Texas Life Connections, a ministry partner of the Southern Baptists of Texas Convention, has hired Julie Parton of Garland to be its executive director.

Parton returned to Texas in 2005 after directing the pregnancy resource ministry of Focus on the Family in Colorado Springs, Colo., from 1998-2005.

Parton was the founding director of the Prestonwood Crisis Pregnancy Center, which opened in 1991 through Prestonwood Baptist Church in Plano.

She holds a master’s degree in counseling from the University of North Texas and a Ph.D. in Christian counseling from Andrew Jackson University.

Parton said her role will be to help create relationships between local churches and life-affirming ministries including pregnancy resource centers, abstinence-education programs, and foster care organizations.

A volunteer training seminar called “Lifesaving 201” is planned for July 18 at First Baptist Church of Euless. Visit the Texas Life Connections website, texaslifeconnections.org, for more information.

PEARLAND?Mission-mindedness has become a hallmark of First Baptist Church of Pearland after members gained a vision for reaching the world. Embracing an Acts 1:8 challenge, the church has extended its ministry to sites in Texas, Baltimore and Denver, North America and around the world.

Initially, church staff members attended a seminar to prepare the church for missions involvement, and then offered a Global Impact Celebration to acquaint the church with the work of the International Mission Board of the Southern Baptist Convention. Guest speakers over the past four years have included Avery Willis and Clyde Meador representing IMB, Jim Richards of the Southern Baptists of Texas Convention, and Keith Eitel and Paige Patterson from Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary.

Various pastors and missionaries representing the work of IMB and the North American Mission Board were also featured.

“As a result our church has caught the vision of missions,” said Pastor Sonny Foraker. “In just four years we have been on short-term mission trips to Kenya, Ethiopia, Rwanda, DRC Congo, Burkina Faso, Mexico, Panama, Belize, Nicaragua, Baltimore, the homeless of Houston, Texas prisons and Denver,” he explained.

The church connected with a pastor in Kenya, making repeated trips several times each year.

“Three years ago I stood on a piece of property and prayed God would move in our hearts to build an orphanage to handle 120 children,” Foraker recalled. “Today that is a reality as our people supplied the financial resources to build the orphanage, latrines, kitchen, and security and cooperated with a local business to drill a clean water well next to the orphanage.”

Last year Foraker and missions pastor Don Schwarz coordinated with pastors in the DRC Congo by renting a soccer field where they preached to 30,000 people. Hundreds of spiritual decisions were made and local pastors followed up with the new converts.

A team traveled to Denver in late June to assist in a new church plant. In July another team will join with Sam Craig Ministries to work in Panama. Later that month a team will return to Rwanda and the DRC Congo while mid-September is set aside for ministry in Kenya.

In November the focus moves to Burkina Faso in West Africa where the church is focusing on the Dogosse people group. Last year they saw 17 of them pray to receive Christ as Savior. Medical volunteers will travel to Ghana in late December to assist with a Baptist hospital where they hope to share the gospel with 900 patients a day.

“God has moved in the hearts of our folks by praying, giving and going,” Foraker said. “It’s incredible how our folks are supporting this effort.”

DALLAS?After months of negotiations, the trustees of Criswell College in Dallas took a first step on June 5 toward separating the school from its founding body, First Baptist Church of Dallas.

The unanimous vote sends the separation proposal, the terms of which were undisclosed and discussed by trustees in executive session, to the church for final approval. A change in ownership of the school and its radio station, KCBI-FM, would also require approval from the Federal Communications Commission and the school’s accrediting agency.

Trustee Chairman Michael Deahl, a Dallas attorney and a First Baptist member, said the proposed separation agreement would go to the church’s deacon body for a vote during a regularly scheduled meeting on June 16, then likely on to the church for a final vote near the end of June.

“I am pleased at the unanimous vote of our trustees in approving the basic terms for our change in governance,” said Criswell Interim President Lamar Cooper. “This governance change must also be approved by First Baptist Church of Dallas, and I am optimistic they will endorse it as well. This change will allow our administration to take the college to another level of success. I also am pleased that we have been able to accomplish this amicably, and trust that the college and church will continue to serve our Lord in a spirit of cooperation.”

Stating he strongly favors a separation, First Baptist Pastor Robert Jeffress said the separation agreement, though tentative, “allows for both the college and the church to pursue their unique ministry callings without unnecessary entanglements,” according to a report in the Dallas Morning News.

Deahl appointed a six-member transition committee to report back by Aug. 31 with proposed bylaw changes if the church approves the separation this summer. The team includes trustees Curtis Baker, chairman, Jack Brady, Jack Pogue, Paul Pressler, SBTC Executive Director Jim Richards, and Cooper. Deahl will serve ex-officio on the transition committee at the behest of Baker. The trustees would then vote on the recommendations in their next scheduled meeting on Sept. 25.

A five-member ad hoc committee of the Criswell College trustees began studying the school’s relationship with the church late last year following disagreement among trustees over the school’s governance and the ownership of KCBI-FM.

Beginning in December, church and school leaders began negotiating the terms of a proposed separation.

The church launched the college in 1969 when founding chancellor W.A. Criswell announced his vision for an institution that would provide biblical training for Sunday School teachers, other laymen and pastors who had not completed college-level ministerial training. The first classes were held in 1970. Today, nearly 400 students attend undergraduate and master’s-level courses.

On May 22 of last year, the board resolved “not to take any action to separate the College and KCBI from the Church at this time,” while not prohibiting designated representatives from further discussions.

Last summer about 40 alumni gathered prior to a trustee meeting and discussed their concern for the school’s future after Jerry Johnson resigned as the school’s president, citing philosophical differences with the chancellor and the trustee board.

An alumni association resolution encouraged the board to promote and advance the school’s independence, describing their support of the trustees as contingent on having “at the forefront the best interests of the Criswell College.”

The notion of the SBTC having a more prominent role was introduced by the state convention’s executive board last Aug. 12 with the passage of a resolution expressing a desire to be part of the solution to ongoing discussion about the school’s future. Criswell College is the only four-year college affiliated with the SBTC. Criswell received $312,977 in the 2008 budget, the largest line item in the SBTC’s allocations to facilitating ministries in Texas. The convention has a non-budgeted ministry partnership with Houston Baptist University.

“Today was an important first step in Criswell College’s future ministry,” said Richards, the SBTC executive director. “I’m grateful that we were able to take this step in a way that was mutually agreeable to all parties. I look forward to continued ministry alongside this great and significant educational institution.”

“I’ll be OK,” Joyce Rogers told her husband of 54 years as she anticipated his death. Looking back several years later, she wrote, “I don’t know if he heard me, and I didn’t exactly know what that meant. I just knew from the depths of my soul that God would take care of me. And, indeed he has!”

Her experience of how God brought her through “that incredibly difficult first year” is described in “Grace for the Widow, A Journey Through the Fog of Loss.” Her late husband, Adrian Rogers, pastored Bellevue Baptist Church near Memphis.

For many widows, Rogers said there’s a sense that is comparable to a destructive tornado “that sweeps away our home while leaving another next to it unharmed.” Lacking an explanation for why “one is taken and another is left,” she sought to discover God’s purpose for this new stage in life.

“I felt like I’d been hit in the stomach,” added Karen Collett, whose husband died in 1997 after nearly 23 years of marriage. “There is just a numbness there. It stayed over the year. It lessened, but it was still difficult.”

MANAGE AND ‘COPE’

“We probably don’t ever ‘recover’ from grief; instead, we learn to manage and cope,” explained Barbara M. Roberts in her handbook “Helping Those Who Hurt” for those involved in caring for others during a crisis.

Speaking at a Women’s Leadership Consultation session held earlier this year at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, Collett outlined the needs of widows at the time of the spouse’s death as compared to the months and years beyond. She serves as women’s auxiliary coordinator at SWBTS where she maintains contact with widows across the United States through the Widow’s Might prayer ministry.

When a terminal illness stretches out for months, the family benefits from the provision of meals, assistance with errands, transportation, babysitting and when appropriate, relieving the caregiver, she said.

Encouragement is greatly appreciated, but consideration of the individual’s time is important, she advised.

“Phone calls can be very overwhelming. You’re trying to be there with your children and you’re saying the same thing for 15 minutes each time.”

Her husband, Dana, pastored Covenant Baptist Church in Columbia, Md., when he was diagnosed with cancer.

Some families take advantage of web-based technology that allows posting of updated information on a person’s condition through one entry. Prayer chains should be succinct, taking care to pass along only accurate information, she added.

It often falls to a minister to guide a grieving widow through the steps she must soon take. Roberts’ handbook outlines the initial decisions to be made at the mortuary and the process of planning a funeral service.

“If the death has been sudden, the shock stage will be severe. The care needed in that situation is much more intense,” she wrote.

At the time of a death, many widows begin operating on autopilot, Collett shared.

“Just be there for them. Your whole security and support system gets ripped out from under you,” she added.

“After the funeral is over and loved ones have gone home, you are faced with the mundane decisions of what to do,” Rogers wrote in her book. She provides direction on tackling the long “to-do” list that ranges from writing thank-you notes to making financial decisions.

Julia Moore, the wife of a Southwestern Seminary student who died in 2006, recalled being so overwhelmed by the day-to-day events that she often forgot who had offered to help.

“Hundreds of cards and notes of sympathy arrived in the mail, phones calls and visitors were constant and food arrived daily like clockwork during the two weeks after Donald’s death,” she said. “Then the widow is left in a fog, wondering what just happened and where did everyone go?”

The simplest efforts sometimes make the greatest difference in a time of need. “Sometimes you have a small voice that you recognized as God telling you something as simple as call this person, write this letter,” shared Anita Onarecker Wood of Spring, whose first husban

WOODSTOCK, Ga.–Greater funding of the Cooperative Program will occur when Southern Baptists have greater confidence their gifts support the priorities of North American church planting, global pioneer missions around the globe and theological education, declared Southern Baptist Convention President Johnny Hunt in an interview with four state Baptist paper editors.

Hunt responded to critics who he believes have misjudged his motive in calling for a task force to examine the denomination “at every level” via his “Great Commission Resurgence” declaration. Far from having “a hidden agenda,” the Georgia pastor said his proposal seeks accountability for the investment of mission dollars.

He predicted his call for a study will be approved overwhelmingly by messengers to the June 23-24 SBC meeting in Louisville, and endorsed an appeal from the four state Baptist paper editors that meetings of the prospective task force would be as open and transparent as possible.

“I would be real open to say that we look forward to every meeting that there will be a state editor there to be able to document the meeting. We have nothing to hide,” Hunt told the editors from the Florida Baptist Witness, Georgia Christian Index, Illinois Baptist and Southern Baptist Texan in the June 3 conference call.

GCR DOCUMENT
Since its initial release April 27 at greatcommissionresurgence.com, Hunt has adopted what he described as “a James 3:17 mentality” that regards “wisdom from heaven as easily entreated.” The feedback from SBC constituents prompted several revisions to the original draft of the 10-point plan “Toward a Great Commission Resurgence,” with the authors softening remarks that some found offensive. The allegation of “bloated bureaucracy” was removed one day after its initial release and a call to “rethink our Convention structure” has been replaced with an appeal for “valued partnerships of SBC agencies, state conventions/institutions, and Baptist associations to evaluate our Convention structures.”

What remains in the most often cited Article IX is Hunt’s motive in calling for a study “so that we can maximize our energy and resources for the health of our local churches and the fulfillment of the Great Commission.” With those changes made, Hunt said he hopes critics will back off of repeating references to language no longer included in the declaration.

“When we felt that word ‘bloated’ was offensive, we removed it, but it continues to be used by the ones who asked us to remove it. That’s very unchristlike. I feel I responded in a Christlike way [to remove it].”

HUNT: KEEP THE ‘TEETH’ OF ARTICLE IX
In spite of the SBC having restructured its entities a dozen years ago, Hunt said it’s not too soon to look at it again. “The question was even asked in an [SBC] Executive Committee report–did we really make a great enough commitment in 1997?” Hunt recalled.

“There’s a lot of fear out there because some have chosen to say that they question my intent, my motive. I would ask them to challenge me on the writing of the document, not the intent, unless they think I’m an evil man and if I am, I pray that same group will go ahead and run a candidate that has greater integrity.”

Instead, he wondered aloud if the openness to asking questions depends upon who is doing the asking. “Others have called for this same type of challenge, but with stronger words. So my question is can you ask this question as long as you’re someone else?”

He expects those who study the convention will find “real celebration points” along the way. “I think they are going to say, ‘Gosh, we’re doing even better than we thought,’ and at the same time say, ‘We could do better.'”

Having made changes that provided a “win-win” result, Hunt said he would reject any appeal for removing Article IX calling for examination of the denominational structure. “That’s like saying let’s use this language we’re all familiar with, but take any teeth out of it that might challenge us. The major change that could happen is in number nine. It gives people greater passion and desire to support the Cooperative Program as long as we continue over the years to hold ourselves to greater accountability.”

The call for self-assessment is already gaining traction among some denominational entities, Hunt said, citing studies underway in his home state convention, at the North American Mission Board, as well as cuts in expenditures at the International Mission Board.

DISAGREEMENT WITH CHAPMAN
Responding to Executive Committee President Morris Chapman’s contention in a May 29 Baptist Press column that “the slippage in Cooperative Program giving is at the local church level” where the percentage given has declined from 8.24 percent to 6.08 percent in the last decade, Hunt said the point is well taken.

He noted his own church’s increase of another $50,000 for the Cooperative Program for the second year in a row at a time when the budget for First Baptist Church of Woodstock, Ga., was lowered. “It has got to begin with me. Are we using our resources best to be a Great Commission church?” Hunt said he has heard from other local pastors who have made similar commitments to increased CP giving.

Last year the Woodstock church reported nearly $17.5 million in undesignated receipts with $432,977 given to the cooperative Program, amounting to 2.48 percent, according to the Georgia Baptist Convention. In addition to $57,500 sent to the local association, the congregation contributed $175,000 to the Lottie Moon Christmas Offering for International Missions and reported nearly $3 million for other mission gifts.

For critics to question Hunt’s own commitment to the SBC by focusing on his church’s percentage rather that the total dollars given is out of line, Hunt added. “Is there a point where you can’t say that about someone who is so Southern Baptist involved?” he asked, emphasizing that 128 families from his church are serving in ministry fields and 78 Southern Baptist church plants have been planted during his tenure.

“It’s something that really is not in writing that every church give 10 percent to CP,” Hunt said. Designating funds made it possible for them to underwrite a major outreach effort of the IMB in the Middle East, he said.

Hunt rejected the charge that he desires to redefine Cooperative Program giving to include designated gifts. “I never said that. I don’t’ feel that way and I’m not going to push for that. One day maybe there will be another way to celebrate those who choose to be more personally involved and go where their money goes and be involved in a different way in Southern Baptist life instead of really large CP dollars.” Pastors who lead those churches are committed to the SBC, he said, but “placed out there as non-missional.”

“Now the word has been changed that I’ll decimate the SBC,” Hunt said, making a passing reference to a letter Chapman sent to Executive Committee members. In the May 29 letter, obtained by the TEXAN, Chapman warned, “If this change is enacted by the task force to be appointed by the SBC president, the Cooperative Program will be decimated in only a very few years.”

Chapman also wrote, “If we jettison the Cooperative Program and go back to the societal funding model, we will get the same results we did before 1925—bankruptcy and failure. If we bypass the trustee system by adopting presidential fiat, we replace our cooperative methodology with the vagaries of personality,” Chapman wrote. “And if we wed our autonomous partners together unintentionally by tying structure across the board to the preferences of a single committee recommendation bereft of thoughtful Executive Committee review, we render the entirety of the Convention and its kindred bodies vulnerable to the assault of any single attacker on any missiological, doctrinal, legal, philosophical, or functional front.”

Hunt told editors: “There’s pretty strong language when you say the president is trying to dismantle CP. How under heaven would I, as a pastor, lead my church to give $525,000 undesignated and $2 million to Southern Baptists causes? Why would I try to dismantle what I’ve led my people to give so much money to for so many years? If I do that I am the biggest fool that this convention has ever elected as president. That’s not my intent.”

He added, “I want to give him credit,” referring to Chapman. “I feel he’s leading the way he feels he should from where he sits as an executive officer and I feel like I’m leading from where I sit as pastor of a local church. I really do feel these initiatives are where grassroots Southern Baptists are.”

In a May 29 BP column Chapman also challenged Hunt for thinking “reorganizing the Convention is the road to revival,” characterizing Article IX as “divisive” and “distracting.”

“I pray that God sends revival,” Hunt responded. “If he were to begin to give Southern Baptists once again a great impetus for incredible growth both financially and numerically, we still need to ask questions. Are we doing as much as we possibly can in making the funds available to areas that have brought us together,” he added, referring to missionary enterprises.

“I think there are some things that if we address them now could move us forward with greater unity into the future,” Hunt said.

“If the denomination empowers me to appoint a task force, my thought was not to see it go beyond a year,” Hunt added. “It’s not like I’m on a witch hunt and want to find some stuff. I’m not out to reveal salaries. I’m about greater commitment.”

He clarified his motive for examining the bureaucracy, stating, “If we look back at 1976, it took less that 1 percent of the CP budget to fund the national headquarters and now it’s at 2.86 percent of a much larger budget,” Hunt said, referring to the Executive Committee. “Is there accountability in place? Is it fair to ask the question, ‘Can the bureaucracy quit getting bigger and bigger so that when the money gets bigger we’re able to send greater portions?’”

Hunt expressed a degree of disillusionment with some of the response to his proposal. “It’s a little hurtful when you write a document that, from what I read, has some strong language when you try to question the motive of a man’s heart—and that’s in print.”

Although he has no further plan to respond to Chapman’s critique of GCR in Baptist Press, Hunt said the two men talked shortly before Chapman’s article was published.

“He feels he’s protecting the convention and I feel like I’m leading it to greater days,” Hunt added.

BYPASSING EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE
In his letter to Executive Committee members, Chapman also raised the question of whether Hunt’s approach violates SBC Bylaw 18, bypassing the EC assignment to advise the convention on questions of cooperation among entities and those of other conventions, whether state or national. While Hunt told editors he is seeking a system of checks and balances to ensure accountability, Chapman wrote that the EC exists for that purpose between annual meetings.

“The last thing I want to do is be in violation of a convention policy,” Hunt told the editors when asked about the charge. “We’re working on it now and it’s being studied.

If I find I’m in violation of something I will be brought in line rightly and desirously so. I’m a local church pastor and not a parliamentarian.”

Pressing the question further, Hunt asked, “Is there some checks and balances back to the local church on every level where I have to write as a local church pastor who supports this denomination—and we send a lot of dollars. They can use percentages till hell freezes over, but the bottom line is everyone there is paid and every missionary is paid not by percentages, but by dollars.”

Insisting that grassroots Southern Baptists want to know the funds are being used for maximum impact, Hunt said, “We want to send more. I’m just trying to ask the question. It may come to the point where even the passion to try to do what I’m doing will be squelched. If so, I fear the reactions of this denomination if there is not some way the parliamentarian can tell us to ask the questions I’m asking and get good answers.”

TASK FORCE COMPOSITION
Hunt previously stated that he anticipates leading pastors, a state convention executive director, a seminary president and a college president will be among the dozen people named to the task force. Asked if he would be open to allowing various groups to select their own participant in the study, Hunt said he’d give the idea some thought.

“I can’t just say I will let state executive directors pick a state executive director when I’ve got documents in files here where they said some very untruthful and hurtful things [about GCR].”

Hunt said he didn’t want a person with a critical spirit representing the concerns of Southern Baptists. “Not on my charge, if I’m the one who has the opportunity of appointing the committee.” Instead, he pledged to appoint “a very fair committee if it gets that far.”

He confirmed that he has agreed to meet with a group of state convention executive directors June 8 to further clarify his views and answer their questions. “I’m not sure who all is coming, but they asked if I would meet and I said any and all. I have no hidden agenda.”

“What if God chose to really give a phenomenal increase to the body of Christ in the Southern Baptist context. I would like to hear it said that if some of our state conventions need extra help, maybe some have grown to a certain place where they send 50 percent now [beyond the state] and larger sums of that money continue on.” Hunt said that kind of generosity by state conventions “would keep us from being tempted in our churches to give designated gifts.”

“I’m really thinking not so much in terms of reshifting chairs on the deck as much as there being more chairs,” he said. After pastoring for 33 years, Hunt said he has good reason to dream, having seen great victory in local churches. “I want to challenge pastors to have afresh encounter with God—have the capacity to believe God again and believe all that will flow out of that.”