MEMPHIS, Tenn.?Six people were found shot and stabbed to death in a mass murder in Memphis’ dangerous Binghamton neighborhood. Three children who survived the attack were hospitalized in critical condition.

And before the dead bodies were cold, yet another shooting and robbery took place in the same gang- and drug-plagued Binghamton area, located just six miles from downtown Memphis.

Southern Baptist missionaries Willie and Ozzie Jacobs Jr.?believing it will take no less than Jesus Christ to once and for all change the crime-culture of Memphis and stop such senseless neighborhood violence and bloodshed?have taken on the challenge.

Although now in their early 60s and married for 41 years, the couple is not ready for matching rocking chairs and simply waiting on monthly Social Security checks. They are on a mission from God in one of the perennial “Top Ten” most dangerous cities in the United States.

“Memphis is in the middle of spiritual warfare,” Jacobs remarked when asked about the spiritual climate of Tennessee’s youngest but second-largest metro area. “We’re dealing with murder, crime and drugs throughout the city. There’s a racial divide that has plagued Memphis since the days of Dr. Martin Luther King. It’s never healed. There’s also an economic and a political divide. In the middle of all this, we try to do ministry.”

And as if ministry in Memphis was not challenging enough, Jacobs serves the North American Mission Board?in partnership with the Tennessee Baptist Convention and the Mid-South Baptist Association?as regional coordinator of church planting for the four-state Memphis Delta Region, including parts of Tennessee, Mississippi, Arkansas and Missouri.

The Jacobses are two of 5,500 missionaries in the United States, Canada and their territories supported by the Annie Armstrong Easter Offering for North American Missions. They are among the NAMB missionaries featured as part of the annual Week of Prayer, March 1-8. This year’s theme is “Live with Urgency: Sowing Together for Harvest.” The 2009 Annie Armstrong Easter Offering’s goal is $65 million, 100 percent of which benefits missionaries like the Jacobses.

Willie and Ozzie (pronounced “O-zie”) didn’t have to transfer to Memphis last July. They were quite happy and content in Columbus, Ohio, where Willie was serving as a church planting strategist for the State Convention of Baptists in Ohio. Before that, he spent 30 years as a full-time pastor?20 years at a single church?in the Dallas area. Both Alabama natives, they now live in nearby Collierville, Tenn., and have three grown daughters and two grandchildren.

“For 40 years, we dreamed of the day when we’d become missionaries going to Africa,” he said. “But God allowed the mission field to come to us, after years of experience as a pastor in Texas.

“We came to Memphis because we sensed the lostness and spiritual climate of Memphis. We felt the Lord wanted us to come here and make an impact in new and innovative ways. This is a God-sized job here in Memphis when you look at the enormous responsibility we’ve been given as national missionaries.” He said sometimes it’s almost overwhelming.

Jacobs has launched a multi-pronged strategy for the Memphis area. He does his best to work along aside other predominantly African-American denominations?strong in Memphis?such as the Church of God in Christ (COGIC) and the National Baptist Convention, although “their concept of missions is quite different from ours as Southern Baptists,” Jacobs admitted.

“One of the biggest challenges we face among Southern Baptist churches is to help people change their mindsets about how ministry is done. The churches need to learn new approaches in order to reach people with the gospel, and do it in such a way that’s non-threatening. You have to build relationships,” Jacobs said.

“There’s a real need for churches to realize that ministry takes place on the outside and that a lot of the needs of people are going unmet because church members and fellowships are not going out.”

The greater Memphis area has a population of 1.2 million, making the city Tennessee’s second-largest metropolitan area behind <st1

HOUSTON–A diverse group of pastors gathered on the 36th anniversary of the Roe v. Wade decision to condemn renovation of a six-story Houston building into what they described as “the largest abortion clinic in the world.”
Some of those same pro-life advocates days later questioned the Houston City Council about monitoring the proposed Planned Parenthood facility to ensure compliance with local, state, and federal laws. Houston Mayor Bill White’s director of health and environmental policy, Elena Marks, is national chairwoman of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America.

Sonny Foraker, spokesman for the Greater Houston Area Pastor Council and pastor of First Baptist Church of Pearland, told the group of supporters and journalists, “We are standing here because [abortion] is a moral evil that destroys human life. We stand together as pastors to say this is not something we want in our community.”

The building, formerly the Sterling Bank at 4600 Gulf Freeway, loomed behind the pastors as they took turns on Jan. 22 speaking out against the new Planned Parenthood of Houston and Southeast Texas clinic. Planned Parenthood officials did not return repeated phone calls from the TEXAN for comment.

“This building is an invitation that gives everyone the message that it is OK to take life away,” said pastor Hernan Castano of Iglesia Rios de Aceite in Houston. “This cannot be the answer to the world. We must respect life.”

Melvin Johnson, pastor of Heart of Christ Community Church in the Houston suburb of Brazoria, called the Planned Parenthood facility an “abomination” and talked about the racist ideas of the organization’s founder, Margaret Sanger.

Johnson, who is black, held up pictures of Sanger participating in a Ku Klux Klan rally in the early 20th century. The summer 2008 issue of the Guttmacher Policy Review stated that black American women have five times as many abortions as their white counterparts.

“As Jesus died on the cross, he proclaimed life,” declared Carlos Martins, a Roman Catholic. “Any Christian should see the evil of this.”

Martins quoted Mother Teresa’s famous chastisement of America when she spoke at the 1994 National Prayer Breakfast in Washington, calling abortion “the greatest destroyer of peace in the world.”

Martins made it clear that the community of faith is not angry toward the women who seek and follow through with abortions but with organizations like Planned Parenthood that promote and conduct them. “There is a caring community that is willing to stand with and next to pregnant women. You do not go through this alone,” he said.

Noting that the Planned Parenthood site is just a few blocks from the University of Houston and historically African-American Texas Southern University, pastor James Clark of Park Place Baptist Church charged Planned Parenthood with targeting college students.

Foraker concurred: “This building is not by chance located here. I assure you, they are targeting our young people, African Americans and Hispanics,” he said.

Christine Melchor, executive director of Houston’s Coalition for Life, said the clinic would encompass 78,000 square feet–with one entire floor dedicated to abortions, including late-term abortions. She said she had reviewed building plans, permits and architectural drawings filed with the city of Houston.

“We’ve been following their expansion since 2006” when Planned Parenthood purchased the property, Melchor said, adding that she thought the most striking feature of the drawings is a planned ambulatory unit over the expanse of the third floor.

A Planned Parenthood clinic in downtown Houston performed late-term abortions until a state law was passed in 2003 to require that abortions conducted on women beyond 16 weeks of pregnancy be done in a center equipped with an ambulatory unit, which the clinic did not have.

Planned Parenthood clinics offer women a wide range of services, including pap tests, disease prevention and treatment, and birth control. Melchor acknowledged that the facility would be used for other these other services but added, “Planned Parenthood is all about abortions.”

Melchor said she suspects the clinic will be used to host international clients seeking abortions, especially late-term procedures. Dave Welch, director of the Houston pastors’ group, said he believes the new clinic could replace the notorious Wichita, Kan., clinic operated by George Tiller, who is on trial for violating state laws regulating the practice of late-term abortions.

Planned Parenthood came under scrutiny late last year following the release of a secretly video-taped encounter at an Indiana Planned Parenthood abortion clinic. The tape reveals a clinic employee manipulating the conversation with a supposedly 13-year-old girl. The girl, actually 20-year-old college student student Lila Rose, told the Planned Parenthood employee she was pregnant by her 31-year-old boyfriend, which, if true would constitute statutory rape.

By law the employee was required to report the case of sexual abuse to child protective services. Instead, the worker suppressed the information and convinced the girl to make up an alternative story.

The tape was produced by members of the pro-life Mona Lisa Project and distributed over the Internet. The Planned Parenthood clinic aide was ultimately fired, but not before national criticism arose concerning Planned Parenthood’s reporting practices and its servicing of minors.

It was that issue, along with questions regarding city regulations, which pro-life proponents brought before Houston City Council Jan. 27. They called into question the integrity of the abortion provider’s adherence to state regulations and asked Mayor Bill White and council members if they wanted Houston to be known as the home of “the largest abortion clinic in the hemisphere.”

Christine Kasper asked, in light of the Indiana violations, how the city of Houston would monitor the activities of the abortion clinic to ensure that Planned Parenthood complied with local and state laws.

Melchor was among those addressing the council. She asked if patients, prior to abortions, were tested for AIDS and other communicable diseases.

“How,” she asked, “will these babies be disposed of?”

Melchor later said her questions relate to the disposal of potentially bio-hazardous substances into the city sewage or waste disposal systems. There were no responses to the questions posed by the women.

Later in a phone interview, Melchor said the purpose of the questions before the council was to give them pause and to educate Houston citizens about the Planned Parenthood facility.

“Do they want to be known as the capital city of abortions?” she asked.

Melchor said she plans to ask more questions of the City Council. But she said she is dubious about getting an objective response because of Mayor White’s connection with Planned Parenthood’s national chairwoman.

Melchor asked White about the potential conflict of interest. He said he would respond at another time to her question.

Ironically, an animal-rights group attended the same meeting, demanding the city’s animal shelters stop the euthanizing of stray and unclaimed animals.

Supporters held signs as advocates spoke. Some wore T-shirts promoting the No Kill Advocacy Center whose policy, in part, states: “The No Kill Advocacy Center is the nation’s first organization dedicated solely to the promotion of a No Kill nation.”

Even if the city of Houston approves all the permits required to complete construction of the new abortion clinic, Foraker said area pastors, along with TexasFamilies.org, a coalition of pro-life organizations, plan to press contractors to disassociate themselves from the project. By asking church members, businesses and the community to stop doing business with Planned Parenthood contractors, they hope to bring enough pressure to force them to withdraw their services to Planned Parenthood.

At the beginning of the Jan. 22 gathering, David Fannin, pastor of suburban Nassau Bay Baptist Church, compared the 3,000 lives lost in the 9/11 terrorist attacks—and the country’s resolve afterward—to the 3,700 lives lost each day to abortion. Will the nation, he asked, steel itself with the same resolve as the massive Planned Parenthood clinic rises from the ground?

FORT WORTH?Just mentioning the word “adoption” causes John Mark Yeats’ eyes to light up. Yeats, assistant professor of church history at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, not only has four adopted children, but he and his wife, Angie, counsel potential adoptive parents and advocate adoption wherever they can.

The idea of adoption was a topic of discussion early on in their relationship.

“Before we got married, we had laid the expectation that we could have kids on the table and surrendered it to God,” Yeats said.

They agreed that even if they were able to have biological children, they would adopt at least one child. At that point, the Yeatses did not know that they would experience infertility.

Having seen a few families self-destruct when faced with infertility, Yeats considers this kind of surrender “an important thing because a lot of times we think it’s a right that we have kids.”

Having difficulty getting pregnant early in their marriage, the Yeatses experienced feelings of inadequacy. Some wondered what was “wrong,” since they adopted children instead of having them biologically.

“Many people want a sense of biological succession,” Yeats said. Angie admits that she had difficulty with it as well, wanting to be able to bring the baby home from the hospital.

Angie said she prayed, “I’d just like to know one way or the other whether we should adopt.”

After a complicated tubular pregnancy that ended in surgery, doctors told them in-vitro fertilization was their only option for getting pregnant, but they did not consider this an ethical option. Through these events and continued prayer, they realized that God wanted them to adopt and began the process. Less than a year later, they brought their first daughter, Briley, home and finalized the adoption.

When they moved to Texas and Yeats joined Southwestern Seminary as a professor a couple of years later, they felt like the Lord was leading them to adopt again. During a meeting with Hope Cottage, a Texas-based pregnancy and adoption center, Yeats asked, “Do you ever get sibling groups?”

With a stunned look in her eye, the representative said, “We never have people ask that question, and we never have sibling groups, but we just got our first.”

Six weeks later, Cadie, an infant at the time, came home with them, and then six months after that, they adopted Sean, her biological brother who was a year older.

In 2007, they received a phone call from Hope Cottage informing them that Sean and Cadie’s birth mother had recently given birth to another child. Although they thought they were finished adopting children, they surrendered themselves in prayer again.

Yeats recalls, “The overarching issue was asking, ‘Where will this child be in 15 years?’ We have a responsibility as believers on some level to bring him into a godly home.”

A couple of months later, they welcomed Jackson into their home, and the adoption was finalized in June.

The Yeats family has also had to work through the challenges associated with transracial adoption, especially misperceptions from people they meet. They’ve endured all of the random questions and false assumptions, but they see them as opportunities to educate people about adoption.

Even their children have begun to notice a difference in skin color from Mom and Dad.

“As Briley has gone to school, it is interesting to hear her talk about kids ‘with skin like mine’ and those who have ‘skin like yours,'” Yeats said.

“We have always used age-appropriate terms and concepts to reinforce positive values of their heritage. One of our kids’ favorite picture books is a book by Sandra Pinkney called “Shades of Black.” The book talks about the variances in skin color, hair textures, and the things that make each person unique.

“We have to work to make sure that we, as parents, stay up on aspects of a culture that is foreign to us so that our children can engage in the history and heritage of their own ethnic identity,” Yeats said. “Most of all, we pray that our kids will find their true identity in Christ, which supersedes all earthly divisions.

“We are careful to try and place our children in arenas where they have exposure to people from all over the world. We also have close friendships with families who have also adopted transracially.”

The Lord has blessed the Yeats family with a church that includes several families who chose adoption. Several children in their kids’ Sunday School classes are adopted and reflect a variety of ethnicities.

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