NEW BRUNSWICK, N.J. (ABP)—Churches that do a good job of including members with special needs like autism often reap side benefits of a positive witness to their community and sometimes even numerical growth, says an expert in disability ministries.

“I’m beginning to hear more and more stories of congregations who are saying, ‘Out of our inclusive work with people with autism and their families, it’s changing us as well and for the better,’“ said Bill Gaventa, director of community and congregational supports at the Elizabeth M. Boggs Center on Developmental Disabilities in New Brunswick, N.J.

“Spiritually,” he explained, “but also people are talking about that in terms of numbers and church growth, because of people who have felt welcome and are coming and the word has gotten out that this is a welcoming place and congregation.”

Special-needs ministry is a two-way street, he stressed.

“Part of this is about helping people and children with autism to learn how to be members of different faith communities, but it’s also about helping that whole faith community to realize what it means for anybody to be a member of that community,” he said. “It’s a dual process of helping somebody to learn the culture but also helping a community to look at its own culture.”

Special-needs ministry is not just to the child or adult with disabilities, Gaventa said. It also reaches the wider family and broader network of caregivers and others whose lives intersect with the individual and family.

“If you ask families to tell you their church stories, in my experience, you never get anything that’s lukewarm,” he said. “Positive stories, families will tell to others, to their relatives, to their extended family, to their caregivers, to therapists, school teachers about how important their faith community has been. And the same thing with the negative stories; when a congregation somehow shuts its door or something that is hurtful happens, that kind of stuff gets out quickly among networks these days, often with the speed of light, it seems like.”

Responding to a member with special needs is “where a faith community has to decide what kind of witness it wants to provide out to the wider community,” Gaventa said.

Ministry in congregations often begins with people being afraid and not knowing what to do with someone with a disability, he said. From there, it moves to some form of ministry to or for special people. As church members get to know those families and individuals, they will say: “Don’t do anything special for us. Just include us. You may have to do some special things to help that happen, but just include us. That’s the gift that we most need.”

Gaventa urges churches to think holistically about ministry with people with special needs. Rather than viewing it as a religious-education or a worship issue, he advises making as many opportunities as possible for inclusion and connection within the congregation.

“See the whole congregation and its activities as a resource,” he said. “Just because somebody may not be able to participate in one particular thing very well doesn’t mean that they couldn’t participate somewhere else.”

Entry points may need to be “customized” in different ways, he added. Gaventa recommends starting not with a whole program, but by focusing on one person at a time. Opportunities might include children’s or adult education or including special-needs individuals in membership rituals like communion.

“The question is not whether to get caught up in what is the doctrinal or absolutely politically correct approach, but work with what’s needed and the gifts you have and the strengths you have,” he said. “It’s not a question of one or the other. It’s a question of both/and and making as many opportunities for inclusion and connection as possible within the congregation.”

Gaventa warned, however, that there are pitfalls to be avoided.

Parents often feel at fault if something happens to one of their children, he noted. Everyone deals with biblical interpretations about whether they did something wrong to cause something to be wrong with their child and theological questions such as “Where is God?” and “What is the source of my faith?”

The last thing they need, he said, is to explicitly or implicitly hear messages so often experienced by people with disabilities and their families: “What did you do to cause this?” and “If your faith was stronger, it could be cured or fixed.’

“Both of those, I think, we need to name them for what they are, and some people call that a kind of spiritual abuse,” Gaventa said. “We wouldn’t want people to say that to us about things that happen to us, and it’s really just other people’s attempts to find answers to questions that are not easily answered.

“But when you walk in that door that sense of welcome and inclusion is there, a sense that ‘You’re part of our faith family; we’ll figure it out with you as we go along; you’re welcome,’ that’s a huge gift for families and for people.”

NASHVILLE (ABP)—My 24-year-old son is a certified nursing assistant who provides care for three children—two with intellectual disabilities—four nights a week while their single mother is at work.

One “benefit” of such a noble-sounding but low-paying job is that he cannot afford a place of his own and lives at home. For that reason, I happened to be in the loop last Halloween that he was helping take the kids trick-or-treating and suggested he bring them by our home.

We had heard a lot about the family, so we invited them in to get acquainted. Somewhere along the line—assuming they already had plans with relatives—I invited them back for Thanksgiving. The mom jumped at the offer. (I gather people with autism don’t get invited many places.) It went well enough that we had them back for Christmas and again this past Easter.

Recently, I shared the story with Kathleen Deyer Bolduc, a nationally recognized expert in the area of ministry to people with disabilities and author of Autism & Alleluias, a book that relates spiritual lessons learned from parenting her 24-year-old son, who suffers from autism, intellectual disabilities and an anxiety disorder.

“It is amazing how meeting one or two people with any kind of disability totally shatters our preconceptions and fears,” she commented.

She said she had a similar experience when her sister-in-law brought one adult with autism and another with Down Syndrome to her home for Thanksgiving. That was in the 1980s, before Bolduc’s son was born, and she often thinks God brought them to her and her husband to prepare them for life with Joel.

Not everyone has the expertise or ability to do something significant about a problem as big as helping families deal with disabilities, she said, but “anybody can be a friend.”

Bolduc says that’s what she tells people when she’s speaking at inclusion conferences. “You don’t need to sign on for something big,” she said. “Just invite someone for dinner or a movie or to go bowling.”

CINCINNATI (ABP)— Kathleen Deyer Bolduc, a nationally recognized author and speaker in the field of disability ministry, said she was unprepared to parent a special-needs child before the birth of her third son.

Now 24, Joel has autism, intellectual disabilities and an anxiety disorder. She tells the story of their life together in Autism & Alleluias, a new book by Judson Press.

“There is a lot of pain involved in parenting a child with autism,” Bolduc said in an April webcast scheduled during Autism Awareness Month to promote her new book. “There’s a lot of joy, but I think we’re kidding ourselves if we don’t look at the grief that’s involved.”

“I can also say at the same time that living with autism, more than anything else in my life, has brought me to a closer relationship with God. It really has brought me to a gut-level understanding of the Lord’s words to Paul in 2 Corinthians, when he said: ‘My grace is sufficient for you. My power is made perfect in weakness.’

“Once I came to an acceptance of that truth, once I figured out that I couldn’t do it all on my own, that I needed God’s power to gift me with the strength I needed to parent Joel, Joel became one of the most spiritual teachers in my life.”

In one of the stories told in the book, Bolduc describes a particularly harrowing morning that started with Joel rushing out of the house barefoot and in his pajamas with the temperature in the 30s. It escalated into an emotional meltdown for Joel and reduced her to tears. Approaching her and reaching a hand toward her, instead of grabbing for her glasses as he sometimes does when he is anxious, Joel patted her face. “We need Jesus,” he said.

“We do need Jesus,” Bolduc said in the webcast. “And Jesus is with Joel, no matter how difficult things get.”

Bolduc emphasized the most important spiritual lesson her son has taught her is that God’s love is unconditional.

“God loves me just as I am. I don’t have to try so hard,” she said. “And God loves Joel just the way he is. I don’t have to fix Joel. God loves him just as he is. Such a huge burden lifted with that realization.”

Parents of children with disabilities long for a church where their sons and daughters are loved and accepted just as they are, regardless of their behavior or their ability to achieve, Bolduc said. Those that do, she said, receive a lot in return.

When Joel was about 8 or 9, she says in the book, his behavior caused Bolduc and her husband to give up on sending him to Sunday school. They learned that if they sat on the front row, where he could not kick the pew in front of him, they could usually make it at least through the congregational singing.

During communion, she said Joel would typically act out in ways so that it “was not really a spiritual experience, to say the least.” One particular Sunday, however, the pastor raised the plate in the air and recited, “This is the body of Christ, broken for you” and then the cup, saying, “And this is the blood of Christ, poured out that you might live.”

Joel stood up and clapped his hands to his chest and said: “For me! For me!” He turned around and said the same thing to the people behind him.

“Joel gave a gift to the whole church that day, when he turned around,” Bolduc recalled. “He was announcing to everybody: ‘Wake up! Open up your eyes and look at the sacrament with brand new eyes. This is for you, and this is for me. This is for all of us together.’ I think it was just an amazing lesson that my son had to teach the congregation that day.”

Another teachable mo-ment came when Bolduc’s family made a commitment to attend an African-American congregation honoring Martin Luther King Jr. During the music, Joel did what he usually did in their Presbyterian church. He worshipped with his whole body, bouncing and dancing in the aisle. This time, though, others were doing it, too.

“A proverbial light bulb went on in my head,” she said. “I thought, ‘You know, you just can’t fit a square peg into a round hole.’ All of these years of trying to make Joel fit into our worship service, it’s craziness.”

That created a dilemma for the family. “Do we leave a church that we love, or do we try to help the church see what Joel has to bring?” They chose the latter.

“I’m glad to say that our church has changed,” Bolduc said. “And I like to think that it’s changed partially because of Joel—and Peter and Jeremy and Matt, who are three other guys with developmental disabilities—and what they’ve brought to us.

“We have a contemporary service now that is much more relaxed,” she said. “Matt walks around and greets people. He doesn’t care what part of the service it is; if he sees you and he hasn’t said ‘hi’ yet, he’s coming on up. Peter dances during the worship songs.

“Joel stands up when everyone else is sitting down, if he wants to, and people are telling me, quite often, how much joy they get out of worshipping with Joel, Peter, Matt and Jeremy. There are some real gifts if we open up our eyes to them.”

“Joel has changed me, and Joel has changed our church,” Bolduc said. “If you open up your hands and your hearts and your minds and your attitudes, and you open up your church doors to those with disability, transformation will take place.”

WASHINGTON (ABP)—A longtime advocate for people with disabilities said the greatest barriers to including special-needs individuals in churches are not architectural or language but rather barriers of attitude.

“We have within us prejudices,” said Ginny Thornburgh, director of an interfaith initiative for the American Association of People with Disabilities. “We have negative stereotypes within us; we have false assumptions within us. And these things must be addressed, and they must be addressed over a lifetime.”

Thornburgh, who is married to Dick Thornburgh, the former governor of Pennsylvania, U.S. attorney general and under-secretary general of the United Nations, said the most effective way to break down barriers of attitude is to strike a friendship with one person who has a disability.

“Once you have one friend and it’s a genuine friend—you know that person, you know them well, you know their likes and dislikes—then you are more confident to have a second friend and move on to a person with a disability who has a different type of disability,” she said. “These attitudinal barriers have to be addressed and have to be addressed all of our life.”

One of Thornburgh’s four sons, Peter, 50, has both physical and intellectual disabilities. She describes him as a “man of faith active in his church.” Largely because of him, she has advocated for people with disabilities more than 40 years.

Thornburgh advised churches to form a task force or committee—including members who have disabilities—to perform an audit of barriers to inclusion of all members and develop short- and long-term goals to remove them.

“Are there designated parking places?” she asked. “Is there a ramped entrance? Is it easy to get in the door? Is there an automatic door opener? Are there pew cuts so I can easily with my wheelchair or scooter slide in a spot and share a hymnbook with my husband? Is there a ramp to the chancel, a ramp to the altar? Is there an ADA-compliant restroom?”

Thornburgh noted July 26 is the 20th anniversary of the Americans With Disabilities Act, a landmark piece of civil-rights legislation. “When I say an ADA-compliant bathroom, that means a bathroom that someone with even a large chair would be able to enter easily and use,” she said. “Those things can’t be put on hold. You can’t expect people who use wheelchairs to come if they can’t go to the restroom.”

Communication barriers are solved by having materials like church bulletins in alternative formats like audio tape or Braille, she noted. A sign-language interpreter means everything to someone who is deaf, not only during the worship service but so they can be fully engaged during social time. Improved sound and lighting systems are important helps to persons losing sensory capacities due to age.

Another category of disabilities is psychiatric. It includes bipolar disorder, depression and other diagnoses. Intellectual disabilities is a broad category.

“The hardest thing for folks in churches is that often the disability is not apparent,” Thornburgh said. “You don’t know that a person who is quiet in the pew actually has chronic pain or has any number of other non-apparent disabilities.”

Often, that is true with older adults, who don’t think of themselves as having disabilities, she added. “They’ll say ‘I use hearing aids’ or ‘I use a walker’ or ‘I don’t see as well anymore,’ but they’re not as comfortable as those of us who have worked in the disability field to the term disability.

“Our older adults are our most steadfast, contributing members. And often, they’ll stop attending because of poor hearing or poor lighting or the lack of railings. As you begin to look at your congregation in terms of disability needs, they are essential to make sure they are fully included and fully welcome.

“There are no barriers in God’s love. There should be no barriers in God’s house.”

• The University of Mary Hardin-Baylor awarded its first doctoral degrees during spring commencement ceremonies. Six students earned doctoral degrees, 21 received master’s degrees and 281 earned baccalaureate degrees. Andy Davis, pastor of First Church in Belton, was awarded an honorary doctorate.

• East Texas Baptist University presented degrees to 122 students during spring commencement ceremonies. Baptist General Convention of Texas Executive Director Randel Everett presented the charge to students.

• Hardin-Simmons University awarded degrees to 291 students during spring commencement ceremonies. Forty-eight students received master’s degrees.

• Howard Payne University conferred degrees on 148 students during spring commencement ceremonies, two of those receiving master’s degrees. Charles Johnson, interim pastor of First Church in Brownwood, delivered the charge to students.

• Pat Crump, president of Baptist Memorials Ministries, has been named vice president of operations for Buckner Retirement Services. The move is part of an ongoing integration of the work and operations of the two retirement services ministries, which affiliated Jan. 1. He will retain his title and role with Baptist Memorials.

• Caia McCullar, Dallas Baptist University professor of music and director of the music education department, has been named the school’s adviser of the year.

• James Spivey, senior fellow and professor of church history at the B.H. Carroll Theological Institute, spoke at a May 15 military prayer breakfast at Dallas Baptist University sponsored by the Texas State Guard’s 4th and 19th Civil Affairs Regiments, the 3rd Battalion Maritime Regiment and the 4th Air Wing. Spivey is a retired brigadier general in the U.S. Army who served in the U.S. Armed Forces from 1972 to 2003 and was assistant chief of chaplains. Jerald Garner, minister of music at South Garland Baptist Church and a Baptist General Convention of Texas-endorsed chaplain serving in the Texas State Guard, planned the program, which included a choir and orchestra from South Garland Baptist Church and First United Methodist Church of Rowlett. Other Baptist chaplains participating included Billy Corn, David Fish, Doug Sewell, Don Vardeman and Rick Foster.

• Baylor Regional Medical Center at Plano presented a $5,000 donation to the American Cancer Society to help underwrite the society’s Silver Dollar Ball.

Anniversaries

• First Church in Kopperl, 135th, May 2. Brian Crain is pastor.

• Alliance Church in Lubbock, 40th, May 9. Jessie Rincones is pastor.

• View Church in Abilene, 100th, June 12-13. A come-and-go open house Saturday from 2 p.m. to 5 p.m. includes refreshments and tours of the campus. Larry McGraw, assistant dean of Logsdon Seminary and a former interim pastor of the church, will preach Sunday morning. Mark Tolar, a former music minister, will lead worship. Ron Shuffield is pastor.

• Walnut Springs Church in Walnut Springs, 125th, June 26-27. A song service will be held at 6 p.m. Saturday. Former pastors have been invited to speak in the Sunday morning service that will be followed by a meal. Jason Sharp is pastor.

• Marcus Lawhon, 15th, as pastor of House of Worship in Brenham.

Deaths

• Ned Hicks, 68, April 12 in Crosbyton. Having been saved at age 9, he was pastor of his first church at age 12 in Albuquerque, N.M. After a worldwide preaching ministry, he founded Community Bible Chapel in Spur and was pastor there 18 years. He is survived by his brother, Joe Stan.

• Ivey Miller, 88, May 6 in Tyler. After attending Decatur Baptist College and Baylor University on basketball scholarships, he attended Southwestern Seminary. Following graduation, he and his wife, Winnie, were appointed by the Foreign Mission Board to Chile, where they served eight years. Upon his return to the United States, he became pastor of First Church in Winnsboro, and then he served as district missionary in Hunt Association. In 1959, he moved to San Antonio to head the Mexican Baptist Children’s Home for 17 years. After retirement, he returned to East Texas, where he served several churches as pastor and was instrumental in starting Bullard Southern Baptist Church in Bullard. As his health declined, he ministered at local restaurants each morning with Bible quotes, his thought for the day or a song. He was preceded in death by his first wife in 1991, as well as his brother, Howard, and sister, Grace Kight. He is survived by his wife of 15 years, Louise; sons, David, Jim; daughters, Marsha Mitchell and Susan Cox; sister, Pauline; five grandchildren; and six great-grandchildren.

Ordained

• Jerry Eddy, as a deacon at Greenwood Church in Saltillo.

TWIN FALLS, Idaho (ABP) — With the last of 10 Southern Baptist mission volunteers released from a Haitian jail May 17, one of her "Idaho 10" co-laborers is breaking his silence and blames the whole ordeal on meddling by the United Nation's Children Fund, more commonly known as UNICEF.

Paul Thompson, pastor of Eastside Baptist Church in Twin Falls, Idaho, told Baptist Press that things were going smoothly as the U.S. Baptists attempted to work out problems with documentation to allow the group to move 33 children from two earthquake-stricken areas near Port-au-Prince to a temporary orphanage in neighboring Dominican Republic until a group of workers wearing shirts with the UNICEF logo got involved.

Thompson said the widely broadcast video of the Haitian children crying and asking to return home was made right after a UNICEF representative told them in Creole the Baptists were kidnappers who wanted to sell the children into slavery or harvest their organs for the black market.

Thompson called the video "a complete setup" and said it was the beginning of building a case that eventually led to the group's arrest on charges of kidnapping and criminal association. Eight of the 10 were released Feb. 17. A ninth was set free March 8. The last one, team leader Laura Silsby, finally was allowed to return to Idaho after being convicted of a lesser crime and sentenced to time already served.

Silsby's church, Central Valley Baptist Church in Meridian, Idaho, released a statement praising God for her safe return and expressing concern for her welfare and for her family to get back to normal.

The church co-sponsored the "Haitian Orphan Rescue Mission" with New Life Children's Refuge, a ministry started by Silsby to rescue and care for impoverished Haitian and Dominican children, including "opportunities for adoption into a loving Christian family."

Ironically, backlash from the ill-fated mission effectively ended inter-country adoptions from Haiti. Taking advice from UNICEF, Haiti's welfare agency temporarily suspended new adoptions not already being processed, citing concern that vulnerable children could be snatched from the country and sold into slavery, prostitution or illicit adoption.

It also renewed a long-running debate in the complex issue of adoption in an impoverished country where children are often given up by destitute parents. An estimated 300,000 Haitian children have been turned over to more-affluent families who treat them as slaves known in Creole as "restaveks" — literally "stay with" — or to child smugglers who force them into prostitution.

Many are handed over voluntarily by living parents duped into believing they were giving their children an opportunity for a better life. In fact, under Haiti's adoption system a true orphan is less likely to find a home overseas than a child with at least one living parent. Regulations require orphanages to document the ancestry of children before offering them for adoption, a lengthy process much harder than getting living parents to supply needed documentation.

Even before the Jan. 12 earthquake, many children were being funneled out of Haiti through a maze of more than 200 largely unregulated private orphanages across the country. For that reason Marie de la Soudiere, coordinator for UNICEF's separated-children fund told Time magazine in February, "Our answer is 'no' to orphanages."

Diana Garland, dean of Baylor University's School of Social Work, said American society no longer removes children from their homes simply because they are impoverished, "because we know that children need to be raised in families."

"If we really love children, we need to help their families to develop the economic resources and stability to raise their children," Garland said.

Garland said in extreme cases where children are separated from parents, the next best thing is to place them with extended family members they know and love.

"When that fails we resort to foster care while we try to find a permanent family home for the children," she said. "Only in unusual circumstances and usually for short periods of time is an 'orphanage' the best choice for a child."

UNICEF's stated policy is that inter-country adoption in some cases may be the best solution, but the preference is for every child to have the right to know and be cared for by his or her own parents whenever possible. For those who cannot, UNICEF recommends finding an alternative family environment and views institutional care as a temporary measure of last resort.

Despite that, some conservative Christians accuse UNICEF of waging a behind-the-scenes war against adoption by lobbying for policies that reduce or close adoptions in some countries, increasing the amount of time that children are forced to live in orphanages or on the street.

"We have discovered and understand from visiting with people and communicating through reports that there is clearly a problem in Haiti with first-unit evangelical Christian orphanages and UNICEF and their abilities to work together," Thompson said in an interview with Boise television station KTVB.

KTVB received a statement from UNICEF saying Thompson's account is mistaken. "UNICEF played no role in the arrests of the Baptist group and UNICEF staff were not present at the arrests," the statement said. "UNICEF does not have the power to order arrests in Haiti or anywhere else." UNICEF said the workers probably were from a Haitian child-services organization, some of which wear UNICEF logos alongside their own.

The arrest of the 10 Southern Baptists came at a time when interest in international adoption is at an all-time high. That is particularly true in the Southern Baptist Convention, where a number of high-profile leaders have begun to promote adoption as a means to spreading the gospel.

This year's SBC Pastors' Conference just prior to the SBC annual meeting will include launch of a national campaign to raise money to help pastors pay for the cost of adopting a child.

"I have six children — three are biological and three are adopted," Pastors' Conference President Kevin Ezell told Baptist Press. "We just got home with a child from the Philippines six weeks ago, we have a little girl from China, and then we have a little girl from Ethiopia."

"We kind of look like the opening ceremony of the Olympics when we walk in," added Ezell, senior pastor of Highview Baptist Church in Louisville, Ky. "Adoption has changed my life personally. It brings missions home. I live with missions 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year. We have had over 120 children in our church adopted and it has helped our church focus on missions so much more."

Conference speakers include Russell Moore, senior vice president for academic administration and dean of the School of Theology at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. Last year Moore published a book titled Adopted for Life calling on Christians to adopt children as a "Great Commission priority."

UNICEF isn't alone in its view that children separated from parents by war or disaster should not be available for adoption until every effort is made to locate other living relatives.

Save the Children said wanting to help children from Haiti by evacuating them to foster and adoptive homes in other countries is "a natural instinct," but that "long experience tells us that it is almost always in the best interests of a child to remain with their relatives and extended family when possible."

–Bob Allen is senior writer for Associated Baptist Press.

LOS ANGELES (RNS)—If Jesus were to take a Myers-Briggs personality test, would he rank as an introvert or an extrovert? He was, after all, popular with crowds, but he often retreated to pray in solitude.

As an undergrad, Daniel Perett wrestled with similar questions as a member of the evangelical InterVarsity Christian Fellowship at Middlebury College. He soon discovered his introverted personality clashed with the group’s prayer-and-share ethos.

“The expectation is if you really are having a spiritual experience, the first thing that you’re going to do is share it very publicly,” said Perett, 31, now a graduate student at the University of Notre Dame.

In other words, “If the Holy Spirit were working in your life,” you’d be talking about it— “You would be an extrovert,” he said. But what Perett really needed most was time to process what was happening to him spiritually.

Perett insists evangelical Christianity—with a bigger-is-often-better strain deeply embedded in its DNA—is stacked against introverts like himself. And so, like other introverts, he began to develop coping methods rather than a deeper theology.

Perett started to speak in code. He sprinkled phrases like “God was testing,” rather than “God was absent,” in his testimonials so that his peers would not realize he was actually trying to determine how—if at all—God was present in his life.

“It forces you to put on a spiritual show for everyone else,” he said.

Perett is far from the only Christian whose introverted personality has caused religious obstacles. Writer and pastor Adam McHugh has taken note and recently released a book called Introverts in the Church.

“In my mind at the time, ideal pastors were gregarious, able to move through crowds effortlessly, able to quickly turn strangers into friends,” he writes in the introduction of the book published by InterVarsity Press.

But as an introvert himself, McHugh found the social demands of his job overwhelming, which led him to take a closer look at his specific personality type.

McHugh discovered that although introverts previously had been thought to be in the minority, more recent studies reveal introverts actually make up roughly half of the population. That doesn’t mean, however, that they’re always understood.

By definition, an introvert is someone who is energized by solitude rather than social interaction. An introvert might also love long intimate conversations; they aren’t necessarily shy, but they may very well dislike small talk. In short, introverts like to go deep, and they often like to do it alone.

As writer Jonathan Rauch described introversion for the Atlantic Monthly magazine in 2003, “introverts are people who find other people tiring.”

McHugh, for example, felt absolutely exhausted by all the retreats he was required to attend as an InterVarsity college minister in California. Canadian Jamie Arpin-Ricci says he has endured similar frustrations as a pastor.

Arpin-Ricci, a Mennonite pastor in Winnipeg, Manitoba, said most Christians expect a pastor to be available at all times, which gives introverts like him and McHugh little of the much-needed downtime.

Arpin-Ricci said it’s important not to fall into certain stereotypes—that introverts are antisocial, for example, or extroverts have plentiful but only shallow relationships. His church, the Little Flowers Community, is intentionally community-led, giving him the freedom to hand off certain responsibilities—especially when he feels a more extroverted personality may be better suited to the task.

Donna Katagi, director of spiritual formation at Cerritos (Calif.) Baptist Church, estimates her congregation is made up mostly of introverts who don’t fit neatly into the category of demonstrative Christians that many believe define a truly spiritual person.

Although Katagi says her church engages in typical activities like refreshments after worship, she also says she’s catered her spiritual formation program to meet the needs of her introverted congregation.

Outside of worship, Katagi says she’ll break up members into smaller rather than larger groups to better facilitate discussion.

For his part, McHugh says he has learned to incorporate solitude during the day, and says he remains confident that introverts can make good Christian leaders.

“I had to just figure out my own rhythm,” he said.

U.S. Catholics vexed at vatican. Nearly three-quarters of Catholics in the United States believe the Vatican tried to cover up clergy sex abuse, and a majority says Pope Benedict XVI has handled recent reports of past abuse poorly, according to a new poll, but less than 10 percent have considered leaving the Catholic Church over the issue. The Vatican has been besieged by criticism in recent months that top officials, including the future pope, mishandled cases of clergy sex abuse, allowing abusers to work in parishes with children, or stalling for years before defrocking serial molesters. More than half of U.S. Catholics—58 percent—say the Vatican did a “poor job,” of handing those reports, according to a New York Times/CBS News poll. Less than one in three gave the Vatican good marks on the scandal, and 74 percent said the Vatican tried to cover up the problem in the past. The poll was based on telephone interviews with 412 Catholics conducted April 28-May 2. The margin of error is plus or minus 5 percentage points.

Moral values in decline, most Americans insist. Three-quarters of Americans say the country’s moral values are worsening, blaming a decline in ethical standards, poor parenting, and dishonesty by government and business leaders, Gallup reports. The number of Americans who say the nation’s moral values are in decline grew by 5 percent since last year. Other reasons Americans mentioned were a rise in crime, a breakdown of the two-parent family and a moving away from religion or God. Only 14 percent of respondents believe the country’s moral values are getting better. The findings are based on May 3-6 telephone interviews with 1,029 adults, with a margin of error of plus or minus 4 percentage points.

New president tapped for Calvin Seminary. Church-planting expert Julius Med-enblik, 49, has been nominated to be the president of Calvin Theological Seminary in Grand Rapids, Mich. He is pastor of New Life Christian Reformed Church in New Lenox, Ill., which has grown from four members to more than 700. He also leads the church-planting efforts for the Christian Reformed Church. Medenblik will succeed Cornelius Plantinga Jr. at the end of the 2010-11 school year if the Christian Reformed Church Synod in June approves his appointment. Medenblik currently is chairman of the seminary’s board of trustees.

Lesbian bishop consecrated. The Episcopal Church has consecrated its first lesbian bishop. Episcopal leaders portrayed the consecration of Mary Douglas Glasspool, 56, as a suffragan bishop in Los Angeles as an affirmation of its aim to be “inclusive” regardless of sexual orientation. Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams, spiritual leader of the Anglican Communion, last December called Glasspool’s election “regrettable” and warned it would affect the Episcopal Church’s role in the communion. But Williams did not comment after Glasspool’s consecration, and reaction from the rest of the Anglican Communion was relatively muted compared to the response after the first gay bishop, Gene Robinson of New Hampshire, was consecrated in 2003.

WASHINGTON, D.C. (RNS) — Is it a show about a modern-day shipwreck, featuring misfit castaways trying to survive increasingly bizarre circumstances on an island somewhere in the Pacific Ocean? Or is Lost really a show about faith, redemption, evil, predestination, love, suffering, free will and human understanding of the supernatural?

Either way, when Lost ends its six-season run on Sunday, May 23, what will remain is the debate — especially on thousands of blogs — about the religious themes sprinkled throughout the hit series.

Because of its complicated plot lines and character development, Lost virtually precludes drop-in viewing, giving it a smaller but dedicated fan base of between about 10 and 15 million viewers per episode, according to Nielson ratings.

So, while those 290 million Americans who don't watch "Lost" each week likely care very little about the show's religious symbolism, inferences or foreshadowing, Losties, as they're often called, eat the stuff up.

"By the end of first season, we began to see Lost cultivate a thematic debate about two ways to view the world," said Jeff Jensen, senior writer for Entertainment Weekly whose "Totally Lost" blog is a Losties must-read.

The options? "Either purely naturalistic terms that only science can explain," he said, or "a supernaturalistic view of the world in which we live in a fundamentally spiritual universe that deals with what theologians and philosophers call the ultimate concerns of man — who are we, who made us?"   

In purely rational terms, "Lost" is about a group of people who survive a plane crash on a tropical island, and the struggle to survive and escape. The characters include a woman on the lam for killing her father, an alcoholic surgeon, a torturer, a drug-addicted rock star and a con man, among other tough people to love.

"They are deeply broken people, but you fall in love with them," said Chris Seay, pastor of Ecclesia church in Houston and author of The Gospel According to Lost. "… We want these people to be redeemed and changed for the better."

In the first season, much of the action revolved around flashbacks o the various characters' lives and set a foundation for how their behavior on the island could be redemptive. During that first season, as the writers teased viewers with hints of who was good and who was evil, many bloggers embraced the theory that the island was purgatory.

Each of the characters in the plane crash had died, the theory went, but the series would follow their attempts to escape purgatory by coming to terms with their lives, thereby purifying their souls as a way to gain entrance to the afterlife. That theory was debunked by the show's creators.

"They said the island wasn't purgatory, but it had elements of purgatory," said Tony Rossi, a radio host and producer for The Christophers, a nonprofit Catholic organization, who writes about faith and culture on his blog, "The Intersection."

Rossi said there are some definite Catholic allusions in the series, including one in which a character (Charlie, the drug-addicted rock star) sacrifices his life for the woman he loves and her child while making a sign of the cross as he drowns.

In a more recent episode, Rossi said, a character named Benjamin Linus, who had been set up as the series villain, confesses his sins to another character who was standing in for God, before being accepted by the rest of the characters.

"That looks very much like the Catholic sacrament of reconciliation in which a priest, standing in for God during someone's confession, allows the person to be reconciled to the rest of the community," Rossi said.

Sarah Pulliam Bailey, the online editor at Christianity Today and a Lost fan, said other theological ideas have been referenced by the show's writers. One, she said, is predestination, made famous by the 16th-century theologian John Calvin.

"Are these characters' paths laid out or do they get to choose their paths?" said Bailey. "That been a debate among theologians a long time."   

Jensen, who visited the set of the Lost finale, said the big-picture religious and philosophical themes are only likely to heighten as the series draws to an end. 

"It does seem that Lost believes that the world is fundamentally piritual, that we are not just stuff, we are not just animals," Jensen said. "But I think that it's also saying that no one explanation has ever gotten it right. And they're not about to declare who is correct."
 

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (ABP) — Former Southern Baptist Convention President Frank Page is being nominated as president of the SBC Executive Committee, one of three key leadership positions in the nation's second-largest faith group in the process of being filled.

According to Baptist Press, Page, 57, is the unanimous recommendation of a seven-member search committee seeking a successor to Morris Chapman, who retires Sept. 30 after 18 years in the leadership post that oversees operations of the denomination and recommends and disburses its annual budget.

Frank Page

Page, a pastor for 30 years before becoming vice president of evangelization for the North American Mission Board in October 2009, will be presented for election at a meeting of the Executive Committee June 14 in Orlando, Fla., just prior to the SBC annual meeting June 15-16 at the Orange County Convention Center.

If elected, Page, chosen from 16 nominees and six finalists, could face tough choices if the convention approves recommendations of a Great Commission Task Force appointed last year by current convention President Johnny Hunt.

One proposal calls for increasing the Cooperative Program allocation for the International Mission Board from 50 percent to 51 percent while reducing the Executive Committee allocation by 1 percent.

The shift of $2 million would increase the IMB's budget by less than 1 percent, while reducing the Executive Committee's current $6.95 million budget by nearly 30 percent.

Chapman wrote recently expressing "grave concerns" that the report, which also recommends recognizing a new category of "Great Commission Giving" broader than the Cooperative Program, would devalue the unified funding mechanism in use since 1925.

Jerry Rankin, who retires in July after 17 years as president of the International Mission Board, welcomed the "token" step of breaking the "50 percent barrier" for funding of the IMB but said it doesn't go far enough.

Rankin said in a recent blog that he fears Southern Baptists will embrace the spirit of the Great Commission Task Force recommendations but continue trying to do everything the convention is currently doing.

"We must see what truly fulfilling the Great Commission entails," he wrote. "It means sacrificing a lot of what we are currently doing, including the traditional structure and programs with which we are familiar. Are we not willing to give it up and make some changes for the sake of a lost world for which Christ gave His life?"

Page, a member of the Great Commission Task Force bringing the recommendations, said May 18 he could not comment on the subject.

A third key leadership spot, president of the North American Mission Board, has been under interim leadership since Geoff Hammond resigned last August over leadership differences with the agency's board of trustees.

One of the Great Commission Task Force proposals is to "unleash" the North American Mission Board to take a lead role in church-planting and evangelism work now done in conjunction with Baptist state conventions through cooperative agreements. Several state convention executives have said doing away with the cooperative agreements would make it impossible for them to afford staff positions currently jointly funded with NAMB. Some have suggested the state conventions would simply reduce the percentage of Cooperative Program receipts they forward to national causes in order to keep those jobs funded.

Dwight McKissic, a prominent African-American pastor from Texas, said recently he believes one of the three leadership posts at the Executive Committee, IMB or NAMB ought to be filled by a minority to send a message that the SBC is serious about racial reconciliation. Like every current SBC agency head, Page is white. 

Page, SBC president from 2006 to 2008, was considered a dark-horse candidate when he defeated two denominational insiders on a first ballot at the 2006 convention in Greensboro, N.C. He introduced himself to media as an "irenic conservative" and "an inerrantist" who is "just not mad about it."

Observers viewed his election as signaling a desire for a more open leadership process and as a referendum of support for the Cooperative Program. Page's church at the time, First Baptist Church of Taylors, S.C., was a leading CP supporter in the South Carolina Baptist Convention, while his opponents were both pastors of mega-churches with a relatively low percentage of budgets going to the Cooperative Program.

It also marked the first time for a candidacy to gain word-of-mouth momentum in the months leading up to the annual convention largely through the use of Internet blogs.

Page told the Florida Baptist Witness he was humbled by the nomination and hoped he could help unify a Southern Baptist constituency fragmented by various controversies.

A native of North Carolina, Page is a graduate of Gardner-Webb College (now university) who earned the M.Div. at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in 1976. He completed a Ph.D. at Southwestern in 1980 with a dissertation that advocated full inclusion of women in ministry, including ordination as pastors. 

Page claimed to have recanted those views, which he described in 2006 as "rather extreme" and the product of an "immature theologian," shortly after graduating and said he now supports the 2000 Baptist Faith and Message article that says, "While both men and women are gifted for service in the church, the office of pastor is limited to men as qualified by Scripture."

–Bob Allen is senior writer for Associated Baptist Press.

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti (ABP) — The last of 10 Americans detained while trying to take 33 children out of Haiti following the Jan. 12 earthquake was released May 17 after a judge found her guilty and sentenced her to time already served in jail.

Laura Silsby, an Idaho businesswoman who led a 10-member mission team from her Southern Baptist church to rescue children left homeless by the earthquake, was jailed Jan. 29 after trying to bring a busload of children into the Dominican Republic without proper paperwork. Silsby originally claimed the children were orphans who lost parents it the earthquake, but it later was revealed that all of the children had at least one living parent who handed them over to the Americans in hope of finding them a better life.

Haiti released eight of the 10 mission volunteers Feb. 17 and a ninth team member on March 8. Judge Bernard Saint-Vil dropped charges of kidnapping and criminal association against the 10 but ordered Silsby to stand trial on a reduced charge of arranging illegal travel.

The Associated Press quoted a Haitian prosecutor as saying Silby was convicted under a 1980 statute restricting movement out of Haiti signed by then-dictator Jean-Claude Duvalier and sentenced to the three months and eight days she had spent behind bars. The prosecution originally recommended a six-month sentence. Her maximum sentence could have been three years.

Silsby, 40, a member of Central Valley Baptist Church in Meridian, Idaho, was expected to fly out of Haiti on May 17.

Previous stories:

Southern Baptist jailed in Haiti to stand trial on reduced charge

Last Baptist held in Haiti faces new charge

Legal expert says remaining Baptist jailed in Haiti likely to be set free

Freed Baptists hope attention will now focus on Haiti's needs

Pastor stays out of division reported among jailed Americans in Haiti

Church seeks forgiveness for mission team detained in Haiti

SBC official says he believes detained missionaries acted in good faith

Baptist group arrested in Haiti denies trafficking charge

TYLER, Texas (ABP) — A grand jury began hearing testimony May 13 in the case of two men suspected of burning down 10 churches in East Texas in January and February, a television station in Tyler, Texas, reported.

Jason Bourque, 19, and Daniel McAllister, 21, were arrested Feb. 21 on a single charge of setting fire to Dover Baptist Church near Lindale, Texas, on Feb. 8. Television station KLTV reported May 13, however, that a grand jury could indict the two men on as many as 12 different arson and attempted-arson charges.

The station cited sources who said the grand jury could hand down four different indictments against McAllister: two arson charges on Feb. 8, the night that firefighters attempted to save both Dover Baptist Church and nearby Clear Spring Missionary Baptist Church, and two charges of attempted arson. Bourque could face a total of eight possible indictments for arson and attempted arson, including the fires on Feb. 8.

Authorities said from the beginning they believed the duo was responsible for nine other church fires in four East Texas communities between Jan. 1 and Feb. 8.

Police have not reported a motive. Their former pastor said the two boys were once active at First Baptist Church in Ben Wheeler, Texas, but drifted away after McAllister's mother died from a heart and attack and a stroke and Bourque's family moved to a different town.

–Bob Allen is senior writer for Associated Baptist Press.