March 1, 2000
PARTICIPANTS IN MISSIONS EMPHASIS WEEK at Hardin-Simmons University included Palmer McCown, Helen Jean Parks, Virginia Connally, Keith Parks, Erika Parks, Miriam Wallace and Kent Parks. At right, HSU trustee Chairwoman Tina Hunter hugs Virginia Connally in a presentation to honor her donation that made the new missions center possible. Standing in the background is HSU President Lanny Hall. (Photo by Charles Richardson)
Speakers spurn 'targeting' of other faith groups
___By Marv Knox
___Editor
___ABILENE--Christians must use love, not symbolic targets, to lead people of other religions to faith in Christ, a couple of longtime missions leaders stressed.
___Keith Parks, retired coordinator of global missions for the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship and former longtime president of the Southern Baptist Foreign Mission Board, and Bill O'Brien, retired director of Samford University's Global Center and former longtime executive vice president of the FMB, discussed the concept of "targeting" other faith groups with the gospel.
___Southern Baptists recently received broad criticism for targeting--or singling out for evangelistic efforts--other faith groups, specifically Jews, Hindus and Muslims. Critics, especially Jews, have claimed the practice conveys overtones of hatred and threatens their security.
___Criticism arose after the Southern Baptist International Mission Board issued pamphlets designed to guide Baptists in evangelizing other faith groups. Criticism also arose from a multi-faith ministers' group in Chicago, after the Southern Baptist North American Mission Board announced plans to blitz that city with the gospel this summer.
___Mission board officials have defended the approach. It merely provides Christians with tools to share their faith with adherents of other religions, they said. And it is nothing new, since Christians have been proclaiming the gospel to people of other faiths since the first century, they added.
___"We need a brand-new vocabulary in the 21st century," stressed O'Brien, who responded to an audience question about targeting at the "Missions in the 21st Century" conference sponsored by Hardin-Simmons University's Logsdon School of Theology.
___"Words give shape to concepts," O'Brien added. "I've taken the word 'target' completely out of my vocabulary. It's a military word. If I target people, I don't have to know them. I've just got to get in range to fire the gospel at them."
___"Focus" is a better word for the concept, Parks noted.
___"At the CBF, we've been talking about focusing, not targeting," he explained. "It's more attitudinal. Targeting sounds like I've almost got to defeat you.
___"But the gospel is not about forcing you, not about destroying you. It is valuing you, embracing you--but still lovingly sharing the gospel relationally."
___Humility is a key to evangelism, especially presenting the gospel to people of other faith groups, O'Brien added.
___"It is very important to pray for people without Jesus," he said. "But I don't have to send a press release telling the world that's what I'm doing. I can humbly pray for them. I can minister with them, not to them. Targeting is not relational."
___
Send this story to a friend
Contents/ Masthead / Why We're Here / Links / Archive / E-mail us/ SUBSCRIBE!
Missions model changing, HSU conference told