Author: amadmin

Oregon county surprised by use of aborted babies as “energy source”

A Catholic newspaper in British Columbia, Canada has reported that medical waste from Canada, including aborted babies, was being sent to a Marion County, Oregon power plant to be burned for electricity production in Oregon homes.

The practice has reportedly been halted pending an investigation by local officials in Oregon, who were quoted as surprised and troubled by the finding.

The Associated Press reported that Sam Brentano, Marion County board of commissioners chairman, was halting human tissue from being used at the longtime waste-to-energy plant.

“We provide an important service to the people of this state and it would be a travesty if this program is jeopardized due to this finding,” he said in a statement, according to the AP. “We thought our ordinance excluded this type of material at the waste-to-energy facility. We will take immediate action to ensure a process is developed to prohibit human tissue from future deliveries.”

A British Columbia health ministry spokesman told the AP that health authorities there contract with a third party to send “biomedical waste, such as fetal tissue, cancerous tissue and amputated limbs,” to the Oregon plant.

I’m not sure on why the panic by the Marion County commissioners—unless they believe human life in the womb has sanctity. I hope that’s the case. Too often people are repulsed by the thought of such things, but those sentiments can be numbed with time and indoctrination provided they have no theological base to hold to.

If we are merely material beings, no biggie. Get over it. Apparently in Canada they understand this more than in Marion County, Oregon.

 

 

 

 

Free @home app offers weekly family and marriage helps

Free marriage and family resources became even more accessible, April 1, when the Southern Baptists of Texas Convention launched its “@home” family ministry app. After a quick, no-cost download from the app store, users can find guides for weekly family devotionals, 5 to 8 minute videos on marriage and an assortment of other resources, all geared toward helping families grow together and grow in faith.

SBTC Discipleship Associate Lance Crowell says the convention developed of the app in answer to the increased focus of churches on family ministry.

“As the family ministry movement has begun to make strides in Texas, many churches are working to help families take spiritual leadership in their homes,” Crowell said.

The app provides guides for a family worship time that includes prayer, a focal Bible verse, discussion and a weekly memory verse. In the fly out tab for each week, parents can also find discussion guides geared specifically for the ages of their children designed to point them in a direction for discussion and application. Those weekly guides are all housed in the devotions section of the app’s family area. In the resources section, parents can find additional helps such as articles about Easter traditions and Passover.

“What’s great about this app is that it provides weekly family devotionals, and there are even age-graded applications, so if you have preschooler or you have a pre-teen, there are things that you can do for both of those,” said SBTC Women and Children’s Associate Emily Smith. 

Since the family’s spiritual health and growth hinges upon a good relationship between husband and wife, Crowell and Smith point out, the app has an entire section devoted to marriage building.

Steve and Debbie Wilson, founders of Marriage Matters Now, sit down with each other in short video devotionals geared for couples, walking through passages such as Ephesians 4 and Philippians 2. Under the resource tab, couples can find practical wisdom for living out marriage at home, such as “The Tech Battle at Home” and “The Power of Words.”

Crowell said this entry level tool will help establish spiritual disciplines in the home for the vast majority of church members who do not already have any such habits.

“One of the things that we focus on is that this is really an entry level tool,” Crowell said. “If your family does weekly devotions this might be a bit too basic for them. We believe that 80% or more (just an estimate not hard facts) of church families do nothing spiritually at home each week, so this has been designed to get them started. This is truly the first step. We did not want it too big, but we wanted it to be something that could develop spiritual patterns and disciplines for families.”

The SBTC offers these resources completely free to any downloader thanks to churches’ faithful support of the Cooperative Program.

To download the app, search “SBTC Family App @Home” in the app store. The @home app is available for iPhone, iPad, Android Phone, Android Tablet and Windows Phone.

Criswell College affirms missions emphasis with Great Commission Week

DALLAS—Criswell College hosted 37 representatives of 17 missions organizations on campus during Great Commission Days, March 24-25, part of the school’s annual Great Commission Week.

Missions organizations set up booths and representatives spoke in classes, said Bobby Worthington, Criswell professor and director of applied ministry.

Great Commission chapel services enriched the weeklong event. On Tuesday, March 25, Daniel Punnose, vice president of Gospel for Asia, was the featured chapel speaker. Aaron Meraz, Criswell assistant professor of church planting and revitalization, addressed students and faculty at Thursday’s chapel service, March 27. A luncheon with students and faculty followed.

Criswell connections with Gospel for Asia are long standing. Punnose is the son of Gospel for Asia founder K.P. Yohannan, the first international student to attend and graduate from Criswell College. Invited to the school by W.A. Criswell himself, Yohannan was also ordained by Criswell at First Baptist Church of Dallas, Worthington said.

“Both Dr. Yohannan and I remember the profound effect Dr. Criswell had upon our lives and ministries during our student days at Criswell College,” Worthington said.

In addition to Gospel for Asia, missions organizations represented this year at Criswell’s Great Commission Days included: Camino Global, Child Evangelism Fellowship of Dallas, East-West Ministries International,  Global English Institute, Gospel for Muslims, NEXT Worldwide, Our Calling, SIM USA, SBTC church planting team, Time to Revive, InFaith, Young Life, Reconciliation Outreach, SBTC student evangelism, Perspectives on the World Christian Movement and the IMB/NAMB/SBTC for unreached people groups.

As with Punnose and Yohannan, Criswell relationships with mission groups abound and graduates were represented at the Great Commission Days. “Warren Samuels, founder of NEXT Worldwide is a Criswell graduate, as is Stan Britton of NEXT. Criswell graduate Joe Anderson serves as state director of InFaith and area director of Young Life,” Worthington said.

Missions emphasis is a Criswell hallmark.

“Criswell College has been at the forefront of providing students with training, education and experience in missions, both domestic and international,” said Scott Bridger, Criswell assistant professor of world Christianity.

The college has participated in the IMB’s initiative to embrace unengaged and unreached people groups by sending students and faculty to minister in two locations in the Middle East over the past 18 months, said Bridger.

“This summer, Criswell students will be engaging this people group firsthand by providing pastor training and counsel to believers from a Muslim background. They will also conduct VBS style camps for another Muslim people group in the Middle East,” Bridger added.

The college has also sponsored mission trips to Cuba and engages in ongoing outreach activities among unreached people groups in the Dallas-Fort Worth area, Bridger said.

Of the latter, Meraz noted, “Dallas-Fort Worth has become a microcosm of the world; thus it is a great training ground for world evangelization.”

Meraz will serve as director of  the new Criswell Church Planting and Revitalization Center (CPRC), an institution made possible by gifts from the SBTC, North Texas Baptist Association, NAMB and local churches.

“The CPRC will connect students to local SBTC churches and church plants, providing scholarship funds for such students as well as stipends when the students intern in the churches,” Meraz explained.

“In addition to academic training of church planting and revitalization, our students will graduate with at least two years of practical training,” Meraz said.

Texas missionary shares gospel in Poland through English classes

LUBAWA, Poland—At first, Bailey Hughes didn’t want to go to Poland. She crossed it off her list of possible missionary destinations. She’d “been there, done that” as a tourist and wanted a new and challenging adventure.

Six years later, the Keller native said that God could not have found a more “personal” place of ministry for her than northeastern Poland. It was such a fit that, after serving there in short-term missions as a journeyman and an International Service Corps member through the International Mission Board, Hughes was appointed as a career missionary in February and returned to Poland. 

“I understand their struggles in coming to faith,” Hughes, a member of Fellowship of the Parks in Keller, said regarding her Polish friends.

“I didn’t grow up in a Christian home. I remember the first time I heard the Word of God. I was in the fourth grade on the playground. I pretended to know but I had no idea who this ‘God’ person was. From that day on, I was intrigued.

“For me, coming into a personal relationship with my Savior was a process,” the 29-year-old missionary said. “It was a process of asking questions, seeking answers, reading the Bible and figuring out for myself who Christ really was.”

Hughes sees her Polish friends struggling as she did through a similar process in coming to know Christ. As she explained, it doesn’t just happen overnight. For most, it takes years of working through questions.

Hughes explained that Catholicism is ingrained in every part of the Polish culture. Operation World estimates that around 90 percent of the population in Poland claims to be Catholic, while less than 1 percent is evangelical. Of the Polish people Hughes works with, 98 percent are Roman Catholic.

According to Hughes, statues of the Virgin Mary and other Catholic saints are found in towns and villages. People come from all over to pray at a special statue of Mary that sits at the end of a well-kept sidewalk in Lubawa, the town where Hughes lives. The statue depicts Mary stepping on a serpent with an apple in its mouth.

“It’s a picture of how Mary is powerful and put on a pedestal,” Hughes said. “It’s the darkest oppression that I’ve come across in northeastern Poland. And it’s one reason we wanted to extend our efforts in sharing Christ here [in Lubawa].”

Hughes will spend the next few years in Lubawa helping to start new work. She’ll continue teaching English, the same strategy she used with her team in the previous city, Olsztyn, to reach out to neighbors. The young missionary explains that offering English conversational classes has been an open door for meeting people and sharing the gospel.

“In my last city, there was an older lady who wanted to learn English so she could visit her daughter in England. She’s not a believer but she came to my class,” Hughes said. “At one point, she wanted to know why I was there. I told her that I was working with Baptist churches, and that led into us talking about spiritual things.

“We do English conversation so we can share the gospel. For example, one day we were practicing past tense words. So I told her my testimony,” she recounted. “This lady now loves to hear people’s testimonies. She is not a believer yet but I pray one day it will happen.”

While Hughes lives in a country where she can openly talk about Jesus, it doesn’t mean hundreds come to salvation each year. In fact, it was years before she even saw one person commit his life to Christ. Veteran missionaries warned her that it could take years to see fruit—if she sees any.

Hughes said this doesn’t bother her, though. As she stated, she reminds herself that God calls some people to prepare the way for the harvest.

Her attitude doesn’t surprise Shannon McMahon, children’s director at Hughes’ home church in Keller.

“I remember Bailey as a seventh-grader asking our women’s group to pray for her mom to be baptized. She was influential in leading her entire family to Christ,” McMahon said, remembering how Hughes never gave up on her family coming to faith. “She has always had a heart for following God and sharing his Word with others.”

Hughes’ goal for sharing the gospel starts with being “intentional”—or keeping her eyes and heart open to meeting people God puts in her everyday life. She said she is asking Southern Baptists in Texas to join her by praying for people of peace to come along and progress in building relationships. Hughes explained that “people of peace” are those who are open to her team and can help them get established in the community. She also hopes fellow believers would pray for openness to the gospel and that people would respond to the Holy Spirit—a request her mother, Mary Hughes, said she hopes Southern Baptists in Texas would really take to heart.

Mary Hughes insists that a revival in Poland can take place and said she believes it will happen one person at a time—just as it did in the Hughes family.

“I’m so excited that our Bailey is sharing the gospel in Poland. They won’t know how to break free in the Lord until someone tells them,” Mary Hughes said. “Pray for the Holy Spirit to work. It’s time to make a new chapter in history for Poland—one that involves a personal relationship with their Savior.”

Crimean Baptists face uncertain times

KIEV, Ukraine—Baptist workers in Russia and Ukraine are uncertain what effect the recent Crimean referendum to secede from Ukraine and join Russia will have on churches in the region.

Although there is freedom of religion in Russia, national identity is tied to the Orthodox Church. Protestant denominations, which are classified as cults, are treated with mistrust. Laws related to religious activity are more tightly controlled in Russia than in Ukraine, where evangelical Christianity has surged since the early ’90s.

“Baptist Church leaders are not sure what standing they will have with the new government,” said Tim Johnson,* an International Mission Board (IMB) representative in Kiev. “The freedoms of religion and the protection of the Ukrainian constitution are now lost and what standing they will have in the transition is uncertain.”

The March 16 referendum in Crimea has left the region torn between two nations. Russia has claimed the region with a strong military presence, but Ukraine and its allies do not acknowledge the legitimacy of the vote. Residents of Crimea are living with the reality of having their citizenship, pensions, currency and property documents in limbo.

“There is an overhanging sense of the unknown,” Johnson said.

John Green,* an IMB representative in Russia, said Russians generally feel that Crimea belongs to Russia. Crimea was given to Ukraine as a gift when both were a part of the former Soviet Union. When Ukraine claimed independence in 1991, Russia lost Crimea.

“What is creating unease is how Russia is perceived by the rest of the world,” Green said. “Russians want the rest of the world to see them as strong and courageous, and Baptist Russians want to see their countrymen trusting in God and not just their country.”

A third player in this drama is the native people of the land, the Tatars, who make up less than 15 percent of Crimea’s roughly 2 million people. Sunni Muslims of Turkic origin, the Tatars began returning to Crimea some two decades ago. They are deeply suspicious of Russian rule following the mass deportation of their ancestors to Central Asia by Soviet authorities in 1944, and many strongly protested the March 16 referendum.

Crimean Baptist pastor Kostya Bakonov, who leads a church in Simferopol, said many people are spiritually open because of the ongoing hostilities.

“Many people in Ukraine have been searching for answers and are seeking the answers from churches and ministers,” Bakonov said. We praise God that he is opening hearts to reveal himself.”

Johnson confirmed this sentiment. “It’s amazing how much easier it is to talk to people now,” he said.

Bakonov asked for continued prayer for the people of Crimea as they navigate this time of transition. “I fervently believe the crisis in Ukraine is not only about the political stability in the country and region but also for the souls of men,” he said.

*Name changed

Filipino village awakened to gospel by SBTC”s Disaster Relief efforts

A small-scale awakening continues in Agojo, the Filipino fishing village in the province of Capiz devastated by Typhoon Haiyan last November, as disaster relief workers minister there under the direction of Garry and Sherry McDugle of Bois d’Arc Baptist Church in Palestine.

The McDugles, coordinators for the effort and disaster relief chaplains with the  Southern Baptists of Texas Convention, have been in the area since early January and will extend their stay until the end of April.

Volunteer teams from churches in Georgia and Texas have assisted in the efforts.

Nearly 80 Filipinos have made decisions for Christ followed by dozens of ocean baptisms and the start of multiple Simbalays, or Filipino home churches.

These new believers face challenges and need prayer, volunteers said.

“Some will be ostracized from their families, friends and communities,” Garry McDugle said. “Here, it is not well received for one to be baptized outside the Catholic faith.”

At the conclusion of an ocean baptismal service, the McDugles’ driver, Bert, expressed curiosity and after hearing the gospel, he too asked to be baptized.

Filipino pastor Ronald Calina conducts the beach services. On March 8, at one evening service, 30 adults and 15 children prayed to receive Jesus.

The scene could have occurred on the Sea of Galilee, Sherry McDugle said. Fishing boats rocked gently offshore, nets cast out, while the families of the fishermen—women, elderly parents and fishermen themselves—listened attentively to the gospel.

A young boy took Sherry McDugle’s hand and explained, smiling and pointing aloft, that he was not going to hell but to heaven.
While the gospel is at work, the physical work of recovery and rebuilding also continues.

Much progress can be seen at the local elementary school, painted by volunteers from the Georgia Baptist Convention. The Georgia contingent completed work on 80 sites and even installed windows in the Agojo daycare, Garry McDugle said.

“I just showed them the need and they went for it,” said McDugle of the team who returned to Georgia on March 14.

Teams from Texas, including volunteers from First Baptist The Colony and First Baptist of Brownsville, have rotated in.

“We have over 250 work orders,” said Garry McDugle, who noted that 30 of the needed 55 10-foot by 10-foot shelters have been completed and that 10 carpentry teams remain busy.

Baptist Global Response and the SBTC have provided $100,000 in funds to meet the region’s needs, but individuals are still encouraged to donate to the effort. More DR teams are also needed, said McDugle, who emphasized the effectiveness of smaller two-person teams like First Baptist The Colony’s Wally Leyerle and Jake Martinez.

SBTC DR teams have assisted schoolteachers who live outside the Agojo neighborhood but work at the Agojo elementary school. One, a mother of five named Gina whose husband had suffered a stroke and pneumonia prior to the typhoon, commutes to work 45 minutes twice daily by motorcycle. Her home was in the eye of the storm and debris remained scattered about. As DR workers gathered to pray with Gina’s family, neighborhood residents joined them.

The family of Belinda, another teacher who lives just outside Agojo, had huddled underneath a table during the typhoon’s blast. Belinda’s husband lost his fishing boat, the family’s means of livelihood, to the storm. Tears welled up in Belinda’s eyes as DR workers arrived with sheets of corrugated metal to repair her home.

Just as Belinda will never forget the November day when the typhoon destroyed her island, neither will she forget that March day when SBTC DR workers arrived to help and to pray. She requested and received a new Bible to replace hers that was lost during the storm.

Stories abound of Filipinos coming to the Lord. There is Nenitea, a laborer likely in her 40s, recently widowed, who with her grown daughter trusted the Lord. Jessa, a 16-year-old who was befriended and given a Bible by the McDugles more than a month ago, recently trusted Jesus, as did her best friend, her father and family of six. Even the wife of the local Agojo elected official or captain has expressed interest in learning more about Jesus.

“Please, please keep praying for everyone here,” Garry McDugle said.

“Jesus is wooing the community,” Sherry McDugle added.

Trustees approve new apologetics master”s degree, elect four professors

FORT WORTH—Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary trustees approved the formation of a Board of Visitors and elected new faculty members, among other business, at a meeting on the school’s campus April 9.

The Board of Visitors acts as purely an observatory and feedback-supplying body, and its members have no legal responsibility or authority to the seminary.

“They don’t have any oversight over the campus,” said Steven Smith, Southwestern’s vice president of student services and communications. “What they do is they come and they look around and generally gain awareness themselves of what’s going on, on campus, and they’re able to give us feedback. It’s one more avenue to engage people who are not formally or vocationally in the ministry, necessarily, and for them to come on to our campus and see what we’re seeing everyday.”

Pending approval by the seminary’s accrediting agencies, students may soon have another degree program from which to choose when they begin studying at Southwestern. The trustees voted to approve a master of arts in Christian apologetics degree as well as a certificate in the same field of study.

Provost Craig Blaising said interest in apologetics has been piqued among laypeople and academics alike and continues to be on the rise, especially among many students studying in the College at Southwestern. The creation of a degree focused on that area seemed a natural response to that interest, he explained.

“With the interest that has been communicated to us, we felt the time was right to go ahead and create this degree, as well as the certificate, because the certificate is there for maybe laypeople who have interest in apologetics, science and culture and who want to focus and get some training in that area.”

Though approved in concept by the trustees, the degree will still have to go through the approval channels of the accrediting agencies before students can begin the new degree.

Faculty Elections
The trustees also voted to elect four professors to the seminary’s faculty: Paul Gould as assistant professor of philosophy and Christian apologetics; Craig Kubic as dean of libraries; Vern Charette as assistant professor of preaching; and Keith Loftin as assistant professor of humanities. Additionally, the board voted to endow the Jesse Hendley Chair of Biblical Theology and elected Blaising to occupy it. Matt Queen, assistant professor of evangelism, was elected to fill the L.R. Scarborough Chair of Evangelism, also known as the Chair of Fire, formerly held by Patterson.

“Due to Matt Queen, this place is a different place than it was three years ago,” Patterson told the board early in the meeting, before the professor’s election to the chair. “Matt Queen has done exactly what I asked him to do. I told him, ‘I don’t care what you teach, I just want you to electrify this campus with evangelistic outreach. I want there to be only two kinds of people that set foot on Southwestern’s campus: those who are soul winners and those who are desperately ashamed of themselves and miserable because they’re not going to get involved in it.’ And he has done that unbelievably. The longer he is at it, I see how big of a failure I was during my first eight years here, and my hat is off to him, and I thank God for the others who have joined him.”

Officer Elections
The trustees made elections to their own board as well, voting to select Steve James of Lake Charles, La., to serve a second term as chairman, Bart Barber of Farmersville, to serve as vice chairman and John Brunson of Houston, to serve a second term as secretary.

Budget and other business
Trustees approved a $35.1 million budget for the seminary for the 2014-15 fiscal year, which represents a slight increase over the $32.9 million budget approved for 2013-2014. The board also approved audits for the seminary and the seminary’s development foundation for the fiscal year ending July 31.

Patterson requested the board “receive the report of the successful conclusion” of the 2009-2013 strategic plan, which it did unanimously. He then also asked that they approve the 2014-2019 strategic plan, which Patterson said includes items such as libraries, faculty and staff compensation, and upkeep to the physical plant.

Alvord church touts CP”s global impact

ALVORD—Hopewell Baptist Church, nestled a few curvy miles off Highway 287 in North Texas, is a modest church. It offers a nursery as needed, has one Sunday School class and fits all its announcements on a small corkboard outside a two-stall bathroom that the pastor and his wife clean themselves.

But for Hopewell Baptist, small would be a misnomer.

Hopewell Baptist operates on a big-vision mindset, taking decidedly large strides in supporting missions and ministry through the Cooperative Program—the collective giving arm of Southern Baptists. As a church, members of Hopewell have committed to pass 10 percent of their annual budget through the CP via the Southern Baptists of Texas and Southern Baptist conventions—all in an effort to extend their reach beyond their community to the far corners of the globe.

Pastor Timothy Pigg, a Florida native and master of divinity student at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, says Hopewell members realized that on their own, they could not do much in the battle to win souls globally, yet they also knew they were not excepted from the Lord’s instructions in Matthew 28 to go into all the world proclaiming the good news of Jesus Christ. From where they sat in a small white church situated just up the hill from a cow pasture and an unmarked railroad crossing, it seemed their influence was somewhat limited.

“We do not have the financial resources to do what the church at Antioch did with Paul,” said Pigg, who grew up the son of an associate pastor now serving at First Baptist Church in Naples, Fla. “As a smaller church, we cannot financially support a full-time missionary, but we recognize our Great Commission obligation to make disciples of all nations. We were stuck in a quandary.”

The CP, however, has provided Hopewell a chance to make big waves for Christ, even from their rather remote and out-of-cellular-range location.

“We decided that partnering with other like-minded churches would allow us to impact the kingdom of God in ways that would otherwise be impossible,” Pigg said, explaining that increasing their contribution through the CP served as part of the solution to the church wanting to up its efforts in missions and evangelism. Pigg said the church also takes Lottie Moon, Annie Armstrong and Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary offerings in answer to God’s call to sacrificial giving.

“Another reason why I support giving through the CP is that is allows me to teach my members the importance of unity and cooperation,” Pigg said. “The nature of the CP is churches working together to accomplish one goal. As a pastor, I want a spirit of unity to undergird every ministry we do as a local congregation. The CP allows me to remind my members how we have been called to a greater service for God that involves our cooperation.”

140th anniversary celebration
In keeping with the church’s big vision was the service it held April 6 commemorating Hopewell’s 140th anniversary. The celebration, which coincided with CP Sunday—a day churches make a concerted effort to recognize the value of the Cooperative Program and emphasize their continued and fervent support of Southern Baptists’ giving channel—included a sermon by Southwestern Seminary President Paige Patterson and music led by Don Wyrtzen, Southwestern church music professor, and Leo Day, church music dean.

Dorothy Patterson taught a women’s Sunday School class, and SBTC Minister-Church Relations Associate Ted Elmore presented a plaque of commendation on behalf of Executive Director Jim Richards and the convention for Hopewell’s faithful ministry over the past 140 years.

Nearly 100 people packed into the two sections of pews for the celebration and then converged on the fellowship hall to share a Texas-sized potluck. Pigg said a normal Sunday service runs about 30 people—double the average attendance from little more than a year ago when the church called Pigg as its pastor.

Before preaching from John 3, Patterson commended the church for its longevity and also for its faithful giving through the CP, which not only funds missionaries but also substantially underwrites the preparation of missionaries, pastors and church leaders in the convention’s six seminaries.

“By your faithful giving and sharing with other churches all across the state of Texas and far, far beyond, in your giving to a common missionary fund, what you have done is to make it possible for Timothy Pigg and this young man and that young man and several others I see around here, all the way back to this young man [Patterson], for us to go to seminary at a third of the cost,” Patterson said.

Reduced education costs for students, Patterson said, equate to ministers and missionaries free to go wherever the Lord calls them without mountains of educational debt. This means, he explained, that those the Lord has called can begin their service with immediacy and focus.
That service, Patterson said, is an extension of the ministry of Hopewell Baptist Church, among thousands of others, as it financially and prayerfully backs those serving as the Lord’s hands worldwide.

“You have 5,200 career missionaries—that’s the largest mission force in all of the history of Christianity—in 2,000 years of Christianity—you have 5,200 missionaries representing you out there on the field in 138 countries,” Patterson told the congregation. “We have all those people scattered throughout the world that represent you and that represent me. Thank you, church, for what you have done across the years.”

Pigg said he prays the milestone in the life of Hopewell Baptist Church will stoke fires that have been burning among their body for the past 140 years into a furnace that will propel ministry and revival in Wise County, and thanks to the CP, the whole world. 

“My prayer is that the 140th anniversary service serves as a catalyst for the next 140 years,” Pigg said. “There is still much to be done for the kingdom of God, and I could not think of two people [Patterson and Day] who would celebrate God’s past work and challenge us to go forward with greater fervency to study and know God’s Word, than these two men.”