May 22, 2000
'20/20' focuses on Texas church, SBC
___DALLAS--A Texas church became the focus of a national television news program about Southern Baptists and Jewish evangelism May 12.
___A segment of the ABC news program "20/20" highlighted the case of a 12-year-old Jewish boy who attended a youth event at First Baptist Church of Allen and made a profession of faith in Jesus Christ.
___The boy's parents later claimed he was coerced into a decision he shouldn't have made, noting he was only three months away from his bar mitzvah, a major rite of passage in the Jewish faith.
___Chad Selph, pastor of the suburban Dallas church, and Jimmy Smith, youth minister, were featured briefly on the segment, as were two officials of the Southern Baptist Convention North American Mission Board.
___"We didn't go to his school to share the gospel with him," Selph said in the interview. "He had come to our church. And our church has a mission that we don't try to hide. For us, this is the loving thing to do, expressing God's love to other people."
___Further, Selph added: "Jesus said, 'I am the way, the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father but by me.' And we believe this is not just a truth but it is the truth. And if I believe this is the only way ... to know God and to spend eternity with him, then I also have a burden that other people know that as well."
___"20/20" reporter Peggy Wehmeyer used the Dallas incident to frame larger concerns about Southern Baptists' desire to convert Jews and other non-Christians to Christianity.
___"We are being asked to apologize for our core belief," noted Jim Sibley, an interfaith evangelism missionary with NAMB who was interviewed on the program along with NAMB President Bob Reccord.
___The program quoted a Houston man who organized a protest against Southern Baptist evangelism as saying, "This kind of religious exclusivity just doesn't belong in today's society anymore."
___The segment "demonstrates the noose that is tightening around the neck of religious freedom in America," Reccord said afterward.
___Reccord and Sibley were interviewed for three hours in March for the program, which included less than 90 seconds of their interview.
___"Some people who saw the broadcast thought that although we were given an opportunity to present out beliefs about evangelism, the program seemed heavily weighted to those critical of those beliefs," Sibley said.
___ABC News posted a synopsis of the program on its website following the program's airing and included a reader poll asking if it is "acceptable for evangelicals to try to convert children under the age of 13." By mid-day Monday, May 15, 60 percent of more than 5,300 respondents said yes, and 40 percent answered no.
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