Fanning and Guthrie interpret conference theme
___By Dan Martin
___Texas Baptist Communications
___SAN ANTONIO--"Jesus did not just practice what he preached, he preached what he practiced," Buckner Fanning told participants at the Baptist General Convention of Texas Evangelism Conference.
___Fanning, who soon will conclude 41 years as pastor of Trinity Baptist Church in San Antonio, said Jesus touched the "least and the lonely and the last and the lost and all of the
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A MASS CHOIR from Macedonia Baptist Church in San Antonio sings during the opening session of the Evangelism Conference.
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lepers.
___"Deeds, not just words, speak loudly," he said in interpreting the conference theme, "A Breaking Heart for a Broken World."
___Fanning told how Trinity Baptist Church started a ministry to women alcoholics 35 years ago.
___"It was not a program planned by the church or a vision of the pastor. It was started because three women alcoholics literally showed up on our doorstep. There was a program in San Antonio for men alcoholics, but none for women," he said.
___Several people left the church because of the ministry, protesting that such a program was "an endorsement of alcohol," he recalled. "I told them it was no more an endorsement of alcohol than Baptist Hospital is an endorsement of sickness."
___Across the years, the ministry has touched the lives of 5,800 women, "70 percent of whom were healed of alcoholism and turned to Jesus as their personal Savior."
___One day, a young woman about 18 or 19 who was being helped by the ministry asked to meet the pastor. So one of the workers--Jane, a recovering alcoholic herself--brought the woman to see Fanning.
___"I could see the anger in her eyes," he said. He talked to her for a bit, and when he suggested the young woman "lean on God," she exploded in anger at him.
___"She didn't believe in God, and all the church had ever done was beat on her," he said. "I thought of things I could say, but God gave me the gift of silence. And in that silence, Jane spoke to the young woman."
___"It's all right that you don't believe in God, or that you don't like the church," Jane told her. "It's OK if you don't want to lean on God. I'll tell you what you do. You lean on me, and let me lean on God."
___The lesson he learned that day illustrates how to have a breaking heart for a broken world, Fanning said. "Jesus is contagious if we will let him live in and through us.
___"There are hurting people in this world, and if we will let them lean on us, then the result will be a broken heart in us and healed lives in those we touch."
___A broken heart is the best thing a person has to offer God, added Don Guthrie in another theme interpretation.
___Guthrie, pastor of First Baptist Church of San Antonio, said he asked himself, "What do I have to offer to God that he would find useful?"
___He found the answer, he said, in Psalm 51:17--brokenness.
___David wrote the psalm after his relationship with Bathsheba, after having her husband, Uriah, killed, after being confronted by Nathan the prophet, after the death of the baby born of David and Bathsheba's relationship.
___"He was there in the dirt of all he had had," Guthrie noted. "He was crushed. That is what the Hebrew word we translate 'contrite' really means. Crushed. Broken."
___Humans cannot truly experience God's grace "until we come to the end of ourselves," he said, quoting a writer who said humans never are able to realize Jesus is all they need until he is all they have.
___"Brokenness is not a bad thing," he said. "But like Jonah, we tend to run away from what we need most. Until we are broken, we can't be open to God's strength, because we are trusting in our own."
The Baptist Standard
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