Texas Baptist Forum

Thanks for students

We would like to thank Texas Baptists for sending students to be involved this summer through Nehemiah Teams. God used them to do some amazing things! More than 120 students from 21 states served among the unreached and hard-to-reach in eight countries. Texas students were Autumn Scrivner, Darjuan Horton, Kelsey Emmons, Haley Barron, Courtney Pett, Christiana Lewis, Clint Taylor and Matthew Evans.

They shared the gospel face-to-face with thousands of people. Teams were involved in a variety of ministries including agriculture and construction, orphanage ministry, media and direct evangelism.

At www.nehemiahteams.blogspot.com, you can read stories and see pictures of the ministries. You can access more information about the goals of Nehemiah Teams and see requests for summer 2010 teams on our website, www.nehemiahteams.com.

We feel called to lead students to help finish the Great Commission in this generation. For eight weeks, through Nehemiah Teams, students can be involved in church planting. While on the field, they confront God’s will for the nations.

Thank you again for your role in reaching the nations. We look forward to partnering with you in the future.

Jess & Wendy Jennings

Pacific region

 

Witness-wrecking speech

In a recent Bible study, we looked at Matthew 18:23-35, commonly referred to as the Parable of the Unmerciful Servant. To set the parable in context with Jesus’ other words, we looked at the preceding verses as introduction: “If your brother sins against you, go and show him his fault. … If he will not listen to you, take one or two others along. … If he refuses to listen to the church, treat him as you would a pagan or a tax collector.”

In Tempe, Ariz., Baptist pastor Steven Anderson is preaching hate of President Obama and praying for his death via brain cancer. Such vitriol is not Christian and disrupts the fellowship of the greater Christian church while undermining the witness of the local churches.

Jesus’ words are explicit in what should be done. Because this pastor has rejected the reprimand of individuals, some influential Christian leaders should go in a group to meet him. If that should fail, leaders should lead their denominations to affirm Christ’s words in the two commandments he gave us—love God and love neighbor, and he should be treated then as “a pagan and tax collector.” To do less is to hide our heads in the proverbial sand and pretend he is doing no harm to the church and our witness in the world.

David C. Long

Monterrey, N.L., Mexico

 

Health care debate

In the Aug. 10 issue, Marv Knox told us Christians had “abdicated” their responsibility to provide health care to the government, and other op/ed pieces urged us to stand behind the socialist takeover of yet another private industry. No mention of LBJ making babies a cash crop and how sheer numbers make a few supporting the many an impossibility.

Last week, I read of a Houston pastor urging us to “speak out against … the unjust treatment of ‘strangers and sojourners’ in the United States.” No mention of the term “illegal alien,” which is exactly what they are.

So, is the star in the banner of the Baptist Standard soon to morph into a hammer and sickle?

Becky Woodworth

San Antonio

 

Health care is supposed to heal the patient, not kill the patient. But so-called “health care” legislation would promote the killing of our youngest patients—unborn babies—through abortion.

Even worse, you and I could be forced to pay for the killing of God’s innocent children—with our tax dollars. Pending bills in Congress could also result in private businesses and organizations being forced to pay for abortions—through government mandates that abortion be covered in their health insurance plans.

Because of this, “health care reform” would lead to the largest expansion of abortion in our country since the tragic 1973 Roe v. Wade Supreme Court decision.

Any health care reform legislation should specifically exclude abortion from coverage. Let’s support health care that heals, not kills.

Rita Kelly

Corpus Christi

 

Homosexuality & church

I’m a native Texan and appreciated the thoughtful articles on the need for churches to “talk about homosexuality.” We need to do more than talk.

Many Christians struggle with unwanted same-sex attraction and are labeled and identified, stereotyped and minimized. They have a temptation issue and understand from biblical principle and teaching that acting out is a sin. I did and hid because I could not seem to overcome. Still, I knew God wanted me to be among believers. Sexually abused as a child, I became a Christian at 12, the result of a bus ministry taking me to Willow Meadows Baptist Church in Houston. I was a Christian long before the sexual problem emerged. I struggled with unwanted same-sex attraction through college, into marriage and while raising a family. I learned that being tempted is one thing; acting on it is another.

If churches create a loving environment where grace is taught and transparency encouraged, where this particular sin is not a mark of rejection, but a sin with which to be reckoned, some might not struggle as long in silence and fear, but might ask for support in our pursuit of freedom from acting out.

With the Southern Baptist Convention’s “The Way Out” task force on ministry to homosexuals, the denomination is attempting to minister. I hope individual churches will wake up and follow the leadership. Helping Christians with this issue is a domestic mission.

Thom Hunter

Norman, Okla.

 

The Evangelical Lutheran Church in America has voted to affirm homosexuals. Slowly, most denominations are moving in that direction. Except Baptists. Most who study homosexuality affirm homosexuals. Have you studied? If not, have you pre-judged it? Pre-judging is prejudice, a great evil. Most Baptists have not studied it.

We need to learn first that there is nothing in the Bible about homosexuality or homosexuals. Homosexuality was unknown until the late-19th century, and until then no one could speak or write about it. Every biblical reference to same-gender sex is to heterosexual people. Historians tell us there was so much of that in Bible times that men had debates about whether sex with a man or sex with a woman was preferable. Certainly, the Bible condemned such lust.

Second, science tells us homosexuality is innate and unchangeable, never a choice.

The message of some pastors that “God hates fags” and will send them to hell is doing untold damage to homosexuals. Many believe it and hate themselves or commit suicide. One boy said, “It terrified me to think that God made me just to hate me and send me to hell.” Some homosexuals forsake churches they have grown up loving. Others never will hear the gospel, for they won’t go to churches they know condemn them.

Homespun philosopher Josh Billings said, “The longer I live, the more I find it necessary to re-examine those things about which I was once most certain.” Baptists need to re-examine homosexuality.

Bruce Lowe

Dallas

 

Women in ministry

Thank you for “Christian love requires respect for Baptist women in ministry, Oklahoma pastor insists” (Aug. 10). I am an ordained Baptist chaplain. I was a student at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary in 1985, trying to learn all I could from dedicated men and women of the Bible. I endured insults, brash young men questioning why I was there, pushed off the campus sidewalk by rude young pastors-to-be. All this in addition to having to listen to twentysomethings question Greek and Hebrew scholars about the meaning of a word. This is only the tip of the iceburg.

After one year of this, I transferred to Duke Divinity School. I’m not bitter or resentful of what I had to go through. It taught me to search the Scriptures for answers; to be more tolerant of those different from me; to follow God’s encouraging ways instead of biased human judgment. I, too, think we must answer for the way we treat our brothers and sisters—Baptists as well as those of other denominations.

I am a Methodist now. I can teach adults in Sunday school and in Bible studies and fill in for the pastor without fear of reprisal. I do not expect everyone to like me or my preaching and teaching. All I want is respect and understanding that this was not my decision. I only do what I am called to do.

Penny Godfrey

Salisbury, N.C.

Continuing Broadway fallout

The leaders of the Southern Baptist Convention, in tandem with messengers who are blinded by the call to chastise Christians who won’t genuflect to the Baptist Faith & Message creed, have now decided to usurp God’s continuing work with professor Michael Cox, faculty member for the past 19 years of Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary.

Try not to laugh, but the tightly controlled seminary has a “rule” that those who teach there must be members of a Southern Baptist church.  Professor Cox met that requirement with membership in Broadway Baptist Church in Fort Worth, where he was employed as a part-time musician—that is, until the “leaders” of the SBC, flying under the flag of convention mandate, kicked this church out of the convention.  Suddenly, he was without a “proper” church and, with his refusal to bend to this childish academic playground rule, that demanded he renounce his church membership, without a job!  He could have joined a Baptist church down the street and kept both jobs, but evidently decided not to play these games.

The “leaders” of this convention are slowly sucking the life from it.  All the talk of reconciliation and compromise falls on deaf ears as people who think realize the creedis the battering ram used to control the fundamental judgments of pious leaders who, after receiving the grace of God, remain graceless.

Edward Clark

Danville, Ky.

Permissive will?

Esteemed people, among them Oswald Chambers, teach that God has both perfect and permissive wills. Will is what God or a person desires to happen. God’s will is always perfect and has not changed over time. God’s plans changed because of man or Satan’s disobedience.

This theology, although elaborately crafted, is not supported by Scripture, and confuses more than enlightens. Man does not always do God’s will, because God gave him free will. God may control natural events, but he can only influence or judge man. To call this problematic situation God’s permissive will means the sins of man or Satan somehow put God in complicity with their disobedience. Satan or man’s disobedience always has consequences. We attempt to soften these consequences by implying they were a part of God’s permissive will. 

God’s will did not include slavery, adultery, bigamy, domination of women, divorce, etc. These are things man did on his own. Because someone in the Bible did something does not mean God approves similar actions. Some actions of God are criticized by some people, but even though they may have seemed cruel, they were necessary for God’s plan for salvation to work.  God is always good and always does good and wills only the best for man.

Russell Hairston

Nacogdoches

Our churches are sick and powerless

After reading three letters from the Sept. 7 Standard—foreign aid, homosexuality and church, and women in ministry) it’s no small wonder why there are two Baptist conventions in Texas!

Folks, our churches are sick and powerless, and so are the denominations we are a part of.  We had better fall on our faces, repent of our sins, and cry out to the Lord God to send the Holy Ghost in a downpour and don’t let up ’til he delivers!

Josh Eubanks

Fort Worth

Vernon's great challenge

Steve Vernon, associate executive director of the Baptist General Convention of Texas, recently preached in First Baptist Church in Plainview and delivered a wonderful message on how the crowd went to blind Bartimaeus and told him, “Take courage, stand up! He (Jesus) is calling for you.”

Vernon said that is our Texas Hope 2010 challenge as Texas Baptists—to see those in need of salvation and bring them to the One who can meet all needs.

What a great challenge!

Danny Andrews

Plainview

What do you think? Send letters to Editor Marv Knox by mail: P.O. Box 660267, Dallas 75266-0267; or by e-mail: [email protected]. Length limit is 250 words.