
The original issue can be found at: http://www.baptistpress.com/issue-03/08/2007

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Trustees to vote on third-generation missionary as new NAMB president
by Mike Ebert
Date: March 08, 2007 - Thursday

ALPHARETTA, Ga. (BP)--Missionary work has been part of Geoff Hammond’s life from his earliest days. He was born on the mission field to British parents who were serving in Nigeria. His father was born in China to missionary parents.

“Among my earliest memories are the times I accompanied my dad, traveling from village to village in Africa and listening to him preach the Gospel,” the 49-year-old Hammond said.

Later, he and wife Debbie served seven years with the International Mission Board as missionaries in Brazil. Upon returning to the United States in 1997, Hammond became a director of missions in Arkansas for two years before responding to a call from Southern Baptist Conservatives of Virginia to be a church planting strategist. He was appointed as a missionary with the North American Mission Board in the same year and has been the SBCV’s senior associate director since 2002.

“I’m a missiologist at heart,” Hammond said. “Cross-cultural evangelism and church planting are my heartbeat.”

It was that steady heartbeat that became a stronger and stronger magnet to members of the presidential search committee appointed by the trustees of the North American Mission Board. NAMB’s full board of trustees will vote on Hammond’s nomination March 21 in a special meeting in Alpharetta, Ga.

“NAMB is a missions agency in need of a strong leader with the mind of a missiologist,” said Greg Faulls, chairman of the search team that is unanimously recommending Hammond. Faulls said Hammond has “a vision to strategically mobilize an army of missionaries who will spread the Gospel and plant churches throughout an ethnically diverse North America.”

That growing diversity in North America is something Hammond seems uniquely suited to address. As a naturalized U.S. citizen, he represents a growing number of American citizens who were born in a foreign land.

“One of my great desires is to see us reaching ethnic groups and being more effective in that area. I’m really excited about the people group research NAMB is doing. I believe NAMB is positioning itself to make a great impact in this area,” Hammond said. “We have the skills in place; now we need a huge prayer movement to support us as we reach out to these different cultural groups that are a part of the U.S. and Canada. I’d like to see our younger leaders using electronic media to help ignite a movement of prayer.”

Hammond said Southern Baptists must start readying themselves now for the population boom heading our way.

“When I moved here 25 years ago, there were 235 million people in the United States. Today, that number has topped 300 million. That’s like adding another nation. It’s more than the population of France! But in another 36 years, we will be over 400 million and North America won’t look the way we look today.”

As for the prospect of being recommended to lead NAMB, Hammond said he wasn’t expecting it. He allowed his resume to be submitted by a friend but didn’t anticipate being in the final tier of candidates.

“In fact, Debbie and I just moved from one house to another right before Christmas,” Hammond said. “Not exactly the move of someone who is expecting to relocate in a few months!”

Hammond’s older son Timothy, 21, is a worship major at Liberty University in Lynchburg, Va., and son Nicholas, 16, is a high school junior.

Hammond described church planting as one of his “core values” and said it will continue as a top priority at NAMB if trustees elect him. He remembers back to his father’s church planting efforts in Africa. Later, Hammond planted a mission church in the Dallas area, taught church planting and evangelism at a seminary in Brazil and was active in church planting in his state convention in Brazil.

“My family is currently part of a church plant in the Richmond area -- Parkway Baptist. And I’m happy to say our church, which is just over four years old, last year gave almost $70,000 to the Cooperative Program so we could help start more new churches.”

And while he hopes more SBC churches will increase their giving through the Cooperative Program, Hammond said NAMB has to learn how to better work with state convention partners to increase church planting capacity.

“We need to find ways to improve our skills, systems, equipping and mentoring so we can increase the number of churches being started in North America each year,” he said.

Hammond said he would take leading NAMB’s 5,000-plus missionaries as a very serious calling.

“Missionaries are not lists and numbers to me,” he said. “I want Southern Baptists to know them and pray for them and I want our missionaries to feel connected. We are going to tell their stories in a way that will help Southern Baptists fall in love with our missionaries all over again.”

And he will look to state Baptist conventions as key partners in the task of reaching North America for Christ.

“One of my priorities will be strengthening relationships with state conventions. I come from a state convention that has benefited greatly from its relationship with NAMB. NAMB has to understand the context of each convention and the challenges they face,” Hammond said. 

He said he’s encouraged that a growing number of churches within the convention understand that North America is a mission field.

“We need to think like missionaries and see the people groups and population segments in our harvest fields. Not everybody around the church is like the people in the church! We need to be more cross-cultural in our evangelism and find ways to do effective, contextualized church planting.”

If elected, Hammond said he will be passionate about assisting Southern Baptist churches to fulfill the Great Commission through evangelism, church planting and sending missionaries. “That’s worth pouring your life into!” 
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Missionary’s love for her state includes its pockets of poverty
by Mickey Noah
Date: March 08, 2007 - Thursday

<i>EDITORS’ NOTE: March 4-11 marks the 2007 Week of Prayer for North American missions. This is the fourth of eight stories in Baptist Press featuring North American Mission Board missionaries and their ministries supported by the Annie Armstrong Easter Offering.</i>


LITTLE ROCK, Ark. (BP)--When the North American Mission Board and the Arkansas Baptist Convention appointed Diana Lewis as state ministry evangelism director nearly 15 years ago, it was a bittersweet assignment.

“I am a missionary in Arkansas, my home state, so it’s a lot of fun for me,” Lewis said. “I get to travel all over my home state and work with churches that are conducting ministries in the local mission fields. 

“Arkansas’ nickname,” she continued, “is ‘The Natural State.’ We have lots of beautiful state parks, lakes, rivers, mountains and farmland. We go from the &#91;Mississippi&#93; Delta to the edge of the Ozark Mountains. It’s a very, very beautiful state.” And whether it’s winning football or basketball, Arkansans are proud of their University of Arkansas Razorbacks. 

But Lewis also would be the first to tell you about the other parts and pictures of Arkansas that aren’t played up in travel brochures or flashed during network TV broadcasts of Razorback football games each fall.

In these areas, kids don’t get enough food. Seniors choose between nutrition or buying their prescriptions. Children lack supplies when school starts in the fall, warm coats when Arkansas’ winter comes.

“In Arkansas, there are some counties –- at least three -- where over half of the children live in poverty,” Lewis said. “Statewide, about a fourth of the children and senior adults live in poverty. This requires the need for many ministries to help these poverty-stricken people.”

Diana Lewis is among the 5,300 missionaries in the United States, Canada and their territories supported by the Annie Armstrong Easter Offering for North American Missions. She’s one of eight Southern Baptist missionaries highlighted as part of the annual Week of Prayer, March 4-11. The 2007 Annie Armstrong Easter Offering’s goal is $57 million, 100 percent of which is used for missionaries like Lewis.

“Now, much of my work as a missionary is traveling all over the state -- helping, encouraging and telling our churches about the mission fields right here in Arkansas,” Lewis said.

Much of her time is spent on a Southern Baptist project -– the Mississippi River Ministry – which started in 1992 following a comprehensive government study commissioned along the lower Mississippi River.

“This study pointed out the tremendous poverty along both sides of the Mississippi River,” Lewis said, “so we began this project to call attention to this huge mission field right in the midst of where we live. Arkansas’ Southern Baptist churches could get involved right in their own backyards, sending mission teams and sharing the hope of Christ with those in poverty.”

Proverbs 22:2 is one of Lewis’ favorite verses: “The rich and the poor have a common bond, the Lord is the maker of them all.”

“I love that verse because it reminds me that we have a lot more in common with people who are in poverty than we think we do. We’re all God’s children.”

Dixonville in central Arkansas is one such low-income hamlet where Lewis and her Baptist mission teams have been ministering for 16 years now.

“We have mission volunteers who come and work at Dixonville every week or month, helping with the children, the women or entire families,” Lewis said. “One of the favorite parts of my work as a missionary has been getting to work with the children in places like Dixonville.

“I love going with the children there to camp each summer, spending the day or night with them, singing songs with them during Vacation Bible School and telling them about Jesus. We hold Bible studies with their mothers. They’re like family to me because I’ve known them so long.

“The most important thing I want to tell our churches across the nation is that poor people have many strengths to share. Unlike most of the world, we shouldn’t measure people by money. In the Christian life, we should measure people by their strengths. The people I’ve come to know, like those in Dixonville, live in poverty but have many strengths –- in family, in endurance and in character.”

Another poverty-stricken town is Helena in Phillips County, the poorest county in Arkansas.

Two years ago with Lewis’ support, Mercy Pregnancy Resource Center was launched in an old house in Helena. It reaches out to pregnant girls and women who need resources to both give birth and raise their babies. At this center, adoption -– never abortion -– is the recommended option of choice for those who cannot raise their babies.

Ironically, the women’s center is located in a rental house that appeared to have been a drug-users’ hangout, based on the drug paraphernalia found inside. But it was also in a perfect location, secluded to ensure the confidentiality of the women who would come there for help. 

Glad to be rid of the previous tenants, the house’s owner -- a local Christian man -- gave the Mercy Pregnancy Resource Center an initial three months’ free rent. A local hardware store offered discounts on the materials needed for renovations. The Arkansas Baptist Convention, local churches, local businesses and area citizens donated thousands of dollars to furnish the center and stock it with needed baby products.

Mandy Chaney, executive director at Mercy Pregnancy Resource Center, a branch of Mercy Ministries, said, “There are so many opportunities here in the Arkansas Delta because the teen pregnancy rate here is so high, the highest in the entire state of Arkansas.”

The center is not just another pregnancy welfare facility with free giveaways, Chaney said. An “Earn While You Learn” system is used in which girls and women who come to the center “earn” tokens for keeping their appointments, sitting through classes, watching educational videos, meeting with their mentors and completing other tasks. The tokens then can be used to “buy” baby clothes, maternity clothes, diapers, baby wipes and other items at the center’s baby boutique.

“Diana Lewis has been the catalyst for this ministry,” Chaney said. “When this ministry first came to my heart, I didn’t know what to do about it. The North American Mission Board and the state convention told us to talk to Diana. She told us that she had been praying three years for God to raise someone up in the Arkansas Delta for a ministry just like this.”

Said Lewis, “We need our Baptists in Arkansas to realize there’s a great mission field right outside the doors of their sanctuaries -– that every time they leave their church they’re entering a mission field where they can share the hope of Christ with someone they’re going to meet.

“Thanks to those who give to the Annie Armstrong Easter Offering,” she continued, “because you make it possible for me to do the ministry God has called me to do. And you make it possible for us to have the things we need as missionaries to do God’s work. You make it possible for me to get into my car and go wherever I need to go in Arkansas to encourage a church’s ministry or provide them with the resources they need to start a new ministry.”

Lewis said she loves to see people sitting in the pews of a church, wondering how God can use them and finally realizing how He can.

“Maybe they know how to cut hair or swing a hammer. Maybe they’re a professional -– a doctor, dentist or nurse who can provide free healthcare. What I love most is to see people get so excited when they discover how God can use them in ministry.”
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9 million uninsured children: coalition calls for action
by Tom Strode
Date: March 08, 2007 - Thursday

WASHINGTON (BP)—-Providing 9 million uninsured children access to quality healthcare should be a top priority for the country’s government officials, Southern Baptist ethics specialist Richard Land and a variety of other religious leaders say.

Speaking on behalf of an interfaith coalition, the president of the Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission called for federal government attention to the problem during a Washington news conference.

The religious leaders called for government action as Congress considers reauthorization of the State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) following its first 10 years. Land and the other religious leaders did not endorse a particular approach to addressing the issue, however.

The number of children without health coverage is “a major problem that is unacceptable in a nation of our wealth and our ability to address the problem,” Land said. He called for a “basic threshold of equal opportunity” to gain “comparable healthcare.”

“That doesn’t mean we can ensure the same healthcare for everyone,” Land said, adding there should be, however, a “threshold below which no child in America should be allowed to fall, and, unfortunately, 9 million or more are below that threshold now.”

Land’s comments came at a March 6 news conference featuring the National Interfaith Advisory Board for Cover the Uninsured. Other speakers at the news conference included representatives of the National Council of Churches, Church of God in Christ, Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism and Islamic Society of North America.

Eileen Lindner, the NCC’s deputy general secretary and chair of the interfaith board, said it is “a moral imperative that all our children obtain healthcare coverage,” but she added finding a solution would require “rigorous debate.”

“We don’t all agree on a remedy,” Lindner said.

If conservatives, liberals, Protestants, Catholics, Jews and Muslims “bring their best ideas to the table, we will end up in the end, if we listen to each other and we work together, with better solutions than we would otherwise,” Land said.

Speakers at the news conference said both Democratic and Republican governors support reauthorization of SCHIP, which provides federal funds to states to cover children in families ineligible for Medicaid but unable to afford private insurance. First authorized in 1997, SCHIP has provided $40 billion over the last 10 years, reducing the number of uninsured children by 2 million during that time.

President Bush’s newly proposed budget would increase funds for SCHIP but decrease the number of children covered, according to Families USA, a consumer advocacy organization. In addition to a base of $5 billion a year for the program, the president proposed $5 billion total over the next five years.

That is not enough to maintain the current enrollment of 6 million children covered by SCHIP, according to Families USA. It estimated that a five-year total of $13 to $15 billion over the $5 billion annual allotment will be needed to cover the children already in the program.

Of the 9 million children without health insurance, about 6 million are eligible for SCHIP or Medicaid, according to Families USA. To cover the current SCHIP enrollees and “make a dent” in the 6 million eligible but uninsured children would require about $60 billion over the next five years in addition to the $5 billion annual sum, a Families USA official said.

Cover the Uninsured is a campaign to build support for providing coverage of uninsured Americans. The annual Covered the Uninsured Week is April 23-29 this year.
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Noise restriction in San Fran. sparks youth ministry protest
by Gregory Tomlin
Date: March 08, 2007 - Thursday

SAN FRANCISCO (BP)--A Christian youth organization is alleging that San Francisco city officials again are trying to derail plans for a massive youth rally in the city March 9-10.

The city, according to a news release from TeenMania and its founder Ron Luce, has issued a “last-minute noise ordinance restricting any use of our sound system until 10 a.m.”

For a small event, that might not be problematic. But Luce is leading more than 25,000 youth in a self-styled “reverse rebellion” against immoral culture. The event, titled “BattleCry,” will be held at AT&T Park, home of the San Francisco Giants. Its morning worship session begins at 8 a.m. Saturday.

The ordinance “means that there can be no amplification of the worship band, no way for teens or anyone to hear and be led in prayer and worship,” Luce said in the news release. “This ordinance is directed specifically at our teenagers and our event this weekend,” he asserted. “We don’t know the motivation of the city, but we can’t let the voices of 25,000 teenagers in worship to God be silenced.”

A San Francisco city ordinance from 2002 bans amplified sound at all outdoor events before 9 a.m., but a city official told Baptist Press in an interview that the city received complaints about early morning noise after last year’s Battlecry and other early morning events.

“The commission does have some discretion as allowed by code and they were exercising that discretion by conditioning the permit to a later start time based on complaints that had been received from the previous year when the event did start earlier,” Robert Davis, director of San Francisco’s Entertainment Commission, said. “It would be the same with Rolling Stones or an all-day rock ‘n’ roll event.”

Luce, in an interview with Baptist Press, said his organization was not notified about noise complaints from last year’s event.

“We’ve had pages of correspondence with the city and nothing was said about last year and nothing was said about this new restriction,” Luce said. “The young people feel it isn’t fair. Shouldn’t the city be glad that there will be a stadium full of young people worshiping God and talking about virtue?	“There was no red carpet for us last year,” Luce continued. “As for whether or not it was intentional, you certainly could interpret it as intentional. So we’re left with an interpretation of their actions. What happens in San Francisco creeps across the country. We should be raising red flags and drawing attention to this.”

Last year, BattleCry’s emphasis on moral living prompted the San Francisco Board of Supervisors to issue a resolution condemning the “right-wing Christian fundamentalist group” for bringing their “anti-gay and anti-choice agenda of intolerance” to the city. The resolution condemned the youth event -- and a related teen rally on the steps of San Francisco’s City Hall -- for aiming to “negatively influence the politics of America’s most tolerant and progressive city.”

Democratic Assemblyman Mark Leno was quoted last year in the San Francisco Chronicle as saying that the Christian teens were feeding hate under a “cloak of love.” The teens, he said, were loud, obnoxious and disgusting, “and they should get out of San Francisco.”

But reaction in the San Francisco Chronicle and other news outlets revealed embarrassment on the part of many San Franciscans for the way the Christian youth had been received, Luce said. “The secular press really came out for us last year,” he said. “They said, ‘We claim to be America’s most tolerant city and we can’t tolerate 25,000 Christian young people and their faith.’”

The city’s mayor, Gavin Newsom, known nationally for bucking his state’s constitution and authorizing same-sex marriages in San Francisco, also contacted the organization last year to apologize for the way the city’s supervisors had responded to the event, Luce said. But Luce said the real apology was owed to the 25,000 students who participated in the event last year.

Luce said Newsom was invited to this year’s event to welcome the youth to his city. In a call to the mayor’s office, however, Baptist Press confirmed that Newsom was not planning to attend the BattleCry event.

Luce said that BattleCry organizers will “honor the law and lawmakers” and not use amplified sound before 10 a.m. But he also said organizers have found a way around the noise restriction. A local AM radio station, KFAX 1100, will broadcast a special morning worship service from the stage at the event. Youth have been encouraged to bring radios, and conference organizers also will provide radios at the ballpark’s gates.

“We will have 25,000 teenagers raising their voices in prayer and worship, listening to the sounds from their radios we’re asking them to bring,” Luce said. “But they won’t hear anything from the sound system until after 10 a.m. I don’t know that any similar restriction has been placed on a Christian worship service anywhere in the country.”

Davis, of the San Francisco Entertainment Commission, said the decision to issue the noise abatement ruling wasn’t “political or onerous in any way.”

“We are an administrative department and there is nothing political to what we do,” Davis said. “In my statement before the commission I was clear that last year they were very cooperative. The only issue we had was some complaints about noise early in the morning. We were not trying to impose anything onerous, as that would put the group at a disadvantage, and we try to condition the permits so they work for all parties involved.”

Davis said there has been no dialogue between the city and Luce’s group, voicing surprise to see the organization’s press release about the noise restriction. “We restricted two hours over the span of 20 hours of use, and it’s unfortunate that it’s left such a bad taste. We want to work with them,” Davis said.

Luce said he isn’t certain whether there will be a third Battlecry event in San Francisco. After facing what he perceives as opposition for a second consecutive year, he said TeenMania is only “considering going back.”

“We haven’t made that decision yet,” Luce said.

Luce, who is originally from the San Francisco Bay area, founded TeenMania to “rescue youth” from the dangers of modern society, such as abortion, drug addiction, sexual immorality and suicide. Now headquartered in Garden Valley, Texas, the organization has a 470-acre facility with 720 students in its “Honor Academy,” a one-year program that focuses on discipleship and moral living.
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BattleCry events are scheduled at Detroit’s Ford Field April 13-14 and at Baltimore’s M&T Bank Stadium May 11-12. For more information, log onto www.battlecry.com.


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Literacy missions pioneer Lillian Isaacs dies at 88
by Staff
Date: March 08, 2007 - Thursday

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (BP)--Lillian Louise Kirtland Isaacs, 88, a pioneer in literacy missions, died March 2 in Tallahassee, Fla.

Isaacs and her late husband John inspired many Christians to become involved in literacy missions over the years. They served wherever the Lord led them, from the hollows of Kentucky to the Alaskan frontier.

In was in eastern Kentucky, the heart of Appalachia, where the Isaacs planted the roots of their literacy missions work with the support of First Baptist Church in Pineville and Woman’s Missionary Union, which helped advertise and sponsor local literacy programs.

Isaacs first announced her mission to begin literacy training at a WMU meeting in May 1959. In October of that year, the initial literacy-training workshop, funded by the Home Mission Board (now North American Mission Board), was held at Clear Creek Baptist College, where John Isaacs was a professor and local pastor.

“The WMU was the best friend the program had,” Lillian Isaacs once said. And Isaacs was a good friend to WMU as well. In 1999, the Lillian Isaacs Endowment for Literacy Missions was established through the WMU Foundation to support individuals and groups who strive to make literacy missions a reality where they live and work.

In addition to being a pioneer in literacy missions, serving as the HMB’s first national literacy missionary, Isaacs was “a gracious Christian woman who served as a shining example for others,” WMU Foundation President David George said. “She lived her faith in a way that inspired countless men, women and children to be involved in God’s mission. We are honored to have the privilege and responsibility of managing the Lillian Isaacs Endowment for Literacy Missions.”

Isaacs, an Alabama native, was a graduate of Mercer University in Macon, Ga.

She is survived by her son John R.L. Isaacs and a grandson.

Her funeral service was March 7 at First Baptist Church in Tallahassee.
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Golden Gate to offer Ph.D. in Old & New Testament
by Amanda Phifer
Date: March 08, 2007 - Thursday

MILL VALLEY, Calif. (BP)--Golden Gate Baptist Theological Seminary will offer a doctor of philosophy program beginning this fall.

The Ph.D. program at the Southern Baptist Convention’s sole Western seminary will offer degrees in Old Testament and New Testament studies, with minors in theology and church history. The new program has been approved by two independent accreditation agencies -– the Western Association of Schools and Colleges and the Association of Theological Schools. 

“I believe Golden Gate’s Ph.D. program will offer a niche, and that is chiefly the unique atmosphere of the West,” said Rick Melick, professor of New Testament studies and director of the graduate studies program at GGBTS. “And our program will be small and therefore especially interpersonal, relational, and with the mentoring nature of a Ph.D. program taken very seriously.”

Melick said the seminary already has received some completed applications and several more are in process. The program, which requires 42 hours of study to complete, will consist of seminars, research and a dissertation.

“Golden Gate is committed to being a strong voice in the West for biblical scholarship based on a strong commitment to the authority and sufficiency of Scripture,” GGBTS President Jeff Iorg said. “I look forward to the day these graduates are leading churches and teaching in seminaries and universities around the world.”

Students will be required to attend all seminars at the Northern California campus of GGBTS in Mill Valley, Calif., per accreditation stipulations. Classes will be scheduled to accommodate faculty based at all five Golden Gate campuses. 

Melick noted that the Ph.D. program at Golden Gate will require interaction with other schools in the San Francisco Bay Area to stimulate networking and research skills.

“I believe this program will help us fulfill our mission to train leaders for the churches of the West,” Melick said. “While a Ph.D. is primarily for those who want to teach, it also helps pastors be better prepared, especially in the demanding intellectual and spiritual climate of the West.”
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Adoption provides a picture of the Gospel, Southern profs say
by Garrett E. Wishall
Date: March 08, 2007 - Thursday

LOUISVILLE, Ky. (BP)--Reflection on how people become a part of God’s family and God’s command to care for orphans reveals the value and importance of adoption, Randy Stinson said recently at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary.

The dean of the School of Leadership and Church Ministry and executive director of the Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood said the nature of the Gospel shows that adoption is important to God and thus it should be important to the church.

“Outside of Christ, we are all orphans,” he said, speaking in January at the Pendergraph women’s ministry event. “All people are born outside of the family of God and the only way to get into the family of God is through Christ. The doctrine of adoption is at the heart of the Gospel and if we are going to be a Gospel-centered people we should take seriously this thing (adoption) that is in front of all of us. Actually adopting someone is a stark picture of the Gospel.”

Randy and his wife, Danna, along with Russell D. Moore and his wife, Maria, recounted their respective adoption experiences and fielded questions at the event. Moore is senior vice president of academic administration and dean of the School of Theology.

The Stinsons adopted two girls -- Eden, now 7, and Payton, now 5 -- from Taiwan in November 2004. Stinson pointed to the book of James’ teaching about orphans in Scripture as a key reason behind their interest in adoption.

“The first reason why Danna and I thought adoption was important is because in the book of James the Bible says it is,” he said. “It says this is true religion, ‘Taking care of widows and orphans.’ Adoption is highlighted by the fact that James talks about orphans and later in the same passage God talks about being a Father to the fatherless.”

In addition, Stinson said, he and his wife were active in pro-life causes and began to think they should adopt some of the children they consistently urged women to have. Stinson also said adoption is fundamentally connected to the husband’s role to lead, protect and provide.

“When I talk to other men, I try to get across to them that the roles of leading, providing and protecting are not just to be applied in the home,” he said. “Those roles are also supposed to spill out into the streets, and take form in caring for the weak, the helpless and for orphans. My challenge to men is to not be so self-preoccupied and self-absorbed and to think about the sacrificial act of adoption.”

Moore said people often ask him if the two boys he and Maria adopted from Russia were brothers.  

“I usually say, ‘Well, they are now,’” Moore said to laughter.

The Moores adopted Benjamin and Timothy -- both now 5, but from different biological parents -- from a Russian orphanage in July 2002 after years of infertility and three miscarriages. Moore said the infertility and miscarriages, though difficult, matured him and Maria spiritually and has allowed them to minister to other couples in similar circumstances.

“Seeing the way that God moved in this (the infertility and adoption process) has helped us understand providence more and trust God more,” he said. “Infertility and miscarriage were horrible, but at the same time we are able to step back and say, ‘If it weren’t for infertility and miscarriage we wouldn’t have Benjamin and Timothy.’ We wouldn’t understand the grace of God the way that we understand it, we wouldn’t understand what it means to love each other the way that we understand it and we wouldn’t understand how to teach the Gospel.”

People struggling with infertility, Moore said, are susceptible to fall into sin not only through ethically questionable reproductive technologies, but also through idolatry.

“Infertile couples could develop an idolatry of having a drive to have their own genetic material in front of them. That is something that ought to be crucified,” he said. “We have had to sit down with infertile couples who are about to begin in vitro fertilization and tell them we don’t think this is right and here is why. I have said to them, ‘You are struggling not with infertility, but with idolatry because you are not really wanting children; you are wanting yourself.’”

Difficult life circumstances and a lack of resources should not prevent someone from considering adoption, Moore said. 

“I was in the Ph.D. program throughout the process,” he said. “Our desire for getting children was so great that we decided to trust God to provide the finances. We had some friends pool some money and give it to us. We had someone come up to us and give us $10,000 to go toward getting the children.”

Stinson pointed to adoption as a way of fulfilling the Great Commission.

“The girls we adopted were in a situation of worshipping their ancestors,” he said. “We rescued them out of that life, out of life with no parents, and brought them into a Christian home.”
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Archaeologist recounts discovery of oldest biblical text
by Brent Thompson
Date: March 08, 2007 - Thursday

FORT WORTH, Texas(BP)--Serendipity plays a role in many of the world’s greatest discoveries, and this was no less the case for biblical archaeologist Gabriel “Gaby” Barkay during a dig he led in Jerusalem 30 years ago. Barkay never would have guessed that a pesky child with a hammer would reveal the resting place of the oldest piece of biblical text ever discovered.

During a lecture at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, Barkay took a crowd of 200 on a journey that began with slides of St. Andrews Church of Scotland, within view of Old Jerusalem. It was on the grounds of that church, erected in 1927 on a rocky knoll on the Valley of Hinnom (Ketef Hinnom), where Barkay oversaw an archaeological dig in the mid- to late-1970s.

“I was looking for less-looked-at subjects: places of extra-rural, para-urban land uses,” Barkay said, describing the reasons why he chose that location as he was developing his doctoral dissertation. “I asked myself, ‘If I were a patriarch, where would I put a defensible place? Where would I put a cemetery or a stone quarry?’”

Barkay decided the answers lay outside the city walls of Old Jerusalem, out of range of ancient weapons, but close enough for easy access. This led him to the hill where St. Andrew’s Church sits. Pointing to an aerial view of the location, he described some features of the terrain.

“There was an ancient road cut out of the rocky escarpment upon which the apse of the church clings,” Barkay said. “This ancient road led to Bethlehem and was in use until the 1800s &#91;A.D.&#93;. This hill is very important because it is just outside the range of city weapons. If I was besieging the city, I would encamp on this hill.”

With the dig underway, Barkay’s team first uncovered artifacts from the 19th century A.D. -- British trinkets, Turkish railroad spikes, coins, military insignias and remains of rifles, many of which were museum-quality pieces.

They also uncovered the threshold of an early Christian church some 1,500 years old. Under the place identified as the church’s narthex, or lobby, the team discovered an intact crypt. Barkay described finding various remnants of the church, including its footings. He said the church likely was destroyed in the seventh century A.D. by a Persian king.

As Barkay’s team continued deeper into the dig, their discoveries went backwards in time, era by era: From the late Roman period, tiny fragments of human bones were found, incinerated inside cooking pots. The team had unearthed a crematorium of the 10th Regiment of the Roman Army. Roman-era hobnails from Roman boots, earrings, coins, rings and glass perfume containers were found intact.

From the Herodian period, Barkay joked about finding clay cooking vessels with tiny holes in them and thinking someone on his team had carelessly punctured the rare treasures. But subsequent research revealed that the cooking pots had been deliberately punctured by first-century Jews in order to “cancel” the cooking pots after they had been used for sacred purposes in the temple.

Further on, discoveries from the First Temple Period, the time of King Hezekiah and the prophet Isaiah. Fertility figurines told the sad story of how residents of Jerusalem had worshiped false gods, giving substance to the warnings of Isaiah and his contemporaries recorded in the Bible.

Soon burial caves came to view. Barkay’s excavation was revealing artifacts from the fifth century B.C. These repositories revealed clues about how ancient Hebrews buried their dead.

Then Barkay described for his audience how, in 1979, a group of 12-year-olds from an archaeology club in Tel Aviv had come to the dig. Barkay thought the children were “pesky.” One in particular, a boy named Nathan, was always “tugging on my shirt and asking silly questions,” Barkay said.

Barkay assigned Nathan to a far-off, unimportant task: clearing out an ancient repository cave to prepare it for being photographed. Nathan took to the task with a hammer and “expressed his frustration by hammering the floor of the repository.” Barkay recalled being quite perturbed when young Nathan, who had not been on task very long, tugged on this shirt to tell the archaeologist that the hammer had broken through the floor of the cave and there was something below.

Upon inspection, Barkay realized that what he had thought was the floor of the chamber was, in fact, the ceiling of another ancient chamber underneath. Nathan had opened up a chamber where Barkay would make his most renowned discovery.

Below was a repository containing a large quantity of intact vessels dating from the fifth, sixth and seventh centuries B.C., Barkay said. Many had survived Nebuchadnezzar’s conquest of Jerusalem in 586 B.C. Glazed pottery, gold jewelry, silver, semi-precious stones and beads all gave evidence of a thriving population. Silver coins minted in Greece showed that the Hebrews were part of a network of international trade.

That was when the “very important” discovery came to light. During his lecture Feb. 5 at Southwestern’s main campus in Fort Worth, Texas, Barkay projected a photograph of a tiny, dirty cylinder he described as “the size of a cigarette butt.” It was an amulet designed to be worn on an arm or forehead in literal obedience to Deuteronomy 6:8, an ancient precursor to what are today known as phylacteries.

“Inside &#91;the amulet&#93; we found a tiny, silver scroll, which took us three years to unroll,” Barkay said. “The scroll yielded 19 lines of minuscule writing ... in ancient Hebrew script.”

Stratigraphy enabled Barkay to date the silver scrolls to the seventh century B.C., to the time of King Josiah. He said the scrolls refute scholars who claim the books of the Pentateuch were written later.

The writing included three repetitions of ancient Hebrew letters which are transliterated YHWH. “This is the private, unpronounceable name of God, which is often pronounced in the West as ‘Jehovah,’” Barkay said.

Experts in ancient Semitic languages showed that the tiny scrolls contained the earliest written example of the Aaronian benediction recorded in Numbers 6:24-26: “The LORD bless you, and keep you; the LORD make His face to shine upon you, and be gracious to you; the LORD lift up His countenance on you, and give you peace.”

“This text predates the earliest Dead Sea Scrolls by four centuries,” Barkay said in reference to the importance of the silver scrolls. “They are the oldest biblical verses identified in the world.”

Born in Hungary, Barkay moved to Jerusalem early in life, where he later earned his bachelor’s and master’s degrees at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He then earned his doctoral degree in archaeology at Tel Aviv University. Barkay currently is professor of archaeology at Bar Ilan University near Tel Aviv. Throughout his career, he has been involved with excavations at Lachish, Jerusalem, Megiddo, Tel Zayit and Susa in modern-day Iran. He has directed excavations at Ramat Rachel, Ketef Hinnom and other sites. Barkay has published numerous articles in the Israel Exploration Journal, Biblical Archaeology Review and other scholarly periodicals. He is a recipient of the prestigious Jerusalem Prize in Archaeology.
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Dawkins’ atheistic arguments are weak, Oxford prof says
by Marilyn Stewart
Date: March 08, 2007 - Thursday

NEW ORLEANS (BP)--The latest book by evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins, “The God Delusion,” is an attempt to shore up the faith of atheists, Oxford theologian Alister McGrath said at a meeting of the Evangelical Philosophical Society at New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary.

The event was co-sponsored by the seminary’s theological and historical studies division and held in tandem with the Greer-Heard Point-Counterpoint Forum.

“I believe Dawkins’ book was really written to persuade atheists that their faith is still valid,” McGrath, professor of historical theology and senior research fellow at Oxford University’s Harris Manchester College, said Feb. 23.

Dawkins, whose other well-known writings include “The Selfish Gene” and “The Blind Watchmaker,” promotes an evolutionary view of nature that excludes any notion of God. McGrath said Dawkins’ work has become increasingly crusading and anti-religious.

McGrath read a portion of The God Delusion in which Dawkins says he hopes “religious readers who open it will be atheists when they put it down.”

“Dawkins’ assertion that science disproves God is not right. The evidence isn’t there and his argument is weak,” said McGrath, who holds doctorates in molecular biophysics and Christian theology.

A former atheist, McGrath has written extensively on the subjects of theology and science and on atheism grounded in the natural sciences. McGrath’s response to Dawkins, titled “The Dawkins Delusion: Atheist Fundamentalism and the Denial of the Divine,” soon will be released in the United States.

McGrath said Dawkins attempts to build a case on five points: belief in God is irrational; science disproves God; faith can be explained on scientific grounds; religion gives an impoverished view of the universe; and belief in God leads to violence.

Dawkins dismisses belief in God as infantile and akin to believing in the tooth fairy, but McGrath noted that people do not begin believing in the tooth fairy in adulthood whereas many people have come to faith in God as adults.

Atheism and theism are both faiths and neither can prove their position with 100 percent certainty through the natural sciences, McGrath said. Science does not necessitate atheism or theism, and the question of God’s existence must be resolved through other means, he said.

McGrath cited the late C.S. Lewis, a renowned apologist who pondered which worldview makes the most sense of what can be observed and experienced in the world.

“I believe in Christianity as I believe that the Sun has risen, not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else,” Lewis wrote in “The Weight of Glory.”

Dawkins’ claim that science proves there is no God is implausible in light of the significant number of Christian scientists, McGrath said, adding that even Dawkins admits Darwinian evolution is subject to revision as new facts come to light. This shows the provisional nature of scientific knowledge, McGrath said.

“If the sciences are inferential in their methodology and hence provisional in their conclusions, how can Dawkins present atheism as the certain outcome of the scientific project?” McGrath asked.

To Dawkins, belief in God is a projection of human longings and a type of wish-fulfillment, McGrath said. Such an argument works against atheism as well, he added, since an atheist wishes there is no God and therefore believes there is no God.

Dawkins concludes that belief in God is caused by “a virus of the mind,” McGrath said. With no observational evidence for mind viruses, McGrath countered that atheism also could be attributed to a virus of the mind.

“Dawkins ends up making the totally subjective, unscientific argument that his own beliefs are not viruses, but those he dislikes are,” McGrath said.

Rather than the puny, medieval universe Dawkins claims Christians embrace, McGrath said Christians see a majestic creation pointing to a majestic Creator. Christians can appreciate both the beauty of the earth and the mathematical models that describe it, McGrath said.

As a native of Northern Ireland, McGrath acknowledged the violence carried out in God’s name but also pointed to the crimes against humanity committed by the atheist Joseph Stalin. Violence is not a religious issue but a human nature issue and shows the need for redemption and transformation, McGrath said.

“As Christians, we can respond with confidence to The God Delusion that Dawkins’ arguments are weak, unsupported by evidence, and tell us more about the condition of present-day atheism than about faith in God,” McGrath said.
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Apologist: Objective moral values evidence of God's existence
by Marilyn Stewart
Date: March 08, 2007 - Thursday

NEW ORLEANS (BP)--The existence of objective moral values is evidence for God’s existence, Paul Copan, a philosopher and Christian apologist, said at a meeting of the Evangelical Philosophical Society at New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary.

“There are certain moral truths that we all know,” Copan, associate professor of philosophy and ethics at Palm Beach Atlantic University, said Feb. 24. “If objective moral values exist, then it is extremely likely that a Creator exists.”

The society’s meeting was held in tandem with the seminary’s Greer-Heard Point-Counterpoint Forum on the topic of “The Future of Atheism,” featuring Alister McGrath of Oxford University and Daniel Dennett, a professing atheist from Tufts University.

Copan, whose books defending the Christian faith include “True for You, But Not for Me” and “How Do You Know You’re Not Wrong,” said morality begins with certain self-evident principles upon which atheists and theists can agree.

Citing atheistic philosophers David Brink and Kai Nielsen, Copan said atheists also appeal to objective ethics and human moral awareness. Oxford evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins also contends that people can be good without being policed by God, Copan said.

In light of Romans 2, Christians should not be surprised when atheists live good, moral lives, Copan said. He quoted Dennett, who wrote, “People can be caring without a belief in immortality.... A scientific materialist may be concerned about justice, beauty, and even religious freedom.” 

By virtue of being made in God’s image, atheists are connected to God the Creator, whose character is the source and metaphysical foundation for morality, human worth and dignity, Copan said.

“Anyone can know that humans have certain moral rights, but a far more fundamental question is, ‘How did they come to be that way?’” Copan said.

Naturalists have confused “knowing” and “being” -- epistemology and ontology -- by acknowledging certain truths but failing to explain why those truths exist, Copan said.

“Can the valueless, mindless, cause-and-effect physical processes of naturalism produce conscious humans with value and worth,” he asked.

Copan cited naturalist’s Colin McGinn’s admission that, “We know that brains are the de facto causal basis of consciousness, but we have, it seems, no understanding of how this can be so.”

Theism offers a more natural and plausible explanation for why humans are “valuable, truth-seeking, morally responsible beings in a finely tuned, beautiful universe,” Copan said. Humans have worth because they are the image-bearers of a good and personal God. 

Although naturalists may live moral lives, naturalism itself undermines objective ethics and undercuts a motivation for morality, Copan said. He quoted Dennett again, saying that while moral norms “contribute to social cohesion,” they are “illusory rule-worship.”

Copan referred to naturalist Michael Ruse who said moral values are “an illusion of our genes to get us to cooperate with each other.” Seeing moral impulses the same as other impulses -- such as the impulse to eat or scratch -- doesn’t inspire the pursuit of virtue, Copan said.

Evolutionary ethics produce skepticism about a human’s ability to know truth, Copan said, adding that Charles Darwin said, “With me, the horrid doubt always arises whether the convictions of man’s mind which has been developed from the mind of the lower animals are of any value or are even trustworthy.”

Ethical foundations, then, are undermined by “an evolutionary process that is interested in fitness and survival but not true beliefs,” Copan said.

Theism offers a more plausible context for affirming human dignity than naturalism that puts moral objectivity and rational thought in question.

Copan cited the 1948 United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights to show that humans have an intrinsic understanding of human rights, regardless of religious convictions. He quoted French philosopher Jacques Maritain, one of the document’s drafters, who said, “God and objective morality cannot be plausibly separated since God is the Creator of valuable, morally responsible human beings and is the very source of value.”

Copan concluded by saying that a moral argument alone doesn’t prove the existence of the Christian God but can be supplemented with other arguments for God.

“The moral argument points us to a supreme, personal, moral being who is worthy of worship and who made us with dignity and worth,” Copan said. “He is a being to whom we are accountable and who could reasonably be called God.”
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WORLDVIEW: Transforming a globalized world
by Erich Bridges
Date: March 08, 2007 - Thursday

RICHMOND, Va. (BP)--China’s economy expands, bringing new jobs to your town -– or taking them away.

The Japanese yen soars in value, sending world financial markets into a tailspin overnight -– along with your 401k. 

At home, your kids are playing computer games online with teens living on the other side of the planet -– the same teens they’ll be competing with for careers in the global economy.

Globalization is no longer a grand theory. It’s a daily reality that shapes nearly every aspect of our lives. We can either deal with it or deny it, but it isn’t going away. The new global reality is exciting –- and frightening. Societies, cultures and economies have always mingled or clashed, but never so instantaneously. 

History is accelerating in ways humanity has never experienced, and we don’t know where it will take us. But God does –- and He bends history to His purposes. One of His purposes is the globalization of the church. We are seeing it become a reality in our day. 

“The map of global Christianity that our grandparents knew has been turned upside down,” reported Christopher J.H. Wright recently in an article for Christianity Today. “At the start of the 20th century, only 10 percent of the world’s Christians lived in the continents of the south and east.... But at the start of the 21st century, at least 70 percent of the world’s Christians live in the non-Western world -– more appropriately called the majority world.

“More Christians worship in Anglican churches in Nigeria each week than in all the Episcopal and Anglican churches of Britain, Europe and North America combined. There are more Baptists in Congo than in Britain &#91;and&#93; more people in church every Sunday in communist China than in all of Western Europe.”

As the church globalizes, the missionary movement is becoming “multidirectional,” Wright says. “The U.S. remains the largest single contributor of Protestant cross-cultural missionaries. But which country is the second-largest? Not a Western nation, but India.... Already, 50 percent of all Protestant missionaries in the world come from non-Western countries, and the proportion is increasing annually. So you are as likely to meet a Brazilian missionary in North Africa as a British missionary in Brazil.... Mission today is from everywhere, to everywhere.” 

Even China has become a missionary-sending country. You can find Chinese missionaries working across Asia and the Muslim world. According to Lausanne World Pulse, church leaders under pressure in Afghanistan, Tajikistan and other Central Asian nations are asking for Chinese workers to come teach them the meaning of suffering -– a topic with which Chinese believers are well-acquainted.

These remarkable cross-currents of missions reveal the creativity of God, as well as His determination to extend the Gospel to all nations. When one ministry door closes, He opens two more. When the world persecutes His followers, He redeems their hardship -– just as He has done since the earliest days of the church.

And He still has plenty of room for participation by American believers in the years ahead. But He needs followers who will venture beyond the narrow mental and cultural borders so many of us occupy.

Time magazine recently ran a cover story on the skills and abilities American students will need in a globalized world.

“Kids are global citizens now, even in small-town America, and they must learn to act that way,” Time proclaimed. “Mike Eskew, CEO of UPS, talks about needing workers who are ‘global-trade literate, sensitive to foreign cultures, conversant in different languages’ -– not exactly strong points in the U.S., where fewer than half of high school students are enrolled in a foreign-language class and where the social-studies curriculum tends to fixate on U.S. history.”

To cope with the new reality, said the experts Time interviewed, students must learn to:

-- see patterns “where other people only see chaos.”

-- think across disciplines and make connections between them.

-- distinguish what is important and reliable in an age of “overflowing information and proliferating media.”

-- develop strong communication skills and the ability to work in teams and with people from different cultures.

That’s an essential set of tools –- not just for young people who want to succeed in the new global marketplace, but for Christian workers who want to transform it for the glory of God.
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Erich Bridges is senior writer with the Southern Baptist International Mission Board.



