Presidential Prayer Team organization launches_71204

Posted: 7/09/04

Presidential Prayer Team organization
launches its Pray the Vote initiative

By Sarah Farris

BGCT Summer Intern

In hopes of encouraging Christians to vote this fall, the Presidential Prayer Team launched its Pray the Vote and Prayer Party initiatives prior to Independence Day.

07/09/2004 - By John Rutledge

Churches find purpose beyond 40-day experience_71204

Posted: 7/09/04

Churches find purpose beyond 40-day experience

By Ken Camp

Managing Editor

Benefits from 40 Days of Purpose stretch beyond an initial 40-day shared congregational experience, say leaders of several Texas Baptist churches that have been through the program–including some who approached it with skepticism.

07/09/2004 - By John Rutledge

Texas Baptist Men build worship center for African Texas church_71204

Posted: 7/09/04

Texas Baptist Men build worship
center for African Texas church

By Mary Crouch

BGCT Summer Intern

GRAND PRAIRIE–Texas Baptist Men formed a new bond this spring with African Evangelical Baptist Church of Grand Prairie as volunteers built a sanctuary for the congregation.

07/09/2004 - By John Rutledge

Texas WMU board approves staff reoganization, change in its focus_71204

Posted: 7/09/04

Texas WMU board approves staff
reoganization, change in its focus

By Ferrell Foster

Texas Baptist Communications

DALLAS–The Woman's Missionary Union of Texas board of directors has approved a reorganization of the state WMU staff.

07/09/2004 - By John Rutledge

Texas Tidbits_71204

Posted: 7/09/04

Texas Tidbits

DBU hosts Japanese group. Dallas Baptist University recently celebrated the opening of its International Center by playing host to the National Collegiate Network, a recruiting company that helps Japanese students select universities in the United States. The network donated 10 cherry blossom trees to DBU in gratitude, and the recruiting company and DBU jointly sponsored a cultural festival for Japanese students at DBU. The International Center is a 11,000-square-foot building that houses four classrooms, two large multipurpose meeting rooms, a computer lab, a student lounge and a full-service kitchen. DBU's student body includes more than 300 internationals from at least 50 countries.

O'Brien to describe world. "Global Reality Check: A Status of the World," will be the theme of a presentation by Baptist missions strategist Bill O'Brien July 13 at 7 p.m. The event is sponsored by Greater Good Global Support Services and will be held at the WorldconneX offices, located at Southside at Lamar streets, near downtown Dallas. O'Brien will discuss health pandemics like HIV/AIDS; world population growth and migrations; political, religious and cultural shifts; and life-changing technologies. For more information go to the website, www.g3s2.org/training.

Lubbock CWJC graduate receives WMU award. Amanda Perez of Lubbock received the national Woman's Missionary Union's 2004 Sybil Bentley Dove Award. Perez, a single mother rearing three children, graduated in May 2003 from Christian Women's Job Corps in Lubbock. She accepted Christ as her Savior and was baptized less than a month after entering the program. After graduating from Christian Women's Job Corps, Perez attended summer school to complete requirements for her high school diploma. She attends South Plains College and hopes to become a social worker. The Sybil Bentley Dove Endowment was established in 1998. The WMU Foundation presents the award annually to a current or former CWJC participant whom the foundation recognizes as wanting to improve her life through skills training, academic development and faith in Christ.

07/09/2004 - By John Rutledge

TOGETHER: Life verse exerts powerful influence_71204

Posted: 7/09/04

TOGETHER:
Life verse exerts powerful influence

Do you have a life verse? Many Christians look for a single verse in Scripture that seems to “wrap up” the truth for their life. Sometimes that verse is called a life purpose statement. Here are some I have heard people use.

From Paul's Philippian epistle: “For to me to live is Christ and to die is gain” (1:21). “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me” (4:13). “I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of sharing in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, and so, somehow, to attain to the resurrection from the dead” (3:10-11). “But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus” (3:13-14).

Or from Paul's letter to the Romans: “And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose” (8:28).

07/09/2004 - By John Rutledge

True Love Waits on display at Olympics_71204

Posted: 7/09/04

True Love Waits on display at Olympics

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (BP)–True Love Waits will carry its message of sexual purity to the 2004 Olympic Games in Athens this August.

True Love Waits, which celebrates its 10th anniversary this year, is an international campaign that challenges teenagers and college students to remain sexually abstinent until marriage.

An estimated 2.5 million to 3 million young people worldwide have signed the True Love Waits sexual purity pledge, according to LifeWay Christian Resources, the Southern Baptist publishing house that created the True Love Waits initiative.

07/09/2004 - By John Rutledge

True Love Waits helps slow spread of AIDS/HIV in Uganda_71204

Posted: 7/09/04

True Love Waits helps slow
spread of AIDS/HIV in Uganda

By Shawn Hendricks

LifeWay Christian Resources

WASHINGTON (BP)–Ten years ago, three out of 10 people in Uganda were infected with HIV or AIDS. Today, that number has dropped to six out of 100. And Uganda's First Lady Janet Museveni credits faith-based abstinence programs with slowing the spread of the fatal disease in her country.

07/09/2004 - By John Rutledge

Texan takes missions commitment to the extreme_71204

Posted: 7/09/04

Jonathan Williams of First Baptist Church in Flower Mound works among the Amarakaeri people in remote areas of Peru as part of the International Mission Board's Xtreme Team.

Texan takes missions commitment to the extreme

By Sarah Farris

BGCT Summer Intern

WESTERN SOUTH AMERICA–Deep in the jungles of the Amazon and high in the Andes Mountains, Texan Jonathan Williams and other missionaries are ministering in Peru, Ecuador, Bolivia and Chile in extreme ways.

07/09/2004 - By John Rutledge

Sexual purity, evangelism share meeting spotlight_71204

Posted: 7/09/04

Sexual purity, evangelism share meeting spotlight

By Ferrell Foster

Texas Baptist Communications

DALLAS–More than 12,000 Texas Baptist teenagers attended this year's Youth Evangelism Conference.

07/09/2004 - By John Rutledge

Storylist_71204

Storylist for 7/12/04 issue GO TO SECTIONS: • Texas       • Baptists       • Faith       • Departments      • Opinion       • Bible Study       • Delivering smiles at Texas…

07/09/2004 - By John Rutledge

CYBERCOLUMN by Jeanie Miley: Free to question, blessed to grow_71204

Posted: 7/02/04

CYBERCOLUMN:
Free to question, blessed to grow

By Jeanie Miley

My life as a seeker began, appropriately, with my first religion course in college. I was so awestruck at the new information and ideas that I laboriously copied my class notes and mailed them to my parents, asking, “What do you think about this?”

For the first time, I was invited to examine my own beliefs and opinions—all of which I had absorbed from my religious culture and my home—and form a belief system and faith of my own. In that religion course, I encountered my childhood, too-small God-image.

07/02/2004 - By John Rutledge