Associated Baptist Press - 7/17/2008

Associated Baptist Press
July 17, 2008 · (08-72)

Greg Warner, Executive Editor
Robert Marus, News Editor/Washington Bureau Chief

In this issue
Baptist help valuable, recovery slow in Burma, China
Baylor students cycle to Alaska for suicide awareness
Lilly provides $1M grant for CBF 'ecosystem' initiative
Opinion: The path to discernment on homosexuality
Correction

Baptist help valuable, recovery slow in Burma, China
By Rachel Mehlhaff & Vicki Brown

FALLS CHURCH, Va. (ABP) -- Two months after Cyclone Nargis devastated Burma and a month after a major earthquake shattered much of China's Sichuan province, Baptist-led recovery efforts continue -- but conditions remain desperate in many places.

The situation is particularly dire in Burma, according to workers with Baptist World Aid. The organization is the relief and development arm of the Baptist World Alliance.

Since May 3, Rescue24, a search, rescue and relief effort by BWAid, has reported "huge unmet basic needs for the victims of the disaster" in Burma, which is also known as Myanmar.

"Many families are living under makeshift shelter ... made of clothes, branches of trees or even under debris," BWAid Rescue24 workers noted, in a 25-page report to the BWA.

The most urgent needs are food, drinking water, hygiene products, mental-health support, shelter and livelihood support, according to the report. Most of the water sources were destroyed or contaminated, and people have no means to store drinking water.

Getting aid into the disaster zones has been difficult -- due to the mountainous terrain of the affected region in China and the reported intransigence of the Myanmar government. Burmese authorities have confiscated some relief funds and have refused to provide travel visas for foreign aid workers, said David Harding, Disaster Response Coordinator for the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship.

But organizations such as the American Baptist Churches USA are finding ways around this problem. The ABC had affiliated workers in place in Burma before the storm. American Baptists are working in partnership with the Myanmar Baptist Convention. "We respond to their needs versus telling them what to do," said Lisa Rothenberger, ABC's world-relief officer, adding that the Myanmar convention is "very grateful and appreciative of our partnership."

CBF is also channeling relief efforts through its existing partnerships with Myanmar Baptists. "We are very pleased with the partnership that we have," Harding said. The goal is to empower the local churches in the country to meet the human needs. But much will be asked of Burmese Baptists as recovery effort drag on. Burma's rainy season, which began in May and lasts until November, is worsening living conditions for many cyclone survivors.

BWAid personnel continue to work closely with the Myanmar convention's Nargis Relief and Rehabilitation Central Committee. The convention daily sends food, potable water, clothing, mosquito nets and medicine to almost 100,000 survivors in the Irrawaddy River Delta, the region hit hardest by the storm.

Noting the number of Burmese left homeless and jobless by the cyclone, the convention's Women's Department plans to begin vocational training in some of the hardest-hit areas.

Baptist Global Relief, the Southern Baptist relief arm, continues efforts in the region as well. Like their international Baptist counterparts, they are working primarily through Burmese nationals via the Myanmar Christian Coalition for Cyclone Relief, a multi-denominational relief effort.

The coalition has developed a six-point plan for responding to the disaster. It includes reconstructing churches, providing food kits, repairing and replacing housing, providing family kits of essential items, providing school supplies and uniforms, and assisting farmers and business people to rebuild their livelihoods.

BGR has committed more than $1 million of its world-hunger and relief funds to Myanmar recovery. It has been hard, but the organization has "been able to release a number of projects and funds," said Jeff Palmer, the group's executive director.

But the needs remain immense. In Burma, casualty estimates vary widely, with figures ranging from 134,000 to near 1 million dead. Several million more are estimated to have suffered directly from the cyclone.

Many of those were Baptists. According to the Myanmar convention, more than 10,000 Burmese Baptists have been confirmed dead, and more than 94,000 were severely affected by Nargis.

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Baylor students cycle to Alaska for suicide awareness
~By Lee Ann Marcel

WACO, Texas (ABP) -- As of July 15, five Baylor University students were nearing the end of a 4,500-mile bicycle journey from Texas to Alaska in an effort to raise awareness about the scourge of suicide in their age range.

Suicide is the third-leading cause of death of Americans between the ages of 15 to 24, behind homicides and accidents, according to the American Association of Suicidology.

Problem brought home

Those statistics came uncomfortably close to reality for Justin Brown, Steve Zimmerman, Andi Nakasone, Kyle Ferguson, and Nathan Lloyd.

Last November, the five students were shocked when a friend confessed that he had tried to suffocate himself. He told them he had attempted to fasten a plastic bag over his head to end it all.

"We looked at each other with our hearts beating in our chests -- life pulsing in our veins -- and wanting to give him the same feeling," Brown, co-founder of the Alive Campaign, wrote on the group's website. "In order to lighten up the mood, one of us said, 'You know, if you're going to kill yourself, you might as well do something crazy.'"

They joked about climbing Mount Everest or throwing a water balloon at the dean of the college. Then someone nonchalantly mentioned biking across country. "Something happened and the guys latched onto it," Brown said.

Attacking the issue

Rather than laughing off the unthinkable, the students attacked the issue head-on. The group vowed that they would start a group on Facebook, the popular social-networking website. When the site reached 250,000 friends, they vowed, they would do something outlandish to draw the public's attention to the epidemic plaguing America's youth.

The group started with 100 members at 8:20 p.m. Nov. 4, 2007. They hit the goal of 250,000 members at 7:15 p.m. on Nov. 17.

"We started seeing numbers shoot up, and we didn't know what to do. We thought we were going to do this next year, but when the money started coming in, we knew we had to do it this year," Brown said, in a telephone interview. "We weren't cyclists, we weren't in shape, but we were about to set forth on a journey. We prayed, 'If you [God] wanted us to do this, you [have] got to meet us halfway.'"

Thus, the Alive Campaign launched.

The students began to prepare for the grueling trip, cutting sodas from their diets and biking in a local park. "I was always that nagging person, telling them to be practicing," Brown said.

The team contacted alumni of the Texas Baptist school to ask for their participation. Several offered their homes as pit stops for sleep and rest along the route.

The trip and its purpose caught local and national media attention. On March 11, the campaign appeared on MTV's collegiate network. The students hosted the channel's music video show, "Dean's List," and spoke out against suicide.

Despite the exposure, though, they were having some trouble with fund-raising.

"It was two weeks before we were going to leave and we still didn't have enough money," Brown said. "But we decided that we still needed to do this. So we still planned on going, even if we didn't have the money."

But then two unexpected donors chipped in, including the Jed Foundation, the nation's leading organization working to prevent suicide and promote mental health among college students.

Life-changing trip

On May 15, four of the original students left Baylor's Waco, Texas, campus on a journey to help change attitudes about life and promote suicide prevention.

The group also recruited Baylor film student Alyson Erikson, who is filming a documentary about the trip. Although the team asked her to join only a month before they were scheduled to leave, Erikson felt the urgency to support the cause. She e-mailed her mother that "she was going to do this no matter what."

"She has been a great addition to the team. Before we were just four guys, but now girls are able to relate to her better than we could," Brown said.

The trip hasn't been easy. "Every day has a new challenge," Brown said, "So we take it one day at a time. If you keep looking to the end, it's easy to get overwhelmed."

The team gets on the road each day around 5 a.m. The students learned a lesson about the need for getting started in the wee hours near the beginning of the trip, in Abilene, Texas. That particular morning, they decided to sleep in a little later than normal.

"We ended up biking nine hours in record high temperature and strong winds," Brown said.

Their biggest challenge is staying healthy and hydrated each day because of the limited water supply they can carry, as well as their lack of an ability to carry nutritious food supplies. "The only food that was available was fast food, which isn't good," Brown said.

Because of the strenuous work, their knees have been their primary source of complaint. Fortunately, only one member has been hurt so far. Ferguson badly strained a muscle, forcing him to follow the rest of the team in a van until he recovered.

Other challenges include finding a place to do laundry and getting a sufficient cell-phone signal to contact parents.

"We call our moms every time we stop," Brown said. "Sometimes we have to get them to write our blogs for us because we can't get Internet reception."

Through aching knees and a few popped tires, the team is getting the hang of things.

"We are just learning along the way, doing things on the fly," Brown said. "It isn't recommended, but it's got us this far."

Education the key

"Early in the process of organizing Alive, the students as a group took it upon themselves to learn as much as they could about the topic of suicide in order to be better informed advocates for those who had no champion," noted Susan Matlock-Hetzel, a staff psychologist with the Baylor Counseling Center, in a statement. "As they increased their knowledge, where others would have been overwhelmed with the enormity of the issue, these young leaders only became more inspired to make a significant contribution in giving hope to the hopeless."

The students became QPR (which stands for "Question, Persuade and Refer") Certified Gatekeepers. The course teaches participants how to question a peer about suicidal thoughts, persuade them to stay alive, and how and where to refer them to professional help.

"It has been my honor to have been a small part of their journey thus far," Matlock-Hetzel added. "I have seen them courageously, yet fully aware of the enormity of the task, move forward with bringing attention to an issue that is crippling an entire generation. I have seen them embody leadership, honor and commitment with grace and humility."

On their trek, team members speak to various schools and churches to help open the eyes of students who suffer from suicidal thoughts.

"They open up their hearts to us. We have heard stories from 12- to 15-year-olds wanting to commit suicide. They share [with team members] the deepest things friends don't even know," Brown said.

"We are the richest country in the world, but studies have shown we are the saddest and most depressed," Brown wrote on the Alive Campaign Web site. "We are lonely with our riches, following the American dream. Go to school, get a job, get married, have kids and repeat. The illusion that our lives have limits causes our massive dependency on drugs, materialism and lusts. We are a society with nothing new to give. This trek, this adventure to Alaska, is to prove that humans don't have limits. You can do anything you set your mind to. Who says you need to go to college to be happy? Who made it the law that you need to be rich? He [their friend] was telling us that he had nothing to live for, so we gave him something to live for."

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Lilly provides $1M grant for CBF 'ecosystem' initiative
By ABP staff

ATLANTA (ABP) -- The Cooperative Baptist Fellowship will create a leadership "ecosystem" during the next three years with a $1 million grant from the Lilly Endowment.

The ecosystem, as the grant describes it, will focus on two initiatives. One will be aimed at youth and college students, while the other will bring theological educators and pastors together in dialogue.

The program is aimed at helping young people discover their vocational calling. "Our focus all along has been to discover, develop and nurture leaders," said Terry Hamrick, CBF's coordinator of leadership development, in a press release. "This grant is strategic in that we will be able to call young people out, improve their theological education experience and create positive ministry experiences in the local church."

CBF will implement the new program with existing staff and partners, adding more than $300,000 of its funds to the grant. Plans call for the program to begin to take shape this fall.

"Lilly Endowment is very pleased that many institutions and leaders affiliated with the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship -- pastors and congregations, leaders of seminaries and colleges and many young people preparing to become pastors -- have been working together so closely to create an environment in which churches can flourish," said Craig Dykstra, the endowment's senior vice president for religion.

Called "Enhancing the Capacity of Missional Congregations to Serve as Agents of Vocational Discovery," the youth and college initiative includes four strategies. The initiative will create a youth-ministry network, establish a collegiate network and fund congregation-based internships for college students. It also will convene a summit for college and graduate students involved in summer ministry, such as CBF's Student.Go volunteers, Passport camp staff, interns for the Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty and others.

The initiative to bring churches and theological educators together is called "Serving as a Catalyst for a New Community of Theological Schools and Congregations." Plans call for instituting a pastors and scholars studio that would bring together 20 professors and 20 pastors to improve the process of forming leaders.

The initiative also will create a supervised ministry network of faculty and staff from theological schools and pastors of churches hosting seminary students in internship-type ministry positions. In addition, it will establish a network for Baptist students in doctoral programs.

"We're trying to help supervised ministry go from being an 'Oh, no, I've got to have this to graduate' to helping students utilize the experience to better set their vocational direction," Hamrick said. "The new networks will be places for us to begin a conversation with colleges and universities to have a relationship. That is such an important time for vocational decisions."

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Opinion: The path to discernment on homosexuality
By David Gushee

(ABP) -- I have sought to suggest in a handful of columns in recent months that a rethinking of the church's stance on homosexuality is needed.

Reading in the scholarly literature, one sees that some very fine Christian minds are at work on this issue. Moving well beyond old clichés and prejudices, these scholars, many of them quite conservative both methodologically and theologically, are wrestling with the idea that Christians may need to revise centuries-old teaching about homosexuality.

Some of these thinkers are concluding that in fact a revision is needed; others are not persuaded. It would be a significant ethical-doctrinal change, though such change is not unprecedented in Christian history (e.g., slavery, segregation, sexism, state killing in the name of Christ, etc.).

In reflecting and dialoguing about this issue, certain things have become clear to me.

It is clear that insofar as "Christianity" or "the church" is primarily associated in people's minds with rejection of homosexuals, as poll data shows, our mission as witnesses to the love of God in Jesus Christ has been badly damaged. There are very good missional reasons for Christian leaders to back off of public crusades against gay rights, whatever one may think about the merits of the particular issues under discussion. We must be known for what (who) we are for, not what (who) we are against.

Secondly, it is clear that an uneasy "don't ask, don't tell" ethos still pervades many (especially big city) churches when it comes to the homosexuals in our midst. Most Christians have little taste for outing and expelling folks who want to attend our churches that we think may be homosexual. Most homosexuals have little interest in provoking a confrontation and just want to attend a church that meets their needs. Nobody asks, so nobody has to tell. Sometimes situations will emerge in which "don't ask, don't tell" is not adequate. But the issue is sufficiently explosive that most ministers will do all that they can to avoid reaching that point.

It is clear that some Christian (and non-Christian) homosexuals, led by a cadre of committed activists (as happens with any movement for social change), will continue to ask the church to rethink its posture on this issue. Some are okay with baby steps and incremental change; others want much more, and want it now. Their strategies differ. Some focus on legal issues and others on the internal teaching of the church. Some appeal to basic values such as fairness and justice, others to our compassion for the suffering of homosexuals, especially young people driven by family and church into self-loathing. All are asking us to offer within our churches a choice for gays other than the closet, lifetime celibacy, change therapy, or finally rejection.

It is clear that our churches and their leaders are rarely prepared to offer a serious discussion of the theological, biblical, scientific and ethical issues that are at stake in the contemporary homosexuality debate. That's because we are not prepared to offer serious discussion of theological, biblical, scientific and ethical issues of any type. We are not ready, for example, to discuss the normative significance of male-female sexual complementarity, the relative importance of the various "ends" of sexual intercourse, or the stubborn persistence of creational sexual orientation diversity and how that relates to cultural patterns and norms.

It's very clear that most of our churches are not getting the intellectual and spiritual leadership they need from their pastors. The leaders don't lead the people in thinking theologically. And as for the Christian education program, let's just say that Sunday school often is a profound waste of time. Some of the dumbest and meanest things that anyone says about homosexuality-and a lot of other issues-are said in church. This is truly scandalous.

In discussions recently with a number of pastors, it has become clear to me that many of our churches are losing the will to fight the abandonment of basic Christian sexual morality among our people. Premarital sex among our youth is rampant. Cohabitation has become routine. Our marriages are collapsing at an epic rate. Multiple remarriages happen among us regularly and without reflection or resistance. Children get swept along as the detritus of our mix-and-match families. Ministers just try to be of some help amidst the chaos, while hanging on to their always fragile jobs.

A church that is in the process of abandoning basic tenets of Christian sexual morality has no credibility as a moral voice in culture. And, ironically, it has no credibility if it decides to abandon the church's traditional stance on homosexuality.

One can imagine a church in which the classic understanding of Christian sexual morality has survived and even flourished. Ministers teach that marriage remains normative and the only legitimate locus for sexual expression, and the people still believe it. Celibacy is understood to be both possible and expected for the unmarried, partly because it is understood that sex is not life's highest good. Faithfulness within marriage is strongly emphasized and rarely violated. Divorce is treated as a rare, tragic exception to the covenant of marriage, and not one in a hundred Christian marriages ends in divorce. Community life is strong and nurturing, contributing greatly to the emotional well being of everyone in the church, both single and married.

That kind of Christian community might one day be in a position to consider the pleas of homosexual believers that have formed families and seek inclusion into the community of those whose permanent, covenanted relationships receive the church's recognition and support. This kind of church might have the capacity to reflect on the idea that even though God's design for sexuality in creation was heterosexual, in our fallen world a tiny minority among us is, mysteriously, is just not wired that way, and needs some structure in which their relationships and families can be properly formed and sustained (if they are not called to the celibate path).

But in churches and denominations in which classic Christian sexual morality has officially or unofficially collapsed, the abandonment of ancient moral convictions related to homosexuality offers no positive way forward. It is just one more abandonment, one more surrender to culture, which makes it nearly impossible for more conservative churches (Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, charismatic/Pentecostal, black and Hispanic, evangelical Protestant) to even consider the possibility that the issue needs rethinking.

We need a careful, unhurried process of Christian discernment related to scriptural teachings, our theological understanding of homosexuality, and church practices in relation to homosexuals, undertaken by those who are committed unequivocally to every (other) dimension of the classic Christian sexual ethic -- in which sex belongs within marriage (lifetime, exclusive, covenant partnerships), marriage is for life, and the church is a disciplined countercultural community in which these norms are both taught and lived.

The question on the table would be whether Christian homosexuals who live according to these norms should be treated as faithful members of the Christian community.

Future columns will offer some discussion of the basic tenets of Christian sexual ethics, such as celibacy and lifetime marriage, and what must be done to preserve them before they are entirely washed out of church life by the waves of a sexually licentious culture. These are actually the most important issues in sexual ethics - not homosexuality - because they pertain mainly to the 98 percent of us who are heterosexuals and who, on the whole, are not doing well in this area at all.

-- David Gushee is distinguished university professor of Christian ethics at Mercer University. www.davidpgushee.com










Correction
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There were errors in the 9th and 10th paragraphs of the July 10 ABP story, "Economy may affect churches in ways other than giving." Please replace them with the following paragraphs:

It also looked at whether church receipts were meeting pastors' expectations. Half of the respondents said church receipts were about what they expected. Twenty-three percent said they were more than expected and 24 percent said their congregation's income was not meeting expectations.

McConnell said the share of those not satisfied with their church's income is a normal percentage from what he has seen in surveys conducted in non-recession years.

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