More than 1,000 people made professions of faith as a result of Valley Reach, an evangelistic effort centered on the Baptist General Convention of Texas annual meeting.

About 130 churches participated in Valley Reach, hosting a variety of efforts that included block parties, the distribution of multimedia gospel compact discs, taco distribution and an apologetics conference.

The outreach activities resulted in 1,024 people making first-time professions of faith and 430 people rededicating their lives to Christ.

BELTON—Hundreds of Central Texas children will have new toys to play with this Christmas, thanks to students from the University of Mary Hardin-Baylor.

For the eighth year, UMHB students in the Sports Medicine Association partnered with Toys for Tots of Waco to provide new toys for underprivileged children in the region.

The U.S. Marine Corps Reserve organizes Toys for Tots each year. In 1991, the Marine Toys for Tots Foundation was created and has provided the funding for the program ever since. Since the foundation was created, it has supplemented local toy collections with 81.3 million toys.

Billy Laxton, head athletic trainer at UMHB, sees the Toys for Tots program as a perfect opportunity to help athletic training students serve others.

“We wanted to do something positive for the community. Eight years ago, no one in this area was working with this toy drive, and it was at the height of deployment to the Middle East, so it just seemed like a good fit,” said Laxton.

“The Marine Corps Reserve brings us boxes every year, and we do our best to fill them up with new toys. In recent years we’ve had such a good turnout, they had to bring us more boxes, because we had so many toys.”

Laxton continues to be surprised by the amount of toys received from the Temple and Belton area.

“We get anywhere from 80 to 160 toys each year,” he said. “I’m just inspired and overwhelmed by people’s continued generosity.”

Whitney Rodgers, a senior athletic training major and president of the group, donates to the cause every year.

“I just went out and bought like 20 toys,” said Rodgers. “It’s our way to give back. It’s better to get a new toy than a hand-me-down.”

Junior athletic training major Tara Humphrey plans to continue to participate in the Toys for Tots drive in the future.

“I think Toys for Tots is a great cause,” said Humphrey. “It gives children a chance to have a good Christmas. And after all, isn’t the true gift of Christmas giving rather than receiving?”

Friends of Texas Baptist Men gathered in east Dallas recently for the dedication of the John LaNoue Disaster Relief Complex—a 15,000-square-foot expansion of the Robert E. Dixon Mission Equipping Center.

John LaNoue (left), longtime leader in Texas Baptist Men and a pioneer in disaster relief ministries, visits with Paul Michael Smith, a TBM disaster relief volunteer from First Baptist Church in Plano during the dedication of the disaster relief complex named in LaNoue’s honor at the Robert E. Dixon Mission Equipping Center in east Dallas.

Texas Baptist Men disaster relief volunteers prepare and serve a meal to guests attending the dedication of the complex.

The building— about 80 percent completed— includes bays to house the fleet of TBM disaster relief vehicles.

It also has a secure communications center with its own auxiliary generator to enable the disaster relief command center to stay in communication with teams on the field regardless of weather conditions.

An open house on dedication day featured booths displaying varied TBM ministries.

Bob Dixon, who led Texas Baptist Men more than three decades as executive director, recounts the “activity of God” in TBM disaster relief ministries during the dedication of the new complex at the mission equipping center in east Dallas that bears Dixon’s name.

The new John LaNoue Disaster Relief Complex will include bays to house the fleet of Texas Baptist Men disaster relief vehicles.

BEEVILLE—No noisy gobbles or flapping wings announced the arrival of Charles “Turkey Guy” Morris at South Texas Children’s Home Ministries before Thanksgiving. But that’s one of the only things that marked his arrival as different from the first Turkey Guy who began delivering a truckload of turkeys to Baptist children’s homes 70 years ago.

For seven decades, one Robertson Country resident after another has assumed the Turkey Guy mantle. Morris, who took over the duties in 1994, is the sixth to bear the responsibility. People throughout the county give year-round to a designated fund at Wells Fargo Bank in Franklin to purchase the turkeys.

“Turkey Guy” Charles Morris (center), representing the Robertson County Turkey Fund, visits South Texas Children’s Home Ministries before Thanksgiving. The Turkey Fund has provided holiday turkeys more than 70 years to benefit children such as (left to right) Samuel, Shelley and Elena. Expressing appreciation are (left to right) house parent Buffy Lee, President Todd Roberson and Vice President Mark Childs from South Texas Children’s Home Ministries, and house parent Michael Lee. (PHOTO/STCHM)

“It all started in the early 1930s with a man named William Anderson,” Morris said. “He and his sister, Sudie, lived at Buckner’s Children’s Home for several years during their childhood. After growing up, Will moved away and became very successful.

“But when the Depression hit, he moved back to Calvert and started raising turkeys and other animals. He remembered what Buckner had done for him, and out of gratitude, he decided to take them a load of live turkeys for their holiday meals.”

Anderson continued the practice many years. After his death, J.L. Wallace, pastor of Franklin Baptist Church for 30 years, continued the tradition. Over the years, Wallace expanded the ministry to include other Baptist children’s homes at sites throughout Texas and was instrumental in involving other individuals and churches in Robertson County.

Many people, even in Robertson County, don’t know Morris by name, he acknowledged, but they immediately recognize any reference to the Turkey Guy. He makes the need for funds known by announcing it in various churches and posting notices in area newsletters and newspapers.

“It is the good people of Robertson County that make it all happen,” Morris said. Seven churches in the county participated in 2010, allowing for the distribution of $2,400 this year to Baptist children’s homes in Texas.

“South Texas Children’s Home Ministries has been the recipient of turkey funds for the past 25 years,” STCHM President Todd Roberson said. “Holidays can be stressful for kids whose lives have been disrupted by family crises, but the love and generosity of others help our kids realize that they are not forgotten. It is heartwarming to know that caring people have continued this tradition year after year for the sake of children all over Texas.”

This year, the children’s home surprised Morris with a campuswide lunch when he visited.

House parents Michael and Buffy Lee served the traditional Thanksgiving meal with all the trimmings in Love Cottage where they care for girls between ages 3 and 16.

“We have found it to be so important to give the children a family setting with great food to help them make it through the holidays,” Lee said. “We send a special thanks to all those that made our Thanksgiving dinner possible. God bless you for being so generous.”

Brandee has lived in Love Cottage only two months, but she was thankful for the warm home and meal on Thanksgiving.

“I think it is really wonderful that people care enough to help us have what we need,” she said.

“And it is also nice that people provide the special extras. The extra things really mean a lot.”

NASHVILLE, Tenn.—When the contemporary Christian group Selah recorded “It Is Well with My Soul” and “Precious Lord, Take My Hand” for their 1999 debut album, Be Still My Soul, one of its members, Todd Smith, had no idea how those hymns would help him and his family through a season of grief a decade later.

When Smith’s wife, Angie, was 18 weeks pregnant with their fourth daughter, Audrey, she went in for what she thought would be a routine ultrasound.

She recalls the medical technician asking several cryptic questions before her doctor came in and confirmed her worst possible fears, saying: “Your child has many conditions. Her kidneys aren’t functioning, and her heart is much too large. Each of these is a lethal condition. There is no amniotic fluid, and her lungs are not developing. You will have some choices to make.”

The doctor and his staff encouraged her to terminate the pregnancy. Overwhelmed, the Smiths sought the opinions of other doctors and specialists. The general consensus was their baby would die in the womb, and if she did survive birth, she probably would gasp for breath and live only a minute at the most.

The couple left each doctor’s visit confused and shaken, but they adamantly refused to have an abortion. 

During their time of uncertainty and heartache, the Smiths had little left to do but cry out to God and trust in him—no matter what the outcome would be for their baby.

They soon discovered providing individual updates to family and friends was too daunting a task. So, Angie Smith began writing a blog for their loved ones called “Bring the Rain.”

During Selah’s concerts, Smith asked audiences for prayer and shared about his wife’s blog.  Within a few months, “Bring the Rain” was receiving 500,000 hits per month and Angie Smith became one of America’s top-ranked “mommy bloggers.” 

While anticipating the birth of their baby girl, Audrey Caroline, they concluded a C-section would give her the greatest possibility to live.

“Angie was just so brave. She was in so much pain because there was no amniotic fluid. She just sacrificed her body,” Smith said.

On April 7, 2008, Audrey Caroline entered the world and exited it a few hours later. The Smiths consider the few precious hours they spent with Audrey a miracle and precious gift from God.

“When Audrey came out, we got to hear her cry, which we thought we would never get to do, and I got to see her move just a little bit,” Smith said.

“I brought her over to Angie, and we just wept. Everything that we could think of to tell her right there, we did. She just had this beautiful little face. We were also thankful that her sisters and many relatives also got to see her.

“She lived for about two-and-a-half hours and never gasped for breath. There was no screaming. It was just so peaceful. In fact, it was the most peaceful day that I’ve ever experienced in my life. I would have never thought that was possible, but there was so much joy. We were with our girl, and we wanted to show her off to everybody. God just really turned a horrible experience into something amazing.”

Shortly after learning that Audrey’s condition would be terminal, Angie Smith wanted to create a song to convey her feelings about baby Audrey. The Smiths met with songwriter Christa Wells and wrote the song, “I Will Carry You.” Although the song originally was intended only for Audrey’s memorial service, the other members of Selah were so moved by it they requested it be released to the public.

Between waves of grief in the weeks following Audrey’s death, the Smith family experienced another devastating loss.

 Todd Smith’s sister, Nicol Sponberg, a Christian recording artist and former member of Selah, lost her 2-month-old son, Luke, to Sudden Infant Death Syndrome.  In their grief, the Smiths had a foundational choice to make.

“We had to look at what we were going to choose to believe,” Smith said.  “We had to decide if the God that we chose to worship in the good times was the same and just as faithful in this horrific time. It hasn’t been easy. There have been and still are, major ups and downs, but we choose to trust him because we know that he is good and faithful.

“You need to be honest about your desperation and honest about how awful it is. Yes, it is horrible. You deal with these different times where you have disbelief, incredible pain, anger, frustration and unanswered questions. But at the same time, there’s this incredible peace and this hope. …

“Every time we hear that a person’s life has been changed through what happened to us, it gives weight to Audrey’s life. My little girl, who was in the womb for 32 weeks, has made more of an impact on people than I probably will my whole life.”

Angie Smith has written a book, I Will Carry You, as a way to minister to others who have suffered the loss of a child while sharing that the source of their hope and peace comes from a relationship with Christ.

“I think one of the main themes that I learned through this is that God is not intimidated by my frustrations, questions and sadness,” she said.  “I definitely developed a different understanding of Christ as a comforter. Just knowing that no matter what I was feeling or how alone I felt, I had to bring all of that to him, instead of shying away. We are all going to go through times where we feel like everything is falling apart, but what God wants is for us to remain faithful and turn to him during those times for comfort and just cry out to him. …

“I think we’d be lying if we said that there weren’t moments where we just felt abandoned and confused. But to come through this experience and feel like our faith is stronger is an amazing testimony of who God is to us when we’re in those dark places. 

“I think it’s different when you’ve walked through a season like this to be able to say: ‘We’re just barely on the other side of this, but we do have hope and a strong faith because we know that Jesus will not fail those who trust in him.’”

PASADENA—Most churches would be happy to say they baptized 100 people during a year. But First Baptist Church in Pasadena expects to baptize 100 more than last year.

Baptisms numbered 159 in 2008, and the church baptized 169 last year. This year, through October, 245 had stirred the baptismal waters.

J.J. Cox, youth minister at First Baptist Church in Pasadena, prepares to baptize three young women, while others await baptism. (PHOTO/Courtesy of First Baptist Church in Pasadena)

“It’s not like we’re doing anything unique. God is just blessing in a faithful way,” Pastor Charles Redmond said.

Redmond does not attach a cause/effect relationship to a visit he made to the Billy Graham Retreat Center in North Carolina earlier this year. But he noticed a upward trend in people making a decision to follow Christ after he returned and taught his people to use an evangelism tract.

“I felt impressed to come back and teach people to use it through the pulpit,” he said. At the conclusion of the service, worshippers took all 3,000 of the tracts. The church ordered another 3,000, and about half of those were taken the next Sunday.

“Very, very soon—almost immediately—we began to see people being saved beyond anything we had experienced,” Redmond said.

The Holy Spirit was the emphasis during Redmond’s visit to the Graham retreat center, and he brought that focus back to First Baptist Church.

“That’s never been one of our major emphases, so we began to teach what the Bible says about the Holy Spirit. I think God has honored that, and God has blessed that. But having said that, God has just spoken to a lot of hearts,” Redmond said.

Many in his congregation have brought more friends and neighbors to church, he noticed.

“We’ve tried every way in the world to share Christ where we are, just like all the other churches do. But the real key is if you can get those members, in their daily lives, bearing the witness of Christ however the Holy Spirit gives them opportunity. They’re around the people who need the Lord,” he said.

“We’re out of the trap of passing out a card and saying, ‘Go visit this person.’ We’re just saying, ‘We’re going to equip you to share Jesus and see what happens.’”

He preaches in two services each Sunday morning and at a community lunch each Tuesday that draws hundreds from outside First Baptist’s membership. His son, Jon, is associate pastor and preaches in the Sunday and Wednesday night services.

People continue making public professions of faith in all four services, Jon Redmond said.

“The preaching has not been anything fancy or out of the ordinary. There’s no gimmicks—just simple, biblical preaching,” he said.

Charles Redmond—now in his 21st year of ministry at the Pasadena church—agreed.

“Our style is different, which is refreshing, I’m sure, for our congregation. But though we do it in different ways, we’re both just simply preaching what the word of God says. We’re not trying to have a production. We’re just trying to teach what the word of God says,” he said.

Baptism can be a catalyst for the start of spiritual inner conversations in others, Jon Redmond said.

“The baptism experience is a sermon in itself. We’ve seen a lot of older people baptized, and when you see someone in their 80s … who barely has the physical strength to get in the baptistery and yet they go through the process, I think that says to other people who are watching that, ‘If she can do that, if he can do that, then I can do that,’” he said.

Those baptisms have the added effect of drawing others to the church, perhaps for the first time. First Baptist has seen visitors at baptisms rise this year after emphasizing the need for the person being baptized to invite others to the occasion.

“Many people who have just become a Christian, they don’t have many Christian friends. We say: ‘When you have a birthday party, you send invitations. So, when you’re going to be baptized, send invitations and invite friends to your baptism.’

“They may be coming out of friendship or family respect, but they’re going to be in that room, and they’re fixing to hear the gospel. And we’re going to plant seed, even if we don’t see all the fruit,” Charles Redmond said.

During each baptism, friends and family are asked to stand.

“It’s to magnify the fact that this is really a great deal,” he said. “A person getting saved is kind of a big event around here, and it’s a big event in heaven.

“We baptize a lot of people around here, and after every person, the congregation claps. It’s not like a clap at a Dallas Cowboy game. It’s a strong clap, but it’s a reverent clap. People are just rejoicing to see people saved.”

The congregation comes with an expectation not only that people will be saved, but also a sense that God is at work, he continued.

“There is an expectancy. You can feel that. We feel God is going to do some mighty things here that we haven’t even fathomed. We don’t know what they are, so we’re sure not trying to orchestrate them,” he explained.

Jon Redmond said the congregation has a warmth that others find inviting. An as example, he mentioned a support group for people with addictions of all kinds.

“They not only come to their meetings, but they come to church and are saved and are welcomed warmly. There’s not a holier-than-thou attitude in the church. I think we all just recognize that we’re all sinners, we all need God’s grace, and nobody is better than anyone else. Nobody is so bad they can’t be saved, and nobody is so good that they don’t need to be saved.”

ABILENE—Bobbie Neal picked up a picture of a dragon drawn by her 9-year-old nephew, Chase. “He’s an excellent little artist,” she proclaimed, sitting in the motel room where her extended family has lived for almost a year.

Bobbie and Robert Neal have been caring for Chase, his 6-year-old brother, Braiden, and their little sister, Sarah, in their parents’ absence. The Neals are one of five families with children enrolled at Johnston Elementary School in Abilene who received toys and a decorated Christmas tree from students at Hardin-Simmons University.

“These five families would not be able to give the kids much for Christmas, if anything, if it were not for the efforts of students at HSU. They have really come to the aid of these families,” said Rosalyn Muzaurieta, special events coordinator at Johnston Elementary School.

Students filled bins in university dorms with donated toys, and some gave money so toys could be purchased for the 19 children in the families.

Brittany Suell, student activities director at HSU, noted students enjoyed participating in the toy collection the past, and she wanted to rees-tablish the tradition.

“Students are looking for projects to become more involved in the community. They really want ways to give back to folks, especially during the holidays,” she said.

Mindy Morris, Title One social services coordinator for the Abilene Independent School District, oversees the needs of students at 11 schools that include low-income students.

“AISD has over 700 students living in families who have been identified as homeless just this semester. That’s more homeless children than we had in all of last year,” Morris said.

Ben Johnson from HSU delivers toys to Bobbie Neal, who has been keeping her nephews and niece for close to a year. The children’s parents are unable to care for them. Robert Neal has been working at the motel in exchange for the room where the family lives.

“The Neals are absolutely one of the families in the greatest need—and certainly worthy of any help that comes from the community.”

Bobbie Neal was diagnosed with cancer in July and underwent surgery in September. She hopes she soon will be authorized by Medicaid to take the five weeks of chemotherapy and six weeks of radiation treatments her doctor has recommended.

Her husband works at the motel in exchange for the room where he and his family live.

“The owner here has really been nice to us. He didn’t have to give me a job. He could have just kicked us out of here,” he said.

The motel room is decorated with Chase’s penciled drawings, tacked above a shelf near the twin mattress Chase and Braiden share.

Toys provided to the children by HSU students included two Barbie dolls, three board games, Playdoh, toy cars, a foam dart gun, some large coloring pages and crayons.

“We really didn’t know what we could give the kids this Christmas. We were just hoping we could come up with something. This really helps,” Mrs. Neal said.

Clergy have middling reputation. What do nurses, soldiers, pharmacists, elementary school teachers, doctors and police officers have in common? Americans say they all are more ethical and honest than members of the clergy, according to a new Gallup survey. Slightly more than half of Americans—53 percent—rate the moral values of priests, ministers and other clerics as “very high” or “high.” That percentage is a slight bump from 2009, when only 50 percent of Americans said men and women of the cloth are ethical paragons, the lowest number in Gallup’s 32 years of measuring professional reputations. One-third of Americans this year said the clergy’s morals are “average,” and 8 percent rated them “poor,” according to the survey. Bringing up the bottom of the professional ethics list were lobbyists, car salesmen and members of Congress. Results for this Gallup poll are based on telephone interviews conducted Nov. 19-21, with a random sample of 1,037 adults, aged 18 and older. The margin of error is plus or minus 4 percentage points.

Higher well-being related to religious commitment. The most religious Americans also have the highest rates of well-being, according to a Gallup survey. The finding is based on a poll of more than 550,000 people about their physical and emotional health and their work environment. Overall, the very religious received a score on Gallup’s well-being index of 68.7 percent, while both the moderately religious and the nonreligious received a score of 64.2 percent. The very religious were defined as those who said religion is an important part of their daily lives and they attend worship services at least every week or almost every week. The survey involved a random sample of 554,066 U.S. adults between Jan 2 and July 28 and had a margin of error of plus or minus 0.5 percentage points.

Is marriage obsolete? Marriage is on the decline in American society, with nearly four in 10 people claiming the institution is obsolete, according to a Pew Research Center study. The Pew survey, conducted in association with Time magazine, showed 44 percent of adults have lived with an unmarried partner at some point in their lives. A majority of Americans agree single parents with children (86 percent), unmarried couples living together with children (80 percent) and same-sex couples with children (63 percent) are families. However, almost seven in 10 say single women having children is bad for the society, and 61 percent think children need both a mother and a father “to grow up happily.” People who regularly attend religious services were less likely than other Americans to accept new forms of family. When asked if “new family arrangements are a bad thing,” 45 percent of church-goers agreed, compared to 15 percent of those who either rarely or never attend church. People who attend religious services also favored a traditional arrangement of a working father and a stay-at-home mom over a marriage where both parents work. Results were based on phone interviews with 2,691 adults and had a margin of error of plus or minus 2.6 percentage points.

Pastors recommended the following books as particularly helpful to people who have experienced loss and to Christians who are seeking to minister to them.

• Good Grief by Granger E. Westberg

“I like the next-to-last chapter title, ‘Gradually Hope Comes Through.’ It is the reminder that, eventually, after the dark night of grief, the sun will begin to gradually peek over the horizon, and the sun will come up again in a person’s life,” said Mark Bumpus, pastor of First Baptist Church in San Angelo. “Life will not be the same—and time does not heal all wounds—but it gradually will be filled with hope and assurance.”

• A Grief Observed by C.S. Lewis (particularly the edition with a foreword by Christian novelist Madeleine L’Engle)

The theater ministry at First Baptist Church in Austin recently completed a three-week run of Shadowlands, a play that tells the story of C.S. Lewis’ marriage to Joy Gresham and her death to cancer. The play sold out every performance, and more than 75 percent of the people who attended were not members of First Baptist Church, Pastor Roger Paynter noted. The dramatic presentation followed an eight-week study Paynter led on the life and teachings of Lewis, with particular attention given to A Grief Observed, which he called “an excellent resource for people who have lost a loved one to an untimely death.”

• Lament for a Son by Nicholas Wolterstorff

Paynter identified it as “one of finest expressions in all of grief literature. … It’s the best thing I’ve ever read regarding the grief of losing a child.”

• Tracks of a Fellow Struggler: Living and Growing Through Grief by John Claypool

“Claypool’s famous set of four sermons preached during his daughter’s battle with leukemia and her subsequent death still speaks with great power,” Paynter said.

• A Decembered Grief: Living with Loss While Others are Celebrating by Harold Ivan Smith

Lynn Turner, associate pastor at First Baptist Church in Richmond, Va., noted her church had ordered copies of the book this year to use with a newly formed grief support group.

Chaplain Mark Grace recommended the following books:

• Praying the Psalms by Walter Brueggemann

• Recovering from Losses in Life by H. Norman Wright

• Sad Isn’t Bad: A Good-Grief Guidebook for Kids Dealing with Loss by Michaelene Mundy

• The Unwanted Gift of Grief by Tim P. VanDuivendyk

Christians can experience joy even in loss—provided they don’t confuse joy with happiness but accept it as a gift from God, several pastors noted.

“Joy is not the same as happiness. It is a deeper contentment that sustains us whether we are happy or not,” said Van Christian, pastor of First Baptist Church in Comanche.

He pointed to the example of the Apostle Paul, who was able to write in Philippians 4:11-13 about how he learned to be content in all circumstances.

“Joy can be experienced in loss through the absolute certainty that Christ is with you, empowering you to make it through all things,” Christian said. “Joy provides the security needed when every-thing else crumbles beneath you.”

Matt Snowden, pastor of First Baptist Church in Waco, defined joy quite simply as “belonging to Jesus Christ.” He also pointed to the New Testament book of Philippians.

“Philippians is Paul’s epistle of joy. He wrote it in jail. How can joy and jail live together? Paul counted on the ‘help of the Spirit of Jesus Christ,’” Snowden said.

“Jesus has not changed. He understands. When he experienced the loss of his friend Lazarus he wept. We need to be honest about our pain. Jesus also called forth life. We experience joy when we serve others.”

Phil Christopher, pastor of First Baptist Church in Abilene, reflected on how joy enters the life of a person who has experienced loss.

“Joy comes through the healing of and leaving the regrets of the past. Joy comes in the combined gifts of hope and peace as we have hope for the future and peace in the promise of ‘God with us’ in everything. Joy is a gift of grace and often comes as a surprise we never expected,” Christopher said.

“Joy is experienced in loss through the gift of memory. Even though the memories might still be tender and bring tears, the memories bring an abiding joy. We might lose something or someone of significance, but the loss cannot take away the relationship, the shared experiences and the deep memories.”

Joy can be a byproduct of endurance for Christians who persevere through life’s valleys—even “the valley of the shadow of death,” said Mark Bumpus, pastor of First Baptist Church in San Angelo. God provides sufficient light to walk out of the valley, he stressed.

“Not run out of the valley, … not stand paralyzed in the valley, but walk—some-times one methodical footstep placed in front of the other … through and out of the valley,” he said.

“It may be more perseverance that leads you out of the valley than joy, but ultimately there is joy because of the confidence we have in our faith in the resurrection and the fact that the shadow of death ultimately cannot harm us. … And ultimately, there is a way out. ‘Through’ implies movement and a way out. Maybe there is some joy in that.”

Chaplain Mark Grace vice president of mission and ministry at Baylor Health Care System, offers suggestions to churches as they seek to minister to people who have sustained loss.

• Facilitate communication. “Find ways to help your members talk about loss. And that means that the pastor has to talk about it from the pulpit in an emotionally and theologically responsible way,” he said.

However, he added, resist clichés such as “Have faith, and everything will be OK” or “Don’t ask, ‘Why me?’ Ask, ‘Why not me?’”

“Don’t talk about it if all you … (can offer are) … pat answers that ignore the truth of the biblical teaching,” Grace urged.

Give grieving people—and people who have worked through the grief process—time and space to voice their own experiences, he recommended.

“Let the grieving speak,” he said. “The most powerful witnesses to hope and faith are those in your own congregation who are recovering from their own losses, as evidenced by their having been able to reinvest in life, to talk about their loss with insight and without being overwhelmed by emotion.”

• Offer service opportunities. “Provide ways for people in grief to serve others during the holiday season,” he said. “This usually doesn’t apply to people in the first three to six months after the death of a loved one, but it can be very meaningful for people searching for a way to both honor a loved one’s memory while building new holiday traditions and reinvesting in life.”

• Develop a list of local resources. Seek out counselors certified in grief recovery. Discover grief support groups. If there is not a local group, consider starting a church-based grief support group. Chaplains—such as the pastoral care staff at Baylor Health Care System—can be valuable resources for congregations as they seek to launch grief support groups, Grace added.

WACO—Christmas on Fifth Street brought more than 8,000 people to the Baylor University campus Dec. 2 for a live nativity scene, musical performances, carriage rides, a petting zoo, pictures with Santa and the 45th annual Kappa Omega Tau tree lighting ceremony.

“We were pleased with the attendance and the way the event unfolded,” said Michael Riemer, associate director of student activities at Baylor. “We offered some new things that we’ve not offered in the past.”

This year’s event included ice skating on Fountain Mall and caroling by the Baylor department of modern foreign languages, as well as a performance by Mandisa, ninth-place finalist in season five of American Idol, who joined the Baylor Religious Hour Choir for their “Cocoa, Cookies and Carols” concert.

“Performing with Mandisa can only be described as electric,” said Ryan Anderson, Baylor senior and program coordinator for the concert. “The energy she brought to the stage was contagious, and it was hard for anyone in the audience to even sit down. … Singing with her will probably go into my top three memories of being a Baylor student. Mandisa loves the Lord, and her spirit and encouragement was something the choir will not quickly forget.”

The 45th annual Kappa Omega Tau tree lighting ceremony—along with numerous musical performances—drew a huge crowd to the Baylor University campus for Christmas on Fifth Street. (PHOTOS/BAYLOR)

A live nativity scene in front of the Bill Daniel Student Center on the Baylor University campus drew attention during the annual Christmas on Fifth Street celebration.

The purpose of the concert was to raise awareness of Baylor Religious Hour’s international mission trip to Ghana, where the choir will work with the ministry OneWay, singing at churches schools and hospitals.

Other Christmas on Fifth performers included The Kappa Pickers, Scott & Clare, the handbell choir from Columbus Avenue Baptist Church in Waco, Phil Wickham and Matt Wertz.

Kappa Omega Tau used the tree-lighting event as a fund-raiser to generate support for the Mocha Club charity’s educational project, which funds job training centers in schools in Kenya and South Africa.

Events like Christmas on Fifth are what endear people to Baylor, Riemer said.

“It’s programs like these that students experience over the years that connect them back to the university and connect them to other alums and to people who will come to Baylor after them,” Reimer said.