Longtime NAMB staff member Richard Harris was named acting interim president Aug. 12.

ALPHARETTA, Ga. (ABP) — North American Mission Board trustees on Aug. 12 named Richard Harris, the organization's senior strategist for missions advancement, as acting interim president after the group's second president resigned — much as his predecessor did.

Harris, a long-time staff member of the Southern Baptist Convention agency formed in a major denominational restructuring in 1997, takes over for Geoff Hammond. Hammond resigned Aug. 11 after a seven-hour board of trustee meeting, held in executive session at the agency's suburban Atlanta headquarters.

Board chairman Tim Patterson, pastor of Hillcrest Baptist Church in Jacksonville, Fla., said even though there has been much public speculation about the reasons for the called trustee meeting in recent days, they involved personnel matters and would remain confidential.

Two weeks earlier a trustee leaked an e-mail reporting concerns among the board's officers about Hammond's leadership.

Ttrustees hoped hiring Hammond, a former missionary, in May 2007 would move the agency forward after his predecessor, Bob Reccord, resigned amid allegations of mismanagement the year before.

Critics said Hammond lacked the management skills to effectively run an organization as large as NAMB, which oversees more than 5,600 missionaries in the United States and Canada.

The Tennessean newspaper in Nashville recently quoted one trustee concerned about Hammond's leadership, particularly that he reportedly hired friends instead of qualified persons for key positions. Three of Hammond's closest associates resigned with him. Another trustee told the newspaper that board members tried to help Hammond adjust to his new role, but that it wasn't working.

Critics say Geoff Hammond, who resigned as NAMB president Aug. 11, lacked the leadership skills for an agency so large.

The e-mail circulated prior to the trustee meeting described staff morale at NAMB as being at an all-time low.

One staff member who spoke to Associated Baptist Press on condition of anonymity said he didn't sense low morale in his department and most of the people he talked to Aug. 12 were surprised and saddened but confident in trustee leadership and optimistic about the future of NAMB.

Another staffer said he believed there was a morale problem, and most people he knows would probably feel relieved that tensions affecting their work were being addressed. He said he knew of some people who would have taken other jobs were it not for the poor economy, in which they had to worry about being unable to sell homes in the Atlanta area after they moved.

Hammond did not respond to an e-mail request for comment.

–Bob Allen is senior writer for Associated Baptist Press. 

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NAMB president, 3 associates stepping down

NAMB trustees consider removing agency head

ALPHARETTA, Ga. (ABP) — The head of the Southern Baptist Convention North American Mission Board and three top associates resigned during a called meeting of the agency's board of trustees Aug. 11.

Trustees convened the special meeting after board leaders identified "serious issues" about leadership of Geoff Hammond, president of the agency since March 2007.

Board Chairman Tim Patterson, pastor of Hillcrest Baptist Church in Jacksonville, Fla., said details of a seven-hour meeting held in executive session would remain confidential.

Earlier reports said trustee leaders were upset by Hammond's unwillingness to work under constraints imposed after his predecessor stepped down amid allegations of mismanagement and chronic morale problems at the agency based in Alpharetta, Ga.

Patterson said in a statement that three of Hammond's closest associates also would resign. They are Dennis Culbreth, senior assistant to the president; Steve Reid, senior associate to the president for strategy development; and Brandon Pickett, leader of the communications team.

Patterson said Hammond's resignation takes effect immediately.

In May NAMB trustees unanimously approved a resolution affirming Hammond for "exemplary, unique leadership and vision."

There is a scene in the book of Nehemiah where Nehemiah has inspected the conditions of Jerusalem and has called the people together. He informs them of the situation as he sees it and then calls them to action saying, “You see the bad situation we are in … let us rebuild the wall of Jerusalem so that we will no longer be a reproach.” And the people responded saying, “Let us arise and build.” The Scripture then says, “So they put their hands (together) to working for the common good.” (Nehemiah 2:17-18, NRSV) Baptists have always been those who somehow (in spite of their differences) have been able to “put their hands together to working for the common good.”

Ellis Orozco

My paternal grandfather came to the United States from Monterrey in 1909 to save his family from the starvation precipitated by the Mexican revolutionary war. When I was a child my grandfather lived with us. He didn’t speak much English. He would speak in Spanish. I would answer in English, and we understood each other perfectly. As a child the thing I loved most about my grandfather was that he always had candy and money … and he would give it to me. He would see me and say, “Venga aqui” (Come here). I would go sit on his lap. He would hold me tight and whisper in my ear … “Nunca olvides” (never forget). And I would say, “Whatever, Grandpa … you got any money?” He would place a few silver coins in my little hand and would say, “Nunca olvides.” And I would say, “Yeah … sure grandpa.” I didn’t understand … but now I do. Never forget means never forget who you are … never forget where you come from … never forget your heritage. I get it grandpa. I didn’t always get it. There was a time (during me teenage years) when I didn’t want to remember. I didn’t want to be Mexican, because I didn’t want to be different. But I get it now, Grandpa … and you were right. I pray that Texas Baptists would hear my Grandpa’s words … “Nunca Olivides.” Baptists have always been those who, somehow, (in spite of their differences) have been able to “put their hands together to working for the common good.”

I want us to reflect tonight on why, historically, that has been so, and why that innate Baptist ability to organize and work together for the common good has shaped us into a force that is uniquely prepared for the challenges of the 21st century. Specifically, the challenges we will face as change agents in a world that will grow increasingly hostile toward Christianity and increasingly apathetic toward the poor.

The most pressing issue for all of us is globalization. We must preserve a distinctively Baptist witness in the world because the world has changed and continues to change dramatically. Change has always been a part of life. That is nothing new. What is unprecedented in human history is the rate of change. The acceleration of change is killing us. Corporations are falling like monolithic giants. Nations are going bankrupt. The world is shrinking at an exponential rate and collaborative efforts are expanding at the speed of a microchip.

The world will not be the same ten years from now, and the church is not immune. Churches are trying to live with four and five distinct and very different generations worshipping under the same roof. And while we fight our worship wars, ecclesiological battles, and creedal clashes, and doctrinal differences … there are millions suffering under the oppressive forces of poverty. It is a mind-blowing and dizzying time to be alive … and most Christian groups will begin to shrink away and build fortresses of protection against every perceived danger or threat … but, I believe that we, as Baptists, have been shaped as a people for such a time as this. We have in our arsenal of faith practices the tools we need to ride the waves of change.

Those pieces of our Baptist legacy that we have all studied and cherished as formative values in the practice of our faith … things like soul competency, the priesthood of every believer, religious freedom (and its soul mate – the separation of church and state), voluntary cooperation based on missionary zeal, church autonomy (and one of its essential benefactors, non-creedalism). These stand like great communication links towering over the landscape of Baptist life. They connect us and benefit us even before we’re able to name them.

Our Baptist heritage – the Baptist distinctives – make us a powerfully effective Christian force in a rapidly changing world. Please understand, any one of our Baptist distinctives is held by a number of different Christian groups, but none can claim the unique combination of beliefs we hold.

As Bill Pinson puts it … It is “the combination of beliefs and practices (that) sets Baptists apart from other Christian groups. There is a distinctive group of doctrines and polities for Baptists, a sort of Baptist recipe. Like most recipes, each of the ingredients is not unique to Baptists, but the total mix is distinctively Baptist” (BaptistDistinctives.com web site). I agree with Dr. Pinson, and I would add, it is that recipe that makes us strategically positioned for the race to globalization, and therefore, strategically positioned to be Jesus Christ to the world’s poor.

Our conservative Biblicism combined with our love for religious freedom … our penchant for autonomous thought and practice combined with our passion for cooperation … our disdain for hierarchal governance combined with our respect for accountability through congregational leadership … our theological center of grace and grace alone, combined with our innate suspicion of anything that smacks of legalism or creedalism … all combine to make us especially adept for the challenges of the next century.

As an example allow me to refer to just two aspects of globalization as discussed by Thomas Friedman. The first from his book, The Lexus and the Olive Tree, and the second from his more recent work, The World is Flat.

In The Lexus and the Olive Tree, Friedman describes the characteristics of the countries and institutions that will collapse under the weight of globalization and compares them to those that will prosper. In his characterization he notes that the nations that are inflexible, totalitarian, and dictatorial will suffer and languish behind a changing world. By the same token, institutions that are controlling, legalistic, and demand conformity at all costs will wither under globalization. Such nations and institutions will NOT carry us into the future. (p. 212-247)

Nowhere is this more important to understand than in our own nation. Jim Wallis reminds us that “Spiritual and religious values should influence our perception of and participation in politics – making a difference in the systems that govern and either hurt or help people. But while religion belongs in the political world, religion and ideology are not good partners.” (The Soul of Politics, p.34)

Yale law professor Stephen Carter, in his book, The Culture of Disbelief, warns against “reaching conclusions on political grounds and, afterward, finding religious justification for them, instead of letting genuine religious conviction shape honest political judgments” (The Soul of Politics, p. 34). And Jim Wallis concludes that “perhaps the best test of the spiritual integrity of our political commitments is their predictability or unpredictability” (The Soul of Politics, p. 34). It seems to me that most of what is coming out of the larger Christian community in America is extremely predictable.

The problem is that no one is talking to each other. If the last three elections have taught us anything they have taught us that the polarization of America is complete. And American religion is just as polarized … a polarized American church that is the mirror image of the polarized culture.

Jim Wallis, in The Soul of Politics, concludes that “the inability of either liberalism or conservatism to lead us forward is increasingly clear.” (p. 21) He says that “the two dominant forms of religion in our time have failed to provide the spiritual guidance that might inform a politics of moral conscience. Both conservative and liberal religion have become culturally captive forces that merely cheer on the ideological camps with which each has identified” (p. 36) Wallis warns, “Religion as a political cheerleader is invariably false religion” (p. 36).

The religious right, for instance, feeling pushed to the margins, “woke up” in the 1970’s and 80’s and decided to become a prophetic force in American politics, and I applaud that thought. If it’s really the thought that counts they are to be highly commended. I am just left wondering where this “great moral force” was in the civil rights battles of the 1950’s and 60’s. Most white Southern Baptist churches were eerily silent during those years when our nation desperately needed a moral compass, and a prophetic voice. Or even worse, they were very vocal on the side of evil. And, more recently, I have to wonder if they did not have a severe case of laryngitis when our country entered into an unprovoked war, against the better judgment of most of the rest of the world.

This is hard for me. I love my country. I’m an avid Olympics fan and I tear up every time I hear the national anthem. I feel the pain of every American athlete who didn’t have a good day. AND I feel the pain of being pushed away from the national conversation because of my Judeo-Christian perspective. Carter, in The Culture of Disbelief, “contends that a prejudice against the influence of religious commitment upon political issues now characterizes many sectors of American society, including the media, academia, the law, and the corridors of political power.” He notes that “religious conviction is trivialized and becomes quickly suspect when it seems to be affecting political matters” (The Soul of Politics, p. 32).

In plain English … the Christian Church in America is being pushed to the margins. And as an ethnic minority in America I say to the church … “Welcome to the margins!! We’ve been waiting for you!!” I agree with most of the values of the religious right. Where I think they get it wrong is that they see being pushed to the margins as a bad thing – something to fight against. I see it as a good thing. In fact, it may be the very thing that saves American Christianity.

The church cannot serve a socio-political ideology and Christ at the same time. The church can speak prophetically only from the margins of society … only from outside the corridors of power … never from the center. Both the left and the right seem to be fighting for a place at the center of political power. And any Christianity operating from that position will be a controlling, legalistic, and spiritually oppressive force, unable to distinguish the voices of political allies from God’s voice. And, I would add, that is the very kind of institution that will wither under the weight of globalization. It is, therefore, imperative that we remain distinctively Baptist because we have the right recipe to be a prophetic voice, speaking from the margins, in a shrinking and dynamically changing world.

The other aspect to globalization I want to briefly mention is what Friedman calls “Open-Sourcing.” In his book, The World is Flat, Friedman discusses the ten forces that flattened the world. Flattener #4 is “Open-Sourcing,” or what Friedman calls, “Self-Organizing collaborative Communities.” It is basically, “thousands of people around the world coming together online to collaborate in writing everything from their own software to their own operating systems to their own dictionary to their own recipe for cola – building always from the bottom up rather than accepting formats or content imposed by corporate hierarchies from the top down” (p. 81) Everyone in the group is allowed to add their improvements to the product … and, oh yeah … they offer the product for free … talk about grace! It’s like the cooperative program on steroids. It’s beyond that. It’s the walls coming down … all of them … and it’s messy. If you don’t like messy then you’re going to have a very difficult time in the 21st century.

The larger Christian witness in America doesn’t like messy. They like clean lines; black and white; a place for everything and everything in its place; doctrinal purity (as if that were really possible). The problem with those who seek to purify the church has always been that they wind up looking more like those who crucified Jesus than those who followed him.

It seems to me that in a day when all the walls that have separated nations and people groups are coming down making room for larger and more effective cooperation, the larger Baptist witness in America is pulling out of collaborative efforts and building more doctrinal walls than ever before. It is one the most frustrating problems in Baptist life today. It is absolutely essential that we hold close and dear the precious ingredients of our Baptist recipe which allow us to ride the wave of collaborative communities. If we don’t … I’m not sure who else will, AND if we don’t the ones who suffer the consequences of our failure are the poor.

Remember, we do it for the sake of the poor, the hurting, and the lost. We must preserve a distinctively Baptist witness in the world because the poor, the hurting, and the lost are depending on it. Gandhi said, “Poverty is the worst form of violence” (Seeds of Peace, p. 127) I pastored for ten years in the poorest county in Texas and one of the poorest in the nation. The poverty in our state and world is simply overwhelming. The poor are depending on our witness in the face of the strongholds of systemic evil in our state and nation. What Walter Wink calls “the domination system,” or “the powers that be” (The Powers that Be, p. 32).

The larger Baptist witness in America seems to have fixated on a few politically salient issues, and although those issues are not unimportant, in fixating on them we have largely abdicated our prophetic voice where it counts the most. We have failed to throw the full weight of our Baptist strength behind the life and death issues that affect the most people. I speak here of the multiplicity and complexity of issues surrounding the plight of the poor.

Tony Campolo points out that the Christian Coalition, the most successful religious lobbying group in American history, was formed to address the need for the government to support “traditional family values,” as it defined them … and yet, the voter guides which the Christian Coalition distributed to millions of Christians, completely ignored the needs of the poor (Speaking My Mind, p. 126).

I don’t have to remind this audience of Jesus’ concern for the poor. It was all-consuming for him. In the Old Testament, the subject of the poor is the second most prominent theme. Idolatry is the first, and the two are often connected. In the New Testament, one out of every sixteen verses is about the poor. In the Gospels, the number is one out of every ten verses; in Luke’s Gospel one of every seven, and in the book of James one of every five.

All the politically charged issues of Jesus’ day were (it seems to me) side-stepped by him in lieu of his concern for the poor. In his inaugural homecoming message at Nazareth Jesus sets the agenda for his ministry when he says, “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor” (Luke 4:18a, NIV).

Jesus starts his most famous sermon by saying, “Blessed are the poor … ” (Luke 6:20). And if Hans Dieter Betz is right in identifying the literary genre of the Sermon on the Mount as the Greek “epitomai” (The Sermon on the Mount from the Hermeneia series) – and I believe he is – then the epitome of Jesus’ teaching (as compiled by Matthew) is his concern for the poor and the marginalized and the oppressed … the 90% of the population (in his day) who, because of the Roman and Temple taxation systems could not afford to both tithe and live, and were, therefore, labeled the “unrighteous ones” (the “Am Harez” of the land) … the working poor.

According to Richard A. Horsley, around the first century there arose, for the first time in Hebrew history, a minority class of people who lived in the cities (mainly Sepphoris and Tiberias) and produced nothing, living instead off of the taxation system. These citizens of the “consumer city” were an elite class living off of the working poor (Archaeology, History and Society in Galilee, p.79). The working poor (labeled the “Am Harez” or the “unrighteous ones”) were the ones who loved Jesus the most … because he first loved them. His heart was always with them. In fact, there is no written record that Jesus every entered the cities of Sepphoris or Tiberias, the two largest and most important first century cities in Galilee. He spent all of his time, it seems, in the small villages … with the poor.

If we lose our distinctively Baptist heritage, there will not be a unified, coherent Baptist voice speaking for the “Am Harez” of our state and our nation … and a greatly diminished one speaking for the “Am Harez” of the world. Both the left and the right in America Christianity have sold out to one political perspective for thirty pieces of silver (promises that never come true, and trickle-downs that never trickle). Their political litmus tests ignore the largest, and in global terms, the most devastating issues of our times: all of the issues fueled by abject poverty. Their alliances (or more often, their failure to align with certain groups) betrays their deeper concern with preserving the American Way of life and the truth as America sees it, than standing with the one who said, “I am the Way, and the Truth and the Life” (John 4:6, NIV).

Richard Lischer in his Lyman-Beecher lectures at Yale said, “Contemporary religion focuses on its own successes and avoids at all costs the paradox of the cross, a move that has produced a flood of compensatory words” (The End of Words, p. 9).

The larger Baptist witness in America is in grave danger of a great “Christological distance.” What Erhardt Guttgemann calls “the distance created by the tendency to redefine Christ in some more “contemporary” meaning, less dependent on just who the crucified Jesus was” (The Politics of Jesus, p. 120). You know who Jesus was … he was poor; he was born poor; he lived poor and with the poor; he died poor; and he rose again for the poor.

John Howard Yoder, in his The Politics of Jesus reminds us that “to follow after Christ is not simply to learn from him, but also to share his destiny” (p. 124). “Wherever He leads I’ll go. He drew me closer to His side, I sought His will to know, And in that will I now abide, Wherever He leads I'll go. I'll follow my Christ who loves me so, Wherever He leads I'll go” (The Baptist Hymnal, #285). Really? Wherever he leads? He leads us to the doorsteps of the poorest of the poor. He points to them and then turns to us and says, “Whatever you have done for the least of these, you have done for me.” (Matthew 25:40, NIV)

To follow Christ wherever he takes me … WHEREVER He takes me … without being labeled a socialist or a communist or a liberal or, even worse, dare I say … a Democrat. I don’t believe that I’m any of those labels. And, at one time or another, I have probably been all of them … and will be again. But the words of Paul keep ringing in my ears, “I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of sharing in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, and so, somehow, to attain to the resurrection from the dead” (Philippians 3:10-11, NIV). I want to know Christ! And, so I follow NO MAN, NO SOCIO-POLITICAL IDEOLOGY, NO DENOMINATIONAL APARATUS, NO CAREER PATH – I WANT TO KNOW JESUS – I WANT TO FOLLOW JESUS – WHEREVER HE LEADS I’LL GO – AND JESUS ALWAYS LEADS US TO THE POOR!

My mother is at the age where she is starting to give her children (my sister, my two brothers, and I) pictures from her treasured collection of family albums … some of her most treasured memories preserved by Kodak. I told her there is only one picture I want. It is my father’s first grade class picture (from 1939). If you look you’ll find him on the third row, three kids over from the right. The reason I want that picture is that there is a hole in it … a hole where my father’s feet should be. Apparently, he was one of only two children in the class who was too poor to own a pair of shoes. There are about forty kids in the picture. They took the picture and my father didn’t have shoes. At the age of seven he somehow understood that there was something wrong about that, and, therefore, something wrong with him. So he brought the picture home and before anyone could see it, he cut his own feet out of the picture. I can see my father as a little seven year old boy so filled with shame that he takes out his pocketknife and carefully cuts out his own feet.

I want that picture because it defines my father’s life: Work hard, work hard, work hard, to make as much money as you can so that none of your children will ever have to cut their feet out of the picture.

We must preserve our distinctive witness because no child should ever have to cut their own feet out of the picture.

In the spirit of Nehemiah … I say to you … “You see the bad situation we are in … let us rebuild our Baptist heritage and identity … so that we will no longer be a reproach.” And may we as a people respond saying, “Let us arise and build.” And may the generations that follow say of us … “So they put their hands (together) to working for the common good.” (Nehemiah 2:17-18, NRSV)

Ellis Orozco is pastor of First Baptist Church in Richardson, Texas. He delivered this sermon at the New Baptist Covenant’s Midwest regional meeting in Norman, Okla., Aug. 6.

NORMAN, Okla.—Baptists must relinquish the status quo in order to unleash God’s power, participants at the New Baptist Covenant’s Midwest regional gathering were warned.

That may mean revising a concept proposed about a decade ago—creation of a Baptist Convention of the Americas, said Mitch Randall, pastor of NorthHaven Church in Norman, Okla. The congregation is affiliated with the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship and the Baptist General Convention of Texas.

“The time to think bigger than the status quo is upon us,” Randall said. “Look in the mirror. For too long, we have been caught in a territorial struggle. That’s not an indictment but acknowledgment of reality. We are fragmented.

“Many conventions, institutions and churches are worried sick about their sustainability. … If something doesn’t happen soon, everything we’ve worked for will pass away.”

Mainstream Baptists must “dream bigger” and embrace a vision for sending men and women to be the presence of Christ in the world, Randall said.

A four-part strategy will be required to fulfill that vision, he said. The strategy includes:

• The local church must become a priority again.

“The local church has lost is place of prominence in the strategy to engage in the Great Commission,” he said. “The time has come for the local church to reclaim her role as a leader in the Baptist movement.”

Local congregations can play crucial roles in theological training and sending missionaries, he noted.

• A “missional theology” must touch everything Baptists do.

“The mission of Christ must be pre-eminent among all else,” Randall said. “We must walk and talk like the presence of Christ.”

Missions is especially germane for the young generation, he suggested. “They want to extend the grace of God and embrace a cause greater than their own. If we don’t understand this premise, we will lose the next generation.”

• Baptists must support the social justice movement.

“We must address ethical issues from a faith perspective,” he urged.

“The next generation has an incredible opportunity to right many of the wrongs we have committed,” he said, citing challenges affiliated with the environment, materialism and poverty.

“We are in the perfect position to reach out to this generation, but we must be authentic. Our deeds must match our words.”

• The next generation must be empowered.

Randall affirmed the work of seminaries, but he also observed many seminary graduates do not want to work in local churches. “If we’re honest, who can blame them?” he asked. “Churches have not always been welcoming to young ministers, especially young female ministers.”

But churches must engage young ministers and young adults in starting churches, he stressed.

“Churches need to start churches,” he said. “Tap the talent of young Christians. Take a chance and see how God blesses their efforts.”

Baptists also need to collaborate in new ways, Randall said, remembering how the late Herbert Reynolds called for a new Baptist Convention of the Americas about 10 years ago. Such a convention would span so-called moderate Baptist work across typical denominational boundaries and bring them together for common ministry and purpose.

“The time for the Baptist Convention of the Americas is now,” he said. “If something like this is ever to occur, the Baptist General Convention of Texas is going to have to take the lead. Texas Baptists like to talk big; it’s time for Texas Baptists to lead out big.”

NORMAN, Okla.—Since the church has abdicated its responsibility for providing health care in America, Christians should help and not hinder the government as it seeks solutions to the nation’s medical crisis, a physician with experience in public health told participants at the New Baptist Covenant meeting in Oklahoma.

“We’re talking about a system that is not working,” Michael Pontious said during a seminar on health care and the local church.

ous, a member of Crossroad Church in Enid, Okla., is director of family practice residency for the University of Oklahoma/Garfield Country Medical Society Rural Program and is editor of the Journal of the Oklahoma State Medical Association. He stressed his opinions are his own and not those of the university, the medical association or his church.

Earlier in the seminar, a participant said the U.S. health care system should be called a “sick care non-system.”

Pontious affirmed that assessment, adding, “I’m so sick and tired of trying to figure out how to help people get taken care of.”

He illustrated with two recent experiences.

First, a woman who was 20 weeks pregnant with a kidney infection took a prescription order to a pharmacy on a Friday. She does not speak English well and could not advocate for herself when the pharmacist said her insurance wouldn’t cover the cost of the medicine—a misunderstanding and overstatement of the facts.

On Monday, she had to be admitted to the hospital “in a life-and-death situation,” simply because she could not get her $4 prescription filled. So, she could have died, and the medical costs soared.

When Pontious called the insurance company to complain, the person on the end of the line responded, “Dr. Pontious, that’s the rules.”

Second, a woman was having excessive menstruation, losing a significant amount of blood and needed surgery after medications had failed to help. But she could not afford hospitalization.

 When Pontious asked her doctor to help her get in the hospital, she replied, “I’d love to do this, but I work for a corporation.”

“We’ve got a system that’s broken,” Pontious said.

Historically, churches and Christian organizations provided much of the infrastructure for American health care, he noted. But more recently, “we have abdicated our responsibility for a good part of the care in this country” to the government.

“Because we have abdicated, it’s our responsibility to hold our government accountable for trying to fix this problem,” he added. “When government comes up with a plan, it’s immoral, it’s two-faced to oppose doing the right thing.”

Americans—led by Christians—need to affirm the right to affordable health care, Pontious stressed.

“We need a system in this country that allows access to health care, no matter what your station in life is,” he said. “We need a system that allows choice … and that cannot allow a cotton-pickin’ insurance company to deny access to reasonable care.”

Opponents of health care reform are manipulating people with fear, Pontious charged. “There are lots of mistruths out there, and where do they go?” he said. “To your fear. They manipulate you with your fear.”

But America should have the capacity to improve its health care system without realizing those fears, he insisted.

“A publicly available option is the only way to keep the insurance companies honest,” he said. “Americans don’t have the stomach for a Canadian or an English system (of socialized medicine). Individually, we don’t want restrictions. But a public system is the only way to keep the business side of insurance honest. … Every other modern society has figured this out.”

NORMAN, Okla.—The plight of poor people depends significantly upon Baptists’ determination to retain their unique legacy, an urban pastor who spent a decade ministering in one of the nation’s poorest counties told participants at the New Baptist Covenant regional meeting in Oklahoma.

“We must preserve a distinctively Baptist witness in the world, because the poor, the hurting and the lost are depending upon it,” insisted Ellis Orozco, pastor of First Baptist Church in Richardson and former pastor of Calvary Baptist Church in McAllen, in Texas’ impoverished Lower Rio Grande Valley.

“The poor are depending upon our witness in the face of the strongholds of systemic evil in our … nation,” Orozco said.

But Baptists must maintain their advocacy and help for the poor “in a world that will grow increasingly hostile toward Christianity and increasingly apathetic toward the poor,” he added.

The plight of the poor is spiraling in large part because of globalization, he explained. The world’s economy is interconnected, change is accelerating, corporations and nations are going bankrupt—and the poor are stuck at the bottom of all the upheaval.

“It’s a mind-blowing and dizzying time to be alive, and most Christian groups will begin to shrink away and build fortresses of protection against every perceived danger or threat,” he said. “But I believe that we, as Baptists, have been shaped as a people for such a time as this. We have in our arsenal of faith practices the tools we need to ride the waves of change.”

Those “tools” reflect Baptists’ unique combination of historic values and beliefs, he said. They include soul competency, the priesthood of every believer, religious freedom and the separation of church and state, voluntary cooperation based upon missionary zeal and church autonomy.

The way these qualities interact “make us especially adept for the challenges of the next century,” Orozco said.

He cited political columnist and author Thomas Friedman, who predicts nations and institutions will not survive the escalating demands of globalism if they are rigid, autocratic and controlling. But Baptists’ heritage gives them the flexibility and openness to thrive amid globalism, Orozco said.

Unfortunately, Friedman’s description of rigidity and autocracy describes much of religion in America, Orozco observed, pointing to increasing polarization in American politics and religion. Consequently, both the religious right and the religious left—conservative and liberal—have become captive to the culture and unable to offer leadership.

“The Christian church in America is being pushed to the margins,” but that’s not bad, he said. “As an ethnic minority in America, I say to the church, ‘Welcome to the margins.’ … It may be the very thing that saves American Christianity.”

That’s because operating from the margins could overcome the conflict of interest generated by religion’s desire to work from a power base at the center of society, he said.

“The church cannot serve a socio-political ideology and Christ at the same time,” he stressed. “The church can speak prophetically only from the margins of society—only from outside the corridors of power, never from the center.

“Any Christianity operating from that position will be a controlling, legalistic and spiritually oppressive force, unable to distinguish the voices of political allies from God’s voice.  And, I would add, that is the very kind of institution that will wither under the weight of globalization.  It is imperative that we remain distinctively Baptist because we have the right recipe to be a prophetic voice, speaking from the margins, in a shrinking and dynamically changing world.”

Baptists’ spiritual heritage also enables them to collaborate well with others to accomplish vital objectives, Orozco said, referencing what Friedman calls “open-sourcing.”

“It’s messy,” he conceded, noting, “The larger Christian witness in America doesn’t like messy.” But that runs counter to important trends that track effectiveness the world over, he added.

Unfortunately, “the larger Baptist witness in America is pulling out of collaborative efforts and building more doctrinal walls than ever before,” he said. “It is one the most frustrating problems in Baptist life today.  It is absolutely essential that we ride the wave of collaborative communities.  If we don’t … I’m not sure who else will. And if we don’t, the ones who suffer the consequences of our failure are the poor.”

Because many Baptists in America have “fixated on a few politically salient issues,” and even though those issues are important, “we have largely abdicated our prophetic voice where it counts the most,” he charged. “We have failed to throw the full weight of our Baptist strength behind the life-and-death issues that affect the most people—the multiplicity and complexity of issues surrounding the plight of the poor.”

In contrast, Jesus side-stepped political issues in order to care for the poor, Orozco said. “Jesus began his most famous sermon by saying, ‘Blessed are the poor,” he explained. “His heart was always with them. … He spent all his time, it seems, in the small villages with the poor.”

So, much is at stake if Baptists fail to identify with what the New Testament calls the “Am Harez”—the working poor, he added.

“If we lose our distinctively Baptist heritage, there will not be a unified, coherent Baptist voice speaking for the Am Harez of our state and our nation … and a greatly diminished one speaking for the Am Harez of the world,” he warned.

“Both the left and the right in America Christianity have sold out to one political perspective for 30 pieces of silver—promises that never come true, and trickle-downs that never trickle.  Their political litmus tests ignore the largest, and in global terms, the most devastating issues of our times—all of the issues fueled by abject poverty.  Their alliances … betray their deeper concern with preserving the American way of life and the truth as America sees it than standing with the one who said, ‘I am the Way, and the Truth and the Life.’”

Baptists often sing the old hymn “Wherever He Leads, I’ll Go,” but Orozco said there’s only one way to prove they mean it: “Jesus always leads us to the poor.”

The full text of Orozco’s sermon is available here.

NORMAN, Okla.—A Southern Baptist pastor from Oklahoma compared his fellow conservatives’ treatment of women in ministry to earlier generations’ treatment of African-Americans.

“History will one day look back on how we Baptists in the 21st century treated our women who were called by God to minister. It is my prayer that conservative, Bible-believing men will not make the same mistake our Southern Baptist forefathers made when they remained quiet two centuries ago as another minority experienced abuse,” Wade Burleson told the Midwest regional gathering of the New Baptist Covenant.

Burleson, pastor of Emmanuel Baptist Church in Enid, Okla., framed his message to the closing session of the multiethnic meeting as a personal confession and a public challenge.

“I now believe in my heart that Jesus is more concerned with how we Baptists treat each other than he is what we Baptists teach each other. The people loved by Christ—particularly those who differ with me—are to be far more precious to me than any finer point of theology believed by me,” he said.

Burleson noted a recent address by California Baptist pastor Rick Warren to the Islamic Society of North America where Warren challenged Muslims and Christians to respect the dignity of every person by valuing, not just tolerating, people; restore civility to civilization; and protect freedom of speech and freedom of religion for all people.

Before Baptist Christians can begin to respond to Muslims in that way, Burleson said, they need to learn to treat their own Baptist brothers—and especially sisters—with that kind of respect.

“In other words, until I can treat all my Baptist friends with dignity, value them as people and respect their views—particularly and especially those Baptists who disagree with me—it will be impossible for me to treat Muslims in the same manner,” he said.

“Likewise, until my liberal or moderate Baptist friends experience Christ’s love in their hearts for me, a theologically conservative Baptist, and until they value my personhood, respect my views and work with me toward a greater common good, it will be impossible for them to do the same for Muslims.

“The greatest barometer for how well we Baptists understand the importance of agape love—which the Scriptures call the distinguishing mark of followers of Jesus Christ—is our treatment of each other.”

In particular, Baptists who are serious about obeying Christ’s command to love one another must rise to defend women in ministry when other Baptists mistreat them, he emphasized.

“These women profess a call from God, show real evidence of being set apart by Christ and have experienced the empowerment of the Holy Spirit to proclaim Jesus Christ and him crucified to the world, yet many of them are being subjected to abuse—and that by Baptists,” Burleson said.

“When our Baptist women in ministry experience such personal mistreatment, ridicule or harm, we are commanded by Christ our Lord to bind up their wounds. And sometimes we must even take the weapon of abuse out of the hands of the perpetrators of those wounds.”

He pointed to specific instances of what he considered harsh and unjust treatment of women in ministry—Sheri Klouda being dismissed as a professor at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary; Julie Pennington-Russell facing protestors when she accepted the pastorate of Calvary Baptist Church in Waco; and a female seminary student whose preaching professor allowed all male students to leave the classroom when she spoke so they would not be subjected to hearing a woman deliver a message from the Bible.

Burleson, a past president of the Baptist General Convention of Oklahoma, particularly noted a turning point in his attitude toward the treatment of women. The incident occurred when he was moderating a state convention business session and a woman was elected second vice president.

“I will never forget the sight from the platform as several men throughout the auditorium stood and literally turned their backs to the platform as they voted against the first woman to be elected to general office within the Baptist General Convention of Oklahoma,” he recalled.

“That moment was an awakening for me. I realized that any cherished principle that would ever cause a Christian to be uncivil, unkind or unloving toward a sister in Christ is a principle that should be thrown out for the sake of obedience to the command of Christ to love one another.”

Not all Baptists will agree on the interpretation of Scriptures regarding the role of women in church leadership, but there is “no wiggle room” when it comes to Christ’s command to love, he said.

“You may not like the fact that women are now being called by God to preach, or called by God to do missions, or called by God to teach. You may ever consider it a violation of your principles for a woman to teach a man, or preach Christ to a man, or baptize a man, or lead a man, but there is one thing you and I cannot—we must not—forget,” Burleson said.

“You and I are called to love each other and every sister in Christ who feels called to ministry. We are called to affirm the dignity of every Christian woman called to minister. We are commanded to treat them with respect and civility.

“We are also called to love, respect and affirm the autonomy of local Baptist congregations and denominations that utilize these gifted women in ministry as they see fit. To censor them, reject them, abuse them or condemn their character is a sin of the first order.”

NORMAN, Okla. (ABP) — If they hope to represent Christ in the world, Baptists must find a "better way" of relating than the racism that has marred their witness for most of the past two centuries, participants in a multicultural gathering of Baptists heard.

A documentary and a panel discussion on racism highlighted the first sessions of the Midwest regional meeting of the New Baptist Covenant in Oklahoma.

The New Baptist Covenant is a movement launched former U.S. President Jimmy Carter and Mercer University President Bill Underwood to help Baptists transcend racism and combat poverty. It kicked off with a multi-racial, multi-ethnic gathering of about 15,000 Baptists in Atlanta in early 2008. Since then, regional rallies have been held in Kansas City; Winston-Salem, N.C.; Birmingham, Ala., and Aug. 6-7 in Norman, Okla.

The regional meetings have focused on helping Baptists learn how to "do things about the marginalized and the poor," explained Jimmy Allen, a longtime Baptist leader and key organizer of the original New Baptist Covenant meeting in Atlanta.

"God is continuing what he started among us," Allen told the Oklahoma crowd, which included African-Americans, Anglos, Hispanic-Americans and Native Americans from across the Midwest and Southwest. "You're in the forefront of the Baptist movement as you find new ways of working together."

Beneath the Skin 

A centerpiece of that effort in Norman was a documentary and panel discussion about Baptists' response to racism.

"Racism is the bone stuck in Baptists' throat," insisted Robert Parham, executive director of the Baptist Center for Ethics and producer of Beneath the Skin: Baptists and Racism, the documentary that opened the meeting.

"The Stone Age did not end because we ran out of stones, but … because we found a better way," Parham said. "The age of racism will not end among Baptists because we ran out of racists, but because we found a better way."

The documentary takes its name from a line offered by Emmanuel McCall, a Baptist pastor and longtime interracial leader in Atlanta. He quoted a mortician who observed about race: "… beneath the skin, it's all the same."

After viewing the documentary, New Baptist Covenant participants heard a multi-racial panel discussion regarding the implications of racism.

J.C. Watts, a former four-term U.S. congressman from Oklahoma, said the answer for racism is unconditional love.

"We're not a post-racial America; we're still very much in the struggle," noted Javier Elizondo, executive vice president and provost of Baptist University of the Americas in San Antonio, Texas.

Elizondo said people must approach racism in humility, acknowledging their own limitations.

"We speak from our own background," he said. "I'm a Mexican. I can only speak to this topic as a Mexican. We can only speak from our own perspective," he said, calling on people of goodwill to realize how they filter their own perspectives of race.

"Too many black assistant coaches"

Fitz Hill, president of the predominantly African-American Arkansas Baptist College in Little Rock, Ark., agreed.

"Our experiences shape our impressions," Hill said. He called for truth as an antidote to the false impressions that fuel racism.

Hill illustrated by citing criticism he received when he was one of the few black head coaches of NCAA Division I college football teams. A booster told him his poor record indicated he had "too many black assistant coaches." He countered that his record was better than his two white predecessors and asked if the booster ever complained that those coaches had "too many white assistant coaches."

In addition to truth, experience is a great teacher when it comes to overcoming racism, said Tim Eaton, president of Hillsdale Freewill Baptist College in Moore, Okla.

Freewill Baptists' tradition has been opposed to racism, Eaton noted, explaining they opposed slavery as early as colonial America and refused membership to slave owners. Freewill Baptist colleges also were among the first U.S. schools to admit people of all races.

"I'm proud of our history, but history means very little to those who are around you," Eaton said, noting Hillsdale requires students to participate in multi-ethnic community-service projects so they are forced to interact with people who are "very different" from themselves.

Racial difference still is dominant in America, testified Laura Cadena, director of communications for Mercy Street, a multi-racial ministry in Dallas.

"Protected" from the barbs of racism

"My age group says racism does not exist," Cadena said, noting she grew up in Texas "protected" from the barbs of racism by her Hispanic parents and grandparents.

encountered racism when she moved to the Southeast for a couple of years, she said, reporting, "Anti-immigration has become anti-Hispanic."

Personal encounters provide the antidote to racial stereotyping, claimed Kim Henry, wife of Oklahoma Gov. Brad Henry.

Her encounter happened during a mission trip to Ghana in Africa, where malnutrition and malaria claim the lives of 50 percent of children before they reach their fifth birthday.

Henry recalled hearing about 75 young children singing, "Our riches are in heaven" and then her group receiving nearly all the food in that impoverished village as a welcoming gift.

"We went to minister to them, and they ministered to us," she said. "This was unlike any experience I'd ever seen — to trust God so much that you would give everything away."

The experience taught her the U.S. lifestyle of abundance is inferior to the simple yet profound faith of her new African friends.

The "sin of racism"

"I wish my parents were alive to see Baptists come together to discuss racism," said Dwight McKissic, pastor of Cornerstone Baptist Church in Arlington, Texas, and a recent leading advocate for racial equality in the Southern Baptist Convention.

McKissic said racism can be so entrenched that even well-meaning words do not erase it, noting the SBC apologized for the "sin of racism" in 1995. But years later, when he visited the headquarters of the SBC Executive Committee and asked to meet with the highest-ranking African-American staff member, he was told that person was the head janitor. "It's impossible to ask a question in the SBC without having to go to a white person to get the answer," McKissic said.

J.C. Watts, a former four-term U.S. congressman from Oklahoma, said in a separate address that the answer for racism is unconditional love.

"Man's love is often conditional," said Watts, who first gained fame as quarterback for the Oklahoma Sooners football team. "Man's love is often exclusive, but God's love is unconditional. God's love is inclusive. God loves us all — red, brown, black and white.

"The thing that should drive us … is unconditional love for the individual," he added. "When people talk about the New Baptist Covenant, I hope they would say: 'They have a compelling love for the individual. They're always talking about Jesus.'"

–Marv Knox is editor of the Baptist Standard.

NORMAN, Okla. (ABP) — Former President Jimmy Carter said Aug. 7 he is planning a return trip to Gaza in an effort to focus international attention on what he describes as a humanitarian crisis.

Carter, who sparked controversy in June after calling Israel's 2-year-old blockade of Gaza an "atrocity" and saying people there are being treated like animals, told an audience at the Aug. 6-7 Midwest Region New Baptist Covenant celebration in Norman, Okla., that he is returning later this month "to try to let the world know what's happening to the people there."

Carter will travel as part of a delegation of the Elders — a group of eminent global leaders brought together by Nelson Mandela — visiting Israel, the West Bank and Gaza at the end of August.

The delegation, led by former Brazilian President Fernando Henrique Cardoso, also includes Desmond Tutu — along with Carter a winner of the Nobel Peace Prize — and billionaire Richard Branson, who helped establish and bankroll the Elders, an independent group of influential personalities dedicated to peacemaking and alleviating human suffering.

Touring the Middle East after monitoring elections in Lebanon June 7, Carter said in remarks at Cairo University that Palestinians in Gaza are being "starved to death" and living on fewer calories per day than people living in the poorest parts of Africa.

A group called Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America criticized media outlets including Associated Baptist Press for repeating Carter's comments without rebuttal. They acknowledge that Palestinians are suffering in the Gaza Strip, but they say it is because of Hamas, an Islamic group the United States has classified as a terrorist organization, and not the fault of Israel.

Carter, the driving force behind the New Baptist Covenant movement aimed at uniting North American Baptists around common concerns including peace, justice and poverty, told the Oklahoma gathering that Christianity has competed well with other religions during the last 2,000 years

"We have had very great success, because we have put forward Jesus' standards that appeal to human beings — peace, justice, humility, service, compassion, forgiveness, love and the alleviation of suffering," he said. "Our effectiveness, though, has depended on our working together, cooperating with each other, as Christians."

–Bob Allen is senior writer for Associated Baptist Press.

Many discipleship and outreach ministries have come and gone over the years, but Vacation Bible School still is a mainstay for most Texas Baptist churches.

As many as 85 percent of churches and missions affiliated with the Baptist General Convention of Texas continue to hold annual Vacation Bible Schools, said Diane Lane, preschool/children’s ministry specialist with the Baptist General Convention of Texas.

“Some churches think they are too small, but the vast majority of our churches still do Vacation Bible School,” she said.

Free curriculum churches can download from the BGCT enables many small churches to conduct VBS, she noted.

But why—when other programs have faded away—is Vacation Bible School such a strong presence after so many years?

“I think churches have seen and recognized that lives are changed,” Lane said. “It’s a very obvious act when after VBS, the church gets to see children baptized.”

Grace Temple Baptist Church in Waco uses the BGCT free online VBS curriculum, and director Merle Neumann said the planning begins as soon as the curriculum is available.

The core cadre of workers who have worked on VBS for years approach the summer outreach ministry with passion and expectancy, she said.

“Our teachers for VBS are very dedicated and very interested in children who are not church children and teaching them about who Jesus is,” Neumann said. “We have children who tell us they have no Bible in their home, and it is very exciting to get to be the ones who share about Christ with them.”

Rod Payne, minister of missions and media at First Baptist Church in Wichita Falls, believes part of the appeal of Vacation Bible School is drawn from its longevity.

“I think one of the things VBS has going for it is that it hasn’t changed,” he said.

Many adults have attended Vacation Bible School at least once, so they know what it is.

As an example, Payne said, he was distributing flyers at a community event the week before VBS and only had to explain what it was to one person.

“Parents identify with VBS, they know what it is. Not a lot of explanation about what we’re going to be doing with their kids is required,” he said.

Also, for many parents, VBS can take them back to a very fond childhood memory, Payne said.

“They want to pass those pleasant memories on,” he said.

The ubiquitous appeal crosses denominational lines. It’s not just a Baptist thing, he pointed out.

This year more than 1,500 children enrolled in the Wichita Falls church’s VBS.

“It’s not about counting noses, but hearts,” Payne said. “But if I have their noses, it’s pretty inclusive that I have their hearts, as well.”

SAN ANTONIO—The Baptist Health Foundation has awarded health care-related grants totaling more than $43,000 to eight Baptist organizations in support of Texas Hope 2010.

The funds will help the Baptist groups care for people in need, one of the pillars of Texas Hope 2010, a Baptist General Convention of Texas initiative that also encourages Christians to pray for others and share their faith. Through Texas Hope 2010, Texas Baptists aim to share the gospel with every Texan by Easter 2010.

The funds, part of the mini-grants committee’s $136,000 awarded this year, will assist the Baptist University of the Americas; Crossroads Baptist, Redemption Baptist, Edgewood Baptist, University Park Baptist and Zion Star Missionary Baptist churches in San Antonio; First Baptist Church in Devine; and First Baptist Church in Pipe Creek.

“Baptist Health Foundation is pleased to be a partner with these fellow Baptist organizations who are helping feed the hungry and care for those with health care needs in their communities,” said Frank Elston, the foundation’s president and chief executive officer.

ROUND ROCK—It all started in 1979 when a woman walked into the office of Charles Wright, administrator of Texas Baptist Children’s Home, and asked if the program could care for her children while she turned her life around.

That conversation sparked the Family Care Program, a Christian residential ministry now celebrating 30 years of service to mothers and their children.

More than 200 past and present Family Care moms and their children gathered to celebrate three decades of changed lives and rebuilt families last month. Every woman present shared something in common with the woman who sought help in 1979. Like her, they came with careworn faces, fleeing abuse, debt-ridden, hungry or on the verge of becoming homeless.

And, of course, there is the worry that they wouldn’t be good enough, wouldn’t achieve even the smallest goal, or wouldn’t overcome. At Family Care, they realized all they needed to do was try and believe. The rest will fall into place.

In 1998, Heather Pauly came into the program with her first child because she “had nowhere else to go.” She stayed for a while, left, then came back after her second child was born in 2001, determined to make the lessons she learned stick.

She began attending school through a Family Care scholarship and earned her teaching degree a semester early. Today, she is in her fifth year teaching kindergartners in Killeen.

“This program saved my life,” she admitted. “My self-confidence is where it is today because of Family Care. This is my family.”

When a mother and her children are admitted to Family Care, the case manager helps each mom create a list of attainable goals for herself and her family. Mothers are responsible for child care and maintaining their living quarters in the home-like cottages, and they are required to hold down jobs and save money. Melinda McElhaney arrived at Family Care with her four children in tow. At the time of the reunion, she had been on campus about a week.

“I walked into the cottage and couldn’t help myself,” she said. “I started crying. It was so beautiful. Then I saw we had our own place to sleep with our own bathroom, there was a playroom and this wonderful kitchen with a refrigerator full of food just for us. It was overwhelming.”

Family Care also provides counseling to their clients, both past and present. Every Monday night staff and residents share their fears, worries and sorrows.

“God has blessed the efforts of a lot of people to make this ministry possible,” said Jerry Bradley, Children At Heart Ministries president and CEO. “Serving children and strengthening families is still the heart of our ministry, and Family Care does that every day.”