Texas Baptists Committed, formed as a political organization two decades ago to resist a “fundamentalist takeover” of the Baptist General Convention of Texas, has accepted the resignation of its executive director, David Currie.

Currie, a San Angelo rancher who has led Texas Baptists Committed since its inception, resigned Sept. 28, effective immediately, reported Debbie Ferrier, chair of the TBC board of directors.

About a week earlier, he announced he was stepping down to become executive director emeritus in his “Rancher’s Rumblings” e-mail newsletter. At that time, he reported the organization would move its office from San Angelo to the Dallas-Fort Worth area.

After several days of constant thinking about the transition, Currie decided to advance the process and resign outright, he said.

“I wrestled around with what it means to be emeritus,” he explained Sept. 28 from Dallas, where he had traveled to attend the fall meeting of the BGCT Executive Board. “And when I got here today, I called my wife and said, ‘I don’t want to do this,’ so I’m moving on.”

“I’ve got other things I want to do,” he added. He has been a managing partner of a 2,700-acre sheep and cattle ranch in Concho County since 1968. Since 1995, he also has been president of Cornerstone Builders, a custom home building company in San Angelo.

“I doubt I would’ve been a good emeritus, anyway,” he said, chuckling.

The Texas Baptists Committed board will appoint a committee to search for a new executive director and will seek a church in the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex to provide office space, noted Ferrier, of Houston, and Bill Tillman, TBC’s immediate past chairman, of Abilene.

With Currie’s resignation, the San Angelo office will close immediately, Ferrier said. The board will work with its staff members there—financial assistant Charlotte Caffey and administrative assistant Carol Scott—during the closing process and help them find other employment, she said.

In his e-newsletter article, Currie presented a rationale for moving the organization’s offices to Dallas-Fort Worth: “Much of (Texas Baptists Committed’s) work involves working with the Baptist General Convention of Texas—keeping folks informed about the work of BGCT institutions, agencies and universities, and also acting as a watchdog in relation to BGCT policies and actions.” The BGCT Executive Board, which coordinates much of the convention’s operations, is based in Dallas.

Texas Baptists Committed “continues to have a vital ministry in Baptist life, but … (the organization) needs to move forward on initiatives that meet the new challenges of 21st-century Baptist life, and much of that work is the type of work for which I don’t have the training or—to be honest—even the desire to do,” Currie wrote.

At its apex of influence, Texas Baptists Committed succeeded in mobilizing thousands of messengers from churches around the state to attend BGCT annual meetings to elect a series of candidates endorsed by the organization. Those candidates included the state convention’s first Hispanic, African-American and female presidents.

Last year, Texas Baptists Committed agreed to refrain from endorsing any candidates for BGCT office.

In recent years, as the organization has experienced financial hardship and endured questions as to its continued reason for being, the group has tried to shift from its previous role of political organizing to a new identity as promoter of BGCT ministries and institutions, as well as a voice for historic Baptist principles.

Currie served from 1988 to 1990 as field coordinator for Baptists Committed to the SBC, a national organization of Baptists moderates that developed into Texas Baptists Committed. Since 2000, he has worked as a consultant with the national Mainstream Baptist Network.

Prior to that, he worked as a special projects coordinator with the Southern Baptist Christian Life Commission in Nashville, Tenn., as pastor of First Baptist Church in Mason and as a special assistant to the director of the Texas Department of Agriculture.

Currie is a graduate of Howard Payne University, and he earned master of divinity and doctor of philosophy degrees from Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary.

FALLS CHURCH, Va. (ABP) — A pastor in Pakistan has asked his fellow Baptists around the world to pray for the nation’s beleaguered Christian community as it faces increasing pressure from the Muslim majority.

In an e-mail to the Baptist World Alliance, Pervaiz Khokhar said prayers are needed after a series of violent incidents in the summer threatened the community’s tenuous safety. In late July, Khokhar said, hundreds of members of Sipah-e-Sahaba, a Muslim group banned by the Pakistani government, killed Christians in the city of Gojra and in the nearby village of Korian. The murders stem from allegations that Christians had been defiling a copy of the Koran.

Between 60 and 70 Christian homes were torched. Khokhar said it is thought that at least nine Christians were burned alive, four of whom were children.

He said the allegations apparently stem from an incident in which a young boy attending a wedding ceremony was accused by Muslims of burning pages of the Koran. Local Christian and Muslim leaders established that the accusation was false, but Sipah-e-Sahaba urged Muslim villagers to attack Christians anyway.

Khokhar asked for prayer from the worldwide family of Baptists. “These people need your support and prayers. Please remember them in your prayers and if possible support them,” he wrote.

He also referred to similar incident from earlier in the summer, when a mob attacked the homes of Christians after charges of blasphemy in another part of Punjab province.

In yet another Pakistani incident, Christians are protesting against official accounts of the death of a 19-year-old Christian man being held in a jail cell. Fanish Masih was arrested on blasphemy charges after he fell in love with a Muslim woman. According to the local police superintendent, he committed suicide 24 hours later.

But Victor Azariah, general secretary of the National Council of Churches of Pakistan, accused the police of killing him. “The boy did not commit suicide,” he told Ecumenical News International.

“Media reports say he was tortured and his ribs were broken…. The situation is dreadful,” he said. “We condemn this heinous act carried out on a Christian in jail.”

Catholic and Protestant leaders in Pakistan have made plans to call an emergency meeting of all church leaders to organize protest action in the face what they believe is a worsening situation for Christians.

Pakistan, with approximately 180 million residents, is home to fewer than 3 million Christians.

–Mark Woods is editor of the Baptist Times, the newspaper of the British Baptist Union. This story includes information from the Baptist World Alliance.

CLEVELAND—First Baptist Church has fully grasped the Texas Hope 2010 vision to share the gospel with all Texans by Easter 2010. Their proof—31 new believers baptized during an open call baptism service and Southern-gospel concert held on the lawn of the church.

This 400-member church placed an ad in the local newspaper inviting the community to come and even be baptized. The service started at 4:30 p.m. with a cookout and Southern-gospel concert following.

Pastor Russ Tynan of First Baptist Church in Cleveland baptizes Jacob Waller.

“When some of the church members saw me take out an ad in the paper and set up a pool outdoors and say that we were going to feed people who came, some of the adults were a bit concerned that maybe this wasn’t holy enough since we weren’t inside the church building,” said Russell Tynan, pastor of the church. “After the baptism, many came back and said that this was unbelievable.”

In July, Children’s Minister Susan Adams took 70 children to camp and saw 24 decide to follow Christ. When the group returned, Roger Yancey, director of missions for the Tryon-Evergreen Baptist Association, suggested that the church use the children’s baptisms as a way to reach out the community.

Several hundred people attended the event, the majority being visitors to the church. Many mentioned they came after seeing the newspaper ad just because of curiosity, Tynan said.

Once at the event, several community members chose to be baptized with the children. Those who came that afternoon to be baptized first met with a counselor from the church.

“We asked them first if they would explain baptism and why they think they needed to be baptized,” said Lloyd Lewis, a deacon at the church. “We wanted them to tell us why they were there. We wanted to make sure they didn’t think that this baptism was going to save them and that they weren’t just doing this because their friends were doing it. We wanted to make sure that they were understanding and had accepted Jesus into their heart.”

The church advertised its “open call baptism” service and Southern-gospel music concert.

The number of baptisms that day was significant because the church had not baptized that many people in one day in recent decades. Since the open call baptism, 15 more people have asked to be baptized.

Adams believes that consistently reaching out to unchurched children of the community during the church’s summer children’s program played a role in many coming to Christ recently. She also sees this as God using Tynan to heal old wounds in the church and open new doors for the congregation to gain a heart to reach the city.

“In the past, our church has been through a lot with our ministers and staff,” Adams said. “Things came out in the past that were very, very traumatic, and we needed a time of healing. Brother Russ came in with all these new ideas, and he has this way of making you think: ‘Oh my gosh. Of course we can do that.’ It’s amazing how one person can come in and light the fire. Now everyone is excited and motivated and ready to do this. He is exactly what we needed.”

The baptisms are confirmation that God wants to use this church in a mighty way, and he is making the church more outward focused, Tynan said.

“When I first came here a year ago, I thought this place has huge potential,” he said. “I really thought we could baptize over a hundred this year, but for whatever reason, the people didn’t see the same thing that I did. And now with this baptism event, people, even the older members, are excited about reaching our community.”

Much of the change began during spring revival services at the church, ones that sparked heart changes among the congregation. Shortly after that, the church made plans to begin Café Connect, a casual service with a coffee bar held in the church gym, in June. The service has a contemporary worship band with a simulcast of the sermon in the traditional service held in the sanctuary.

Lewis attributes the growth to this new service being geared to young families who wouldn’t feel comfortable attending the traditional service, but he also sees this as a movement only God could cause.

“About six months ago, even the older people sensed something was changing and happening,” Lewis said. “We have been praying for years that this type of thing would happen and it was amazing. I’m sure that anyone couldn’t tell you what we did to make this happen. Maybe it was just that we quit trying hard and let God do it.”

When the church tested a few services in June, more than 100 community members came. From the beginning, the service grew only by word of mouth. This fall, the church plans to advertise the service to the whole community.

To continue reaching out to the community, the church will begin delivering the Texas Hope 2010 gospel compact discs throughout the city starting mid-September as well as hosting monthly evangelistic events.

“It’s been amazing to see how this church of 134 years is reaching out to the community,” Tynan said. “I believe this is the kind of work that directly relates to Hope 2010.”

PITTSBURGH, Pa. (ABP) — U.S. religious leaders including the missions coordinator of the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship said the Sept. 24-25 G-20 Summit in Pittsburgh provided a unique opportunity to raise their concern about the plight of the world's poor.

Rob Nash, coordinator of global missions for the Atlanta-based CBF, was one of more than 25 Christian, Jewish and Islamic religious leaders at a Sept. 23 Faith Leaders Summit organized by groups including CBF-partner Bread for the World.

"It was a privilege for me to join with other religious leaders in representing the needs of the most neglected peoples of the world at the G-20 Summit," Nash said. "My prayer is that global leaders will take seriously the realities of hunger and poverty as they fashion a response to the current economic crisis."

Formed in 1999, the Group of 20 is comprised of finance ministers and central bank governors from 19 countries and the European Union. It is replacing the Group of 8 nations of the Northern Hemisphere — Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia, the United Kingdom and the United States — as the new global forum for economic issues.

Faith leaders gathered in Pittsburgh called on world leaders to include the 1 billion people who live in extreme poverty in their deliberations about actions needed for recovery from a global economic crisis.

"The most important indicator of economic recovery should be what happens to hungry and poor people — the many families who are struggling in our own country and the tens of millions who have been driven into hunger around the world," said David Beckmann, president of Bread for the World, a collective Christian voice urging U.S. decision-makers to end hunger at home and abroad.

An empty pulpit doesn’t have to mean an empty sanctuary, some long-time ministers insist.

At any given time, roughly 600 Baptist General Convention of Texas-affiliated churches are without a pastor. A pastor may have retired or moved to serve another congregation. The church may have terminated the pastor. Or the congregation simply may not have enough money to pay someone to fill the pulpit permanently.

Many churches view these periods as times between leaders, but they can be much more, according to BGCT Pastorless Church Consultant Karl Fickling.

“They view the interim period as a time to do nothing but tread water and look for a new pastor,” Fickling said. “That means the next pastor will have to face those issues. What we’re saying is that needs to be a time when churches work through their issues, clarify their call and begin to grow.”

If congregations will use times when they do not have a pastor to reflect on who they are and what God is calling them to be, they will be in a much healthier place when they are ready to call a pastor, Fickling noted. They can begin to create a ministry plan for how to accomplish what God is asking of them.

When churches understand who they are, they have a better idea what they want in a pastor, Fickling said. They know their talents, desires and callings. In turn, they have an idea of the type of leader that can get them there.

The BGCT Intentional Interim Ministry provides an excellent tool for pastorless churches to use to assess their history, leadership, connections and mission, Fickling noted. Trained, experienced ministers lead the congregations to look systematically at themselves, at their communities and to God in laying the groundwork for the future.

Long-time intentional interim minister Jan Daehnert recently praised the intentional interim program for helping revive numerous churches. Although the congregations had to make some tough decisions, churches were brought together by a unifying vision and able to move forward to reach people in the name of Christ.

Charles Lee Williamson receives the inaugural Intentional Interim Award from the Baptist General Convention of Texas, presented by Associate Executive Director Steve Vernon. The award is named in honor of Williamson, Jan Daehnert and Dick Maples, who helped pioneer the program among Texas Baptists. (BGCT PHOTOS)

The intentional interim pastor is a peacemaker, Daehnert said. Interims step in when pastors are under attack and churches are in conflict. They find a way to reunify congregations.

Daehnert and fellow intentional interim statesmen Charles Lee Williamson and Dick Maples recently received the inaugural Intentional Interim Award named in their honor.

If a church is willing to examine itself when it doesn’t have a pastor, it will increase the chances of it hiring the correct person when it is time to call a pastor, Fickling said.

“One of the biggest issues is the pastor and the church were not a good match to begin with,” Fickling said. “Search committees, often all they know is the look for the best preacher they can afford. Pastors often make the mistake of thinking they have a vision for what a church should do and roam from church to church to church looking for a place where that vision will work.”

For more information about the BGCT’s Intentional Interim Ministry program, contact Fickling at (888) 244-9400.

WASHINGTON—Health care reform may be Priority No. 1 in Congress and at the White House, but for the 1,825 religious conservatives who gathered for the annual Values Voter Summit, the subject was barely on their radar screen.

“To me, there are so many more important issues than health care right now,” said John Leaman, a retired yacht builder from Lancaster, Pa. Added his wife Linda, a waitress: “I don’t think it’s as urgent as Obama’s making it out to be.” The real problem, she said, is illegal immigrants “cluttering up our emergency rooms.”

Indeed, among the dozen issues that summit participants cited in casting their votes in a straw poll for possible 2012 Republican presidential candidates, health care never made the list. The top three issues were abortion, protecting religious liberty and opposing same-sex marriage.

“It’s up to us to help each other; it’s not the government’s job to take care of us,” said Texan Karen Marsalis, a retired teacher from Deadwood, whose shirt, like her husband’s, featured stars and stripes and images of the Statue of Liberty.

Just days before the summit got underway, a report by the University of Akron and the liberal-leaning group Public Religion Research found that conservative and progressive activists don’t just disagree on hot-button issues on the public agenda, they can’t agree on the agenda itself.

Conservative activists—typified by the “values voters” who rallied in Washington— picked abortion (83 percent) and same-sex marriage (65 percent) as their top two issues; just 6 percent cited health care. Progressives, meanwhile, cited poverty (74 percent) and health care (67 percent).

The only organized attention that health care received at the two-day summit was a panel discussion on “ObamaCare: Rationing Your Life Away.”

Participants booed at any mention of “Obamacare,” and cheered Texas Gov. Rick Perry when he decried a government that “has its hands too far in our pockets and its nose too deep in our business.”

Many participants drew a distinction between access to health care and health care reform. Anyone who needs treatment, they said, can get the care they need. How they pay for it is their problem, no one else’s.

“Personal responsibility is not something people want to do anymore,” said Debbie Michael of Mount Airy, Md. “We expect the government to do it all.”

Still, some at the summit said there is room for improvement. Lorie Watson, a nurse from Simpsonville, S.C., works for an insurance company administrating third-party claims and worries about the high costs of drugs and tests. She said Washington could have “a limited role in reform, but not in providing health care.”

BROWNSVILLE—Iglesia Bautista West Brownsville dreams big—so big that the members set a goal to see 20,000 people place their faith in Christ this year. And they expect to surpass that goal within the next few weeks.

The 2,000-member congregation isn’t set on winning souls for the sake of numbers but to make disciples who will reproduce themselves wherever they are, Pastor Carlos Navarro said.

To accomplish that objective, church members share the gospel by hosting block parties, providing free breakfast to people crossing the border each morning, sending missionaries and mission teams to Latin American countries, ministering to the sick through a weekly health clinic and living out the Great Commission in all they do.

“Since I came here in 1993, I set goals every year in the soul-winning effort,” Navarro said. “We started with a goal of 1,000. Then we went to 2,000. We were increasing it by 1,000 each year.”

To reach 20,000 in one year may seem unattainable and unrealistic to some, but the church said it is possible—and likely.

In tallying results of their witnessing efforts, the church includes people who come to faith in Christ through direct interaction with West Brownsville members, whether in a worship service at the church or through international missions where they serve alongside local churches in Latin America or through personal evangelism done in day-to-day life.

Many of these believers have been baptized into the West Brownsville church, but many have joined churches in their hometowns or back in their home countries.

Pastor Carlos Navarro shares about Christ during a worship service held at a block party. Iglesia Bautista West Brownsville uses block parties, personal evangelism, border outreaches, home Bible studies and medical clinics to share the hope of Christ with people in Brownsville, the surrounding area and Latin America. (PHOTOS/Courtesy of Iglesia Bautista West Brownsville)

Much of this growth came as every member in the church took seriously the task of sharing the gospel, Navarro said. The church stresses that it is each Christian’s responsibility to witness, not just the responsibility of the church staff or leadership.

“I don’t just tell them how to do it, but I show them how to do it,” Navarro said. “I created that environment before I came. I did it with my wife and two kids first. And as soon as I accepted the invitation as the pastor, I went out by myself because the church wasn’t use to doing this. Since I went ahead of them, they now do it gladly when they see it.”

On average, the church sees 1,200 people a month accept Christ through ministries at the church and along the Rio Grande, as well as through mission partnerships in South America. By late September, the church had seen 18,300 come to Christ this year, with about 70 percent of those decisions happening in Texas.

The evangelistic spirit of the church is an example of the Texas Hope 2010 to give every Texan an opportunity to respond to the gospel by Easter 2010.

“Our church has an emphasis on evangelism and missions and reaching people,” said Mary Perez, a member of the church. “From the beginning of coming here, we were taught that as Christians, we need to reproduce ourselves. On an everyday basis, we are taught about winning souls. It is a way of life. We do this locally and in Mexico. Then we started mission trips to South America about five or six years ago.”

Perez and her husband Rogelio took the evangelistic spirit of the church to heart as they went with their children to Argentina to serve as missionaries for a year. They were the first missionaries to be fully supported by the church. Now, the church supports missionaries in eight Latin American countries, Spain and Morocco.

To keep international ministry before the congregation, Navarro highlights a different country each Sunday. Members originally from that country will share and offer prayer requests for the country before the church joins them in praying for evangelistic efforts there.

The church has started four churches in Mexico and five in Texas and uses 18 cell groups to disciple believers within the mother church. Perez credits the congregation’s ministry vision and family atmosphere to training new Christians how they can become involved in the work.

“We have a program set up where we give new Christians 13 lessons on basic theology,” Perez said. “After that, they go to the second level, and we teach them a little more in-depth about the church and opportunities for ministry.”

Roland Lopez, Hispanic church planting consultant with the San Antonio Baptist Association, said that the church’s vision and strategy is what has been used for ages. And members are passionate about sharing the gospel as a lifestyle.

“The strategy is that it’s just the old-time stuff that he uses,” Lopez said about Navarro’s evangelism and outreach efforts. “You have to present the gospel to people. The more people you present the gospel, there is more of a chance that someone will respond.

“If we can define revival, which is the rekindling or reactivating of people to spiritual things and to spiritual commitment, I think that Carlos has done that and is doing that with the city of Brownsville. He has really impacted the community by gospel presentation, but also in modeling Christianity.”

SHREVEPORT, La. (ABP) — The parents of a girl who died this summer from injuries received in a church-bus wreck are asking 13,000 people to keep her memory alive by doing something good on Oct. 29 — which would have been her 13th birthday.

Maggie Lee Henson, one of 23 youth and adult sponsors injured when their bus from First Baptist Church in Shreveport, La., blew a tire and overturned while en route to a Passport youth camp in Georgia July 12, died Aug. 2.

Church-bus crash victim Maggie Lee Henson, pictured her with her Chihuahua Ellie, won\'t be around to celebrate her birthday Oct. 29, but thousands of people are planning to keep her spirit alive by performing a good deed for someone in her honor.

Her parents, John and Jinny Henson, documented her three-week struggle for life at Blair Batson Memorial Children's Hospital in Jackson, Miss., in a journal on a website called CaringBridge.com. 

Kelli Alamond, a member of First Baptist Church in Texarkana, Texas, didn't know Maggie Lee personally but was touched enough by her story to start and administer a Facebook prayer group for her and others from the stricken Shreveport church.

After her death, Alamond thought about her own twin boys, who had recently turned 13, and realized that if not for the tragedy the Hensons would have been gearing up for Maggie Lee's birthday bash. Rather than letting the occasion go unnoticed, she issued a challenge on Caring Bridge for 1,300 people to commit to performing "demonstrations of Christ's love" in her honor on Oct. 29.

Jinny Henson loved the idea. She set up a Facebook group and sent an invitation to everyone in her address book, about 800 people. Within 24 hours, 1,500 members had joined. That number quickly doubled, and she upped the challenge to 13,000. As of Sept. 24 when this story was written, membership in the group had grown to 8,948. Other Internet users have joined through a website,

The theme "Maggie Lee for Good" is adapted from the song "I Have Been Changed for Good," which was sung at her funeral service at First Baptist Church on Aug. 6. It is from Maggie Lee's favorite Broadway musical, Wicked.

"Maggie Lee was the kind of young lady who creatively loved people," says the Maggie Lee for Good website. "Whether it was asking her mom to pull over and buy a hamburger for a homeless person or sticking up for a friend, she made the world a better place with her presence."

Ideas for honoring her memory include having a Maggie Lee For Good Party, which involves inviting friends over who each bring a new toy to donate to charity. Another suggestion is simply picking up the phone to call an estranged friend, acknowledging that life is too short to bear a grudge.

Alamond, who is originally from Shreveport and has friends and family who attend First Baptist Church, was one of thousands of complete strangers who took Maggie Lee's story to heart and wanted to do something to help.

Alamond said starting the Facebook prayer group helped ease her own restlessness, and it wound up being more of a blessing than she ever imagined. She said she was amazed at the number of people who joined the group — but what surprised her most was not the number of people who were praying for Maggie Lee to recover, but that so many were deeply affected and changed by reading about the accident.

One mother wrote to say she had been strung out on drugs for years. Reading about the Hensons' love and concern for their daughter, she thought of her relationship with her own children and decided to turn her life around and enter drug treatment. A father decided he was working too much and didn't spend enough time with his kids. A mother who struggled with depression realized she had much to be grateful for and for the first time began to think about the afterlife. In all, hundreds wrote to say the journal was a wake-up call for them in one way or another.

One woman wrote John Henson, who serves on the staff of the Shreveport church as associate pastor for emerging ministries, to tell him that, because of Maggie Lee, she stopped to give lunch to a homeless man she had passed up many times before.

"I am truly shocked that Maggie Lee's story has touched people so profoundly," Jinny Henson said. "Every day, we get e-mails about how people woke up in the middle of the night interceding for her and how God used that experience to completely change their lives. Now that she is gone, people are doing all kinds of wonderful things because of her story and that is amazing, as well."

"It is almost as though God has raised peoples' spiritual antennae because of this," she said. "As wonderful as that is, I will always wish I could've seen my child grow up — but I guess that's why God is so much higher than we are, because he gave his Son."

The Hensons recently met country pop singer and songwriter Taylor Swift, who said she would be happy to be part of Maggie Lee for Good.  Erin Anderson, a wedding photographer in Houston, added her support by designing a logo for Maggie Lee for Good.

Henson said there are no words to describe "the awful process of adjusting to the loss of a child." Little things like going to the grocery store and starting to pick up a cereal product before remembering that the only person in the house who liked it is no longer there can reduce her to tears.

"It is unnatural to bury a child, and with them you bury the parent you were to them," she said. "So a piece of you dies, as well."

Several people commenting on the Maggie Lee for Good website mentioned birthdays of lost loved ones of their own.

Jinny Henson said she and her husband found it natural to express themselves throughout their ordeal.

"People have responded to John's writing because he is honest about what people call the greatest loss a human being can suffer, losing a child," she said. "I am a Christian speaker, as well, so I, too, have seen the value of communicating honestly where we are."

"I think so many people have shared their burdens with us because there are so many people out there who walk around with broken hearts, even in the church," she said.

–Bob Allen is senior writer for Associated Baptist Press.

WACO (ABP)—Students at two historic Baptist schools are taking Jesus’ command to feed the hungry and quench the thirsty quite literally.

Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, N.C., and Baylor University in Waco are feeding their communities through the Campus Kitchens Project. The initiative is an effort by students to keep extra food on their campuses from going to waste—and to challenge the very roots of malnutrition in their communities.

According to the group’s website , 20 schools across the country have started their own Campus Kitchens chapters. Students coordinate the redistribution of leftover food from dining halls to people in need.

The chapter at Wake Forest has been serving since 2006. According to Shelley Graves, the kitchen’s coordinator, in that short time about 1,200 volunteers have worked to serve meals in the Winston-Salem community. Graves said student volunteers work in donated kitchen space and help serve 350 to 400 meals per week, Sunday through Thursday, to a number of local organizations that serve the disadvantaged.

“Students are really the ones that are running the program from day to day,” Graves said. In fact, she noted, the program’s volunteer spots are very popular among Wake students.

The Campus Kitchen at Baylor is just beginning its first full year of service to the Waco community. It is one of the two major initiatives of the Baylor Interdisciplinary Poverty Initiative . According to Gaynor Yancey, faculty coordinator for the initiative and associate dean at the Baylor School of Social Work, the project gets faculty, staff and students “all concentrated on the fact that poverty is one of the major issues in the world.”

(L to R) Sheena Smith, Flor Avellaneda, Christine Hersh and Marianne Magjuka celebrated the grand opening of Baylor University Campus Kitchen earlier this year. The students were four of the more than 40 BUCK volunteers, who made 1,000 box lunches for volunteers working on the Martin Luther King Day of Service. (PHOTO/Baylor)

The Baylor kitchen was born from a project in Yancey’s advance practice class in the social-work master’s program.

“What would normally take a year to a year-and-a-half, my class did in three-and-a-half months,” she said. The process taught the students how to start an organization by breaking the class into teams, with each functioning as a team would in a real-world organization. The teams had a plate full of tasks ranging from working with the university, administration, and local food service, to being trained as safe food handlers, writing grants and organizing volunteers.

Their work paid off when the kitchen officially started on Baylor’s campus Jan. 17—the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday. On that day alone, volunteers served 1,000 boxed lunches at nine different sites to people who were marking the day by serving their community.

Like the Wake Forest kitchen, the Baylor kitchen is student-driven. Last semester, Yancey said, the program had about 350 student volunteers.

One of this year’s student volunteers and leaders is coordinator Anna Imose.

Campus Kitchens Wake Forest University encourages volunteers to use their creativity put thoughtful touches on the food they prepare like this football cake. (PHOTO/Melissa Duquette)

Her responsibilities include all of the planning, scheduling and paperwork—including a monthly report to the national office of Campus Kitchen.

This year, Imose said, the Baylor chapter will continue to prepare one full meal a week to be served at a local organization. They also will be taking food that can’t be stored to the Salvation Army, which serves three meals every day of the week.

To Imose, her role as a student coordinator is about more than just serving food.

“You realize how important food is,” she said. “I never realized how much of an influence it has. … (I) learned that in the simple thing of feeding people they are more willing to listen to you … open up to you … it opens a door that I never thought was possible.”

Campus Kitchens’ mission goes beyond simply feeding people, to include teaching them about healthy eating and living.

Christine Hersh is Baylor’s kitchen manager. A nutrition-sciences major, she acts as the chapter’s nutrition coordinator as well. Her job is to take the reclaimed food and decide how to make nutritious meals out of it, along with running the kitchen and making sure food-safety standards are being followed.

Students Helen Woldemichael (L) and Demetria Williams (R) volunteered their time to help Baylor University Campus Kitchen (BUCK) with its grand opening earlier this year. (PHOTO/Baylor)

This year, the Baylor kitchen will partner with a local farm to incorporate locally grown produce into the meals. The Wake Forest chapter also will be adding this element to its kitchen through a campus garden.

Hersh said her experiences volunteering have helped her to see the need in the local community surrounding campus.

“It has enabled me to see beyond the ‘Baylor Bubble.’ … It really opened my eyes to what the need is out there and how much food we waste—or would have wasted if we threw away this food from the dining halls.”

In the case of Waco, it’s a community that could really use the help. According to Yancey, Waco has a 27.5 percent poverty rate among adults. “Baylor is a part of the Waco community. … This is something that we can all get involved in,” she said.

Outside of serving food and providing nutrition education, both Baylor and Wake Forest’s kitchen projects encourage students to sit and eat meals with the people they are serving.

Yancey described the program as “not just a thing of serving food, but building relationships … sitting and talking with people over food, over a meal is one of the most effective ways to build relationships.”

Breaking bread and getting to know someone over a meal is “something pretty biblical,” Yancey said.

WACO—The tense relationship between Baylor University and the Baylor Alumni Association may have reached a potential turning point—or boiling point—Sept. 19 when the university presented the alumni association a proposal asking the group to give up its independent nonprofit status and come under the authority of Baylor administration.

The proposal would consolidate the alumni association’s independently produced Baylor Line—which has sometimes taken positions critical of university administration and the board of regents—and the university-produced Baylor Magazine into a single publication, with the school maintaining editorial control.

In exchange, Baylor would cover operating costs for the alumni association, provide a seat on the board of regents to a member of the current Baylor Alumni Association’s board of directors, make the executive director of the alumni association vice president for alumni affairs and give the association’s current employees the option of working for the university.

Baylor Regent Bob Beauchamp presented a detailed proposal from Regent Chairman Dary Stone and Baylor University Interim President David Garland to the Baylor Alumni Associa-tion board.

Alumni association to study proposal

The association’s board passed a motion to create a study committee composed of alumni and faculty to examine the proposal.

The alumni association’s board “will strongly consider the merits of the proposal received from the board of regents and interim administration,” according to a statement by Baylor Alumni Association President David Lacy and CEO Jeff Kilgore.

The alumni association “has always given any request from the Baylor administration full consideration in keeping with the responsibilities with which it is entrusted,” the statement said.

Even so, the statement noted the request for the Baylor Alumni Association to give up its independence and become a department within the university “raises questions with many

alumni, considering that only two years ago, both (the alumni association) and the Baylor board of regents agreed upon and expressed their commitment to the independence of (the alumni association), strategic plans that support the mission of the university and a harmonious relationship.”

Kilgore noted the proposal from the university generated “a degree of shock” among some alumni association board members, who had anticipated their meeting would focus on events related to the association’s 150th anniversary, including the launch of a “United for Baylor” five-year plan to increase scholarship giving to children of alumni and raise money for Baylor University.

Regents emphasize national ‘best practices’

The written proposal presented to the alumni association board acknowledged “conflict of purposes” between the university and the association, and it called for the Baylor Alumni Association to become part of the school’s division of university development.

“Baylor needs a vibrant, nonpolitical, supportive alumni organization communicating with its alumni around the world,” the proposal stated.

In separate interviews, Beau-champ and Stone both characterized the proposal as an offer by the university to bring the alumni association into line with “best practices” of other major universities around the nation.

Baylor officials have insisted the number of universities with independent alumni associations is small and getting smaller, and Baylor’s relationship with its alumni association is unique among private universities.

“We must have a thriving, growing alumni association,” Beauchamp said, noting that while Baylor has graduated about 25,000 alumni in the last decade, membership in the Baylor Alumni Association has declined. In contrast, the Baylor Network—the university’s in-house alumni program—has been “thriving and growing” both in the number of events it has sponsored and the number of individuals involved, he added.

Baylor University is “carefully considering best practices in all aspects of the school,” from its governance to administration to alumni affairs, Stone added.

“Every other private school in the country” comparable to Baylor “has a well-constituted, well-organized alumni affairs effort that is a part of the school,” Stone said. The “outdated model” of an independent alumni association results in discordant messages, he noted.

“When you have two voices, two organizations, there are going to be bumps,” he said.

Different perspectives

While differences between the alumni association and the university’s administration and regents cannot be denied, Kilgore countered that the Baylor model—an independent alumni association outside the university structure—worked well as long as both parties valued each other as willing partners.

“The model in itself is not as important as how you work together,” he said.

Baylor Alumni Assoc-iation—formed 150 years ago—has functioned as an independent entity for about 30 years, when Baylor incrementally began decreasing its funding for the group by mutual consent.

But the organization’s relationship with the university has been strained for about the last seven years, when Baylor developed its own alumni services office—the Baylor Network—and began publishing its own magazine mailed to alumni and donors.

Earlier this year, the university removed the alumni association from its toll-free phone line, alumni association staff lost their university e-mail addresses, and the alumni association lost its link on the “Alumni and Friends” page of Baylor’s website.

A timeline of events distributed by Lacy and Kilgore to the Baylor Alumni Association also recounted a series of other actions demonstrating the breakdown of the relationship between the association and the university.

“For the past three years, (Baylor Alumni Association) officials have continued to request direct discussions between the board of regents and the (association’s) leadership to improve communication, including both private conversations and appearances before the full board of regents during its official meetings to address any concerns and misunderstandings,” the documents said. “To date, the board of regents has not invited (alumni association) officials to any of its official board meetings since … May 2007.”

John Barry, vice president for marketing and communications at Baylor University, said: “We take exception to a number of things in their timeline, but we are focused on the proposal that we have made and we are eager to learn of their response to it. Regardless of the inaccuracies in the timeline, what it represents is a look backward. What we are interested in, and what the Baylor family is interested in, is the future of Baylor University. That’s what the proposal represents and that’s where we want to focus.”

Kilgore insists the alumni association wants to advance the best interests of Baylor University. He noted a survey of alumni association members and non-member alumni in 2007 conducted by an independent, third-party professional researcher revealed 83 percent of the respondents believe the Baylor Alumni Association’s independence enables it to be a strong partner with the university while providing alumni their own voice.

That survey also showed 96 percent of the alumni polled believed the Baylor Alumni Association should serve as an organization that responsibly and candidly represents the values and interests of Baylor alumni, and it provides a forum for Baylor supporters to address issues regarding the wellbeing of the school, he added.

Regents and administration want to bring current leaders and supporters of the Baylor Alumni Association into the fold, not alienate them, Stone emphasized.

“We don’t want to disenfranchise one single Baylor Alumni Association leader, supporter or officer,” he said. “We want to give them a better platform within the university.”

Perceived sense of urgency

Kilgore noted the association would seek to appoint a study committee comprised of “people whose reputations in the Baylor community are beyond question.” The association will move deliberately in putting together the committee and beginning the process of study “with no preconceived notions of its outcome,” he said.

Still, he noted, some in the alumni association felt they were being pushed to accelerate the process of studying the proposal by the “media blitz” launched by the university after the meeting.

Stone denied the proposal carried any sense of urgency or deadline. He also insisted Baylor’s search for a president was “not a driver,” and the proposal was not a move to settle matters with the Baylor Alumni Association before a new university president is selected.

“There is not a timeline established. There’s no deadline. They can take as long as they need to consider the offer,” he said. At the same time, he added, “The university has to go on and conduct its business.”

Checks and balances

The document presented to the Baylor Alumni Association board said positioning the alumni association in a “watchdog role” or as the “loyal opposition” should not be the organization’s primary mission.

“It is not in the charter, nor in best practices, and not good for Baylor,” the proposal stated. “Baylor alumni as a whole do not envision the alumni association as a ‘checks and balance to the administration and the governing board of the university.’”

Baylor University’s unique history and mission created the need for the unique relationship between the school and its alumni association, the public statement by Lacy and Kilgore said.

“Baylor University is unique as an institution of higher education, maintaining a delicate balance between learning and faith while being governed by a self-perpetuating board of 21 individuals who have limited checks and balances to their authority as far as determining the future course of Baylor,” the statement said.

“Because of that special status, and for hundreds of other reasons, many alumni and the strongest supporters of Baylor have believed that the university is best served by an association that is self-governed and endowed with an independent voice—an association whose uniqueness in the world of private higher education matches the uniqueness of the institution it serves. We must carefully study whether or not this mission holds true today as we consider this new proposal.”

Proposal outlined

The document offered 12 specific proposals:

•Baylor Alumni Associa-tion would terminate its status as an independent nonprofit entity, become a unit within the Baylor structure and assume the responsibility of “involving, reaching and energizing the entire alumni base of Baylor.”

The university maintains its ability to communicate with about 120,000 out of 140,000 Baylor alumni. The Baylor Alumni Association has about 19,000 members.

•The university would provide the new Baylor Alumni Association with “appropriate resources and funding to enable its effective communication with all Baylor alumni.”

•Current employees and staff of the Baylor Alumni Association would be offered the option to become employees of the university and work within the new structure.

•The alumni association would have office space in the university-owned and maintained Hughes Dillard Alumni Center.

•The alumni association “shall coordinate all fund-raising, marketing, branding and communication efforts with the administration.”

•Consolidate the Baylor Line and Baylor Magazine, with editorial control in the hands of the university.

•Baylor regents would elect one regent in 2010 from the current Baylor Alumni Association board of directors.

•Baylor’s board of regents would amend the university’s bylaws to provide for the annual selection of an ex-officio regent from Baylor alumni, starting in 2011, to serve a one-year term.

•The alumni association may transfer its board of directors and executive committee into a new associational board of advisers that will coordinate its activities with Baylor’s administration.

•The alumni association’s executive director position would become vice president for alumni affairs and report to the vice president of development. The vice president for alumni affairs may serve on Baylor’s executive council and attend regents’ meetings, except for executive sessions of the board.

The vice president for alumni affairs would nominate qualified candidates for the board of regents from the alumni base.

•Money raised by the Baylor Alumni Association as an independent entity—after all outstanding financial obligations have been met—would become part of Baylor’s endowment, designated as an endowed scholarship fund.

•Beginning Jan. 1, 2010, the university would begin awarding recognition to distinguished alumni, and those individuals will be chosen in consultation with the new alumni association.

“If you accept our proposal, the new BAA will be well funded and will flourish,” the document presented to the alumni association board said.

The written proposal expressed the “fervent hope” of Baylor regents and administration that the alumni association would accept its offer. However, it also acknowledged the possibility the association might choose to maintain its independent status.

“If so, we will continue to assist you in maintaining your independence which is virtually unique among private university alumni associations. Baylor will likewise move forward in furthering Baylor’s efforts to engage and energize support from our outstanding alumni,” the document said.

Specific elements of the proposal are “definitely subject to further discussion,” Beau-champ said, adding, “We’re open to new ideas.”

What makes Baylor unique?

The Baylor Alumni Associ-ation seems to understand the unique character of Baylor University better than the school’s regents or administration, asserted Marie Brown of Aubrey, president of the Baylor Black Alumni Club.

“Baylor’s administration continues to promote how Baylor is different from most private institutions of higher learning. The administration also continues to promote Baylor as a Christian university that fosters unity, morality and strong Christian values in order to produce well-rounded graduates who will be prepared to accept any challenge life has to offer. However, it is evident that in the past several years, the administration as well as members of the board of regents have lost sight of Baylor’s mission and core values in their campaign to dismantle” the Baylor Alumni Association, she wrote in an opinion article submitted to several media outlets.

Baylor’s administration and regents should direct attention to problems deeper than the university’s relationship to the Baylor Alumni Association, said Brown, who serves on the alumni association’s board.

“The issues of attracting and retaining a stable administration, after a period of great turbulence in the president’s office, should be the main focus of the board of regents,” she said. “Baylor University is different than other schools, and that is why students choose to attend Baylor. However, if the board of regents as well as the interim administration continue their campaign to be in total control of the one organization that represents all alumni, then you will also lose a part of what makes the university so unique.”

Brown noted the contributions the Baylor Alumni Association has made to minority students. With the association’s assistance, the Baylor Black Alumni Club “would not have been able to award more than $15,000 in scholarships over the past nine years to deserving minority students,” or “host 11 scholarship luncheons to secure funds for its endowment,” she said.

The association also enabled the Baylor Black Alumni Club to support student initiatives such as the Association of Black Students, Baylor NAACP, Hispanic Student Association, and other student organizations, she added.

For more information, see http://www.baylor.edu/pr/news.php?action=story&story=61653 and http://www.bayloralumniassociation.com/news/news.asp?show=VIEW&a=87 .

Texas Baptists Committed, formed as a political organization two decades ago to resist a “fundamentalist takeover” of the Baptist General Convention of Texas, soon will be seeking a new executive director and relocating its office.

David Currie, a San Angelo rancher who has led Texas Baptists Committed since its inception, will be named executive director emeritus, and the organization will move its office to the Dallas-Fort Worth area.

The organization’s board will appoint a committee to search for a new executive director and will seek a church in the Dallas-Fort Worth area to provide office space.

Currie announced the move in his “Rancher’s Rumblings” e-mail newsletter, also posted on the Texas Baptists Committed website at http://www.txbc.org .

“Much of (Texas Baptists Committed’s) work involves working with the Baptist General Convention of Texas—keeping folks informed about the work of BGCT institutions, agencies, and universities, and also acting as a watchdog in relation to BGCT policies and actions,” he wrote, announcing the organization would move its office to the Dallas-Fort Worth area where it would be more accessible to the BGCT Executive Board offices.

In announcing his plans to “step down as executive director,” Currie noted he will continue to write his column, travel and speak on behalf of Texas Baptists Committed.

“However, I will give up day-to-day oversight of the (Texas Baptists Committed) office and operations, and I am thrilled about this,” he wrote.

Texas Baptists Committed “continues to have a vital ministry in Baptist life, but … (the organization) needs to move forward on initiatives that meet the new challenges of 21st-century Baptist life, and much of that work is the type of work for which I don’t have the training or—to be honest—even the desire to do,” Currie said.

Currie said he would continue in the executive director’s position until a new leader is chosen and on the job. “At that point, I will move to emeritus status, and the new executive director will then hire his or her own support staff,” he said.

At its apex of influence, Texas Baptists Committed succeeded in mobilizing thousands of messengers from churches around the state to attend BGCT annual meetings to elect a series of candidates endorsed by the organization. Those candidates included the state convention’s first Hispanic, African-American and female presidents.

Last year, Texas Baptists Committed agreed to refrain from endorsing any candidates for BGCT office.

In recent years, as the organization has experienced financial hardship and endured questions as to its continued reason for being, the group has tried to shift from its previous role of political organizing to a new identity as promoter of BGCT ministries and institutions, as well as a voice for historic Baptist principles.

Currie served from 1988 to 1990 as field coordinator for Baptists Committed to the SBC, a national organization of Baptists moderates that developed into Texas Baptists Committed. Since 2000, he has worked as a consultant with the national Mainstream Baptist Network.

Prior to that, he worked as a special projects coordinator with the Southern Baptist Christian Life Commission in Nashville, Tenn., as pastor of First Baptist Church in Mason and as a special assistant to the director of the Texas Department of Agriculture.

He has been a managing partner of a 2,700 sheep and cattle ranch in Concho County since 1968. Since 1995, he also has been president of Cornerstone Builders, a custom home building company in San Angelo.

Currie is a graduate of Howard Payne University, and he earned master of divinity and doctor of philosophy degrees from Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary.

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (ABP) — Morris Chapman, president and CEO of the Southern Baptist Convention Executive Committee, announced plans Sept. 21 to retire at the end of September 2010.

Chapman, a former pastor who this year celebrates his 50th anniversary in the ministry, called his election to the post both "one of the greatest honors of my life" and "one of the most humbling challenges I have ever faced."

Chapman's announcement comes just a week after a similar one by another SBC agency head, International Mission Board President Jerry Rankin, who announced he is retiring after 17 years at the end of next July. The CEO spot at a third SBC entity, the North American Mission Board, is also vacant, since President Geoff Hammond and three top associates resigned under pressure Aug. 11.

Chapman, who was pastor of First Baptist Church in Wichita Falls, Texas, before coming to the Executive Committee in 1992, said he has been discussing his retirement plans with committee officers for several years and announced his decision to that group Sept. 20.

The Executive Committee authorized chairman Randall James, president of First Orlando Foundation in Orlando, Fla., to appoint a search committee to nominate Chapman's successor.

Saying he does "not want to spend the entire year preparing to vacate my office," Chapman said he would launch an initiative to support a "Great Commission resurgence," urging agency heads to publicly challenge denominational workers to commit themselves with sharing the gospel with individuals.

–-Bob Allen is senior writer for Associated Baptist Press.