Hi-tech promotes high-touch churches

You can visit many churches that show no signs of awareness that we live in a digital age, awash in multiple media venues and online opportunities for social networking. For some folks, I suspect, a simple sanctuary with nothing more high-tech than a piano may be just that -- a place of sanctuary and longing for a simpler day.

But I'll bet at least three-quarters of the worshipers in those bare pews will have cell phones in their pockets.

Trend-spotter George Barna published a survey on Churches and Technology this week. The study took a look at eight technologies and their application in Protestant churches. Surveyors found that 65 percent of churches now have a large screen projection system. Size, as one might expect, played an important role:

Among churches that average less than 100 adults each week, only half (53%) have such systems. The proportion balloons to 76% among churches that attract an average of 100 to 250 adults, and nearly nine out of ten churches (88%) that draw more than 250 adults each week.

Researches even noticed a somewhat surprising correlation of large screens and theology: just more "liberal" churches used large screens, while 68 percent of churches perceived to be more conservative used them.

Barna has a vested interest in knowing how many churches use screens for video clips and the like: his Barna Films division makes a host of clips available, indexed to scriptures or topics and with royalties appropriately paid. His group found that 80 percent of churches with large screens also used film or other video clips in some way. The number that use satellite dishes to offer remote training opportunities remains small, at eight percent.

But that's not all Barna's interested in: his researches found that 56 percent of Protestant churches use "e-mail blasts" to communicate with the congregation, and 62 percent have an Internet presence through a curch website. As expected, the larger the church, the more likely it is to have a website.

Churches have been slower to get on board with social networking sites like MySpace and FaceBook: only a quarter of Protestant churches sponsor a group on social networking sites, with large churches and charismatic churches being more likely to be plugged in.

While many churches embrace technology, they aren't as likely to provide interactive opportunities. Just one of eight churches host a blog where members can respond to blogs posted by church leaders. Watch for social networking and blogging, along with community-building opportunities like Twitter, to skyrocket in coming years -- or churches will be left in the digital dust.

One-way communication such as the commonly employed "tape ministry" for shut-ins has also benefited from technology: one out of six churches now offer podcasting, allowing tech-savvy members to download sermons or other programs and listen at their leisure.

Barna concluded:

The Internet has become one of the pivotal communications and community-building tools of our lifetime. Churches are well-advised to have an intelligent and foresighted Internet strategy in order to facilitate meaningful ministry.

That's the sort of news many churches don't want to hear, but it's a truth that they'll need to heed if they want others to hear their message. For younger believers who love being part of tight communities, high-tech and high-touch go hand in hand.

[Graphic from Cross Systems, Inc. ]

Samuel's plea for a dog.A personal note: some of you have heard about our son

The effectual fervent plea of a righteous son availeth much.

His name, Samuel says, is Banjo.

Fresh voices

The "Ministry of Writing" course I teach at Campbell University Divinity School is a challenge for me, given that my students are at various levels of preparation. And, it's a challenge for students, given that I require of them such a broad range of assignments.

We work on proper form and style for everything from newsletter announcements and press releases to creative sermons and obituaries. And, recognizing that we live in a digital world, I also require students to create an online blog and post at least four entries to it. For some students, it may never go beyond that. For others, including some who are already veteran bloggers, it could become a lifetime practice.

For readers who might be interested in gleaning insights from the thoughts of divinity school students at various stages of their ministry journeys, here are links to some of this semester's more intriguing blogs, posted with the authors' permission.

By profession, Wendy Tingle specializes in the management of radioactive waste, which should come in handy when she finishes divinity school and takes a church position. When she writes about inaccurate portrayals of "dirty bombs" on television, she knows whereof she speaks, and when she writes of a conversation with an aging pastor about the unwitting role he played in helping launch the "conservative resurgence" (and now regrets), you can feel the pain.

Chad Reed has served this year as an associate to Campbell University's campus minister. He also plays in a band, is big into music, and writes of it often, though not exclusively. I liked his recent post about what he would do with an extra hour each day.

As a youth minister, Jeffrey Sholar has a heart for others and a perceptive eye. He recently remembered a local soldier who was killed in Iraq, and thoughtfully pondered the significance of shoes.

Paul Burgess is a sharp as they come, with enough quirkiness and savvy to create a blog with a comic book theme. He writes with real charm about his love for Eliza, his soon-to-be bride, and with appreciation for his father's assistance in helping him remodel a house for them.

The pastor's life is nothing new to Wes Balmer, who effectively speaks of a pastor's frustrations, but can also glory in the elegance of a bicycle -- and the joy of a long ride.

Paul Cannon is a rarity these days -- he plays the organ, which should put him in great demand, as many churches have organs, but no one to play them. Whether remembering Mr. Rogers or a burned-out Arby's, Paul does a nice job of including links and photographs in his blog.

Life hasn't always been easy for Kristi Stratton, but that hasn't slowed her down. She loves dogs and is a major league baseball fan, and writes with flair about those and other subjects close to her heart.

Deanna Deaton is a star student by any standards. She's a singer-songwriter who taught music in public school for several years before sensing a call to ministry and devoting herself to full-time studies. In meditating poetically on the joys of sleep or speaking eloquently about her love for Woman's Missionary Union, Deanna is a woman who has something to say and who says it well.

Like my students, I'm relieved to see the end of the semester at hand. I hope, however, that some of them will continue blogging, not for a grade, but for the joy of writing and the contribution of positively-charged thoughts to the often-negative blogosphere.

Stetzer calls it straight

Statistics recently released from LifeWay Christian Resources reveal that the Southern Baptist Convention has clearly peaked, and is in decline. Not only are baptisms down for the seventh year out of the last eight, but even membership numbers, a highly inflated statistic, showed a small dip. This despite a recent campaign designed to baptize a million people a year and persistent calls to do more in evangelism.

One of the few SBC insiders willing to call it straight is missiologist Ed Stetzer, who works for LifeWay Research. In a recent post, Stetzer analyzed the trends and concluded: "Reality is we have peaked. "

In no uncertain terms, Stetzer spells out the evidence showing that the SBC is declining.

Stetzer attributes the decline, in large part, to:

1) "a serious (and increasing) depopulation of young leaders" and a lack of ethnic representation in leadership positions,

2) the "national caricature" of Southern Baptists as bickering people who can't get along, and

3) what he sadly calls "our loss of focus on the Gospel."

One of Stetzer's more insightful comments relates to his second point, which I think may be the most significant factor of the three:

"The communities in which we live simply do not want to hear what we have to say when we can speak kindly to one another. If the focus of every SBC meeting is a new controversy to be debated, new parameters to be narrowed, and new issues to be fought, the trend toward decline will only accelerate."

Those are powerful words.

They are also the truth.

We can only hope that the powers-that-be and those who support them will get the message.

[Image from LifeWay Resources]

Conflicts, but no conspiracy

North Carolina is loaded with Baptist folk who love missions and enjoy attending mission-related meetings. Three of the most popular are traditionally held in the spring of each year: the North Carolina Missions Conference sponsored by N.C. Baptist Men (NCBM), the Missions Extravaganza sponsored by Woman's Missionary Union of N.C. (WMU-NC), and the annual General Assembly of the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship of N.C. (CBFNC).

There is a lot of cross-pollination between those groups, and many people like to attend at least two, if not all three of the meetings. Unfortunately, they will have tough choices to make in 2009: all three meetings are scheduled for the same weekend, March 20-21.

It's not a conspiracy or a competition; it just happened. Planning big meetings is a difficult business, especially when the meetings are hosted by a local church that will have to provide lots of volunteers and go to a great deal of trouble to host the meeting. Thus, when asking a church to host a meeting, one has to respect the church to provide dates that are available. Since dates for Easter move around, it's natural that available dates will also move around the calendar.

WMU-NC traditionally holds its Missions Extravaganza at LifeWay's Ridgecrest Conference Center, where more than 1300 attended this year. Its bylaws require it to establish meting dates several years in advance, so it's generally first on the calendar. But, persons who don't attend the meeting or consult the WMU-NC website don't automatically know what those dates are.

N.C. Baptist Men generally has the largest attendance (about 2100 this year), and generally alternates between Charlotte and Winston-Salem (and occasionally Raleigh) because those sites have churches that are large enough and enough hotel space to accommodate them. Even at that, they "sold out the house" this year at Calvary Baptist in Winston-Salem, and director Richard Brunson said about 1,000 would-be registrants had to be turned away.

Next year's meeting was slated for Charlotte, where Hickory Grove Baptist is the largest church available. Hickory Grove had only two dates available, Brunson said, one of which was March 20-21. Not realizing that WMU-NC and CBFNC were planning to meet on the same dates, he said, he chose the one in which there was less going on in Charlotte, so more hotel rooms would be available. Brunson said the NCBM board does not vote on such arrangements, but leaves him leeway to make the decisions. By the time he learned of the conflict, he said, contracts had already been signed with musicians and several speakers for the meeting.

CBFNC, which had 1150 participants attend a meeting at Forest Hills Baptist in Raleigh this spring, also had limited dates to choose from when asking Snyder Memorial Baptist Church to accomodate its meeting in 2009. March 20-21 was most convenient for the church, which has a major role in leading a large "Operation Inasmuch" effort two weeks after that date. Coordinator Larry Hovis said CBFNC is looking at options for possibly changing the date by a week, but was not sure it could happen.

So, it appears that some folks will have tough choices to make next year (it may be toughest for us news types who like to attend them all). On the negative side, some people who like to attend multiple meetings will only be able to attend one.

But on the positive side, consider this: there will be an opportunity for Baptists to celebrate missions in across the state, from Ridgecrest in the west (WMU-NC) to Charlotte in the south (NCBM) to Fayetteville in the East (CBFNC).

The leaders of all three groups, by the way, have pledged to work harder at informing others of their plans and trying their best to avoid similar conflicts in the future. Better communication is always a good thing.

The greening of the church

Earth Day has come and gone, and while some conservative stalwarts continue to deny human impact on global warming -- or see no need to care for the earth since they anticipate Armaggedon -- more and more Christians are recognizing the need to be good stewards of the earth.

That's a message that's been around for a while. I still have a canvas "Earth Stewards" bag distributed by the once-significant but now almost nonexistent Christian Life and Public Affairs council of the Baptist State Convention of North Carolina. They were encouraging the use of reusable bags instead of "paper or plastic" years ahead of the curve.

But, not enough people paid attention to them or others calling for greater global stewardship. Now, however, as one environmental crisis stands on another and the price of oil continues to rise, it's hard to ignore the importance of earth stewardship -- a responsibility the Bible claims has been around from humanity's earliest days: "God blessed them, and God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it; and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the air and over every living thing that moves upon the earth” (Gen. 1:28).

God put humans in charge of the earth: the word "subdue" does not imply "ravage," but "exercise control." With control comes responsibility and a need for careful stewardship.

Ethics Daily has posted a new resource to promote environmental awareness, especially from a Christian point of view. Director Robert Parham presented Al Gore with a green Bible during the New Baptist Covenant meeting a few months back, and indicated that more resources were on the say. The site is a collection of helpful articles and videos, and can be found at thegreenbible.org. It's worth a good look.

More importantly, it's worth considering that stewardship of the earth is not just a human concern, but a Christian one.

[Note: if you've wondered why the Baptists Today website has been so sketchy the past few days, there have been some serious issues with the server at the hosting company. As you can imagine, frantic efforts are underway to get it restored.]

Of carts and horses

The undergraduate program that successfully boosted enrollment at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary has a new name: instead of "Southeastern College at Wake Forest," which had caused some confusion about whether it was related to Wake Forest University, the school is now "The College at Southeastern."

Twenty years ago, the idea of a seminary campus hosting an undergraduate college was rare. Many seminaries had "Associate Degree" programs for students who did not have a college education, but did not pretend to offer a full college education.

That has changed, at least in Southern Baptist life, where it's more common than not for seminaries to host undergraduate colleges as feeder schools. The college at Southeastern was one of the first and most successful. A few years back, some trustees wanted to name it for former president Paige Patterson, who was instrumental in starting the trend. Since he was still president at the time, he appropriately declined the honor.

The school offers B.A. degrees in Christian studies, pastoral ministries, and missions. According to an article in Baptist Press, dean Peter Schemm said "One of the most appealing things about The College at Southeastern is that we are a college on the campus of a seminary, and our status as part of Southeastern Seminary allows our students to take advantage of academic programs, faculty resources and a way of life on campus that are not available at other undergraduate institutions."

This reflects the insular mindset of today's Southern Baptist education system that channels students into a narrow course of studies as opposed to a classic liberal arts education, where students have access to academic programs and faculty resources that might lead them to consider liberal ideas.

For most schools in the broader educational stream, it works the other way around. Many consider it more ideal for a divinity school campus to be associated with a university that offers many more options for study. Divinity schools at Campbell and Gardner-Webb universities, for example, offer combination degrees such as an MDiv-MBA or a combination MDiv and counseling degree. Many of the 15 seminaries or divinity schools affiliated with the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship offer similar programs, and can do so because theological training is seen as a special area of studies within a broader spectrum of options.

Models that subsume a college within a seminary see undergraduate education as a focused step toward advanced theological training, rather than a learning experience with the broader base of options that one would find in a typical college or university setting.

I'm not suggesting that students can't learn a lot at seminary-run colleges, but what they learn won't have the breadth or offer the options to be found at colleges and universities where the theological cart can draw strength from a whole team of educational horses.

Chi Rho -- fantastico!

Good news is for sharing. So are good experiences, or new discoveries.

There's nothing really new about Chi Rho, a Christian men's a cappella ensemble made of up students at Wake Forest University. They've been around since 1991, and various versions of the group have recorded seven albums. Last spring they toured internationally.

I heard them in concert April 13 at Calvary Baptist Church in Mount Airy and ... these guys are good.

Really good.

With a broad repertoire ranging from contemporary Christian to old hymns and spirituals to classical (Ave Maria in Latin, for example), the group sings with joyful enthusiasm -- and always on key. The sounds they can make with their voices alone leave you looking for the percussion section or the bass guitar -- but it's all them.

To hear clips of their music, go to their website and click on one of the albums displayed there. You can order CDs online if you like. The most recent ("Here Is What I Know Now") is a special treat.

To hear them live, make your way to Wake Forest University on Saturday night, April 19 for their big end-of-the-year concert at Wait Chapel. They're hoping to pack the house.

If you live within driving distance and could use an extra blessing, here's a golden opportunity. And, like the grace that it echoes, there's no charge.

CBFNC listens for God’s call

Celebration, worship, and fellowship topped the agenda as 1,175 registered participants packed Forest Hills Baptist Church in Raleigh April 11-12 for the 14th annual gathering of the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship of North Carolina (CBFNC).

Keynote speaker Julie Pennington Russell, pastor of First Baptist Church in Decatur, Ga., brought two messages on the assembly theme “Incoming Call: Hearing and Responding to God’s Call.”

In a sermon based on Jesus’ call of the first four disciples in Mark 1:16-20, Pennington-Russell noted that some readers are disappointed that Mark presents Jesus full-grown, with no story about Jesus’ birth. “We like the Christmas Jesus best,” she said -- “weak and wordless.”

Mark offers little detail about how Jesus called out the disciples, “but maybe he leaves it out because the process is not the point,” she said. “The point is that Jesus comes to us and calls us to follow him. It’s about personal commitment to the person of Christ." Jesus said ‘follow me’ – not a denomination or program or task or creed, she added.

“If our first calling is to follow Jesus, it gives us tremendous freedom to grow and be shaped along the way,” Pennington-Russell said: “Jesus doesn’t put us in vocational straightjackets.”

To sense the direction Jesus would have us to go, she said, believers must learn to be still and hear the Spirit speaking.

In a brief business session, participants approved a 2008-2009 program budget of $1.1 million, up 19 percent from the previous year’s budget of $915,000. During the 2007-2008 fiscal year, CBFNC received $2.4 million, including funds channeled to CBF national, Baptist colleges and institutions in North Carolina, and other ministry partners.

Steve Little, an attorney who is a member of First Baptist Church in Marion, was elected as moderator-elect, to serve in 2009-10. Greg Rogers, pastor of Oakmont Baptist Church in Greenville, took the gavel for 2008-09 from Gail Coulter, pastor of Providence Baptist Church in Hendersonville, who presided this year.

In her moderator’s remarks, Coulter thanked CBFNC and the five CBF-related churches that helped to sponsor Providence when it began in 2002. Providence “is one of the strongest small churches to be found,” she said. Coulter retired from the pastorate March 31.

Coulter highlighted CBFNC accomplishments during the past year, including “phenomenal growth in the Missions Resource Plan and undesignated giving,” the addition of new program staff, new missions initiatives, leadership development efforts, and the establishment of the Lolley Fund for theological education.

CBFNC is currently assisting with six Hispanic and two Anglo church starts, with plans to help launch several more in the near future.

Coordinator Larry Hovis praised Forest Hills Baptist Church for its assistance in hosting the event, and announced that next year’s meeting will be held at Snyder Memorial Baptist Church in Fayetteville, with Fred Craddock preaching. The dates will be March 20-21.
In a closing message, Pennington-Russell said urged attenders to surrender themselves as “instruments of God.” Jesus never said “Go and do some witnessing,” she said. Rather, “he said ‘you will be my witnesses.’”

Those are very different things, Pennington-Russell said. To be a witness is “to be an instrument for the purposes of God on this earth.”

For related blogs, learn about the Baptist Women in Ministry N.C. meeting and a banquet that kicked off the Lolley Fund for theological education.

[Photos: Above: Julie Pennington-Russell. Below: Larry Hovis thanks Gail Coulter for her service as moderator in 2007-2008.]

BWIM NC celebrates 25 years

Baptist Women in Ministry of North Carolina (BWIM NC) celebrated its 25th anniversary April 11, unveiling a "Cloud of Witnesses" quilt and honoring those who support women in ministry.

The quilt contained names of people whom others have found inspirational and encouraging as a witness to them. Contributions were made to the BWIM scholarship fund in honor of each person named. BWIM provides scholarship assistance to one woman at each of North Carolina's four divinity schools that have some affiliation with the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship.

Pam Durso, associate executive director of the Baptist History and Heritage Society, recalled Addie Davis, who in 1964 became the first woman ordained in a Southern Baptist church, and reflected on Joshua 3:1-4, where Joshua instructed the Israelites to follow God's lead as they crossed the Jordan and entered the Promised Land, for "then you will know which way to go, since you have never been this way before.”

Durso spoke of women who have depended on God to find places of service and voices of encouragement, willing to walk down roads and explore places Baptist women had not been before. Just as they were watched, she said, so "we are being watched" by a cloud of witnesses in the making. Thus, she said, "We too must run with perseverance and not grow weary."

The organization presented its annual church award -- given to a church that has encouraged women in ministry -- to Ridge Road Baptist Church in Raleigh, which also served as the host church for the meeting. The "Cloud of Witnesses Quilt" will remain on display at Ridge Road for the next year.

The annual Anne Thomas Neil Award was presented to Ruby Fulbright, executive director of Woman's Missionary Union of North Carolina. Karen Metcalf, a minister at Trinity Baptist Church in Raleigh, said the award recognized not only Fulbright's leadership, but also the group's admiration for WMU.

Scholarships make a difference

The heart of theological education is found in the interplay between teachers and students and administrators engaged in the education process itself. That process, however, is has to be paid for. Somebody has to foot the bill, and students are often the least prepared to afford it. In the absence of huge bequests or major denominational funding to keep them afloat, seminaries and divinity schools depend heavily on scholarship funds to assist students in paying the tuition needed to keep the ship afloat.

A lack of funds or students can lead to considerable pain, something the good folks at Baptist Theological Seminary at Richmond are facing. A lower enrollment combined with the high cost of a stand-alone seminary, along with some financial overreaching in the purchase of additional property, is forcing that school to make significant cutbacks in its faculty and staff.

On a more positive note, the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship of North Carolina (CBFNC) has had good success in creating a long-term endowment fund to provide scholarships for North Carolina Baptist students attending one of the state's four CBF-related divinity schools (the Baptist House at Duke University, Campbell University Divinity School, the M. Christopher White School of Divinity at Gardner-Webb University, and Wake Forest University Divinity School), or divinity schools in other states.

At a banquet at Raleigh's First Baptist Church April 10, participants learned that the fund has already received pledges and gifts of more than $250,000, and were encouraged to contribute more. The Lolley Fund for Theological Education is named for Randall Lolley, former president of Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary, and his wife, Lou. The current total includes the value of a mountain cabin near Banner Elk that the Lolleys are donating to the fund.

Scholarships can be promoted on other levels, as well. Many churches have found providing scholarships to be an important ministry. Todd Blake, who gave a testimony at the Lolley Fund banquet, earned his undergraduate degree at Campbell University before going on to complete his MDiv. studies at the Campbell University Divinity School. Blake noted that Mount Pisgah Baptist Church in Fayetteville, is such a strong supporter of Campbell that the church has raised more than $300,000 over the past 20 years to support two endowed scholarship funds for students at Campbell: the Rufus Warren Johnson scholarship is primarily for undergraduates, and the Howard Daniel Williams scholarship if specifically for the divinity school.

Mount Pisgah raises funds for the scholarships with an annual barbecue: the next one is scheduled for May 3 (corrected date): Facebook users can get more details here.

Several divinity school students at the banquet spoke briefly about how crucial scholarship money has been to them -- and how meaningful their theological education has been.

Twenty years after control of Southeastern seminary -- to be followed by all the other Southern Baptist seminaries -- was taken by conservatives bent on turning theological education in other directions, no less than 14 new theological schools or programs for Baptist students have gotten underway.

There's a world of need out there -- a world that needs pastors and other ministers with a sound theological training. There's also a world of need for finances to provide that all-important training.

I trust you'll do your part.

Beating on Baptists

Baptists in America are often the brunt of jokes (generally aimed at the more fundamentalist branches of the family tree), leading us to occasionally complain that people are unfairly beating up on Baptists. We should be grateful that the "beating up" involves words alone.

In Uzbekistan, they use clubs.

BosNewsLife, a news service that focuses on religious persecution, reported recently that several Christians were severely beaten April 3 after police raided a house church meeting in the city of Samarkand. A report on the Baptist World Alliance (BWA) website has identified the group as a Baptist congregation, led by pastor Bobur Aslamov.

After the beatings, Aslamov was hauled off to jail.

Larry Maddox, a retired Texas Baptist who is temporarily teaching in Kiev, Ukraine, told BWA in an email that Aslamov had been scheduled to attend his classes in Kiev. “Christianity is illegal in Uzbekistan and he is facing the possibility of several years in prison for practicing his faith,” Maddox said.

The Barnabas Fund, which reports on persecution of Christians, reported that “police confiscated all books, notebooks and a laptop which they found in the house.”

Uzbekistan, a former Soviet Republic, is a Muslim-majority country with a reputation for intolerance toward Christians. Forum 18, a religious news service based in Norway that highlights religious rights abuses in Central Asia, reported in February of this year “a Baptist in the eastern city of Fergana, Eduard Kim, was fined the equivalent of nine months average wages, after a raid by 10 state officials on his house where about 40 local Baptists were meeting for Sunday morning worship.” He was charged and convicted for holding “illegal religious meetings in his house.”

Occasionally I hear Baptist folk in America claim that they are being "persecuted" by the government because they aren't allowed to promote Christianity in public schools or some other nonsense. I'm inclined to think those folks wouldn't know persecution if it hit them in the face.

In Uzbekistan, that's precisely what they do.

[Map from Wikimedia Commons]

WMU-NC looking forward

Ruby Fulbright began her executive director’s report to Woman’s Missionary Union of North Carolina (WMU-NC) with a single word: “Whew!”

After a topsy-turvy year in which WMU-NC lost its office space and all Baptist State Convention (BSC) financial support as the price of preserving its autonomy, Fulbright said the organization – the largest state WMU in the country – is still growing, adding 138 new mission organizations in the past year. The announced attendance of 1,343 was the largest since 2002.

While grieving the deaths of former presidents Mabel Claire Maddrey and Dorothy P. Allred, Fulbright cited multiple reasons to celebrate. Those included the ongoing construction of a new unit lodge at Camp Mundo Vista, continued growth in Restorative Justice and Christian Women’s Job Corps ministries, and advances in multi-cultural work. For the third year in a row, North Carolina has a national Acteens panelist and Baptist Nursing Fellowship marked its 25th anniversary as a new Professional Christian Women’s Network gets underway. A number of women-only mission trips are also being planned.

In reflecting on the challenges of the past year, Fulbright said WMU-NC’s decision to ensure its autonomy had been applauded by many, but had “caused confusion and miscommunication among others.”

“Some things have been said that are absolutely not true,” Fulbright said, things that have caused hardship in some churches. “We want to express our apology for any difficulty you have gone through or may be going through,” she said, “and to remind you that WMU was born in adversity. Faith and obedience and being true to our calling is costly.”

“I hope you will hear that WMU-NC is still committed to missions,” Fulbright said, “to working alongside all North Carolina Baptist churches and associations in Christ-centered and Bible-based missions.”

WMU-NC still loves God and wants to share that love with all the world, and is still committed to working together with BSC leadership.

“In all honesty, that relationship still needs work,” she said. Fulbright pointed out that BSC officials have removed any mention of WMU-NC from the UpClose audio-video magazine and the “Church Leader” page designed by the BSC for publication in the Biblical Recorder. Likewise, a reference to WMU-NC has been left out of articles on BSC website concerning who to contact about the Annie Armstrong and Lottie Moon missions offerings – even though the partnership arrangement with WMU national requires that such materials be distributed by state WMU organizations.

“Those decisions were made by Baptist State Convention leadership, not WMU,” Fulbright said. “We will discover new ways of communicating with you,” she said, and “we’re still committed to working with the Baptist State Convention or others who want to do missions with us.”

After WMU-NC was excluded from the BSC’s North Carolina Missions Offering (NCMO), the Heck-Jones Offering used prior to advent of the NCMO was reestablished. Fulbright reported that more than $336,000 has been contributed thus far. “It’s not enough, not yet, but God is providing for our needs in other ways,” she said.

Fulbright thanked those who had helped pack boxes, donated furniture, sent notes, or encouraged the staff in other ways. Stopping her report, Fulbright, the WMU-NC staff, and members of the WMU executive board donned cowboy hats and went throughout the audience to say “thank you” while country artist Tracy Lawrence’s “Find Out Who Your Friends Are” played over the sound system.

WMU-NC’s new office suite is now ready, and nine staff members will be relocating during the week of April 14, Fulbright said. “Moving will be no easy task, but it will cost less than we ever thought possible, and donations have been overwhelming,” she said.

“We’ve had our lions and tigers and bears this year, but that tension can help us,” Fulbright said: tensions between dependence and independence, frontiers and boundaries, quality and quantity, present and future.

“We are laborers together with God, radically involved in the Great Commission,” she said. “Some think we’ve been radical this year, but I’m more concerned with our radical faith from here on out. With this faith women will be lifted from the pit of despair to the mountain of hope … Children will be blessed … Young people will sow the seeds of missions around the world … We will cement in Baptist history a union that is self-supporting and blessed by God.”

WMU will teach, pray, and go together as God has commanded, Fulbright concluded. “I believe we are following God’s orders, and accountable to God for how we handle this opportunity. History is on our side in believing that WMU-NC will go forward.”

[WMU-NC's new physical address is 1200 Front Street, Suite 110, Raleigh, NC 27609. The location is near Wake Forest Road, just inside the I-440, the Raleigh "beltline."]

It has never been easy

Woman’s Missionary Union of North Carolina (WMU-NC) gathered for “Missions Extravaganza” April 4-6, its first meeting since the group was required to give up its office space and all Baptist State Convention (BSC) support in order to retain its autonomy.

Former executive director Nancy Curtis brought an important historical perspective on opening night, reminding more than 1,300 participants that WMU has always lived on the edge and had to overcome considerable opposition from the Convention’s male leadership before it could even begin.

“WMU has always been and will always be about missions,” Curtis said. Women controlled very few resources in the late nineteenth century, but they established “Cent Societies” to support missions, contributing pennies from the “butter and egg” money they were generally allowed to keep.

"WMU has always lived on the edge because that’s where the lonely, the lost and the hurting are," Curtis said – "and where the missionaries are." Baptist churches cannot do without what WMU does for missions, she said. “Nobody does it better.”

As WMU has sought to carry out its mission, “it has never been easy,” Curtis said. In 1877, the Foreign Mission Board asked women in every state to organize mission societies. Mattie Heck of Raleigh organized a number of societies who raised more than $300 for missions, but at the next BSC meeting – where women were not allowed to speak – the male messengers acted to quash the movement.

Ten years later, again at the request of the Foreign Mission Board, Mattie Heck’s daughter Fannie – then just 24 years old, accepted the challenge of leadership, and recruited Sally Bailey, the 16-year-old daughter of Biblical Recorder editor Josiah Bailey, as her assistant. By the end of the year they had organized 71 mission societies and raised more than $1,000 for missions, a large sum at the time.

Despite their success, when representatives from the states gathered to establish the national WMU organization in1888, Heck attended but had been instructed not to join on behalf of North Carolina. Some men expressed fears that if WMU was allowed to raise money, the women might end up taking over. One noted that the women prayed as if everything depended on God, but worked as if everything depended on them.

WMU-NC was allowed to join the national group two years later, but the women and their efforts were frequently ridiculed, Curtis said. “It has never been easy.”

While supporting missions despite the obstacles, “WMU has always been a minority organization,” Curtis said – “but an overwhelming minority.” Even among women in most churches, WMU members are in a minority, she said, “a zealous, committed, faithful few” who do the work year in and year out.

“Adversity has been a friend that has made us stronger,” Curtis said. “WMU has been indomitable because of its passion for missions.”

More than once, WMU women have sacrificially given to bail out national and state convention ministries. “You have been remarkable,” Curtis said, “but still face apathy, opposition, even ridicule.”

“Some think we no longer need WMU,” she said, “that some other women’s program can take our place.”

“No one can take the place of WMU,” she said, asking what other organization has established worldwide networks for prayer, communicates missionary needs, trains all age groups in missions, raises billions for the cause of missions, and helps members to grow spiritually.

“If not WMU, who?” she asked again. “There’s not anybody.”

A Knight to the Rescue

Baptists Today honored founding editor Walker Knight at its annual "Judson-Rice Award" banquet April 3 in Atlanta.

As Southern Baptist conflict bloomed in the early 1980s, Knight left a secure position at the Home Mission Board (HMB, now North American Mission Board) to begin what was then called SBC Today in 1983. Knight, who had been editor of the popular Home Mission magazine, was known for careful journalism who covered issues like race relations in order to set the cultural context for missions. He told participants that he was often called to the HMB president’s office to explain what a particular article had to do with missions.

Seeing the “writing on the wall,” Knight said, he was receptive to the idea when a group of moderate leaders sometimes called the “Gatlinburg Gang” asked him to consider publishing a new journal to be a voice for moderates confronting the emerging takeover of the SBC by fundamentalist leaders.

With funds raised by that group, along with financial assistance and office space provided by Oakhurst Baptist Church in Decatur, Knight led the new journal to offer a “message of hope, openness and enlightenment to counteract the restrictive vision of the fundamentalist takeover of the SBC,” he said.

Truett Gannon, emeritus pastor of Smoke Rise Baptist Church in Stone Mountain, said Knight’s example offered “irrefutable evidence” that people can be incredibly courageous, profoundly altruistic, and fully transparent, describing Knight as “a man with no guile.”

Both Knight and current Baptists Today editor John Pierce paid tribute to Oakhurst Baptist Church for its role in assisting the publication in its early days. Knight said Oakhurst “practically institutionalized risk-taking.” To begin a new ministry challenge, Knight said, Oakhurst required a “yes” answer to three questions: “Is it incredibly good news?" "Is it almost impossible to accomplish?" And, “Is there a good chance it will fail?”

The new journal easily met those criteria, Knight said, and often flirted with failure. “May Baptists Today always be a publication that continues to bring light in dark places,” he said.

[Top Photo: Walker Knight accepts the Judson-Rice Award as editor Johnny Pierce joins participants in a standing ovation. Bottom photo: Oakhust Baptist pastors Melanie Vaughn-West and Lanny Peters accepted a plaque on Oakhurst's behalf.]

Campbell names Day, Jorgenson

Campbell University Divinity School will soon bid farewell to two fine professors: preaching professor Roy E. De Brand will retire at the end of the year, and theologian Steven R. Harmon will be taking a new position in Samford University's Beeson Divinity School next fall.

After lengthy searches and the receipt of applications from around the country, Campbell has announced that J. Daniel Day and Cameron Jorgenson will fill the two positions.

Day, who earned a Th.D. from Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, will become Associate Professor of Preaching and Worship.

He recently "retired" after 44 years of successful pastoral ministry that included pulpits in Oklahoma, Texas, Louisiana, and Missouri before concluding at First Baptist Church of Raleigh. Day is widely known for his artistry in the pulpit, crafting sermons that are carefully conceived and convincingly presented.

Associate dean Barry Jones said Day "will model a high view of preaching that combines clear and compelling communication with vital spirituality, biblical fidelity, intellectual integrity and Christ-like compassion." Day, who will teach courses in worship as well as preaching, said he hopes the lessons he has learned in congregational ministry will be of value to younger leaders.

Jorgenson is at the other end of the experience scale, but already accomplished as a young theologian. Jorgenson is scheduled to receive his Ph.D. from Baylor University in August, just as he joins the Campbell faculty as Assistant Professor of Christian Theology. Jorgenson "sees theology as a joyful pursuit that bridges both the treasures of the ancient church and the everyday world of contemporary culture," Jones said.

For ministers, "being a theologian is not an option," Jorgenson says. "It is my goal that students walk away from their theology coursework grounded in the essential doctrines of the faith, equipped to ask good questions, prepared to read texts carefully, and committed to engage in theological dialogue charitably." Jorgenson has served with distinction as a teaching fellow and adjunct professor at Baylor.

Day and Jorgenson will be introduced to the Campbell Divinity School community on April 15, and I am confident they will be very welcome.