Mark A. Croston Sr., pastor of East End Baptist Church in Suffolk, Va., nominated Luter for the office, calling him “the kind of guy we need on the scene.”

Croston recounted Luter’s pastorate of Franklin Avenue Baptist beginning in 1986, when Luter took the helm of the struggling 65-member church and led its growth into a megachurch with thousands of members.

“[They] called this young, fiery preacher to be their pastor because he preached boldly and lived holy,” Croston said.

Croston praised Luter as a man of dignity who has led the Southern Baptist Convention with distinction, lauding Luter’s commitment to the inerrancy of the Bible, support of the Cooperative Program, and love of biblical marriage.

“He is the husband of Elizabeth, the father of Chip and Kimberly, the pastor of the Franklin Avenue Baptist Church in New Orleans, La.,” Croston said, “and a believer that Jesus Christ still is the way, the truth and the life, and that no man comes to the Father but by Him.”
                                                                                 –30–

NEW CANEY—“I want to be forgiven, but I don’t think I can,” said a young homeless man at the Open Door Mission in Houston.  He was only in his thirties, but looked much older due to a lifestyle of excess and addiction.

Professor Bobby Worthington and five students from Criswell College ministered to the man, sharing that forgiveness is possible, no matter what a person has done. “I shared scripture with him,” said Worthington. “He thought God couldn’t forgive him because he had done too much. We prayed around him and he accepted Christ.  You could see the Holy Spirit helping him to understand.”

The annual Crossover evangelism practicum at Criswell College takes students out of the classroom and brings them to the Southern Baptist Convention host city to give them practical evangelistic experiences, helping them take classroom theory into the real world.

This year Worthington, who serves as director of Applied Ministry Projects, director of Urban Ministry and adjunct professor of evangelism, brought five students to Houston for the practicum.  The group worked with Pastor Ron Rogers at Forestwood Baptist Church in New Caney. “We try to work with alumni of Criswell,” said Worthington.

The group began its work by going door-to-door.  “We canvassed 160 homes in two days, helping the church reach out,” said Worthington.

In addition, the team ministered at the Open Door Mission in Houston where they saw five professions of faith.  “I wanted the students to experience ministry to the middle class as well as to the poor.” Students led worship and preached at two different services at Open Door.  “They led. I guided them,” said Worthington.

Trey Holmes was one of the Criswell students who preached at Open Door and had the opportunity to lead a man to Christ.  Holmes shared The Parable of the Wedding Banquet from Matthew 22. “I read the Word and preached the Word,” said Holmes. The man, who was at Open Door for rehab, approached a Criswell team member. “He said, ‘I realized I am the guy who is going to be kicked out of the banquet.’”

Holmes shared the plan of salvation with the man and asked if he was ready to repent.  The man said yes and gave his life to Christ.

“All the glory goes to the one who really does it,” said Holmes. “You get excited, but it is a serious thing. I have hope and he grasped hope tonight. It was exciting to see a new creature birthed right in front of us.  That’s what I’m here for.”

Brice Johnson, another Criswell team member, also had the opportunity to lead a man to faith in Christ. Using his own testimony, Johnson shared how God radically changed his life. He was approached by a young man in need. “He was in a place where he was really broken,” said Johnson.  The man struggled with alcohol, drugs and criminal activity.  “I shared my story and he prayed to accept Christ.”

Johnson was touched by the encounter. “It’s encouraging in the sense of seeing these guys – the idea of rock bottom.  They have nowhere else to go. They are pointed to Jesus.” Johnson was also challenged by the heart of Christ. “I was reminded that Jesus spent the bulk of his time with the poor and outcast. It’s easy to be around people who know the right things to say. It’s refreshing to see the humility and eagerness to hear what we have to say. It helped me develop a deeper heart for the lost and broken.”

Worthington believes the Crossover Evangelism Practicum provides a valuable opportunity for his students to see ministry in different contexts, preparing them for their futures. “They learn theory in class and then have practical ministry experience,” said Worthington. “It’s one thing to talk about it in the classroom. It’s another to do it in the field.”

SBTC churches are energized by local and out-of-state volunteers

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WAXAHACHIE—“Adoption is maybe the most explicit picture of the gospel,” said Aaron Clayton, pastor of Remedy Church in Waxahachie. “We were those neglected, hurting, helpless, fighting people, without hope, until God intervened in our lives and rescued us.”

Encouraging adoption and foster care has been a focus of Remedy Church since its beginning in September 2011 with 12 adults and five children in Clayton’s living room. Remedy Church is supported by sponsor church Hillcrest Baptist Church in Cedar Hill and the SBTC church planting division, and has grown to about 65 people in 18 months.

“The primary reason we support orphan and foster care is because it is central to the heart of God,” Clayton said. “Throughout Scripture, God highlights his heart for orphans and specifically charges his people to care for these defenseless people. My conviction is that any church that is not involved in this disregards a major theme of Scripture and is disobedient to the Spirit and the heart of God.”

Remedy Church takes this charge seriously, promoting adoption and foster care in various ways among its congregation. The church meets in space rented from the Texas Baptist Home, which is a foster care and adoption ministry in Waxahachie that is an affiliated ministry partner of SBTC. “We’ve done lunches for their staff as a way to serve those who serve orphans and foster kids. We’ve hosted gift drives and gift-wrapping parties benefitting the kids at the home. We’ve done some clean up in various buildings on campus, and we’ve participated and served at their 5K, raising money for adoption and foster care work.”

Recognizing Orphan Sunday, the first Sunday of November, also increases awareness of adoption and foster care. “We put adoption resources in front of our people, highlighted some specific ways people could get involved immediately and for the long haul, and spent the day laying out the scriptural call to the church to care for orphans.”

Cultivating a culture of adoption is also ongoing at Remedy Church.

“This is something that will take time to do, but our hope is to see orphan care, foster care and adoption become regular parts of our ministry and our conversation at Remedy,” Clayton said. “We already have several families either praying and considering foster or adopting or already taking steps toward it. Our hope is to provide resources and support for these families, including financial help, in order to cultivate a culture of caring for orphans, even at a cost to ourselves.”

In addition to cultivating an adoption culture inside the church, Remedy Church also encourages community awareness of foster care and adoption needs. “Chick-fil-A has asked us to put on their family night periodically, and we use it as an opportunity to invite the families of Waxahachie to participate in orphan care with us through these various outlets. We also use Facebook, our website and personal invites to engage people.”

Engaging the church through finances is the final way Remedy Church encourages foster care and adoption awareness. “We have challenged our people to give above their regular offerings to what we call our Missio Dei Offering. It is our mission offering, given year-round and emphasized in the Advent/Christmas season. One hundred percent of what is given to it is used for six missional causes, one of which is orphan care, so we are challenging people to give regularly toward orphan care and adoption,” Clayton noted.

While challenging his church to embrace God’s heart through adoption, Clayton also lives what he preaches and understands the sacrificial nature of adoption firsthand. He and his wife, Charity, adopted a child from Kazakhstan in 2009.

“We know the road is hard,” he said. “It was by far the hardest season of our lives, exceeded only by how hard it’s been since we came home. So, yes, it’s a hard and costly road. And we don’t pull any punches when we talk about it as a family or as a church. People need to know what they are getting into and count the cost.

“The beauty of it is that it mirrors what God did for us in sending Jesus. We had nothing that should attract him to us or that earned his approval or gained his favor. He chose us and adopted us into his family based on his purpose and grace. Knowing the cost, he willingly paid it to bring us into his family, and he still walks with us down a hard road of rebellion, sin and struggle.

“This is the call to adopt, and after we have weighed the incredibly high cost, we should knowingly, humbly say ‘yes’ anyway, willing to walk down this road in obedience and with courage, believing that Jesus is more satisfying than comfort, security or convenience.”

MOORE, Okla.—Wayne and Ann Barber didn’t start out to be storm chasers but it seems to have worked out that way.

The SBTC Disaster Relief volunteers deployed to Moore, Okla., from their East Texas home in Jasper on May 26. Last Friday (May 31), they found themselves “hunkered down in the hallway” of Southern Hills Baptist Church in Oklahoma City, riding out the second wave of tornadoes to strike the Oklahoma City area in two weeks, Wayne Barber told the TEXAN.

Five tornadoes were confirmed in the Oklahoma City area on Friday, NBC News reported. At last count, nine adults and five children died in that day’s storms. One of Friday’s tornadoes turned south and swept through Moore, the area ravaged 11 days earlier by a massive EF-5 tornado that killed 24 people.

One of Friday’s tornadoes passed over Southern Hills Baptist Church, just a couple of miles north of west Moore, Wayne Barber said. Southern Hills was hosting the SBTC DR volunteers.

The clouds Friday afternoon seemed threatening, prompting DR workers and others to seek shelter, Wayne Barber said.

“One of the tornadoes went right over the church. It destroyed a little bit of the steeple. People started banging on the church doors. A lot of people were caught in this. We let people in,” he said.

Some 75-80 people sought refuge in the church, including DR workers, people from the neighborhood and stranded motorists, Wayne Barber explained.

“We heard there were four tornadoes within a 10-mile radius of the church,” he added.

One of the tornadoes crisscrossed the area where SBTC DR workers had cleared debris through the week. The tornado scattered much of the debris, which had been stacked up.

“We got home [to Jasper] on Saturday. We decided we had had all the tornadoes we wanted and we were coming home,” he quipped. The couple approached Dallas only to find tornado warnings in effect. They continued south to Jasper, where early Sunday morning a storm hit, knocking out electricity.

“It’s been a rough week,” Wayne Barber said. 

But it was a fruitful week as well.

On Monday, two people accepted Christ. Ann Barber led a 15-year-old girl to Christ and later that afternoon Wayne Barber led a man to Christ who lived across the street from the girl.

The 54-year-old man’s wife had died two years before. “He said that his life was just empty. He had nothing,” Wayne Barber related.

“If the Lord had taken you home during this storm, do you know where you would spend eternity?” Wayne asked the man, whose name was Tracy.

“I’ve been thinking a bunch. No, I wouldn’t,” Tracy replied.

“Would you like to know?” Wayne Barber asked.

“Yes, I’ve been thinking a bunch about that, too,” Tracy answered.

“He was just ready. He was ready to be picked. The Lord just sent us there. We just shared with him. He went with us to share with his neighbor. He was so empty and exhausted; now he was full. He was totally different,” Wayne Barber related.

The Barbers gave Tracy a Bible supplied by their home church, Hillcrest Baptist of Jasper. He confirmed that he had begun reading it enthusiastically, according to the Barbers.

Stories of faith that was confirmed and even rekindled abound as well.

Another man told the Barbers he hadn’t prayed in 42 years. The man, Tracy’s neighbor, told DR volunteers he had accepted Christ at age 7 but an unfortunate experience with his parents on the mission field left him bitter towards God, he said.

When the tornado struck, the man and his wife got in their bathtub. The storm damaged the tub but spared the couple. During the tornado, the man who hadn’t prayed in four decades asked the Lord to forgive him. “He told us he said, ‘Lord, if you want to take me, please take me fast and easy. But if you don’t, I’ll turn to you from now on,’” Wayne Barber stated.

“He was ready to share the Lord. He was so glad we had come by. He could not wait to share his story with us.”

Wayne said he also got to pray with an 83-year-old biker known for being cantankerous. The biker and his wife sought refuge in a closet during the May 20 tornado. “Their home was totally destroyed and they were under all of the debris,” Wayne Barber said. A neighbor rescued the couple.

He asked the crusty gentleman about his faith.

“He said that when he was 21 years old, he had accepted Christ as his savior but he never read his Bible and had never gone to church. He had never worshiped God or served him until now. We gave him a Bible and he was excited about that,” Wayne Barber said.

“He may have already been a Christian, but he is a stronger Christian today,” Wayne remarked. “He was proud of his new Bible; he was protecting that.”

The words of one tornado victim, a middle-aged believer who had also survived the 1999 tornado that devastated Moore, inspired Ann Barber, who said the couple lost everything then and again this time.

The two-time victim’s response of faith was simply this: “I feel fresh and renewed. It’s like being saved. The past is washed away and we are going to start afresh and anew and not worry about all the things we have lost,” Ann Barber explained in quoting the woman.

“We also prayed with a lot of the policemen who were there,” Ann Barber said. “Quite a few told us they were Christians. They said, ‘I couldn’t do this job if I didn’t know Christ.’”

The Barbers haven’t been home much lately. They volunteered after the fertilizer plant explosion in West, assisting SBTC efforts to aid victims there. They spent a week at DR training before deploying to Oklahoma.

The couple even celebrated their 48^th wedding anniversary in Moore on May 28.

“Two people had accepted Christ that Monday.  We thought that was the greatest anniversary present we’d ever had,” Wayne Barber said.

SBTC DR teams were continuing their work with Baptist groups in the Moore area this week. Chaplains, clean-up/recovery and chainsaw teams have rotated in and out.

Meanwhile, the lights were back on at Southern Hills Baptist Church following Friday’s storm. The church held only one service on Sunday, but VBS began on Monday.