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Texas Baptists offer relief to victims of widespread storms
Posted: 4/27/07
Texas Baptist Men responded to help victims of storms that struck across the state in April. Texas Baptists offer relief to
victims of widespread stormsBy Barbara Bedrick
Texas Baptist Communications
From suburban Fort Worth to the Panhandle plains to the Rio Grande, Texas Baptists provided disaster relief after a series of violent storms swept through the state.
High winds, heavy rain and a tornado killed two people and damaged more than 150 homes in Tarrant County April 13, and another storm system followed a similar path 11 days later. Haltom City, just north of Fort Worth, experienced some of the worst damage from the first wave of storms.
04/30/2007 - By John Rutledge
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Newspapers rethink religion sections
Updated: 4/27/07
Newspapers rethink religion sections
By Hannah Elliott
Associated Baptist Press
NEW YORK (ABP)—The Dallas Morning News recently received the Religion Communicators Council award for the nation’s best religion section. It was the 10th time in 11 years the News had won. Unfortunately for the News, there’s no chance of an 11th title.
In January, the newspaper discontinued the section, citing economic concerns.
04/28/2007 - By John Rutledge
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Baptist schools prepare ‘in case the unthinkable occurs’
Updated: 4/27/07
University of Mary-Hardin Baylor students participate in an emergency preparedness drill on campus. The exercise, held just two days after the Virginia Tech shootings, had been scheduled and planned months in advance. (Photos by Randy Yandel/UMHB) Baptist schools prepare
‘in case the unthinkable occurs’By Ken Camp
Managing Editor
BELTON—Police cars and fire engines lined the streets on the north side of the University of Mary-Hardin Baylor campus. Paramedics carried students on stretchers and loaded them into ambulances. But it was just a drill—an emergency response exercise planned long before an armed rampage occurred two days earlier at Virginia Tech.
Bell County’s emergency planning committee had scheduled the drill—a simulated hazardous-materials spill on the railroad tracks adjacent to the UMHB campus—months earlier, university spokesperson Carol Woodward said.
UMHB emergency response personnel confer during emergency preparedness drill. 04/28/2007 - By John Rutledge
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RA boys deliver missions by the ton to Mexico
Updated: 4/27/07
Royal Ambassadors from First Baptist Church in Graham load and deliver 9,000 pounds of food to orphans in Piedras Negras, Mexico. RA boys deliver missions by the ton to Mexico
By George Henson
Staff Writer
GRAHAM—Maps of the Apostle Paul’s missionary journeys decorate the walls where Hunter Dooley meets for Royal Ambassadors. If someday a map chronicles Hunter’s missionary travels, it will have to start with the trip he took as a 7-year-old from North Texas to an orphanage in Mexico.
He was among eight RA boys and nine adults who collected, transported and delivered 9,000 pounds of food to feed Mexican orphans. About two dozen boys helped prepare for the trek by keeping First Baptist Church in Graham informed of the need and helping load the trailer, but the smaller number made the trip.
04/28/2007 - By John Rutledge
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Face death with grace and watchfulness, ethicist urges
Updated: 4/27/07
Face death with grace
and watchfulness, ethicist urgesBy Marv Knox
Editor
ABILENE—Christians must not abandon people who are dying on the doorstep of medicine, ethicist Allen Verhey pleaded.
Instead, the church should engage in “watchfulness” with the seriously ill and dying, Verhey stressed in the Maston Christian Ethics Lectures at Hardin-Simmons University’s Logsdon Seminary in Abilene.
Ethicist Allen Verhey urges churches to treat the seriously ill and dying with grace and to practice “watchfulness.” He delivered the Maston Christian Ethics Lectures at Hardin-Simmons University’s Logsdon Seminary. (Photo by Dave Coffield/HSU) 04/28/2007 - By John Rutledge
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Baptist Briefs
Posted: 4/27/07
Baptist Briefs
Southern Baptists fall short of baptism goal. Southern Baptists failed to meet their goal of baptizing 1 million people in 2006, according to statistics reported by Southern Baptist Convention-affiliated churches. Baptisms for 2006 instead declined by 1.89 percent—364,826 in 2006 versus 371,850 in 2005. The SBC baptism thrust was launched by immediate past-President Bobby Welch at the outset of his two years in office in June 2004.
International Baptists discuss local-church autonomy. Sixty seven Baptist theologians, leaders and pastors from around the world gathered at a Baptist World Alliance symposium at the German Baptist Seminary in Elstal, Berlin, to talk about the theology of the church—particularly issues of local-church autonomy. Participants examined the relationship of the local church to the larger Baptist community of associations, national conventions and unions, regional fellowships and the Baptist World Alliance. At the end of the symposium, participants issued a statement concluding, “For Baptists, the local church is wholly church but not the whole church.”
CBF offers church-starter ‘boot camp’ at Truett. The Cooperative Baptist Fellowship’s New Church Starts Boot Camp will be held July 29-Aug. 3 at Baylor University’s Truett Seminary in Waco. The annual event offers individuals interested in starting churches opportunities for networking, learning about practical resources and assessing their ministerial gifts and calling. American Baptist Churches USA and the Baptist General Convention of Texas also are sponsoring the event. Featured speakers include Tom Johnson, American Baptist new-church planting coordinator; Andre Punch, BGCT congregational strategists director; and Charles Higgs, BGCT director of western-heritage ministries.
04/28/2007 - By John Rutledge
