Month: April 2010

How do we get there?

As the family ministry wave builds momentum, more and more church leaders are beginning to deliberate over how to lead their families to become Deuteronomy 6 families where discipleship takes place daily, “along the way?as you lie down, and as you rise up.”

In those efforts of deliberation, Lance Crowell, church ministries associate for the Southern Baptists of Texas Convention, said, “We just want to be there to help churches in any way that we can.”

Crowell invites church leaders as well as families to take advantage of the SBTC’s first Family Ministry Conference, May 7-8 at First Baptist Church of Keller. Breakout sessions are planned for couples, for single parents, for church leaders, for parents of both young children and of teens.

“We are also so very excited to provide a complete track designed explicitly for children and teens. The desire is to provide a family-friendly event to encourage and challenge every member of the family,” Crowell said.

The theme of the 2010 conference is “Great Commission Families: Transforming the Church One Family at a Time.”

Citing Matthew 28:19-20 as the theme passage, Crowell stated the conference objectives: “We want to help leaders and churches think through what it means for discipleship to take place in the home so families can then be on mission. We want them to think about this question for their families: ‘Are they being who they are called to be in the home and in the world, so they can be who they are supposed to be in the church?'”

Conference headliners include successful and experienced family ministry guides such as John Trent, Kurt Bruner and Ryan Rush. Presenters will impart the strategies they have implemented in order to flesh out the concept of family ministry and help attendees begin to plot their own courses. Well-known worship leader Dennis Jernigan will lead in family praise and worship.

Trent, who will bring the keynote address, is a prominent psychologist and popular conference speaker. With over 25 years of work devoted to the family, he is founder of the Center for Strong Families and strongfamilies.com, and the author of several best-selling books including “The Blessing,” and “The Language of Love.”

Formerly with Focus on the Family, Kurt Bruner is the pastor of spiritual formation at LakePointe Church in Rockwall and oversees Homepointe, a ministry that provides resources and ongoing accountability to teach and encourage discipleship in the home. He also works with Heritage Builders Association and the Center for Strong Families, and is the author of two resources for families: “Your Heritage” and “The Family Night Tool Chest.”

Pastor of Bannockburn Baptist Church in Austin, Ryan Rush presents “Home on Time” conferences based on his book with the same name, teaching families how to have control over their schedules and manage their priorities?in particular their walk with God. His church’s strategy called Faith Breakthroughs provides families with tools they need to “take ownership of God’s promises where they live,” according to Rush in his blog at ryanrush.com.

The cost of the Family Ministry Conference is $35 per person, or $40 per family. “An event like this is a great starting point,” Crowell said, “both for churches and for families.” For more information or to register, go to sbtexas.com/family or call Emily Gentiles in the SBTC office at 877-953-SBTC. For further help and resource suggestions, contact Lance Crowell at 877-953-SBTC.

Other valuable guides to help churches explore family ministry as recommended by speakers at the Connection Conference are:

? “Home-based Student Ministry: Leading a Student Ministry Focused on the Family” (Southern Baptists of Texas Convention 2009), by Ken Lasater. Lasater recounts his extensive research with parents whose children maintained a strong commitment to faith after leaving home. He then describes a discipleship strategy developed using his research in which the primary burden of discipling students is shifted from the student minister to the home. Student ministers would then encourage and equip parents to disciple their own teens, and focus primarily on providing meaningful ministry and leadership development opportunities for teens.

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State convention leaders weigh in on NAMB “reinvention”

Fifteen years after the adoption of a strategy called a “Covenant for a New Century” turned the Home Mission Board into the North American Mission Board (NAMB), the Southern Baptist Convention is once again considering recommendations from a national study committee to “reinvent” the North American missions agency. In its initial report, members of the Great Commission Resurgence Task Force (GCRTF) hope to see changes in NAMB’s missions strategies, responsibilities, and partnerships in keeping the entity focused on a church planting priority.

Released as a progress report on Feb. 22, seven pages of the 32-page draft outlined Component 2 of the task force’s vision ? the reinvention and release of NAMB “to plant churches ? reach our nation’s cities, and clarify its role to lead and accomplish efforts to reach North America with the gospel.”

The report addresses two basic questions about NAMB: what should the agency do, and how should it do that work?

What should NAMB do?
With the adoption of the “Covenant for a New Century” in 1996, NAMB was tapped with nine ministry assignments to assist churches:

? Supporting missionaries

? Evangelism

? Establishing new congregations

? Christian social ministries

? Volunteer missions

? Missions involvement and education

? Communication technologies

? Service to associations

? Disaster relief

According to the GCRTF progress report, the “reinvented” NAMB will focus on five areas:

? Church planting

? Evangelism and discipleship

? Leadership

? Sending and supporting missionaries

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SBC leaders disagree on whether new GCR vision is really new

NASHVILLE?The first “Component” of the Great Commission Resurgence Task Force’s interim progress report calls Southern Baptists to rally around a missional vision focused on the Great Commission and to “create a new and healthy culture within the Southern Baptist Convention.”


The report, released Feb. 22, proposes a “missional vision” to “present the Gospel of Jesus Christ to every person in the world and to make disciples of all the nations.”

To that end, the report lists eight core values the GCRTF says will help create a changed culture: Christ-likeness, truth, unity, relationships, trust, future, local church and kingdom.

GCR Task Force chairman Ronnie Floyd told the Florida Baptist Witness, “The core values we want our convention to embrace can help us create a new culture in the way we talk to and relate to one another personally and in the way we conduct our business together.” The SBC lacks clarity on this issue and the GCRTF wants “to see this changed radically,” he said.

Floyd said response to Component 1 of the report has been overwhelmingly positive with only one change suggested. The GCRTF is not considering any changes to this component at present, he said.

Ed Stetzer, missiologist and president of the research arm of LifeWay Christian Resources, told the Witness the word “missional” has become a widely accepted term in evangelical circles during the last decade, though it may be unfamiliar to some.

“At its core, ‘missional’ is generally defined as joining God on his mission,” Stetzer said. “In other words, the church and Christians do not exist for themselves, but rather they are here to join Jesus on mission and to live sent for God’s agenda. We reorder our priorities to be focused on what God is doing rather than what we want.”

In order to embrace this vision long-term, Floyd wrote in the progress report of the need to create a new and healthy culture within the SBC. He explained that the eight core values articulate “what we stand for, how we should work together, how we govern our personal relationships, and how we should be guided in making decisions.

The core values are:

? Christ-likeness: We depend on the transforming power of the Holy Spirit and rayer to make us more like Jesus Christ.

? Truth: We stand together in the truth of God’s inerrant Word, celebrating the faith once for all delivered to the saints.

? Unity: We work together in love for the sake of the gospel.

? Relationships: We consider others more important than ourselves.

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Exhibit requirements set for 2010 SBTC Annual Meeting

Approved exhibitors at the SBTC Annual Meeting include

(subject to available space) SBTC ministries, SBC agencies, SBTC

ministry relationships (under the oversight of the Facilitating

Ministries Committee of the Executive Board), Baptist associational

ministries, and any host church. All other entities desiring booth

space must submit their request in writing to Joe Davis

at the SBTC, prior to June 1, 2010.

Entities or individuals may share exhibit space with approved

exhibitors only with the approval of the Committee on Order

of Business. For profit entities that have no formal relationship

with the SBTC shall not be granted exhibit space.

All exhibit material must be in agreement with the SBTC Constitution and

Bylaws, which includes the Baptist Faith & Message 2000.

Fund raising or sales that do not conflict with SBTC

priorities will be allowed in the exhibit area.

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