The original issue can be found at: http://www.baptistpress.com/issue-05/04/1998 DISCLAIMER: Baptist Press should be credited for any reprinted stories that originate with BP. Suggested credit line: Reprinted from Baptist Press (www.baptistpress.com), news service of the Southern Baptist Convention. Please note that Baptist Press periodically carries stories from other sources by permission. Individuals interested in reprinting non-BP stories should contact the entity where the story originated to seek reprint permission. -------------------------------------------------------------------- SBC Cooperative Program April gifts down; year up by Date: May 04, 1998 - Monday NASHVILLE, Tenn. (BP)--Southern Baptist Convention Cooperative Program receipts for April declined more than 16 percent compared to the previous year’s April, according to Morris H. Chapman, president and chief executive officer of the SBC Executive Committee.
For the fiscal year, however, receipts remain above the previous year by .46 percent.
For the month of April 1998, a total of $11,903,309 was received, compared to the same month of 1997 of $14,299,668, a decrease of 16.76 percent or $2,396,359.
After seven months of the SBC fiscal year, October through April, CP gifts total $91,241,293 compared to the same period last year of $90,819,060, an increase of .46 percent or $422,232.
Designated gifts for April also declined compared to the same month a year ago: $9,193,432 compared to $10,046,351, a decrease of 8.49 percent or $852,918. For the fiscal year, however, designated gifts total $104,479,592 compared to the same period a year ago of $97,944,314, an increase of 6.67 percent or $6,535,278.
For the SBC Cooperative Program Allocation Budget, the April CP receipts were 3.61 percent below the required budget figure of $12,348,756. For the year-to-date, the budget requirement of $86,441,294 has been surpassed by $4,799,998 or 5.55 percent.
The SBC Cooperative Program total includes receipts from individuals, churches, state conventions and fellowships for distribution according to the 1997-98 Cooperative Program Allocation Budget.
The Cooperative Program is Southern Baptists’ method of supporting missions and ministry efforts of state and regional conventions and the Southern Baptist Convention. Designated contributions include the Lottie Moon Christmas Offering for international missions, the Annie Armstrong Easter Offering for North American missions, world hunger and other special gifts.
State and regional conventions retain a percentage of Cooperative Program contributions they receive from the churches to support work in their areas and send the remaining funds to the Executive Committee for national and international ministries. The percentage of distribution is at the discretion of each state or regional convention.
-------------------------------------------------------------------- Minister to homosexuals wages EEOC complaint after losing job by Ken Walker Date: May 04, 1998 - Monday RALEIGH, N.C. (BP)--When Tim Wilkins urged the 1997 Southern Baptist Convention to promote healing for homosexuals, he didn't know it would cost him his job.
Formerly employed by the Raleigh (N.C.) News & Observer, Wilkins was fired after a front-page article about the motion and CROSS, an ex-gay ministry he founded, appeared in the newspaper.
After its publication last August, the member of Providence Baptist Church said he faced hostility from superiors in the circulation department. Later that month, he was suspended for three days and then fired.
His loss of a position in direct sales occurred just two months after he received an overall job rating of two-plus, or commendable. The highest grade is one for exceptional work, according to a copy of the review Wilkins provided to Baptist Press.
The year before, supervisors rated him "excellent" in all 11 categories of a job skills assessment.
A complaint Wilkins filed with the Equal Opportunity Employment Commission (EEOC) is sketchy on details. But he alleges the newspaper is guilty of religious discrimination for firing him because he believes that homosexuality is wrong -- although that reason wasn't cited in his dismissal.
In the latest issue of his ministry's newsletter, Wilkins wrote that he was suspended for alleged insubordination, lack of respect for management and failure to take responsibility.
But prior to that, he had never received an oral or written reprimand, nor had his work ever been called into question, he noted.
When asked for the reason he was being fired, the director of human resources cited failure to perform his job duties at the required level, Wilkins recounted.
"This is preposterous," he wrote in the newsletter. "The contents of my personnel file (performance appraisals, evaluations, an award, etc.) will show otherwise."
The EEOC is still investigating his allegations. But if the federal agency finds he has a valid complaint, he plans to file a lawsuit against the newspaper.
"I don't think reinstatement to The News & Observer would work at this point," said Wilkins, a former SBC pastor who still speaks regularly in churches and other forums. "I hope to get an admission of wrongdoing and (monetary) damages."
He is represented by the Liberty Counsel, a religious civil liberties group based in Orlando, Fla. Formed in 1989, the nonprofit organization also provides legal defenses involving violations of persons' First Amendment religious rights.
Attorney Nicole Kerr said the council's only similar case was getting a Washington lawyer excused from employer- mandated "sensitivity" training because it supported the view that homosexuality is normal.
Liberty Counsel has handled numerous other religious rights cases," Kerr said. "Frequently we can resolve these issues before they go to court."
Baptist Press contacted The News & Observer's publisher twice for a comment on the case, but he did not return phone calls.
The day The News & Observer article appeared last year, Wilkins learned it may have upset his employer. A co-worker told him his name had been discussed in a meeting and a question raised of whether the story would adversely affect circulation.
The article proved controversial, generating more than a dozen letters (pro and con) to the editor. It included an extensive discussion of his background and the formation of CROSS (CReated for the OppoSite Sex) Ministries. Wilkins and his wife, Lisa, organized it two years ago to reach out to homosexuals.
His concern for homosexuals stems from his own experience. Although baptized at age 9 in an SBC church, in his teens confusion over his identity and sexuality led to a series of sexual encounters with men.
Wilkins stopped after realizing homosexuality was incompatible with biblical teachings, he said, but it wasn't until his early 30s -- after a decade of celibacy and prayer -- that he felt desire for women. He and Lisa were married in 1992 after meeting at a Christian singles seminar.
Many Christians stop short of delivering the message of hope and change the homosexual community needs to hear, Wilkins said. His motion at the '97 convention advocated spreading that message.
He had originally planned to speak in favor of the resolution to boycott The Disney Company because of its promotion of homosexuality and other immoral ideologies.
While he didn't get the opportunity, he later moved that the North American Mission Board (NAMB) contact a reputable ex-gay ministry to learn about resources for ministering to those affected by homosexuality.
The motion also called on the NAMB to aggressively promote these resources to all agencies, state conventions and local churches as part of a campaign to promote healing for homosexuals.
Martin King, public relations director for the board, said trustees had taken action on the motion. They will release their report at the upcoming SBC annual meeting, June 9-11 in Salt Lake City.
Regardless of the outcome of his case, Wilkins said he hopes Christians will recognize the harm caused by homosexuality and let homosexuals know that God can change them.
"Unfortunately, there is a taboo and stigma associated with this sin," he said. "Yet, to tell the homosexual all he needs to do is repent is as ludicrous as telling someone who suffers from anorexia nervosa all she needs to do is eat. True, repentance is essential to change, but many underlying issues regarding homosexuality need to be addressed."
-------------------------------------------------------------------- Speaking out against homosexuality can lead to harassment, report says by Ken Walker Date: May 04, 1998 - Monday WASHINGTON (BP)-- In a recent column, Frank Rich of The New York Times lamented a hold-up in Senate confirmation of James Hormel as ambassador to Luxembourg because of his homosexuality.
The syndicated columnist accused three Republican senators of pandering to a far-right hysteria over a "gay agenda." He also quoted the chairman of a homosexual Republican group as saying an intolerant few were defining the GOP's stands.
Concluding with excerpts from a letter from Hormel's ex-wife commending him and urging a vote, Rich asked, "How often does anyone write a testimonial like this about a former spouse? In the battle between James Hormel and the homophobic right, just who has the family values and who is the queer?"
Ken Irvin, a research assistant at the Family Research Council, isn't surprised by such media coverage. He called it evidence that homosexuals are succeeding in a clever campaign to portray themselves as victims.
That is one point outlined in a 1990 book, "After The Ball: How America Will Conquer Its Fear and Hatred of Gays in the '90s," by Marshall Kirk and Hunter Madsden, he said.
The section reads, "Portray gays as victims, not as aggressive challengers. In any campaign to win over the public, gays must be portrayed as victims in need of protection so that straights will be inclined by reflex to adopt the role of protector."
"They don't call it a propaganda campaign, but that's what it is," Irvin said. "It's incredible. It's public persuasion tactics."
Irvin compiled "The Other Side of Tolerance," a 32-page report released last year. It details a variety of incidents of people fired from their jobs or facing other hostilities for challenging the acceptance of homosexuality as normal.
One case involves Ron Greer, a veteran of the fire department in Madison, Wis., who lost his job earlier this year after an extended battle over his views on homosexuality.
In 1996, after he gave some co-workers and friends a pamphlet titled, "The Truth About Homosexuality," the fire chief ordered an investigation of whether he had violated the city's non-discrimination policy.
In addition, both his church and home were targeted by homosexual-rights activists. Last year World magazine carried photos of banners left at the home, adorned with such sayings as "Wisconsin Queers Against Greer" and "Dyke Power."
Another person who lost her job was Betty Sabatino, a personal trust administrator for Texas Commerce Bank in San Antonio. The bank fired her for questioning the addition of sexual orientation to the bank's non-discrimination policy, the report said.
The change was mentioned in a session on fair employment practices, part of a management orientation seminar. After being encouraged to ask questions, Sabatino asked why the company would give someone special consideration based solely on the person's sexual behavior.
Three days later her boss expressed concern about her question and less than a month later she was fired.
Among other instances the report reviewed are:
-- John Farrell, a San Fernando, Calif., Superior Court judge, had to fight for his job after another judge objected to his participation as a Boy Scout leader. The second judge, a homosexual, called Farrell's Boy Scout activities "unethical" because of the organization's policy against accepting homosexual members or leaders.
-- Debra Kelly, a hospice coordinator in the Philadelphia area, lost her job after her supervisor complained her Christian views made her "intolerant" and unsuitable for the position. Kelly filed a lawsuit alleging religious discrimination, but the case was settled out of court.
-- Larry Phillips, a Christian who worked for the Kansas City, Mo., Department of Family Services, was harassed after objecting to distribution of a sexually explicit brochure on "safe sex" to teens. According to the report, he was later fired after refusing to attend a "diversity" training session.
Irvin is working on an updated version of the report. Among the incidents he plans to investigate is a complaint filed earlier this year with the Equal Opportunity Employment Commission by Tim Wilkins.
Wilkins is a former Southern Baptist pastor and director of an ex-gay ministry in Raleigh, N.C. Wilkins alleges he was fired three weeks after a story about his ministry work appeared in the Raleigh News & Observer, where he worked.
The council researcher said these types of cases are increasing as more cities, states and companies implement non-discrimination policies running counter to Christian standards.
While the popular perception is homosexuals need job and civil rights protections, it is often those who speak out against homosexuality who suffer, Irvin said.
"It's nuts is what it is," he said of homosexuals' alleged mistreatment. "I won't say it never happens, but I don't think it happens nearly as much as they'd like people to think. It's more a propaganda tactic."
-------------------------------------------------------------------- Spiritual markers guide journey for Dixon of Texas Baptist Men by Ken Camp Date: May 04, 1998 - Monday DALLAS (BP)--Bob Dixon looks at marker boards covering two walls of the communications room in the Texas Baptist Men office.
Ongoing examples of the "activity of God" among the group's volunteers fill them: Disaster relief in Texas. Famine relief and agricultural missions in North Korea. Wide-ranging criminal justice ministry opportunities, Royal Ambassador and Challenger programs, church and encampment building projects, and church renewal events. Far-flung assignments from Belize to the Ukraine.
Across the top of one board, Dixon has scrawled Colossians 4:17, "Take heed to the ministry you have received from God, that you may fulfill it."
He sees that verse as a watchword for the missions organization he has served for 29 years as executive director, a post from which he plans to retire in September. It's also been a guiding principle personally for the 70-year-old pilgrim in his journey of faith.
"As believers, we walk forward by faith. But looking back, I can see where God has been preparing me for assignments all my life," he says.
When he came to faith in Jesus Christ as an 11-year-old boy in eastern Tennessee, Dixon's passion was sports. While serving as a mobilization officer for the Sixth Naval District during World War II, he played with a Navy baseball team in Hawaii. Later, he spent two years as a catcher in the Washington Senators AA farm system.
During his time on the armed forces baseball team, Dixon injured his right leg sliding into base. Lying in a Navy hospital, between wondering if he would lose his leg to infection and receiving 98 shots of a new wonder drug called "penicillin," he received his first calling from God to vocational Christian service.
"When I went back to the little church where I grew up on Missionary Ridge and told them I had been called, they asked me, 'Preacher or missionary?'" Dixon remembers replying, "Neither one. If that's all he's got, I must have missed the calling."
After graduating from the Edmondson Business College in Chattanooga, Dixon went to work for the Tennessee Valley Authority. The lucrative job with five weeks of paid vacation allowed him plenty of opportunities to work with youth as a Baptist layman, but he continued to struggle with his earlier calling.
While taking a group of young people to a tournament at Central Baptist Church in Birmingham, Ala., pastor Wayne Dehoney and the minister of education talked to him about joining the church staff as youth minister.
Recognizing the confirmation of his calling and his need for ministry training, Dixon quit his job, loaded up his wife and their two daughters, ages 4 and 6, and moved to Fort Worth, Texas, to enroll at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary’s school of religious education. Last year, the seminary named Dixon as a distinguished alumnus.
"I didn't know a soul there," he recalls. In spite of having no local contacts, College Avenue Baptist Church in Fort Worth brought Dixon on staff as minister of youth activities, and his wife, Jean, got a job at the then-Radio and Television Commission.
Dixon went on to serve as a pioneer in the field of church recreation and youth ministry at churches in Jackson, Miss., Nashville and Memphis, Tenn., before he was invited to return to Texas to direct the state's Royal Ambassadors program in 1966. Three years later, he became executive director of Texas Baptist Men.
Just as God used his affinity for sports to draw him into church recreation and his penchant for campcraft and love of the outdoors to bring him into Royal Ambassadors leadership, Dixon believes the Lord used all of his life experiences up to that time to equip him for his new assignment.
"As mobilization officer for the Sixth Naval District, my job was finding the right men for the right jobs. I never realized God was preparing me to mobilize volunteers in his work," he says. "Then when I played ball and coached, he taught me about teamwork."
That skill has proved vital as Texas Baptist Men under Dixon's leadership has built a statewide network of volunteer ministry teams that has set the pace and often paved the way for Southern Baptist men's ministries nationwide.
Texas Baptists blazed the trail for Southern Baptists in disaster relief ministries when Hurricane Beulah hit in 1967. Dixon was working at an east Texas RA camp when he was called to the Rio Grande Valley to help do what he could in coordinating volunteers in their relief efforts.
"At the time, nobody knew I had received disaster relief training by the U.S. Bureau of Mines when I was with the Tennessee Valley Authority," he recalls.
Before he left the RA camp, he loaded it with homemade "buddy burners" fashioned from gallon-sized coffee cans. In south Texas, he and other Texas Baptists used the cooking cans to prepare breakfast for truck drivers delivering food and clothing to storm victims.
Four years and a couple of major disasters later, TBM had its first Disaster Relief Mobile Unit. The tractor-trailer rig was specially equipped with a field kitchen, ham radio, bunks for the volunteer crew and a generator to provide emergency power in electrical outages. It became a prototype for units throughout the Southern Baptist Convention, and it was the first of a fleet of disaster relief vehicles in Texas that now includes a command post, temporary emergency child-care unit, utility vehicles and regional response units.
Texas Baptist Men also led the way in volunteer construction for churches and encampments, launching teams throughout the state. In 1986, they worked around-the-clock for 24 hours, nearly completing construction of the first Hospitality House, a refuge for prisoners' families in Huntsville, Texas. A year later, Texas Baptist Men led more than 700 volunteers who worked throughout Labor Day weekend to rebuild Saragosa, a west Texas town that had been destroyed by a tornado.
Perhaps the greatest influence on Dixon's life and the greatest course change in the organizational life of Texas Baptist Men began with the prayer seminars of Fort Worth's Don Miller in the mid-1970s.
"I had never known much about the Holy Spirit before," Dixon acknowledges. But through the teachings of Miller and others such as T.W. Hunt, Avery Willis and Henry Blackaby, he became convicted that God had called his children to be "a praying people." Blackaby’s "Experiencing God" teachings on the "Seven Realities" of God's work among his people particularly made an impact.
"I came to understand that God is always at work around us, and he pursues a continuing love relationship with us. It's when we are in that relationship that he invites us to join him in his activity," Dixon says.
In the late 1980s, he led Texas Baptist Men to reject program-driven long-range planning. Instead, he urged his executive board and staff to make any "radical adjustment" necessary to respond to God's invitations.
That's when the doors of ministry swung wide open.
In the spring of 1991, when a cholera epidemic swept through Peru, Texas Baptist Men coordinated the shipment of desperately needed medical supplies. Since the organization was able to meet that urgent need, a few weeks later a representative from the U.S. Department of Defense called Dixon to ask if they could secure blankets in large quantities. They would be airdropped by military planes to the 2 million Kurdish refugees who had fled from Saddam Hussein's army to the United Nations "safe haven" at the juncture of Iraq, Iran and Turkey.
Success in that effort led to Texas Baptist volunteers working in cooperation with Global Partners, a London-based relief clearinghouse, to offer medical relief in Kurdish refugee camps and operate field kitchens in remote villages.
Since then, Texas Baptist Men has continued to be involved in Kurdish refugee resettlement in Texas. At their home church, Midway Road Baptist in north Dallas, Dixon and his wife work with the Kurdish ministry each week. Using a storytelling technique developed on the international mission field, they "chronicle" the story of redemption from creation to the second coming of Jesus.
In addition to working internationally with the Kurds, Texas Baptist Men also in 1991 began an ongoing ministry in the Ukraine. Other overseas assignments followed, including an ongoing project in Belize which Dixon hopes will develop into a training base for Third World ministries.
The widespread, varied nature of the "assignments that God has given Texas Baptist Men" prompted the group to adopt the ministry slogan: "Anyway, Anytime, Anywhere," Dixon notes.
"I have a pretty wild imagination, but when I first came to Texas to work with TBM, I never could have dreamed what God would do with this group," he says.
"We didn't ask for any of it. It's all been at God's invitation. But one thing I have learned. When God invites you to join in his activity, he will provide the resources you need."
-------------------------------------------------------------------- European Baptist Convention celebrates 40th anniversary by Judith Lynn Bloomer Date: May 04, 1998 - Monday WIESBADEN, Germany (BP)--In countries where church buildings have been around longer than the United States, 40 years seems insignificant. However, for the European Baptist Convention, 40 years equals its lifetime.
Begun in 1958, the European Baptist Convention (EBC) is now composed of 69 English-speaking churches in 22 countries in Europe and the Middle East.
Special activities to mark the convention’s 40th anniversary are being planned. Interlaken '98, an annual assembly held in Interlaken, Switzerland (similar to Ridgecrest and Glorieta events), will feature a special anniversary celebration night during the week of July 4-9. Another, larger celebration will be held during the convention's annual meeting in Stavanger, Norway, Oct. 28-29. All former church members and friends of the convention are invited to attend the special events.
The first EBC church, Immanuel Baptist, was begun in 1957 in Wiesbaden, Germany, by Herman Stout, a former American GI who returned to Wiesbaden to begin an English-language church. The next year, Bethel Baptist Church in Frankfurt was organized. Herbert Stout, Herman's twin brother, was called as its pastor.
These two churches formed the Association of Baptists in Continental Europe. During the following two years, Immanuel and Bethel sponsored 19 churches and missions. In 1964, the convention changed its name to the European Baptist Convention when churches in England joined.
Today the convention, with 4,500 members, covers a geographical territory larger than the United States. The geographic boundaries of the convention include Stavanger, Norway; Rota, Spain; Athens; Moscow; the Azores, Portugal; and Dubai, United Arab Emirates. People from more than 100 nations participate in the life of EBC churches.
EBC churches were originally started to minister to the needs of the U.S. military personnel stationed in Europe. The fall of communism in 1990 brought a new challenge to the EBC -- the urgent need to reach internationals in many Eastern European countries. At its annual meeting in October 1991, the EBC set a goal to plant 20 new English-language churches during the next four years. That goal was reached. However, at the same time, the EBC saw the closing of many churches as the U.S. military began its drawdown and closing of many military bases. Through the years the churches have evolved to reflect the makeup of the international communities to which they now minister.
Despite the many changes and challenges it has faced, EBC General Secretary James L. Heflin said, "Europe needs the churches of the convention. We will continue to strengthen existing churches and to plant new ones."
For more information about the convention, its ministries or its anniversary celebrations, contact the EBC office at Holzstrasse 11b, 65199 Wiesbaden, Germany; telephone: 011-49-611-941-0505; fax: 011-49-611-941-0442; e-mail: ebc@compuserve.com.

Bloomer is the press representative for the European Baptist Convention and editor of its newsletter, Highlights.