
The original issue can be found at: http://www.baptistpress.com/issue-03/31/2008

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Evangelicals less likely to divorce, Barna survey says
by Michael Foust
Date: March 31, 2008 - Monday

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (BP)--Evangelicals are less likely than the overall population to divorce, although one out of every four evangelicals who are or have been married nevertheless have gone through at least one divorce, according to a new study by The Barna Group.

The telephone survey found that, among all U.S. adults who have been married, 33 percent have been divorced at least once. By comparison, 26 percent of evangelicals who have been married have been divorced. The poll did not ask evangelicals whether the divorce occurred before or after their salvation experience.

The survey was based on a sample of 5,017 adults conducted over a year, from January 2007 through January 2008. Of this sample, 3,792 adults were or had been married.

Christian researcher George Barna said Americans have grown accustomed to divorce.

"There no longer seems to be much of a stigma attached to divorce; it is now seen as an unavoidable rite of passage," he said in a news release. "Interviews with young adults suggest that they want their initial marriage to last, but are not particularly optimistic about that possibility. There is also evidence that many young people are moving toward embracing the idea of serial marriage, in which a person gets married two or three times, seeking a different partner for each phase of their adult life."

Among adults who have been married the poll also found that:

-- 28 percent of self-identified conservatives who have been married have experienced a divorce, compared to 33 percent of moderates and 37 percent of liberals. 

-- 38 percent of those associated with a non-Christian faith who have been married have been divorced.

-- 32 percent of whites who have been married have been divorced, 36 percent of blacks, 31 percent of Hispanics and 20 percent of Asians.

-- 28 percent of self-identified Catholics who have been married have been divorced.

Nearly four out of every five U.S. adults (78 percent) have been married at least once.

"Government statistics and a wealth of other research data have shown that co-habitation increases the likelihood of divorce, yet cohabiting is growing in popularity," Barna said. "Studies showing the importance and value of preparing for marriage seem to fall on deaf ears. America has become an experimental, experience-driven culture. Rather than learn from objective information and teaching based on that information, people prefer to follow their instincts and let the chips fall where they may. Given that tendency, we can expect America to retain the highest divorce rate among all developed nations of the world."

For a person to be considered an evangelical by Barna researchers, a respondent must say: he has made a personal commitment to Christ that is still important to his life today; when he dies he will go to heaven because he has confessed his sins and accepted Christ as his savior; he has a personal responsibility to share his beliefs about Christ with non-Christians; he believes that Satan exists; eternal salvation is possible only through grace, and not works; Jesus Christ lived a sinless life on earth; that the Bible is accurate in all that it teaches; and that God is the all-knowing, all-powerful, perfect deity who created the universe and still rules it today.

Among the 3,792 participants included in the survey there were 339 evangelicals, 1,373 non-evangelical born again Christians, 1,488 notional Christians, 197 associated with a non Christian faith and 269 agnostics or atheists. Of these, 875 identified themselves as Catholic and 1,997 as Protestant. Participants described their ethnic identities as white (2,641), African American (464), Hispanic (458) and Asian (128), and they called themselves conservative (1,343), moderate (1,720) and liberal (474) on social and political matters.
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Michael Foust is an assistant editor for Baptist Press.


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Court accepts religious monument case
by Staff
Date: March 31, 2008 - Monday

WASHINGTON (BP)--The U.S. Supreme Court agreed March 31 to review a lower court decision that some allege could cause local governments to remove Ten Commandments displays or permit a plethora of other religious monuments.

The justices will consider the case in the next term, which begins in October.

The case involves a Utah city's attempt to prevent a barely 30-year-old, religious-inner meditation sect from placing a monument of its principles next to a Ten Commandments exhibit in a public park. Pleasant Grove City denied the request. The sect, known as Summum, filed suit, alleging the city's decision violated its federal free-speech rights, as well as the state's protection of free expression and prohibition on establishment of religion.

In April 2007, a three-judge panel of the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals overruled a federal judge and found the park was a public forum and the city had abridged Summum's freedom of speech as protected by the First Amendment. The judges ruled the violation of Summum's First Amendment rights surpassed the potential harm to the city, which contended its park would be overwhelmed with monuments if the court sided with the sect.

After the 10th Circuit, which is based in Denver, rejected Pleasant Grove City's request for a rehearing, the city appealed to the Supreme Court.

The American Center for Law and Justice, which represents Pleasant Grove City, welcomed the high court's action. The ACLJ contends the Ten Commandments monument in Pleasant Grove City has become government speech since the initial donation by the Fraternal Order of Eagles in 1971. Therefore, no forum for private speech exists, ACLJ says.

"Unlike in private speech cases, accepting a monument for permanent display as the government's own property does not require accepting other monuments in the name of content or viewpoint neutrality," ACLJ Chief Counsel Jay Sekulow said in a written release. "Nor does the government's acceptance of a donated monument require that a government park be turned into a cluttered junkyard of monuments contributed by all comers. In short, accepting a Statue of Liberty does not compel a government to accept a Statue of Tyranny."

The 10th Circuit was correct, Summum lawyer Brian Barnard said.

"It's a matter of simple fairness," Barnard said, according to The Salt Lake Tribune. "If you let one private group put up a monument in a public park, you have to let another private group put up a monument. You can't pick and choose."

The Utah cities of Salt Lake City and Ogden both removed Ten Commandments displays in order to prevent Summum from placing its monuments on city property.

The sect's proposed monument in Pleasant Grove City would contain the Aphorisms of Summum, seven principles the sect says support all of creation. The group teaches these principles were a higher law that was inscribed on the first set of tablets brought down from Mount Sinai and broken by Moses. The Ten Commandments are lower laws, according to Summum, and were on the second set of tablets given to the Hebrews.

Corky Nowell, a former Mormon elder, founded Summum in 1975 after what he described as encounters with intelligent beings during meditation. Nowell is now known as Corky Ra.

Summum is the only organization in the world that provides mummification services, according to its website. Mummification, Summum's website says, "lends itself ... to cloning for the specific purpose of spiritual progression."

Pleasant Grove City has a population of about 30,000 and is located in north central Utah.
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Compiled by Tom Strode, Washington bureau chief of Baptist Press.


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EKG catching on in former Soviet Union
by Mark Kelly
Date: March 31, 2008 - Monday

NASHVILLE (BP)--Baptist leaders in the former Soviet Union are catching a vision of fulfilling the Great Commission as they learn more about Empowering Kingdom Growth and Thy Kingdom Come, according to Southern Baptists who have been working with those leaders for almost five years.

Since 2003, Carlisle Driggers, executive director of the South Carolina Baptist Convention, and Jere Phillips, a professor at Mid-America Baptist Theological Seminary in Memphis, Tenn., have trained more than 700 national, regional and local Baptist leaders in the Commonwealth of Independent States to use materials associated with the two church renewal emphases. Those training sessions were conducted in conjunction with Mick Stockwell and Ed Tarleton, International Mission Board strategists in the region.

"These national leaders, pastors and our missionaries are excited by the combination of Empowering Kingdom Growth and Thy Kingdom Come," said Phillips, who became acquainted with Baptists in that region in 2002, when he helped them develop an indigenous Sunday school curriculum. "EKG gives the spiritual foundations while Thy Kingdom Come helps translate it into real action plans."

Empowering Kingdom Growth (empoweringkingdomgrowth.com) is a process for spiritual renewal that helps churches and individual believers recognize that their purpose in every aspect of life is to advance God's kingdom as He empowers them. Thy Kingdom Come helps them discover and implement what God wants to do through their ministries. Both emphases were developed in the South Carolina Baptist Convention, and EKG was adopted by the Southern Baptist Convention as a national emphasis in 2002.

Empowering Kingdom Growth and Thy Kingdom Come have helped Baptists in countries of the former Soviet Union define God's vision for their work in the aftermath of the Soviet Union's collapse in 1991, Tarleton said.

"A mere 10 years ago, this same group of leaders was struggling to define their vision," Tarleton said. "Now they are talking excitedly about their visions, values, and key results areas for impacting God's Kingdom. Future years will certainly mark these current days as historic turning points in the development of these Baptist unions."

The emphasis has helped Baptist leaders in the Commonwealth of Independent States turn their focus toward the future, said one Union president, whose name is withheld for security reasons.

"For two years we have been talking about the vision of the union," the leader said. "In our prayerful discussion, we defined many of the aims of the union, many expectations of the union, and as a result came to the following conclusion: We are meant to serve churches for the establishment and expansion of the Kingdom of God on the earth.

"I suddenly felt that we devote most of our time and efforts to the preservation of the past," the leader added. "Even minute changes in the service lead to a storm of protests, including members leaving the church.... The only manifestation of the life of the church is a general meeting of the church which has been unchanged for more than 100 years ... &#91;but&#93; the gospel of Jesus Christ calls to action: to change and transformation."

Ken Hemphill, the Southern Baptist Convention's national strategist for Empowering Kingdom Growth, noted that those comments echo A Journey of Faith and Hope, a book written by Driggers that warns about the danger of congregations failing to focus on the future and denominations seeing churches as the support system for the denomination, rather than the reverse. 

"These Baptist leaders understand that you should never attach a church's giving to a budget," Hemphill said. "Giving is part of our worship and our stewardship to the King. A budget is nothing more than a strategy plan for accomplishing the Acts 1:8 imperative.

"In the same way, our Cooperative Program is not a budget for funding a denomination," Hemphill added. "The Cooperative Program is a local church's budget to participate with partners in accomplishing the Great Commission vision."

A church starter who participated in one of the EKG training sessions has since moved to another area where the process has not been used and has requested a conference for that area, Phillips said. 

Phillips quoted a letter from the church starter: "The EKG vision ... is what is needed here ... to get our work on a new level of effectiveness and closer to what God has in mind for His church in the times we live .... Statistics in the last two years show decline in church membership and baptisms. There is a concern in the air....

"&#91;This area&#93; is not lacking resources, what it needs is a united empowering vision," the church starter wrote. "I know an EKG conference is not a 'shot in the arm' that can miraculously infuse a vision, but if the churches ... are asking for God's help to move beyond the current impasse, the time might be just right."
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Mark Kelly is an assistant editor with Baptist Press.


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Churches, associations 'rediscovering cooperation' via EKG strategy
by Erin Roach
Date: March 31, 2008 - Monday

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (BP)--Rather than continuing a myopic mindset of growing one's own church to the neglect of other needs, churches across the Southern Baptist Convention are catching on to the idea that advancing God's Kingdom often means partnering with a Baptist church down the street, Ken Hemphill said.

Hemphill, the SBC's national strategist for Empowering Kingdom Growth, reported that an associational model is taking root in several states as churches in local Baptist associations are studying the EKG process simultaneously.

"What's exciting about this is that both churches and associations are catching the vision that it's not about just growing our church, it's about assisting our sister churches," Hemphill told Baptist Press. "We're rediscovering cooperation, which I think is critical to the whole concept of Kingdom advance."

ROBERTSON COUNTY, TENN.

One example of the associational model, Hemphill said, is the Robertson County Baptist Association north of Nashville, Tenn., where Robert Tyson, the director of missions, led churches to participate in EKG together.

For a year, the Robertson association planned an EKG emphasis coupled with a missions celebration. They even wrote a manual to guide churches in implementing the initiative so everyone who wanted to participate would be on the same page. At the end of January, they had Hemphill lead an associational EKG kickoff rally, and more than 300 people attended.

"The next morning, I met with the pastors for two to three hours, just answering questions and helping them understand the process," Hemphill said. "It may have been the most effective associational strategy I've seen done where they have 37 of their 40-some churches involved in the process.

"What they saw it doing was knitting all their churches together in a similar strategy, a similar emphasis so their laymen would be talking about the same kinds of biblical stories and asking, 'What's your church doing with EKG?'" Hemphill said. "It creates sort of a synergy across the whole association where the Kingdom advance issue is more than a church growth emphasis. It becomes a Kingdom advance emphasis that I think is a healthier paradigm."

After the kickoff rally, the churches in the Robertson association delved into the 40-day "EKG: The Heartbeat of God" study written by Hemphill, and their initiative culminated in a missions emphasis where churches were encouraged to have missionaries speak about their work. Afterward, churches held community outreach events to put into practice what they had learned from EKG and the missionaries' visits.

"We thought that would add a positive influence to our region with the community noticing that many Baptist churches were involved, and it would help people understand the good side of who we are as Baptists," Tyson said. "Some churches are looking at what they can do next. Pastors have commented that the EKG part of the study had been very beneficial for them."

MIDLAND, TEXAS

Another place where Hemphill has seen an associational model at work this year was Midland, Texas, where First Baptist Church hosted an EKG rally and invited all the churches in their association, as well as some beyond. 

Hemphill showed them how churches can tie the EKG emphasis into Sunday school, which is normally the first place leaders want to start in an effort to revitalize their churches. 

"If we start simply with Sunday school, which is a particular strategy or methodology, often times you have kind of a resistance to change," he told BP. "Most churches have a tendency to resist change -- we don't want to start new units, we don't want to split our class.

"They saw this as a way of backing a little further back to deal with a bigger issue and that is, how does the church move from apathy to activity?" Hemphill said. "That's the whole strategy behind the EKG process. We take a church from where it is now -- whatever status that is -- and begin to get a spiritual ignition point, and then we move to a transformation of the thinking process and then from that we can talk about structure and strategy and style."

HINESVILLE, GA.

Another place where Hemphill has seen progress relating to EKG this year was at First Baptist Church in Hinesville, Ga., where he led a rally on Super Bowl Sunday evening. 

"This is not exactly the night most people would have any kind of training event, but this church and the association, working in partnership, did a Sunday night EKG/Sunday school event for the churches of their association and had a full house," Hemphill said.

Immediately after Hinesville, Hemphill met in Norman Park with the directors of missions for the Georgia Baptist Convention.

"What they were most excited about was to see this associational model for developing a strategy which would bring all our churches together in a Kingdom advance mindset," he said. "I was able to share with them the Robertson association model and the tools they had used."

The day Hemphill spoke with Baptist Press, he was headed to Anderson, S.C., where he would lead a regional meeting sponsored by the South Carolina Baptist Convention, utilizing the "Making Change" stewardship material he wrote as part of the EKG emphasis. The next night, he was to duplicate the meeting in Charleston, and in April he'll lead two more in different parts of South Carolina.

'KINGDOM ACTIVITY 24/7'

Hemphill said both paradigms -- the association-sponsored and the state convention-sponsored -- have been at work across the SBC. For instance, Louisiana Baptist leaders are working to enroll up to 1,000 churches in a statewide EKG emphasis.

"Where some of the associations are picking up on it and knitting all of their churches together, others are being strategized by the state convention," Hemphill said. "Then of course it goes on to the association. Both models seem to be working quite well and it's related to what seems to work best in a geographic area."

However they're implemented, Hemphill said his office has received an abundance of positive feedback related to the EKG studies, which include EKG: The Heartbeat of God and Making Change. A third component, "Eternal Impact," has just come out in book form, and a DVD and study guide will be available by the SBC annual meeting in June.

"We're getting stories where God is using EKG to make them sensitized to Kingdom activity 24/7," Hemphill said. "The most common comment I get from laypeople is the idea of being a moveable possession. Most folks, I think, go to church to do Kingdom activity, and they've never really thought about Kingdom activity happening every day around them."

One specific story Hemphill recalled is a church in North Carolina that gave away one of their historic buildings after studying EKG. The church had moved their original building to a site across the street about 25 years ago in order to make room for a new sanctuary, he said. 

"It sat there and was used once a year on anniversary Sunday," Hemphill said. "They'd go over there and walk through and have a picnic out in front of it. The church just voted to give that building to an international church, and they've got probably 65-70 internationals meeting across the street. 

"That's one church that decided, 'If we're going to be Kingdom-centered, we don't need to keep a building over there sitting vacant a whole year, and its history is not as important as its future.' It kind of got this Kingdom strategy enmeshed in the whole question of 'What are we doing as a church and why are we preserving an old building when we can use it for the Kingdom?'"
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Erin Roach is a staff writer for Baptist Press. For more information about Empowering Kingdom Growth, visit www.empoweringkingdomgrowth.com. 


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'Eternal Impact' is latest in EKG resources
by Erin Roach
Date: March 31, 2008 - Monday

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (BP)--"Eternal Impact: The Passion of Kingdom-Centered Communities," the latest component of the Empowering Kingdom Growth study series, conveys first-century church principles for the success of modern congregations.

Ken Hemphill, the Southern Baptist Convention's national EKG strategist, said Eternal Impact, though it is the third book written for the series, is intended as the second resource following "EKG: The Heartbeat of God" and before "Making Change: A Transformational Guide to Christian Money Management."

"Our philosophy, simply stated, is that nothing changes someone's heart and mind except the Word of God applied by the Spirit of God," Hemphill told Baptist Press. "Everything I've tried to develop in this office has been biblical study aimed at laity. If we're going to see this transformation take place, it's going to happen in the pew, it's going to happen in the Sunday school class and the small group."

Hemphill has been traveling the country helping churches, associations and state conventions implement strategies to see an expansion of the Kingdom of God. The goal of the first resource, The Heartbeat of God, is to achieve what Hemphill calls a spiritual ignition point.

"Until you have a transformation of the heart and the culture of a church, any attempt to make a change will generally hit pretty severe resistance and can oftentimes be detrimental -- even cause church splits," he said.

The spiritual ignition point, Hemphill noted, has occurred when a church member says, "What are we going to have to do, Pastor, to become a Kingdom-centered church? What changes will it require?" They begin to ask the right questions, Hemphill said. 

LifeWay Christian Resources reported that through the end of 2007, more than 87,000 member books for The Heartbeat of God 40-day study had been sold.

"Eternal Impact, which just came out, is essentially a study of the church in the New Testament with a major emphasis on the Book of Acts and going on to pick up materials from some of the early Pauline letters that described the church, its function, its leadership structure, the role of the pastor, the role of deacons and how a church makes Kingdom-focused decisions," Hemphill said.

A study guide and DVD to accompany Eternal Impact will be available by the SBC annual meeting in June, he said, and rather than purchasing a teaching kit, church leaders will be able to download the additional material at no cost online.

Making Change, the third component, is not simply about tithing, Hemphill said.

"It's much broader than that because if we don't deal with other financial issues, we're not going to solve our stewardship issues in our churches. What I mean by that is we've got spending issues," he said. "The average family in America spends $1.20 for every $1 they earn. We've seen what's happened in subprime lending where people are borrowing money they can't afford to repay, and what it has done to our economy.

"The Making Change study is a book that deals with virtually everything the Bible teaches about money -- how to earn it, how to spend it, how to get out of debt, how to stay out of debt, how to give," Hemphill said. "We look at all the Old Testament offerings, and we look at how the New Testament applies those Old Testament principles and goes beyond those, actually, as Paul talks about hilarious giving and he talks about supernaturally-empowered grace giving."

Hemphill explained that he wrote Making Change before Eternal Impact in response to state executives who wanted a guide for revitalizing an understanding of stewardship.

Also at the request of state convention leaders, youth and children's editions of Making Change are forthcoming. The youth edition, written by Phil McMichael, minister of student discipleship at Prestonwood Baptist Church in Plano, Texas, should be available in June. The children's version, complete with vivid illustrations, is being written now and should be in stores this fall, Hemphill said.

"Our goal is eventually to start with the children as soon as they can read because we feel like if we don't teach children and youth these stewardship issues at an early age, they develop bad patterns," he said, adding that state stewardship leaders have said they see a tremendous need for going back to the children's and youth levels in order to lay good foundations.

"We're saying to pastors, do these EKG studies in any setting you feel is most appropriate for your church," Hemphill said. "A lot of pastors will take the deacons or a group of leaders in the church through studies first so they build an understanding of the material."

Ultimately, the more people in a church who are on the same page, using the same language and talking about the same issues, the greater impact the EKG emphasis will have, Hemphill said. Some churches choose to implement the studies in Sunday school, while others choose another small group setting. Many times pastors preach a sermon series to shape a consensus about the church's quest to see people develop relationships with God.
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Erin Roach is a staff writer for Baptist Press. For more information about Empowering Kingdom Growth, visit www.empoweringkingdomgrowth.com. 


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Disposing of the disabled
by Ken Connor
Date: March 31, 2008 - Monday

LEESBURG, Va. (BP)--Most parents receive the news that they are "expecting" with joy and excitement. For some, however, the good news turns sour when they learn that their unborn or newly born child has Down syndrome or is afflicted with some other disability like cystic fibrosis. 

What parents are told about their child's future and how they are told it often influences whether that child is born at all. That's why Sens. Sam Brownback and Ted Kennedy have co-sponsored the "Prenatally and Postnatally Diagnosed Conditions Awareness Act"

The act (S. 1810) mandates that health care providers give the mother of an unborn or newly born child "up-to-date, scientific, written information concerning the life expectancy, clinical course, and intellectual and functional development and treatment options for a fetus diagnosed with or child born with Down syndrome or other prenatally or postnatally diagnosed conditions." In addition, the health care provider must provide "referral to supportive services providers," including hotlines, resource centers and support programs. These measures seek to ensure that medical advice to parents of developmentally disabled children is accurate and balanced.

Sadly, in today's post-Roe environment the news that a child is likely to be born with a significant handicap is often a death sentence. According to The New York Times, about 90 percent of unborn children who are diagnosed with Down syndrome are aborted. Meanwhile, in Massachusetts, the number of children born with cystic fibrosis dropped by 50 percent when a prenatal cystic fibrosis test was developed. No studies have been done to asses the cause of the drop, but the odds of this being simple coincidence are quite low. A likely cause is the prevalent cultural notion that "flawed" human beings do not have lives worth living.

Parents whose child has been diagnosed with Down syndrome or cystic fibrosis are often apprehensive and frequently terrified. They have little idea what to expect for the future and even less understanding of the resources available to assist them in providing for their child. Unfortunately, their fears are often heightened by doctors who present the news as a tragedy or encourage the parents to pursue an abortion. In their time of trial, many of these parents are not given sound information about the reality of raising a handicapped child.

Sadly, we have entered a period in our history when children who do not measure up to someone else's subjective standard of perfection are consigned to the ash heap of history. Roe v. Wade has produced a disposable man ethic which holds that if people are less than perfect or unwanted, they may be disposed of with impunity. What will be required in the future to secure our membership in the human family? Will we have to be as smart as a Supreme Court judge or as beautiful as Miss America? Will we have to be able to shoot baskets like Michael Jordan or ride a bike like Lance Armstrong?

And have we become so soft and so self-centered that we can't bear the burden of providing for those less fortunate than ourselves? Are we unwilling to learn the life lessons that come from serving the weak and frail and the handicapped? Have we come to the point where we seek only our own comfort and our own pleasure rather than the good of others? Is there no room in our society for those who are counted among the least of our brethren?

Only time will tell. But in the meantime, Brownback's and Kennedy's bill seeks to dispel the myths associated with disabilities and to let parents of handicapped children know that they are not alone.

There were times in America's past when neither blacks nor women were regarded as full-fledged members of the human family. As a result, they too were deprived of the full panoply of rights endowed by the Creator to those created in His image. Those were not the best of times in America's history. Thankfully, however, there were other times when Americans were willing to pay the price to see to it that both blacks and women received the protections they were entitled to by virtue of their humanity. Will we be willing to pay such a price for the unborn and the handicapped in our time? Again, only time will tell.
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Ken Connor is chairman of the Center for a Just Society based in Washington D.C., online at www.centerforajustsociety.org.



