Associated Baptist Press
January 28, 2009 · (09-12)
David Wilkinson, Executive Director
Robert Marus, Managing Editor/Washington Bureau Chief
Bob Allen, Senior Writer
In this issue
Church with woman pastor expects further rebuke from Georgia Baptists (636 words)
Childs makes 'tiny stitches' in lives of children, youth in Croatia (525 words)
Former youth minister pleads guilty to sending explicit e-mails to teen (179 words)
Opinion: Torture: Reflecting on a long, illuminating battle (762 words)
Church with woman pastor expects further rebuke from Georgia Baptists
By Bob Allen (636 words)
DECATUR, Ga. (ABP) -- A church denied voting rights in the Georgia Baptist Convention because it is led by a woman pastor could face further sanctions, Pastor Julie Pennington-Russell reports in the church newsletter.
In a recent meeting with representatives of the state convention, Pennington-Russell said she and other leaders of First Baptist Church in Decatur, Ga., were told that some individuals were not satisfied with a vote last November to refuse to receive money from the historic church -- thereby making it impossible for FBC Decatur to qualify to send messengers to the annual meeting -- and would likely move for full ouster this fall.
Pennington-Russell said for the first time she asked convention leaders the difference between refusing funds and withdrawing fellowship, and they said while the church could not contribute to the convention, it could still receive materials and services like training of Sunday school teachers.
Asking if that meant the state convention staff would meet with the church to help with an influx of new members needing a good foundation in the faith, Pennington-Russell said GBC Executive Director Robert White responded that he would be willing to come over a help "personally," but not as representative of the state convention.
"In that hour-long conversation it became crystal-clear to me why people are abandoning denominational structures in droves and why denominationalism as it exists today is doomed," she reported.
Pennington-Russell said she is convinced the officials in the meeting care deeply about the gospel but are "missing the point."
"The sad reality is most denominational organizations are stuck in bureaucratic systems that have forgotten why they exist in the first place," she said. She said denominations -- like churches -- exist not to provide goods and services to eligible "members" but to worship and serve.
Messengers at the Georgia Baptist Convention annual meeting last fall changed financial policies to for the first time permit leaders to decline gifts from churches "not in cooperation and harmony with the approved work and purpose" of the convention." A report of the committee recommending the change said it was in response to "questions raised regarding First Baptist Church of Decatur, who has a woman as senior pastor."
While few Southern Baptist churches have called a woman as senior pastor, the denomination did not officially discourage the practice until 2000, when it amended its faith statement to specify, "While both men and women are gifted for service in the church, the office of pastor is limited to men as qualified by Scripture."
A motion at last year's SBC annual meeting called on the national body to withdraw fellowship from churches with female pastors, but the SBC Executive Committee is recommending against the change, saying there is already a mechanism for excluding a church for any reason by making a motion at the annual meeting.
While the SBC changed its constitution to disallow churches that affirm homosexuality in 1993, denominational leaders said in a meeting last September it would be unwise to expand that prohibition into a laundry list of moral principles addressed elsewhere, such as in the Baptist Faith & Message.
First Baptist Church of Decatur called Pennington-Russell as pastor in 2007. While still technically part of the Southern Baptist Convention, the last two decades the 146-year-old church has identified primarily with the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship, a moderate breakaway group.
Before coming to Georgia, Pennington-Russell was pastor at Calvary Baptist Church in Waco, Texas, and Nineteenth Avenue Baptist Church in San Francisco, Calif. 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 last January, a gathering of more than 30 racially, geographically and theologically diverse Baptist groups in North America.
Bob Allen is senior writer for Associated Baptist Press.
Childs makes 'tiny stitches' in lives of children, youth in Croatia
By Laurie Entrekin (525 words)
ATLANTA (ABP) -- Elaine Childs, one of the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship's field personnel in Cakovec, Croatia, likes to think of her work in Roma villages as analogous to lace making, a well-known Croatian trade since the 15th century.
"Most of life's achievements come about because we make one tiny stitch at a time, and eventually something complete comes out of it," Childs said.
Childs is in Croatia representing her home church, First Baptist Church of Knoxville, Tenn., which has a strategic partnership with the Croatian Baptist Union to support the work of the pastoral center in Cakovec. The center provides seminary extension textbooks and classes for Baptist pastors and church members enrolled at the Baptist Institute of Croatia.
While Childs helps out at the center, most of her "tiny stitches" are made during Good News Bible clubs in various Roma villages, which she helps plan and lead alongside Karmen Horvat, a missionary with the Child Evangelism Fellowship. Horvat has been organizing the clubs for the past six years.
During the two-hour clubs, children sing songs, hear a Bible story, play a quiz or game, watch a puppet show and learn a scripture verse.
Sometimes, adults attend the clubs and stand in the back of the host home, listening to the Bible stories. At one of the sessions just prior to Christmas, an uncle of one of the children stayed around to hear Childs tell of the journey of the wise men to see Jesus.
"[After I told] the story, he [said] that he used to be afraid to go out alone at night, but isn't anymore," Childs said. "He said, 'Now I just remember that God is with me.' I think he's wonderful evidence of how God works miracles in peoples' lives one step at a time."
When Childs first arrived in Croatia last July, the children's clubs were held twice a day for five days in seven different locations. In the fall, Childs and Horvat resumed clubs in four villages -- Kursanec, Pribislavec, Sitnice and Orehovica -- and are currently holding sessions about once weekly in each location. Continuing the clubs is important, Childs said, especially for the 27 children who made a profession of faith during the summer.
"These kids choose to use their free time on the weekends to listen to Bible stories. They have such a desire for the word of God," said Childs. "Looking into their faces, I [am] amazed by how much they want to know."
According to Childs, there is a real need for continued Christian education and discipleship for young people once they are too old to attend the children's clubs.
"The church teenagers don't have what we would think of as a youth group where they can discuss issues with each other," she said.
In November, Childs began hosting a Bible study for young people in her flat. She is leading a small group of girls through Old Testament wisdom literature, beginning with the book of Job. She hopes that out of this small group study, she will be able to identify a core group of youth who would be interested in regular Sunday worship services.
Laurie Entrekin writes for Cooperative Baptist Fellowship communications.
Former youth minister pleads guilty to sending explicit emails to teen
By Bob Allen (179 words)
BRIDGEPORT, Conn. (ABP) -- A former American Baptist youth minister has pleaded guilty to sending sexually explicit emails and photos to a 15-year-old girl he was counseling.
At his arraignment Nov. 5, David Esarey, 30, denied sending photos to the girl and claimed teenagers must have used his computer at Stepney Baptist Church in Bridgeport, Conn., without his knowledge.
Pleading guilty to reduced charges Jan. 22, however, Esarey admitted sending the emails to a child he knew was younger than 16, according to the Connecticut Post.
Originally charged with employing a minor in an obscene performance, third-degree child pornography and risk of injury to a minor, Esarey pleaded guilty to risk of injury to a child. He is scheduled to be sentenced March 13. An assistant prosecutor said he will recommend that Esarey receive probation and be required to register as a sex offender.
Kevin Merritt, pastor of Stepney Baptist Church, said Esarey has not worked at the church in any capacity since his arrest. "I am glad he is accepting responsibility for his actions," Merritt told the newspaper.
Opinion: Torture: Reflecting on a long, illuminating battle
By David Gushee (762 words)
(ABP) -- It is still hard to believe that the hopes we have nurtured in the Christian anti-torture movement would come to fruition -- and so early, and so comprehensively, as they did with President Obama's executive orders on Guantanamo, detention policy, and interrogation his first week in office. Those orders fulfilled, to a very large extent, the agenda that Evangelicals for Human Rights has been promoting since our founding. And in nearly every detail the president's orders tracked with our declaration of principles for a presidential executive order, released last spring. We applaud the president for these decisions.
My first article on the issue of torture was just about exactly three years ago, in the pages of Christianity Today. The Bush detainee policies had thrown off the moral gyroscopes of many people -- perhaps especially evangelicals and Southern Baptists, with their so-often-reflexive Republican and Bush loyalties. If President Bush had ordered or permitted something, it must be right, they reasoned -- and if anyone was opposed to it, they must be partisans, liberals, irrationalists, pacifists, or heretics. CT wanted me to try to think through the issue biblically and theologically, and I did my best to do so. I argued that Christians could never support torture or cruelty in the name of national security. A few months later, Evangelicals for Human Rights was born as an organization, and later we produced "An Evangelical Declaration against Torture," which helped change the terms of the debate and gained considerable mainstream evangelical support.
You would have thought we had argued that Jesus was not the Second Person of the Trinity from some of the criticism our work received. A large number of evangelicals simply were unable to reflect on these issues in any coherently Christian way, so they just engaged in ad hominem attacks. (I have a nice collection of these in my "save for a sunny day" file.) Others offered a defense or quasi-defense of abuse, cruelty, or torture in the name of Romans 13 and just-war theory. Some are still at it. A review of the articles and news stories on these issues available in the conservative Christian media since early 2006 would be an interesting, though depressing, project for some enterprising researcher.
History will record how woefully un-Christian -- how out of touch with anything approaching Gospel values -- that these arguments were. Not to put too fine a point on it, but I believe that some who carry the name of Christian teacher/minister/leader will face serious accounting before God for defending or euphemizing the cruel abuse of human beings made in God's image.
And I think that is the next stage of the torture fight: coming to grips, settling accounts, evaluating the religious, moral, and cultural meaning of the fact that not only did our government torture people, but that many Christians fully supported it. EHR and the National Religious Campaign Against Torture will continue to press for legislation codifying many of the principles and policies articulated by President Obama. We also support some kind of national inquiry tasked with uncovering everything that happened and hearing the voices of those who wrote the policies, those who implemented the policies, and those who suffered from the policies. We need a total national repudiation of what occurred, and the development of a moral consensus in which we agree that national security will never again be (purportedly) purchased in this country at the cost of our 240-year-long rejection of torture and cruelty during wartime. There is no such consensus now.
Much needs to happen -- not just in Washington, but in the churches, parachurch organizations, denominations, and educational institutions bearing the name of Jesus Christ. We need ministers, professors, and organization heads to reflect on what it means that over half of evangelical Christians supported the use of torture even as late as summer 2008. We need these leaders to think about their silence amidst this long-running national debate, and even in some cases their active, public support for extremes of mental and physical cruelty toward those in our custody.
Yes, as critics never tired of saying, there is plenty of torture in other parts of the world. Yes, much of it is worse than what our nation did. Yes, there is plenty of need to protest the torture that goes on elsewhere. But we live here. This is our country. This was done in our name. This was authorized by our leaders at the highest level. And most Christians were fine with it. That is our problem, and it's a big one.
-- David Gushee is distinguished university professor of Christian ethics at Mercer University.
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