Just like so much of life these days, the way we train ministers is changing. This trend is vital, because even though Baptists affirm the priesthood of all believers, pastors’ and staff ministers’ influence is inversely proportional to their actual numbers. An exceptional minister cannot single-handedly build a great church, but he or she can impact hundreds, if not thousands, of lives. And a poor minister can bring a church to its knees and ruin its influence.

This issue of the Standard carries a cover package about creative new approaches to ministerial training. They supplement outstanding training provided by traditional Baptist seminaries and theology schools. Texas Baptists benefit directly from three—Baptist University of the Americas, Logsdon Seminary at Hardin-Simmons University and Truett Seminary at Baylor University.

With due respect to all these programs, here are 10 skills seminaries need to emphasize. Churches also need to support these skills with opportunities for lifelong continuing education. Most seminary graduates do a passable job of interpreting Scripture, preaching and/or operating church programs. But a vast majority of church travail traced to ministers involves failure touching on one or more of these skills:

• Spiritual discipline. Seminary students spend so much time handling the sacred it can seem mundane. The same is true in ministry. So, a life of prayer and devotional Scripture reading is vital. Ministers can’t survive without this.

• Communication. A huge number of church challenges stem from poor communication. Pastors and staff must be able to present ideas and vision and even basic information clearly. The often-overlooked key is learning to listen.

• Team-building. A church is an army of volunteers. Success often hinges on enabling members to pull together in the same direction. An equally important corollary of this skill is learning to motivate with integrity, not manipulation.

• Conflict mediation. Churches are going to experience conflict until “the roll is called up yonder.” Ironically, conflict can be a catalyst for many valuable developments, such as learning from one another, clarifying goals and expectations, healing old wounds and finding common ground. Unfortunately, many pastors waste these opportunities by either pretending conflict doesn’t exist and allowing it to fester or escalating the conflict into win-lose scenarios that damage their ministries and hurt their churches.

• Transparency and vulnerability. Pastors quickly learn to mask their weaknesses, because some church members will exploit them. But this skill set can strengthen and empower church members by enabling them to identify with and learn from their ministers’ struggles.

• Healthy families. Here’s a strength that becomes a weakness: Ministers are so committed to the church they sacrifice their families. Then, when their marriages corrode or their families crumble, everyone loses. Ministers’ families must come first, before church, just as marriage preceded the church.

• Financial management. Many—most?—churches should do better at compensating their staff. But in this materialistic, consumeristic age, ministers must exercise financial discipline and teach values by the way they conduct their personal business.

• Basic planning. How can you get where you’re going if you don’t know the way? We need pastors who can lead, and it starts with the ability to conceive and execute plans.

• Healthy lifestyles. This is important on multiple levels. Like everyone else’s, ministers’ bodies are the temple of God. Ministers perform best when they’re healthy. And church members need to see the example of fit ministers.

• Humble courage. Maybe neither of these traits can be taught, but they are essential. Both arrogant tyranny and passive cowardice ruin churches.

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

I defeated my fear of spiders years ago—in 1973, if memory serves me correctly. That was the second summer I worked for Clarence, a carpenter, friend and fellow member of our church.

Up in the far northern Texas Panhandle, most houses sit on pier-and-beam foundations. They rest about 18 inches above the ground on wooden frames that are mounted on concrete posts. As the weather changes, the ground under the houses shifts, and the houses get out of line.

So, Clarence and I spent a good bit of that summer crawling underneath people’s homes. I used a hydraulic jack to lift the beams, and Clarence tapped wooden shims in the space between the beams and the piers. Folks all over Perryton got level homes that summer.

And I got over my fear of spiders, who just love to crawl around under Panhandle houses.

What I am scared of is heights. Maybe Clarence and I should’ve built skyscrapers, and I could’ve scaled my fear of heights.

Turns out, I also must be a little bit scared of water. In mid-July, Joanna and I spent a long weekend at Lake Granbury with our girls and their guys—Lindsay and her husband, Aaron, and Molly and her boyfriend, David.

Now, I never really thought about being afraid of water, since we frolic at the beach almost every summer. But, apparently, I am.

On Saturday morning, David and I went out riding the jet skis. I was nervous. Not because I was scared of drowning, but because I didn’t really know how to operate a jet ski, and I was afraid of revealing all of my doofusness to the rising generation of young Texans.

Well, I got the thing started and eventually felt comfortable at the controls. Before long, I was tearing down the middle of the lake, the wind streaming through my … well … the wind streaming around my head.

For some reason, I decided to turn sharply to my left, and the jet ski sort of cut into the water, and I found myself leaning sharply into the wake, which now was on the side of my jet ski.

For a second, I experienced a clear and present fear: “You’re the King of Doofuses. You’re about to turn this jet ski over on top of yourself. And you might swallow so much water, you’ll drown with a life vest on. Doofus.”

So, I let off the gas.

Jet skis stop really, really fast when you let off the gas. And when you’re cutting a tight turn, the front stops immediately, and the back keeps on spinning, completing the circle. Water sprays all over you.

And then you thank God—from whom all blessings flow—for water and jet skis and speed and even that little twinge of fear that caused you to discover the thrill of cutting 360s in the middle of the lake. I may be a scaredy-cat doofus, but I’m a grateful scaredy-cat doofus.

How can I teach my children to be more earth-friendly?

The question itself takes a great step toward your children’s commitment to be more earth-friendly. If parents model appreciation for the world’s condition, our children will notice. That having been said, how can we intentionally pass along to our children our environmental commitment? The best source for this answer comes from my “green” daughter. My wife, Laurie, and I admire Katherine’s loyalty to God’s creation. As a recent college graduate, she exhibits as much devotion to God’s earth as any individual I know. What were her impressionable moments during her growing years? She remembers five simple, but profound, actions in our family:

• Recycle. Seeing the recycling bin on the curb every pick-up day and returning plastic bags to the grocery store revealed in her early years that we could do better than shift trash from our cans to a dumpsite. Today, she understands those dumps are not bottomless pits.

• Travel. Mission trips to less-developed countries revealed the evils of our wastefulness as compared to the need of others’ frugality. Witnessing how our neighbors lived accentuated the surplus we have and misuse. Today, she understands our need to protect the world for them, as well as for us.

• Turn out the lights. It sounded like a simple instruction to cut electric bills to a young girl. But today, she understands it not only saves money, but it also saves the planet. The energy spent on silent wastes of electricity, such as lighting an unused room or running a clock display on an empty coffee pot, was reducing available resources for others and cluttering the environment with its excess waste.

• Dispose of your trash properly. On a trip to the Eiffel Tower in Paris, the grandeur of the monument almost was overshadowed by the mounds of trash tourists had thrown on the ground below. The long wait for the ride to the top was spent picking up trash at the bottom. It seemed a futile effort at the time. But today, she understands a small action in a brief moment can make an eternal impact. A few other tourists joined the effort.

• Turn off the water. Water from the faucet was so easy to obtain, it was difficult to imagine its value when she was young. Trips to poverty-stricken countries, especially when potable water could only be found in purchased bottles, taught the value of clean water. Today, she understands the world’s pollution eventually could reduce an already-scarce water supply throughout the world and water should be treated respectfully, even through such simple acts as turning it off while brushing teeth or stopping a dripping faucet.

These small efforts may seem to be very simple in the eyes of young children, but they potentially lead to a way of life that reveals love and respect for God’s earth.

Allen Reasons, senior minister

Fifth Avenue Baptist Church

Huntington, W.Va.

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.

Homosexuality & church

“Extreme disappointment” describes my reaction to your July 13 editorial .

You implied the presence of homosexuals within Broadway Baptist Church was the cause for the Southern Baptist Convention’s action.

I would expect similar action to be taken against a congregation that condoned advocacy of gossiping, back-biting and tattling if the practitioners of such were unrepentant.

Complacency toward sin is intolerable. I would call upon the staff of Broadway to preach against the advocacy of any and all sin and not shy away from any particular sin, just because it might hurt the feelings of a group.

You mentioned the harm done by mean deacons and ministers. Such meanness is not a thing of the past. Just as we should not excuse those indefensible mean practices, neither should the leadership of any church defend or tolerate flagrant sin of any nature.

The church’s error was not their failure to root out homosexuality. Their error was in failure to take a scriptural position when the extent of homosexuality tolerance within their congregation surfaced. Loving the sinner in no way allows us to do anything but hate the sin. God does.

Let them declare to us all that they hate homosexuality; and don’t water down that statement.

Congregations are filled with women who have had abortions, practitioners of abortions, tattlers, back-bitters, gossips, and mean deacons and ministers. Their presence and our God-mandated willingness to forgive them does not require our acceptance of militant in-your-face flaunting of sin.

Paul Wrightsman

Copperas Cove

Open membership?

My friend Fisher Humphreys seems to think that among Baptists there has been a four-century history of the practice of open membership (July 13 ). Open membership is the practice of Baptist churches in which they receive into full membership, without believer’s baptism by immersion, those who have had baptism only as infants, those whose baptism was by pouring or sprinkling, or those who, claiming to be Christians, never have been baptized.

I wrote that John Bunyan made a case in 1672 for open communion and open membership “as a quasi-Baptist or Congrega-tionalist.” The Bedford church was a mixed Baptist (believer’s baptism)-Congregational (infant baptism) church and is even today. Whether Bunyan should be regarded as a Baptist has been debated for three centuries. Particular Baptists did not replicate the Bedford pattern. Some followed Bunyan’s practice of open communion; others followed William Kiffin’s strict communion.

Robert Hall Jr., a major advocate of open communion, writing in 1815, did not mention or advocate open membership. The latter practice began to be adopted by some English Baptist churches, both General and Particular, in the 19th century. Hence, Baptist open membership can be properly identified as a “modern (19th and 20th centuries) development.”

James Leo Garrett Jr.

Fort Worth

Speak up. Send letters to P.O. Box 660267, Dallas 75266-0267 or marvknox@baptiststandard.com. Max is 250 words.

Sheila and I recently worshipped at the Cowboy Church of Marshall County in Albertville, Ala. We were invited by our nephew, Bob Johnson. Most of the many guests there were invited by friends and relatives. We were greeted at the entrance of the parking lot by the trademark cowboy and cowgirl sitting on horses welcoming all who entered. The church was a converted feed store where Sheila had gone as a child with her dad to buy feed.

Ten percent of Baptist General Convention of Texas baptisms come from a relatively small number of western heritage churches. I’ve been told that 75 percent of these baptisms are adults. What is their secret? When they say, “Come as you are,” they mean it. You don’t have to hide the fact your life is a mess behind church dress and religious clichés.

At the Alabama church, even though we sat in folding chairs in a barn-like structure without air conditioners, we felt comfortable and at home. Before the service and during the service, we heard stories from ordinary people who had been rescued by Jesus. When the interim pastor, Travis Brasell, learned we were Texas Baptists, he affirmed from the pulpit the assistance the BGCT has given this Alabama church start and especially the help from Charles Higgs and Ron Nolen.

The service ended as they often do, with baptisms in a water trough. The stories of the baptismal candidates were those of everyday people who found forgiveness and hope in Jesus. As the cowboy churches expand and mature, I pray they will remain humble and simple and remember that evangelism is just “one beggar telling another beggar where to find bread.”

This Christian movement contrasts with what many people feel about some churches. I was startled this week when a new friend shared that when he was considering moving to Texas from another state, he was asked how he would be able to manage all those Baptists in Texas. I didn’t take that as a compliment. Unfortunately, some of the negative impressions outsiders have of Baptists come from listening to our conversations and watching our lives.

One Baptist layman, who contributed thousands of dollars to missions, complained about the kind of youth who attended his church. He said church is one of the last places his children could be with other kids like themselves. Apparently, when we sing, “Just as I Am,” we are inviting others just like us to come.

Jesus spent very little time proving his orthodoxy to religious leaders, but he spent much of his life proving to sinners that he loved them.

If baptisms are going to increase in our churches and communities are going to be transformed by the grace of Christ, we will have to spend more of our time building meaningful relationships with outsiders and less time trying to convince each other of the rightness of our beliefs.

Our world needs the gift of Christ’s love that we have to offer.

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

Moderate Baptists have distinguished themselves through their elevation of freedom of conscience to a near-absolute good. While the conservatives who came to dominate the Southern Baptist Convention focused on defining and requiring (their particular version of) orthodoxy, moderate Baptists proclaimed freedom of individual conscience before God is a more distinctive Baptist principle than doctrinal conservatism.

Next-generation Baptists have raised questions about this relentless focus on freedom. Even those generally sympathetic to moderates have asked searching questions about the adequacy of freedom alone as the highest principle of moderate Baptist life and have proposed other models for what ought to be central to Baptist identity.

These questions about freedom should not go away. But I want to say a word on behalf of a rigorous understanding of freedom of conscience in Christian life and our institutions. It is a sacred value that easily disappears if not protected vigilantly.

Freedom of conscience in a Christian context means each individual who has committed to follow Jesus Christ is understood to be answerable to Christ himself. Freedom is not mere personal autonomy. Nor is it license to believe, say or do just anything. But when a Christian community values freedom of conscience, it recognizes the individual alone will give account before God on Judgment Day. It recognizes the community must protect the space in which each individual Christian can determine what pattern of belief and action is required by God.

To value such freedom of conscience strengthens rather than weakens commitment to the Lordship of Christ. It is because Christ is Lord, and because the believer stands in relationship with God, that freedom of individual conscience must be protected. The community dare not stand as an obstacle to the believer’s obligation to follow Jesus faithfully.

Most Christian communities have interpretive traditions that are broadly agreed upon in the community and that guide the exercise of individual conscience. Baptists have long agreed, for example, on the high role of Scripture and the secondary role of church tradition. These interpretive traditions help hold faith communities together and set parameters that can help order the religious life of individuals.

But such parameters, while useful, cannot resolve every issue. They cannot prevent sharp differences of opinion on a wide range of issues that arise in Christian thought and practice. Some Christian communities respond to these often-quite-uncomfortable differences by trying to come up with an expansive set of standards for orthodoxy and orthopraxy, which often tyrannize individual responsibility before God.

These standards can even make it impossible for Christian communities to hear any new word from God’s Spirit. For there are many examples of times in which God’s transforming word was first heard by scattered Christian outliers and rejected by the community as a whole until it finally broke through—with the path usually littered by the scarred bodies of the original outliers.

Think about the way racism infected Christian doctrine in the years leading up to the Civil Rights Movement. In many contexts, racism was viewed as a theological truth and segregation as a Christian moral requirement. God couldn’t be permitted to speak a new theological or moral word. It was too dangerous to the status quo.

The same thing happened 20 years later in relation to the role of women in Christian communities and families. I was among those who had to leave Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in the mid-1990s because my understanding did not match with the new orthodoxy, which changed overnight.

I am grateful currently to be in a congregation and a university in which expansive understandings of freedom of conscience before God are embraced. I am free to follow my conscience where it leads. I may misunderstand what Christ requires of me, but the space for me to do so is protected. This is a rare, precious and fragile gift. I hope no one takes it for granted. I sure don’t.

David Gushee is distinguished university professor of Christian ethics at Mercer University. His column is distributed by Associated Baptist Press.

“The relationships that are being built mean everything. … When an evangelical Christian gets to know a Muslim, the whole defense of Islam has stepped up to a higher level because … you’re no longer talking about a religion. You’re talking about my friend.”

Joel Hunter

Florida megachurch pastor and member of the President’s Advisory Council on Faith-based and Neighborhood Partnerships (RNS)

“It’s easier to be an extremist of any kind because then you only have one group of people mad at you. But if you actually try to build relationships—like invite an evangelical pastor to your gathering—you’ll get criticized for it. So will I.”

Rick Warren

Megachurch pastor and author, addressing the Islamic Society of North America, an action criticized by Warren’s fellow evangelicals (Associated Press/RNS)

“They’re used to knocking on doors, and they're used to rejection.”

Scott Warner

Manager of the Chicago sales team for Pinnacle Security, about former Mormon missionaries who now are door-to-door salespeople for the company (New York Times/RNS)

They told me they were born again. I continued to talk to them about their salvation and their relationship with Christ. 

As the conversation went on, they began to tell about their turbans. They cited a passage of Scripture—the third chapter of the Old Testament book of Zechariah, where the high priest Joshua stands before an angel of the Lord, and he is given new garments and a clean turban for his head.

They asked if I wanted a turban. I didn’t have money with me to buy anything, so I told them “no.”

They said: “ It’s OK. It’s OK. You can pay us tomorrow. We want to give you one.”

I thought that this was simply a present they wanted to give me as an act of friendship, but I was still kind of curious about the meaning behind it. As it turned out, the turban was presented in a formal ceremony—one that was both interesting and sort of uncomfortable. It involved five or six of us American missionaries in a very tiny room and three men who gave me the turban—none of whom spoke English. Needless to say, not everything was clearly understood, nor clearly translated. The men prayed over me, wrapped the turban around my head and prayed again.

I began to pray: “Lord, what’s going on? I don’t feel comfortable. May you receive the glory through all this someway, somehow.”

As we left the ceremony, one of the men told me that I could take off the turban only when I slept. That made me even more uncomfortable, and it prompted extensive prayer and Scripture-reading on my part. The next morning, I spoke to my new friends and explained I couldn’t keep the gift they had presented to me. Apparently the turban means more to them than just a cultural tradition. I wasn’t able to get the exact meaning, but I knew it had something to do with their religious beliefs.

I explained to them that the story of Joshua in Zechariah 3 was a depiction of the gospel. When we come to Christ, our filthy garments—our old selves—are gone, and our new image in Christ is present. The clean turban Joshua received doesn’t have much standing in today’s time, because Christ is the Head of our body. And in Colossians, the Apostle Paul talks about not holding onto human regulations that promote self. I told the men I had been crucified with Christ. I am a new creation in Christ alone— nothing more. Christ is enough.

I explained I couldn’t accept the gift because I wasn’t sure of its meaning. I felt like it was an act of promoting self, and Christ calls me to become less. As I explained this to my new friends, they didn’t agree. But truth was spoken, Christ was glorified, and a friendship remains for further conversations.

Al Johnson from the University of Texas at San Antonio is a student missionary correspondent with Go Now Missions .

Our purpose was to engage the people whom we encountered, hoping they would ask questions: "What are you doing?"  What are the balloons for?"

As we encountered many people in the park, we were able to tell them the balloons represented purity, and then that led into conversation about where you can find purity in the city. People were very surprised that these white balloons had such a deeper meaning. 

As a sort of spontaneous accident, I divided all 25 balloons between the team members and had them spread out through the park to have a visual of what purity would look like if it were contagious. More and more people began to ask questions about what we were doing, and children began asking for the balloons. 

The spread of the balloons reached further than we had anticipated, but it sparked something inside all of us. It made us ask ourselves, "What if Jesus was a contagious as these white balloons?"

Kimberly Suenkel, a student at the University of Texas at Arlington, is serving in New York City with the Gallery Church as a Go Now summer missionary.

I've been frustrated so many times this summer when the things that I plan aren’t successful by my standards. Even so, the Lord is so faithful to provide opportunities to share with the youth in ways I never could have dreamed of or planned out myself.

Recently, after struggling through a Bible study with constant distractions and interruptions, I was so discouraged. I was angry with the youth for not understanding, was embarrassed that I had failed and was ready to retreat into a time of self pity where I questioned why I even bothered with these kids. Soon after, we were stuck inside because of the rain, and all began to color in some coloring books we had found.  My partner was coloring a picture of the nativity scene and Angelicia, a10-year-old girl, asked her who was in the picture.  The simple question led to a discussion where we outlined the Bible from Adam and Eve through the life of Christ. Who would’ve thought that coloring a picture would open the door to a spiritual conversation?

God doesn’t expect me to change these kids’ lives all on my own abilities. Rather, he simply asks that I be open and available to be used by him. It’s then that I get to be a part of the work God has already begun here with the youth.

Kimberly Roberts, a student at Texas A&M University, is serving in Round Rock with the Texas Baptist Children’s Home Family Care Program as a Go Now summer missionary.

We walked with Shadrach into the most distant areas of Karanji, and the Spirit directed us to stop at a particular compound. We went in and began knocking on doors.

Jordan, Jack, and I went into David’s house. He and his two sons were there with him. They were nonbelievers, and we told them about Christ. Jack was translating for me. In one instance, he told them what I said in Kikulou (which they are) and then turned to me to tell me what they said. He began rattling off everything they said to me, but I just stared at him blankly. He had spoken to me in Swahili. He burst out laughing, as did everyone else in the room. All the men in the room became saved through God’s grace. 

STUDENTS ON MISSION

A woman whom Shadrach and Hayley and Al were talking to also was saved. Shadrach talked with both about Imani Baptist Church and wrote down their information to keep in touch with them. 

As we were leaving, we noticed another room down a corridor. Anthony Ndungu lived there.  He is a marathoner; he has several medals. He’s Catholic but had not accepted Christ as Lord and Savior. We told him that if you confess with your mouth and believe in your heart, you will be saved. He said he did not think he could believe because tomorrow he would mess up again. I asked if he was a runner, and God put on my heart 1 Corinthians 9:24.  I told him that it’s about striving to be like Christ. We all mess up, but we keep striving just as we strive to get faster and win a race. He accepted Christ and made chai for us. He also invited Al and me to run with his running group, which consists of Kenyans even faster than him, one of whom is going to the world championships. 

Two other woman were led to Christ by Hayley and James (another translater).  Seven people in that compound came to Christ.

Andrew Lancaster, a student at Wayland Baptist University, is serving in Kenya with Go Now Missions .