Archives
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Evangelism requires commitment–even if it means holding church under a tree
Posted: 1/30/08
Youth who have never fit in at church are drawn to Ron Evans' Church Under the Tree in a Plano park. Evangelism requires commitment–
even if it means holding church under a treeBy Loni Fancher
Texas Baptist Communications
ROCKWALL—Commitment is the key to a fruitful ministry, said Ron Evans. He should know. He’s persistently followed God’s calling to break through barriers and reach a group of disenfranchised young people as pastor of Plano’s Church Under the Tree.
During Super Summer in 2006, the youth pastor of Brown Street Baptist Fellowship in Wylie felt God calling him to reach out to unchurched and disenfranchised youth.
01/30/2008 - By John Rutledge
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DOWN HOME: Talk about your gridiron miracle
Posted: 1/30/08
DOWN HOME:
Talk about your gridiron miracleThis season, the National Football League once again demonstrated an old adage passed down from generation unto generation: Football will break your heart.
Unless, inexplicably, you are a New England Patriots’ fan (like my son-in-law, Aaron), or, even more incomprehensibly, you favor the New York Giants, you got your heart broken weeks—maybe even months—ago.
Well, that’s not exactly true.
I haven’t polled Houston Texans fans to see if they’ve suffered like all of us who root, root, root for the Dallas Cowboys. We were disturbed when the Cowboys lost their Mojo in December. And we were crushed when the despised Giants knocked them out of contention for the Super Bowl.
01/30/2008 - By John Rutledge
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EDITORIAL: The BGCT’s opportunity for success
Posted: 1/30/08
EDITORIAL:
The BGCT’s opportunity for successLike few decisions in the past 100 years, the Baptist General Convention of Texas Executive Board must make a correct call on the election of its next executive director.
Although the BGCT is composed of about 5,500 churches, more than 100 associations, 27 agencies and institutions, and more than a million Baptist Christians, the executive director wields unparalleled influence in shaping the overall direction of the convention. That’s because the Executive Board stands at the visible “center” of the BGCT. It supplies the connective tissue between Texas Baptist churches and the institutions and convention ministries. It provides most of the conventionwide promotion, receives and allocates the BGCT’s Cooperative Program unified budget, and helps coordinate overall strategy and tactics for making an impact on our state, nation and the world with the gospel.
During the last few years, for a variety of reasons, the BGCT has been in a funk. We have lost churches to a competing state convention. More tragically, churches have distanced themselves from our convention because of apathy and a sense the convention is irrelevant to them and to their ministries. Cooperative Program receipts have suffered. The Executive Board has endured rounds of staff cutbacks and reorganizations. Support for institutions has not been satisfactory. Attendance at vital events, such as the BGCT annual meeting, has been disappointing. Factions have pointed fingers of blame at each other. Morale has suffered, both in the Baptist Building and across the state.
The next person to occupy the executive director’s chair—which became vacant Feb. 1—must restore a spirit of purpose and unity to our beloved BGCT. This will be more difficult and demanding than we can imagine. For one thing, the Cooperative Program is expected to decline, most likely necessitating further staff cutbacks and possibly curtailing institutional and missions/ministry support. These moves will bruise morale. For another, some aspects of factionalism have had time to set up and harden, so bringing our disparate constituencies back together will require patience, persistence and sacrificial, selfless integrity. The person who steps into that breach will feel as if he’s being pressured and questioned from every direction, an excruciatingly lonely assignment.
01/30/2008 - By John Rutledge
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Evangelism requires commitment–even if it means holding church under a tree
Posted: 1/30/08
Youth who have never fit in at church are drawn to Ron Evans' Church Under a Tree in a Plano park. Evangelism requires commitment–
even if it means holding church under a treeBy Loni Fancher
Texas Baptist Communications
ROCKWALL—Commitment is the key to a fruitful ministry, said Ron Evans. He should know. He’s persistently followed God’s calling to break through barriers and reach a group of disenfranchised young people as pastor of Plano’s Church Under the Tree.
During Super Summer in 2006, the youth pastor of Brown Street Baptist Fellowship in Wylie felt God calling him to reach out to unchurched and disenfranchised youth.
01/30/2008 - By John Rutledge
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Faith Digest
Posted: 1/30/08
Faith Digest
Catholic Charities study links poverty and racism. Poverty and race remain integrally linked in the United States, and continuing racism contributes to that linkage, according to a recently released study by Catholic Charities. The study cites evidence the poverty rate for African- Americans in the U.S. is 24 percent—three times the rate for whites. Latinos and Native Americans also suffer from poverty rates above 20 percent. On average, white families are 10 times richer than minority families, the study says. And while white families’ wealth grew 20 percent between 1998 and 2001, the net worth of African-American households decreased during that period. At the same time, “the ghosts of our legacy of racial inequality continue to haunt us,” the study says, citing racial violence as well as discrimination in housing and health care. The study, “Poverty and Racism: Overlapping Threats to the Common Good,” is part of Catholic Charities’ campaign to cut the U.S. poverty rate in half by 2020.
Creationists launch online journal. Answers in Genesis, the Christian ministry that founded the $27 million Creation Museum in Kentucky last year, has launched an online technical journal to publish studies consistent with its biblical views. The Answers Research Journal will disseminate research conducted by creationist theologians and scientists who follow a literal reading of the Creation account in Genesis. Ken Hamm, president of Answers in Genesis, said submissions will be peer-reviewed, but the journal’s guidelines discourage asking non-creationists to conduct those reviews. The journal is needed because of academic bias in most scientific journals against creationists, Hamm said.
01/30/2008 - By John Rutledge
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Holy Land church leaders appeal for Gaza
Posted: 1/30/08
Sheikh Raed Salah (center), head of the Islamic Movement in northern Israel, prays during a protest against Israel's blockade of Gaza, at the Erez crossing just outside the northern Gaza Strip. Israel recently resumed fuel supplies to the Gaza Strip's main power plant, offering limited respite from a blockade that plunged much of the Hamas-ruled territory into darkness and touched off international protests. (REUTERS/Ammar Awad) Holy Land church leaders appeal for Gaza
By Michele Chabin
Religion News Service
JERUSALEM (RNS)—Christian leaders from the Holy Land are demanding that Israel, President Bush and the world community “put an end to this suffering” of Gaza residents caught in the crossfire between Israel and the Hamas militants who rule the Gaza Strip.
“There is no time to waste when human life is endangered,” said the heads of the churches in Jerusalem and the Holy Land.
01/30/2008 - By John Rutledge
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Some worry Habitat dispute might stall Katrina recovery
Posted: 1/30/08
Some worry Habitat dispute
might stall Katrina recoveryBy Bruce Nolan
Religion News Service
NEW ORLEANS (RNS)—A months-long effort by Habitat for Humanity International to retool relations with its 1,600 local affiliates has raised concerns in Habitat’s operation in southern Louisiana, where volunteers have built more than 100 low-cost replacement homes since Hurricane Katrina.
The dispute recently surfaced when the San Antonio affiliate—the oldest in a far-flung Habitat organization—charged in federal court that Habitat for Humanity International sought to impose unprecedented controls on the local organizations.
Texan Alison Cagle from Clayborne hammers a nail while working at a Habitat for Humanity site in New Orleans in this 2006 file photo. Some participants in the rebuilding effort in southern Louisiana fear Habitat International’s dispute with its domestic affiliates could derail the ongoing Katrina rebuilding effort. 01/30/2008 - By John Rutledge
