May 20, 2002

ONE WHO WON'T SIGN:
Granddaughter of 'Preacher Hallock'
___By Mark Wingfield
___Managing Editor
___GARLAND--Officially, Charlotte Greenhaw is a "church and home" missionary, working alongside her husband, a former seminary professor who now is a church starter. By training and experience, she's a music educator. In reality, she's an evangelistic social worker among the poor and imprisoned of Recife, Brazil.
___Hundreds of inmates in northeastern Brazil have professed faith in Jesus Christ through Greenhaw's ministry; some have gone to seminary upon release and are preparing to be pastors.
___"You can go anywhere with music," the veteran Southern Baptist Convention missionary explained during a recent interview at her daughter's home in Garland, where Greenhaw was visiting a newborn grandson.
___While God has opened new doors for Greenhaw's witness in Brazil, she fears the politics of SBC life may attempt to shut those doors. The reason: She and her husband, Houston, both have declined to sign an affirmation of the SBC's 2000 Baptist Faith & Message and an accompanying commitment to work "in accordance with and not contrary to" the SBC faith statement.
___Music has opened a door for Greenhaw's ministry not only in Brazil's prisons, but also with the street children of Recife.
___After working her way through the "Experiencing God" discipleship book, Greenhaw felt God's leadership to move beyond the traditional music education ministry she had done for years at the Baptist seminary in Recife. She was drawn to the words of Jesus as recorded in Matthew 25: "I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me."
___Armed with a boldness that runs in her family--her parents were legendary and innovative missionaries to Brazil, and her grandfather, "Preacher" Edgar Hallock, was a legendary Baptist pastor in Oklahoma--Greenhaw hit the streets to round up a children's choir. In Recife, thousands of children live on the streets, and most are addicted to sniffing glue to ease the pain of their troubled young lives.
___She took an electronic keyboard, sat down on a curb near a church and started playing. Soon she had a crowd of children interested in what she was doing. She formed that crowd into a choir.
___Her one rule: The children must put down their glue.
___From that choir, other ministries to the street children developed in which they learned the gospel of Jesus Christ and received help for their physical needs. The ministry continues with leadership from seminary students and others.
___Greenhaw still felt she had not accomplished all God intended for her to do, however. Matthew 25 still beckoned. So she went to prison, where she started an inmate choir.
___Again, the choir led to a Bible study, and the Bible study led to formation of a church within the prison walls. Eventually, prison officials granted her permission to build a chapel on the prison grounds. With help from First Baptist Church of Norman, Okla., and others, a team of volunteers and the prisoners themselves built the chapel in five days.
___The chapel also features a well-used outdoor baptistry as a visual witness to other prisoners. More than 500 prisoners have professed faith in Jesus Christ in the last three years.
___Greenhaw has expanded her ministry to serve the families of prisoners. She assists them when they visit the prison on Sundays, and she devotes one day a week traveling around the region to visit prisoners' families in their homes. She has arranged for 45 prison weddings--including 22 at one time--having emphasized to the male prisoners the importance of a marriage commitment.
___Now, she's developing plans to assist inmates once they're released from prison. Prisoners in Brazil often enter freedom destitute and with no direction for their lives.
___Meanwhile, she also teaches at the seminary and assists her husband in his work as a church starter among wealthy Brazilians. In a recent campaign which reached out to the whole city, more than 900 young professionals professed faith in Christ. The Baptist couple is reaching out to both ends of the socio-economic spectrum.
___Greenhaw knows she is an American, but she feels just as much Brazilian. She was born in Rio de Janeiro and had only been to the United States twice before she arrived at the University of Oklahoma to attend college.
___Her parents, Edgar and Zelma Hallock, served as SBC missionaries to Brazil for 45 years. Her father also was a driving force behind the Baptist World Alliance, coordinating world congresses in 1960, 1990 and 1995.
___Her grandfather, known as "Preacher" Hallock, was pastor of First Baptist Church of Norman for 46 years and was widely known as a conference speaker.
___But now, that rich legacy, the evidence of her witness in Brazil and her own rigorous theological examination upon appointment by the SBC as a missionary in 1980 appear not to be enough to satisfy unnamed skeptics among Southern Baptists, she fears.
___Jerry Rankin, president of the SBC's International Mission Board, earlier this year mandated that IMB missionaries must sign an affirmation of the 2000 Baptist Faith & Message statement. That faith statement was drafted by an SBC committee but has been rejected by some SBC partners, including the Baptist General Convention of Texas.
___Critics charge the new faith statement was drafted--and is being used--as a creed rather than a statement of faith.
___Rankin said he is requiring missionaries to sign the affirmation in order to silence unnamed people who are suspicious of the doctrinal integrity of the missionary force.
___Greenhaw said she and her husband never thought the political and theological controversy that has raged among Southern Baptists in the United States since 1979 would reach missionaries who live and work outside the United States. But the day they received notice that they must sign an affirmation of the convention's new faith statement, they knew the controversy had indeed touched them.
___For three days, Greenhaw stayed awake nearly all night, reading her Bible, praying for guidance and agonizing over how to respond to the IMB mandate. Finally, she settled on Daniel 3, the story of Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego thrown into Nebuchadnezzar's fiery furnace because they would not bow down to his idol.
___At that moment, "the Lord spoke very clearly to me not to sign," she said.
___She also thought about her family's experience living in Oakington, England, before returning to Brazil. Near their home was a church graveyard where three men were buried who had spent a total of 52 years in prison rather than pledge allegiance to the Church of England under Henry VIII.
___"We are not willing to sign off on somebody else's statement of belief," Greenhaw said. "I will not sign as a statement of my faith something I did not write. Neither will I promise to conduct my ministry according to a statement of belief which was prepared for a situation foreign to the culture in which I live and work."
___During her appointment process in 1980, Greenhaw said, she and her husband both completed all the scrutiny required by the SBC's mission board. At the prompting of key questions, they wrote out their own statement of faith.
___"My statement of beliefs still stands," she declared. "My faith has grown, and my relationship with the Lord has deepened. But my statement of beliefs still stands.
___"I will notify the IMB the day it changes, but it hasn't changed."
___Three of the six IMB missionaries serving in Recife have not signed the affirmation of the 2000 Baptist Faith & Message, Greenhaw reported.
___Missionaries in Brazil were given a deadline of March 31 to sign the new faith statement.
___After that deadline passed, the Greenhaws were among 12 missionaries called to a meeting with their regional leader and former IMB Executive Vice President Don Kammerdiener. At that meeting, Greenhaw said, they were asked what it would hurt them to sign the affirmation, and then they were admonished to sign it. Then they were advised to "pray about this."
___Greenhaw responded that she already had prayed about it, extensively, and still would not sign.
___"If you have a problem with us as missionaries, come check us out," she urged. "Come see what we're doing. Help us meet the daily spiritual and cultural challenges of ministry, instead of taking doctrinal potshots from a distance on matters foreign to our culture."
___Although missionaries at the Brazil meeting asked Kammerdiener and the regional leader, "Who are these people who have questioned our beliefs?" they received no answer, Greenhaw said.
___Now, as she prepares to leave her new grandson behind in Texas and return to her ministries in Brazil, Greenhaw wonders what will happen next. The missionaries in Brazil who did not sign the affirmation have not been told what will happen to them. They have been told only that IMB trustees will meet in May to discuss the matter.
___"I don't know what will happen," she said matter-of-factly. "But the Lord has told me my time is not up, and I'm not leaving Brazil. I am not sure at this point who will support me, but I'm not willing to back off on what the Lord has called me to do."

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