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Music bridges racial and cultural gaps
Posted: 7/06/07
Texas Voices of Praise gospel choir from 10 African-American Baptist churches performs with the Fujiyoshida Baptist Church gospel choir before a crowd of 400 people during a mission trip to Japan. Music bridges racial and cultural gaps
By Barbara Bedrick
Texas Baptist Communications
TOKYO—At 26, Kyoko Murakami’s journey of faith began when she started singing with the Tokyo Voices of Praise gospel choir in 1997. She sang about Jesus, but she didn’t know why. For four years, she performed, but she didn’t worship.
In 2001, a Christian friend handed her a Bible and encouraged her to read it. Soon the words and the gospel songs began to touch her heart.
Douglas Edwards, member of Minnehulla Baptist Church in Goliad, sings gospel music with choir members from Chofu Minami Baptist Church at Japan concert hall before an audience of 500 people, most of them not Christians. 07/06/2007 - By John Rutledge
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2nd Opinion: Following Christ: More than ‘Red’
Posted: 7/06/07
2nd Opinion:
Following Christ: More than ‘Red’By Gary Long
Bono and Oprah are two of the most powerful figures in the entertainment business. So, naturally, it caught everyone’s attention when they went “Red.” They are two key celebrities affiliated with the “Red” campaign, an idea to brand products and give proceeds from the sales to fight diseases—specifically HIV/AIDS—in Third World nations.
On the surface, it seems like a good idea to “do the ‘Red’ thing.” Bono explained the campaign to Relevant magazine: “Some people won’t put on marching boots, so we’ve got to get people where they are at, and they’re in the shopping malls. Now you’re buying jeans and T-shirts, and you’re paying for 10 women in Africa to get medication for their children with HIV.”
But my concerns are several:
07/06/2007 - By John Rutledge
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DOWN HOME: A terrific ride for a good, long talk
Posted: 7/06/07
DOWN HOME:
A terrific ride for a good, long talkIf our family vacation had a theme this year, it would have been “riding.”
We rode the family sedan out past West Texas, across New Mexico and up into the Colorado mountains. When we got there, we rode the rapids in a raft, rode over a pass in a train and rode through mountain meadows on the backs of horses. When the time came to leave, we rode our car back down out of the mountains, west across the mesas and plains of New Mexico, south through the Texas Panhandle and, deep into the night, back to our home near Dallas.
Except for the time we paid about $3.50 per gallon to fill our gas tank, we had a terrific trip.
Some people prefer to fly when they go to the mountains or the beach. I freely acknowledge they have a point: Both peaks and waves are a long, long way from here. In theory, flying is best. Except for three facts:
07/06/2007 - By John Rutledge
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EDITORIAL: Think about immigration & Jesus
Posted: 7/06/07
EDITORIAL:
Think about immigration & JesusDon’t you wish America’s political leadership had an ounce of moral imagination? The Senate’s failure to improve our immigration system represents a new low in legislative ineffectiveness. (Coming from someone who’s watched the Texas Legislature at un-work, that’s a mouthful.) One side wanted reform. But even with support from the president and top members of both parties, they couldn’t put together a plan to answer basic concerns, much less build a victorious coalition. Not to be outdone, the other side behaved just as badly. They waved the flag of fear long enough to beat back the reformers. Yet their warnings about “amnesty” for “illegal immigrants” rang hollow when they failed to offer an option for alleviating the problem.
So, now what do we have? Something to scare and/or trouble almost everyone: Porous borders. Between 12 million and 14 million undocumented workers living in the United States. Strained social services, particularly in the Southwest. Industries vital to our economy—such as agriculture and construction in the Southwest, textiles in the Southeast—dependent upon cheap labor. Thousands, if not millions, of workers who are vulnerable and exploited. Thousands, perhaps millions, of U.S. workers whose job status and/or income is affected by competition from immigrant workers. Families torn apart. Millions of citizens angry and confused by the dramatic changes they’re seeing in their culture and communities.
Meanwhile, back in Congress … . Well, nothing.
Common sense has sprung from other quarters, however. In a Wall Street Journal column, Peggy Noonan, the former Reagan White House speechwriter, laid out a two-step solution that’s profoundly simple: Secure the borders. Admit the workers we need.
07/06/2007 - By John Rutledge
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Faith Digest
Posted: 7/06/07
Faith Digest
Polluted lower Jordan River an endangered site. The lower portion of the Jordan River is so polluted, the World Monuments Fund has designated it an “Endangered Cultural Heritage Site.” The international body for the protection of monuments recently placed the river revered by Jews, Christians and Muslims on the organization’s “watch list” of 100 endangered sites. About 90 percent of the river’s natural water flow has been diverted by Israel, Jordan and Syria for domestic and agricultural use, with sewage flowing in its place, according to Friends of the Earth Middle East, an environmental organization with offices in Israel, Jordan and the Palestinian Authority.
Network takes over struggling biblical theme park. Trinity Broadcasting Network has become the new owner of the Holy Land Experience, a biblical theme park in Orlando, Fla. The ownership change came as five members of the network’s leadership team—including TBN founders Paul and Janice Crouch and their son—were announced as new board members of the theme park. The Orlando Sentinel reported the tourist attraction—which features music, drama and portrayals of Jesus’ ministry, death and resur-rection—has experienced financial troubles and declining attendance.
07/06/2007 - By John Rutledge
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U.S. Hispanic believers prefer ‘Spirit-filled’ worship in Spanish
Posted: 7/06/07
U.S. Hispanic believers prefer
‘Spirit-filled’ worship in SpanishBy Ted Parks
Associated Baptist Press
WASHINGTON (ABP)—Hispanic believers in the United States prefer “Spirit-filled religious expression” and gravitate toward a “distinctively ethnic” worship experience, opting to go to church with other Hispanics and speak Spanish when they get there, according to a recent report by the Washington, D.C.-based Pew Hispanic Center.
Titled “Changing Faiths: Latinos and the Transformation of American Religion,” the Pew study suggests more than half of Latino Catholics in the United States, 54 percent, are charismatic or Pentecostal, with the proportion of charismatic and Pentecostal believers even larger among Latino Protestants, at 57 percent.
07/06/2007 - By John Rutledge
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Scholar mulls the possibilities of U.S. relations with Muslims
Posted: 7/06/07
Scholar mulls the possibilities
of U.S. relations with MuslimsBy Omar Sacirbey
Religion News Service
WASHINGTON (RNS)—What if, Akbar Ahmed asks, America had limited its military response to 9/11 to liberating Afghanistan from the Taliban and al-Qaida? What if, instead of invading Iraq and waging a global war on terror, the United States had expanded diplomacy and exchange programs with Muslim nations, and tried to win Muslim hearts and minds with hospitals, schools and irrigation?
Those are the questions Ahmed, a former Pakistani diplomat and renown Islamic scholar at American University in Washington, tackles in his new book Journey Into Islam, an analysis of relations between America and the Islamic world.
Akbar Ahmed 07/06/2007 - By John Rutledge
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Texas Baptist Forum
Posted: 7/06/07
Texas Baptist Forum
Speaking in tongues
I was concerned with the report that over half of our Southern Baptist Convention pastors believe in a special prayer language (June 11).
• Jump to online-only letters below Letters are welcomed. Send them to marvknox@baptiststandard.com; 250 words maximum.
“The life of faith is first and foremost about our relationship with God. It is not about how good our behavior is. Nor does it hinge on how correct our theology is. … What God really cares about is whether we love him.”
Njongonkulu Ndungane
Anglican archbishop of South Africa (Communion News Service/RNS)“Cars shall not be for you an expression of power and domination, and an occasion of sin.”
Driver’s ‘Ten Commandments’
The Vatican’s Pontifical Council for the Pastoral Care of Migrants and Itinerant People, urging safety and charity for motorists (RNS)“It sounds as if the economic side of the family is serving us divorce papers.”
Tony Perkins
President of Family Research Council, a conservative Christian advocacy group, on the divisions between fiscal and social conservatives on the Republican 2008 presidential field (The Wall Street Journal/RNS)If Jesus prayed in a language we could understand, why shouldn’t we? Any language we use should be for the edification of his church, not the division of the saints.
What is most important is that we talk to our Creator; focusing on who he is and who we are. If anyone’s praise and gratitude are voiced in gibberish, I won’t say God can’t understand, but who are you trying to impress? As far as my knowledge goes, the Bible only references the Holy Spirit interceding for us with groans we cannot understand.
07/06/2007 - By John Rutledge
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Churches see themselves as missions-sending entities
Posted: 7/06/07
Churches see themselves
as missions-sending entitiesBy John Hall
Texas Baptist Communications
NOXVILLE, Tenn.—While Baptist missiologists and prognosticators are declaring church-based missions the future of global outreach, some pastors believe it’s the present, as their congregations serve around the world.
Although the evidence is largely anecdotal, many Baptists believe churches doing mission work overseas without the help of missions boards, agencies or parachurch organizations is on the rise. The trend began with congregations taking short-term mission trips, but it has shifted toward churches that send members to the mission field for longer periods of time.
Greg Adams from Cottonwood Baptist Church in Dublin ministers to a woman who lives in Asia. The church, which directly supports missionaries around the world, has long-term missions commitments to several people groups around the globe. 07/06/2007 - By John Rutledge
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Back to the future, as missionaries raise their own financial support
Posted: 7/06/07
Back to the future, as missionaries
raise their own financial supportBy Jennifer Harris
Missouri Word & Way
Career missionaries may be cutting the middleman from the flow of missions dollars, say experts in the study of mission trends. While denominational agencies and missions partners will not be out of the picture, their roles may change—and perhaps already are.
Larry and Sarah Ballew serve in Macau as affiliates in the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship As You Go program. The Ballews raise their own financial support, relying on relationships with churches and individuals in the States to stay in Macau. The Ballews already had been in Macau several years before working with CBF.
07/06/2007 - By John Rutledge
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What is the future of missions?
Posted: 7/06/07
Southern Baptist Missionary Scott Bradford joins a friend for a traditional African tea ceremony known as “warga.” The two-hour ceremony takes places three times a day and consists of three rounds of tea, each progressively sweeter than the last. Short-term volunteer trips cannot take the place of this kind of “incarnational” presence by career missionaries, according to Ed Stetzer, director of LifeWay Research. (IMB Photo) What is the future of missions?
By Ken Camp
Managing Editor
As churches and individual Christians demand more hands-on, practical connection to missions, some Baptists are questioning whether a missions-by-proxy approach—churches supporting professional career missionaries sent by large denominational agencies— has a future.
Count Ken Hall, president of Buckner International, among them.
See Related Articles:
• What is the future of missions?
• Churches see themselves as missions-sending entities
• Back to the future, as missionaries raise their own financial support
• Technology changes the way missionaries work
• Embracing the World: The Church and Global Mission in the 21st Century
07/06/2007 - By John Rutledge
