Month: February 2009

Let free scientific inquiry prevail in classrooms

Leave it to the “experts” instead of “scientifically illiterate” elected officials to decide what constitutes legitimate science education for your kids.

That’s the message the New York Times editorial board and Darwinist advocacy groups want recorded as the moral of the story after the Texas State Board of Education last week caused the scientific establishment to smile and then frown in the course of one very influential, closely watched board meeting. (See related story, page 1)

It was a net win for friends of honest scientific inquiry?albeit a tentative one that will be challenged fiercely before the final vote to ratify the new standards during meetings March 26-27.

In the meantime, however, the Texas education board ought to be applauded for its initial approval of language that requires students to “evaluate the sufficiency or insufficiency of common ancestry” as it relates to the fossil record and to “assess the arguments for and against universal common descent in light of this fossil evidence.”

The board, in its once-a-decade review of science curricula and standards, acted after a public hearing and advice from a panel of mostly Darwinist scientists and educators to drop a 20-year-old state requirement that students evaluate the “strengths and weaknesses” of all scientific theories, which it did in a close vote.

After that vote, however, the board astounded the evolution-as-inviolable-truth crowd, allowing amendments that included the “arguments for and against” language directed at key evolutionary tenets of biology.

Between now and March, activists opposed to critiquing evolution have promised to fight to remove the new amendments. Those who are committed to free academic inquiry should also join the battle by thoughtfully explaining why Darwinism deserves scrutiny as much as any other theory that involves conjecture about things that cannot be tested in a laboratory.

The Texas Freedom Network, which bills itself as “a mainstream voice to counter the religious right” but is rarely mainstream, is among those that has vowed to fight the new amendments.

The network’s president, Kathy Miller, likened the amendment to allow critique of common ancestry to a “Hail, Mary” football pass that would be called back on further review, adding that the amendment “could provide a small foothold for teaching creationist ideas and dumbing down biology instruction in Texas.”

Of course, no reasonable person?creationist or not?wants biblical creationism taught in public school science classes. In a pluralistic culture, even elective Bible classes are not without danger. Moreover, I don’t want a public school teacher explaining Genesis to my kids. You wouldn’t either.

What’s more, I want my kids, who attend Texas public schools, to know evolutionary theory backwards and forwards. I’m not afraid of them learning what is the consensus of the scientific establishment, but that same establishment is terrified of students learning that Darwinism and neo-Darwinism might not be foolproof.

Miller’s claim that criticisms of evolution are part of a Trojan horse strategy for introducing sectarian religion into public schools is the rallying cry in this fight, and it couldn’t be more absurd.

The tact of the evolution-as-inviolable-truth crowd is to cry wolf about a theocratic conspiracy of Christian fundamentalists who want six-day Genesis creation crammed down the throat of every school kid?Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Hindu, secular, you name it.

Related to that is the clever move of evolution proponents to equate biblical creationism?a religious viewpoint?with intelligent design (ID) theory?a scientific investigation into the apparent design in the known universe and in living things.

ID proponents are a varied lot?from secular Jews such as philosopher David Berlinski to Roman Catholics like biochemist Michael Behe and Christian evangelicals like mathematician and philosopher William Dembski of Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary and Guillermo Gonzalez, an acclaimed astronomer whose research has been covered in respected journals such as Nature and Science.

In closing its editorial about the Texas school board, the New York Times wrote: “The lesson we draw from these shenanigans is that scientifically illiterate boards of education should leave the curriculum to educators and scientists who know what constitutes a sound education.”

When the arguments for free academic inquiry encroach on Darwinism’s place as the great meta-narrative of human history and existence, Darwin’s defenders resort to character attacks at the rate of bullets flying from an automatic rifle.

(One wonders if anyone on the Times’ editorial board has ever bothered to read Dembski or Berlinski or Gonzalez.)

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Sermon-based small groups foster effective discipleship, speaker says

Pastors and church leaders attending a small groups seminar at the SBTC offices in Grapevine on Jan. 13 were encouraged to reinforce expository preaching with sermon-based small groups.

Presenter Alan Stoddard, executive pastor at Cornerstone Baptist Church in Arlington who is doing doctoral research on sermon-based small group (SBSG) ministry, said the approach revisits the “big idea” of a pastor’s sermon, it revisits Scripture and clarifies the text, and it reinforces application of the text.

Moreover, Stoddard said, the SBSG approach is biblical.

“Even Jesus used this as one of his teaching techniques to reinforce what he taught because [his disciples] didn’t get it,” Stoddard explained, referring to Jesus’ explanation of the parable of the sower with his followers as recorded in Luke 8.

Stoddard said many churches have no way to gauge the discipleship effectiveness of their church’s ministry, and small groups make that easier to do.

“We are to teach people to do {discipleship],” Stoddard remarked. “Who’s monitoring the doing? Is your church’s delivery system set up to know where people are spiritually?

“Too many churches find out where their members are spiritually on the back end and not on the front end.”

Small group ministry provides the potential for deeper, more intimate friendships often in a home setting where people may feel more relaxed.

Many churches deliver sound, biblical content, but don’t facilitate relationship-building very well, Stoddard commented.

“Content devoid of relationship building is insufficient. It’s relationships that shut the back door of the church. The people who fall out are those without any vital connections.”

Stoddard said good, expository preaching makes possible deeper discussions in small group settings, but if you’re a pastor “and you wing it and you don’t really study, this isn’t going to work. Your preaching has to be good.”

Stoddard asked the pastors attending: “What are people doing today with your message? They’ve probably forgotten it.”

SBSG’s allow the Sunday sermon to resurface in a discussion-driven environment where most transformation takes place, Stoddard said.

“If you are a campus church, you are cutting some of your people off from discipleship by not creating living room opportunities,” Stoddard stated. “On the other hand, some people are not ready for being in a group under 12 people.”

Because of this, churches with traditional Sunday School should not take an either/or approach, he said.


For more information on the SBSG approach, contact Kenneth Priest toll-free at 877-953-7282 (SBTC) or e-mail him at kpriest@sbtexas.com.

Ft. Worth couple advocates adoption in words, deed

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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FIRST PERSON: Infertility journey was worth it

NASHVILLE, Tenn.  My 11-month-old son Graham is saying “da-da” now.

Actually, it’s more like “da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da,” and he rarely says it when looking at me, but I’m not complaining. I’m just enjoying the moment.

He says it when he’s going to sleep, when he’s waking up, when he’s playing. I’m not even sure he knows what it means, but that’s OK. Soon enough, he’ll figure it all out.

I’ve seen him grow a lot since that night he was born nearly one year ago, 38 minutes past midnight. I was there in the delivery room, holding my wife Julie’s hand, as together we stood on one side of the room and watched Graham take his first breath and voice his first cry.

You see, Graham isn’t our biological son. My wife and I adopted him the day after he was born, some nine months after Graham’s birth mother learned she was pregnant and wondered what she would do. Unable to provide for him?and unwilling to consider an abortion?she began exploring other options. That’s where we entered the picture.

We had had a strong desire to be parents but had struggled with three years of infertility, and the doctors couldn’t point to any one specific reason as to why. All of our friends, it seemed, were pregnant. Our low point emotionally came during the summer of 2007, when during a vacation to Maine we thought we finally might be expecting. For a few days, our sightseeing was a bit more exciting than usual. Our meals were more exciting, too. How crazy, I thought at the time, would it be to find out we were pregnant, more than a thousand miles from home?

Yet the day before our flight home, we learned we weren’t. We sat together on the edge of our hotel bed, held one another and cried. And sobbed.

Little did we know that at that very moment, our son had already been conceived here in the U.S., and was waiting?through the providential hand of God?for us to learn about him and his birth mom.

I don’t know all the reasons why God allowed us to walk through infertility, but I’m glad he did. If not for infertility, we wouldn’t have Graham. And Graham, even though his genes are different from mine, is the baby I always wanted. Why would I trade Graham?the son I love more than my own life?for a baby who has my own genes and my own blood?

My wife and I aren’t royalty, desiring to continue a pointless bloodline. Our citizenship is in heaven (Philippians 3:20), where bloodlines are meaningless anyway. Graham is our son, and we wouldn’t want it any other way. He is “our own.”

Last night, I gave Graham a bath. (Baths and bedtime are my responsibility in our house.) Graham and I did what we do every night: I ran the bath water, and he, still sitting on the floor in his diaper, excitedly pulled up on the edge of the tub (with help from me for safety), wanting to see the action. Once in the tub, we got the scrubbing and the cleaning out of the way early so that we would have time to play. On this night, he chewed on his favorite toy, a red plastic teething circle?he has five teeth with a sixth one coming through?and also splashed his little hands and arms in the water. I put my hand in the tub and splashed along with him, which may sound crazy to some moms, but Graham thinks it’s funny and I enjoy it. I then dried him off, put his long-sleeve blue pajamas on him and took him to his bedroom to help him wind down for bed.

Once in his room?and after he had said goodnight to Mommy?I read him a short story from his Bible toddler board book, which, as usual, he tried to grab and chew. (Keep in mind he’s only 11 months old.) Finally, I gave him his final bottle of the day, shared the gospel with him, told him that I loved him and that I was glad to be his Daddy and wouldn’t trade him for any baby in the world, kissed him and placed him gently in his crib.

Somewhere during all of that, he smiled and kissed me, too.

Thanks to the healing power of God?and a wonderful gift named Graham?I no longer have that burning desire to have biological children. If God gives us a biological child, I’d be thrilled, but if he doesn’t, that’s OK.

Sure, pregnancy and biological children are a wonderful blessing, but adoption is, too. After all, Scripture tells us that every believer was adopted by God (Romans 8:15, Ephesians 1:5).

During our battle with infertility, I remember pondering the same question that many infertile couples consider: Will I love an adopted child as much as I would a biological one? The simple answer was yes. In fact, we hope to adopt again in the near future.

Perhaps God took us through infertility to encourage other couples struggling with the same issue. Today’s