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Archives For November 30, 1999

Briefing: Open for Christmas, it’s a hipster Christmas scene, new ‘miracle on 34th Street’

ib2newseditor —  December 13, 2016

The BriefingChurches are open for Christmas
Nearly 9 out of 10 Protestant senior pastors say their churches plan to hold services on Christmas Day and New Year’s Day, as both fall on a Sunday, according to LifeWay Research. Small churches and large churches are slightly less likely to be open for Christmas. Pastors in the Midwest (92%) and South (89%) are more likely to say their church will be open on Christmas.

Hark! The herald hipster sings
For those that have wondered what it would be like if Jesus was born in 2016 or what a modern day wise man would look like — hint: he wears skinny jeans — the folks at Modern Nativity have the answer. The company has created a hipster version of the classic nativity scene featuring a young Mary and Joseph taking a selfie with baby Jesus in a solar-paneled stable.

Macy’s ends Planned Parenthood gifts
Macy’s Inc.’s latest 990 tax form verifies that the retail giant no longer includes the Planned Parenthood Federation of America in its community contributions, the research group 2ndVote said, describing the news as the latest “miracle on 34th Street.”

Compassion International out of India
Compassion International, a Christian nongovernmental organization (NGO) that aids 145,000 impoverished Indian children, has three weeks left in the country unless officials give it a reprieve. It is the largest humanitarian presence in the second most populated country in the world—providing $50 million in annual relief funds. But India is cracking down on foreign NGOs based on fears that groups are using humanitarian work to mask evangelization efforts.

Graffiti welcomes Muslims in MO
At a time when reports of anti-Muslim sentiment are rising, an Islamic Center in Missouri has received a different message. Kamel Ghozzi, imam at the Islamic Center of Warrensburg, says “Welcome” and “Thank you for choosing our community” were written in chalk on the center’s sidewalk during the weekend.

Sources: Facts and Trends, CNBC, Baptist Press, World Magazine, Fox News

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Briefing: French priest beheaded at mass, gay rights reshaping religious liberty

ib2newseditor —  July 26, 2016

The BriefingIslamist behead priest during mass in France
An 86-year-old priest was butchered while two nuns and two parishioners were held by assailants who raided the church in Saint-Etienne-du-Rouvray near Rouen in Normandy during morning mass at 9 a.m. The clergyman, named as Jacques Hamel, is believed to have been beheaded during the attack while another hostage, said to be a nun, is fighting for life in hospital.

Chicago YMCA supports transgender bathroom, locker rooms
A recent incident caused the YMCA of Metro Chicago to craft guidelines for accommodating transgender members and guests, allowing them access to restrooms and changing areas that match their gender identity. They cover all programs and services, from gym and pool facilities to summer camps and various classes. The guidelines will apply to the YMCA’s 140,000 members at its 21 Chicagoland centers, but not some smaller, independent YMCA’s in the Chicago area.

How the push for gay rights is reshaping religious liberty
Proponents of full and equal rights for gay men and lesbians are pushing to expand the marriage equality they won at the high court into broader, society-wide freedoms. Religious conservatives are pushing back, worried that traditional religious values and protections they see as integral to the nation’s identity are being attacked as never before. Both sides feel they are victims. Both sides feel under threat.

Clinton VP pick church going Catholic
The day after appearing alongside Hillary Clinton as her running mate for the first time, Virginia Sen. Tim Kaine was in his Richmond Catholic church Sunday to seek prayers and also sang the Communion hymn. Kaine spoke to journalists after the service about his involvement in the mostly black church.

20 safest cities in Illinois — 2016
Whether you live in one the state’s rural or urban communities, you can feel good knowing that, overall, crime is on the decline in Illinois. In fact, the most recent FBI Crime Report states that incidents of violent crime and property crime each decreased by nearly 10% from 2013 to 2014. Comparing the latest Illinois crime data to information for the year 2000, we found that reported violent crimes dropped by an impressive 42% and property crimes fell by approximately the same amount.

Sources: Daily Mail, Chicago Tribune, Christian Science Monitor, Christian Post, Baptist Press, SafeWise

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The sinking sand of cultural Christianity

ib2newseditor —  July 7, 2016

I did not grow up a Southern Baptist. In fact, I only stumbled into the denomination 12 years ago. But every year I become happier and happier to be associated with this great tradition and organization. And this year’s Southern Baptist Convention in St. Louis made me more pleased than ever before to be a Baptist.

Maybe I am set up for future disappointment. I hear that these meetings are not always as eventful. This year, attendance was up. Emotions were high. We gathered in the immediate wake of the mass shooting in Orlando, the worst in our country’s history. We remembered the tragic shooting in Charleston one year earlier and acknowledged the racially charged atmosphere reflected in nearby Ferguson. “Election” also loomed large. The theological understanding of the term was a subtext for the hotly contested SBC presidential election. And the upcoming U.S. presidential election was in everyone’s mind.

One of the most memorable moments for me, though, came amid a flurry a motions presented to convention messengers. One brother from Arkansas had requested the removal of Southern Baptist officials or officers who support a right for Muslims in America to build mosques. The next day, after the Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission’s report, the same brother pressed ERLC President Russell Moore on the issue, likening the defense of the right to construct mosques to Jesus endorsing the erection of temples for Baal in ancient Israel.

As our culture unravels, we must remember our hope is in Christ, not country.

Dr. Moore’s response was sharp and received by the majority of messengers with applause. “The answer to Islam is not government power,” he said. “The answer is the gospel of Jesus Christ and the new birth that comes from that.”

In defending the idea of soul freedom for every individual, he illuminated a critical theological concept that lies at the heart of being Baptist. I am referring to religious liberty—the belief that no religion should be established by the state, but all faiths should be free to win adherents through the power of persuasion and not the sword.

In our history, Baptists have been persecuted by the government for non-conformity. We have seen the damage done by state churches to true religion. We do not baptize babies, in part, because we believe you cannot be born a Christian. Everyone must be genuinely converted without coercion. This should compel us to a radical witness to our Muslim neighbors and refugees, not to seek political action against them.

Recently there was a debate between a Christian and an atheist at the university near our church. It was sponsored by an evangelical campus ministry. To get there, you took the escalators to the third floor and turned left to find a small room with perhaps 100 mostly Anglo attenders. That same night, in the large room to the right of the escalators, there was a banquet for Islam Awareness Week with hundreds of Muslims from places like the Middle East and South Asia.

The lesson is this: We can wring our hands at the growing influence of Islam in the U.S., or we can get to work witnessing in new ways. Now is not the time for fear, but for bold faith.

In the New Testament era, the church is an altogether different institution than the state, with distinct ends and means. The two cannot be confused. So today, the proper analog to Baal altars in Israel is not Islamic Centers in Wheaton. It is idolatry in the corporate worship of the Church.

Patriotism definitely has its place, but perhaps one appropriate application would be to examine whether nationalism has crept into our Christianity. There are many forms of syncretism. As former SBC President James Merritt eloquently said in favor of a resolution to cease display of the Confederate battle flag, “Southern Baptists are not a people of any flag. We march under the banner of the cross of Jesus and the grace of God.”

As our culture continues to unravel and even the Bible Belt unbuckles, we must remember that our hope is in Christ, not country. His kingdom is unshakeable. And in many ways the dismantling of cultural Christianity that fused God and country is a good thing for the cause of the gospel. We Baptists want real believers that worship Christ alone, even if they are persecuted by a secular state or Islamic State.

– Nathan Carter is pastor of Immanuel Baptist Church in Chicago.

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Worth the risk

ib2newseditor —  May 2, 2016
A whirl of color – The Illinois mission team tries on pieces of the sari indigenous to the culture.

A whirl of color – The Illinois mission team tries on pieces of the sari indigenous to the culture.

As Carmen Halsey walked the roads of this South Asian country, she challenged herself to a game of sorts. “I’m a make eye contact, smile kind of person,” said IBSA’s director of women’s ministry and missions. Halsey tried to lock eyes with women she passed and see if she could get them to smile. But it never happened.

“I’ve never seen the face of oppression like what I saw there,” Halsey said, remembering how she tired of the multiple calls to prayer at the mosque, ringing out daily and reminding her mission team of how many people are walking in spiritual darkness.

Halsey’s trip to South Asia was actually years in the making. When she joined the IBSA staff in 2013, she mobilized women in the state around awareness and prevention of human trafficking—a focus started by National Woman’s Missionary Union.

In Illinois, Halsey has continued that emphasis, putting in place a task force to study the issue, create resources for churches, and facilitate mission trips in North America and internationally to be involved in rescuing victims of trafficking. The trafficking focus is how Halsey met Kimberly Sowell and Bangladesh: For Faith and Freedom.

The April trip, led by Sowell, gave Halsey and Illinois women an opportunity to see up-close trafficking prevention and rescue at the Light of Hope Center. But they also saw the importance of encouraging national Christians—South Asian women who have come to Christ and are now risking persecution to reach others with the gospel.

During their trip, the Illinois women saw in a new, real way the threats Christians face in other parts of the world. The awareness that believers in South Asia could lose their lives for their faith spurred the team on, Halsey said, and inspired “intense, beautiful” prayer. It also left Halsey wrestling with a bigger question: As Christians in the U.S., most of us don’t have a target on our backs. Why then are we not sharing here?

As the team ministered in a village one day, they were asked to pray for people who were sick. One woman went to get her son, a Muslim, so Halsey could pray for him. Halsey describes what happened next as her boldest moment. “I looked at him and said, ‘I will pray for you. But I have got to be clear: There is only one name I’ll pray to.”

In this place, where people are in desperate need of hope, only one Name can deliver it: Jesus.

For more information about IBSA mission opportunities, contact Carmen Halsey at (217) 391-3138 or CarmenHalsey@IBSA.org.

– Meredith Flynn

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Terrorists and refugees: A fear-based response is not the answer. What is?

Lisa Misner —  December 29, 2015
Editor’s note: After an often tearful year, the Christian’s counterattack is hope.  The enemy may use the events of last year to strike chords of fear, but in reporting them, we offer notes of hope for 2016. God is in control of this world, and whatever happens, this history being made before our eyes will turn people toward him. He is our hope.
This is our certainty as we anticipate the new year, our hope.

Jesus-squareBy Eric Reed | The killing of 14 people at a social services facility in San Bernardino, California came only two weeks after the fatal shootings of 192 people in Paris in November. At first, the California attack seemed different from the Paris massacre: far fewer fatalities in a daytime shooting following angry words in the workplace.

But then, similarities emerged. Weapons of war altered to discharge more rounds and kill more people, a stockpile of explosives, young people with Middle East backgrounds, and finally the verdict: self-radicalized Muslims.

The fear of ISIS-connected terrorist attacks on U.S. soil that has marked 2015 appeared plausible and justified. But for some Christians, combatting terrorism on a national security level became complicated by biblical mandates to care for widows and orphans and strangers as we witnessed the flight of 1.5 million Syrians from their own homeland, trying to escape ISIS rebels themselves.

There was no uniform response from Southern Baptists. Several leading pastors agreed that Syrian refugees should not be admitted to the U.S. And polls showed many people agreeing with Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump who recommended halting Muslim immigration in response to terror attacks.

But others found themselves defending Muslims as Russell Moore, president of the SBC’s Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, cautioned, “A government that can close the borders to all Muslims simply on the basis of their religious belief can do the same thing for evangelical Christians.”

What are believers to do? First, we pray. That is not a simplistic answer. To know the mind of Christ, we study his Word and we pray. The Teacher who instructed us to “love our neighbor as ourselves” is the same One who said “be shrewd as serpents and innocent as doves.”

Second, we can educate ourselves. The pastor who said that members of his church are “all over the place” on handling Syrian refugees can lead meaningful discussion rather than allow his flock to wander into emotional or unbiblical arguments.

Third, remember the spiritual need of all persons involved. “Our Muslim neighbors are not people we want to scream and rail at—we don’t want to demonize our mission field,” Moore told Buzzfeed. “I think that the evangelistic missionary impulse of Christianity that sometimes seculars present as nefarious actually is what grounds evangelicals to see individuals not as issues but as persons.

“Every person may well be our future brother or sister in Christ.”

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Tuesday Briefing: Baptist leaders say Charleston church shooting was ‘unmasked evil’

Meredith Flynn —  June 23, 2015

The_BriefingTHE BRIEFING |  The murder of nine people at a Charleston, S.C., church prayer meeting “should shock the conscience of every person,” a group of Southern Baptist leaders said in a joint statement after the June 17 shooting.

“There is hardly a more vivid picture of unmasked evil than the murder of those in prayer,” said Ronnie Floyd, president of the Southern Baptist Convention; Russell Moore, president of the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission; K. Marshall Williams, president of the SBC National African American Fellowship; and A.B. Vines, NAAF’s immediate past president.

Dylann Roof, 21, sat through the Wednesday evening prayer meeting at Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, and then opened fire in what police have called a hate crime, Baptist Press reports.

“This act of bloodshed is wicked and more than wicked,” the leaders’ statement continues. “It is literally satanic, as our Lord taught us that the devil is a ‘murderer from the beginning’ (John 8:44).”

Read the full story at BPNews.net.

InterVarsity welcome again at Cal State campuses
Christianity Today reports that after being “derecognized” on all 23 campuses of the California State University system, InterVarsity is back in business as a recognized student organization. InterVarsity’s leadership policy, which requires that leaders affirm Christian doctrines, was previously found to be in conflict with a Cal State rule that requires recognized student groups to accept all students as potential leaders.

“Cal State has not changed the language of their ‘all comers’ policy,” InterVarsity’s Greg Jao told CT. “They have clarified that the policy only requires that (a) we allow all students to become members, which we have always done, and (b) we allow all students to apply for leadership positions.”

Southern Baptist ethics entity will open office in the Middle East
The Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention announced last week it will open a Mideast office for international religious freedom. “We must contend for religious freedom for our brothers and sisters in Christ and for everyone else wherever they are on the globe,” ERLC President Russell Moore said at the 2015 Southern Baptist Convention in Columbus, Ohio, according to reporting by Baptist Press. “We will not stand idly by while those with whom we will share eternity are being led to the slaughter.”

How can Christians pray for Muslims during Ramadan?
Former International Mission Board president Jerry Rankin encourages Christians to use the traditional Muslim month of fasting and prayer (which begins this Thursday) to pray for spiritual awakening among Muslims. “Rather than hardening our hearts and dismissing their lostness to the judgment of God as something they deserve,” Rankin writes for ChristianityToday.com, “we should plead for their hearts to be open to God revealing himself.”

‘Inside Out’ puts emotions on the big screen
It’s official: The latest Disney/Pixar movie is a hit (although even it couldn’t defeat the dinosaurs of “Jurassic World” at the box office). In his review of “Inside Out” for PluggedIn.com, Paul Asay writes that the team behind the PG-rated film are communicating “a message that feels truly countercultural: Happiness isn’t everything.”

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