Associated Baptist Press - 11/20/2008

Associated Baptist Press
November 20, 2008 · (08-113)

David Wilkinson, Executive Director
Robert Marus, Acting Managing Editor/Washington Bureau Chief
Bob Allen, Senior Writer

In this issue
Shooting on Ouchita campus ends with no injuries, suspects in custody (431 words)
Father, Son & Who? (770 words)
Trinity debate trickles down to gender roles (1,008 words)
Charismatic Southern Baptists see themselves as open to spiritual gifts (735 words)
On the Trinity, Baptists worship largely settles for two out of three (616 words)
Guest Opinion: Seasonal mood swings (593 words)
Guest Opinion: Dear Michelle (767 words)

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Shooting on Ouachita campus ends with no injuries, suspects in custody
By Bob Allen

ARKADELPHIA, Ark. (ABP) -- A shooting incident the afternoon of Nov. 19 on the perimeter of the Ouachita Baptist University campus didn't involve any students and ended with no injuries and three suspects quickly arrested, according to authorities.

The alleged assailants fired from a parking lot owned by the Arkansas Baptist State Convention-affiliated school, but apparently targeted a student at neighboring Henderson State University. The student was walking across the lot, which borders both campuses, while returning to a Henderson State dormitory.

Police in the town of Arkadelphia, where the schools are located, said none of three "people of interest" held after the shooting attended either school. One of the three was reportedly the intended victim's ex-girlfriend.

Henderson State President Charles Welch said he first learned of the incident about 3:35 p.m., right after Arkadelphia police were called. While discussing whether to implement the campus' crisis plan, officials learned that potential suspects had been apprehended off campus.

The Henderson State administration later sent an e-mail to faculty, staff and students notifying them about the incident and assured them that campus police believed the campus was safe. Welch told Little Rock ABC television affiliate KATV-7 that campus officers reported a "relatively calm scene" shortly after the shooting.

Ouachita President Rex Horne sent an e-mail to students, parents, faculty and staff that was posted on the university website shortly after 6 p.m.

"In the interest of open communication, I need to inform you about an incident that occurred this afternoon on the edge of the Ouachita campus," Horne said.

He said that while no one was injured and the incident involved no Ouachita students, at least one gunshot was reportedly fired. He said campus safety would provide an increased presence in the area for the next several days and urged prayer for everyone involved in the situation.

Keldon Henley, Ouachita's dean of students, said administrators chose to use e-mail and the OBU website to inform the campus community about the incident. They used that method rather than activating the school's emergency-alert system, he said, "because the individuals involved were already apprehended when Ouachita was informed of the shooting."

Ouachita, Arkansas Baptists' flagship institution of higher education, is located about 65 miles southwest of Little Rock.

Police declined to release the names of two women and a man stopped outside of town shortly after the shooting. The Arkansas Democrat-Gazette reported Nov. 20 that the intended victim was the ex-boyfriend of a woman trying to get money back after a breakup. The report said information is scarce, and police are still trying to locate witnesses.

Bob Allen is senior writer for Associated Baptist Press. Trennis Henderson, Ouachita Baptist University's vice president for communications, contributed to this story.

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Father, Son & Who?
By Vicki Brown

(ABP) -- "Ghost!" the 5-year-old screeched as he stood in the pew and clutched his mother's neck. "Mama, the preacher said there's a ghost in here!" Although most Baptists in the sanctuary laughed at the outburst, likely at least a few also wondered: Who or what is the Holy Ghost -- the Holy Spirit? And what difference does the Holy Spirit make in today's world?

Baptists profess to believe God manifests attributes and character through the Trinity, three distinct persons -- the Father as Creator, the Son as Savior and the Holy Spirit as Comforter.

But through history, some Baptist branches -- including those of the Southern tradition -- have leaned toward a form of Unitarianism, sometimes centered on the Creator and often focused on Jesus. Doug Weaver, associate professor and director of undergraduate studies in Baylor University's religion department, believes Baptist biblicism -- the way Baptists understand the Bible -- explains the tendency to focus on Jesus.

"Passages about God and the Holy Spirit are surely there, but we will quote Jesus' 'I am the way' from John and Paul's 'we preach Christ crucified' before we quote anything else," Weaver explained.

The New Testament leads Baptists to a Trinitarian position, said Dallas Roark, a former professor at Wayland Baptist and Kansas State universities. For example, "John 1:1-18 [and] the words of Jesus in John 14-17 indicate the identity with the Father and the Holy Spirit," he said.

And, Roark believes, the New Testament leads to the Savior.

"The emphasis on Jesus is so strong because he is the mystery of God now revealed in history.... The central fact of God's revelation is in Christ, not the Holy Spirit," Roark added. "Jesus indicated that the Spirit would testify to him, not about the Spirit's self."

Baptists focus on the person of Jesus because they recognize him as central to personal salvation and Christian experience.

"Baptists are a conversionist movement; testifying to the personal experience of salvation made possible through Christ and signified by believer's baptism has always been the basis for our concept of 'believer's church,'" Weaver added.

The Enlightenment -- the social and cultural age that emphasized reason and intellect -- also affected Baptist understanding of the Trinity, Rosalie Beck believes. Beck is an assistant professor at Baylor, specializing in Christian history and missions and in women's studies.

"We are heirs to the Enlightenment and accept a growing emphasis on mentally describing and understanding everything," she said. "Other cultures have a more creative understanding of their world and explain it in terms that we have rejected because of our intellectual tradition."

Human form lends concreteness to the person of Jesus, while the Holy Spirit remains abstract. "When one reads through the New Testament, particularly the Gospels, the personality of Jesus shines through and we are given an image of a Person who is one with us," Roark explained.

"We don't have the same details about the Holy Spirit. The embodiment of the Logos [the Greek noun that the writer of the Gospel of John uses to denote God's the Son] gives us concrete details that we don't have about the Holy Spirit."

But that concreteness should not detract from the Holy Spirit's role, he added. The Spirit's presence is the constant reminder of what Jesus did for humankind. The Spirit penetrates "in a way that it is not conceivable in the seeming limited spatial body of Jesus," Roark said.

Sometimes Baptists have shied from emphasizing the Holy Spirit to distance themselves from the practices of other groups. A few Baptists participated in the holiness movement in the late 19th century, Weaver explained. "Holiness" Baptists adopted an understanding of sanctification that paralleled the Pentecostal approach.

"More recently, Baptists, like other Protestants and Catholics, have been influenced by what I call the 'pentecostalization of American religion,'" Weaver added.

"As the charismatic movement developed in the 1960s -- and the electronic church -- a few Baptists began to affirm the 'gifts of the Spirit,' though most Baptists -- especially in the South -- opposed the movement," he said.

Some Baptist groups, such as the Southern tradition, include the Spirit "through the back door, because Baptists emphasize the inspired aspect of the Bible." said David May, professor of New Testament at Central Baptist Theological Seminary in Shawnee, Kan.

But other Baptist groups express more open connection to the Holy Spirit, May pointed out -- and particularly in African-American Baptist traditions.

"I wonder if those who have felt marginalized have sensed the Spirit because the Spirit is kind of marginalized," he speculated. "Mainline churches have monopolized Jesus. The Spirit doesn't have a cultural look."

-- Vicki Brown is a freelance writer based in Jefferson City, Mo.

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Trinity debate trickles down to gender roles
By Bob Allen

DEERFIELD, Ill. (ABP) -- There's a tempest brewing among evangelical theologians about the triune nature of God, with potential to spill beyond academic halls into relationships between males and females in the church and home.

Trinity Evangelical Divinity School near Chicago recently sponsored a two-hour debate, broadcast live on the Internet, about whether relationships of submission and authority exist eternally between the Persons of Father, Son and Holy Spirit within the Trinity.

For non-theologians, the discussion may sound similar to, "How many angels can dance on the head of a pin?" But the stakes grow higher when groups like the Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood, based on the campus of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Ky., use it to buttress their claim that God built gender roles into the created order before the Fall. Critics say that instead of allowing the Bible to inform their beliefs on wifely submission, the "complementarians" are trying to establish theirs as the only acceptable view for orthodox Christians, while labeling those who promote equality of the sexes as heretics on par with people who deny the Trinity.

In a June sermon at Denton Bible Church in Denton, Texas, Bruce Ware, professor of Christian theology at Southern Seminary, included an argument for "eternal submission" of Christ in a list of 10 reasons "why we should affirm that God designed there to be male headship" in the family.

"If it's true that in the Trinity itself -- in the eternal relationships of Father, Son and Spirit -- there is authority and submission, and the Son eternally submits to the will of the Father," Ware said in the sermon. "If that's true, then this follows: It is as Godlike to submit to rightful authority with joy and gladness as it is Godlike to exert wise and beneficial rightful authority."

At another point, Ware also said one reason men abuse their wives is because women rebel against their husband's God-given authority.

At the Trinity debate, Ware, incoming president of the Evangelical Theological Society, said the three persons of the Trinity possess the same divine essence or nature but are different in role.

"The Father is the Father eternally, the Son is the Son eternally, and among the differences is authority and submission in relational structure between those two members of the Trinity," he said.

Wayne Grudem, Ware's partner in presenting the submission side of the debate, said the very names "Father" and "Son" imply a hierarchy of authority and submission.
Former president of the Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood and now a professor at Phoenix Seminary in Arizona, Grudem added that by sending the Son, the Father revealed his headship in the relationship.

Both sides agree Jesus submitted himself to the Father's will while on earth, but Grudem noted that after his Ascension, Jesus is described as "high priest," an intermediary between God and humans, and as sitting at the "right hand" of the Father, a place of second-in-command.

All this worries theology professor Curtis Freeman, director of the House of Baptist Studies at Duke University Divinity School. Freeman believes Baptists have neglected the Trinity to the point they have become functional Unitarians -- elevating faith in Jesus alone to near exclusion of the Father and Spirit, or on occasion elevating the Father with subordinate roles for Son and Spirit.

While welcoming renewed attention to the Trinity, Freeman said he fears the current complementarian crowd is using it as "an end to justify" their views on the family.

In an e-mail posted on Oklahoma pastor Wade Burleson's blog, Freeman labeled eternal subordination of the Son a "semi-Arian" doctrine not thoroughly examined and tested by the entire church.

Arianism is named after a cleric who taught in 4th century Alexandria, Egypt. Noting the Bible describes Jesus as "begotten" of the Father, Arius posited there must have been a time when the Son of God did not exist. Jesus, therefore, was not "one" with the Father, but rather subordinate and less than fully divine.

The controversy became so intense that in 325, the Emperor Constantine assembled bishops in present-day Turkey for the First Council of Nicea. It was the first of seven ecumenical councils that over time developed the historic creeds of the Catholic Church.

Church leaders at Nicea declared Arius a heretic and responded with the Nicene Creed, describing Jesus Christ as, "Very God of Very God, begotten, not made, being of one substance with the Father, by whom all things were made."

While the whole argument may sound strange to modern ears, the late Southern Baptist theologian Dale Moody wrote in his 1981 book, The Word of Truth, that Arius' view was not far different from statements in the 19th century by J.R. Graves, founder of a theological movement among Southern Baptists known as Landmarkism.

Eternal submission of the Son advocates deny charges that they are tinkering with the Trinity. They counter that the ones guilty of innovation are the feminist theologians who argue for egalitarian relationships between men and women based on evidence of mutual submission among the Persons of the Trinity they find in Scripture.

Opposing Grudem and Ware at the Trinity debate, Keith Yandell, professor of philosophy at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, acknowledged the New Testament talks about Christ submitting to the Father's will (such as in the Garden of Gethsemane prior to his Crucifixion) but they say submission resulted from -- and was in effect only during -- the Incarnation.

Other passages, like Philippians 2:5-11, portray the pre-existent Christ as fully equal to God, humbling himself voluntarily to die on the Cross, and afterward exalted to the name "above every name."

Tom McCall, professor of biblical and systematic theology at Trinity, said verses like Mark's description of the Spirit "driving" Jesus into the wilderness for 40 days of temptation suggest mutual submission.

McCall said "it's not entirely clear what motivates" his opponents' claim.

"What might motivate this claim?" Ware offered in his rebuttal. "Only the entirety of biblical revelation from God about himself as Father, Son and Holy Spirit."

Bob Allen is senior news writer for Associated Baptist Press.

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Charismatic Southern Baptists see themselves as open to spiritual gifts
By Bob Allen

HIXSON, Tenn. (ABP) -- Suffering from burnout after a decade as pastor of Central Baptist Church, a Southern Baptist congregation in suburban Chattanooga, Tenn., Ron Phillips wrote his resignation letter on a portable computer on the way to a meeting at Glorieta Baptist Conference Center in 1989. He never submitted it.

That night as he slept, he heard a voice calling his name. He went to the door, but no one was there. It happened again, and then a third time. He described the event in his 1999 book, Awakened By the Spirit.

"As I was awakened a third time, my room was filled with God's presence. It was the voice of my dear Savior. I wept as the glory filled the room, and I cried out, 'Lord, where have you been?'

"He said to me, 'I've been waiting for you.'

"I asked, 'Lord, where have you been waiting?'

"He replied, 'Read your Scripture for today.'"

Phillips read Psalm 92:10, "I have been anointed with fresh oil."

Soon, what he called a "baptism of power" came over him. He wept, sang, laughed, shouted and shook. He did not receive what many charismatic Christians call a "private prayer language" until three years later, but the moment changed his ministry forever.

Phillips' congregation, which today goes by the name Abba's House, describes itself as a "Spirit-filled Southern Baptist church."

On occasion, the church has experienced manifestations of God's power among the congregants such as trembling, crying, leaping, jumping and "falling out" in the Spirit. While not seeking such events, Phillips welcomes them as evidence God is moving among them.

As a well-connected leader in the Southern Baptist Convention in the late 1970s, Phillips would have identified himself as a "cessationist" -- a Christian who believes miracles such as speaking in tongues and healings occurred in Bible times, but are not valid gifts for today.

Today, Phillips says he finds scant biblical support for the cessationist view. Instead, he believes the Bible suggests gifts will remain until the Second Coming of Christ.

Phillips thinks many SBC churches are more interested in appearing mainstream and acceptable to the intelligentsia than in being true to Baptists' free-church tradition.

Historical accounts of frontier revivals described loud worship, wild cries, falling out and other things embarrassing to the modern church. Rather than embracing their "brush arbor" roots, Phillips says most Baptists today seem to be more comfortable with the Reformed tradition that persecuted their Anabaptist forebears.

"Could it be that Baptists who believe in the gifts and manifestations of the Spirit are more true to Scripture in their beliefs than some of those who are more comfortable with the formality of the Reformation?" Phillips wrote in an article for the May 2008 Theology for Ministry, a journal published twice a year by Mid-America Baptist Theological Seminary in Cordova, Tenn.

Abba's House recently was host for the 10th annual "Fresh Oil, New Wine" conference. Phillips counts more than 500 Southern Baptist churches in the network that open themselves to spiritual gifts.

A study last year by the SBC's publishing arm, LifeWay Christian Resources, found half of Southern Baptist pastors believe the Holy Spirit gives some people a "private prayer language," but those who practice it find themselves increasingly marginalized in the denomination's life.

In 2005, the SBC International Mission Board forbade missionaries to pray in tongues, even though the agency's president, Jerry Rankin, has acknowledged using a private prayer language in his own devotional life.

In 2006, Dwight McKissic, a prominent Texas pastor and trustee at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, prompted controversy by saying in a chapel service that he also used a private prayer language. He eventually resigned from the board under pressure.

Phillips contends Southern Baptists have nothing to fear from those who embrace spiritual gifts, but should instead embrace them themselves. "In doing so, Baptists welcome the Third Person of the Godhead, the Holy Spirit," he wrote.

"The fact remains that charismatic Southern Baptists exist, albeit a small minority. They are committed to historic Baptist identity and doctrine, but make room for the supernatural working of the Holy Spirit within God's people for ministry and proclamation.

"The question remains: Will the issue of charismatic gifts be a test of fellowship and cooperation? The process of making it a litmus test has already begun; let's pray and hope that brotherly love and toleration for differences on this issue may begin to prevail."

Bob Allen is senior writer for Associated Baptist Press.

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On the Trinity, Baptist worship largely settles for two out of three
By Ken Camp

(ABP) -- Hymns sung in most Baptist churches historically have been "More About Jesus" than about either God the Father or the Holy Spirit, several church music experts agree.

"From a Baptist perspective, I don't think the hymnody has ever been Trinitarian," said Clell Wright, director of choral activities and Logsdon professor of church music at Hardin-Simmons University in Abilene, Texas.

Baptist worship has been shaped to a large degree by the revivalist movements of the 19th and early 20th centuries, he noted. "By nature, the focus is on Jesus and his redeeming work," Wright said.

Consequently, when it comes to Baptist understanding of the Godhead as reflected in congregational song, "Our Trinity is more two-point-something rather than three," said Terry York, associate professor of Christian ministry and church music at Baylor University's School of Music and George W. Truett Theological Seminary in Waco, Texas.

"One way to gauge that is by looking at the index in the back of the hymnal under 'Holy Spirit.' Looking at the 1991 Baptist Hymnal [produced by the Southern Baptist Convention's publishing arm], for instance, there's not much there. And I was on the committee that put that one together, for crying out loud."

A quick glance at the recently released 2008 Baptist Hymnal reveals similar results, noted Lee Hinson, coordinator of church-music studies at Oklahoma Baptist University in Shawnee, Okla.

"It has not changed much," Hinson said. "We struggle with singing Trinitarian doctrine. There are several categories of things we free-churchers don't do well in worship.... Dealing with the doctrine of the Holy Spirit is one of them."

York agreed, noting lack of emphasis on the Holy Spirit may reveal, in part, lack of clarity among Baptists about the Spirit's role and about the doctrine of the Trinity in general.

"Baptist churches divide themselves in worship according to which Person of the Trinity gets the most emphasis," he noted. Baptists who say they want to "worship the Father in the beauty of holiness" generally favor more formal, liturgical worship.
Baptists who want to "praise Jesus for who he is and what he has done" may tend toward a more revivalist and evangelistic worship style. Baptists who say they want "the Spirit to come down and bless us" often follow a less structured worship format.

"Generally, we are less than balanced," York commented. "Few churches stand in the middle."

Observers differ about whether the rising popularity of praise-and-worship music translates into increased attention directed toward the Holy Spirit.

Wright sees a shift toward greater "recognition of the work of the Holy Spirit" in praise music. "So much of it in the last 15 to 20 years seems very pietistic, with a strong emphasis on personal worship," he noted.

That emphasis represents a departure from the evangelistic and revivalist tradition that has marked Baptist worship, he added.

"Our Baptist heritage of music in the gospel tradition has defined who we are for a couple of hundred years," Wright said.

Hinson sees a greater emphasis on the work of the Holy Spirit in Baptist worship, but he believes it is restricted to the youngest worship leaders.

"Millennials [roughly defined as the generation born in the 1980s and 1990s] want their worship to be free," he said. Lyrics that stress the Holy Spirit exist, "but they're not sung where the Boomers are in charge. They're in the Wednesday night services where students lead worship."

York, on the other hand, sees praise-and-worship lyrics focused primarily on Jesus, but worship leaders stressing the role of the Holy Spirit in leading them.

"They attribute being caught up in worship to the work of the Holy Spirit, who helps lead in the worship of Jesus," he said.

Ken Camp is managing editor of the Baptist Standard.

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Guest Opinion: Seasonal mood swings
By Jim Evans

(ABP) -- At midnight after Thanksgiving Day, the Christmas shopping season officially begins. Many shopping malls will actually open at midnight. And even in this tough economy there will be folks who will be there when the doors open. You should know that these folks don't just go and leisurely shop. They are more like shopping storm troopers battering down the doors of their favorite stores.

How is it possible to whip a crowd into such a buying frenzy? Do these people mistake the first shopping day of the Christmas season for the last shopping day ever? And is there anything in the story of Jesus' birth that would account for this mall madness?

I believe it has to do with seasonal mood swings. These mood swings are temporary emotional states brought on by holiday stimuli. When they appear they trigger certain behaviors, like shopping for example. But they trigger other things as well.

For instance during the brief period between Thanksgiving and Christmas, people are suddenly able to see the less fortunate in our midst. They carry blankets to the homeless or serve food in a soup kitchen for a day. They gather canned goods for the hungry and buy toys for needy children.

And all of this is great. Just as retailers count on Christmas shopping to flesh out their profits for the year, so do charities rely on this annual outbreak of kindness to round out their struggling budgets.

And of course the poor and the homeless appreciate it. It's the one time in the year when they have reason to believe that someone cares. Unfortunately, once the season is over, the poor and the homeless tend to revert back to their previous state of invisibility.

Seasonal depression is also likely a result of these annual mood swings. Christmas is supposed to be a magic time. It's all about family and joy -- at least that's what the commercials say. But reality does not always match the hype.

Unresolved personal issues, marital or financial problems do not suddenly get better simply because Christmas rolls around. In fact, sometimes they get worse. The financial pressures and burdens on families may actually increase during the season.
Seasonal depression is the disappointment that comes when the magic does not work.

There may be something we can learn from these holiday ups and downs. For instance, in spite of the fact that we already have more junk than we can use, we frantically shop at Christmas time to buy and have even more stuff. Is there some emptiness in our lives we are trying to fill?

And the poor are always around, as Jesus reminded us, and we can help them anytime we choose. Why only at the apex of our material pursuits do we suddenly notice our struggling neighbors? Could it be that our temporary bouts of charity are really efforts to atone for a life of meaningless consumption?

And I ask again, is there anything in the story of Jesus' birth to account for all this?

Christians believe that Jesus' birth marks the beginning of a new day for the whole world. What if, in an effort to celebrate that birth, we reversed the order of our values? Instead of shopping 'til we drop, why not share our wealth with the needy --and not just once a year, but as a daily discipline. It might be just the cure for our Christmas blues, but even if it's not, it will at least keep us from being trampled at the mall.

James Evans is pastor of First Baptist Church in Auburn, Ala.

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Guest opinion: Dear Michelle
By Amy Butler

(ABP) -- Dear Michelle: I'm probably supposed to call you something more important now that you'll soon be our country's first lady, but I'm not sure what I should call you exactly, and, anyway, we're not much for titles around here. I thought I'd write because I'm sure your husband is busy choosing Cabinet officials and all that -- and, when it comes to matters of your family's spiritual nurture, I suspect you'll be taking some serious leadership on the very important matter of looking for a faith community in your new town.

So, please consider this an invitation to you and your family to join us in worship at Calvary any Sunday at 11:00 a.m.

Honestly, I hesitated to write because, well, it's hard enough getting folks to come to church without metal detectors flanking the doors, and I've heard stories about how tough that can be from the folks over at Foundry United Methodist, believe me.

But despite all of that, here's why I'm writing. I suspect that you've been steadily transitioning from the optimistic, energized environment of the campaign to a whole new world where a lot of people around you wear shiny political façades; where policy decisions are often made with political expediency in mind; where ideals and dreams for change quickly become discarded detritus on the side of the road to greater and greater power.

Leading change in times such as these is going to take a heavy toll on your whole family, and the truth is, you're going to need a community that loves and supports you as people, not just as residents of the big White House down the street.

I've never gone to church with a president and his family before, of course, but I think you could find what you need at Calvary.

In a city where political posturing takes up most folks' waking hours Monday through Friday, come Sunday morning lots of people get up and do it again -- at church. And that just gets old really fast. Calvary is a place where we try really hard to get real. Our community works hard to be a place where everything each of us brings to the table -- our pain, doubt, joy, fear -- together they all become a shared experience, where the happy times are happier and the pain is a little lighter.

Even the president's family needs that, right?

I should warn you, though: there's not much easy, lukewarm religion around here. Like the community in which we live, our church is very diverse, with age and race, political persuasion and economic status -- even theological perspective -- varying from pew to pew. But we gather and we do the hard work of Christian community because we are serious about being followers of Jesus Christ, who knew that relationship with God could change us into people who love each other in ways that can change the world. This message, the message of a radical, transformational gospel, is what draws us together every week to worship and learn and serve together, despite our differences.

I figure if you live through the stress of a campaign and you're willing as a whole family to sacrifice what it will take to serve our country, then you must not be people of marginal conviction. And you may be able to flourish in a faith community where you are challenged all the time to live a faith that matters.

You know, I make it a practice to call or write folks who I know are moving to town to invite them to Calvary. I love this community and the ways in which living my faith in this place illustrates for me the deep gift of relationship with Jesus Christ. I can't wait to introduce people to this place where I know for sure they'll be loved -- and certainly that they'll be expected to engage meaningfully.

I've never invited anyone to church by writing a blog entry, but, truthfully, I just didn't know where to send a letter to you.

I'd love to talk more about why Calvary might be a great community for you and yours. I wish you the very best in all the transitions ahead of you, hope that you find good people in this town who will love, nurture and support all four of you, and find the courage and strength you need for the big tasks ahead.

And, if you ever want to hang out, grab some coffee or have lunch, I'm right down the street from your new house.

-- Very Neighborly Yours,
Amy

-- Amy Butler is senior pastor of Calvary Baptist Church in Washington, D.C., located just a few blocks from the White House. It was once the faith community to President Warren Harding, the first Baptist to fill the Oval Office. This column is adapted from a Nov. 13 post on her blog, Talk With the Preacher.