Baptist Briefs: Guidestone to fight healthcare rule

GuideStone ready to battle mandate in court. GuideStone Financial Resources has renewed its vow to fight the Affordable Care Act’s mandate for contraceptives, looking to court action alongside efforts in Congress and before federal agencies. The mandate covers all FDA-approved contraceptives, including those that cause early abortions. GuideStone President O.S. Hawkins told members of the Southern Baptist Convention Executive Committee litigation is the latest front in GuideStone’s three-pronged fight to protect church health plans. GuideStone also has been working with a broad coalition of religious denominations on both the regulatory and legislative fronts.

Baptist heads farmworker ministry. Lindsay Comstock, an ordained Baptist minister and former human-trafficking specialist for the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship, is the new executive director of the National Lindsay ComstockFarm Worker Ministry, a faith-based organization advocating justice and empowerment for an estimated 3 million migrant and seasonal farmworkers in the United States. Comstock, until recently minister of Christian education and youth at First Baptist Church of Worcester, Mass., succeeds Virginia Nesmith, who stepped down in 2012 after 15 years. Comstock’s first order of business is relocating the ministry’s office from St. Louis to Raleigh, N.C. Formed in 1920 as a service ministry to provide farmworkers with food, clothing and day care, the National Farm Worker Ministry shifted to advocacy in the 1960s when United Farm Workers founder Cesar Chavez called on the religious community to change its emphasis from charity to justice. Comstock holds degrees from Chowan University in Murfreesboro, N.C., and Baptist Theological Seminary of Richmond. She served previously as associate pastor at Tabernacle Baptist Church in Richmond, Va., which ordained her to the gospel ministry in 2007. She served four years as a human-trafficking specialist in Southeast