Associated Baptist Press - 5/1/2008

Associated Baptist Press
May 1, 2008 (8-46)

IN THIS ISSUE:
Congressional Black Caucus honors Georgetown College
CBF partnering with churches in Spanish-speaking Caribbean
Tiny New York church does outsized ministry
Opinion: On homosexuality, whose narrative do we believe?

Congressional Black Caucus honors Georgetown College
By Robert Marus

WASHINGTON (ABP) -- Extraordinary efforts at fostering diversity and building relationships with African-American Baptists earned Georgetown College special recognition April 30 in Washington.

In a United States Capitol ceremony, officials of the Congressional Black Caucus recognized the Georgetown, Ky.-based Baptist school for its Bishop Scholars program. The scholarship, established in 2006, currently provides funds for five Georgetown students.

The program is named after Bishop College, a historically black institution in Dallas that was forced to close in 1988. Over its more than 100 years of existence, Bishop earned a reputation as a solid training ground for African-American Baptist ministers.

In 2006, Georgetown “adopted” the school’s approximately 7,000 living alumni, and established the Bishop Scholars program to carry on the defunct school’s legacy. To qualify for the Bishop Scholarship, students must be the children or grandchildren of Bishop alumni and demonstrate strong academic achievement. Upon graduation, Bishop Scholars receive Georgetown diplomas that note their connection to the legacy of Bishop College.

“I am pleased to welcome the Bishop College Scholars in our nation’s Capitol in order to recognize their tremendous achievements,” said Rep. Barbara Lee (D-Calif.), first vice chair of the caucus, in a press release announcing the honor.

“I commend Georgetown College and the Bishop College alumni for forming this historic partnership to promote academic excellence,” Lee, who is a Baptist, continued.

“Being a Bishop Scholar means being a part of a historical black college that produced many successful black leaders,” said Ralphael West, one of the scholarship recipients. The five attended the Capitol ceremony along with Georgetown President William Crouch.

The scholarship program is one of several ways that Georgetown has attempted, in recent years, to expand its diversity and build relationships with African-American Baptist groups. In 2005, Crouch announced a Georgetown partnership with the four largest black Baptist denominations in the United States that featured a new Georgetown archive for African-American Baptist historical artifacts.

Georgetown, founded in 1829, is located in a border state that sided with the Union in the Civil War, but allowed slavery. The school houses the Kentucky Underground Railroad Research Institute in a campus building that originally operated as slave quarters.

Georgetown officials are also raising funds to erect a replica of a Bishop College building on campus, and plan to host a Bishop College reunion.

Crouch, according to the press release, said the students aren’t the only ones who have benefitted from the Bishop Scholars program. “A richness has been added to my life and the life of Georgetown College because of the spirit found in the lives of Bishop College alumni,” he said. “For the Congressional Black Caucus to recognize the uniqueness of this partnership is a great endorsement of this initiative.”

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CBF partnering with churches in Spanish-speaking Caribbean
By Sue Poss

ATLANTA (ABP) -- The Cooperative Baptist Fellowship has a new answer for an old question being asked by many CBF churches: “How do we reach Hispanics living in our community?”

The new answer? “Partner with churches from Spanish-speaking countries.”

“Such partnerships would be of mutual benefit,” said Bernie Moraga, coordinator of CBF’s Hispanic network. “Baptist churches in Latin America are looking for fraternal relationships with more moderate [Baptist] groups, and they see CBF as a place where they can belong. We struggle here to find pastors to work with Hispanics. These Latin American churches want to work with us to reach people from their own countries living here.”

The first church outside the United States to partner with CBF is Iglesia Bautista de Metrópolis (in English, Metropolitan Baptist Church) in Catalina, Puerto Rico. The 300-member congregation voted last November to affiliate with CBF of Florida.

CBF of Florida Associate Coordinator Tommy Deal was a member of a delegation that attended the 2007 annual meeting of the Baptist Churches of Puerto Rico. Also at that meeting in Puerto Rico, the Florida delegation met six pastors from the Dominican Republic who expressed an interest in a similar partnership.

“We are open to all possibilities in nearby Spanish-speaking countries,” Deal said. “We believe that not only are we geographically positioned for this endeavor, [but] we sense God is moving and directing in all of these opportunities and connections. We want to be faithful to be the presence of Christ and to work with and encourage others as they are the presence in their own homeland.”

To develop further the Latin American connection, CBF representatives have planned two trips in May -- one to the Dominican Republic and one to Cuba.

A four-member Fellowship delegation, including Deal and Bo Prosser, CBF’s coordinator for congregational life, will meet with representatives from the Cuba’s Oriental Baptist Convention May 4-8 to explore partnership opportunities. The Cuban convention is comprised of about 300 congregations mainly located in the eastern part of the island.

“These mission churches are mostly house churches, but are reaching many of their fellow Cubans for Christ,” Deal said. “CBF of Florida has been licensed under guidelines of the U.S. Treasury Department to send mission-support funds to this group. We will be able to observe the work that these funds are supporting.”

Another group of CBF representatives will travel to the Dominican Republic May 17-26. As part of that trip, Prosser and Rick Bennett, the Fellowship’s director of congregational life, will lead a spiritual-formation retreat for pastors.

“Part of our missional-church work is to make sure that we are helping churches everywhere make an impact in the Kingdom,” said Prosser. “Cuba has been kept in bondage spiritually. Perhaps, CBF can make a difference in opening up their awareness of Christ. In the Dominican Republic, Rick and I hope that we can model some prayer practices for them that can nourish their souls and perhaps refresh their churches.”

Deal will also participate and will be looking for Dominican and Cuban congregations willing to partner with sister churches in Florida.

“We tell every church that we are not so much looking for how we can help them, but how they can help us reach their people who live among us in the Sunshine State,” he said. “These partnerships show that CBF of Florida and CBF are serious about being demographically and culturally diverse and all-inclusive.”

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Tiny New York church does outsized ministry
By Patricia Heys


NEW YORK (ABP) -- Matthew is one of the many stories that make up Manhattan -- and little Metro Baptist Church’s outsized ministry.

The young musician came to New York with dreams of making it big in the industry -- and with everything he owned packed in his van. But within a few weeks of arriving in the city, the van was stolen and he was homeless, living on the streets of Hell’s Kitchen and dreaming of returning home to Atlanta. That’s where Metro Baptist came in -- he got warm clothes and a warmer welcome there.

Hell’s Kitchen, located on the west side of Manhattan, is one of the many New York neighborhoods that are rapidly gentrifying -- but, as its name suggests, it has a history of being a rough area. This is due in part to the location of the Port Authority Bus Terminal, the world’s busiest terminal, at the south end of the neighborhood. Approximately 200,000 people move through the terminal each day, including commuters, tourists and people such as Matthew who are following their dreams -- or aching to go home.

“Even with all the luxury high-rises that are now being built, this neighborhood is still one of the first stops for people coming into the city and into America,” said Ronnie Adams, one of the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship’s field personnel. “There are still tenement buildings and lower-priced places to live, but many times there are three or four families living in one apartment -- that’s the only way people can live economically.”

Metro Baptist Church is next to the Manhattan side of the Lincoln Tunnel, just a few blocks from the bus terminal. Originally built as a Catholic church for Polish immigrants in the in the early 1900s, the building was purchased by Metro Baptist in 1984. CBF has partnered with Metro since 1995, when Adams began serving alongside the church.

The congregation has been intentional about identifying the needs of the Hell’s Kitchen community and trying not to duplicate services that already exist in the area. For example, two nearby homeless shelters provide meals and shower facilities to people living on the streets, so the church determined there was a need for distributing toiletry kits and clothes instead. That was how Metro Baptist connected with Matthew.

“The make-up of the church is very diverse,” said Adams, a native of Dallas. “On Sunday mornings you’ll have everyone -- from the homeless to Wall Street lawyers -- and a lot of people who are trying to make it in the theatre world. What I love about the church is that although there are only about 50 people on Sunday morning, they have a vision and faith for ministry. It’s a pretty amazing story of being faithful to ministry in your area and how God will provide.”

In addition to the homeless community, Metro Baptist also reaches out to families living in the surrounding single-room-occupancy buildings, formerly referred to as “welfare hotels.” Many immigrants, who often work in the nearby factories of the clothing district or at one of Manhattan’s more than 12,000 restaurants, live in these low-income buildings. The church provides a weekly food pantry, along with health education, discounted counseling services, English classes and after-school programs for youth and children.

Metro’s community ministries are facilitated by church members, staff and CBF field personnel, including Amanda Hambrick, who ministers to youth at Metro Baptist. Two part-time Metro staffers returned after previous missions experiences at the church: Brice Friske, who made six trips to Hell’s Kitchen with teams from Tabernacle Baptist Church in Richmond, Va.; and Katie Furr, who spent a summer serving at Metro through CBF’s student-missions program.

“It’s important for people to be provided a community where it doesn’t matter how much money you make or where you are from, but what matters is that we are all made in God’s image,” said Hambrick, a native of Georgetown, Ky. “I think that is one of the most valuable things a church can be in an urban area -- a space and a place for authentic relationships.”

Each summer, Adams and Hambrick facilitate six weeks of summer camps, which are led by teams from CBF partner churches. Church volunteer teams from around the country also work for Metro Baptist ministries throughout the year.

“The whole idea here of reaching people for Christ is relational evangelism,” Adams said. “It’s a long-term process of letting them see how God is reflected in your life, and, through that, having an opportunity to share with them about faith and our walk with Christ and why it’s important to us.”

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Opinion: On homosexuality, whose narrative do we believe?
By David Gushee

(ABP) -- My column of a month ago related to homosexuality garnered more feedback than any opinion piece that I have ever written.

The response surprised me in that it was overwhelmingly positive, with a few notable exceptions. I heard from pastors who asked for help in figuring out how to minister to congregations that are divided on this issue -- including the homosexuals who are in their congregation, mainly closeted. I heard from a number of homosexuals, some of whom preferred to remain anonymous. These correspondents mainly expressed gratitude while also recounting the numerous painful experiences they have had in church and at the hands of (fellow) Christians. I heard from parents of homosexuals who held a variety of perspectives amidst a universal pain.

I also heard from those critics who believed that the baby steps I took in that column toward a Jesus-focused recognition of the suffering of homosexuals were dangerous. I think they may like future columns even less. But Christian ethics is not a popularity contest.

I want to suggest in this column that two fundamental stories compete at the poles of the Christianity-and-homosexuality debate. They are alternative ways of interpreting what is really going on amidst the heated contemporary debate over homosexuality and the church. (I will confine my comments in this column to the church, not the state, and will analyze the issue, not reveal everything I think.)

The conservative narrative frames the homosexuality debate as a fight for biblical conviction in a relativistic and sexually confused culture. In this view, homosexual behavior is clearly sinful, like all other sexual behavior outside of monogamous heterosexual marriage.

Some conservative pastors, scholars, and activists treat the homosexuality issue as a pivotal matter in church life (and culture). They believe that we must hold the line right here, right now, or Christian sexual ethics (and Christian biblical commitments) will be compromised irreparably. Others try to treat it as one issue among many, but still hold the moral rejection of homosexual behavior with certainty. The “moral of this story” is that homosexuality is a sin that must be resisted even against powerful cultural currents demanding its acceptance.

At the other pole of the homosexuality debate within the Christian community is a justice-and-liberation understanding of the issue. This view holds that homosexuals are a population victimized by a bigotry rooted in irrational prejudices and a misreading of Scripture. The injustices homosexuals experience are, in this view, a cruel violation of the Christian values of love and justice. These values, in turn, are viewed as either overriding biblical prohibitions on homosexual conduct or as leading to a re-interpretation of those Scripture passages.

Those who hold this view of the debate believe that Christians should side with homosexuals and act on behalf of their liberation from such oppression and victimization. The moral of this story is that homosexuality is one of the biggest human-rights issues of our time -- and that the church must join the fight on the side of the victims.

In moments of grave moral conflict there are always such competing narratives about what’s really going on. The question becomes how we discern God’s will, how we read the signs of the times, how we figure out whose narrative is the right one.

Consider: 1850, United States: Slavery is either a biblically mandated practice or an abomination before God. 1938, Germany: The church is either called to accommodate itself patriotically to Nazi rule or to resist it even to the point of imprisonment and death. 1963, United States: The Civil Rights Movement is either a great Spirit-led force for liberating oppressed black people or a bunch of misguided rabble-rousers destroying public order. 1980, South Africa: Apartheid is either God’s plan for keeping the races separate or a grave violation of God’s will for justice. 1990, Southern Baptist Convention: Full equality of women in church leadership is either direct disobedience to Scripture or a long-delayed fulfillment of God’s will.

Those caught in the midst of such profound moral conflicts have three options: they can clearly side with one narrative, they can clearly side with the other narrative, or they can seek a kind of in-between position in an effort to take some of the rough edges off of the debate -- and, in doing so, perhaps prevent irreparable divisions in churches and denominations.

But in the end, as the examples above indicate, on the most significant issues, the middle-of-the-road position almost always fails.

In the homosexuality debate, these in-between positions have created at least tentative common ground within many churches and denominations. One might say that they have bought a bit of peace and some time for further reflection on this issue. Most of these have involved at least the tacit acceptance of the idea that homosexual behavior does contravene God’s will. We can call this the “sinful, but” position.

In this view, homosexual behavior is sinful, but homosexual orientation/inclination (as opposed to behavior) should be viewed as temptation rather than sin. Therefore, those struggling with homosexual inclination but not acting on it should be included in the fellowship of the church along with all other struggling sinners.

And, according to this view, homosexual behavior is sinful, but so are many, many other things that people -- including churchgoing Christians -- do. Leading church sins include anger, factionalism, lovelessness, greed, luxury, selfishness, gluttony, gossip, and pride. Therefore, a church can either practice a consistent church discipline in which every sin is met with resistance and accountability by the congregation -- leading, when necessary, to exclusion of the offending party (a rare position in today’s churches). Or a congregation hewing to the middle-road position can opt for a form of church life in which believing sinners congregate for forgiveness, instruction, and community. If it chooses this latter stance, homosexuals can be quietly accepted in the community as believing sinners like everyone else.

Also, in this intermediate view, homosexual behavior is sinful, but Christians need to be compassionate. Therefore, we need to offer hospitable welcome to gays, but not affirmation of homosexual practice.

Finally, in this view, homosexual behavior is sinful, but Christian anti-homosexual activism has damaged our evangelistic witness. Therefore, we need to quiet down on this issue while not changing our basic stance.

The “sinful, but” stance definitely can take the edge off of the homosexuality debate. It can offer a welcome reduction of attention to this particular sin among all sins. And it is a pretty safe position in many Christian circles, so self-interest drives many church leaders to this stance.

But the ultimate question does not lie here, so the middle-of-the-road positions leave the fundamental issue unresolved.

The deeper question is posed by the competing narratives presented above. Either homosexual behavior is by definition sinful, or it is not. If it is sinful by definition, then presumably it must be resisted like any other sin. If it is not sinful by definition, then the homosexuality issue is a liberation/justice struggle for a victimized group.

Probably the right answer to this question will be very clear to everyone (that is, to 99% of all reasonable Christian human beings) in 100 years, as the proper positions on slavery and Nazism and civil rights and Apartheid are to modern-day Christians. But in real time, right now, it is tearing churches and denominations apart here and around the world.

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-- David Gushee is distinguished university professor of Christian ethics at Mercer University. His latest book is titled, The Future of Faith in American Politics: The Public Witness of the Evangelical Center. www.davidpgushee.com

To offer feedback, send e-mails to feedback@davidpgushee.com.