April 28, 1999

Do you see the needs in Texas?
___By Dan Martin
___Texas Baptist Communications
___HOUSTON--"How do you see people?" Bill Pinson asked participants at the Beyond These Walls/Missions in the 21st Century conference.
___Pinson, executive director of the Baptist General Convention of Texas, said how Christians look at the people who live in the nation's second largest state determines what they will see, noting the state has the poorest counties but also the richest neighborhoods.
___Both Pinson and George

THE SEOUL Korean Baptist Church choir performs during the opening session of the Beyond These Walls/Missions in the 21st Century conference this month at First Baptist Church of Houston.

Hunter III, the conference's keynote speaker, used the story of Jesus' encounter with the Samaritan woman at the well recorded in John 4 as they addressed the statewide conference, held at First Baptist Church of Houston.
___"I encourage you to look at Texas through the eyes of our Lord," Pinson said, "and see our state and our neighborhoods the way Jesus sees people. When we see people as Jesus sees people, then we will respond to people as Jesus responds to people."
___Hunter, dean of the School of World Mission and Evangel-ism at Asbury Theological Seminary in Wilmore, Ky., noted four characteristics of the outcast woman Jesus encountered at Jacob's Well.
___"She had ancestors who had known the God of Abraham and had even inherited some of the language," he said. "She was not substantially affected by the faith of her ancestors; it had missed her. Her life was out of control; she was morally adrift. She was a seeker and was asking religious questions, profound questions, but not in the language of the religious people."
___Hunter, who has done extensive research on secular society, told of working at Muscle Beach, Calif., years ago.
___There he observed "a dozen different subcultures within a three-mile area down the beach," he said. "They had little contact between them, but they had one thing in common. None of them had any idea what I was talking about.
___"Most of them had some Christian history, but they had missed out on any meaningful contact with the 300,000 or so congregations that dot our country."
___He compared the people in modern America with the Samaritan woman by noting they had ancestors who were deeply involved in the Christian faith but they were not substantially affected by the Christian religion themselves.
___"They don't know a saving faith even exists," Hunter explained. "Their lives are out of control, and they are tremendous seekers, although they are not asking their questions in any language we understand."
___Once, secularized society was confined to places like Greenwich Village, Muscle Beach and Haight-Asbury, but now it is

INNOVATIVE CHURCH PLANTER Andrew Jones talks with a participant in the Beyond These Walls conference. Jones has helped launch a new ministry in Austin.

infused into all of society, he said.
___Hunter quoted a Gallup survey that showed in 1957, only 6 percent of the population said they had no religious training. That increased to 9 percent by 1965, 17 percent by 1970, to 21 percent in 1981, 25 percent in 1988 and 35 percent by 1993.
___"Many of the other 65 percent have had some religious training, but it didn't take, and they can't recall any of it. The majority of the people in the United States--perhaps as many as 140 million--are functionally secular people."
___He added that research shows 80 percent of the churches in the United States are stagnant--either declining or plateaued in membership. "Of the other 20 percent, 19 of 20 show biological growth or transfer growth. Less than one church in 100 in the United States today is growing by conversion growth," he said.
___Secular people have six characteristics, he said:
___ They are ignorant of the basic tenets of Christianity.
___ They are more interested in life before death than life after death.
___ They have low self-esteem.
___ They are morally adrift and have no adequate guidelines.
___ Their lives are out of control.
___ They are lost and cannot by themselves find the way that leads to life.
___Then he listed several questions that must be answered by churches if they want to reach the secularized population around them:
___ Do you want to get to know the secular pre-Christians around you, or will you be like the Jews in the Bible story of the woman at the well who did not associate with the Samaritan?
___ Do you want them in your churches? "Most Christians want to be 'fishers of people,' but we want them caught and cleaned," Hunter said.
___ Are you willing for your church to be their church, too, in style, content and music?
___ Are you willing to go where they are? "They are in some strange places because people are searching for life in all the wrong places," he said.
___ Are you willing to spend time with them in the ministry of conversation?
___ Are you willing to learn who they are, and to adapt to them, and learn about them?
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