Posted: 8/22/07

Student missionaries discover
Christ’s presence while cleaning toilets

By Jessica Dooley

Communications Intern

The ideal summer vacation usually doesn’t involve cleaning restrooms or talking to families of prisoners every day. But for more than 160 college students, this is exactly what they believe God wanted them to do.

Through the Baptist General Convention of Texas’ Go Now Missions program, 167 college students devoted their summer to spreading the gospel. Some had the opportunity to minister overseas or around the nation; others served in Texas.

As Deborah Perry finished up her sophomore year at Stephen F. Austin State University, she prepared to embark on a journey of a lifetime. While most students were dreaming of lazy afternoons by the pool or the money their summer job would bring in, Perry began packing for an eight-week adventure in East Asia.

A career missionary baptizes a young man in Japan. Several Go Now missionaries served in Japan this summer.

She teamed up with other college students to minister on a college campus, learned the language and served two weeks meeting needs in another city in East Asia.

Perry first felt a pull toward East Asia in late December, and in March found out she would be sent to there. She had never been overseas, so to prepare she began memorizing Bible verses and talking with the other girls from her team, two who had been to East Asia before.

The team’s main purpose was to “build relationships and share the gospel with everyone” they met.

“They want to practice English so it was easy to make friends and build relationships early on,” Perry said.

 At the end of the summer, the team witnessed 27 people become new followers of Christ.  Go Now Missions has been sending students to this city for 13 years, but this was the first time the group sent a team to this university, and Perry considered it a great success.

“God really prepared the hearts of a lot of students there,” she said.

Whitney Travis, a senior at Texas A&M University, spent nine weeks of her summer in Huntsville ministering to families of prisoners who were being released each day.

“It was hard to hear the stories everyday because they all ended sadly,” Travis said. “There is so much brokenness in the world.”

She also helped with the People of Peace Bible study for ex-offenders. With the volunteers like Travis, the Bible study has decreased the rate of those who returned to jail by 40 percent.

Baylor University Junior Marshall Cook served in Chicago where he facilitated various ministries such as feeding the homeless, networking with area businesses and charities and putting on a rock concert at church. But Cook was humbled and truly felt the presence of Christ most when he was cleaning the bathroom.

“I was cleaning up the bathroom on a Saturday night, and it was absolutely filthy,” he said. “But, it was when I was cleaning that I stopped for a second. It was as if I knew right there in the middle of cleaning up urine and hair that Jesus was right there with me. And this was something he was a part of as well.”

But Cook wasn’t the only who found Jesus in a bathroom. Summer Caniglia, a senior at the University of Mary Hardin-Baylor, interned with a missionary in Japan and mobilized short-term teams. She also led Bible studies for business people and college students. And she witnessed a baptism in a bathtub in the wee hours of the morning.

“I think that one of the most exciting things was when we had the opportunity to baptize a new brother in our bathtub,” she said. “He had become a believer that night and after we told him the story of the Phillip and the Ethiopian, he told us, ‘There’s no water in Tokyo.’ Someone replied ‘You can be baptized anywhere, even in a bathtub.’  So we baptized him in a bathtub at 3:30 in the morning.”

Posted: 7/13/07

FLIP FLOPS. BIBLES. TEENAGERS:
YEC cultivates relationships with God

By Barbara Bedrick

Texas Baptist Communications

DALLAS– Struggling through the teenage years can be difficult under ordinary circumstances, but for 13-year-old Raymond Lopez the road has been particularly painful — until now.

Just days before his youth group from Amistad Cristiana Baptist Church in Midland joined nearly 8,000 teenagers, adults and volunteers for the Youth Evangelism Conference June 29-30, Lopez' mother left him, his aunt moved to New York City and other family members remained thousands of miles away in Puerto Rico.

Joining students, parents and youth leaders from across Texas, Lopez and his youth leader, Ariana Chavez, prayed about cultivating relationships with others and with God. They praised and worshipped as Christian bands played and were inspired by keynote speakers, J.R. Vassar who recently started a new church in New York City, and youth evangelist Daniel 'Tiny' Dominguez, pastor of Community Heights Church in Lubbock.

Throughout the two-day event, the central YEC theme– Cultivate, based on John 4: 39-41 — began moving hearts and minds. The first night, Lopez made a profession of faith which left both he and his youth leader in tears. "It is awesome to see how God is working in his life."

"Now, I have found it doesn 't matter what my parents do, I still have my Father in heaven. He 's going to take care of me," Lopez said proudly.

"God is doing amazing things. It's just kids are so ready to give life," Chavez added. "Our congregation is probably only 120 to 150 people, but we have a youth group of about 40, and three teens in all professed their faith at YEC."
Cultivating relationships with each other and with God is the central theme of YEC 2007 and Super Summer 2007 — both are evangelism events coordinated by the Baptist General Convention of Texas.

Leighton Flowers, director of BGCT youth evangelism, believes the mission ahead will be met through cultivation.

"The real emphasis is to cultivate relationships with the Father, then with others to introduce them to God," Flowers explained. Throughout the two-day event, participants saw video vignettes of how different groups are cultivating lives, and innovative ways to cultivate others for Christ. He encouraged young people and youth leaders to build relationships by cultivating campuses, homes, friends, communities and the world.

This year at YEC, 24 people made professions of faith, 42 recommitted their lives to God, and 16 made commitments to ministry. And, the cultivation continues this summer through 300 youth missionaries commissioned during YEC. The group is bound for Germany where they will witness through sports camps and Bible schools.

Posted: 8/17/07

RIGHT or WRONG?
Welcoming the disabled

A disabled friend told me: “Your church is not friendly to people with disabilities. If the Americans with Disabilities Act could be applied, your congregation would be closed down.” If she’s right, what have I missed theologically and ethically about our church? 

I might differ with how your friend approaches the issue of welcoming people with disabilities. Still, she is identifying an important issue for your church to consider. Private clubs and churches are exempt from the Americans with Disabilities Act. There are points about the act that congregations should consider, however.

One in five Americans lives with a disability that limits one or more major life activities. Almost everyone will live with a disability or will have a family member with a disability at some time in their life. Even with the Americans with Disabilities Act, people with disabilities face numerous obstacles and often are marginalized. Yet people with disabilities bring unique gifts to the life and ministry of the church—gifts the church needs.

What might prevent a church from addressing access for all people? Churches may have budget constraints. It may be a matter of priorities for the church that chooses to budget funds for missions or increased utility costs before investigating and implementing changes to increase access. Churches may only consider the issue when a church member or regular visitor has a disability that limits or stops their attendance at church.

Why might the church want to address the policy prescriptions in the Americans with Disabilities Act?

First, all people are created in the image of God.

Second, we want to make it possible for all people to come to our churches. Making our churches accessible is an act of hospitality to people who are differently abled. From the time of the Exodus on, God urged the Hebrew people to remember the experience in Egypt and never imitate the Egyptians, instead, do the opposite—practice hospitality and justice, care for widows and orphans, serve the poor and strangers. As a result, have compassion for the stranger and sojourner, for widows and orphans, for refugees—for those who are vulnerable.

Third, Jesus welcomed people with debilitating diseases and disabilities—lepers, the woman with the issue of blood, those who were blind and lame.

Fourth, over and over in the Bible, we hear God’s call to love and action. “How does God’s love abide in anyone who has the world’s goods and sees a brother or sister in need and yet refuses to help? Little children, let us love, not in word or speech, but in truth and action.” (1 John 3:17-18)

How do we respond? Prayerfully and with the sure knowledge that all people, regardless of ability, are God’s precious children and worthy of our concern and compassionate actions. Doing so will authenticate our faith to ourselves and to others.

Michelle Tooley, Eli Lilly Professor of Religion

Berea College, Berea, Ky.

Right or Wrong? is sponsored by the T.B. Maston Chair of Christian Ethics at Hardin-Simmons University's Logsdon School of Theology. Send your questions about how to apply your faith to btillman@hsutx.edu.

• The “Comments” function is being reworked for greater security. We're sorry for the inconvenience.

Posted: 8/17/07

Around the State

• The Texas Baptist Missions Foundation is hosting a Sept. 17 event to help North Texas churches and individuals connect with mission opportunities through Baptist General Convention of Texas avenues. “Celebrate Texas Missions” will be held at Park Cities Church in Dallas and begin at 10 a.m. and continue until 1:30 p.m. Among the groups represented will be Texas Baptist Men, Buckner International, Woman’s Missionary Union of Texas, WorldconneX, and the BGCT’s collegiate ministry, community missions, border/Mexico, world hunger and worldwide partnership arms. Paul Powell will be the keynote speaker for the free gathering, which includes lunch provided by Texas Baptist Men.

• Debbie Rippstein has been named executive director of Gracewood, the Children at Heart Ministries residential program for single mothers and their children in Houston. Children at Heart is an agency of the Baptist General Convention of Texas.

• Gabriel Cortés has been named special assistant to the president at Baptist University of the Amercias after joining the university in 2004 as executive assistant to then-President Albert Reyes. He now will have additional responsibilities for directing a church relations program and promoting the Center for Culture and Language Studies program.

• Ninety-nine University of Mary Hardin-Baylor students were awarded degrees during summer commencement ceremonies. Seventy-nine earned bachelor’s degrees, and 20 were awarded master’s degrees. Keith Bruce, director of institutional ministries for the Baptist General Convention of Texas, was awarded an honorary doctor of humanities degree.

• Dallas Baptist University granted degrees to 128 undergraduate and 111 graduate students during summer commencement ceremonies. The university also awarded Dallas businessman George Shafer an honorary doctor of humanities degree. Shafer has served on the boards of numerous civic organizations and is a member of Prestonwood Church in Plano.

• Howard Payne University will use a gift from Brownwood’s TexasBank to purchase a portable basketball floor and a portable goal system to be used in Brownwood Coliseum. The floor the teams had been playing on was more than 50 years old, and the goals did not meet current NCAA regulations. Despite the outdated equipment, the school has had great success in recent years, and last season set a Division III all-time attendance record for any game during women’s playoffs, with attendance of more than 4,000.

• Buryl Red, a 1957 Baylor University graduate and musical director of The CenturyMen, has received the Award for Exemplary Leadership in Church Music, given by Baylor’s Center for Christian Music Studies.

• Leslie Adams has returned to Houston Baptist University as director of marketing and communications. She will serve as editor of the HBU News and work closely with the staff of the Ornogah. She also will oversee the university’s media relations and creative services areas. Adams taught in the school’s department of languages from 1990 to 2003.

• Ned Calvert has been appointed vice president for administration and finance at East Texas Baptist University. Calvert previously held the same position before leaving in 1999 to enter private business. He and his wife, Sarah, are members of Central Church in Marshall.

Anniversaries

• Joel Odom, 25th in ministry, July 8. He is pastor of Oak Hills Community Church in Floresville.

• David Gale, 10th, as pastor of First Church in La Vernia, July 29.

• Ken Cannon, fifth, as associate pastor of First Church in Paris, Aug. 1.

• Jack Ables, 15th, as pastor of Eastridge Church in Red Oak, Aug. 2.

• Wayne Ford, 50th in ministry, Aug. 11. Licensed at Patillo Church in Patillo in 1957, he has been pastor of Allison Church in Lipan since 1979.

• Baptist Temple Church in Victoria, 55th, Aug. 12. David Hudson is interim pastor.

• The Well Community in Dallas, 10th, Aug. 19. Joel Pulis is pastor.

• Gary Chevalier, 10th, as pastor of Ferris Avenue Church in Waxahachie, Aug. 24.

• San Patricio Church in Mathis, 10th, Aug. 26. A meal will follow the morning worship. Rayford Smith is pastor.

• Kevin Moore, fifth, as pastor of Beulah Church in Millsap, Sept. 8.

• First Church in Throckmorton, 125th, Sept. 21-23. Activities will begin Friday evening with a fellowship following the high school football game. Registration on Saturday will be from 1 p.m to 4 p.m., and will be followed by an anniversary choir practice at 4:30. At 6 p.m., there will be a meal at the Throckmorton Youth Center, followed by a worship service there. On Sunday, a continental breakfast will be served at the church beginning at 9 a.m. A choir rehearsal will be held at 9:30 that morning. Former member Donnie Hibbitts will preach in the 10 a.m. service. A lunch and afternoon service will follow at the youth center. Will Fish is pastor.

• Powderly Church in Powderly, 100th, Sept. 22-23. A time of fellowship, singing and remembrance will begin at 2 p.m. Saturday, followed by a sandwich supper. Sunday moring’s worship service also will be followed by a meal. Jerry Moore is pastor.

Retiring

• Isaac Rodriguez, as pastor of Segunda Iglesia in Corpus Christi, Aug. 26. A reception will follow the morning worship service at Kings Crossing Country Club. He has served the church 23 years, and prior to that was pastor of West Brownsville Church in Brownsville 15 years. He has served in denominational positions at both the associational and state level.

• R.T. Blalock, 90, July 19 in Mount Pleasant. He was a graduate of the College at Marshall, now East Texas Baptist University, Baylor University and Southwestern Seminary. His first pastorate was with a church in Katy in 1946. In 1953, he served with the Marines as a Navy chaplain during the Korean War. After leaving the armed forces, he served several churches in Texas and California. After retirement, he led a nursing home ministry and taught a men’s Sunday school class at First Church in Mount Pleasant. He was preceded in death by his first wife, Viola; daughter, Kathleen; six sisters; and three brothers. He is survived by his wife, Inez; sons, Bob and Johnny; daughters, Cathi Brown, Donna Neuville, Pam Adams and Krista Yeary; 13 grandchildren; and 11 great-grandchildren.

• Michael Cook, 56, July 21 in Texarkana. An electronics engineer, he was a member of First Church in Red Springs, where he was interim minister of music. He was preceded in death by his son, Jeffrey. He is survived by his wife, Kathy; sons, Adam and Brad; brothers, David and Eric; sisters, Carolyn Cole, Linda Cole and Cindy Powell; and one grandson.

• Anita Low, 83, Aug. 12 in Houston. She and her husband were commissioned as Southern Baptist missionaries to Nigeria in 1950, where they served 11 years. They returned to Canyon, where they lived 40 years before moving to Houston in 2003. She was preceded in death by her husband, Joe. She is survived by her sons, Jon and David; daughter, Martha Bishop; and four grandchildren.

Event

• Priddy Church in Priddy will hold a homecoming service Sept. 16 at 10:30 a.m. The Brazos Boys will perform during the service, and a catered lunch will follow. Butch Pesch is pastor.

Ordained

• Rick Carney to the ministry at Bones Chapel in Whitesboro.

• Chance Perkins to the ministry at College Heights Church in Plainview.

• Larry Norotsky to the ministry at First Church in Corpus Christi.

• Robert Anthony, Hal Bales, Toby Jones and Larry Sleadd as deacons at Haltom Road Church in Haltom City.

Revival

• First Church, Sulphur Springs; Aug. 25-26; evangelist, Chuck Pourciau; pastor, Bob McCartney.

Posted: 8/17/07

Open plains, open hearts
welcome Austrian Baptists to Texas

By John Hall

Texas Baptist Communications

DALLAS—Open plains and open hearts helped show Austrian Baptists how big the Baptist family is.

A group of Austrian Baptist youth recently finished a several-week-long trip through Texas, during which they served at Mission Arlington, ministered through Woodlawn Baptist Church in Austin and participated in Super Summer at Hardin-Simmons University.

The vastness and variety of Baptist work helped show the youth how numerous Baptists are around the world, said Dietrich Fischer-Dorl, who leads the youth division of the Baptist Union of Austria. Twenty-two churches that serve a total of 1,400 members comprise the Austrian union.

“I think the biggest effect is to show our Baptist family is much larger than this small minority in our country,” he said.

Fischer-Dorl said the youth were impressed by Texas hospitality. Texas Baptists welcomed the group into their homes with open arms. Texans showed the students new ways of ministering that Fischer-Dorl hopes they will take back to Austria.

“Ministering is part of a Christian lifestyle,” he said.

The Baptist Union of Austria has enjoyed a fraternal relationship with the Baptist General Convention of Texas through the BGCT Texas Partnerships ministry.  Texas Partnerships’ mission initiatives partially are supported by funds from the Mary Hill Davis Offering for Texas Missions. 

Fischer-Dorl hopes Texans will continue to collaborate with Austrian Baptists for mission work in Texas and Austria. Both the Austrian union and the BGCT are members of the Baptist World Alliance.

“When we get teams to Austria from Texas, we see we have new friends who are praying for us, supporting us,” Fischer-Dorl said.

Posted: 8/17/07

Baptist Briefs

Some SBC leaders endorse blog. Several prominent Baptist leaders have publicly endorsed a groundbreaking blog operated by reform-minded pastors within the Southern Baptist Convention. The endorsers include the presidents of three SBC entities and a college president—Morris Chapman, president of the SBC’s Executive Committee; Thom Rainer, president of LifeWay Christian Resources; Jerry Rankin, president of the SBC’s International Mission Board; and David Dockery, president of Union University. All have posted messages of support for SBCOutpost.com. The weblog, previously run by Georgia pastor Marty Duren, relaunched in June as a collaborative site with the goal of becoming the “premier site for Southern Baptist news and commentary.” All of the bloggers are conservatives and have been involved in efforts to reform the Southern Baptist Convention, which most say has become too narrow and moribund under the leadership of an older generation of biblical inerrantists.

NAMB plans to sell FamilyNet. Southern Baptists’ North American Mission Board plans to sell its FamilyNet to Atlanta pastor Charles Stanley’s In Touch Ministries. NAMB trustees reportedly voted unanimously Aug. 8 to accept a letter of intent from In Touch outlining the ministry’s intent to buy the television network. Under terms of the letter, NAMB and In Touch Ministries will work together to evaluate and negotiate the planned sale and purchase of FamilyNet, and finalize details for the sale on or before Oct. 31.

Former Campbell president dies. Norman Wiggins, president of Campbell University for 36 years before his retirement in 2003, died Aug. 1 at age 83 in Winston-Salem, N.C. Under his leadership as president, Campbell College grew to become a full-fledged university, adding graduate programs in law, education, business, pharmacy and divinity. Wiggins, a former president of the Baptist State Convention of North Carolina, served as the school’s chancellor after he retired from the president’s post.

Holy water from Falwell school? Move over, Perrier. The next designer bottled water may come out of Lynchburg, Va., courtesy of the late Jerry Falwell. Liberty University, the school founded by the fundamentalist Baptist evangelist who died May 15, has announced that it will bottle water drawn from a spring near the campus, according to the Lynchburg News & Advance. Liberty Mountain Natural Spring Water apparently was one of Falwell’s last projects before his death. The 16.9- ounce bottle of water will be taken from a spring on university property once owned by the late Carter Glass, a Democratic U.S. senator from Virginia who died in 1946. Falwell bought the estate and founded his university there in 1971. The spring had been out of operation for at least 35 years until about six months ago, when Falwell had it brought back into service.

Seminary president, ethicist debate homemaking studies. Paige Patterson, president of Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Fort Worth, and Robert Parham, executive director of the Baptist Center for Ethics, squared off on Fox News to debate the value of the seminary’s new undergraduate program in homemaking. The classes are part of a homemaking concentration for a bachelor of arts in humanities degree through the College at Southwestern, the seminary’s undergraduate school.

Posted: 8/17/07

Black churches face challenges
in maintaining musical tradition

By Bob Faw

Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly

MEMPHIS, Tenn. (RNS)—Music, for many, is at the heart of the black worship experience.

“Music comes as a softener of people,” said Frank Thomas, pastor of Mississippi Boulevard Christian Church in Memphis, Tenn. “It allows me to gradually open myself to receive the word. That’s why you have so much music in church, because people can’t just receive … the raw word.”

Glen McMillan leads the choir at Concord Baptist Church of Christ in Brooklyn, N.Y.

Music, when done well, can both transcend and transform. Leo Davis Jr., minister of music at Thomas’ church, recalls a woman who told him that on a particular Sunday, “I had made up my mind to commit suicide, … but the song that you ministered that particular Sunday gave me hope to live on.”

But black churches face a problem. Accomplished ministers of music are a vanishing species, and churches throughout the country are finding it harder to hire skilled musicians.

“It’s a difficult thing to try to find someone trained,” said Gary Simpson, pastor of the historic Concord Baptist Church of Christ in Brooklyn, N.Y. Simpson knows the problem firsthand; his church went without a minister of music about a year.

“We are not training musicians in the music of the church, which the black church did all along its tenure,” Simpson said. “That kind of commitment is gone, for the most part.”

There are a number of reasons for the problem, including public schools slashing music programs.

But the biggest handicap facing the churches, Simpson said, is the world outside, where musicians can find greater fortune and fame.

“The big money is in producing,” said Davis. “The big money is in rap. They’re looking at rappers with the million-dollar houses with gold ceilings. And why do I want to work in a church and make $30,000?”

Glen McMillan spent months auditioning candidates to fill the vacancy at Concord Baptist and said he knows he will be judged in large part on how well he performs.

“We are in this whole mega-church mentality where the church has become so performance-based that everything is a quick fix,” McMillan said. “The church has been a place where you could express your gift and nurture your gift in the process.”

And that is yet another dilemma facing black churches; they are not just competing for musical directors.

“There are a lot of things competing for people’s attention,” said Mississippi Boulevard’s Thomas. “So how do you get people to pay attention to you, you know? So you have to be very good at what you do. Mediocrity will not get you a hearing in today’s world.”

And that competition can be fierce. Church members increasingly are accustomed to flashy performances on VH-1, Black Entertainment Television and their iPods. To reach these members, some churches conclude they, too, must entertain.

Davis sees it “all the time,” he said. “When it’s not planned well, when it’s not open to the moving of the Holy Spirit, then it becomes entertainment.”

Thomas refers to it as “sunshine music.”

“Some music has bad theology,” he said. “Some music, you know, has stuff that the Bible does not say. It’s like giving people cotton candy. We can give people cheap answers to deep questions.”

McMillan, working as the interim music minister at Concord Baptist, notes that while congregations may appreciate the sounds of hip-hop, “Where are those things that are so important—the tradition of music, the hymns, and especially in terms of black people, the Negro spirituals?”

With few accomplished musical directors—and more “sunshine music”—many fear worship will be diminished.

“I don’t believe that if you did hip-hop 20 years ago, you’re going to remember a hip-hop line,” McMillan said. “But you will remember ‘Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing,’ if you learn it. Or you will remember ‘Amazing grace, how sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me.’”

“Those songs live on,” Davis added. “They live on because they’re sustaining. And you want the younger generations coming up to be part of that. And to embrace that. And to learn it and pass it down.”

Posted: 8/17/07

Book Reviews

The Mr. and Mrs. Happy Handbook: Everything I Know About Love and Marriage by Steve Doocy (William Morrow)

Nonfiction has come a long way from the inner lives of grasshoppers and the complexity of moon rocks. 

In The Mr. & Mrs. Happy Handbook, a reindeer falls from the sky and dents the family car, an anaconda is under the patio, author Steve Doocy and his wife, Kathy, end up spending their honeymoon at a remote leper colony, and concerned kids are asking about the birds and the bees—and the carrot. Try explaining that one.

What are you reading that other Texas Baptists would find helpful? Send suggestions and reviews to books@baptiststandard.com.

In this laugh-out-loud book about married life, Doocy, co-host of Fox and Friends, shares the nitty-gritty about love, married life, family and what to do when the neighbors’ kid starts foaming at the mouth. Blame it on the Easter bunny.

Throughout the book, Kathy Doocy gives her own advice, following her husband’s. And to make things easier, there are several charts, including honeymoon do’s and don’ts and how to rate your honeymoon. If no one gained weight, the honeymoon gets an A.

This book provides sound advice to married couples of all ages through humorous true-life stories. Although there are a few “choice words,” and some adult humor, this book is a must read. You may discover your marriage and your family aren’t as strange as you thought.

Who wants to read about a perfect marriage anyway? Maybe the same folks who read about the inner lives of grasshoppers.

Whitney Farr

Communications Intern, Waco

God, I Don’t Understand: Answers to Difficult Questions of the Christian Faith by Kenneth Boa (David C. Cook)

“I don’t understand” is a statement we all have expressed from time to time. Every person who serves God desires to understand God’s will and ways.

Kenneth Boa wrote this classic book in 1974 and has added notes, called “Thirty Years Later,” which address thoughts and issues he would include if he were writing it today.

Boa’s theology is sound, and he writes in a language we all can understand. He encourages the reader to study the mysteries of the Bible and sees these as a strong evidence of divine origin. I was stretched in mind again and again as I eagerly read this book. The illustrations in key chapters visually brought the written words into focus.

If you want to understand the God Man, the Trinity, the Resurrection Body and other great and timeless truths, it is worth your time to read Boa’s answers of the Christian faith.

Leo Smith, executive director

Texas Baptist Men, Dallas

Judas and the Gospel of Jesus: Have We Missed the Truth About Christianity? by N. T. Wright (Baker Books)

Recent controversies surrounding the publication of the Gospel of Judas, along with popular books and movies such as The da Vinci Code, have sparked what appears to be a new conversation about Christianity.

N.T. Wright takes the time to fully develop the dynamics of both sources in his new book. This address reveals that the “new” controversy actually is something that dates to the beginning of Christianity. Wright skillfully takes the most novice of theologians through a brief history and explanation of the dangers and fallacies of the Gnostic movement.

Judas and the Gospel of Jesus is great for a person seeking a first book about Gnosticism or an experienced pastor who needs a quick read to refresh previous education. Wright provides a practical book with his scholarly touches. Overall, this book is excellent—short enough to make it useful but also detailed enough to prove beneficial.

Jeremy Johnston, pastor

Preston Highlands Baptist Church, Dallas

Posted: 8/17/07

BUA inauguration focuses
on leadership development

“Forging New Leaders for a New World” will be the theme as Baptist University of the Americas installs its seventh president, René Maciel, former assistant dean of Baylor University’s Truett Theological Seminary.

Truett Professor Hulitt Gloer will deliver the inaugural address during the public inauguration and installation ceremony, 10 a.m. Sept. 28 at Primera Iglesia Bautista Mexicana in San Antonio.

“While in 2007 the university is celebrating its 60-year history of developing Hispanic church leaders for Texas, the inauguration provides a visionary vantage point to look into the future and define the kind of Christian leaders that the next generations will need,” Maciel said.

The inaugural theme was selected to emphasize the school’s commitment to leadership development for undergraduates who seek to be equipped to fulfill their Christian calling in a world marked by multiculturalism, globalism, emerging church structures and innovative mission methodologies, organizers noted.

The theme showcases new university programs and degrees such as the recently created Latina Leadership Institute and its newly accredited bachelor’s degree in cross-cultural business leadership.

A Sept. 27 campuswide celebration includes a pre-chapel outdoor fellowship event with music by the school’s Rondalla de las Americas; an extended chapel with Charles Wade, executive director of the Baptist General Convention of Texas; and a formal president’s inaugural dinner that evening.

Student council leaders also will organize community ministry projects during the weeks surrounding the inauguration, and every student and staff member will be encouraged to volunteer one hour in honor of the university’s 60th anniversary and the presidential inauguration.

Posted: 8/17/07

Posted: 8/17/07

Church starters learn the ropes;
BGCT & CBF establish covenant

By Whitney Farr

Communications Intern

WACO—While 36 future church planters learned with Legos inside Truett Seminary, two Baptist leaders sat in the courtyard discussing the power behind the recent partnership of Cooperative Baptist Fellowship and the Baptist General Convention of Texas.

“It’s not a legal contract. It’s more of a spiritual covenant partnering between BGCT and CBF in terms of starting new churches,” said Phil Hester, CBF church starts specialist. “In the covenant, we both agree to bring certain resources, and the church planter agrees to have a mutual responsibility to both organisms.”

Phil Hester (left), church starting specialist with the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship, and Charles Higgs (right), Baptist General Convention of Texas coordinator for western-heritage churches, visits with church planter Rocky Louthan and his wife, Amy. The cowboy church the Louthans are planting in Santa Fe, near Galveston, is the first product of a new church-starting partnership covenant between the BGCT and CBF.

Charles Higgs, BGCT coordinator for western-heritage churches, and Hester agreed BGCT and CBF are not in competition with one another, but just two parts of the body of Christ, both with individual resour-ces, combining forces.

A western-heritage church in Santa Fe, near Galveston, will be the first fruit of the new partnership. CBF decided on the Galveston area after noticing the small number of BGCT and CBF churches in the region. After partnering with the BGCT, the funds were raised for Gulf Coast Cowboy Church, and a planter was chosen, Rocky Louthan.

Louthan and his wife, Amy, were two of the 36 leaders who came to the CBF Church Planting Boot Camp at Truett Seminary July 29-Aug. 3. Participants came from North and South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, Arizona and Oklahoma, and they attended sessions aimed to develop and strengthen leaders for future church plants.

“The sessions are giving them the nuts and bolts of church planting—working with directors of missions, using media, financial planning, writing a business plan, understanding yourself and building a team,” said Judy Battles, Truett coordinator for pastoral ministries.

Not all lessons were learned in the confines of Truett Seminary. On Monday, the group took on the challenge of Baylor University’s ropes course. And on Wednesday, they engaged in HALT, Horse Assisted Leadership Training, a ministry that incorporates horses to teach leaders about themselves and how to work with those around them.

“We can learn so much about ourselves, our relationship with others and our relationship with God through these four-legged creatures,” HALT co-founder Debbie Bahr said.

The conference included daily worship services and opportunities for the group to fellowship, over meals and a dessert gathering.

CBF started the church-planting conferences four years ago, and each year the conference is held at a different seminary around the country. God has used the leaders trained at the conferences to do big things, and each of the churches planted in the past has reproduced itself within six years, Higgs said.

The conference’s overall goal was to “prepare these candidates to successfully plant new Baptist congregations,” Hester said.

The conference also equipped each person with $200 worth of books on topics including leadership, church planting and how to be a missions-minded church, according to Battles.

Posted: 8/17/07

2nd Opinion: Stats tell tale not good for Texas

By Karen Wood

Start talking statistics, and my eyes glaze over. I’m already yawning, just thinking about percentages and number signs.

But smack dab in the middle of some great reading recently, out popped some statistics. For once, I didn’t snooze. I got scared—the kind of scared with goose bumps and shivers running up and down the spine.

Right there, plain as day: “Texas, at 23.8 percent, had a higher percentage of (health) uninsured citizens than any other state in 2006.”

Might as well round that up to 24 percent. I do better with whole numbers.

That compares to 14.6 percent nationally, or 43.6 million who didn’t have health insurance last year from sea to shining sea.

Shorthand: Nation, 15 percent uninsured. Texas, 24 percent uninsured. Not good, Texas.

Understand I’m a native Texan, so I’m not one to knock the Great State.

Indeed, when I saw those stats comparing us to the rest of the country, I was sure it couldn’t be right. After all, we are bigger, better, stronger, higher, deeper, wider.

Well, pretty much nobody has anything on us. Especially attitude.

Except health insurance. What happened?

As I looked further, the stats got worse. Like the one on uninsured kids. From Pacific to Atlantic: 9.3 percent. In Texas? 19 percent. Not good, Texas.

Just who are these people trying to trash the GreatStateofTexas (Always one word. Just listen to the politicians)? Why, it’s none other than the people at the National Center for Health Statistics.

Its website (www.cdc.gov/nchs) breaks down all of the gory details—pie charts and graphs and footnotes and sub-sections and details too spooky for me to handle without digging out my whiffle dust to ward off the nightmares.

I was prepared to challenge the National Center for Health Statistics. Surely it was relying on too small a sample. But, no. This survey was based on 100,000 interviews.

As for the ranks of Texas’ uninsured: Even larger numbers were uninsured at some time or another during the last 12 months prior to the survey. And a portion of those surveyed had gone without health insurance for more than a year at the time the survey was done.

Why, shucks. 100,000. That’s a pretty big number, even for a native Texan. No matter how big I yawn, I can’t get 100,000 in my mouth. No matter how much my eyes glaze over, I can’t get 24 percent and 19 percent out of my mind’s eye.

The GreatStateofTexas has people smart enough to fix the problem. The GreatStateofTexas has the resources to fix the problem.

We just need to hitch up our britches, tighten our Lone Star belt buckles and do it.

Karen Wood is a freelance writer living in Waco. She formerly worked for Woman’s Missionary Union and Baylor University.