Associated Baptist Press - 5/20/2008

Associated Baptist Press
May 20, 2008 (8-52)

IN THIS ISSUE:
Baylor President John Lilley’s future in doubt after meeting
Wiley Drake cleared in IRS probe, but vows further endorsement
Baptists continue to respond as tolls rise in China, Myanmar
Prestonwood minister resigns after arrest in online sex sting
American Baptists launch fund to battle global food crisis
British Baptists to go to Jamaica with apology for slave trade

Baylor President John Lilley’s future in doubt after meeting
By Robert Marus

WACO, Texas (ABP) -- John Lilley may be the latest endangered leader at the world’s largest Baptist school, according to reports in the local newspaper.

The Waco Tribune-Herald reported May 17 that Baylor University leaders declined to discuss whether the school’s regents took a vote on Lilley’s fate during a board meeting the previous day. The paper reported earlier that, according to unidentified board sources, such a vote would be held.

Lilley came to Baylor in 2005 after the stormy 10-year tenure of Robert Sloan. Baylor officials hoped at the time that Lilley would help heal a rift that had developed under Sloan between the faculty and administration over ideological and educational issues. They also hoped Lilley could calm tensions between the independent Baylor Alumni Association and the regents.

But controversy over several recent denials of tenure to faculty members, despite the recommendations of their departments, and other issues has raised questions in recent weeks about Lilley’s fate.

The Tribune reported May 14 that the meeting would include a vote to fire Lilley. But the school issued a press release following the May 16 meeting that mentioned nothing about any such vote.

According to the newspaper, Lilley, Baylor Regents chairman Harold Cunningham and Vice President for Communications John Barry refused to say if the meeting had included a vote on Lilley’s fate, repeatedly noting that they would not comment on anything that happened in executive session.

Asked for further information by an Associated Baptist Press reporter May 19, Baylor spokesperson Lori Scott Fogleman reiterated other school officials' statements. "We can't talk about confidential executive session matters, but what I can tell you is that Dr. Lilley is Baylor's president," she said, noting that Lilley "has a full schedule of business he is attending to on behalf of the university" in the next few weeks.

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Wiley Drake cleared in IRS probe, but vows further endorsement
By Robert Marus

WASHINGTON (ABP) -- Southern Baptist pastor-personality Wiley Drake did not violate tax law by using his church’s letterhead or his radio show to endorse Mike Huckabee, he announced May 18.

Drake, pastor of the 75-member First Southern Baptist Church in Buena Park, Calif., told church members and visitors that the government had cleared the congregation. An IRS letter that Drake provided to local media outlets said that, based on “all the facts and circumstances” of the endorsements, “the IRS has concluded that Buena Park First Southern Baptist Church did not engage in prohibited political campaign intervention in violation of the requirements of [Internal Revenue Code] Section 501(c)(3).”

Federal tax law prevents churches and similar tax-exempt organizations from endorsing candidates or parties in elections. If they do so, they risk losing their tax exemption altogether.

Drake -- who has announced his long-shot candidacy for the Southern Baptist Convention’s presidency this year -- said in February that he was under investigation for using his church letterhead and a radio show last year to endorse Huckabee for the Republican presidential nomination. Huckabee, the former Arkansas governor, is also a Southern Baptist minister.

“After very serious prayer and consideration, I announce today that I am going to personally endorse Mike Huckabee,” he said in the press release, which was e-mailed to media outlets and written on church letterhead. “I ask all of my Southern Baptist brothers and sisters to consider getting behind Mike and helping him all you can.”

He said he believes “God has chosen Mike for such an hour,” and that of all the candidates running for president, “Mike Huckabee will listen to God.”

Shortly after he released the written statement, Drake also endorsed Huckabee on an Internet-based radio show he broadcasts, often from the church’s property.

“Yes, I endorsed him personally and, yes, we use the First Southern Baptist Church,” Drake said on the show. “Everything we do is under the auspices of the church.”

But the IRS letter said that both endorsements were more properly understood as Drake’s individual endorsements rather than official church actions. The press release, it noted, was sent from Drake’s personal account and did not go out to church members. It listed his position as pastor “for identification purposes,” the letter said, and the endorsement was not “authorized or approved” by the church. In addition, it claimed, “no church resources were utilized in preparing or sending the e-mail.”

On the radio-show endorsement, the letter said the Wiley Drake Show is a separate legal entity from the church, and the church doesn’t “own, financially support, sponsor or have any legal rights” to the show. It said Drake uses his personal mobile phone to call the organization (Crusade Radio) through which the show is broadcast, and that he may do so while “at the church on his break” or when away from the church building.

In recent years, some religious conservatives have tried unsuccessfully to undo the tax laws that prevent churches from endorsing candidates or parties while retaining their tax-exempt status. Opponents of such efforts claim the prohibition actually upholds religious freedom by protecting houses of worship and denominational bodies from being used by candidates and parties.

A conservative Christian legal organization recently asked thousands of pastors to endorse candidates from the pulpit on Sept. 28. The Alliance Defense Fund -- which defended Drake against the IRS investigation -- hopes that one or more investigations or tax revocations launched by the event will lead to a federal case that would test the constitutionality of the law curtailing church political endorsements.

Drake did not respond to an Associated Baptist Press reporter’s request for confirmation by press time for this story, but according to the Orange County Register, he plans to participate in the organization’s protest against tax law.

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Baptists continue to respond as tolls rise in China, Myanmar
By ABP staff

(ABP) -- Baptists continue to mobilize supplies and prayer in an effort to minister to victims of natural disasters in China and Myanmar.

Latest news reports May 19 indicated the death toll in China had risen to 34,000, with 220,000 injured, in the wake of the 7.9-magnitude earthquake that struck Sichuan province May 12.

Cyclone Nargis struck Myanmar (Burma) on May 3, killing at least 78,000 and leaving hundreds of thousands homeless. The country’s ruling military junta continues to resist most international assistance.

Franklin Graham, founder of the relief organization Samaritan’s Purse, was in China at the time the earthquake hit. His organization continues to collect supplies and plans to send them to the area by the end of the week.

Working with the China Association for International Friendly Contact, Samaritan’s Purse is sending rolls of plastic sheeting, water filtration units, hygiene packets, medical kits, blankets and other supplies.

Myanmar’s leaders continue to resist international assistance efforts. But as of May 19, some help had been accepted from the Baptist World Alliance and Samaritan’s Purse.

Graham’s organization was among the first non-government relief agencies allowed to send supplies to Myanmar. According to its website, one cargo-plane-load of supplies arrived from Thailand on May 14. Because of government restrictions, Samaritan’s Purse is working through local churches to get relief materials delivered.

Airlifted supplies include water purification kits, rolls of plastic for emergency shelters, emergency health kits, blankets, clothing and mosquito nets.

A Baptist World Alliance Rescue24 team was granted visas and has entered Myanmar. The team currently is stationed in Yangon, among the largest cities devastated by the cyclone. The team is working in five camps near the city, serving approximately 15,000 people.

According to news reports, the Asia Pacific Baptist Federation, a BWA affiliate, is organizing a meeting of national Baptist convention representatives and relief workers in Bangkok, Thailand, May 24 to discuss needs and ways in which to meet them.

BWA, through its relief arm, Baptist World Aid, expects to send a relief team to China by Thursday or Friday. According to the BWA website, volunteers from the United States -- North Carolina, Virginia and Texas -- and Singapore, Australia and Hungary are on standby to form additional teams. Members of Hungarian Baptist Aid are leading both teams.

According to a post on its website, the Southern Baptist Convention’s relief organization, Baptist Global Response, is hoping to have a team in China sometime during the week of May 19.

The organization sent five initial disaster-relief responders to Bangkok in the wake of the Myanmar storm.

American Baptists have given two $5,000 grants, one for each country, to assist with relief efforts.

Contributions for both countries can be made online at www.thefellowship.info/give (CBF); www.abc-oghs.org/give (American Baptist Churches, USA); www.bwanet.org/bwaid (Baptist World Alliance); www.baptistglobalresponse.com (SBC Baptist Global Response).

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Prestonwood minister resigns after arrest in online sex sting
By ABP staff

DALLAS (ABP) — An associate minister at a Dallas megachurch was arrested in Bryan, Texas, while trying to meet face to face with a “teen” he met online.

A minister to adults at Prestonwood Baptist Church, Joe Barron, 52, of Plano, a Dallas suburb, was arrested around noon May 15 and charged with solicitation of a minor, according to the City of Bryan Police Department. He has been released on $7,000 bond, the Dallas Morning News reported.

According to a police press release, Barron was caught as part of a police sting operation against online sexual predators. Barron had communicated with Bryan police officers for about two weeks, thinking he was chatting with a 13-year-old female. According to the report, the online chats were “sexually explicit in nature.”

On May 6, Barron arranged to meet the “girl” the following week in Bryan, about 200 miles south. Undercover police staked out the agreed upon location and arrested Barron when he arrived.

At the time of his arrest, “he said he was feeling guilt and shame and grief,” Sgt. Shane Bush, an officer with the department’s directed-deployment team, told news reporters.

Barron gave no indication in his online chats that he was a minister, Bryan police spokeswoman Lesley Malinak said.

Officers confiscated a web-cam and headset and condoms from Barron’s car. Bryan and Plano law enforcement took a desktop computer, two laptops and several computer disks and memory cards from the minister’s home.

According to the police report, Prestonwood Baptist cooperated by allowing officers access to Barron’s office computer.

Prestonwood pastor Jack Graham informed his congregation at a Saturday evening videotaped service that Barron had immediately resigned his position as minister to middle-aged married adults. One of 40 ministers, Barron had been on the church’s staff about 18 months.

“We are appalled and disgraced by this terrible action,” Graham said. “We have worked very, very hard to earn the trust of our congregation and our community…. We will continue to make it our highest priority … that our staff … will be of the highest character and calling.”

If convicted of the second-degree felony, Barron faces a possible 20-year prison sentence and a $10,000 fine.

Acting as a vice squad, the Bryan team has been in place since September 2006. They have made 12 arrests for online solicitation.

Accounts of sex abuse of minors and adults by Southern Baptist clergy have made national headlines in recent years, sparking widespread calls for reform -- so far unanswered.

The Journal of Pastoral Care reported in a 1993 survey that 14 percent of Southern Baptist senior pastors have engaged in “sexual behavior inappropriate for a minister.” Those statistics include sexual misconduct between adults. But 70 percent of reported sexual assaults involve minors, according to the victim-advocate group Darkness to Light, and an estimated 30 percent of child victims never report their abuse. Most abusers will have multiple victims, and serial abusers can have 40 to 400 in a lifetime.

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American Baptists launch fund to battle global food crisis
By ABP staff

VALLEY FORGE, Penn. (ABP) -- American Baptist Churches USA has launched a fund drive to provide money to help ministry partners in poor areas deal with the rising costs of basic foodstuffs.

ABC International Ministries started the Global Crisis Food Fund with $100,000. The missions agency contributed $50,000 of its resources, and the other $50,000 came from One Great Hour of Sharing, an offering conducted by the ABC World Relief Office.

“Places around the world where hunger has been a big problem, have now seen it become a bigger problem as food prices have increased dramatically” Reid Trulson, ABC International Ministries executive director, said, according to the American Baptist News Service.

“Our fund is a response to our partners and other Christian organizations who are on the frontlines of helping to feed the hungry and homeless every day. We want to help them so they don't have to cut back on basic staples their people need for survival,” he continued.

Half of the money will be granted immediately to the Thailand Burma Border Consortium, to help cover the rising cost of rice. That is the primary staple food given to hundreds of thousands of displaced people living in refugee camps in the region.

“The most recent report I saw shows that the Thailand Burma Border Consortium supplies all the food in nine camps. [They] still need about $7 million to avoid having to severely cut the food ration,” Duane Binkley, a missionary who works with refugees in Thailand and in the United States said. Some cuts have been made already, he added.

The remaining $50,000 will be available for partners to apply for grants. U.S. partners may apply through American Baptist National Ministries.

A $5,000 grant has been approved for Jean Rabel, a region in Haiti, where missionaries Kihomi and Madubiga Nzunga serve. According to Nzunga, families are reportedly selling their children in hopes that they will be able to eat and survive wherever they are taken.

Partners in the Philippines and North Korea have also applied.

The food crisis is blamed on many factors, such as the rising cost of oil, which increases transportation costs; government subsidies that have increased food costs in some countries; natural disasters and other ongoing crises.

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British Baptists to go to Jamaica with apology for slave trade
By ABP staff

DIDCOT, England (ABP) — A delegation of British Baptists is set to apologize, in person, to Jamaican Baptists for the trans-Atlantic slave trade.

During a May 22-29 stay, the delegation plans to meet with Jamaican Baptists and worship in their churches, as well as to see some of the locations tied to the history of the slave trade. Team members during two worship experiences with Jamaican Baptists May 25, the British representatives will apologize and present a plaque.

The trip follows the bicentennial commemoration of the passage of the 1807 act of the British Parliament that abolished that nation’s slave trade. Jamaica was a British colony where many slaves settled.

The Baptist Union of Great Britain instigated the trip after Baptist Union Council members passed a resolution of apology at their November session.

That decision was prompted, according to a release from the Baptist Union, by letters that appeared last year in the Baptist Times, a British Baptist newspaper. Several writers expressed disappointment that the British delegation failed to offer an apology, during last year’s Baptist World Alliance gathering in Ghana, to Ghanaian and other black Baptists. That nation, like other parts of West Africa, is where many of the slaves that British slave-traders sent to the New World originated.

Council members unanimously agreed to the resolution, which offers an “apology to God and to our brothers and sisters for all that has created and still perpetuates the hurt which originated from the horror of slavery.”

Members of the delegation to Jamaica include Baptist Union General Secretary Jonathan Edwards; Alistair Brown, director of the union’s missionary arm, BMS World Mission; Wale Hudson-Roberts, racial-justice coordinator for the union; and Pat White, a member of Brixton Baptist Church, who will represent the London Baptist Association and the British Baptist Black and Ethnic Minority Ministers’ Forum and churches.

“The decision to offer an apology for the trans-Atlantic slave trade was an historic moment for the Baptist Union Council,” Edwards said, in the release. “In the statement that was agreed at that meeting, it was clearly stated that this was just the start of a journey. Taking the apology to Jamaica in person seemed to many people a vital step on the journey, and it is my privilege to participate in it.”

Brown noted, “Going to Jamaica is very important for me. BMS worked in Jamaica among slaves and stood with them against slavery. But Baptists in Britain were slower than we should have been to take a decisive stand, and I’m very sorry about that. It matters now to stand shoulder to shoulder with Caribbean sisters and brothers, acknowledging failures and rejoicing in Christian fellowship.”

Jamaica Baptist Union General Secretary Karl Johnson is looking forward to meeting the delegation. “The Jamaica Baptist Union received the news of the apology made by our sisters and brothers in the Baptist family in the United Kingdom with openness, humility and appreciation,” he said.

“For years we have felt that such an action was necessary and have indeed encouraged them to consider [the] same. It therefore goes without saying that we are grateful to God that in God’s own time and in the lifetime of some who were part of the original request in 1994, it has come to pass.”

Another Baptist of African descent hailed the development. As members of the body of Christ, we treasure the solidarity we have in Christ and we know how to respond when fellow Christians admit to wrongdoing, if even by their forebears,” said Baptist World Alliance General Secretary Neville Callam, who is from Jamaica.

”We know the joy and the blessing of forgiveness. With this, true healing is possible and liberation becomes the common gain of everyone involved.”

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