FORT WORTH (BP)—Southern Baptists who recall a historic revival that swept through Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary 50 years ago say remembering what God did in the midst of one divisive period of American history should motivate believers to pray for it again.

This month marks a half-century since revival broke out at Asbury College and Seminary in Wilmore, Ky., on Feb. 3, 1970. Thanks to the testimonies of those Asbury students, the revival spread to college campuses and seminaries throughout the United States.

Asbury students visited Southwestern Seminary in March of that year and spoke after a chapel service, launching the revival there.

Tom Elliff, then a 24-year-old seminary student, said students knew the Asbury students were on campus and expected them to be at chapel that day. Robert Naylor, president of Southwestern Seminary at the time, announced the Asbury students would speak after chapel and students could stay and listen.

“Nobody left,” said Elliff, who later was elected president of the Southern Baptist Convention and served as president of the SBC International Mission Board. “To my recollection, the chapel was full. That began a seemingly endless time of confession. What started everyone confessing was that not only were students confessing, but there were guests confessing sin. There were also professors confessing sin.”

Extended time of confession

The time of confession continued all night. Elliff, who lived in Dallas at the time, drove home at 7 p.m., took a shower and then returned. As he exited his car, Elliff met a man who was frantically coming out of the chapel. He asked for prayer and the two slipped into a nearby prayer room.

The man then confessed to Elliff that he had been bitter toward God because he hadn’t had an opportunity to preach while at the seminary. Elliff prayed with him. As they walked out of the room, they ran into another man who said his church needed revival and wanted someone to come and share their experience of that evening.

“I told him, ‘I think you have someone right here,’” Elliff said, pointing to the man with whom he had been praying. “I left those men talking and rejoicing and made my way back to the chapel where the prayer service was taking place.”

As Southwestern students went to local churches that next weekend, the impact spread throughout the Dallas-Fort Worth area and beyond. Elliff connects his Southwestern experience to another revival he led a few months later in Colorado that touched an entire town.

Prayer preceded revival

Tim Beougher, the Billy Graham professor of evangelism and church growth at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Ky., points to two factors that laid the groundwork for the Southwestern revival.

First, leaders had prayed for revival for several years. Jack Gray, who taught spiritual formation at Southwestern at the time, began gathering students, faculty and staff to pray for revival at the seminary.

Elliff remembers these volunteer prayer times as significant experiences in the life of the seminary and in his own life.

“Anytime you see revival, you can always point back to some praying figures,” said Beougher, who wrote his master’s thesis on the 1970 revival at Southwestern.

Time of division and unrest

Beougher also notes the revival came during a time of intense unrest in America, particularly among students. Demonstrations were taking place at universities nationwide. In May 1970, several unarmed students were shot and killed at Kent State University. Multiple universities cancelled spring commencement exercises for fear of violence.

“Revival always presupposes declension,” Beougher said. “In other words, if you’re already living in a revived state, you don’t need revival. You already have it. One of the things that we have seen throughout history that helps cause revivals like this is desperate prayer. We’ve all heard the saying that there are no atheists in foxholes. That’s not completely true, because sometimes foxholes cause people to become even more hardened against God. But, in general, when we’re desperate, we cry out to God like we never have before.”

Matt Queen, who holds the L.R. Scarborough Chair of Evangelism at Southwestern, said the seminary has a long relationship with revivals throughout its history. He pointed to hymn writer Dick Baker, an alumnus who participated in revivals worldwide with Billy Graham, and his brother, B.O. He also mentioned a famous 1995 revival that started in Brownwood and impacted the campus at Southwestern.

Beougher hopes memories of revivals like the one at Southwestern in 1970 will remind Southern Baptists that God can do something similar today.

“When we think about our world today, it’s very divided,” Beougher said. “We have 80 to 85 percent of our churches plateaued and declining. We need a fresh touch from God. Part of having this kind of desperate prayer is really believing there is a God who loves to answer those prayers—and that he is able to do it.”

EDITOR’S NOTE: The third paragraph from the end was edited after the article originally was posted to correct an error, changing a reference from a 1995 revival in “Brownsville” to “Brownwood.”

TUCSON, Ariz. (RNS)—An Arizona federal judge has reversed the convictions of four faith-based volunteers who were fined and put on probation for aiding migrants at the border, saying the activists simply were exercising their “sincerely held religious beliefs.”

The ruling in United States v. Hoffman, announced Feb. 3, upended a lower court decision that found the activists guilty of breaking federal law by leaving out water and food for migrants crossing the U.S.-Mexico border in Arizona’s Cabeza Prieta National Wildlife Refuge.

Activists in the case argued they were working with the group No More Deaths/No Más Muertes, an official ministry of the Unitarian Universalist Church of Tucson, and thus were acting on their religious beliefs to save immigrant lives. They contended that prosecuting them violates the 1993 Religious Freedom Restoration Act, which bars the government from placing a “substantial burden” on the free exercise of religion.

The lower court rejected the RFRA argument, but U.S. District Judge Rosemary Márquez ruled that not only are the activists’ beliefs sincerely held—so much so that the “depth, importance and centrality of these beliefs caused defendants to restructure their lives to engage in this volunteer work”—but also that prosecuting them amounts to a substantial burden on their faith.

“Defendants argue that those actions, taken with the avowed goal of mitigating death and suffering, were sincere exercises of religion and that their prosecution is barred by the Religious Freedom Restoration Act,” Márquez wrote in her decision.

“The court finds that defendants demonstrated that their prosecution for this conduct substantially burdens their exercise of sincerely held religious beliefs, and that the government failed to demonstrate that prosecuting defendants is the least restrictive means of furthering any compelling governmental interest.”

Judge cited Hobby Lobby case

Márquez also invoked Burwell v. Hobby Lobby Stores, the landmark 2014 U.S. Supreme Court case that granted the craft store giant a religious exemption from providing female contraception coverage under the Affordable Care Act. Márquez noted the justices described RFRA in their ruling as providing “very broad protection for religious liberty,” and the government must provide religious people exemptions from laws unless they amount to the “least restrictive means” of furthering a “compelling government interest.”

Katherine Franke, a law professor at Columbia University who joined other legal scholars in submitting an amicus brief in the case, called the ruling a “stinging rebuke” of both the lower court decision and the U.S. Department of Justice, which she accused of trivializing the religious freedom claims of the activists.

“For an administration that has made the protection of religious liberty its stated top priority, it is shocking to see how they have mocked the No More Deaths defendants in this case,” she said.

Franke, who also heads up Columbia’s Law, Rights and Religion Project, insisted unlike other rulings, Márquez simply was applying the law neutrally and “not just for religious actors that agree with the White House’s political stances.”

Franke noted the Arizona case is one of at least two high-profile religious liberty cases making their way through the courts that feature progressive, faith-based immigrant rights activists. The other centers on Kaji Douša, senior pastor of Park Avenue Christian Church in New York, who is suing the federal government, contending it surveilled and investigated her for doing religious work with immigrants along the U.S.-Mexico border.

The government has sought to dismiss Douša’s case, which alleges that federal officials violated her religious freedom under the U.S. Constitution and RFRA. On Jan. 27, a federal judge in California’s Southern District rejected the government’s attempt to dismiss, allowing the case to move forward with most of Douša’s religious freedom claims intact.

For years, Marsha Relyea-Miles had prayed for 36 remote villages in Papua New Guinea. She lived in them and ministered among them.

She and her husband created the first written language for many of the Aruamu people. They translated the first New Testament in that language in 2005. Soon, the first complete Bible in the Aruamu’s language will be published.

They knew people in these isolated places thirsted for the Living Water that is Jesus Christ, as well as clean drinking water that wouldn’t make the children sick and cut their own lives short.

The couple first arrived in 1986 as Pioneer Bible translators. The field was fertile spiritually, and people responded. Churches were started—and even a Bible college. The gospel took root and is flourishing.

Physical water proved more challenging. Relyea-Miles tried every avenue she could find. Local drillers couldn’t get their equipment in. Some nonprofit organizations could drill the well but weren’t working in the area. Others could teach churches how to drill a well.

‘We were the only people who could do both’

Then she learned about Texas Baptist Men.

“We were the only people who could do both” drill wells and teach churches how to do it, said DeeDee Wint, vice president of TBM water ministry. “We couldn’t get it out of our minds. We felt God impressed it upon on hearts. We had to do it. We don’t decline projects just because it’s hard.”

For Wint and her husband, Tim, it didn’t matter that it took three days to get from Texas to the nearest city to the Papua New Guinea villages. Or that it took three days to gather supplies or another day crossing World War II-era bridges to get where they needed to be. Or even the notion of sleeping in open bamboo huts with little electricity and no running water.

All that mattered was the need and God’s call to meet it.

Overcoming obstacles

The TBM team overcame all the obstacles, sensing God’s presence with them along the journey. They found the parts they needed and made the necessary connections on an exploratory trip. The villages came together to support the effort, volunteering to help however they could and offering encouragement along the way.

Still, with the rainy season nearing, it seemed all the effort to drill a well in late November would be for naught. When the rains begin, transportation in or out of the villages is impossible. After two weeks of hard work, it came down to one day. If they were successful, the first village would have clean water. If not, the entire effort would have to wait another year.

“People doubted that it could be done but they had underestimated God’s people. We were amazed at the Aruamu people’s capacity to learn, their physical strength, their faith in God and their positive attitude. They didn’t see obstacles. When something went wrong, they just figured out how to fix it—no complaining, no doubts,” DeeDee Wint said.

“At one point, we thought the borehole had caved in on the bit 40 feet down. If this happens, you can not only lose the borehole; you will likely lose the bit and drill pipe. Replacements are in Utah. After prayer and discussion, they just went back and started drilling again, and it worked. We still don’t know exactly what happened. It was another God thing.”

The entire community participated in the effort. The hope and desire of the village was clear as they worked together for the betterment of all.

“The entire village came and watched and helped,” DeeDee Wint said. “The ladies carried water. The men worked the rig. The children dug clay out of the ground and made clay marbles to seal the borehole below the surface. When it was done, it was a community accomplishment.”

Changing lives—now and for eternity

When the community dedicated the well, tears filled people’s eyes. When a child filled a five-gallon container with clean drinking water, people felt they were seeing the impossible. Several individuals remarked how God had shown himself to be “plenty big” enough to meet their needs.

A local church team, The Aruamu Water Projects, has the TBM drill and can use it in other villages. To qualify for a well, a village must raise 15 percent of the needed funds, form a committee to care for the well and have at least one toilet. Already, communities are working to become eligible. Another TBM team will visit the area in June to further train and drill more wells and encourage the church.

“It’s a groundbreaking thing,” Tim Wint said.

Everywhere the church goes with its drill, lives will be changed.

“They will be healthier because they’re not drinking out of a contaminated river,” DeeDee Wint said. “With open defecation everywhere, the water is quite bad. They are sick all the time.”

Church members also will share the gospel as they drill each well. People will be healthier physically and spiritually. It is a visible reminder of how God loves his people, the Wints noted.

EDITOR’S NOTE: After the article originally was posted, the first and fifth paragraphs were edited to correct a misspelled name.

HOUSTON—When Houston Northwest Church recently welcomed children and their families to the congregation’s newly constructed HNW Kids Building, it marked a milepost in recovery and rebuilding after Hurricane Harvey.

Harvey hit the Texas Gulf Coast in August 2017, flooding almost every building on the Houston Northwest Church campus and causing $14.5 million in property damage.

“Our worship center was the only one that didn’t take on three to four feet of water,” said Karen Stamps, director of connections and communication at the church.

In the immediate aftermath of the hurricane, the worship center became the staging area for mud-out disaster relief teams and a distribution hub for supplies and assistance in the community.

Building had to be demolished

The floodwaters caused extensive damage to the church’s adult and student facilities, but its children’s building was most severely affected.

Years earlier, the church’s original sanctuary had been converted into the building that housed the congregation’s children’s ministry. The 40-year-old building had not been constructed with reinforced steel beams designed to withstand severe storm damage. Structural damage was so severe, the building had to be demolished.

“The area where the kids’ building stood was repurposed as green space for community use,” Stamps said.

For more than two years, Houston Northwest Church offered limited children’s activities in temporary space on campus. Students relocated to a nearby YMCA. Adult Bible study groups either met in homes or temporarily suspended operation until the renovated adult building reopened in January 2019.

In mid-December, the church held a ribbon-cutting ceremony marking the completion of its newly construction HNW Kids Building. The facility includes several worship venues, classrooms and multiple play areas.

Grand opening featured outreach events

In January, the church observed the grand opening of the HNW Kids Building with a series of outreach events over several weekends.

“We’re grateful for the support of our community and church family during our rebuilding phase, and we look forward to sharing this new space with our neighbors as we bring up future generations to know Jesus,” Pastor Steve Bezner said.

On Jan. 11, the church offered a breakfast reception for families who live in an apartment complex behind the church campus. FamBlitz Live—a high-energy event with games and music designed to involve whole families—immediately followed the reception, and activities continued the next day with KidzBlitz Live.

The next two Sundays featured a Winter Wonderland theme. On “Frozen” Sunday, Jan. 19, the church invited families to enjoy hot cocoa and have their photos taken with volunteers dressed in costumes portraying characters from the popular Disney movie.

For “Snow Jam” on Jan. 26, the church filled the lawn outside the children’s building with more than 40,000 pounds of snow. Children who rarely—if ever—see snow in Houston threw snowballs and sledded down a snow-covered slide.

In the process, visiting parents had opportunities to get acquainted with each other and with families who already were part of Houston Northwest Church.

“We’ve been glad to see parents lingering in the kids’ building—sitting down and visiting with each other, not rushing out right after the service,” Stamps said.

Prior to Hurricane Harvey, the church’s children’s ministry averaged just under 400 in attendance, she noted. Since the new building opened, the number of children and volunteers has surpassed 550.

William Robert “Bill” O’Brien, longtime missionary and missions innovator, died Feb. 1. He was 86. O’Brien was born in Fort Worth, graduated with a bachelor’s degree from Hardin-Simmons University in Abilene and earned a master’s degree from Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Fort Worth. He felt the call to serve God early in life, and he served out his calling in many capacities, including as a music minister, pastor, international missionary and writer. Many fondly remember him as a teacher, mentor and friend. Others praised him as a visionary and statesman who challenged Baptists to move beyond a paradigm of isolation and programs to collaborate to reach the spiritually unreached. He and his late wife, Dellanna West O’Brien, were appointed as missionaries to Indonesia in 1962. He served two terms there in the field of music and the arts, taught in the Baptist seminary and directed radio-television efforts for Indonesian Baptists. An internationally recognized missiologist, he taught at Dallas Baptist University, at Baylor University’s Truett Seminary as the inaugural Missions Scholar-in-Residence, and at the John Leland Center for Theological Studies in Arlington, Va. He was founding director of Beeson Divinity School’s Global Center at Samford University, and he also served as missions professor at Beeson Divinity School. He is widely known for his time of service as executive vice president of the Southern Baptist Convention’s Foreign (now International) Mission Board. He founded Bridges of Hope, a community development organization in Indonesia, and he was founder of the Gaston Christian Center, a collaboration of faith-based agencies in Dallas. He served on the board of directors of the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute and was president of the American Society of Missiology. Reflecting on one of his favorite Bible verses, Romans 12:1–3, and his sense of calling, O’Brien said, “The whole idea of becoming a living sacrifice through the transformation of the mind is a daily challenge, not a one-time event.” He was preceded in death by his first wife of 56 years, Dellanna West O’Brien, who served as executive director of national Woman’s Missionary Union. He is survived by his wife of 10 years, Charmaine; children Denise O’Brien Basden and husband Paul; Erin O’Brien Puryear and husband Rick; and Ross O’Brien and wife Lisa; as well as six grandchildren and four great-grandchildren. A celebration of his life will be held Feb. 10 at 1:30 p.m. at Wilshire Baptist Church in Dallas. Donations in his memory can be made to two of the ministries in which he was invested—the Gaston Christian Center and the Pathways Endowment at Wilshire Baptist Church.

DALLAS (BP)—GuideStone has released the 2020 Ministers’ Tax Guide for 2019 Returns.

The tax guide includes tax highlights for 2019 including changes based on the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 and the current status of minister’s housing allowance after the recent 2019 litigation, along with step-by-step filing instructions for minister’s personal taxes and comprehensive examples and sample forms.

Additionally, GuideStone participant churches and church administrators have access to the annual Federal Reporting Requirements for Churches. This publication is included in the full tax guide or as a separate electronic copy.

The guide can be downloaded online here.

A limited number of free printed copies of the tax guide are available to GuideStone participants by calling (888) 98-GUIDE (888-984-8433).

The guide was written by Richard Hammar, a noted CPA, attorney and widely published author who specializes in legal and tax issues for ministers. Additionally, the material is edited by GuideStone to ensure it addresses, in detail, the tax issues directly affecting Southern Baptist ministers.

“It is a deep privilege each year to provide this annual tax guide for our participants and their preparers,” GuideStone President O.S. Hawkins said.

“Each year, we hear from so many who are thankful for the guide and how much it helps them. This free guide is part of our ministry to the messenger of the gospel and is a concrete way in which we live out our vision of honoring the Lord by being a lifelong partner with our participants in enhancing their financial security.”

BIRMINGHAM, Ala.—National Woman’s Missionary Union leaders emphasized the organization’s global reach during reports to the WMU board meeting in mid-January.

WMU ministries touched 39 countries “from A to Z—from Afghanistan to Zambia” in 2019, Executive Director Sandy Wisdom-Martin told the board.

“When you include ministry partners here at 100 Missionary Ridge (location of WMU building), the number of countries touched moves from 39 to 65. And then factor in what each of you are doing in your states—it’s astonishing,” she said. “The breadth and scope of global kingdom impact is stunning and beautiful and humbling.”

Wisdom-Martin acknowledged ministry is not always easy, but she insisted it is evident God is at work.

“We need to all commit daily to serve humbly and lead courageously,” she said. “As long as we surrender wholeheartedly to the cause of Christ, we will have a future in kingdom work.

“It’s not about me or you. It’s not about WMU. It is about taking the gospel to those who have never heard. I just happen to believe engaging Christ followers in missions discipleship is critical to the Great Commission. And we are Great Commission people.”

Banner year for international missions

Linda Cooper, president of national WMU, said 2019 was a banner year for the organization’s international missions efforts.

“We are a national company with a global reach,” Cooper said. “Through Pure Water, Pure Love, we provide all (International Mission Board) missionaries with water filters and funded water projects in 12 different countries, including Cuba, India and Liberia—providing clean drinking water for people in need and the opportunity to experience the Living Water.”

Cooper reported “more than 1,800 impoverished artisans in 22 countries earned a sustainable wage and find real hope through WorldCrafts,” the WMU-sponsored initiative to develop fair-trade businesses among people in poverty around the globe.

“In addition to nearly 200 Christian Women’s and Men’s Job Corps sites in the United States, there are Christian Women’s Job Corps sites in Mexico, West Africa, South Africa, and soon to be Thailand with IMB personnel,” she continued.

Shifting to WMU’s online leadership development opportunities, Cooper reported: “Women from around the world—including Afghanistan, Japan, Taiwan, Thailand and Ukraine—take WMU’s Christian Women’s Leadership Center classes, and a second international student just finished all nine courses representing 150 hours of coursework.”

Cooper and Wisdom-Martin continued to recap some OF the year’s highlights, including:

• Milestones marking decades of changed lives. Mexico WMU and Nigeria WMU both celebrated 100 years and Taiwan WMU celebrated 60 years. Brazil celebrated 70 years of Royal Ambassadors.
• Following an 18-month collaborative process that included three national WMU staff members traveling to South Korea, WMU signed an historic agreement with Korean nationals on the campus of IMB’s International Learning Center. Koreans will have the rights to WMU’s chronological Bible storying resource, Tell the Story: Bible Storying for Kids, to sell in Korea. In exchange, Korea Baptists will translate Tell the Story into Korean and gift the translation to WMU.
• After leading Korean WMU for 30 years, Angela Kim passed the mantle of leadership to Joy Lee.
• WorldCrafts welcomed four new U.S.-based artisan groups: Refugee Sewing Society in Clarkston, Ga.; Baptist Friendship House in New Orleans, La.; Christian Women’s Job Corps of Monroe, La.; and Christian Women’s Job Corps of Madison County, Ala.
• National WMU staff members participated in numerous podcasts, panel discussions and task force meetings with various Southern Baptist agencies and entities to discuss strategies to address the needs of refugees and displaced people.
• In addition to encouraging ongoing support of Southern Baptist missionaries through prayer and giving to the missions offerings, WMU maintains a database of approximately 650 available housing options for international missions personnel while on stateside assignment, partners with IMB to host an annual MK Re-Entry retreat, and awards a host of scholarships. WMU also partners each year with NAMB to promote Christmas in August, in which WMU missions groups gather, pack and send needed supplies to North American missionaries.

Emphasis on missions discipleship

“It can get complicated when you try to explain all that WMU does,” Cooper acknowledged. “But when you think about it, we only do three things—compassion ministries, leadership development and missions discipleship. Everything we do fits under one of those three areas … all with the purpose of making disciples of Jesus who live on mission.”

Cooper offered an example of missions discipleship from a Girls in Action leader in California who told about an outreach event that draws thousands to their church each October.

The GA leader wrote: “Because of the size of our event, we are required to have several paramedics on stand-by. My favorite image of that night was definitely the sight of those GA girls sharing the gospel with the paramedics assigned to our church event. Those things happen … when we share with our children the importance of the gospel and then model a lifestyle of faith … living it and sharing it.’”

Cooper said one of her dreams is for every church to offer missions discipleship through WMU.

“I believe with everything in me that it is life-changing,” she said. “It sure has changed mine!

“My biggest dream is for everyone on the planet to have a chance to hear and respond to the gospel, the good news of Jesus Christ, and I believe WMU can play a big role in seeing that come to fruition. We must raise up a generation that will continue to tell the wonderful story of Jesus so they can tell others, who tell others, and on and on until his return … making disciples of Jesus who live on mission.”

Thanks from the mission boards

Gordon Fort, senior ambassador for the International Mission Board president, thanked WMU for the group’s support and partnership for the cause of missions before introducing his daughter, Lizzy, who served as a journeyman in Central Asia.

While there, Lizzy told about meeting Mary, who said she had dreamed about Jesus. The two became friends and began studying the book of Luke in Kurdish. However, Lizzy said, Mary began to worry she would be persecuted if she accepted Christ and decided it was too risky, so she quit coming to their Bible study sessions.

“I prayed for her,” Lizzy said. “And Mary came back one day and said she felt so lost. We began studying the Bible again. When we read Romans 10:9 about confessing with your mouth that you believe in Jesus, she prayed to receive Christ. … The lost need to be found.”

Kevin Ezell, president of the North American Mission Board, thanked WMU for the organization’s partnership in helping to raise a record $61.4 million in 2019 through the Annie Armstrong Easter Offering for North American Missions and presented updates related to Send Relief ministry centers and outreach efforts.

The WMU board set $175 million as the goal for the Lottie Moon Christmas Offering and $70 million as the goal for the Annie Armstrong Easter Offering.

WMU’s next board meeting will be June 6-7 in Orlando, Fla.

RIVERSIDE, Calif. (BP)—Paul Chitwood, president of the Southern Baptist Convention’s International Mission Board, announced the mission agency’s five-year plan during meetings with trustees Jan. 29-30 in Riverside, Calif.

Chitwood announced five targets built around IMB’s vision and mission to engage unreached people and places over the next five years. The targets are based on the organization’s core convictions, which include proclaiming the gospel to those who have yet to hear it.

1. Mobilize 75 percent of Southern Baptist churches to pray for and financially support the Lottie Moon Christmas Offering by 2025. On the Annual Church Profile, less than half of Southern Baptist churches reported they gave to the offering last year, he noted.
2. Send an additional 500 fully funded missionaries by 2025. This number came to IMB leadership directly as a request from the field, Chitwood said.
3. Mobilize 500 global partner missionaries on IMB teams. While IMB will not fund these missionaries, they will be embedded on IMB teams and an essential part of IMB strategy, he said.
4. Engage 75 global cities in comprehensive strategies. Demographers project that 80 percent of the world’s population will be in the urban centers by the end of this century, Chitwood said.
5. Increase Lottie Moon Christmas Offering receipts 6 percent annually to sustain the 500 additional missionaries, or $10 million per year for the next five years.

“While that seems like a lot of money, it will only require that every one of the 16 million Southern Baptists increase their … offering by 63 cents per year,” Chitwood said. “Dividing by the number of Southern Baptist churches, every church needs to give an additional $200 per year. No matter how you do that math, the point is, it can be done.”

New vice presidents elected

International Mission Board trustees elected Charles Clark as vice president of mobilization and Price Jett as vice president of finance, logistics and technology.

Clark most recently served with the IMB as affinity group leader for the Americas. He has more than 15 years of experience with IMB.

Growing up as a “missionary kid” in the Americas, Clark began his career with IMB as a church planter in 2004 after working more than 30 years in the corporate world in progressive leadership roles.

He completed his corporate career as vice president of e-Business with Occidental Chemical Corporation and vice president of global solutions with HAHT Commerce. He and his wife, Karen, have three grown children and nine grandchildren.

Jett has served as chief information officer for IMB since July 2019. In this role, Jett has managed all aspects of IMB’s technology portfolio and established a global governance process for technology initiatives, as well as restructured financial arrangements with vendors to eliminate waste.

Prior to work at IMB, Jett founded The Care Group, using technology to help families navigate the complex world of elder care. Jett also previously served as the chief information officer and executive director of The Corporate Executive Board (now Gartner) from 2002 to 2016.

As executive director and chief information officer, Jett led a technology team of 300 and a publishing team of 200 across five continents. He and his wife Diedre have three children, Peter, 13, Price, 18, and Rachel, 20.

Missionaries appointed, memorial tribute paid

Trustees approved the appointment of 21 new full-time, fully funded missionaries, who were honored during a Sending Celebration on Jan. 29 at Magnolia Church in Riverside.

Todd Lafferty, IMB executive vice president, recognized the lives of 78 former colleagues—including 10 retired staff members, three current missionaries and 65 emeritus missionaries—who died in the past year. The field personnel’s lives totaled 1,780 years of service through the IMB, with an average age of 85 and an average of 26 years of service.

Former staff who were recognized in memoriam included Don Kammerdiener, who served 39 years as a missionary to Colombia, Argentina and Paraguay, area director for Middle America and Caribbean, and executive vice president and interim president of the IMB.

Lafferty also recognized three missionaries who died in active service. Gena Wilson, 51, served 22 years in Europe. She died of cancer May 13, 2019. LaVerne Brown, 48, served 15 years with Sub-Saharan African Peoples. She died of cancer Aug. 25, 2019. Andy Leininger, 56, served 22 years in Europe. He died of cancer Oct. 13, 2019.

Emeritus missionaries included, among many others who served around the globe: Martha Brady, 86, who served 43 years in the Bahamas, Guyana, Belize and the Caribbean Regional Office; Emanetta Qualls, 101, who served 20 years in Brazil; and Thurman Braughton, 87, who served 28 years in the Philippines, Malaysia and Pakistan.

Acknowledge racist past

In response to a motion made during the 2019 Southern Baptist Convention in Birmingham, Ala., IMB trustees also voted to recommend to the SBC “that the IMB sponsor the addition to the SBC calendar of an annual George Liele Missions and Evangelism Day, to be held on the first Sunday of February of each year,” beginning in 2021.

Liele was a Georgia slave who came to faith in 1773 at age 23, was given his freedom to pursue God’s call on his life, became the first ordained African American Baptist preacher in America and planted the gospel in Jamaica as the first missionary from America.

“As we seek to educate Southern Baptists on our own history, we are grateful for the prospect of being able to promote an annual George Liele Missions and Evangelism Day,” Chitwood said.

Chitwood also announced the celebration of 175 years of Southern Baptist work among the nations. Recognizing that Baptist churches in the South separated from northern churches over the issue of slavery, Chitwood invited Nate Bishop, an African American trustee from Kentucky, to share his perspective on the issue.

Bishop encouraged trustees when addressing the beginnings of the Southern Baptist Convention and the IMB “to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.”

“Our convention was birthed in sin,” Bishop said. “There is no way to get around it. You can’t put lipstick on a pig. You have to call it what it is. But here is the beauty of being a Southern Baptist: When we repent and confess our sin, we don’t have to be defensive. … We celebrate this 175th anniversary because Christ has freed us” from that sin.

“There is a new ethnicity birthed by the blood of Jesus, and that is the church,” Bishop continued. “We will tell the truth, not because we are ashamed, but because we want to glory in Christ. What is impossible with man is possible with God.”

Increase diversity, respond to sex abuse

Chitwood also announced the selection of several new staff members, including a renewed emphasis on mobilization, a new general counsel and a newly created prevention and response administrator.

“In an effort to better serve and more effectively mobilize the diverse family of Southern Baptists here at home, we have diversified IMB’s mobilization team with team members representing and assigned to African American Southern Baptist churches, Hispanic Southern Baptist churches, and Asian American Southern Baptist churches,” Chitwood said.

“We have also added mobilization personnel specifically assigned to engage more students and local Baptist associations. We have a long way to go, but the early returns on this extra investment in mobilization are encouraging.”

The goal of these positions is to continue to grow the number of candidates for missionary service, Chitwood said.

“Our missionary pipeline is growing again,” Chitwood said. “In just over a year, we’ve been able to increase the number of candidates in the career pipeline by more than 400 percent and the number of combined long-term, mid-term and team associate candidates by nearly 300 percent. We’ve also been blessed to receive this year the largest Lottie Moon Christmas Offering from a church in IMB history.”

Chitwood also announced that Richard Salamy has been named as IMB’s general counsel and Somer Nowak will serve in the newly created role of prevention and response administrator.

“The prevention and response administrator position is evidence that IMB absolutely remains committed to making changes necessary to better prevent instances of child abuse and sexual harassment (including sexual assault) and to better care for victims while holding perpetrators accountable,” Chitwood said.

IMB leadership is “diligently moving toward the highest standards in abuse prevention and response, including providing compassionate care,” he said.

The next IMB board of trustees meeting is scheduled May 13-14 in Richmond, Va.

Donald Cannata, longtime minister of education, died Jan. 31. He was 86. He was born Aug. 20, 1933, in Houston to Samuel R.J. and Mattie Lee Ellison Cannata, and he was educated in Houston public schools. He earned degrees from Baylor University and Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary. Cannata served as minister of education and administration in churches in Texas and Alabama for four decades. He moved with his family to Waco in 1972 to serve First Baptist Church and later Western Heights Baptist Church. He was preceded in death by brothers Harold Lee and Sam Jr. He is survived by his wife, Norma Palmer Cannata; daughter, Leigh Ann Marshall, and husband, Tracy; son Mark, and wife, Edna; daughter Susan Moody; seven grandchildren; and one great-grandson.

WASHINGTON (RNS)—Abuse survivor and activist Rachael Denhollander brought her advocacy to presidents of evangelical colleges, urging them at their annual conference to not discount sexual abuse but to instead support survivors who report it.

“As Christian institutions you are the most equipped to condemn sexual abuse and objectification,” she told dozens of attendees of the Presidents Conference of the Council for Christian Colleges and Universities on Jan. 31. “You are the most equipped to help survivors to understand and teach your students to understand this is wrong. It is evil. And it matters to me because it matters to God.”

Denhollander is a lawyer and former gymnast who was the first woman to publicly accuse former Michigan State University and USA Gymnastics doctor Larry Nassar of sexual assault. She has been encouraging denomination leaders and churches to increase their attention and response to sexual abuse and has recently wrote the book What Is a Girl Worth?

“What you need to understand is that when you do not do this with your policies, your counseling programs, your classes and how you are educating the next generation, when you do not do this, you are not in agreement with what God says, you are not properly portraying the character of an all-holy God.”

Timed to coincide with Title IX changes

Shirley V. Hoogstra, CCCU president, introduced Denhollander to the conference, a three-day gathering of 100 presidents of evangelical higher education institutions, and affirmed the need to address the issue with faith and compassion.

“Human beings take advantage of others for their own purpose, but, because of our faith, we can actually look unsparingly at these events,” said Hoogstra, whose organization timed the discussion to pending changes in Title IX regulations that govern how colleges address sex discrimination. “We can face the real facts and potentially be a redemptive force amid human failing.”

Kathryn Nash, a higher education attorney with the firm Lathrop GPM, joined Denhollander and Hoogstra for the plenary titled “The Lion and the Lamb: How Christian Theology Shapes Our Approach and Response to Abuse.”

Nash stressed the necessity for sufficient training not only of Title IX investigators on college campuses but anyone to whom a student may reveal an allegation of sexual abuse.

“Who is most likely to get the report from one of your community members? I hope it’s your Title IX coordinator, but it’s probably not your Title IX coordinator,” she said. “It’s an RA (resident assistant). It’s a professor. Are they trauma-informed? They’re probably not.”

Call to repentance

Nash said any first responder to abuse should be well-equipped.

“We don’t want to make this terrible situation any worse for a victim or a survivor,” Nash said.

Denhollander said institutions, including faith-based ones, should worry less about reputation and more about repentance.

“If we truly believe in the power of repentance and the importance of truth, then our Christian institutions should be the first to repent of where we have erred,” she said. “We should be the first to acknowledge and pursue the truth when it looks like something might have been handled wrong. But more often than not the immediate response is to clamp down and protect liability and reputation at the expense of the victim and justice.”

Both Denhollander and Nash have addressed questions of sex abuse in the Southern Baptist Convention as it has started grappling with reports of abuse. At a Southern Baptist conference in October that focused on sexual abuse, Denhollander criticized that denomination’s leaders for not doing enough to aid abuse survivors and urged an independent review “not only of the abuses that occurred, but why those abuses were covered up.”

Nash has worked with the SBC, leading a team involved in an external review of its International Mission Board’s handling of sexual harassment and child abuse allegations.

WASHINGTON (RNS)—To many evangelicals and ardent Christian Zionists, God promised the land of Israel to the Jews and to the Jews alone.

The belief comes, at least in part, from a biblical passage that recounts the covenant God made with Abraham: “The whole land of Canaan, where you now reside as a foreigner, I will give as an everlasting possession to you and your descendants after you” (Genesis 17:8).

On Jan. 28, when President Donald Trump unveiled his long-awaited plan for peace between Israel and the Palestinians, which calls for some land swaps with Palestinians and a Palestinian capital in East Jerusalem, his most loyal evangelical advisers congratulated him for it.

Evangelicals for Trump applaud the initiative

Robert Jeffress, pastor of First Baptist Church in Dallas who attended the unveiling in Washington, called the proposal “courageous and compassionate.”

Johnnie Moore, another evangelical adviser, said it was “nuanced, realistic and comprehensive.”

On Twitter, Jack Graham, pastor of Prestonwood Baptist Church in Plano, tweeted, “The peace plan President Trump presented is bold, courageous and historic.”

Samuel Rodriguez, president of the National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference, said the plan “reflects a clear-eyed and fact-based approach that takes into account the economic, religious and political complexities of the region, and it demonstrates what is possible when a commitment to peace and justice transcends the allure of political power.”

As close as can be expected

John Hagee, chairman of Christians United for Israel and founding pastor of Cornerstone Church in San Antonio, called it “the best peace proposal any American administration has ever put forth.”

For years, Hagee has defended Israel’s right to make decisions free of international interference or pressure.

“God did not make a covenant with Washington, D.C.,” Hagee said in 2011. “He made a covenant with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. And that covenant stands. It is still the covenant.”

But Trump’s plan, developed with adviser and son-in-law Jared Kushner and announced alongside Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, is as close to the biblical ideal as Israel is likely to get, evangelicals said.

The plan would allow Israel to keep all the settlements it has already built in Palestinian territory annexed in the 1967 Six-Day War. Even more, it allows for the application of Israeli law in parts of the West Bank that have never been subject to it.

In exchange, it gives Palestinians parts of the West Bank and some land in Israel’s Negev Desert along the Egyptian border. The plan, which falls short of giving Palestinians full statehood,  also proposes a Palestinian capital in East Jerusalem.

Joel C. Rosenberg, an evangelical with dual U.S.-Israel citizenship who has a large following among U.S. evangelicals—mostly for his bestselling fiction about Bible prophecy, but also for his views on Israel—said evangelicals are not about to turn on Trump.

“Evangelicals in the United States trust President Trump on the issue of Israel because he’s been so supportive,” Rosenberg told Religion News Service from his home in Israel. “They’re not dealing with a hostile president, like President Obama. They’re dealing with a friend who has been enormously helpful to Israel.”

Some criticize the plan

Not all evangelicals welcomed the Trump peace plan. Yohanna Katanacho, academic dean at Nazareth Evangelical College, said it lacks “a solid moral foundation.”

“Trump’s peace plan does not lead to prosperity or a better life. Instead, it endorses injustice, accepts Israeli settlements in the Palestinian territories, gives Jerusalem including its holy sites to the state of Israel, imposes one-sided solutions, and increases tensions in the Middle East,” Katanacho wrote in an article posted on “Come and See,” a Christian website from Nazareth.

Many American Jewish leaders were critical of the plan.

Rabbi Rick Jacobs, president of the Union for Reform Judaism, said he was troubled by Netanyahu’s statement at the White House saying that he will establish Israeli law over all of those West Bank settlements and the Jordan Valley, calling that approach “dangerous for Israel’s future.”

J Street, the liberal pro-Israel advocacy group, was even more blunt, calling it the “president’s ‘peace sham.’” Jeremy Ben-Ami, president of J Street, said it was “the logical culmination of repeated bad-faith steps this administration has taken to validate the agenda of the Israeli right, (and) prevent the achievement of a viable, negotiated two-state solution.”

However, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee said it appreciated the effort and urged the “Palestinians to rejoin Israelis at the negotiating table.”

Pro-Trump evangelicals briefed in advance

Evangelical leaders who were briefed on the proposal during the three years it took to draft it said the plan was close to biblical, mindful that even Abraham divided his property with Lot, his nephew, after a quarrel.

“From our perspective what he’s done is recognize the Bible as legal,” said Mike Evans, a Christian Zionist who heads the Jerusalem Prayer Team, referring to Trump’s plan to apply Israeli law to parts of the West Bank.

Evans, who attended the unveiling ceremony, said he had talked beforehand to Kushner as well as Jason Greenblatt, Trump’s Israel adviser; David Friedman, the U.S. ambassador to Israel; and Avi Berkowitz, another Trump adviser.

Evans pointed out the peace plan does not really call for a two-state solution, since it does not allow Palestinians an army or air force and gives Israel overriding security responsibility. As for the plan’s call for a Palestinian capital in East Jerusalem, Evans said it was a small neighborhood called Abu Dis, which is already inhabited and controlled by Palestinians.

“We’re all sophisticated enough to realize that reality is going to be the prominent factor that controls everything,” Evans said. “The Palestinians won’t accept this generous offer, but the Muslim world will appreciate it.”

No Palestinians attended the White House preview and none were consulted on it. Ambassadors from the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Oman attended the ceremony.

Evans said evangelicals care about Palestinians and hope they will eventually come to embrace the deal.

“As Christians, we care about these people,” he said. “We want them to have hope and dignity, but not at the expense of Jewish lives.”

With additional reporting by Managing Editor Ken Camp. 

LAURENS, S.C. (AP)—Not many years ago in a small, rural South Carolina town stood The Redneck Shop—a racist emporium and Ku Klux Klan museum housed in an old theater, where white supremacist neo-Nazis gave heil-Hitler salutes and flaunted swastikas and Rebel flags.

That building, once the property of the Klan, now belongs to a black preacher and committed foe of racism who fought the group for more than 20 years. Pastor David Kennedy plans to transform it into a shrine of reconciliation.

How Kennedy, whose great-great-uncle was lynched in the community, got ownership of the old Echo Theater building from an ex-Klansman—a man who once contemplated murdering Kennedy—is the subject of a movie that could end up raising funds for that transformation.

“It symbolizes right now in the shape it’s in—hatred,” Kennedy said. “But we hope we can turn it into a building of love.”

White supremacist store and KKK museum

A decade ago, the white supremacist store in Laurens was a place where one of the few shirts sold without an overt racial slur said, “If I had known this was going to happen I would have picked my own cotton.” The World Famous Ku Klux Klan Museum with its racist meeting place was in the back.

The KKK had put the title in the name of a trusted member, Michael Burden. Burden said other Klan members once suggested that he kill Kennedy, and he considered it. Kennedy didn’t know that when he saw Burden, hungry, poor and full of hate, and took him to a buffet to fill his stomach, then to a hotel so his family wouldn’t have to sleep on the street.

Burden’s girlfriend at the time kept urging him to leave the Klan, and in 1997, he did. He also bestowed ownership of the old theater building upon Kennedy for $1,000.

But there was a twist. Under the agreement, John Howard, who owned The Redneck Shop, would be allowed to stay and run his store as long as he lived.

Howard abandoned the store years ago, ignoring maintenance. Duct work and piping were ripped from the walls. He died in 2017, giving Kennedy complete control over the building.

Kennedy estimates it needs at least $500,000 in repairs that must be done carefully because of the theater’s age and historic location. That seems impossible for the minister, whose New Beginning Missionary Baptist Church congregation meets in a converted gun store several miles west of Laurens.

Unlikely friendship subject of new movie

But a movie may provide a Hollywood ending.

The story of the unlikely friendship between Kennedy and Burden has been made into a film called Burden, scheduled for national release Feb. 28. Starring actor Forest Whitaker as Kennedy, it was shown at the 2018 Sundance Film Festival.

101 Studios, which distributed it, has promised Kennedy it will help repair and reopen the theater. They have created a website at rehabhate.com to accept donations and tell more people about the project.

“The South cannot rid itself of its past. But we could rid ourselves of the Redneck Shop,” Kennedy said.

The studio is getting companies to donate materials and time and is selling commemorative bricks that can be placed  at the theater.

The movie’s director, Andrew Heckler, first entered The Redneck Shop in the late 1990s after reading a short article about Kennedy’s fight. He knew it had to be a movie and finished the screenplay in 2001, finally getting the green light from 101 Studios to make the film a few years ago.

‘Not giving up’

“I knew this story would mean something to people. Three people in the middle of nowhere South Carolina did something that would be meaningful to all people,” Heckler said. “There is a pathway for fighting hate. It’s not easy. It’s love, faith and not giving up.”

Kennedy knows about not giving up. He protested when a South Carolina county refused to observe the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday, and he helped lobby to remove the Confederate flag from the Statehouse dome.

In his church office, he keeps a poster-size photo of a lynched black man swinging at the end of a rope. It is his great uncle, killed more than 100 years ago by a white mob in Laurens County.

Kennedy also has a photo of white people about 15 years ago in the back of the theater, wearing uniforms with a Nazi swastika and raising their arms and hands in a white power salute.

“Racism is a strange kind of organism. It is systemic. And it probably will not go away in our lifetimes,” Kennedy said.

Burden and Kennedy remain friends, though not as close as they once were. Burden got married, turned his life around and now drives a truck across the country.

“When I changed my lifestyle, I buried that guy,” Burden said of his racist past.

Burden cautiously shares his story with those he thinks need to know that change is possible.

The movie named after him is a way to do that on a larger scale.

“I’m willing to go through this again,” Burden said. “Am I happy about it? Some days yes, some days no.”

Kennedy recently gave a tour of the theater to a few visiting reporters. Through the soft winter afternoon sunlight, faded two-story paintings of Nazi and U.S. flags can still be seen on a wall. A Confederate flag remains on the theater marquee.

The images are deteriorating, but they linger.

“Racism and hatred, they are both destructive and they have no future,” Kennedy said. “But love, forgiveness and mercy will always have a future because they are constructive.”