Associated Baptist Press
November 17, 2008 · (08-111)
David Wilkinson, Executive Director
Robert Marus, Acting Managing Editor/Washington Bureau Chief
Bob Allen, Senior Writer
In this issue
Ga. Baptists reject church with woman pastor (687 words)
American Baptist mission agency faces budget shortfall (389 words)
Va. Baptists approve scaled-back budget, hear Campolo's appeal (732 words)
Azerbaijani pastor on trial released to house arrest (301 words)
Ga. Baptists reject church with woman pastor
By Bob Allen (687 words)
JONESBORO, Ga. (ABP) -- The Georgia Baptist Convention has decided to refuse gifts from a historic member church that last year called a woman as pastor.
Messengers to the Nov. 9-11 annual meeting approved a policy change authorizing convention leaders to decline funds from churches "not in cooperation and harmony with the approved work and purpose" of the convention.
A report of an administrative committee recommending the change said it was proposed "as a result of questions raised regarding First Baptist Church of Decatur, who has a woman as senior pastor."
The Georgia Baptist Convention defines membership as "messengers from cooperating Baptist churches." A cooperating church is one that is in "harmony and cooperation with the work and purpose" of the convention.
But the new financial policy for the first time appears to tie "harmony and cooperation" with whether a church agrees with the 2000 Baptist Faith & Message. The revision of the Southern Baptist Convention's confessional document includes the statement, "While both men and women are gifted for service in the church, the office of pastor is limited to men as qualified by Scripture."
"Our main mission at FBC Decatur is to love God and to connect as many men, women, teenagers and children as possible with God's love for them in Christ," said Julie Pennington-Russell, who took over as pastor of the church in 2007. "I guess the Georgia Baptist Convention will need to decide whether or not this is in harmony with their own mission."
Pennington-Russell said the church has been connected with the Georgia Baptist Convention and the national Southern Baptist Convention for 146 years. The last two decades it has affiliated primarily with the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship, a moderate breakaway group formed in 1991, but a number of members -- many of them senior adults -- remain connected to the SBC and describe themselves as Southern Baptists.
Pennington-Russell said it never felt important to the church to "draw a line in the sand" over the issue of affiliation.
She said the main impact on the church would be that "some members of our church who have faithfully supported Southern Baptist ministries and missionaries through the years -- often with money given from their monthly Social Security checks -- will have to be told that the Georgia Baptist Convention doesn't welcome their support any longer."
Prior to moving to the Decatur church, Pennington-Russell was pastor at Calvary Baptist Church in Waco, Texas, and Nineteenth Avenue Baptist Church in San Francisco. She is a graduate of Golden Gate Baptist Theological Seminary and earned a doctor of ministry degree at Baylor University's George W. Truett Baptist Theological Seminary.
She was a featured preacher at the New Baptist Covenant Celebration in January, a gathering of more than 30 racially, geographically and theologically diverse Baptist groups in North America.
First Baptist Church of Decatur reportedly gave about $10,000 in 2007 through the Cooperative Program, a unified budget that supports both the Georgia Baptist Convention and Southern Baptist Convention.
Pennington-Russell said she heard a couple of months ago that something was in the works about withdrawing fellowship from the church, and she was surprised that no one from the Georgia Baptist Convention contacted her about it.
"First Baptist Church of Decatur has been affiliated with the GBC since our beginnings in 1862," she said. "Pastors and lay leaders of our church have played significant leadership roles along the way, and FBC Decatur has given several million dollars to Southern Baptist efforts through the years. I assumed that a 146-year relationship was worth, at very least, a personal conversation."
The new Georgia Baptist policy also addresses concerns over acceptance of funds and property that raise the risk of liability, involve donor restrictions not in line with convention priorities or reasons "not otherwise in the best interest of the convention."
Robert White, executive director of the Georgia Baptist Convention, told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution the policy would not be enforced against churches that call women as deacons or members of their ministerial staff other than pastor but would give convention leaders discretion to refuse gifts from questionable sources, like alcohol distributors.
Bob Allen (bob@abpnews.com) is senior writer for Associated Baptist Press.
American Baptist mission agency faces budget shortfall
By Bob Allen (389 words)
KING OF PRUSSIA, Pa. (ABP) -- The board of American Baptists' National Ministries met Nov. 12-13 to consider cuts to cover a $1 million gap between the organization's income and expenses.
According to American Baptist News Service, National Ministries Executive Director Aidsand Wright-Riggins attributed a continuing decline in mission giving to "job losses, home foreclosures and a decline in personal-investment wealth" resulting from a bad national economy.
Michaele Birdsall, National Ministries' treasurer and CFO, said the organization is "not in financial crisis" but cautioned that continuing to rely on unrestricted reserve funds to balance the budget is "unsustainable."
"National Ministries is very strong financially," Birdsall said. "We are in a position to look ahead and see the warning signs -- and start taking some strategic action and making some difficult choices now -- so that, in the next several years, we don't reach a crisis point."
Birdsall said National Ministries must take immediate steps to increase income and reduce expenses. However, given the poor economy, results may not be apparent before 2010.
Leaders hope to develop a plan to bring expenses in line with income within three to five years without tapping reserve funds.
"As stewards of this organization, as we look at the generations that will come behind us, we want to leave them with a financially strong organization similar to how we found it when we came," Birdsall said.
National Ministries has responsibility for the evangelism, social-justice, discipleship and mission work of the American Baptist Churches USA. The organization works with more than 1,300 mission partners who minister as chaplains and pastoral counselors, refugee sponsors, directors of Christian centers, volunteers and church planters across the United States and Puerto Rico.
American Baptists aren't the only missionary-sending group facing financial challenges. The International Mission Board of the Southern Baptist Convention heard finance reports that a press released termed "cautionary."
Meeting Nov. 10-11 in Houston, IMB trustees approved a budget that does not allow any increase in the size of the agency's missionary force. According to Baptist Press, the SBC's news arm, a 2009 budget of nearly $320 million is about $15 million larger than expenditures in 2008, but most of the increase is due to rising costs of keeping missionaries on the field. Southern Baptists expect to appoint enough international missionaries to replace those that leave by attrition.
Bob Allen (bob@abpnews.com) is senior writer for Associated Baptist Press.
Va. Baptists approve scaled-back budget, hear Campolo's appeal
By Robert Dilday (732 words)
ROANOKE, Va. (ABP) -- The Baptist General Association of Virginia, acknowledging an uncertain economic environment, approved a reduced budget for 2009 during a quiet annual meeting that drew about 1,200 people.
About the only fireworks during the Nov. 11-12 meeting in Roanoke were provided by featured speaker Tony Campolo, who spoke out against California's recently passed ban on same-sex marriage.
Messengers also elected a retired public-school administrator as president and adopted constitutional amendments that increase the amount of contributions necessary for churches to affiliate with the BGAV.
The 2009 budget of $13.8 million is $560,000 less than this year's $14,360,000 total. Tom McCann, who chairs the BGAV budget committee, said officials project 2008 receipts will be lower than this year's expected revenue.
"It's not rational to propose a budget that is more than we're actually receiving right now," McCann said.
Jeff Bloomer, a member of Culpeper (Va.) Baptist Church, was elected president without opposition. Bloomer, who had been serving as first vice president, has been an administrator for more than 40 years in Virginia's public schools and colleges.
Tim Madison, pastor of Madison Heights (Va.) Baptist Church, was elected first vice president and Richard Childress, pastor of Franklin (Va.) Baptist Church, second vice president. Fred Anderson, executive director of the Virginia Baptist Historical Society, was elected to his 28th term as BGAV's clerk.
The constitutional changes establish new financial criteria for affiliation, requiring a minimum annual contribution of $500 from every member church. Previously a contribution of any amount would qualify a church for membership and allow it two representatives, or messengers, at the annual meeting. The changes also increase the amounts necessary to receive additional messengers, up to a total of 15.
Dick Bidwell, the BGAV parliamentarian who presented the constitutional changes, said the increases are necessary because of the growing costs of providing services to affiliated churches. He noted the BGAV supplements churches' ministerial pension plans at about $300 annually per minister. In addition, the Virginia Baptist Mission Board each year distributes about $360 in resources and other information to every church, he said.
Bidwell said that 200 of the BGAV's 1,400 churches contributed less than $500 in 2007, and another 199 churches gave nothing. "That's the rationale for this amendment," he said.
They also heard impassioned addresses from Campolo, the popular Baptist author, speaker and sociologist. He interpreted the meeting's theme of "Who Is My Neighbor?" by appealing to Virginia Baptists to welcome the poor, Muslims and gays.
In his thematic addresses, Campolo said Jesus' parable of the Good Samaritan changed "the whole concept of 'neighbor.'"
"The Samaritans were those who were considered spiritually unclean, abominations in the eyes of God," he said.
Some of today's "Samaritans," said Campolo, are the poor, Muslims and gays.
"The only description that's given [in Scripture] of Judgment Day is how we respond to the needs of the poor and the oppressed," he said, referring to Matthew 25. "Jesus said, 'You can't have a personal, transforming relationship with Me unless you have a personal relationship with the poor and oppressed.'"
Muslims, he added, also have not been treated like neighbors in the United States.
"And of course the big one right now -- are gays and lesbians our neighbors?" he asked.
Campolo said that, while he is "a conservative on the issue" of homosexuality, he opposed California's recently adopted Proposition 8. The amendment to the California Constitution upends a court ruling that extended marriage rights to same-sex couples.
"I believe that same-gender erotic behavior is contrary to the teaching of God," he said. "You might ask, 'If you believe that way, didn't people like you and me win [with Proposition 8]?' What did we win? ... I'll tell you what we won. We won tens of thousands of gays and lesbians parading up and down the streets of San Francisco and New York and L.A. screaming against the church, seeing the church as enemy."
"I don't know how we're going to reach these brothers and sisters," he said, "but I'm an evangelical and I'm going to win them to Christ.... And we're not going to win them to Christ if we keep sending them bad messages, and we've sent them a bad message. I think the decision in California was in agreement with how I believe, but sometimes you've got to consider the person before you bang them over the head with your principles."
-- Robert Dilday (rdilday@religiousherald.org) is associate editor of Virginia Baptists' Religious Herald.
Azerbaijani pastor on trial released to house arrest
By Bob Allen (301 words)
(ABP) -- A jailed Baptist pastor in Azerbaijan was released Nov. 6 until Nov. 17, when his trial on what supporters say are bogus charges was scheduled to resume.
Mission News Network reported the release of Hamid Shabanov, 52, leader of the Baptist community in the village of Aliabad in Azerbaijan's Zakatala district, as "good news."
Shabanov's attorney had tried unsuccessfully to get the pastor out of jail since his arrest in June on what defenders have characterized as trumped-up charges aimed at intimidating religious minorities.
Shabanov's family told Azeri Press Agency the Zakatala Region Court commuted his sentence to 14-day house arrest, citing lack of evidence.
According to the agency, police found a Makarov semi-automatic pistol and spare parts during a raid of his residence June 20. He is charged with violating a law banning the purchase, transfer, selling, storage, transportation and carrying of firearms or accessories.
Shabanov's family and friends say he doesn't own a weapon and allege police planted the evidence. Police also confiscated 37 banned religious books found in the house.
According to the Christian news service Forum 18, members of Shabanov's church welcomed his release -- 20 weeks after his arrest and 15 weeks since his trial began.
"The police and prosecutor still cannot prove Pastor Hamid's guilt," the Baptists told Forum 18. "As he has been in prison for five months already, we want to have him released even from house arrest."
Shabanov said he was glad to be free and welcomed the transfer to house arrest. He said he hopes the judge will exonerate him completely Nov 17. He said he didn't know how long the new hearing would last, but believes it will be the last in his long-running trial.
No update on Shabanov's trial was available as of press time Nov. 17.
-- Bob Allen (bob@abpnews.com) is senior writer for Associated Baptist Press.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment