Associated Baptist Press - 9/24/2008

Associated Baptist Press
September 24, 2008 · (08-91)

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

In this issue
Cecil Sherman, in hospital, gets ABP freedom award
Wyatts' ministry to internationals broadens with move to Ottawa
Bilingual resources engage Korean preschoolers, children in missions

Cecil Sherman, in hospital, gets ABP freedom award
By Robert Marus

HOUSTON (ABP) -- Associated Baptist Press has paid homage to moderate Baptist pioneer Cecil Sherman even as the veteran of Baptist internal fighting faces a different sort of battle.

ABP board member Marv Knox presented Sherman with the news agency's Religious Freedom Award Sept. 10.

Although usually presented at a banquet in conjunction with an ABP directors' meeting, the award was given to Sherman in his room at Houston's M.D. Anderson Cancer Center, where he is undergoing treatment for acute myeloid leukemia, an aggressive form of cancer.

The struggle against the deadly disease is one of many challenges he has met in his 80 years.

Jackie Moore, who chairs the ABP board's awards committee and accompanied Knox to Houston, said directors had decided long ago to present the award to Sherman for his defense of religious freedom and freedom of the press. But his hospitalization caused them to expedite the event, in hopes that Sherman would be in good enough health by ABP's April board meeting to be honored with the traditional banquet tribute.

"Several on our board suggested that we present it to him now as a way of expressing our love and encouragement to a true hero of our Baptist faith," she said, in a Sept. 24 e-mail message. "So many of those giants of the faith have gone on to heaven, and I believe we had a great cloud of witnesses surrounding us in that hospital room and joining us in celebrating this faithful servant. Dr. Sherman has spent a lifetime loving people through his pastoral ministry, his writing and his legacy of truth even when it meant personal sacrifice."

Sherman, a prominent figure in moderate Baptist life over the last half-century, served as the first national coordinator -- or chief executive -- of the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship. He helped shape the moderate organization, founded in 1991 after fundamentalists wrested control of the Southern Baptist Convention from their more theologically centrist brethren.

Sherman is renowned for going toe-to-toe with fundamentalist Adrian Rogers during theological debates when both served on the SBC Peace Committee in the mid-1980s. The panel worked -- ultimately unsuccessfully -- to resolve the moderate-conservative dispute that had dissolved into open conflict within the denomination in 1979.

"This award allows me to join a company of extraordinary Baptists, and I am honored to be in their company," he said, in a statement conveyed by his daughter, Eugenia Brown. "For Marv Knox to fly to Houston to make this presentation was an extraordinary kindness. I am grateful to the directors of ABP for this honor."

Knox, editor of the Texas Baptist Standard, wrote a column describing the presentation in Sherman's hotel room as a moment in which he felt as though he was "on holy ground."

"Cecil is a living legend among Baptists," Knox said, in a telephone interview Sept. 23. "And he's embodied in his life and in his ministry ... the ideals of this award and, really, what ABP stands for in terms of religious freedom."

ABP "seeks to promote religious freedom ... at its founding and throughout the years and has sought to tell people the truth about issues of faith and life and particularly the Baptist denomination, and Cecil was certainly a role model for all of us, even though he was not a journalist," Knox continued. "He was a pastor and a denominational leader and now an elder statesman. And he was always courageous to speak the truth. And we all appreciate what he's done to not take freedom lightly, but to value it and treasure it and pass it along to future generations by being a good steward."

Before helping found CBF, Sherman served as pastor of several prominent congregations, including Broadway Baptist Church in his native Fort Worth, Texas, and First Baptist Church in Asheville, N.C. After retiring from CBF in 1996, he served as a professor and interim pastor. He was teaching at the Baptist Theological Seminary at Richmond, Va., and serving as pastor of Westover Baptist Church in Richmond, when doctors discovered his leukemia.

Sherman's wife, Dot, was diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease several years ago. She died Aug. 1.

Brown said Sept. 24 that her father was discharged from M.D. Anderson Sept. 22 and that his prognosis was much better than when his cancer was initially diagnosed. Sherman has been undergoing experimental drug treatments at the hospital, which is highly regarded for cutting-edge cancer research.

"In July, he was given about 3 months to live," she said. "But now, as he has responded so well to the chemo, the docs clearly think that he will live a good bit longer than that."

Sherman now lives in an apartment provided by Houston's South Main Baptist Church. Brown, who lives in Madison, Wis., has been caring for him with the help of family friends. If his condition continues to improve, she noted, he may move back to Richmond.

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Wyatts' ministry to internationals broadens with move to Ottawa
By Carla Wynn Davis

ATLANTA (ABP) -- A peaceful night's sleep for a refugee whose run from violence and danger has ended, the sound of fellowship as a Christian connects with a lonely international student and the joy of a congregation that rediscovers its mission and purpose in the world -- this is the stuff of Kim and Marc Wyatt's ministry.

For more than a decade, the Wyatts, who now serve as Cooperative Baptist Fellowship field personnel in Canada, have ministered among internationals, including students, immigrants and refugees.

They began in Thailand, where first-hand experience as internationals helped them understand those with whom they now minister. In 1998, they began serving at Matthew House, a shelter in Toronto that has helped refugees from more than 75 countries resettle in Canada.

As more individuals and churches became involved, the Wyatts widened their ministry scope to include meeting needs of other internationals, such as the large population of immigrants and international students living in cities near the Canadian-American border and in Montreal, Canada's second-largest city and the second-largest French-speaking city in the world (after Paris).

Last year the Wyatts and children Rebecca, 16, and Jon Marc, 13, moved to Ottawa -- Canada's capital -- to be more centrally located to the mostly French-speaking congregations with which they partner.

The Wyatts are helping Eastview Baptist Church, a Portuguese and English-speaking congregation, rediscover its missional presence. The church has connected with refugees such as Pierre (whose last name is not being used for security purposes) and his wife. Originally from war-torn Congo, the couple recently moved to Ottawa after years in Hong Kong, where they constantly feared deportation.

The Wyatts have helped network churches and ministry organizations to assist the couple with furniture, employment, friendship and a baby shower to celebrate the birth of the couple's first child.

"How wonderful it is when churches ... community leaders and municipal service providers ... work together for the common good, blessing immigrant families and communities," Kim Wyatt said.

The Wyatts have started ministering among a growing population of refugees from Haiti. These refugees journey to the United States and, feeling the risk of deportation, flee north to large Canadian cities, where their native French language is more commonly spoken.

In Ottawa, Toronto and Montreal, the Wyatts partner with Baptist churches to create a refugee ministry that includes emergency housing assistance, free food and clothing, counseling services, immigration assistance and orientation to the country.

"Our work is to seek, discover, advance, encourage and bless the work [of Canadian churches] among internationals in their local neighborhoods," Marc Wyatt said.

Ottawa is home to immigrants, refugees and international students from approximately 150 countries. The doors for ministry are open, and through partnerships the Wyatts believe that more people can be reached with the presence of Christ.

"We work hard to include others with sharing the Great Commission of Jesus," Marc Wyatt said. "Much more is possible together than separately."

While most of their work is with Canadian churches, some U.S. congregations also partner with the Wyatts. First Baptist Church in Reidsville, N.C., added sending an annual summer missionary to Canada to the prayer and financial support they were already giving to the Wyatts. Other supporting churches include First Baptist Church in Danville, Va., and Monument Heights Baptist Church in Richmond, Va.

"God is sending his church to so love the world, to share and demonstrate the gospel to everyone, everywhere," Marc Wyatt said. "God is bringing those he loves into proximity of his people, his church, his good news. Missionaries and churches are needed to send, support, pray for and welcome those [internationals] God is literally bringing to us."

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Bilingual resources engage Korean preschoolers, children in missions
By Julie Walters

BIRMINGHAM, Ala. (ABP) -- Korean preschoolers and children now will learn about Baptist mission efforts around the world thanks to an agreement between national Woman's Missionary Union and its Texas affiliate.

Leaders of the two WMU organizations signed a three-year agreement Aug. 28 to formalize their commitment to provide educational materials.

The project began in 2007 as a pilot between the state and national bodies to meet a specific need in Korean Baptist churches, according to Carol Causey, director of national WMU's missions-resource center. The churches needed missions-education materials written in both Korean and English for preschoolers and children.

Angela Kim, Korean consultant for both WMU organizations and editorial coordinator for the Korean curriculum project, presented the proposal along with Carolyn Porterfield, Texas WMU's former executive director-treasurer.

Mission Friends and Children in Action organizations in Korean churches have grown exponentially in the year since the materials became available.

"Most adults in cultural churches in North America speak their own languages," Kim said. "However, they are limited in English-speaking teachers -- and usually the first-generation adults with limited English comprehension have to prepare the lessons using English curriculum. WMU has been sensitive to this need and responded with materials for the first-generation teachers teaching the second generation using both their own language and English."

Under the agreement, Texas WMU will handle logistics, including layout and design, printing and distribution, and the national body will provide expertise in curriculum development and will help fund the project.

Kim, who also serves as WMU committee chair for the Council of Korean Southern Baptist Churches in America, added, "Most Korean churches are very much interested in missions today, but they have not had the framework for on-going missions education or materials where the children can grow learning about missions. The concept is new to them and has been very well received."
Causey said that, in addition to preschool and children's materials, bilingual resources for Korean adults are being developed.

"National WMU remains committed to expanding missions involvement with emerging audiences, and this project provides us with a good model for other bilingual resources," Causey said. "Our hope is that other states will join us with similar projects to engage a larger multicultural audience in missions."

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