“Alaska is the closest place to heaven on earth.” That’s what a man on a plane to Alaska told one of my teammates.

Indeed, the range of mountains and open wilderness is beyond belief—truly beautiful. Church groups from all over the United States have come to this beautiful place to share the gospel with the people of Alaska as part of Salmon Frenzy Ministries.

The evangelistic efforts are concentrated during the Alaskan dip-netting season for salmon.  During that time, the state allows residents to gather on beaches to catch salmon, fillet the fish and take the meat home for their families.

Our ministry is restricted in some respects. No non-Alaskan can help residents bring down their nets and coolers without being fined.

On the bright side, teams can give away free hotdogs, hot cocoa, coffee and lemonade.  We interact with everyone on the beach and build relationships. Kids’ camps also are provided to help the parents.

My experiences here with the Alaskans indicate many have a skittish mentality about the gospel. Many think they don’t really need to know Jesus.

But I am reminded of the promise in John 1:12: “But as many as received him, to them he gave the right to become children of God, to those who believe in his name.” 

Katy Thomas, a student a Navarro College, is serving with Go Now Missions in Salmon Frenzy Ministries in Alaska.

We were able to share our testimonies of how we each came to Christ and our individual journeys in accepting the call to Colorado this summer. The difference in each of our stories shows the beauty of how God works through a vast array of experiences in each person’s life. While it was beneficial for me to reflect on what Christ has done in our lives, I pray that it was equally meaningful for the students as they listened. My hope is that it inspired them to think about the value of their own story of God in their lives and how they could share it with others. 

My favorite part about going to talk to them was sharing what we have learned about sowing the gospel and harvesting the fruit that comes once the truth has been sown. In our experiences with reaching out to nonbelievers here, it has proven the significance of willingly taking time to listen to others so as to fully grasp who they are.

The sowing does not begin when we start preaching. It starts with showing a genuine interest in the person and what matters to them. Being OK with simply hanging out without having to force our beliefs on them speaks volumes. As trust builds, the gospel can be much better received and strategically explained according to that individual’s learning style, established beliefs and personality.

This can be a very tiresome process at times, as we often do not see the results of sowing into an individual’s life for days, weeks or even years. Maybe we will never see the impact at all, but we obediently continue sowing God’s word through the way we live trusting that God will use it to expand his kingdom in the long run.

Mike helped provide an example of how these teenagers could apply this lifestyle. He asked them if they enjoyed playing sports, and most of them raised their hands. He said that as they are playing these sports and interacting with those they are playing with, they can start friendships with the goal of being a light in the lives of others. Instead of asking their friends to go to church and then building a relationship when the invitation is accepted, they can build a relationship, and maybe their friend will get involved in a church later as a result of seeing Christ in their life.
 

It excites me to think that us sharing with them what God has taught us could play a role in helping them to grasp the concept of sowing and its importance at a much younger age than I did. Watching these youth realize the opportunity to build relationships in their junior high and high schools, on their sports teams, in their neighborhoods, in their clubs and other various activities made me hopeful for the eyes of the younger generation to be opened to the mission field right in front of them.

Student missionary correspondent Amber Cassady, a communications student at Texas A&M University in College Station, is serving in Colorado with Go Now Missions.

We hung out with them a lot—talking, watching the World Cup games, and even horseback riding. Our host family was excited at the quick friendship because they have long hoped to start a cell church in the neighborhood. They wanted us to help start it.

After a month, we realized that even though our neighbors knew we were Christians and came to Venezuela to talk about God, we had never shared the gospel with them.

To remedy this, we recently began the first service of a cell church in the neighborhood. We welcomed three neighbors—two unbelievers and one believer. My partner, Julie, and I shared our testimonies and the host family shared the gospel.

Initially I thought our guests were uninterested, but then I noticed the intensity with which they listened. Normally stoic, one of the guys even shed tears as he said, ´Yes, I want to accept Jesus as my Savior.´ Both of the unbelievers prayed that night to become Christians and were excited to receive Bibles.

Later, we helped host a neighborhood game night. Between a treasure hunt and charades, we shared the gospel and 19 youth prayed to receive Christ. Many were excited to hear about the cell church and said they will attend the service.

It is exciting to see God glorified in an entire neighborhood. Now, we are praying for someone to disciple our new brothers and sisters.

But the Bible clearly states that if you are still, and know that God is who he says he is, you will see that he is being exalted all around you, and you are invited into it.

I wish we had listened when people told us that this summer we were going to be attacked—hard. From the beginning, we’ve had team members get sick, go to the hospital, get in fights, get unbearably homesick, lose friends and family, and deal with other tough issues back home. I’m not going to lie; it’s been a rough ride. There have been several times when all of us have just wanted to give up and go home. And, yet, God has been who he said he is through the entire summer.

When I have stopped to truly sit in God’s presence and to allow him to refresh my spirit, he has shown me his power in this summer—eight kids coming to know the Lord, one man in his 80s coming to Jesus, one co-worker recommitting his life to Christ, and countless numbers of relationships formed where people have been able to see the power of God working through us. Who am I to question why we were all called here this summer?

One of the dramas our creative-arts team performs is called “In the Words of Satan.” It’s a song about the lies Satan feeds us on a daily basis to try to bring us away from the love of our Lord. But he will not tell us about the God of heaven who loves us, who yearns for us and the freedom of the truth and forgiveness that God offers. Why is it so easy for us to buy into these lies?

I’ve been praying that God would reveal to me the lies that I buy into each day so that I may know what is of Christ and what needs to be pushed out of my life, and it’s rocked my world. God has shown me through revealing the lies in my life the different lies that others around me believe in, too. It breaks my heart. That’s why God wants us to know who he is and to believe it and know it on a daily basis, because we are not up against anything that will go easy on us—not by any means.

Emily Gerloff,  a student at the University of Texas at Austin, is serving with Go Now Missions in Orlando, Fla.

This summer on this page, we’ve been talking about the most significant topics facing Texas Baptists. We must:

• Prioritize the Baptist General Convention of Texas budget so we fund vital ministries for excellence, even though that means operating only ministries we can afford.

• Acknowledge our state’s seismic demographic shifts and emphasize Hispanic churches, Hispanic ministries and Hispanic leadership development.

• Recognize the only way we will reach Texas with the gospel is if we start thousands of churches and pour our energy into calling out and equipping church planters—mostly bivocational ministers—to lead them.

These are vital issues, but we also must think beyond our borders. We need to talk about how Baptists conduct missions in other countries. We need to consider changing how we organize, fund and implement missions.

For more than 200 years, career missionaries have been the vanguard of Baptists’ efforts to propagate the gospel around the globe. If Baptists declared saints, the pantheon would be populated by foreign missionaries, from British pioneer William Carey, to American trailblazers Adoniram and Ann Judson, icon Lottie Moon, martyrs Bill Wallace and Archie Dunaway, and Texans-turned-Brazilians Buck and Anne Bagby. Their faith and passion epitomized the best of who Baptists are and hope to be.

But traditional missions methods are experiencing unprecedented challenges. Among the most significant is the expense of training and maintaining overseas missionaries. This crisis even transcends the politics that divided Baptists during the past few decades. Jerry Rankin, president of the Southern Baptist International Mission Board, has announced the board is backing down from a record 5,624 overseas missionaries in 2008 to fewer than 5,000 by the end of this year. Meanwhile, Daniel Vestal, coordinator of the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship, said CBF may have to recall missionaries next year.

In both cases, money—or, more precisely, lack of it—is the culprit. “People are always saying ‘Why don’t you appoint more funded missionaries?’ The fact is we don’t have the money,” Vestal said. Even though the IMB would like to deploy more than 8,000 missionaries, “we will … have to restrict appointments and restrict our missionary force” due to costs, Rankin reported.

Southern Baptists have launched the Great Commission Resurgence to raise more funds for missions, and Fellowship Baptists have pleaded for more funding from their faithful.

Certainly, Baptists could bankroll many more missionaries if we were so inclined. But we also need to think about how we can make our missions money go further. With all due respect to our sainted forebears and to current career missionaries whom we love and admire, we must ask: "Is training and maintaining large career forces the best way to accomplish global missions today"

We must be strategic about how we spend missions money. We must consider the possibility that the best use of most missions funds may be training and supporting indigenous pastors, who are native to their countries and culture, who are trusted locals and who will raise up new generations of Christians from their own people.

We may deploy selected U.S. missionaries, particularly gifted ministry teachers and those who have invested many years developing relationships and identifying and cultivating those indigenous leaders.

We also may utilize short-term volunteers and mission teams, sent specifically to serve and encourage the indigenous leadership.

This will be a tenuous, even tender, conversation about missions. But for the sake of the gospel, we must talk.

Marv Knox is editor of the Baptist Standard. Visit his FaithWorks Blog.

Popo’s been on my mind all week. I always think about Mother’s father a lot this time of year. His birth day was Aug. 2—the same day as this edition of the Baptist Standard—104 years ago.

The world knew Popo as Leonard Moore. He grew up on a homestead in northwestern Oklahoma when farmers plowed the land behind horses and mules. He married my grandmother, Grammar, when she was 17 and he was 21, if I remember correctly. He worked my great-grandmother’s homestead until the Dust Bowl dried up the land and blew most of it into surrounding states. Then he went to work for the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe Railway.

By the time I came along, Popo and Grammar had moved to Waynoka, Okla. Popo eventually operated the Sante Fe Reading Room, a company-owned hotel for railroaders. Most of the crews who ran the trains lived in Amarillo or Topeka, Kan. Their shifts took them to Waynoka, where they slept over in the Reading Room and then worked another train back home.

Popo and Grammar lived in an apartment in the Reading Room, and Popo had the perfect job for a granddad. He could accomplish every task with a little boy hanging around. So, when we went for a visit, I spent almost every post-breakfast moment of every day shadowing Popo.

For part of my childhood, Mother attended summer school at Northwestern Oklahoma State University in nearby Alva, obtaining her teaching certificate. So, I got to spend about six weeks in the summer at Grammar and Popo’s home.

Most of those years, Grammar worked alongside him at the Reading Room. If Popo and I wanted to go fishing late in the afternoon, Grammar watched “the front”—the office where guests registered—and we headed for the stock tanks. After supper, we often played catch out by the car shed. And after sundown, we walked along the railroad platform behind the Reading Room, where fat toads squatted in pools of light and zapped flies and mosquitoes with their tongues. Then we took our “vitamins”—Popo’s euphemism for ice cream—and went to bed.

Those are some of the best memories of my life. I’ve been rolling them around in my brain more than usual this summer. That’s because Joanna and I will be grandparents by this time next summer. You may recall I told you Lindsay, our older daughter, is expecting a baby shortly after the first of the year.

For a long time, I thought I wanted to be called Popo by my grandchildren. But lately, I’ve come to think my Popo was a one-and-only specimen of grandfatherhood. So, now I’m thinking Marvo would be a terrific grandpaw name.

Of course, I’ll probably go by whatever consistently comes off the lips of that baby growing in Lindsay’s belly. But no matter what my grandkids call me, I hope I fill their lives with as many wonderful memories as Popo poured into mine.

The company he works for is an immense pharmaceutical giant. And here he is, sitting across from me.

We initially met at Starbucks. I was drinking my overpriced Japanese coffee, when out of the corner of my eye, I saw him holding a piece of paper with Kongi and English. This provided an opening to begin conversation. As we began to talk, I soon found out he soon would travel to New York, Chicago and Los Angeles to close deals for his company. Nobody sends a low-level operative to represent your company in America. He was so delighted to talk and interested in my story that he offered to take me to dinner in the future.

We got together for a meal at a local Japanese casual restaurant, and it is here the mystery of the gospel was presented to him. As we dove into the topic of religions, I knew my work was cut out for me. Most Japanese do not believe in a religion, but many believe there are 8 million gods, and everything around you is a god. And that’s not to limit the amount of gods, for the “8” stands for infinity. That’s essentially what this man believed. So, after intently listening to his thoughts and views, I begin to layout a case for Christ.

We discuss a multitude of topics, from the historical accuracy of the Bible, to the nature of God, and to the differences between Christianity and other religions. But as I found through personal experience, numbers of manuscripts and theological philosophy will not fully capture the image of Christ to those who are lost. The most personal and powerful story of the gospel is not found in an academic book or in statistics—it is found in us. It’s the story of how Jesus’ good news saved and changed us.

As I began to pour out my life, telling how Christ changed me, I could see true understanding in his eyes. My friend was not bored with the story. I quoted the end of the beatitudes in Matthew where Jesus calls us to be salt and light in the world, to let our light so shine before men that they will see our works and glorify our Father who is in heaven. I told him how I want my life to be different.

This was the sticking point—to move into a metaphor of how I wanted my life to be. I heard this example many years ago, and through the years, it has flowed into the context of my conversation—but never before as perfect as this.

“Imagine I am eating a dessert,” I said. “Its just so good—the cream, the chocolate, the little nuts that tie the flavor together. …This is perfect.” (Cue waiter, walking to table beside us with breathtaking dessert.) “But wait, look at that dessert over there. It makes mine look like nothing! Look at the precision, the creativity, the flavors, the artistry. After looking at it, I feel like mine is missing something. I wish I could have that something which makes it different. I want the better dessert.”

God’s perfect timing spurred me on to drive home the point. When people see my life, I want them to see me as the better dessert. I want them to look at their life and say, “What does he have that I don’t?” In this world of darkness and despair, in this world of seekers and sinners, every person is looking for something to fulfill his or her life. As the believers in Antioch who first were called Christians, may we be salt to a tasteless life, may we be light to the dark places, and in a world searching for something more, may we be the better dessert.

Pray for my friend, as I connect him with a missionary who lives here. Pray he will continue to have a thirst and desire to know the one and true God of the Bible.

Dan Black, a student at the University of Mary Hardin-Baylor, is serving with Go Now Missions in Japan.

As medicine implements stem-cell research, genetic engineering and other scientific achievements, are we violating the created will of God? Do we infringe on things we have no business doing when we dabble with the human body?

At what point are we “playing God” with the knowledge and technology we acquire? The question recognizes a basic theological understanding of the fact we are limited, sinful humans who have shown from the very beginning of existence the propensity to make wrong choices when faced with the opportunity to exceed ourselves.

Such concern struggles with the tension of also understanding the theological concept that God has given us dominion over the earth, and he has worked with humanity to develop wonderful and miraculous answers to the complex problems that bring pain and suffering to the world. Such good cannot be ignored.

Medical experimentation has created attempts to “purify” the races and forced involuntary sterilization on the mentally ill. Medical experimentation also has provided cures and preventions for polio, smallpox, tuberculosis and numerous other diseases that have plagued society. Thus, we cannot always say we are right to take control of science and nature, nor can we say we always are wrong. Medical technology is no different than any other powerful technologies of history. Technology always produces a quandary.

We are forced by such development into the realm of making choices. The question is not whether or not we play God. The question is how we make choices.

The technologies themselves basically are neutral. The good or evil they produce results from the purposes society pursues or for which it permits them to be used. Here is where Christianity has the opportunity to exert its influence over society in making these decisions.

Christians affect this process by gaining accurate and thorough knowledge of the facts and details of the issues involved. Too often, fears based on ignorance and false or distorted information cause unnecessary and impulsive reactions. Included in gathering this knowledge must be the realization the ethics of the situations and issues rarely will be concrete or clear. An innate sense of humility will help provide a reliable foundation for investigation.

Christians also must gain an accurate and thorough knowledge of the value system created by God in his people. While the Bible does not address every conceivable ethical issue, it does provide a solid understanding of God’s purpose and plan for the world and his people. The task of Christians in this sphere of technology is to try to control such knowledge and power in a way that does not destroy humanity and creation, but fulfills God’s plan for us to serve the world as we wait for his ultimate redemption.

Van Christian, pastor

First Baptist Church, Comanche

Right or Wrong? is sponsored by the T.B. Maston Chair of Christian Ethics at Hardin-Simmons University’s Logsdon School of Theology. Send your questions about how to apply your faith to btillman@hsutx.edu.

This question was the topic for a debate in which I participated recently with the Dallas Philosopher’s Forum. I was assigned the affirmative; a philosophy professor at SMU was assigned the negative. In preparation, I came across a fascinating article in The New York Times and thought its insights might interest you.

Peter Railton is the Perrin Professor of Philosophy at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. His Times submission looks at the question of morality through Darwinian eyes. As he explains, current evolutionary theory suggests life tends to preserve itself genetically. You and I are a means to the end of our genes’ survival and procreation. As Samuel Butler put it, a hen is only an egg’s way of making another egg.

Jim Denison

Applied to our question, this approach views moral choices as genetic instruments. We choose to sacrifice for each other so our families can survive and procreate. We value moral traits in others such as altruism, loyalty and generosity because they make them better reproductive partners. These “proximal psychological mechanisms” are not very glamorous, but evolutionary theory sees them as essential to the progress of life.

Here's what interested me: Railton admits this approach cannot explain moral advancement on a societal level. Even if we concede (which I don’t) that moral choices are all about preserving and advancing our individual genetics, how does this view account for what he calls cultural evolution? He applauds the Geneva Convention, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and dramatic advances in civil rights and women's rights. But the evolutionary theory he describes so well cannot explain them.

It is here that Christians have a point to make. Scripture teaches that God is the Cause for which we are the effect. This is true not just physically but also morally. As C.S. Lewis pointed out, our moral tendencies deserve explanation. I can claim that I learned them from my parents, but where did they get theirs? If from my grandparents, where did they get theirs? We step backwards across time and arrive ultimately at a Moral Cause, a God who is “holy, holy, holy.”

This God is the ultimate explanation of the moral impulses that move humanity. He calls us to moral excellence in attitudes (Galatians 5:22-23), thoughts (Philippians 4:8), words (Ephesians 4:29) and actions (Psalm 15:1-2). But we cannot achieve the moral standard he sets for us, so he enables us by the transforming work of his Spirit (Ephesians 5:18) to be molded into the character of Christ (Romans 8:29).

So, does morality require religion? George Washington thought so. In his farewell address (Sept. 19, 1796), our first president told his infant nation: “Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable supports. … Reason and experience both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle.”

To amend Butler, morality is God’s way of making us like God.

Jim Denison is president of the Center for Informed Faith (www.informedfaith.com) and theologian-in-residence with the Baptist General Convention of Texas.

“I prayed multiple times a day, sang hymns with emotion and tears, felt each time that it wouldn't happen again, read the Bible every morning. … So how in the world did I have a ‘torrid’—which is an accurate word—many-year affair?”

Mark Souder

Recently resigned Republican congressman from Indiana, writing about his extramarital affair (World/RNS)

“If only I could believe that he could look down and see how he is missed and how nobody will ever be the same without him. But I haven’t believed in the child’s vision of heaven for a long time. There is no way now to commune with him.”

Jackie Kennedy

In a Dec. 20, 1963, letter to Joseph Hannan, then an auxiliary bishop in Washington, D.C., about her assassinated husband, John Kennedy. The letter recently was included in Hannan’s memoir, The Archbishop Wore Combat Boots (RNS)

“It was easily a rock concert. The only thing missing was ‘Free Bird’ and us holding up our lighters.”

Scott Thumma

Scholar of megachurches at Hartford Seminary, recalling a visit to a youth service at a large church outside Washington, D.C. (Los Angeles Times/RNS)

I believe it is time for the Southern Baptist Convention to come back to the Baptist World Alliance. The SBC held a leadership role from the founding of the BWA in 1905 until a few years ago, when it voted to withdraw.

At the recent SBC annual meeting, messengers voted to move forward with a Great Commission Resurgence strategy. The International Mission Board has been one of the most effective mission movements ever. Thousands of Baptist missionaries are serving around the world at this time. Yet while we cry for God to call more missionaries, don’t overlook the 40 million Baptists who already are scattered throughout the world.

I have known the presidents of the BWA personally over the past 15 years, and I’m a close friend to John Upton, who is the president-elect. They all have preached in churches where I was pastor. They are godly men who love the Lord and the church, are committed to Baptist values and are personal witnesses and Great Commission Christians.

Nilson Fanini was president from 1995 to 2000. Fanini was a 14-time president of the Brazilian Baptist Convention, founded the Baptist Theological Seminary of Niterói in Brazil in 1984, founded a nationwide project to print and distribute 25 million Bibles in Brazil, founded and hosted a nationally broadcast weekly evangelical television program, and founded Reencontro, a social-service organization that included an orphanage, a daycare center, 19 medical clinics, mobile ambulances for low-income pregnant women, a bakery for needy children and a two-year vocational college.

Billy Kim was president from 2000 to 2005. There were only a dozen members when Billy and his wife, Trudy, began serving at Suwon Central Baptist Church in 1959, and now there are more than 15,000. He translated for Billy Graham during the 1973 Korean Crusade. Each night, the crowd grew to a maximum attendance of 1.1 million. Thousands of people gave their lives to Christ through the crusade, which greatly contributed to church growth in Korea. The Suwon church has hundreds who gather every morning at 5 a.m. for prayer. Its pastor has preached to large crowds around the world during the last several years in evangelistic meetings, seeing thousands profess faith in Christ.

I also could tell stories of David Coffey, who has been president since 2005, and of John Upton and his wife, Deborah, who served as missionaries to China before coming to Virginia Baptists. Several of the BWA staff, including Denton Lotz, the previous general secretary, were members of the church in Virginia where I was pastor. They love Christ and serve his church.

Sheila and I will join many Texas Baptists and thousands of other Baptists from around the world July 28-Aug. 1 at the BWA Congress in Hawaii. We will hear firsthand stories of persecutions, suffering and hardships. But we also will hear of God pouring out his Spirit in powerful transformational ways. It will be a great time of worship, celebration and commitment. I wish our SBC leaders were there to join with us.

Randel Everett is executive director of the Baptist General Convention of Texas Executive Board.

“When I said a higher power was here, I meant the electrical lineman.”