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HBU students take local & global missions plunge
Posted: 3/30/07
Brittany Myer, a Houston Baptist University student, shares a smile with two children from Yellowstone Academy in Houston. (Photo courtesy of HBU) HBU students take local & global missions plunge
Two groups of Houston Baptist University students recently stepped out of their comfort zones and into places where they could meet urgent human needs in Christ’s name.
One team spent spring break taking an “urban plunge” into Houston’s Third Ward—one of the city’s most impoverished areas. Another group dug wells, helped offer medical clinics and led Vacation Bible School in Nicaragua.
A village girl in Nicaragua enjoys the pure, clean water a new well provides. The inner-city missions experience, coordinated with the school’s Center for Student Missions, included visiting an adult day-care center, leading a museum field trip for schoolchildren from the Third Ward and helping at the Harbor Light shelter sponsored by the Salvation Army. An inner-city church provided lodging for the students during their three days of service with nonprofit organizations in the area.
“Initially when the students arrive in these impoverished areas, they arrive with the comprehension and interpretation from what they’ve seen on television—the crimes, the poverty, the struggle. We immediately take them to these neighborhoods they’ve heard about from the news and show them around. Then, they are connected with people who live in these neighborhoods,” said Jason Shaffer, HBU coordinator of spiritual life, community service and missions. “Students’ stereotypes and fears fade as they recognize the humanity in those that society casts aside.”
03/30/2007 - By John Rutledge
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Keep ‘dream stealers’ at bay, keynote speaker urges lay leaders & ministers
Posted: 3/30/07
Nearly 100 pastors, youth and women ministry leaders and Sunday school teachers at Inspire ’07 were motivated to evangelize and grow their churches. The customized regional event was held at College Heights Baptist Church in Plainview. (Photos by Ferrell Foster) Keep ‘dream stealers’ at bay, keynote
speaker urges lay leaders & ministersBy Barbara Bedrick
Texas Baptist Communications
PLAINVIEW—Pastors and lay church leaders should “recognize those things that are dream stealers” and exercise mountain-moving faith, keynote speaker David Mahfouz told participants at Inspire ’07.
The Baptist General Convention of Texas and Caprock Plains Baptist Association sponsored the inaugural Inspire event March 24 at College Heights Baptist Church.
03/30/2007 - By John Rutledge
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Evangelical support for Iraq war apparently wavering
Posted: 3/30/07
Evangelical support for Iraq
war apparently waveringBy Julie Sullivan
Religion News Service
DAMASCUS, Ore. (RNS)—Suzanne Brownlow shivers on an Oregon highway overpass as a cutting wind whips her sign: “Honk to End the War.” Her weekly demonstration is the latest turn in a fractious journey that has taken the evangelical Christian mother from protesting abortion clinics to protesting the war in Iraq.
“I feel like at least we are doing something,” Mrs. Brownlow said, waving to passersby along with her husband, Dave, and two youngest children.
Suzanne Brownlow and daughters Desi (left) and Sierra (center), look at photos of their son and brother Jared, 20, who serves in Iraq. Mrs. Brownlow is an evangelical who had supported President Bush but now strongly opposes the war. (RNS photo by Benjamin Brink/The Oregonian) 03/30/2007 - By John Rutledge
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Texas Baptist Forum
Posted: 3/30/07
Texas Baptist Forum
God & Allah
Charles Kimball claimed Islam and Christianity worship the same God: “Allah is simply the Arab name for God” (March 5).
Letters are welcomed. Send them to marvknox@baptiststandard.com; 250 words maximum.
“As I thought of what may await me, I felt a feeling of great trust. No one raised in the kind of church environment I grew up in totally leaves behind the acrid smell of fire and brimstone, but I felt an overwhelming sense of trust in God.”
Philip Yancey
Author, on awaiting news of whether injury sustained in a car crash would threaten his life, before he was released with a neck brace to be worn for 10 weeks (www.philipyancey.com/RNS)“There has been a great deal of talk lately about the role of religion in politics. Yet, if the religious voice were truly a factor, then 45 million Americans—and 8 million children—would not be uninsured.”
Marla Feldman
Director of the Joint Commission on Social Action of Reform Judaism (RNS)“Saddam Hussein is developing at breakneck speed weapons of mass destruction he plans to use against America and her allies.”
Richard Land
President of the Southern Baptist Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission, in 2002 (Baptist Press/ethicsdaily.com)“My justification for the war was not based upon weapons of mass destruction.”
Richard Land
In 2007 (BeliefNet/ethicsdaily.com)This is a ploy by Muslims to encourage the widespread use of this falsehood by nonbelievers so the non-Islamic world might be tranquilized into thinking Islam is just another harmless religion, one that might some day be persuaded to convert to Christianity, if we don’t antagonize them by political incorrectness.
A comparison of the characterizations of Allah in the Qur’an and Jehovah God in the Bible will reveal vastly different beings the most casual eye can easily detect.
03/30/2007 - By John Rutledge
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Students find missions calling through BSM
Posted: 3/30/07
Students from Stephen F. Austin State University helped work on a Katrina-damaged church during spring break. Students find missions calling through BSM
By John Hall
Texas Baptist Communications
NACOGDOCHES—When Ashlee Stricklin was a high school senior, Stephen F. Austin State University barely made the list of colleges she considered attending. But when she visited, she found God calling her to the campus.
Stephen F. Austin State University pray during Beach Reach at South Padre Island.
Students Minister at Spring Break
• Beach Reach volunteers immersed in missions service
• Baylor fraternity brothers serve God in the Ozarks
• DBU students build homes in South Carolina & South Dakota
• HBU students take local & global missions plunge
• ETBU nursing students put training into practice in Mexico
• Students find missions calling through BSM
• More than a day at the beachShe stopped by the school’s Baptist Student Ministries, where a speaker told students God brought each one of them to the BSM that night for a reason.
03/30/2007 - By John Rutledge
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Two generations of Wiesers serve as student missionaries
Posted: 3/30/07
Ken Wieser (left, top row), associate pastor at Heights Baptist Church in Alvin, and his wife, Judy (left, lower), never expected their three children—Kris (center, top), Jana (center, lower) and Keith (right, top)—to follow in their footsteps and serve as student missionaries with the Baptist Student Ministry at Stephen F. Austin State University in Nacogdoches. Keith’s wife, Paige (right, lower), also served as a student missionary. (Photo courtesy of the Wieser family) Two generations of Wiesers
serve as student missionariesBy Ken Camp
Managing Editor
ALVIN—The Wieser family sees student missionary service as more than a family tradition. For two generations, they believe it’s been God’s instrument for confirming a calling to Christian service.
Ken and Judy Wieser both became involved in missions through what was then called the Baptist Student Union at Stephen F. Austin State University in Nacogdoches. Their three children—Keith, Jana and Kris—not only followed their parents’ lead in their college choice, but also each served terms as student missionaries.
03/30/2007 - By John Rutledge
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At 40 years, no break for Texas Baptist Men
Posted: 3/30/07
At 40 years, no break
for Texas Baptist MenBy Barbara Bedrick
Texas Baptist Communications
DALLAS—Forty years of labor ought to entitle a worker to a break. In the Old Testament, even Noah got one. But don’t tell that to Texas Baptist Men volunteers. They are nailing a church back together again in Sabine Pass.
Texas Baptist Men, a missions organization affiliated with the Baptist General Convention of Texas, takes no spring break. Instead, its volunteers work to help people who lost their church building to Hurricane Rita.
03/30/2007 - By John Rutledge
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Texas Tidbits
Posted: 3/30/07
Texas Tidbits
Scholarship fund benefits HPU student workers. The Landon Carter and Edna Fay Johnson Work Scholarship Fund has been established at Howard Payne University to pay students for their on-campus work. The fund honors the memories of the Johnsons, members of First Baptist Church in Ponca City, Okla. Mrs. Johnson graduated from Howard Payne and taught math at the school nine years.
The Ancient Trasures of the Holy Land exhibit features an ossuary (casket) that many archaeologists think contained the bones of Simon of Cyrenia. Holy Land relics come to Texas. An exhibit of Holy Land relics—believed to be the largest ever to tour the United States—is on display at Dallas Fair Park through July 28. The 27,000-square-foot exhibits includes more than 350 relics and rare sacred texts, including many never before seen outside of Jerusalem.The display include portions of the Leviticus and Deuteronomy Dead Sea Scrolls; the ossuary (bone box) archeologists believe held the remains of Simon the Cyrene, who carried the cross for Jesus; a 2,000-year-old sandal found at Masada; Egyptian artifacts, some over 5,000 years old; ancient weapons, including bronze spear heads, battle axes and a sword dating as early as 2200 B.C.
Maston lectures slated at Logsdon. Allen Verhey of Duke University is the featured speaker for the T.B. Maston Christian ethics lectures April 2 and 3 at Hardin-Simmons University’s Logsdon School of Theology. Topics include “Reading Scripture and Caring at the End of Life” and “Praying and Caring at the End of Life.” The lectures are free and open to the public.
03/30/2007 - By John Rutledge
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TOGETHER: Jesus is the way, the truth & the life
Posted: 3/30/07
TOGETHER:
Jesus is the way, the truth & the lifeA speech by Charles Kimball at this year’s Christian Life Conference has generated a lot of discussion. Kimball, a professor at Wake Forest University in North Carolina, said Christians and Muslims “are talking about the same God.”
“There is really not much ambiguity about this. Allah is simply the Arabic word for God,” Kimball said. “The name for God in Islam, in Arabic, is Allah. This is not another god. This is the same God that Jews and Christians are talking about.”
Executive Director
BGCT Executive Board
This language is a bit jarring. It’s not how we Baptists normally talk. Kimball was referring to the fact Christians and Muslims, as well as Jews, trace their theological heritage to the God of Abraham. He also was stating the linguistic fact that Middle Eastern Christians who speak Arabic use the word “Allah” (God) in prayers, Scripture reading and worship.
To say that the God of Christians, Jews and Muslims is the same God is a literary and historical understanding of the common origins we have in the story of Abraham. But the reality of Jesus Christ as God incarnate means that any view of God that does not look through the eyes of Jesus is going to be flawed and inadequate to provide salvation.
03/30/2007 - By John Rutledge
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