OAK GROVE, La. (BP)–Five people killed in a church van crash June 22 all had made professions of faith within the last 18 months, said Greg Dunn, a pastor in Oak Grove, La.

Providentially, Dunn added, the 50 or more churches of several denominations in West Carroll Parish began planning for an area-wide crusade a year ago.

The 3,000 people in and around Oak Grove are broken with grief, said Dunn, pastor of New Zion Baptist Church. Even so: “We believe what Satan meant for harm, God will use for good. We are going to honor their lives by many souls coming to the Lord.”

Investigation continues into the cause of the crash, which took place in daylight about five miles from New Zion as the 15-passenger church van took folks home from Wednesday night services.

Killed were Portia Thornton and her two daughters, Katelyn, 19, and Brittany, 12, as well as Emma Adams, 4, who was visiting the church, and driver Joey W. McKan. Six others were injured, some critically.

“I will never forget that night, standing in the hallway while surrounded by church members, still talking about the service and laughing and fellowshipping like we always do, and then came the call that would forever change our lives,” Dunn said.

A frantic yet prayer-filled dash to the accident site followed.

“We could have never been prepared for what we saw and heard when we arrived,” Dunn said. “I have never felt so helpless, wishing that this was not happening, and yet it was.”

The next few days were filled with hospital visits, funerals and road trips between Shreveport, La., and Jackson, Miss., “to pick up the broken pieces and try to do all we could to minister to these precious families,” Dunn said.

As Sunday quickly approached, Dunn recounted, “I lay in my bed Saturday night, knowing that my church family was expecting a word from the Lord.

“Jesus reminded me of the storm the disciples faced in Matthew 8, when they were all in the boat and the wind and the waves began to shake their faith.

“We can't choose the storms,” Dunn said. “We are guaranteed to have storms. … I cried out, 'Lord, where are You in our storm? Where are You in the midst of this tragedy?'”

Dunn said God told him that He was in all the people who have united because of the crash: EMT personnel, hospital staff, volunteers, families, churches and communities “from all over who have come together for one purpose: to help the hurting. … He's the one holding the hand of the dying. … He's a piano player, a deacon, a body of Christ who rallies around a scared, young preacher who wants to quit and run the other way.”

Dunn wrote down 21 places where God was amid the tragedy and read his “Where is God?” list at Mt. Zion at the Sunday, June 26, service. The pastor said he could see comfort settling atop the congregation's raw wounds.

“The Lord is doing His work here,” Dunn said, turning from the tragedy to view the big picture of God's activity. New Zion, planted in 1934 during the Great Depression, reported 60 professions of faith and 31 baptisms in 2010 and probably that many already in 2011.

“We're a very mission-minded church and serious about being real,” Dunn said.

“We know God has given evangelists as a gift to the local church, so we use them,” he added in reference to revival meetings held at Mt. Zion twice a year.

“Everybody on this van were folks saved and discipled in the last 18 months,” Dunn continued, “every last one of them,” including a 16-year-old girl who made a profession of faith six months ago as a result of the van ministry.

“We send 20 to 25 missionaries out of our church each year to do missions, and we believe missions starts at home,” Dunn said. “We seek through our Brotherhood and the women's group to minister any way we can — cutting down trees, providing school supplies, groceries — any avenue we can to get the Gospel to people not just in word but in action.

“Our director of missions [Jay Morgan] was out of town when this happened,” Dunn said, returning to the loss his congregation is enduring. “He was doing ministry with Kingdom Builders and drove all night to be at the hospital with the families and me.

“It was overwhelming, the first few hours,” Dunn said. “The people have moved from 'overwhelmed' to very evidently trusting God in it. They're still hurting, still in need, but trusting God.”

Dunn said his immediate goal is “to be there and try to be strong for them and with them”

“The one thing we know is we can cling to God's Word and God's presence,” the pastor said. “The message God gave us Sunday morning was about the storms of life and how we can't choose whether or not we go through them, but we can choose how we handle it.”

The July 10-15 community crusade is scheduled for 11 a.m. Sunday and 7 p.m. each night in the Thomas Jason Lingo Center in Oak Grove, with evangelist Bill Britt as guest speaker and the Mackey Willis Family leading in worship.

Depending on what God does with hearts already broken, the crusade could be extended, said Dunn, chairman of the crusade steering committee.

“One thing God has given us is that this [crusade] is going to be big,” Dunn said. “[Britt] has a gift to challenge Christians to be real and not lukewarm. … We felt like this is who God wanted to be part of this crusade.

“This is something no one is going to want to miss. … You're going to want to see for yourself what God does.”
–30–
Karen L. Willoughby is managing editor of the Baptist Message (www.baptistmessage.com), newsjournal of the Louisiana Baptist Convention.

DARRINGTON MAXIMUM SECURITY PRISON UNIT, NEAR ROSHARON, Texas—Through an unusual partnership, 40 long-term inmates at the Darrington maximum-security prison unit are now receiving pastoral seminary training behind bars. 

The new program, open to any inmate meeting the academic standards to enter college and given clearance by the state, is being funded partly by a $116,200 grant from the Southern Baptists of Texas Convention. The SBTC, Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, and the Heart of Texas Foundation are collaborating on the program.

The grant will provide library books, classroom furniture, technology and half of the ongoing costs for professors’ salaries and travel expenses for the first two years. For its part, SWBTS is providing from money outside its Cooperative Program allocation to fund the remaining half of the ongoing costs as well as scholarships for each student. And while the Texas Department of Criminal Justice has allowed SWBTS to use classroom space at Darrington, no state funds support the program.

HOW IT STARTED
Houston native Grove Norwood toured the 5,000-inmate Angola maximum-security prison in Louisiana after an Angola prisoner viewed the movie “Heart of Texas,” which documents Norwood’s radical forgiveness following the tragic hit-and-run death of his daughter. While at Angola, Norwood learned of the Bible college program offered by New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary within the facility. 

Since its inception in 1995, that program has been credited with a 70 percent reduction in inmate violence, with murders dropping from 20-30 per year to no murders committed during each of the past three years and assaults dropping from 400-500 per year to only 40 last year. In addition, graduates of the program have been sent out in pairs to other prisons throughout the state.

“The key to what God has done in our programs is application. Every student must be involved in ministry in the prison,” Chuck Kelley, the New Orleans Seminary president, told the TEXAN. “They learn to do, not to merely know. Raising up godly, trained inmate leaders is what sets prison transformation in motion. As our students became ministers, light began pushing back the darkness.

“All that we are doing was set in motion when a Baptist layman took his faith to work. His work happened to be serving as warden in the largest and toughest maximum security prison in the nation. He saw the need and came to us to see if we would be a partner in training leadership. We said yes, and the rest is history.”

A documentary of the NOBTS program at Angola can be viewed at the North American Mission Board website: onmission.com/A-New-Hope/.

Impressed with what he saw, Norwood came back to Houston in May 2010 and asked two Texas state senators, John Whitmire, D-Houston and Dan Patrick, R-Houston, along with representatives from the SBTC and SWBTS, to visit Angola with him. As members of Texas’ Senate Criminal Justice Committee, the senators were convinced to establish a similar program in Texas, which has 13 maximum-security prisons to Louisiana’s one. Joe Davis, the SBTC’s chief financial officer, was also at Angola during that visit and was equally impressed.

“We were just amazed at the things that had happened at Angola because of the Bible college program New Orleans seminary had here,” Davis said. “And we were amazed and excited to think something like this could happen in Texas. We saw what it did in the system in Angola. It completely changed the prison. The men there have turned their hearts to Christ.”

Since their visit last spring to Angola Prison, Denny Autrey, dean and professor of pastoral ministries at Southwestern’s Houston-based J. Dalton Havard School for Theological Studies, has been working with the SBTC and TDCJ to work out the details of the Texas program. As a result, 40 students began their coursework this past spring semester. After completing the 125 credit-hour program over four years, graduates will receive the bachelor of science degree in biblical studies. A similar degree program is also planned for Southwestern’s Fort Worth and Houston campuses. 

Autrey said he is most encouraged by the influence the program at the prison could have on the seminary.

“This is a God-given thing that Southwestern has been asked to do this,” Autrey said. “It will bring strong doctrine and biblical inerrancy into the prisons. Anyone can apply for the program, but we are going to teach the exclusivity of Christ and the inerrancy of Scripture.”

In contrast to other moral rehabilitation programs that bring in outsiders to work with prisoners prior to their parole or release, Southwestern’s program focuses on long-term prisoners. To be eligible, inmates must to be at least 10 years from parole, with preference given to inmates with even longer sentence terms remaining. The stated purpose is to give graduates five or more years to be an influence on other inmates within the prison system.

“These guys are in prison 24-7, not like ministries that come and go or just focus on evangelism,” explained Ben Phillips, Southwestern professor of systematic theology and preaching at Havard who serves as director of the program at Darrington. He noted that participants would live among the general prison population, not in one of the faith-based dorms that are available to Darrington inmates.

“These inmates will not just evangelize in the prison, but minister and pastor with street credit.”

Phillips said that roughly 600 inmates applied for the program, and of those the department of criminal justice passed along 155 applicants to Southwestern for consideration. 
From that number, 40 inmates were chosen for the first cohort, along with 20 alternates—any student who creates a discipline issue in the prison will lose his seat in the program, something they are not eager to do. 

“The students are ecstatic and abundantly grateful for our presence there,” said Brandon Warren, administrative assistant at Havard who taught at Darrington this spring. “I served a total of six-and-a-half years in prison myself, and I’ve been out almost seven years now. So the students and I relate to each other well in a number of areas, and they’re very passionate about serving and succeeding in the program.”

In choosing participants, Southwestern looked for inmates with a desire to serve their fellow prisoners.

“Criminals by nature are incredibly selfish,” Phillips explained. “They will lie, steal, and even murder to get what they want. So when someone like that shows desire to serve others, we take it as pre-conversion work of the Holy Spirit. And we believe if you give them four-and-half-years of solid Bible teaching, they will either come out Christians or be strengthened in their walk, and they will know how to use the Bible to serve their fellow offenders.”

Phillips emphasizes the changes that happen when inmates with life sentences embrace Christ and minister in his name.

“What we’ve seen in Angola is that if you change lifers, you actually see the guards’ attitudes change, and eventually you change the whole culture in the prison. That reduces violence in the prisons and cost to the justice system. And when you minister to guys who will get out, now those changes begin to happen on the streets, in the lives of their children and families and in the reduction in the number of new victims.”

According to Autrey, the program has already made changes, as four of the 40 men have made professions of faith within the first semester. He hopes to see that continue as Southwestern works to move the program out into the remaining 12 maximum-security prisons, as well as the 100 other prisons in the state.

“TDCJ has asked us to move the program out as soon as possible,” Autrey said. “We hope to be in two or three more units, and into a woman’s prison unit as well.” He said in order to accomplish this Southwestern and the Heart of Texas Foundation are reaching out to the many churches in Texas that already have prison ministries. “We feel the next step is connecting with our churches,” Autrey said. 

For Phillips, the excitement comes in imagining how the inmates’ lives will be a testimony to Christ in the coming years as the program adds 40 participants each of the next three years until it reaches 160 students enrolled at once. 

Citing the first chapter of 1 Timothy, Phillips noted in verses 13 through 16 that Paul emphasizes how violent and wicked he had been before he met Christ. Yet, Paul says, Christ saved him so that his life would be living evidence to the power of the gospel.

“If these guys can have their lives transformed,” Phillips said, referring to inmates in the program, “if God can transform murderers into the image of Christ, then that shows that the gospel has real power.”

PHOENIX—Criswell College student Esther Jeong’s eyes teared up as she talked about her stay in Maricopa, Ariz., a growing desert community 45 minutes south of Phoenix. A South Korean native and single mother of two college students, Jeong clearly saw God’s plan for her to stay with her host family here during this year’s SBC Crossover evangelistic event. The day after her arrival, Jeong spoke with Jannett Large, the mother in this blended family home, about the importance of marriage, and Jannett began to weep.

Jeong remembered Jannett saying she had intended to return to Mexico and never come back but the commitment to host a student delayed that plan. She told Jeong of a dream she had of being close to the Mexican border and being stopped by a women who told her she was going the wrong way and needed to turn around, advising her to simply follow her. The next morning Jannett told her husband that about a strange dream and needed to stay and see what God had for her.

Despite Jannett’s unusual story, Jeong was not surprised. Even before arriving, the Lord had also been preparing the Criswell student for what would prove to be a fruitful four days.

“When I arrived in the home, I realized they were Hispanic, and it shocked me,” she explained, recalling that one of her close friends had recently shared her own dream of Jeong bringing many Hispanic people to a house. “So I thought, ‘OK, there must be something happening here.’”

Jeong is one of six Criswell students who participated in Crossover through the school’s Encounter Missions program.  The students, along with program director Bobby Worthington, partnered with Jay Gjurgevich, an Arizona native and pastor of newly planted Waypoint Church in Maricopa who had previously served on the staff of Travis Avenue Baptist Church in Fort Worth.

The church meets in a school building in a development of about 2,000 homes and now has about 70 in attendance, including Jannett and her family. One of a dozen churches that this year’s Crossover organizers hope to see strengthened through the evangelistic outreach, Waypoint was begun two years ago by 10 members of Foothills Baptist Church in Ahwatukee, Ariz.  

With another new believer ready to be baptized, the church made plans to gather at the home of Wil and Jannett Large for an afternoon fellowship and baptismal service in the family’s backyard pool. On the day prior to the event, Jeong talked further with Jannett to confirm her conversion experience and explained the need for biblical baptism.

“I said to her, ‘Why don’t you proclaim you are a Christian through baptism? You must proclaim who you are,’” Jeong recalled. “I told her, ‘Baptism is not the time of salvation, but it is the time of proclamation.’”

While Jannett considered the matter, Jeong took the family’s 12-year-old son Devon along to knock on doors, inviting residents to visit the church. “He was evangelizing door to door in his community,” Jeong explained. “He knew the Lord, and everybody knew him.”

After further conversation with the pastor, both Jannett and Devon recognized their need for baptism, and participated in the ordinance as the church gathered at their swimming pool. As Jannett came up out of the waters, she was embraced by Jeong who declared, “I am your big sister now.”   

During the time in Maricopa, Criswell students visited nearly 600 homes in the area, hosted a free car wash and a parents’ night out, providing additional opportunities for spiritually directed conversations. In his sermon on Sunday morning, Gjurgevich told the congregation how God had used the Criswell team to refocus the church on its community.

“We understood early on as a church that we must get outside the walls of the church,” he shared. “We must go out and live it out.”  

Gjurgevich told the TEXAN, “When we began, there were only 10 of us, so there was an urgency for outreach because we knew if we didn’t do outreach, there wouldn’t be a church.” Through the involvement of Criswell students that original passion was renewed, he said.

“There was inspiration and encouragement in watching their excitement, so it was good for me and for those who worked alongside them.”  

Worthington saw many examples of God’s hand in directing the team.

“I tell the students, ‘If there is one thing you should learn this week, it is that prayer and evangelism are linked together,’” Worthington emphasized. “They must be right with the Lord before they minister. And before you speak to someone about the Lord, you must speak to the Lord about them.”

Two other of Worthington’s students found themselves faced with a witnessing opportunity as they went to pray in the convention’s prayer room. Rick Bailey and Darrell Vang noticed a young man serving with the convention center posted at the door across from the prayer room. They approached him and began to talk to him about the Lord. Within minutes, the young man had accepted Christ.  Sheila Jones, who serves as prayer coordinator for the Arizona Baptist Convention and for Crossover, watched the interaction as she staffed the prayer room.

“I could see what was going on and just sat here smiling,” Jones related. After the pair of students left she saw the change that came over the man. “I could hear him reading Scripture out loud, and then he would look up at the ceiling and smile. I told someone, ‘Look at that young man—he’s a new brother! I just witnessed a birth.’”

Despite their busy ministry schedule, students found time for study as well. Each one enrolled in Criswell’s SBC annual meeting history and practicum course, which includes attendance at the Pastors’ Conference and annual meeting, lectures from Criswell College President Jerry Johnson, Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary President Paige Patterson and Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary professor Bruce Ashford, as well as advance study of SBC polity.   

“The advantage of taking our students to the Southern Baptist Convention for this class is that Baptist history becomes real,” course instructor Andrew Hebert said. “It is a real enhancement to the books they are reading.”

Meanwhile, Jannett and her family continue to rejoice in the faithfulness of the Criswell team in coming to Maricopa.  

“When we left I told Jannett, ‘Thank you for taking care of Esther for us,’” Worthington said. “But she replied, ‘No, she took care of us!’”

Worthington said Jannett’s husband added, “‘Thank you for sending Queen Esther to us.’”

“There is no doubt in my mind that God placed Esther in that home,” Worthington said. “That’s something the Spirit of God does.”

ISHINOMAKI, Japan – A 6.7-magnitude earthquake struck at 6:51 a.m. June 23 off the northeast coast of Japan, rattling not only the communities devastated by the March 11 earthquake and tsunami but also a nine-member Southern Baptists of Texas Convention disaster relief team. The crew is divided and serving in two prefectures in the Tohoku Region.

No one from the team or their hosts from Tokyo Baptist Church were injured during the quake, which was felt most significantly by the four members deployed in the Iwate Prefecture. The team is staying in a multi-purpose facility in Tono City and was preparing a meal for 150 people in a nearby refugee shelter when the quake hit.

The remaining five members were further south in Sendai at the time of the quake. The epicenter was about 31 miles offshore, according to news reports, prompting public officials to warn of a potential tsunami. Both teams were about 18 miles inland at the time of the quake.

“It was really pretty awesome,” said Dewey Watson, youth pastor at First Baptist Church of Leonard. “It sounded like a train and it shook back and forth, back and forth.”

Watson laughed about his first earthquake experience and said he and team member R.L. Barnard of First Baptist Church of Duncanville were straddling ice chests and the shaking made it seem like they were riding bucking horses.

Dewey’s wife Glenda, children’s ministry director at FBC Leonard, was peeling shrimp when the ground began to move. She reported the entire kitchen shook for about 20-30 seconds. No one panicked but when it settled everyone called home to let family members know they were OK. As the team awaited further news of the earthquake’s effects they prepared to shift gears from feeding refugees to operating search and rescue. But the tsunami passed with reportedly little to no significant damage and the crew continued its work.

The Tono City team members are Dewey and Glenda Watson of FBC Leonard and R.L. and Elaine Barnard of FBC Duncanville. The rest of the team is deployed in Ishinomaki and traveling daily from Sendai to the work site. They are Julian Mareno and Jean Ducharme of the Ulvade-Del Rio Association; Charles Grastly of Concord Baptist Church, Palestine; Sharon Grintz of Bois D’Arc Creek Cowboy Church; Nathan Pike of FBC Keller; and this reporter, of Nassau Bay Baptist Church.

The Sendai team was in the lobby of their hotel when news of the quake was sent via a text message on the phone of Tokyo Baptist Church representative Yoko Dorsey. The team had just completed their morning devotional when her phone rang with the automated warning. Dorsey looked at her phone then announced to the group, “An earthquake is coming.”

Within seconds the windows began to rattle and a slight shifting of the ground from side to side was felt. It was over almost as quickly as it began.

The SBTC DR team is working in conjunction with Tokyo Baptist Church. The international congregation has established ministries in Kamaishi and Ishinomaki since the March 11 events, sending teams to provide meals, distribute necessities, and establish personal contact with people in the region, which is culturally influenced by Buddhist traditions. Their efforts have resulted in two salvations with many other residents open to the gospel because of the kind acts of the Christians, members of the Tokyo church said.

PHOENIX—A coalition of homosexual leaders and their allies met for more than 30 minutes June 15 with Southern Baptist Convention President Bryant Wright, with the leaders demanding an apology from the SBC and Wright refusing to budge, saying that Scripture is clear on the issue.

The remarkable meeting—cordial the entire time—took place between the morning and afternoon sessions of the SBC in Wright’s annual meeting office at the Phoenix Convention Center.

The nine-person coalition included representatives of the Association of Welcoming and Affirming Baptists, Faith in America and Truth Wins Out. They protested outside the convention hall and requested to deliver petitions to Wright, who decided to turn the event into a dialogue. Several members of the media also attended.

“We’re a coalition of groups asking the SBC to acknowledge and apologize for the damage that the convention has done to lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people,” Jack McKinney, a heterosexual married man told Wright at the beginning of the meeting. McKinney is a spokesperson for Faith in America and a former Southern Baptist minister. McKinney and the other leaders repeatedly made parallels between racism and a stance against homosexuality. Sixteen years ago to the day, McKinney said, Southern Baptists passed a resolution apologizing for past racism.

“We feel like the convention is making the same mistake in the way it has demonized LGBT people,” said McKinney, who handed Wright a packet of 10,000 signatures. “We come today to ask for an apology for that and for a pledge that those kinds of teachings would come to an end.”

Wright, sitting at a roundtable with McKinney and four of the other leaders, rejected the parallels.

“Obviously, we don’t feel that there can be an apology for teaching sexual purity,” Wright, pastor of Johnson Ferry Baptist Church in Marietta, Ga., said. “As followers of Christ, our only authority for practicing our faith is Scripture, is the Word of God…. As followers of Christ it would be very difficult for us to betray our faith by ignoring what God says about sexual purity.”

The Bible condemns both homosexual sex and heterosexual sex that is outside the bonds of marriage, Wright said.

“When I teach from the pulpit about adultery, I don’t hate adulterers,” Wright said. “Just as we have people attending our local church that are engaging in homosexual activity, we have people attending our church who are engaging in adultery. I don’t hate those people when I speak about adultery. I am just, hopefully, loving them enough to speak the truth about what God desires for the best for that person.”

Similarly, when Wright preaches about the Bible’s prohibition on premarital sex, that doesn’t “mean we hate teenagers,” he said.

Mitchell Gold, Faith in America’s founder, then spoke.

“I remember during the 1960s similar words justifying a position against integration and justifying a whole attitude toward black people. Part of what we are saying to you is, you really made a big mistake before and you apologized for it, you recognized it,” Gold said.

“There’s an enormous amount of harm” done to teens by the SBC’s stance, Gold said, handing Wright a book written by Gold, “Crisis,” that details stories of people who grew up homosexual.

Although some of the leaders said ex-gay ministries were harmful, Wright disagreed, saying “there really have been” people who have left homosexuality through the various ministries.

“The standard of Scripture for heterosexual single adults” and for homosexual single adults is “no different,” Wright said. Both groups are, he said, to abstain from sex.

Wayne Besen, a leading homosexual activist and a former Human Rights Campaign spokesperson, interjected, “You’re asking for people to surrender their humanity. … It’s very unrealistic.”

Wright drew the conversation back to his Christian faith.

“Jesus Christ came to die for all of our sins, whether it’s heterosexual sin or whether it’s homosexual sin…. For a society to come along at this stage in history and all of a sudden say that one of the … areas that Christ has no power” over is “homosexual behavior is really elevating the importance of that behavior above the power of Christ.”

Robin Lunn, executive director of the Association of Welcoming and Affirming Baptists, told Wright that the two sides needed to have an “honest, respectful, humble dialogue.”

“In the same way that you feel convicted about homosexuality from your interpretation of Scripture … I would say that we feel equally convicted, and perhaps the moment is here where we need to just sit together to be in dialogue instead of standing off to the side from one another and pointing our fingers at one another,” Lunn said. “… It’s a moment of conversation that, I believe, the Holy Spirit is begging for us to engage in. And I would ask anybody—yourself … to contact me and contact us so we can begin this dialogue.”

Wright responded, “When the Scripture is so clear about sexual purity, for us to compromise … that is just something that we’re not going to be able to do.”

“What I am hearing you say,” Lunn said, “is that you are not willing to even be in dialogue.”

Said Wright, “I think we’re in dialogue right now. I think we’re having this meeting today because you have expressed a concern and we’re seeking to respect you and hear your concerns. … I would just encourage you all to not elevate homosexual behavior above all other sexual behavior.”

Scripture, Wright emphasized again, calls all sex outside of marriage sinful. Lunn urged him to back “gay marriage,” but Wright declined. Gold said he believed the SBC one day would reverse its position, but Wright said if the denomination stuck to clear biblical teachings, it would not.

“If we’re going to be true to what God’s Word says, we’re not going to be able to come to common ground,” Wright said. “If we were to ignore what God’s Word is saying about sexual purity, yes, possibly, we could come to common ground. But looking at sexual purity from Scripture, we’re not going to be able to come to common ground. … I hope you all would respect that we’re just seeking to follow Jesus according to the authority that he’s given us, and that’s the written Word of God. I would just ask you to respect us for that.”

Wright then offered the leaders a hypothetical illustration to demonstrate his point.

“Let’s say one of my sons comes to me and tells me he’s engaged in a homosexual lifestyle,” Wright said. “I hope I’m going to continue to show love, but that doesn’t mean I’m going to agree with the behavior. And, if he came to the point to engage in that lifestyle and wanted me to affirm the relationship, it would be like a heterosexual son coming home from college and saying, ‘I’ve been living with this girl. Why can’t we stay together when we’re in your home?’ … That would be condoning sinful behavior. It’s really no different.”

Besen then said, “We don’t see it as behavior. We see it as an integral part of who we are. It’s certainly not a choice.”

Wright responded, “I recognize those desires may always be there, but still, Christ, through God’s Word, does give us clear guidance that through the power of the cross and what he has done, he not only offers forgiveness but he offers a transforming power where we are able to resist those temptations. It doesn’t mean we’re not going to be tempted, but we’re able to resist.”

Wright began drawing the meeting to a close with a personal plea.

“Christ loves you Wayne, he loves you Mitchell, he loves Robin, he loves me in spite of my incredible amount of sin,” Wright said. “… But he does not desire for us to continue to engage in sinful behavior that he very clearly says is not good.”

PHOENIX—In their first reports to the Southern Baptist Convention, mission board leaders challenged Southern Baptist churches to take steps toward reaching previously unengaged people in population centers of North America and even the remote areas around the world.

Hundreds of people made a public commitment at the closing session of the annual meeting for their churches to “embrace” one of the approximately 3,800 people groups currently not engaged by anyone with an intentional church-planting strategy and where less than 2 percent are evangelical Christians.

“To the best of our knowledge … nobody has them on the radar screen,” shared International Mission Board President Tom Elliff in making the appeal. “It’s like having people standing out in the cold around your house while you’re enjoying a wonderful warm meal. You know they’re out there but you have no plan to go out there and offer them anything.

“We’re going to ask God for a strategy, we’re going to figure out a way to get boots on the ground.’”

IMB workers reported 360,876 baptisms in their work with Baptists overseas, 29,237 churches planted, 920 people groups currently engaged and 114 new people groups engaged. Southern Baptists gave $7,985,000 that went toward hunger and relief, and $145,662,925 to the 2010 Lottie Moon Christmas Offering.

SEND North America
North American Mission Board President Kevin Ezell outlined a new “big picture strategy” for church planting, called Send North America, to enable Baptists to penetrate lostness through a regional mobilization strategy.

Ezell promised that, under his watch, future financial stewardship at NAMB will demand “accuracy, transparency, effectiveness and efficiency.” He reported that Southern Baptists planted 769 new churches in 2010, not the 1,400 to 1,500 a year usually reported in the past.

“When the old NAMB counted church plants, they didn’t ask for church names or addresses or planter names. The new NAMB is asking and only counting churches for which those details can be obtained,” Ezell said. “The old NAMB had no system for consistently tracking new church plants across the 42 state conventions. We are working with the states on such a system.

“Also, the old NAMB had no definition of a church plant agreed upon by all of our state convention partners,” Ezell added. “The new NAMB is working on that with state partners, to write a definition we all can adhere to.”

“Biblical stewardship calls us to the highest level of accountability. I am doing everything in my power to spend each dime wisely. We must put more missionaries and more new churches in North America’s least-reached areas.”

Ezell shared how NAMB’s mission board’s staff has been reduced by 38 percent through retirement and separation incentives, saving the mission board $6 million a year. He said the budget has been cut another $8 million, including slashing the travel budget by half.

“These savings will go to place more churches and more church planting missionaries where they are needed most in North America,” Ezell said. “I believe you cannot judge the effectiveness of an organization by the size of its staff, but NAMB is not taking one step backwards. We intend to do more with less infrastructure.”

Compiled from Baptist Press reports.

PHOENIX—Missionaries and chaplains, a U.S. Army general, a barber, two tornado victims and a redeemed young man mirrored the work of the North American Mission Board during its report to messengers June 14 at the 2011 SBC annual meeting.

“Knowing there are 318 million people in North America who need to know Jesus Christ stirs our passion as trustees,” NAMB trustee chairman Tim Dowdy, senior pastor of Eagles Landing First Baptist Church in McDonough, Ga., told the messengers. “Last year, God led us to the right man, Kevin Ezell. We’re starting down the right road. I can’t wait to see what God does with us, together impacting the world for Jesus Christ.”

Ezell told messengers the months since his election have been very challenging.

“I have learned a lot in the nine months since I accepted this role, and I appreciate your patience and prayers,” Ezell said. “I hope to clearly communicate our direction in the midst of a very complex transition…. I am striving to bring a sense of strategic focus and efficiency to our North American missions.”

After thanking Southern Baptists for their support of the Cooperative Program and the Annie Armstrong Easter Offering, Ezell noted: “Biblical stewardship calls us to the highest level of accountability with these funds. I am doing everything in my power to spend each dime wisely. We must put more missionaries and more new churches in North America’s least-reached areas.”

Ezell then outlined how NAMB’s mission board’s staff has been reduced by 38 percent through retirement and separation incentives, saving the mission board $6 million a year. He said the budget has been cut another $8 million, including slashing the travel budget by half.

“These savings will go to place more churches and more church planting missionaries where they are needed most in North America,” Ezell said. “I believe you cannot judge the effectiveness of an organization by the size of its staff, but NAMB is not taking one step backwards. We intend to do more with less infrastructure.”

SEND NORTH AMERICA
The new “big picture strategy” for church planting, called Send North America, will enable Baptists to penetrate lostness through a regional mobilization strategy, Ezell said.
“Already, 80 percent of NAMB’s resources are invested through the state conventions to go to underserved areas—even before Send North America. But this strategy will send even more in that direction.”

The GPS—God’s Plan for Sharing—initiative will continue to be one of the entity’s top priorities under NAMB’s new vice president for evangelism, Larry Wynn, Ezell said.
Ezell promised that, under his watch, future financial stewardship at NAMB will demand “accuracy, transparency, effectiveness and efficiency—not smoke and mirrors.” He then clarified and put into perspective some oft-quoted NAMB statistics—for instance, that Southern Baptists planted 769 new churches in 2010, not the 1,400 to 1,500 a year usually reported in the past.

“When the old NAMB counted church plants, they didn’t ask for church names or addresses or planter names. The new NAMB is asking and only counting churches for which those details can be obtained,” Ezell said. “The old NAMB had no system for consistently tracking new church plants across the 42 state conventions. We are working with the states on such a system.

“Also, the old NAMB had no definition of a church plant agreed upon by all of our state convention partners,” Ezell added. “The new NAMB is working on that with state partners, to write a definition we all can adhere to.”

Ezell generated laughs and applause when he said, “If Walmart can track how much toilet paper it sells every hour, we should be able to track how many churches are planted each year.”

The mission entity president also spoke to the question of how many missionaries NAMB has.

“It’s been said that NAMB has more than 5,100 missionaries serving in North America,” Ezell said. He said 3,480 of NAMB’s missionaries are jointly funded with the states; 1,839 are spouses, some with ministry assignments and some not; 1,616 are Mission Service Corps missionaries who receive no funding from NAMB; and 38 are national missionaries, who are paid 100 percent by NAMB. In addition, NAMB has 3,400 chaplains—1,350 of them military chaplains—and 955 summer student missionaries on its rolls.

Ezell also gave time for a testimony on lack of gospel presence in Canada, and honored the ministry of the 85,000 trained disaster relief volunteers in the SBC. He challenged individuals and churches to participate in the entity’s Send North America Strategy. For more information, visit namb.net and click the “Mobilize Me” button.

PHOENIX—A pastor, a seminary student and Frank Page, president of the Southern Baptist Convention’s Executive Committee, delivered a challenge for renewed commitment to unified ministry through the SBC’s Cooperative Program.

The pastor and seminary student were part of the Executive Committee report to the SBC annual meeting in which Page urged Southern Baptist churches to magnify their impact nationally and internationally by even a 1 percent-of-budget increase in support for CP.

Kevin White, pastor of First Baptist Church in Longview, Wash., thanked Southern Baptists “for giving so sacrificially so that my family might know Jesus Christ. I am the product of your sacrifice and your giving to the Cooperative Program.”

White was 4 years old, living in a mining town of 80 people in northern Nevada, when a CP-funded missionary began visiting and repeatedly witnessing to White’s father.

The missionary “never gave up…. And through his devotion, my family came to Jesus Christ,” White said. “I watched a radical change in my father,” who five years later was pastor of a church the missionary planted in the remote town. White said his father also planted several other churches, primarily among Native Americans, during the next 35 years.

White himself also became a church planter, as will his son, a recent seminary graduate, who will soon engage in church planting among an unreached people group overseas.

“Three generations so far because you gave. Thank you, thank you from the bottom of my heart,” White said tearfully, his voice cracking.

Quincy Jones, a student at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, said: “Is our vision of the Cooperative Program the Lord’s vision? … Could the Cooperative Program actually be about more than numbers and dollars [and] actually be about a special stewardship from God given to Southern Baptists?”

The questions—part of an initiative started at Southwestern by Jones—should “stimulate a greater awareness and appreciation for the unprecedented resources and impact Southern Baptists have through this incredible mechanism for ministry called the Cooperative Program,” he said.

The initiative’s goal is “to burn the historic vision of the CP upon the hearts and minds of students in such a way that we graduate with a real commitment to continue this extraordinary stewardship of the gospel given to Southern Baptists by God,” the father of five added.

Jones said he and his wife Rhonda, who was standing next to him, came from an independent church background and so appreciate the value of cooperative missions. “We look around us, and we get it,” Jones said. “We have caught the vision, and we want to help promote that vision so the impact of the SBC will continue and be even greater for the sake of the gospel as we press ahead into the 21st century.

“So we thank you, Southern Baptists, for the investment in our lives and in the lives of countless others through your commitment to this incomparable stewardship of the gospel that we call the Cooperative Program,” Jones said.

Page echoed that sentiment on behalf of all the annual meeting messengers June 14.

“I know all of you could stand here, and in some way or another share the impact of the Cooperative Program upon your life,” Page said. “I certainly can as well.

“What we do together, we do to the glory of God,” Page said. “And he is using cooperative ministry, unified ministry, in a mighty way across this land. Let’s not forget that.”

Despite the level of unified ministry underway, Page said the SBC has “been headed in the wrong direction, in several ways. Our convention is fracturing into various groups, some theological, most methodological.

“I believe our unity affects our evangelism,” Page said. “And it’s time to come together in a principle of unified ministry.

“It is natural to have an individualistic mindset. And in the 21st century, that has reached epic proportions. Everyone thinks they can do best what they do by themselves. Some of our churches have adopted a fortress mentality. That is sad,” Page said. “We need to recommit to a principle of unified ministry. To accomplish this, and to do better at what we’re doing together, we’re asking you … and we’re challenging you, would you please do more than you’ve done before?

“Our Cooperative Program ministries have decreased every year for many years. We challenge you; we encourage you to raise your Cooperative Program support,’” Page said. “Would you do that? One percent next year. We have churches that have already said, ‘We will be a part of this. We will join in raising our Cooperative Program support by 1 percent next year.’”

Page introduced a video showing that a 1 percent-of-budget increase in Cooperative Program giving from all SBC churches would add $100 million to the CP.

This would allow hundreds of churches to be planted across the United States, Page said. Internationally, 380 missionaries could be commissioned to begin reaching the 3,800 unengaged people groups worldwide. A 1 percent increase could boost seminary student enrollment by 16,000 students.

“I’m excited that almost all of our state executive directors have made a promise to move their states to giving more to reach the lost in the world as well as in their own states,” Page said.

“Hear it and hear it well,” he said. “We need a revival of total mission support, including a renewed commitment to unified ministry through the Cooperative Program.”