PLANO—Every week, First Baptist Church sows and harvests compassion through its community garden.

Saturdays at 9 a.m., volunteers gather on a half-acre lot across from the downtown Plano church. They weave through rows of ripening crops with contagious energy—watering, digging, planting, picking.  

Their efforts exhibit the church’s mission to reach out and serve the surrounding community. Gardeners donate half of the produce—and often more—to local food pantries.

Ben Haning, who oversees and coordinates the garden ministry, recalled how the idea took root.

“Pastor Jerry challenged the deacon body to reach out to the neighborhood immediately around the church,” he said. “I was driving around the neighborhood and thought that since we had this acre lot across the street from the church, a community garden might serve the needs of the community right there.”  

Volunteers find vegetables ready for picking.

Through involvement in the Texas Offering for World Hunger, the church became aware of the growing problem of hunger in many Texas families. Haning saw the garden as a natural way to provide for that need, and the church agreed to help facilitate his vision.

 “The community garden was a project that God planted in seed,” Pastor Jerry Carlisle said. “As (Haning) began to design it and implement it, a lot of us said, ‘O, we’d love to see this.’ Our missions committee provided some initial funding, and the church approved ministry teams specifically for the garden.”

After a successful crop in 2010, participants set specific goals for 2011.

“We hope to give away 1,000 pounds of produce this year,” Carlisle explained. “We also hope to build relationships with people in the community and affect their quality of life in a positive way by helping them to learn how to grow food for themselves.”

Members of First Baptist Church in Plamo work on a Saturday afternoon in the community garden.

Since apartment dwellers lack gardening space and it is scarce for other local families, the garden provides a place to grow, he said. Thirty-six plots—4 feet x 20 feet—comprise the garden, open to anyone wanting to grow fresh produce and give some back to the community. Gardeners are responsible to cultivate their own plots, and they find their weekly duties posted in a bulletin inside the garden.

“I think it’s a wonderful project, a great way to engage our community and build relationships,” Carlisle said. “I also like getting dirt under my fingernails. It’s therapeutic.”

Carlisle called the garden a “wonderful conversation starter,” a point Haning also underscored.

 “It’s been fun getting to know folks in the neighborhood,”

Mary Spencer works in the community garden of First Baptist Church in Plano. (PHOTOS/Grace Gaddy)

Haning said. “People will stop and talk to you when you’re out there working on church grounds. There’s a fair amount of pedestrian traffic through that neighborhood because of the people that ride the DART train down into Dallas. Some of those people walk in that area, so people will stop and talk to you and ask what you’re doing.”

Haning described what he hopes will come out of it all.

“Short term, I want to grow vegetables to give to people that may be in a bind as far as their ability to provide for their families,” he said. “And long term, I want the opportunity to make friends with the people that work in the garden and be able to witness to them somewhere down the line.”

Ultimately, the mission is to please and glorify God through the garden’s outreach, Haning said. They seek to plant seeds in the heart, as well as the soil.

DALLAS—Jennifer Hibdon’s life changed May 20, 2010, when her parents’ lives ended in double suicide.

Jim and Mina Hibdon had been pillars of Bethel Baptist Church in Norman, Okla., and been happily married 65 years. He had a long career as an economics professor, and she had served as a state representative.

Laurie Taylor (right), executive director of the Grief and Loss Center of North Texas, talks with Jennifer Hibdon. (PHOTO/Ken Camp)

Jennifer Hibdon knew her parents’ health was beginning to fail, but she had no idea they had decided to take their lives rather than suffer arduous physical decline.

Naturally, Hibdon grieved. She began to see a therapist, but she didn’t find the help she needed to put her life back in order.

Then she remembered Laurie Taylor, a minister to families at Wilshire Baptist Church in Dallas, whom she had met while volunteering at Baylor Medical Center. She recalled Taylor’s passion for helping people who experienced bereavement. The two reconnected, and Hibdon discovered Taylor was starting a grief support group.

“It was divine intervention,” Hibdon said. “I needed ways to structure my thoughts and feelings. I needed to understand what I was going through. I needed to learn how to organize my thoughts and feelings after my world was turned upside-down.”

Leaders of Wilshire Baptist recognized Hibdon was not alone in that need, and they saw the opportunity for an expanded, ongoing ministry focused on grief and loss. In December, members with varied backgrounds in management of nonprofit organizations met with Taylor to explore the feasibility of launching such an entity.

On March 1, the Grief and Loss Center of North Texas began operation with Taylor as full-time executive director.

“We focus not just on death but also on feelings of loss related to abandonment, divorce and infertility,” Taylor said. “We’re getting calls every day, mostly just due to word-of-mouth referrals.”

Wilshire Baptist Church provided seed money to help launch the Grief and Loss Center, and it makes its church facilities available to the center at no cost.

“Part of the impetus for spinning off Laurie’s work into a separate nonprofit entity was the realization that she had unique gifts to offer the larger community. It is rare for a local church to provide this level of specialized service just for its own congregation. And so, we determined we could give a gift to the community and plant the seed for something we hope will grow into a much larger ministry in the years ahead,” said Mark Wingfield, associate pastor at Wilshire Baptist Church.

Taylor offers one-on-one consultations with people who have experienced grief and loss. She makes it clear she is not a licensed professional counselor, although she is certified in thanatology—the study of death, dying and bereavement.

“We’re not here to push or pull people but to listen and walk alongside them,” Taylor said. “There’s no reward for speed in grief. Grief never ends. It just becomes part of who we are as it is woven into the fabric of our lives.”

Christians generally respond in appropriate and caring ways to people immediately after they experience loss, but they often have no idea how to help them in the weeks, months and years that follow, she noted.

“We have our grief box, and we keep the casseroles, sympathy cards, memorials services and visitation in it. And those are wonderful. Keep the casseroles and cards coming. But after the memorial service is over, we put the lid back on the grief box and put it on a shelf,” Taylor said. “Meanwhile, the family that has experience loss doesn’t even know where the grief box is anymore.

“Jesus companioned people—he walked alongside them. We don’t do that kind of follow-through well.”

Through the Grief and Loss Center, Taylor wanted to correct that deficiency. In addition to individual consultations, she leads grief support groups at Wilshire and wants to train “companions” and facilitators for groups at other churches and helping institutions such as hospitals, hospices and schools.

Among other things, Taylor hopes to teach the importance of letting people in grief tell their stories and remember people who meant so much to them.

“Say the name. They want to hear the name. … They don’t want them to disappear and not be remembered,” she said.

“Sometimes people are afraid to mention the name of a person who has died because the grieving person might cry. Well, of course they may. That’s why God gave us tears. … There’s a cleansing of the soul that comes with tears.”

Hibdon learned that lesson, and she has shared it. As part of her own healing process—and to help her parents’ friends in Norman keep their memory alive—she sponsored breakfast and brunch events in her parents’ honor prior to Mother’s Day and Father’s Day.

Hibdon serves on the board of directors for the Grief and Loss Center. She sees it as another way to honor her parents’ legacy.

“How they died did not define who they were,” she said. “They had given decades to philanthropic work and to living out their Christian values. I can celebrate their lives and not just remember their deaths.”

For more information about the Grief and Loss Center of North Texas, contact Laurie Taylor at (214) 452-3105 or e-mail ltaylor@mygriefandloss.org.

BROWNWOOD—Nerve and blood vessel damage in 2003 paralyzed the left side of Ernest Espinoza’s face. It required two extensive brain surgeries and cost him his job as a factory supervisor.

“It’s great watching TV for a while,” Espinoza said, but time off gets old for a man who always has worked. “I was home, real depressed. … I got to where I didn’t want to talk to anybody.”

Ernest Espinoza, a member of First Baptist Church in Early, enjoys meeting needs and helping people at Good Samaritan Ministries in Brownwood, where he works with Angelia Bostick, the ministry’s executive director. (PHOTOS/Courtesy of Texas Baptist Christian Life Commission)

Finally, he recalled, “I told my wife I had to get out of the house and do something.”

A federal jobs program that matches disabled workers with part-time work enabled Espinoza, a member of First Baptist Church in Early, to work for Good Samaritan Ministries in Brownwood 25 hours a week.

“I’ve been so happy,” said Espinoza, who is now a full-time employee and food manager of the ministry supported by the Texas Baptist Offering for World Hunger. “People come and they have problems and we sit and talk. … We give them something to show that the Lord’s there. … We help out any way we can.”

While sitting and talking may be one of the things Espinoza enjoys, he’s doing much more than that. The food ministry of Good Samaritan fed 907 families in May, and those numbers have been increasing, said Angelia Bostick, executive director of the ministry and a Southern Baptist Convention North American Mission Board missionary.

“With Ernie, it’s always about the Lord,” Bostick said. “It’s a mission.”

Espinoza’s commitment to Christ and to people matches Good Samaritan’s approach. The ministry seeks to show respect to all people, no matter their current circumstances, said Bostick, who helped start the ministry 20 years ago.

Everything associated with the ministry looks nice—not fancy, but clean and inviting. The walls are painted in a “calming” light green because many of the people who come to Good Samaritan are in the midst of traumatic life situations, Bostick said.

But it’s not just the décor. The director has a basic rule about the clothes that are available.

“If you’re not going to wear it or if you’re not going to let your kids wear it, don’t put it out there” for those in need, she said. “All people are children of God and deserve respect.”

DALLAS—An orange wave of compassion washed across South Dallas recently as about 150 Woman’s Missionary Union of Texas volunteers prepared meals for the hungry, cared for the elderly and prayed for people across the area to come to Christ.

Wearing orange shirts and bright smiles, Texas WMU members and ministry volunteers took to the streets for Touchpoint, performing a variety of community ministry in a partnership with Cornerstone Baptist Church.

Earl Ann Bumpus from First Baptist Church in San Angelo labels a box during Touchpoint, a service project in South Dallas sponsored by Woman’s Missionary Union of Texas in partnership with Cornerstone Baptist Church.

Through the WMU effort, women, men, boys and girls held a children’s carnival; visited with people living in an apartment complex by playing bingo with them and cleaning their apartments; fed homeless people; cleaned showers; prayer-walked the neighborhood; and did some landscaping and construction work for Cornerstone Baptist Church.

The service event empowered Texas WMU members to connect with people and share the hope of Christ in word and deed, Touchpoint organizers noted.

“It does something to see children and adults and grandparents working side by side for the cause of Christ,” said Sandra Wisdom-Martin, Texas WMU executive director-treasurer.

Virginia Kreimeyer from Hyde Park Baptist Church in Austin said an effort like Touchpoint reflects the heart of Texas WMU—Christians engaged in mission work to spread the gospel.

“That’s what WMU is all about,” she said. “Missions is all about reaching people.”

Frances Thurman, a Texas WMU board member and member of First Baptist Church in El Paso, said she had the opportunity to meet an 88-year-old man while playing bingo. He talked about the death of his wife and his son. During the game, he won a bookmark with three crosses on it. He said he would use it to decorate his son’s grave.

In an interview more than a week after the event, Thurman said she’s thought of the man each day since the event. She bought a greeting card that she was going to send him to let him knows someone cares about him.

“It was a time where we could go and just be with the residents,” she said. “These people are lonely. It was a real unified time of touching and being with people.”

Johnnie James of Greater St. James Baptist Church in Dallas was part of a team that prayer-walked and looked for opportunities to share the gospel. She found people largely were open to being prayed with and talking about faith.

Texas WMU members and ministry volunteers took to the streets for Touchpoint, performing a variety of community ministry.

“They were so happy to see us,” she said. “We got to pray with them.

Seeing the vast ministry of Cornerstone Baptist Church reminded James congregations can accomplish great things when they follow God’s calling. It was a reminder to the 14 people from her church that they are called to serve the community as well.

“Touchpoint made us aware of what we could do,” she said.

Touchpoint is meant to help individuals “transform their Christian walk into a missions lifestyle,” where people begin to see chances to share the hope of Christ and take advantage of them, Wisdom-Martin said.

“One of the reasons we want to offer experiences like this is people feel safe participating in missions when it’s preplanned,” she said. “But when they go home and it’s not planned, they see their communities with new eyes. Not only do we do ministry when we’re there, we return and minister at home.”

GEORGETOWN—Proper evangelism means more than sharing the gospel. It involves makings disciples—a process that affects multiple generations, Mike Woods, pastor of Coronado Baptist Church in El Paso, said during one of Texas Baptists’ Engage evangelism conferences.

Christians are called to pour their lives into non-Christians, sharing the hope of Christ and discipling them in the ways of the faith, Woods said. Christ’s Great Commission requires believers to be willing to invest in the lives of others for extended periods.

That investment will have a multiplying effect, Woods noted. If a person leads one person to Christ every year for 32 years, that leads to 32 new Christians. But if a person properly disciples one person a year for 32 years, leading to a chain of people who disciple others, 4 billion people will come to Christ. Generations will be affected.

“I can wrap my mind around sharing the gospel with one person and pouring my life into theirs for one year,” Woods said.

The investment of time and energy from a mature Christian into new believers can have a profound impact and is something younger generations are seeking, Woods said.

Millennials—the generation that reached adulthood around the start of the new millennium—are extremely relational and recognize older people have experience and wisdom from which they can learn. They seek out people who can mentor them in life.

The same is true in spiritual matters, Woods said. Older generations can shape and mold younger people, teaching them based on their life experiences.

“We need to get a vision for our lives for younger generations,” he said.

Woods was one of several featured speakers during Engage evangelism conferences across the state. The conferences focused on providing practical assistance in evangelism and inspiration for future evangelistic endeavors.

This year, members and ministers from more than 400 churches participated in evangelism conferences across the state, sponsored by the Baptist General Convention of Texas. Some of the Engage conferences have focused on the 4xfour evangelism model, and one of those conferences is scheduled to take place Aug. 15 in Lubbock. The evangelism conference in San Antonio focused on apologetics. The Engage conference in Tyler was postponed due to weather.

Congregations must remain “others-focused,” said Lisa Burkett, children’s minister at Crestview Baptist Church in Georgetown, in order to be effective evangelistically. Churches are meant to carry the gospel to the community and must be mindful of barriers they erect.

“One of the best things we can do is teach our people to think of others, to be others-focused,” she said.

GENEVA (RNS)—The Obama administration's new envoy for international religious freedom told a U.N. commission that government, political, religious and business leaders must stand ready to condemn hateful ideology.

Borrowing from recent headlines, Ambassador-at-Large Suzan Johnson Cook cited a Florida pastor who had been so "publicly reviled and rebuked" for threatening to burn a Quran that he has virtually no followers left.

The appearance before the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights was the first for Cook, a New York pastor who was recently sworn in after a long nomination battle during which critics questioned her credentials.

"Leaders who remain silent are contributing to the problem and hould be held politically accountable," Cook said at a forum on "Combating Intolerance and Discrimination Based on Religion or Belief."

Holding up the United States as an example, Cook said the U.S. Justice Department sought to fight and prevent "backlash" crimes and threats against people who were, or were perceived to be, Arab, Muslim, Sikh or South Asian after the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

More than 700 bias-motivated incidents were investigated after 9/11, Cook said, resulting in 34 federal convictions and more than 160 local criminal prosecutions.

"President Obama has made clear that it is in the interest of ecurity and stability worldwide to ensure fundamental freedoms for people of all backgrounds and all faiths to understand that religious freedom is a universal human right," she said.

While noting the value of legal safeguards such as the U.N.'s Universal Declaration on Human Rights, she said creating a climate to avert violence and discrimination is better than trying to prosecute it "after the fact."

Cook credited former President George W. Bush for visiting a mosque just days after 9/11 in a bid to promote tolerance and to "counter efforts to blame all adherents of Islam for the actions of a violent extremist group."

She also noted near universal condemnation of Terry Jones, "an extremist pastor in Florida" who threatened to burn a Quran on the 9/11 anniversary, which set off deadly protests in Afghanistan and the wider Islamic world.

"His behavior is publicly reviled and rebuked by virtually the entire society," Cook said. "The result has been that you can count on your fingers the number of supporters Pastor Terry Jones has in our country."

Marriage is a “dying institution,” actress Cameron Diaz claimed recently. And the movie star’s assertion hit a nerve.

“I think we have to make our own rules,” Diaz said in the June issue of Maxim magazine. “I don’t think we should live our lives in relationships based off of old traditions that don’t suit our world any longer.”

She isn’t alone. Fox News expert Keith Ablow roiled conservative viewers by not only applauding Diaz but adding that in his clinical judgment, “marriage is—as it has been for decades now—a source of real suffering for the vast majority of married people.”

Diaz, 38, who famously has dated celebrities Justin Timberlake, Matt Dillon and most recently New York Yankees slugger Alex Rodriguez, recently shared with Elle Magazine: “I think a lot of people are married to people that they’re not romantic with anymore. I just didn’t ever marry anybody that I then had to get divorced from. We break up. We move on.”

A conference in April by the conservative think tank Ethics and Public Policy Center examined “a retreat from marriage” over the last 50 years.

Bradford Wilcox of the National Marriage Project at the University of Virginia said the United States “has witnessed a dramatic retreat from marriage, marked by the declining role of marriage as the anchor for the adult life course and the publicly recognized vehicle for lifelong love, sex and the bearing and rearing of children.”

Fewer adults are getting married. The percentage of middle-aged adults who are married has declined from about 88 percent in 1960 to about 66 percent today. Divorce has more than doubled since the 1960s but recently has seen a slight decline, attributed in part to the fact that more and more couples are living together without getting married.

Statistics just reported from last year’s census show that for the first time, married couples are the minority in America, accounting for 48 percent of all households. That’s down from 52 percent 10 years go. The number of opposite-sex couples who opt to live together without getting married is 7.5 million, up 13 percent from 2009.

A May Gallup Poll found 60 percent of Americans now believe it is morally acceptable for an unmarried man and woman to have sex, while 36 percent believe it is morally wrong. More than half, 54 percent, said it is OK for a man and woman to have a baby outside of marriage, compared to 36 percent who said it is morally wrong.

Nearly seven in 10, 69 percent, said divorce can be morally acceptable, compared to 23 percent who disagreed. Just 11 percent, however, said it is OK for a married person to have more than one spouse at a time and 91 percent said that it is immoral for a married man and woman to have an affair.

Cohabitation is competing with marriage not only as a place for sex but more and more for child-bearing, Wilcox said. Fifty years ago, 5 percent of children were born out of wedlock. Today, 41 percent are born outside of marriage.

The retreat from marriage has hit poor and working families harder than folks with a college degree, Wilcox said. In a December study done with the Center for Marriage and Families at the Institute for American Values, Wilcox found that among the affluent, marriage is stable and perhaps getting even stronger. Among the poor, marriage continues to be fragile and weak.

But the “newest and perhaps most consequential marriage trend” he said, is that marriage is foundering among “Middle Americans,” those with a high-school diploma but not a college degree.

“In the early 1980s, only 2 percent of babies born to highly educated mothers were born outside of marriage, compared to 13 percent of babies born to moderately educated mothers and 33 percent of babies born to mothers who were the least educated,” the study reported. “In the late 2000s, only 6 percent of babies born to highly educated mothers were born outside of marriage, compared to 44 percent of babies born to moderately educated mothers and 54 percent of babies born to the least-educated mothers.”

Wilcox said the children of highly educated parents now are more likely than in the recent past to be living with their mother and father, while children with moderately educated parents are far less likely to be living with their mother and father.

That trend, he said, has implications for child-rearing. Studies show boys are about twice as likely to end up in prison by the time they turn age 32, if they don’t have their father in the household.

The less a dad is around in the early years of a girl’s childhood, the more likely she is to become pregnant as a teenager. The risk doubles if the dad leaves while she is in school. If he leaves before she turns 6, it increases to seven times.

Children also are more likely to suffer physical, sexual or emotional abuse if they don’t grow up in an intact married family.

The retreat from marriage affects religion, because religion and marriage seem to go together, Wilcox observed. Having children tends to lead parents either to return to church or become active for the first time, while houses of worship play a key role in the moral education of kids.

“We know that congregations tend to offer social, religious and moral support to marriage,” Wilcox said. “People often are looking for that when they get married.”

Religious congregations “offer marriage-centered social networks that can be valuable to couples who are looking for other folks to kind of help them through the joys and challenges of married life,” he said.

DENVER (RNS)—Tim Tebow is a 23-year-old second-year, second-string quarterback on a so-so NFL team. So, who’s going to buy his memoirs? What’s to remember?

• How his missionary dad, Bob, prayed for a son and promised God to raise him to preach.

• His birth—a miracle tale told in a Super Bowl commercial.

• High school gridiron statistics that made college recruiters pant. After all, he had 80 scholarship offers. An ESPN documentary called him “The Chosen One” when he was just 17.

• A Heisman trophy and college championships at the University of Florida, where Tebow already is immortalized in a bronze statue on campus.

• His selection in the first round of last year’s NFL draft by the Denver Broncos.

Woven throughout Tebow’s new memoir, Through My Eyes, is the bone-deep religious side of the evangelical young player who writes Bible verses beneath the play codes on his wristbands, just as he once inscribed them in his eye black for his college games.

The book, written with Nathan Whitaker, starts each chapter with a Bible verse and is laced as much with “glory to God” as it is with pages of grit-and-grunt details of Tebow’s trademark punishing workouts. He trains relentlessly, determined to confound everyone who has questioned whether he can make it as an NFL quarterback.

So, the book is for anyone who ever felt a sense of defiant determination in the face of skeptics. And, it’s aimed at anyone who finds Tebow’s story just a bit insufferable.

It’s the memoir of a no-drugs, no-drinks, no-arrests player whose idea of swearing is “Holy sweet cheese-and-crackers!” Even so, there are some smudges on Tebow’s Jockey-endorsed T-shirt.

He admits to crying so often he could compete with weepy House Speaker John Boehner in a Kleenex Bowl. During his college years, a Facebook page called “I saw Tim Tebow Cry and Loved it” had 23,000 fans.

He laughs off the anti-Tebow legions.

“If those people got to know who I really am as a person, we’d get along. Holier than thou? That’s not me. I’m a real person. I fail, and then I try to keep improving and enjoying life,” Tebow said in an interview. “I’m a people pleaser. I would love everyone to love me, but they’re not, and I’m just not going to worry about it.”

Tebow seems happy, excited, eager and upbeat as he talks about faith, football and a future he says he never worries about.

The NFL lockout that threatens the 2011 season? Beyond his control.

Questions of whether he’ll start for the Broncos in 2011? Keep training.

Romance? Ha! No one special—not yet anyway, he said, laughing.

Tebow’s agenda: Live pure. Work hard. Leave the rest to God.

Tebow’s father got the preacher he promised his Lord, and the son said football is “absolutely” his pulpit.

“As a player, especially as a quarterback, you are blessed with so many things you can do with that platform,” Tebow said. “You can help a lot of kids.”

In the off-season, he has raised funds for orphanages through his Tim Tebow Foundation, running a celebrity pro-am golf tournament and tithing from his $8.7 million Broncos contract to the foundation and other causes such as Wounded Warriors.

He supports his father’s efforts in the Philippines, where Tim was born after his mother Pam’s difficult pregnancy. She rejected doctor’s advice to abort their fifth child and toughed it out, as she recounts in a Focus on the Family-sponsored commercial that broke through the NFL’s ban on issue-oriented ads during the 2010 Super Bowl.

History doesn’t count for much in the NFL, where Tebow knows he’s just another young player expected to listen and follow, not lead. Tebow wants his teammates to see that improving his play, and getting to know them on and off the field is his top priority.

“I’m with veterans who have played 10 to 15 years,” he said. “But as quarterback, you have to have everyone looking at you. You have to earn respect. Show up first. Be last to leave. After that, they begin to like you and play for you. Ultimate goal is fellows who will lay it on the line for you.”

LOS ANGELES, Calif.—At age 12, when most young girls are dreaming about what they would like to be when they grow up, Rebecca St. James already was asking God to use her talents and gifts for his glory.

“I had given my heart to God when I was 8 years old and grew up in a wonderful Christian family,” St. James said. “When I was 12, I remember a specific prayer where I said: ‘God, I want to give you my gifts and talent. They are not mine, but yours. I hope you can use my life to make a difference and change the world.”

St. James grew up attending Thornleigh Community Baptist Church in Australia. Because her father was a Christian concert promoter, she became familiar with the Christian music industry at an early age.

As a teenager, St. James broke new ground in the contemporary Christian music industry as she paved the way for many other female artists to come.

“Music has always been a natural part of my life,” she said. “I moved to America with my family when I was 14, and I sang at different youth groups and churches. Some guys from a record label saw me sing when I was 15 and signed me to that label soon after that. So, it was one of those things that God definitely led me to do.”

Along the way, she has garnered multiple honors including a Grammy Award and Dove Awards from the Gospel Music Association.

Throughout her ministry, St. James has used her influence to shape teenagers’ attitudes about sexual purity and Christian commitment by speaking at a variety of events, writing books and appearing in film projects.

Recently, her leading role in the pro-life movie, Sarah’s Choice, prompted St. James to support the work of crisis pregnancy centers. In addition, St. James has continued to connect with teenage girls and their mothers by hosting events that meld music and ministry into an evening of encouragement and practical advice on living godly lives.

Over the past few years, St. James has taken time to reflect and renew her commitment to music and ministry while staying busy with a variety of projects.

St. James’ most recent album, I Will Praise You, marked her first full-length album in five years. Shortly after the album’s release, St. James married Jacob Fink, who proposed on Christmas Day.

For St. James, the songs on this album reflect personal seasons and themes of renewal, acceptance, surrender, hope, redemption, praise and the utter dependence on the vast and unfathomable love of God.

“When I think of my life today, I have a new appreciation of ministry, music and the new season of opportunities God has for me,” St. James said. “I realize the very threads that run through this album are all very poignant and personal to me through the journey of the last five years of my life.

“In this season of new music, God has been reminding me: ‘This is about Jesus. This is about praising him and inviting other people into that journey with you.’

 “My mission statement and focus is, ‘Get out of the way, Rebecca, and just let people see Jesus.’ It’s all about his glory.”

PHOENIX (RNS)—The Southern Baptist Convention adopted a plan to try to boost minorities in their top leadership posts as the convention faces continuing reports of stagnant baptism rates and declining membership.

Messengers to the annual meeting backed the recommendation for intentionally including minorities as nominees for positions, speakers at the annual meeting, and staff recruited for its seminaries and mission boards.

The ethnic study workgroup, members of the SBC Executive Committee, answer questions during a press conference June 14 after the close of the first day of the Southern Baptist Convention annual meeting at the Phoenix Convention Center in Phoenix, Ariz. At far left is Paul Kim, a Korean multiethnic church planter and pastor in Boston who, at the 2009 SBC annual meeting, introduced a motion regarding ethnic involvement in the convention, which led to the formation of the workgroup. Workgroup members are: left to right, Darrell Orman, pastor of First Baptist Church in Stuart, Fla.; Robert Anderson, pastor of Colonial Baptist Church in Randallstown, Md., and Scott Kilgore, senior associate pastor of Crossland Community Church in Bowling Green, Ky. (SBC PHOTO By Bill Bangham)

Before the vote, Executive Committee President Frank Page acknowledged the need for “measurable information” to help Southern Baptists evaluate their progress on ethnic relations.

“I believe we are living in a day and time where there will be increased ethnic involvement and increased sensitivity to ethnic diversity within our convention,” Page pledged. “In the principle of honesty, I tell you we have not done as we ought.”

The move toward greater diversity comes as the predominantly white denomination grapples with a 2010 baptism rate that was down 5 percent from 2009 and a 0.15 percent drop in membership—the fourth consecutive year of decline.

The recommendation was the result of two years of study after a Korean pastor from Boston requested an examination of how ethnic churches and their leaders could be more actively involved.

On the convention floor, messengers defeated a move to change the language of the statement to appoint convention leaders “who are the most gospel-minded regardless of their ethnic background.”

“If we keep the gospel as the center, everything else will follow and take place,” said Channing Kilgore, the Tennessee delegate who offered the amendment.

Others countered that the intentional language was necessary.

“We cannot any longer be a convention that is basically a white convention that anybody can come to,” said Pastor Jim Goforth, who leads a multicultural church in Florissant, Mo. “We must intentionally be a convention that reaches out to everyone, and until the stage looks like we want the pew to look like, it won’t be that way. It doesn’t happen by accident.”

President Bryant Wright noted after the vote that the SBC was founded for two reasons—“one was bad, one was great”—the defense of slavery and sharing the gospel.

“It took us 150 years to come to our senses … and seek the forgiveness of God and to apologize with our African-American friends and to ask their forgiveness for the strain of racism all through our history,” he said. “But there’s a noble reason for which we were founded, and that is for the propagation of the gospel of Jesus Christ.”

David Lema Jr., a native Cuban and associate director of theological education for Florida Baptists, said the Executive Committee’s support for greater inclusiveness means the issue no longer is a matter of a “voice crying in the wilderness” but a more authoritative stance.

“I believe that the Southern Baptist Convention is turning a corner, and it’s turning a corner not just of awareness, but it’s a corner now of reality, of action,” he said.

FAIRFAX, Va.—When the pastor of one of the nation’s largest churches shot and killed an unarmed man who entered his study threatening him, the whole nation took notice.

J. Frank Norris, the controversial pastor of First Baptist Church in Fort Worth who earlier had been indicted but acquitted on arson and perjury charges after his church burned, stood trial for first-degree capital murder—and beat the rap.

The courtroom drama drew page-one attention in newspapers across the country in the mid-1920s. But today, more people know Norris for his part in denominational schisms than for his role as defendant in a high-profile murder trial.

Nearly 40 years ago, David Stokes first heard about how Norris shot and killed D.E. Chipps, a wealthy Fort Worth lumberman and close friend of Mayor Henry Clay Meacham—whom Norris defamed both in the pulpit and in print. Stokes found the story captivating, and he began to collect material related to the event.

“It had all the elements of a powerful drama,” he said.

Four years ago, Stokes decided the story was too compelling to remain untold, and he started conducting serious research with the intention of writing about it.

Stokes’ book about the Norris murder trial, The Shooting Salvationist, first appeared as a privately published work under the title, Apparent Danger. Steerforth Press subsequently picked up and revised the book, and it will be released July 12—the 85th anniversary of the day Norris shot Chipps.

“Any time there is a scandal involving a clergyman, it’s an ugly thing. But who better to tell the story than someone with an inside view?” Stokes reasoned.

After all, his mother “was converted under the preaching of J. Frank Norris” at Temple Baptist Church in Detroit, Mich., although she later grew quite critical of him. Stokes grew up an independent fundamentalist Baptist and attended Baptist Bible College in Springfield, Mo., a school that grew from an offshoot of the movement Norris led.

Today, Stokes serves as pastor of Fair Oaks Church in Fairfax, Va., a nondenominational congregation in the suburban Washington, D.C., area.

Stokes sees the Norris/ Chipps affair as an example of overreaction by Norris and overreaching by the prosecutors. He believes Norris probably did not act in with premeditation to kill Chipps, but he responded in fear at the possibility of being physically assaulted by the burly lumberman, who had been drinking.

Attorney W.P. “Wild Bill” McLean and the other members of the high-powered legal team assembled to prosecute the case probably could have won if they had charged Norris with second-degree murder or man-slaughter, but they became “blinded by hatred of Norris,” Stokes said.

“I think the jury fumbled the ball, but more than that, I think the prosecution fumbled it by insisting on a verdict of first-degree murder or nothing,” he said.

While The Shooting Salvationist contains all the elements of a true crime novel, Stokes sees it more an a character study of a “Lyndon Johnson-style larger-than-life” figure whose tremendous gifts and flagrant flaws continue to shape a significant segment of conservative Christianity in the United States.

“The DNA of Norris still is seen in the whole independent Baptist and fundamentalist movement,” he said.

Norris exercised authoritarian leadership utilizing “coercion, control and manipulation … and that continues to happen,” Stokes noted. “Norris was undoubtedly a person of great gifts and abilities, but he also operated out of dysfunction.”

To a large degree, the feuds Norris launched that affected the lives of many people—whether in local politics or denominations—grew out of “petty slights, hurt feelings and personality conflicts,” he added.

“But Norris was not as doctrinaire as people think he was. He was a pretty pragmatic, populist guy,” Stokes observed.

For instance, Norris built alliances with the Ku Klux Klan in the 1920s primarily because they shared his fervent anti-Catholic views. But by the early 1950s, he embraced Catholics as comrades in the fight against “godless communism.”

“Norris always needed a bogeyman. He always needed an enemy,” Stokes said. And when it came to defeating an opponent, “Norris believed the end justifies the means.”

Perhaps the greatest lesson to learn from Norris’ life centers on his ability to build a church and a movement around his own powerful personality.

“There’s a lesson concerning the danger of any cult of personality—the worship of a person,” Stokes said. “And that transcends categories of politics, religion and entertainment.”

WACO (ABP)—Conventional wisdom says “the family that prays together stays together.” But one study of 15 Baptist congregations found that what families want most from their church are opportunities to serve.

In 2004, Baylor University researchers polled more than 3,000 members of churches in 12 states affiliated with the Southern Baptist Convention, Cooperative Baptist Fellowship or both. While not statistically representative of all Baptists, researchers Diana Garland and Jo Edmonds said findings shed light on the struggles church families face at different stages of life.

Seventy percent of families in the survey were married couples with or without children, far higher than the general population. One in four of those were a second marriage. Fewer than 1 percent were unmarried or separated couples, far below the national norm, while widowed single adults were double the rate of society as a whole.

Researchers asked respondents to mark items from a list of 37 possible causes of family stress. Four of the top five reported stressors involved physical or mental health. A third reported serious illness or disability of a family member, close friend or relative had caused stress for their family in the previous year. About one in four mentioned death of a loved one, depression or other serious emotional problems or financial strain.

Some stressors varied by age. Teenagers felt the same stressors their families reported, like death, illness and depression, but others—such as school problems and parent-child conflict—were unique to their age.

Among families in their 20s, 61 percent reported financial strain. Thirty-eight percent cited problems balancing work and family. Three in 10 reported stress about moving from one home to another.

Financial strain was somewhat less common for families in their 30s, but a new issue emerged—30 percent reported difficulty on the job for a family member.

Families in their 40s continued to experience stress from balancing work and family and finances, about 40 percent each, while death of a family member, close friend or relative entered the top five most prevalent stressors, affecting 28 percent of families in the survey.

Respondents in their 50s carried the dominant stressors of younger groups, along with higher rates of worries related to physical or emotional health. Nearly half (46 percent) reported stress from serious illness or disability of a family member, close friend or relative, 38 percent from caring for a sick or disabled family member, and 36 percent because of a death. Financial strain remained a problem for more than a third (36 percent) of families in their 50s.

Financial strains decreased to 19 percent for families in their 60s and older, while health-related worries became more common. Nearly half (46 percent) cited stress from serious illness or disability of a loved one, 38 percent mentioned pressure of caring for a sick or disabled family member and 36 percent the death of someone close to them.

In terms of religious practice, daily Bible study and prayer historically have been considered important for Baptists, and 86 percent of individuals reported praying on a daily basis. Barely half, however, (55 percent) reported doing so as a family.

Fewer than one in four individuals said they studied their Bible daily. That rose to 62 percent on a weekly basis. Researchers said that probably is a result of Sunday school and weekly Bible studies, but daily Bible studies by families was reported by a scant 5 percent.

The most common religious activities engaged as families were caring for the created world (more than 50 percent weekly), caring for others in need and helping their community to be a better place.

“These examples suggest that families are more likely to be engaged in the world around them as expressions of their faith than to be engaged in studying the Bible together,” researchers surmised. A majority also mentioned forgiving and encouraging others and talking and listening to one another’s deepest thoughts at least once a week.

Respondents also marked up to six items in a list of 47 ways in which they would like to see their church help their families. The most common were:

• Serving others outside our family, 26.8 percent.

• Family prayer and devotional time, 21.8 percent.

• Communication skills, 20.6 percent.

• Developing a strong marriage, 19.6 percent.

• Developing healthy habits—eating, exercise, rest and recreation, 19 percent.

• Talking about our faith together, 18.5 percent.

“A majority of these families already is engaged in their communities—serving others in need, caring for the created world, offering hospitality, seeking more justice in the world and stronger communities—and still list help in these areas at the top of their requests from their congregation,” researchers reported.

Second, researchers said, families wanted more help in developing prayer and devotional time as families instead of as individuals.

“Perhaps the most interesting challenge for the church is to offer guidance and support for families in these needs of common areas of concern that are grounded in the beliefs and values of the Christian faith,” researchers noted.

“Families can go to schools and community centers for marriage or parent education or anger or money management, but only the church can ground these life issues in Christian values and practices.

“Similarly, families can go to any number of social service agencies seeking volunteers and find ample opportunities to serve their communities. There are a myriad of ‘walks’ for various causes, community cleanups and so on. These families are asking their churches to ground their service in Christian mission.”

“They not only want to offer charity, they want to strengthen their communities,” the study concluded.

“The data suggest that these families are seeking an integration of the life of service with the life of prayer and worship.”