to need financial support for additional storage and shipping expenses," Hall said.

Although the number of shoes collected in San Angelo was unprecedented, Garton emphasized that there is still a great need for people to host shoe drives and donate shoes.

“The shoes we received from R.G. Barry Corporation are mostly slippers and house shoes,” she said. “They will be a huge blessing to children in different parts of the world, especially in the colder countries. But there is still a need for sneakers and shoes that protect the children’s feet.”

For more information about Shoes for Orphan Souls, visit www.ShoesforOrphanSouls.org or call (866) 774-SHOE.

RICHMOND, Va. (BP)—Rodney Hammer, the Southern Baptist International Mission Board’s regional leader for Central and Eastern Europe the past eight years, resigned after challenging policies of the board of trustees with which he is in disagreement.

Hammer informed the trustee committee responsible for his region and IMB administration that he could no longer support personnel policies adopted by the board regarding the baptism of prospective missionaries and regarding private prayer language. Hammer resigned his position, recognizing expectations for field leadership to be accountable to and support board policies.

Hammer and his family left the field for stateside assignment on May 5. They plan to be reassigned to a field assignment upon their return.

“We absolutely love working with our missionary family and the peoples of Central and Eastern Europe, but I must now resign as regional leader,” said Hammer, who has served as an IMB missionary 18 years. “I am expected as a regional leader to accept, own and support the policies of the IMB trustees. I can do so no longer.”

Mark Edworthy, a member of the regional leadership team, will serve as interim regional leader.

Baptism policy

In 2005, IMB trustees adopted a stance against appointing missionary candidates who have not been baptized in a Southern Baptist church or in a church of another denomination that practices believer’s baptism by immersion alone.

A second policy ruled out the appointment of missionary candidates who practice either glossolalia—speaking in tongues—in public or a “private prayer language.”

In 2007, the trustees revised the measures, which are now both termed guidelines. They retain much of the original wording, but with several changes for clarification. Neither the original actions nor the revisions apply retroactively to missionaries appointed before the measures were adopted.

IMB President Jerry Rankin expressed appreciation for Hammer’s leadership in a challenging part of the world.

Appreciation

“We are grateful for Rodney’s passion and vision for leading the region to growth and evangelistic impact these last eight years,” Rankin said. “We respect his personal convictions and regret that the compelling desire to speak to these issues makes it inappropriate to continue his leadership role.

“We all had opportunities to speak to the issues over the more than two years these personnel guidelines were being considered. However, once the decision was made it is essential the policies of the board be respected and supported.

“The board of trustees are very conscientious about representing Southern Baptists and are committed to doing what they feel is necessary for the effectiveness of our work around the world.”

Reported by the International Mission Board’s communications office.

BLACKPOOL, England (ABP)—British Baptists heard warnings against over-consumption and further degradation of the environment during their annual meeting in Blackpool, Lancashire.

Theologian Elaine Storkey told members of the Baptist Union of Great Britain to reject “false prophets” of consumerism, and renowned climate-change expert Sir John Houghton encouraged listeners to switch to clean energy for the earth’s sake.

Taking Jeremiah 29:11 as her text (“I know the plans I have for you, says the Lord; plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you a future and a hope”) Storkey spoke of the effects of global poverty, and she warned against those who suggested that the present levels of consumption in rich countries could be sustained indefinitely.

“Don’t listen to the false prophets; don’t listen to the dreams they dream; don’t listen if they are proclaiming anything but the good news that comes from God,” she said. “False hope is anything that doesn’t have its grounding in the plans and purposes of God.”

No easy answers

Storkey, a prominent British evangelical feminist who also runs a Christian charity, said false prophets are those who “offer easy answers, easy solutions, complacency and self-indulgence.”

She added, “The false prophets have prophesied continual growth and rising consumption. But the earth cannot sustain these levels of consumption and these levels of growth.”

Reflecting on the Israelites’ experience of exile, she reminded listeners that, even as aliens and strangers, they were called to work and pray for the welfare of their nation, to “live in a land that was not their own as if they belonged there.”

“We should live respecting our earthly location, respect its cities and work for their welfare,” Storkey said.

Her theme built on an earlier on-stage interview with Houghton, one of the United Kingdom’s foremost experts on global warming, conducted by the Alistair Brown, who was attending his last British Baptist Union meeting as general director of BMS World Mission, the denomination’s missions agency. Brown is to become president of Northern Baptist Theological Seminary outside Chicago later this year.

Cut energy usage

Although it may cost slightly more, Houghton said, British Baptists could make a powerful statement by signing up for Good Energy. The company supplies electricity from wind, hydroelectric and solar-power generators located all over Britain.

“We simply must cut down our emissions of greenhouse gases, and one thing we can all do is sign up for greener electricity through Good Energy,’ said Houghton, the country’s former chief meteorologist.

“By doing this, it means none of our energy is from fossil fuels. If everyone in this room were to do it, it could make big news.”

Houghton’s call came in a hard-hitting and impassioned presentation on the disastrous effects of global warming.

Using a mixture of slides, clips from the Al Gore film An Inconvenient Truth and an interactive question-and-answer session, Houghton outlined how human activity has led to “unprecedented levels” of climate change.

"Weapon of mass destruction"

“The impact of global warming is such that I have no hesitation in describing it as a ‘weapon of mass destruction,’” he told the audience, referring to a famous quote in a newspaper article he had written on the subject. “I was criticized for writing that, but I have studied climate change for many years—and it was meant to be strong language.”

Houghton explained that the use of fossil fuels over the last 200 years had led to a marked increase in greenhouse gases, such as carbon dioxide, in the atmosphere. The combined effect of these gases has been to gradually raise the temperature of the earth’s surface.

If it continues at the current rate, by the end of the century there will be between a two- and four-degree rise in temperature—and a corresponding and catastrophic rise in global ocean levels, inundating places like the Netherlands and parts of New York.

But generally, poorer nations will be worse affected, Houghton said.

Moral imperative

He said there was a “moral imperative” for Britons to act, as the average carbon-dioxide emission per person was much higher in the developed world.

“We have become very rich because of all this coal, oil and gas. Initially, we didn’t know the damage, but now we do,” he said. “We have benefited from this, and now we need to share our right to have all these things we have with the poor nations of the world.

“This is a real opportunity for Christians to make a difference.”

Houghton already has exerted a global influence of his own on the subject. One of his talks several years ago directly led to the vice president of governmental affairs of America’s National Association of Evangelicals, Richard Cizik, changing his views on global warming.

In other business, British Baptists installed John Weaver, principal of South Wales Baptist College, as president of the denomination.

They also took up donations toward scholarship fund for the Amsterdam 400 conference, scheduled for next July. The European Baptist Federation is holding a major celebration in Amsterdam marking 400 years since the Baptist movement began there in 1609. The gifts will be used to help participants from Eastern Europe, Central Asia and the Middle East.

Compiled from stories by the Baptist Times, the newspaper of the Baptist Union of Great Britain.

WASHINGTON (ABP)—An independent, nonpartisan federal panel’s failure to issue a recommendation to the State Department about Iraq reportedly is due to political division.

The United States Commission on International Religious Freedom released its annual report and recommendations in early May. But conspicuously absent from the document was a recommendation on whether to black-list Iraq, which the commission has been eying warily since the United States overthrew dictator Saddam Hussein in 2003.

“The commissioners said at the press conference several times that they haven’t finished their deliberations on Iraq and they will be traveling back to the region later this month to collect more information so they can make a considered decision,” said Judith Ingram, the panel’s spokesperson.

The report and recommendations—made to Congress, President Bush and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice—included information about religious-freedom conditions in dozens of countries around the world. Although it did not contain information about Iraq or a recommendation, the commissioners sent a separate letter to Rice mentioning their concern about that country.

Dire conditions

“The commission has been concerned about the particularly dire conditions affecting non-Muslims in Iraq, including Chaldo-Assyrian Christians, other Christians, Sabean Mandaeans, Yazidis, and other minority religious communities, who face widespread violence from Sunni insurgents and foreign extremists, as well as pervasive violence, discrimination, and marginalization at the hands of the national government, regional governments, and para-state militias, including those in Kurdish areas,” the letter said.

“The commission also concluded that Iraq’s government was failing to curb the growing scope and severity of other religious-freedom violations,” the letter added, noting the commission’s decision last year to focus on Iraq’s deteriorating conditions for religious freedom. “We remain seriously concerned about religious freedom conditions in Iraq.”

The 1998 law that created the commission requires it to report annually on the status of religious liberty worldwide and to recommend that the State Department name nations that commit or tolerate “severe and egregious” violations of religious freedom as “Countries of Particular Concern.” Administration officials retain ultimate authority to make those designations and impose sanctions they deem appropriate.

Divided mostly along party lines

In addition, the commission has made a practice of producing a “watch list” of nations in danger of earning CPC status. Last year, it added Iraq to the watch list. In 2006, the panel added Afghanistan—another nation struggling to recover from a U.S.-led invasion—to the watch list. In 2007, the panel was divided—mostly along party lines—on whether to elevate Iraq to the watch list or to full CPC status.

But the New York Sun reported the division was even sharper and more partisan this year.

The 10-member panel has nine voting members. Of those presently serving, five commissioners were appointed by Republicans, and four by Democrats. According to the Sun, all Democrat-appointed commissioners supported elevating Iraq to CPC status this year, while most Republican-appointed commissioners opposed the designation and the report accompanying it.

A draft of the Iraq recommendation reportedly was harshly critical of the Bush administration’s military strategy in Iraq because of its lack of provisions for protecting religious minorities. Some Republican commissioners planned to issue a dissenting report accusing the panel’s Democrats of injecting partisanship into the process.

Plan to visit Syria

The commission’s members and staff almost always make recommendations by consensus and decline to speak publicly about ideological divisions on the panel. Ingram would only say that commissioners will make a recommendation following the trip to the region later. They will visit places, such as Syria, to which Iraqi religious minorities have been forced to flee.

Other than Iraq, the panel’s recommendations for CPC status and its watch list are unchanged from last year. Commissioners recommended the State Department designate Burma, China, Eritrea, Iran, North Korea, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and Vietnam as CPCs.

Although the commission has long recommended most of those nations for CPC status, the State Department has not followed that recommendation for Pakistan and Turkmenistan, has been slow to take action against Saudi Arabia and, last year, removed Vietnam from its CPC list.

The commission’s report criticized those decisions, noting that religious-freedom violations are widespread in Pakistan and Turkmenistan. The commission also contended that Vietnam has not improved conditions enough to warrant its removal from the CPC list, which happened on the eve of Bush’s November 2006 trip there.

With the exception of Iraq, the panel’s watch list is the same as the last two years—Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Belarus, Cuba, Egypt, Indonesia and Nigeria.

DALLAS—The Baptist General Convention of Texas has partnered with the Canadian Convention of Southern Baptists to offer leadership, evangelism, Bible study and church-starting training sessions online.

Recorded sessions with accompanying presentation materials can be viewed at http://texas.e-quip.net/.  Bill Claiborne, BGCT leadership training and development specialist, hopes the online offerings will help people across the state participate in the training they desire without expending valuable resources.

“Our goal is to provide on-demand training videos for every area of church life,” Claiborne said. “With more than 170 videos currently on the site, we are striving to address the full scope of church needs. The training opportunities will include leadership, evangelism, age group needs, Bible study, church starting, and much more.

“We are seeking to respond to the training needs of busy staff members, as well as the person in the pew who wants or needs training but does not have the vacation time or the resources to attend a conference that may be hundreds of miles from their home. This venue offers the opportunity to open their computer wherever they are and have access to training at no cost, with a slide presentation. This not only works for the individual, it will also work with groups of people in a home or on the church campus.”

The BGCT regularly will add sessions about new topics to the site to meet Texas Baptists’ needs. Claiborne believes Texas E-quip will be a helpful addition to the training sessions BGCT staff members lead across the state.

“Users visiting e-quip receive free, on-demand training videos from leading practitioners across North America,” he said. “From church planters to lay leaders, e-quip has just on time training for the motivated leader. Texas E-quip offers us the ability to reach out to people across the planet.”

CARY, N.C. (ABP)—The Southern Baptist Convention is dying rapidly, and resistance to change could kill more than half the denomination’s churches by 2030, SBC President Frank Page said.

Unless something is done to reverse the downward trend, Southern Baptist churches could number only 20,000—down from the current total of more than 44,000—in fewer than 22 years, Page said. His comments came in a conference call with pastors, hosted by the Baptist State Convention of North Carolina.

Page said the problem “resided in the churches” that refuse to change to stop their inevitable demise. He said the SBC downturn is not the denomination’s fault—not due to poor programming or lack of emphasis on the denominational level.

“The reality is it’s our fault,” Page told the Pastor’s Disciple-Making Network, an initiative of the North Carolina convention. “People rarely rise above the level of their pastor’s spiritual life, and it is critical that pastors maintain a vibrant walk with Christ.”

"Busyness"

Page confessed to the “busyness” which often accompanies life in modern ministry, with committees and administrative responsibilities overwhelming a pastor’s schedule to the point that he has no time for serious study of the Bible, prayer or mediation.

“Pastors can easily get distracted, and they must fight against it, because pastors must remain learners of Jesus for as long as they live,” said Page, pastor of First Baptist Church of Taylors, S.C.

“Many Southern Baptist churches are small groups of white people who are holding on (until) the end,” he said. “Not only have we not reached out to younger generations, but we have failed to reach out to other ethnic minorities who are all around us.”

Rather than embracing a “whatever it takes” mentality to change and restore a local church to health, Page said, many pastors and churches have “chosen to die rather than change, and they are doing it.”

Stay the course

Page said the vision of pastors must be biblical, firm and resolute, or else when they face “the horizon of trouble, their vision is the first thing out the window.” Pastors must stay the course or risk being blown off course by the trials that accompany any change in any church, Page emphasized.

“Church members must be helped to catch the vision, and pastors must work to bring their people to a place of trust” so they will follow the pastor’s vision, he said.

Personal interaction with the pastor and times of pastoral care and concern are essential to establishing relationships capable of embracing change, Page continued.

“Until I pastored a congregation of more than 1,000 people, I always personally called every member on their birthday,” Page said. As a result, in times of personal crisis or church-wide change, they knew “that their pastor was involved in their lives and cared about them,” he said.

Page’s recent book, The Incredible Shrinking Church, discusses the declining status of churches in America. The book attempts to help churches make the transition from a mentality of an inevitable decline, without resorting to non-biblical organizational tactics.

Although change is a church imperative, Page said, there is “no national entity currently helping them do that.”