Posted: 10/19/07

Motion calls for committee with 2020 vision

By Marv Knox

Editor

Messengers to the 2007 Baptist General Convention of Texas annual meeting will be asked to create a committee to define the BGCT’s “shared vision” for the coming 12 years.

Ed Jackson, a member of the convention’s Executive Board and a layman from First Baptist Church in Garland, has announced he will present the proposal during the annual meeting in Amarillo Oct. 29-30.

Jackson’s motion calls for the BGCT president and Executive Board chairman to “appoint a committee of no more than 25 members to consider our shared vision of the Baptist General Convention of Texas for the year 2020.”

If approved, the committee will report to the Executive Board at its February, May and September meetings next year and present a formal report to the convention at its 2008 November session.

The motion instructs the committee to:

• Study, analyze and project income from all sources for the BGCT between 2008 and 2020, including factors that influence cooperative giving.

• Address the relationship between the BGCT and its institutions, as well as set priorities for programs supplied by the Executive Board staff.

• Study the changing missions strategy of the BGCT’s congregations and how that strategy connects with programs operated by Executive Board staff.

• Analyze the impact of innovation on Texas Baptist ministries and the sustainability of convention programs.

“The purpose of this committee is to use our resources in the best possible way to win Texas and the world to Jesus Christ as Savior and to encourage and support the ministries he has called us to do,” the motion states.

Jackson began to develop the idea for a comprehensive convention strategy study as he listened to the Executive Board discuss the convention’s 2008 budget during its fall meeting in late September. He recalled the last BGCT study of this magnitude launched in 1995, when messengers authorized the Effectiveness & Efficiency Committee.

“It dawned on me it has been 12 years since we made a detailed examination of what we are doing. That’s too long,” he said in an interview. “It’s amazing how much the world has changed in the past 12 years—and how much it will change in the next 12 years.”

The Executive Board cannot effectively conduct such a study, primarily because the 90-member board doesn’t have time to take on this task amid its other assignments, said Jackson, a retired electronics industry executive. He spent eight years working in the Baptist Building as a Mission Service Corps volunteer providing leadership to the Continuous Quality Improvement organizational effectiveness program.

The time for this study also is right because the convention is seeking a new executive director to replace Charles Wade, who retires Jan. 31, Jackson said.

“The new executive director will have ideas of his own, but he will be someone who listens to a diverse group of voices. And we need to hear what they’re saying,” he explained. “So, what better time? We’ll have a new executive director coming on board. The committee will hear him, and he will hear them, and we will march forward.”

An analysis of BGCT income and resources is vital for the convention’s future, Jackson said.

“We must use our resources in the best way possible. That’s the whole object,” he said. “We always know our resources are limited. Let’s use them for the best possible impact.”

Likewise, a study of the relationship between the convention and its institutions is overdue, he added.

“Our Baptist institutions are the part of the convention most Baptists identify with,” he said, noting ministries such as universities and children’s homes touch the hearts of Texas Baptists.

“That’s what keeps us together. We identify with these institutions. We also identify with Texas Baptist Men when they’re out on disaster relief. They are important to every Baptist. So, we need to highlight them.”

Jackson hopes the committee will lead the BGCT to increase the percentage of its receipts allocated to the institutions each year through 2020. Similarly, the convention has a vested interest in understanding and collaborating with local churches’ developing missions strategy, Jackson insisted.

“I am convinced that actual missions giving has gone up appreciably in the last few years. It’s just not being channeled through our cooperative giving plan,” he said.

Illustrating how Texas Baptists’ involvement in missions is increasing even as Cooperative Program receipts decline, Jackson cited his own church.

“Our church participated in a mission trip to Brazil (organized) by local churches in Dallas. But that never will be reported as cooperative giving,” he said. “Our church also built two houses for a church on the Texas/Mexico border, but that was not reported, either.

“It’s not that we’re not giving to missions. We’re giving in a new way, and it’s obviously a new strategy. I’m not saying that’s bad at all. But we can benefit by coordinating our efforts and connecting our missions commitment to missions needs.”

The call to analyze innovation and sustainability is a key to success for the endeavor, Jackson said. Technological innovation—particularly in communication and coordination—can make convention staff more productive, even in a downsized configuration, he predicted.

“Too often, as I look over past motions and recommendations, they resulted in increased population in the Baptist Building,” he said. “There are things we can streamline and do more effectively, if we study them carefully.

“And ‘sustainability’ is the key word. We can’t start something that’s not sustainable. We need to see where we are going and what we are doing with our programs.”

BGCT President Steve Vernon, who will preside at the Amarillo meeting, said Jackson’s motion is in order and will be presented to messengers for their consideration.

“We certainly welcome the motion,” said Vernon, pastor of First Baptist Church in Levelland. “He’s certainly presenting something for the good of the convention.”

Executive Board Chairman Bob Fowler affirmed Jackson’s proposal. “It’s directionally where we ought to go,” said Fowler, a lay member of South Main Baptist Church in Houston.

The strategy committee will face a formidable task, he added.

“Not knowing how—or if—we are going to capture the imagination of the churches to see that we can accomplish more through cooperative giving, it will be hard to predict the resources we will have in coming years,” Fowler explained.

The stakes are high, he acknowledged. “If we can’t inspire more churches to see the benefits of cooperative giving—and there are many benefits—then we will face a significant challenge. …

“So, clearly, we have to be strategic in thinking about where we need to go and how we need to get there.”

John Petty, the Executive Board’s chair-elect, said he appreciates both the spirit and content of Jackson’s motion.

“It’s hard for me to imagine the convention not taking action on that sort of motion,” said Petty, pastor of Trinity Baptist Church in Kerrville. “We clearly have some budget challenges we’ve got to get over if we’re going to be effective as a convention.

“This study might take us to a place we don’t want to go but we need to go. Nevertheless, if we as a convention will decide to go there together, we’ll get where God wants us to be.”

Jackson conceded the year 2020 sounds like a long way off, but he noted now is the time to ensure the convention is where it needs to be in a dozen years.

“The BGCT is like a big battleship, and you’re not going to turn it around in just a few years,” he said. “Let’s do this as seamlessly as we can—and get to where we want to be in 12 years.”

Posted: 10/19/07

Whites participate quietly
in African-American Baptist body

By Robert Marus

Associated Baptist Press

AUSTIN (ABP)—Pastor Larry Bethune, an Anglo from Austin, recently became president of a mainly African-American Baptist group, and it didn’t make news, because it was nothing new.

Perhaps what is news to many Baptists is that the American Baptist Churches of the South has, since its beginning, included both white and black Baptists in its leadership and gone quietly about its business. Bethune is only the latest of several white pastors of Southern Baptist heritage who have served the majority African-American group.

“When I go to regional meetings, I’m the chip in the cookie. And it’s been remarkably good for me to be part of a predominantly African-American fellowship,” said Bethune, pastor of University Baptist Church in Austin.

“It’s interesting to experience that, because—being a white male who’s accustomed to being the majority in most settings—there are ways in which experiencing being a minority has … raised my consciousness to the ways we in the majority exclude people in the minority without even being conscious of it.”

The group Bethune was elected to lead is one of 32 regional bodies affiliated with the American Baptist Churches USA. It includes American Baptist congregations located in the former states of the Confederacy, as well as Oklahoma, West Virginia, Maryland and Delaware. While the ABC is historically a white, Northern denomination, it now has an increasingly sizable minority of African-American congregations—including many in the South.

Meanwhile, a handful of historically Anglo congregations have been affiliated with the region since its founding more than 30 years ago.

In recent years, however, increasing numbers of historically white churches that have left the Southern Baptist Convention have affiliated with American Baptists and the regional body.

“African-Americans have come to the American Baptist Churches, first of all to learn their system, to learn their agenda. And as we become more populous, as we become large, we now have an opportunity to help set the agenda. The same thing is true with Euro-Americans” who have joined the American Baptist regional body, said Ivan George, the group’s minister for missions development.

“You first come and learn of the culture and adapt yourself to the culture, and then within that culture, you can find your own self.”

Since University Baptist joined the American Baptists in 1993, Bethune said, he felt “welcomed into the fellowship” immediately and that his congregation received “nothing but support” from regional officials. Bethune has participated in leadership positions in the regional group for several years, serving as an officer and as chair of its ministers’ council.

That’s more welcomed than his church felt while involved in white Baptist life, Bethune said.

In the 1990s, the Austin Baptist Association withdrew fellowship from the congregation for ordaining a gay deacon and taking a “welcoming and affirming” position toward homosexuals. The Baptist General Convention of Texas responded by refusing to accept contributions from the church—essentially cutting off its official relationship with the congregation.

University Baptist was expelled from the Austin association once before, in the 1940s, for accepting African-Americans into membership decades before other Southern Baptist churches thought about doing so.

Posted: 10/19/07

Around the State

• East Texas Baptist University will hold homecoming activities Oct. 24-28. The theme for this year will be “Fiesta de la Familia—Celebrating the Family.” There will be a number of special events including Saturday’s homecoming parade at 10:30 a.m. and the 1 p.m. kickoff of the football game versus Mississippi College. For more information, call (903) 923-2041.

• A children’s gala will be held Oct. 27 from 4:30 p.m. to 8:30 p.m. at the Cameron County Fairgrounds in San Benito to benefit Valley children through a pediatric emergency department at Valley Baptist Medical Center-Harlingen and the renovation of the pediatric unit at Valley Baptist in Brownsville. The family event will include a mini-rodeo, pony rides, petting zoo, a mechanical bull, music by the Texas Drifters, a dinner, live auction and a raffle. For tickets or more information, call (956) 389-1614.

Counting the Texas World Hunger Offering for Adamsville Church in Lampasas are Janice Hartley, left, and Treasurer Wanda Lang. The congregation collected $1,157 in plastic rice bowls, surpassing the $800 goal set by the church’s Women on Mission group. The amount was the most ever collected by the church for the hunger offering. Glynn Tyson is pastor.

• Howard Payne University will induct three alumni into its sports hall of fame during homecoming activities Oct. 27 at 7:30 p.m. They include L.J. Clayton, a football player who went on to play in the Canadian Football League; David Gilger, who played both offense and defense for the 1956-60 football teams; and Dale Fisher, who played on the 1957-61 football teams.

• B.H. Carroll Theological Institute will hold its fall colloquy Nov. 26-27 at First Church in Arlington. Richard Swinburne will be the guest lecturer with “Is There a God?” as his theme. For registration costs and other information, call (817) 274-4284.

Anniversaries

• Highland Terrace Church in Greenville, 100th, Oct. 27-28. Festivities will begin at 4 p.m. with food and fellowship time, followed by a worship service at 6 p.m. James Weir and Charles Russell will be the speakers, and Duane McClure will lead worship. The Sunday services at 9 a.m. and 10:45 a.m. will have Bob Layman and Bobby Renfro as speakers and J.K. Weger as worship leader. A catered lunch will follow. There will be a history display, and prerecorded interviews with current and former staff will be available in a viewing room. A hymn-sing and and worship will begin at 1 p.m. with Robert Baldridge and Terry White speaking and Bob Mathews leading the music. Robert Webb is pastor.

• Freedom Home Church in Austin, 25th, Oct. 28. A special homecoming service will be held at 3:30 p.m. The founding pastor, Oscar Howard Jr., still retains that position.

• Gayle Hogg, 50th in ministry, Nov. 27. He was ordained at Hartburg Church in Deweyville. He is pastor of First Church in Clint, where he has served since 1995.

Event

• Forestburg Church in Forestburg honored four members who have remained active in the church more that 50 years during a Founder’s Day service. Ruth Eldridge was honored as charter member of the church for her 57 years of service, during which she has served as church clerk, Sunday school teacher and committee member. She also prepared the elements for the Lord’s Supper for almost 30 years. Olin and Claryce Merrett joined the church in 1954. He served as song leader more than 20 years and she as organist for almost 50 years. June Eldridge, who also joined the church in 1954, was recognized for her work in many capacities, but especially as chair of prayer for numerous revival meetings and events throughout the congregation’s history. To honor those members, the church will upgrade its pipe organ, installed in 2004. Stewart Holloway is pastor.

Revival

• Oakwood Church, Mauriceville; Oct. 28-31; evangelists, The Cherrys; pastor, Wesley Blanton.

Posted: 10/19/07

Revised version of book Baylor rejected
explores issues of faith and learning

By Ken Camp

Managing Editor

An interpretive history of Baylor University’s recent years—originally slated for publication under the university’s name but rejected by the school’s administration last year—will be released next month by a conservative publisher in South Bend, Ind.

Some changes made at Baylor University in the last two decades—membership in the Big XII athletic conference, a new tuition structure, and expansive and expensive building projects—seem set in concrete for the immediate future.

But contributors to a revised edition of the previously rejected book insist the jury remains out on a pivotal question: “Can a Protestant university be a first-class research institution and preserve its soul?”

Editors Don Schmeltekopf, provost emeritus and director of Baylor’s Center for Ministry Effectiveness and Educational Leadership, and history professor Barry Hankins enlisted a dozen other contributing writers to explore the question from varied angles in The Baylor Project: Taking Christian Higher Education to the Next Level.

“Baylor seems to have moved beyond the crossroads. … What remains unsettled principally are the issues surrounding faith and learning, or how Christian belief and the Christian intellectual tradition are to engage our common academic life, and the question of Baylor’s identity as a university,” Hankins and Schmeltekopf wrote in the preface.

Those unsettled questions—along with allegiances to some strong personalities related to Baylor who have offered starkly different answers—contributed to the controversy that swirled around the book even before its publication.

Originally titled Baylor Beyond the Crossroads: An Interpretive History, 1985-2000, the manuscript was rejected last year first by Baylor University Press, the school’s academic publishing house, and later by the university itself.

The announcement by Baylor administrators to reverse their plans to publish the book came one week after former Baylor President Herbert Reynolds—now deceased—sent a sharply worded e-mail to the volume’s editors. However, university officials insisted their decision to withdraw support for the book predated the e-mail by several months and was based on “policy issues and legal issues associated with the university’s name.”

St. Augustine’s Press, a nonprofit, nondenominational press that specializes in books related to philosophy, theology, and cultural and intellectual history, will release the revised book Nov. 16.

“Our mission is to offer exceptional works that draw from, exhibit and advance Western civilization and particularly the traditional Judeo-Christian roots of that civilization,” according to the mission statement posted on the publisher’s website. “Toward that end, we focus our attention on the timeless work over the timely, the classic over the atypical, the orthodox over the heterodox.”

That kind of language—with its emphasis on orthodoxy and social conservatism—typifies the way Baylor University under former President Robert Sloan looked for common ground with Roman Catholics and northern evangelicals while rejecting principles dear to historic Texas Baptists, according to economics professor Kent Gilbreath.

Gilbreath, a frequent critic of the Sloan administration, wrote a chapter for the original edition of the book that the editors rejected. At least two other writers withdrew their chapters.

Baylor 2012, the university’s 10-year strategic vision, became a vehicle for the Sloan administration to “reconstruct Baylor” into a different kind of institution than the school Texas Baptists had supported, Gilbreath insisted. He believes “a small group of faculty and administrators were seeking to move Baylor away from its Texas Baptist roots and toward a new theological base that reflected a combination of northern evangelicalism coupled with religious hierarchical structures.”

Gilbreath drew parallels between the “theological correctness” he and some others perceived as implicit in the implementation of Baylor 2012 and the tests of “theological purity” imposed by fundamentalists who took over the Southern Baptist Convention.

But several contributors to The Baylor Project insisted Baylor and other universities with religious roots are endangered more by secularism than fundamentalism. The mainstream Baptist emphasis on freedom had become quite thoroughly absorbed into the dominant American culture, Hunter Baker argued in his chapter, “The Struggle for Baylor’s Soul.”

“Freedom of conscience is arguably the single most powerful American value. … If anything, modern Americans might have too much freedom given the destructive choices many individuals make,” wrote Hunter, director of strategic planning at Houston Baptist University and doctoral fellow in Baylor’s Institute of Church-State Studies. “These facts lead one to wonder whether concerns about coercion are legitimate today, particularly at a university that tolerates a wide diversity of opinion within the confines of what Schmeltekopf calls ecumenical orthodoxy.”

Sloan himself, now president of Houston Baptist University, essentially made the same point in the concluding chapter of The Baylor Project.

“In our generation, the greatest enemy to the Christian vitality and Baptist heritage of Baylor is not fundamentalism,” Sloan wrote. “Though fundamentalism has been a threat to the religious identity of Baylor in times past and though fundamentalism can be, and often is, associated with factionalism, sectarianism and divisiveness and in those forms needs to be either earnestly avoided or corrected where possible, I believe the greatest threat to the continuation of Baylor’s academic excellence today as an institution committed to the Lordship of Jesus Christ is from the pervasive secularism and loss of traditional moral virtues which so characterize our present world.”

Baylor 2012 represented neither the fundamentalist model of Christian indoctrination nor the model of a religiously affiliated university that differs from a secular institution only in its Christian environment, Sloan noted.

“My not-so-radical claim (though often considered so by some in the Baylor community) is that the Christian faith has real intellectual content,” Sloan wrote. “It is relevant to our everyday lives and provides a vital frame of reference from which we might engage constructively with the larger culture. The ‘integration of faith and learning’ institutionalized and publicized at Baylor is not a mere slogan, but is in fact a legitimate and creative way of undertaking the scholarly enterprise.”

Sloan insisted controversy grew out of differences over substance of the Baylor 2012 vision—particularly its emphasis on the integration of faith and learning—and not his management style or the way he implemented the long-range plan.

“If the critics of my administration had been more agreeable to the substance of Baylor 2012’s spiritual, academic and theological vision for Baylor, controversies over management would have been of little longstanding consequence,” he wrote. “It is not really a question of how things were done; it is a question of what was done.”

Gilbreath strongly disagrees. He subscribes to the Baylor 2012 goal of a Christian university that offers academic excellence, but he saw “a slippery slope toward theological intolerance” within that vision as interpreted by the Sloan administration.

“It was not the hope embodied in the goals of Baylor 2012 that caused Baylor’s subsequent problems; it was in the vision’s implementation where things went wrong,” he wrote. “From the beginning, Baylor’s administration made a series of decisions that steered Baylor and Baylor 2012 straight onto the rocks.”

For his part, while he defended the Baylor 2012 vision and the goal of intentionally integrating Christian faith into the university learning environment, Sloan acknowledged imperfection.

“What all of us must remember with all of our investments of ego and partisanship in these matters, is that no period in Baylor’s history, no leader and no clique of faculty or alumni, has ever fully got it right,” Sloan wrote. “There is always more work to be done. There is never an adequate amount of either charity or passion to make any one generation or individual equal to the task of God’s calling.”

Posted: 10/19/07

BGCT offers seminar track for certification

By John Hall

Texas Baptist Communications

DALLAS—For the first time, a series of seminars during the Baptist General Convention of Texas annual meeting can help ministers and laypeople gain foundational ministry principles on the way to earning a certificate of completion.

The first two of four Paraclete seminar tracks will be offered during the BGCT annual meeting Oct. 29-30 in Amarillo. Four seminars in leadership and four seminars in biblical/theological studies will be offered during the meeting. Seminars on Baptist distinctives and spiritual formation will be offered in future years.

In order to earn a Paraclete certificate, students must complete four seminars in each of the four tracks. Individuals may participate in as many as four seminars during each BGCT annual meeting.

Each seminar is limited to 20 students. Preregistration is recommended.

In addition to the Paraclete seminars, a variety of workshops will be offered during the BGCT annual meeting that provide practical ministry help.

For more information on workshops offered during the BGCT annual meeting, visit www.bgct.org/annualmeeting or call (888) 244-9400.

Posted: 10/19/07

BGCT annual meeting slated to feature Rick Warren, historic presidential election

By John Hall

Texas Baptist Communications

The Baptist General Convention of Texas annual meeting will feature Pastor Rick Warren and a historic presidential election as messengers elect either the first female BGCT president or the first second-generation BGCT president.

The meeting, themed “Together We Can Do More— Missions,” will be held Oct. 29-30 at the Amarillo Civic Center.

Warren, who will speak Oct. 29 and whose The Purpose Driven Life has sold more than 20 million copies, is pastor of the 22,000-member Saddleback Community Church in Lake Forest, Calif. He has been called “one of the most influential pastors in America” by The Economist. Time magazine called him “America’s new people’s pastor” as it named him among the 25 most influential evangelicals in America.

The Purpose Driven Life and its predecessor, The Purpose Driven Church, spurred congregations across the country to undertake efforts dubbed “40 Days of Purpose” where members of congregations seek to find God’s calling upon their respective lives.

BGCT President Steve Vernon hopes the meeting will encourage Texas Baptists to become further involved in mission work.

“I hope this meeting stokes the fire of missions in the hearts of Texas Baptists,” he said. “We are doing so much in mission work locally, throughout the state and around the world. We want to gather to celebrate that and improve upon it.”

Current BGCT First Vice President Joy Fenner of Garland and David Lowrie, pastor of First Baptist Church in Canyon, will be nominated for convention president.

Fenner is a former missionary to Japan and retired executive director-treasurer of Woman’s Missionary Union of Texas. Lowrie, who has been pastor of churches in both East Texas and West Texas, is the son of D.L. Lowrie, longtime pastor of First Baptist Church in Lubbock and former BGCT president.

If elected, Fenner has pledged to continue the missions emphasis set forth by Vernon.

“Through the various but limited spheres of influence of a president, I would hope my missions passion and experience would encourage churches and individuals to engage in missions and ministry beyond the needs of their own congregation,” she said. “I believe we are richly blessed with gifted lay men and women who can make a difference locally and globally.”

Lowrie has said he would like to bring the BGCT “back to the middle,” where he be-lieves the convention’s leadership would be more representative of its affiliated congregations.

“I believe our convention faces a critical crossroads, and as we go into the future, I believe we need to look at the future through fresh eyes and with a fresh voice calling us to action,” Lowrie said.

David Coffey, president of the Baptist World Alliance, also will speak Oct. 29, giving Texas Baptists a glimpse into how God is working around the world through the extended Baptist family.

The Baptist General Convention of Texas is one of more than 200 conventions and unions that are part of the Baptist World Alliance. The BWA serves more than 110 million Baptists around the globe.

Posted: 10/19/07

Baptist Briefs

Baptist Joint Committee looks for new property. Directors of the Baptist Joint Committee on Religious Liberty voted recently to engage a real-estate agent to identify property for the agency to purchase and renovate. The planned Center for Religious Liberty will provide offices, research space for visiting scholars, meeting space for legislative coalition partners and a training center. For decades, the Baptist Joint Committee has used a rented office suite on Capitol Hill in the Veterans of Foreign Wars building. Rent for the space has comprised more than 10 percent of the group’s annual budget in recent years.

Missouri Baptists join BJC. Directors of the Baptist Joint Committee on Religious Liberty voted to accept the Baptist General Convention of Missouri as a member organization. The statewide body—formed in 2001 as an alternative to the fundamentalist-controlled Missouri Baptist Convention—joins 14 other national and regional Baptist groups that support the BJC, including the Baptist General Convention of Texas. BJC directors also approved a $1.2 million budget for 2008, a slight increase over the 2007 budget of $1.15 million.

Missouri Baptist Convention may move. The Missouri Baptist Convention Executive Board will evaluate the sale of its downtown Jefferson City, Mo., offices and may accept a gift of property in a neighboring town. The board plans to consider the issue when it meets during the convention’s annual gathering Oct. 29 in Osage Beach, Mo. If the board approves the motion to accept six acres in nearby California, Mo., the convention will build its new offices on the land, regardless whether the motion to sell the current headquarters is approved. The recommendations came from a convention relocation committee and have been endorsed by the Executive Board’s administrative committee. In recent years, the convention has been trying to sell the Baptist Building—the former Missouri Hotel, which it acquired and renovated in 1969—because it has become too difficult to maintain.

Seminary honors veteran evangelism professor. Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary designated Oct. 10 as Roy Fish Day and devoted both a chapel service and reception to honoring Fish, distinguished professor emeritus of evangelism. Fish served the seminary more than 40 years and held the L.R. Scarborough Chair of Evangelism prior to his retirement. Two years ago, Southwestern Seminary’s division of evangelism and missions in the School of Theology was reorganized as the Roy Fish School of Evangelism and Missions. In addition to serving the seminary, Fish has held several prominent leadership positions in the Southern Baptist Convention, including interim president of the North American Mission Board and SBC second vice president.

Veteran Baptist communicator to retire from NCC. Wesley “Pat” Pattillo, who served 29 years in Southern Baptist higher education, will retire from his current post with the National Council of Churches at the end of the year.  Pattillo, 67, has been associate general secretary of the ecumenical council and director of its communication commission seven years. Previously, he served from 1986 to 1994 as vice president for university relations at Samford University, and he had a 21-year career as vice president of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Ky., from 1965 to 1986. 

Posted: 10/19/07

Posted: 10/19/07

CBF council OKs UN anti-poverty goals,
hears of year-end budget shortfall

By Greg Warner

Associated Baptist Press

DECATUR, Ga. (ABP)—The Cooperative Baptist Fellowship’s governing board, at its mid-October meeting, endorsed the United Nations’ Millennium Development Goals, joining many governmental and religious bodies in the global fight against extreme poverty, hunger and disease.

Jack Glosgow, moderator-elect of the Fellowship and a pastor from Zebulon, N.C., said CBF will “demonstrate tremendous responsiveness” to the decision by its annual general assembly last June to pursue the UN goals.”

Colleen Burroughs, executive vice president of Passport Camps in Birmingham, Ala., made the motion at the June general assembly urging CBF to adopt the Millennium Development Goals as a framework for fighting urgent global issues. That motion asked the council to study the issue. The council’s endorsement, approved without opposition, will be presented to the general assembly for approval in June.

The Coordinating Council, meeting at First Baptist Church of Decatur, Ga., also heard a report on sluggish contributions to CBF, which reached only 86 percent of the amount budgeted for the recently concluded fiscal year and ended the year with a shortfall.

The council was briefed on the global development goals, as well as work already underway by CBF missionaries that addresses the social needs targeted by the UN in 2000. The eight goals, which have been targeted for completion by 2015, are detailed on the UN’s website (www.un.org/millenniumgoals):

• Reduce by half extreme poverty and hunger.

• Achieve universal primary education.

• Promote gender equality and empower women.

• Reduce child mortality by two-thirds.

• Reduce maternal mortality by three-fourths.

• Reverse the spread of HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases.

• Ensure environmental sustainability.

• Develop a global partnership for development.

“For the first time in history, we have the technology, the resources and the knowledge to get this done,” said Erin Tunney, senior international policy analyst for Washington-based Bread for the World, who briefed the Coordinating Council on the goals. “All we lack is the will. As Christians, we have the opportunity to get involved and help achieve these goals.”

In budget matters, CBF leaders reported the Fellowship received $19,103,539 in total revenue, including $14.8 million in undesignated gifts, for the 2006-07 fiscal year, which concluded June 30. Expenses for the year totaled $21,619,206.

According to financial reports presented to the council, much of the drop in revenue was in undesignated receipts, the category that includes contributions from churches and which accounts for about 56 percent of the organization’s revenue.

“I really don’t know why” undesignated gifts are down, CBF Executive Coordinator Daniel Vestal said. The $8.2 million in undesignated receipts for 2006-07 was about $700,000 less than the previous year, continuing a three-year downturn, according to financial data.

Vestal estimated about $100,000 of the drop represents a trend of state CBF organizations passing less of the money they receive from churches on to the national CBF. Additionally, he suggested, donations to churches themselves are down. “My hunch is, if church budgets are down, we suffer.”

The Fellowship’s financial report indicated the organization finished the fiscal year 2006-2007 on June 30 with a shortfall of $649,974 in unrestricted funds and $2.5 million total.

The Fellowship funds its own missions work in the United States and abroad and provides funding to partner organizations, such as CBF-related seminaries. Individuals and churches donated $5.7 million in support of CBF’s global missions offering in 2006-07. Another $3.7 million from a previous designated gift also supported missions.

The mission funds, coupled with undesignated gifts and other income, allowed CBF to spend $21.6 million during the year for all ministries.

“That’s a remarkable figure to me—$21 million went to the work of Christ,” Vestal said. “I think that $21 million is a victory.”

This year the Fellowship is shifting its fiscal year to October-September. During the three-month transition period, July to September, giving rose to 91 percent of budget, CBF leaders said.

This article includes information from Lance Wallace of the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship.

Posted: 10/19/07

2nd Opinion:
Prioritize equipping & edifying

By Woody Hambrick

The ‘‘Great Deception’’ within the church is the prevailing belief that evangelism itself is the answer to the unchurched state of our nation and the cure for the anti-Christian social agenda. Christians have institutionally neglected equipping and edifying the saints.

This is not to say no churches value discipleship. But you cannot deny our primary initiatives center on evangelism. We have mission boards that are well worth funding, but what about a discipleship board? We have some very well-prepared discipleship tools—but no real discipleship initiatives. Christians have focused the lion’s share of our energies, time and finances on the wrong impetus—outreach. Not that outreach is wrong in itself, but it should not be our first priority.

Most churches need to refocus on inreach rather than outreach. Yes, I am painting with a broad brush. But I am looking honestly at a nation that is no longer “one nation under God.” America is one nation under “self.” This change in emphasis from biblical values to moral relativism has been made possible by the failure of the local church. We must admit we collectively have failed as a church at the local level. This has not been a failure to evangelize. We often hear of salvations in large numbers. It is a failure to develop pure faith through equipping and edifying the saints.

Evangelism is the job of every Christian. With that in mind, it is impossible then to expect to have any grouping of Christians, such as a church, that does not have some intent in evangelism. The problem is that the church, the association, the state convention and the national convention have had an almost-exclusive evangelism focus to the detriment of the health of the church.

The purpose of the local church is to equip and to edify the saints, not the lost. The lost can neither be equipped nor edified in Christ. The Apostle Paul makes that clear in 1 Corinthians. Only after the saints are equipped and edified, and the local body is healthy, should the purpose of evangelism have a distant third place in the church. Outside the church, each individual Christian should have evangelism as their primary focus.

Let me illustrate it this way: If you had a church whose sole purpose is evangelism with no attempt at discipleship, it would flourish with new growth. The reason is obvious. It flourishes because we all would rather focus on other peoples’ spiritual needs than our own. But there will be little, if any, spontaneous discipleship.

Take another church and have it solely purpose on equipping and edifying the saints. Let there be no evangelistic motor within the corporate mechanism. This church may atrophy initially, due to the discomfort many will feel from the inward focus, but spontaneous independent evangelism will be the product. We can have church growth without evangelism. But there can be no spiritual growth without discipleship.

We have failed in keeping our nation as “one nation under God.” That failure is a product of not properly equipping and edifying the saints. It is not a product of not having enough evangelism initiatives. Each generation has seen a decline in how their children view the importance of a personal relationship with God through Jesus Christ. A faith that is a constant work-in-progress looking inward daily is a faith that will cross generational boundaries. A faith that is focused on personal spiritual growth is a faith that infects. It no longer becomes the faith that we tell our children about. It becomes the faith our children witness in us. And that is a faith they will more likely take with them from the homes of their parents.

Woody Hambrick is pastor of First Baptist Church in Markham.

Posted: 10/19/07

Struggling Corpus Christi church
finds new lease on life, new purpose

By George Henson

Staff Writer

CORPUS CHRISTI—Even though at one time the church appeared so dead that it needed to post a “not for sale” sign, the faith of a core group has made a resurgence at Windsor Park Baptist Church possible.

Windsor Park was struggling when Pastor Grover Pinson and his wife, Jana, arrived last year. Only about 20 names remained on the membership rolls, and attendance averaged about a dozen. Even so, Pinson was excited about being the church’s pastor.

Pastor Grover Pinson holds a fish cookie at Vacation Bible School at Windsor Park Baptist Church, Corpus Christi.

“We could sense God was present. Rather than seeing the downside, we sensed God had been present here, had moved here and that he would again,” Pinson said. “Of the congregation that remained, you could sense they still were very interested in doing God’s will.”

Ella Prichard, a longtime Corpus Christi resident but recent addition to the church, pointed out the church never lost its passion for Christ and missions. Based on membership, the church was entitled to two messengers to the Baptist General Convention of Texas, but its giving raised that number to six.

“Windsor Park was one of the most faithful givers to missions even during the down times,” she said.

An eye to reaching non-Christians rather than a constant focus on their own circumstances was a strength of the congregation, Pinson noted.

“You got the feeling from the congregation that, ‘Yeah, we’re down, but we’re not out,’” he said. “Because of their heritage and faithfulness, they were assured God was not through with them yet.”

But times got tough. Before Pinson came as pastor, so many people came by to see if the property were for sale, the interim pastor felt compelled to put on the marquee “Church Not For Sale.”

One thing that helped the congregation survive especially trying days was the support of First Baptist Church in Corpus Christi, the congregation that started Windsor Park more than half a century ago.

Kathaleen Rodman tells stories to children at Vacation Bible School.

“First Baptist remained supportive throughout, and has continued to give financially and been supportive in many ways, not the least of which is through prayer,” Pinson asserted.

“That has been a real shot in the arm. You don’t feel like you’ve been left alone on an island by yourself.”

Some people help at Windsor Park who are in the pews of other churches on Sunday morning.

“They have taken this sleepy little corner and turned it into a beehive of activity, and they include everyone. Even me, and I don’t even go to church here, but I’m here more than I am at my own church,” said Sheri Hunt, who attends Yorktown Baptist Church.

With that behind-the-scenes support, Pinson began rebuilding the vision of a vibrant family.

“My prayer was, ‘God, when people come here, give them a sense of what it means to be a part of the body of Christ.’”

They seem also to have found what it means to be a part of the family of God.

“We have a lot of older people and a lot of younger people, and they all just get along so well,” Pinson said. “There is a feeling of family, and that’s been one of the greatest joys here.”

That feeling spans generations, Prichard noted. “I think the young people who come here have been glad to find grandparents here. They are really enjoying the relationships they have found here,” she said.

The Pinsons have worked hard to instill that feeling of family. In fact, Jana Pinson cooks lunch for the congregation every Sunday.

“We thought, ‘How can we start being more of a family?’ People staying together and eating together has really helped in that,” Pinson said.

Saturday workdays also have helped strengthen bonds within the congregation, as long-neglected parts of the facility have been readied for use. The church also has formed a women’s Bible study and men’s basketball team.

A big boon to the church’s visibility in the community has been Vacation Bible School, but Pinson admits it wouldn’t have happened if his wife hadn’t insisted.

“I thought it was too much too soon, but she was right,” he said.

And older members of the congregation led the way, Prichard noted.

“It was the older people who were a model for the younger people,” she said. She pointed to 82-year-old Kathaleen Rodman, the missions story leader for VBS.

“At the end of the day, she was so tired … and so thrilled,” Prichard said. Senior adults served refreshments and provided the bulk of the 100 dozen cookies needed for the week.

Last year, Bay Shore Bible Church brought their VBS to Windsor Park and had about 70 children, many of whom they brought with them. This year, Windsor Park put on its own VBS.

“We had about 70 kids again, but it was a different 70. Last year, there were a lot of church kids, but this year, it was kids from the neighborhood,” Jana Pinson explained.

One of the greatest things to watch over Pinson’s tenure as pastor of the congregation has been the way God leads people to the church, he said

“From the beginning, someone has walked in almost every week and has been God’s gift to provide just what was needed at the time,” Pinson said.

Prichard is just one of many who have come to the church after years of active involvement in Baptist life.

Of more than 70 people who now regularly attend, about 20 either are preparing for ministry, are active in ministry or are retired from ministry.

And the newcomers were needed. By the time Pinson arrived, there were no deacons left, and only two of the church’s committees still were functioning.

“The bylaws called for 21 committees, and we didn’t even have 21 people,” Pinson said with grin.

All the good things that are happening are a tribute to the handful of people who maintained a steadfast faith through trying times, Pinson said.

“Thank God that the people here continued to be faithful and didn’t give up. They are seeing things happen here and seeing that faithfulness rewarded,” he said.

“I thank them regularly for maintaining that faithfulness so that God is able to do what he’s doing here now.”

Posted: 10/19/07

DBU team hits home run
with Guatemalan children

By George Henson

Staff Writer

DALLAS—The Dallas Baptist University baseball team and 40 other students recently returned from a four-day mission trip to Guatemala, and the picture etched in most of their minds is a child with a beaming smile.

The two groups embarked on several mission opportunities around Guatemala City, including visiting several orphanages, conducting baseball clinics for Guatemala’s Little League teams, and wrapping up each day with a game versus the Guatemalan national team as part of the university’s missions partnership with Buckner International.

Clay Kelly offers encouragement to a Guatemalan boy during a base-running drill.

But the games were not the focus of the trip, Head Coach Dan Heefner said.

“I think every player would agree that the highlight of our trip was not the three games we played, but the time we spent with the boys of the San Gabriel Orphanage and the baseball clinics we were able to have each afternoon.”

Plans for the trip began formulating last spring, and players, coaches and other students making the trip began securing passports and other necessities for the trip. But when students returned to school in the fall, preparation shifted into high gear, Heefner said.

“Every day at practice, we prayed for some aspect of the trip —the financial support necessary, safety, the hearts of the people we would be ministering to and our own hearts, as well,” he said. “It was really neat to pray for that month and then to see God answer every one of those prayers.”

For Heefner and the vast majority of the players, this was their first mission trip.

“As college baseball players, you’re playing all summer, all fall, all spring—you never have the time to do things like this, and we finally got the opportunity to do it, and it was a great thing,” he said.

“I wish I had done it sooner. When you’re a ball player, you think it is so urgent that you don’t miss a game, but you can’t take a trip like this without it impacting you.”

The team and the Diamond Belles, a group of female supporters for the team, particularly enjoyed visiting the orphanages, Heefner said. The DBU students interacted with the children, as players organized activities and a Bible study, and the girls led in crafts.

Diamond Belle Lindsay Beahm interacts with some of the Guatemalan children attending the camp put on by the DBU nine.

Their coach was very proud of the way his players ministered to the children in the orphanages.

“The thing that impacted me most was going to the orphanages and seeing our players and the way they were interacting with those kids. I’ve never seen a group of college baseball players have more joy than when we were there. That was probably most impactful for me—to see our players realize that it really is greater to give than to receive.

Junior Evan Bigley from Lancaster agreed the children made the trip special. The afternoon camps also were a special time for him.

“It was probably the best experience I have ever had. We put smiles on kids faces just by showing up,” he said.

One child who attached himself to Bigley from the beginning gave him a bracelet he had made. “That really affected me, to know that I had helped him,” he recalled.

Austin Knight, a junior shortstop, had grown up at First Baptist Church in Denton, a church that regularly scheduled mission trips, but baseball always kept him from participating.

“I had never gotten to go on a mission trip before, but I had always heard how life-changing they were, and I was excited to be a part of it,” he said.

The main thing Knight said he will take away from the trip was the demeanor of the children he worked with.

“I think I expected them to be sad and not too welcoming, but they were smiling and hugging us and giving us high fives from the minute we walked in,” he said.

For Knight, a big part of the blessing grew out of the opportunity to mix his love for baseball with sharing the message of Christ.

“It was neat to get to teach the game of baseball, but at the same time getting to share the gospel,” he said.

After the third game with the Guatemalan national team—all of which DBU won—students from the Texas Baptist school presented the gospel to their athletic opponents, Knight reported.

Senior Brett Lester led a Bible study at the baseball camp.

“I could not have asked for a better way to start off my senior year than teaching kids my love for baseball and, most importantly, how much God loves them. It was a huge blessing being able to share a little of my testimony with the kids, and I am so thankful the Lord allowed us as a team to be able to take part in such a special event,” he said.

Andrea Adams, a DBU cheerleader and early childhood education major from Crowley, said the trip confirmed for her a desire to work with children.

“Just to see their smiles was breathtaking,” she said. She recalled the joy in the faces of the little girls as the students painted their fingernails. “They were so excited by little things like that. It made you think of how much you have and how much we take for granted.”

Memories of a child with a heart defect at a baby orphanage will stay with her for a long time, she noted.

“She was a year and seven months, but she was so tiny, she looked like a newborn. I would have held her forever if I didn’t have to share. It just broke my heart. She was so beautiful,” Adams recalled.

Amy Patrick, a senior Diamond Belle, had a similar experience.

“I didn’t want to leave. I made a little friend at the orphanage—Jose—and I didn’t want to leave him.”

The trip falls into DBU’s overall plan for its athletic program, Athletic Director Ryan Erwin said.

“Part of the whole athletic program is to teach these young men and women to become servant leaders,” he said. The NCAA allows universities to take a foreign tour such as this once every four years, but Erwin felt certain this was a different sort of trip than most teams take.

“I’m sure we’re the only Division I team who took a trip like this. Some teams went out of the country, but their first priority was winning and getting better as a baseball team. We also want to do that, but our first priority is sharing Christ,” he said.