In the wonderful, compelling, memoir Same kind of different as me a rich art dealer is nudged by his simple, sincere, servant wife to begin serving the evening meal once a week at the Union Gospel Mission in Fort Worth, Texas. 

His wife Deborah has had vision about a poor man rising to lead the city and when Denver shuffles through the line, eyes down, for his meal, she realizes with a start, “That’s him!” She encourages Ron, her reluctant husband, to befriend Denver.

It takes months because the distance between their universes is light years.

Denver was born and raised a sharecropper in Louisiana, a modern slave. He could not read or write, never attended school a day in his life. He never even knew there was a school he could attend.

One day when he was 23 he just left the plantation, still in debt to “the man” for the clothes on his back and for rent on his two-room, windowless shack that had no plumbing or electricity. He caught a slow freight train to California.

With the help of hobos and homeless, he learned to survive by panhandling, feigning a “hamburger drop” in which he would scrounge through a garbage can for a hamburger he’d put there earlier. When a likely “donor” approached, he would pull the burger out and start eating, a revolting sight that compelled the approaching pedestrian to say, “Don’t eat that! Here is some money, get a real meal.”

After 10 years in prison for armed robbery, Denver migrated back to Fort Worth, where his path crossed with Ron and Deborah. Unknown to him, his face matched the vision Deborah saw as the face of one who would change the city.

Ron heeded his wife and reached out to Denver over time. They went to eat, had coffee, even toured some art museums and hung out. Street wise and guarded, Denver finally asked Ron, “What do you want from me?”

Ron said he simply wanted Denver to be his friend. Denver asked for a couple days to think about it.

When next they sat over coffee, Denver said he’d learned of a curious white man’s practice of fishing. While a poor black man is proud of everything he catches, takes it home and makes it a meal, he’s learned that white men sometimes throw their catch back into the water. They call it “catch and release.” 

If Ron was interested in a “catch and release” friendship in which he reaches out to secure Denver’s friendship, and releases Denver once he’s gained it, then Denver was not interested in being a friend.

If, however, Ron was interested in a forever friend — a mutual, supportive friendship through thick and thin — then he would like to be Ron’s friend.

It is a moving scene in a riveting, true story.

Denver recognized that some who strive to “do good” might be crossing social barriers to notch a credit, or gain a good feeling, only to realize the energy and commitment required to maintain a friendship across boundaries is too great. And they release the friendship.

Denver wanted no part of such a friendship and had the wisdom and courage to say so, at risk of losing the patronage of a man who was trying to help him.

Are you a catch and release friend?

Central Triad Baptist Association and the Piedmont Baptist Association have merged and the 81 associations in North Carolina now number 80.

Rather than anyone wringing their hands, knowledgeable insiders are simply saying more such mergers are needed.

I attended an associational meeting last year in which the nominating committee chair said there were not nearly enough persons willing to fill committee positions as there were committee positions to fill. He announced a meeting the following week and if enough interest was not shown, he would take that as a clue that the committees were not needed, and perhaps the association itself would be better if member churches — all six of them — affiliated with neither of two early associations.

The director of missions — himself bivocational — expected the association to survive immediately following that meeting because member mountain churches wouldn’t feel welcomed in the valley. And it did.

Vital associations provide a vital ministry. Associations, which predate any state or national convention, have lived on the verbal guillotine for many years as the conditions that birthed them have changed. Just as there were two state conventions in North Carolina until a railroad facilitated edge-to-edge transportation, geographic associations grew up around central communities.

Modern transportation, along with telephones and internet, make it less important for associations to be defined by geography. Instead, churches and Christians who by nature look for like-minded souls, find that affinity outside of map lines.

Consequently, casual observers say associations have outlived the need for their services. More informed observers aren’t so ready to write the obituary.

Kelton Hinton, associational missionary for Johnston Baptist Association south of Raleigh who was the director of missions representative on the Baptist State Convention Executive Committee last year, has said the viability of associations that are doing the work is not a question. In fast-growing Johnston County, Hinton is leading churches in language missions, international missions, in planting churches and in ministering to their communities.

Any association’s vibrancy depends on the support of churches within the association. For reasons still unexplained, Central Triad Baptist Association churches did not support the association at a vibrancy level. Director of Missions J.C. Bradley put his own dreams for the association aside and led the merger. J.C. retires March 31.

If more mergers are to follow, it will not necessarily be a bad thing. When mergers are forced by lack of church support, however, that implies issues way beyond geography.

Thanks to a tax refund check and a year-end bonus to fund his growing appreciation for cycling, my youngest son Austin is the proud owner of a new Cannondale road bike. No longer is “equipment” an excuse and I anticipated a fresh, generational challenge when he came to visit last weekend.

We arranged a couple rides during which he was anxious to mark his progress against the “fixed” standard of his dad. It’s not unlike the annual pencil line on the door post that marks physical growth against the fixed standard of a yardstick.

How are you doing? Well, let me take a measurement. Yes I’ve grown an inch. Or yes, I rode the old man into the ground.

Of course, my wife and I are of the age where we think the kids are starting to talk amongst themselves, asking each other if they’ve noticed mom and dad losing a step, slowing down. I can remember when my siblings and I started talking that way about our parents and I will tell my kids “Keep pushing. We are not there yet!”

I could handle the new bike, I thought. Since the weather turned toward spring, and I finally shook the 4-week cough, I’d gotten out a few times. My neighborhood riding buddies even told me I pulled them an extra couple miles per hour when I joined the group.

After mom and I oohed and ahhed over the new wheels Austin and I went to get dressed with the technical clothes that look so silly but which enable a rider to put in some distance with the least amount of discomfort possible.

Then Austin pulled out a new helmet – sleek, silver, racy. After that, new gloves. His new shoes and pedals all fit together and the pending challenge was looming. Then, he pulled out his ultimate upgrade – he’d shaved his legs.

Gulp.

Reasons for serious cyclists shaving their legs vary. The common wisdom has something to do with lowering wind resistance but that is so miniscule paying an extra $200 for pedals that weigh 3 grams less would make more sense. (And as you can guess, I don’t think that makes any sense unless you do this for a living)

A more likely rationale for cyclists shaving their legs is that it makes a massage at the end of the race easier. Or it’s easier to pick road rash out of your skin without hairy legs.

Retired racer and frame maker Dave Moulton says, “It’s tradition.”

“Shaved legs are faster,” he said in his blog. “It is psychological. Like polishing the engine on a hot rod car; you can’t see inside the engine but you polish the outside. The cyclist is the “engine” of his bike; you can’t see the heart or the lungs inside, but by making the legs smooth and clean so you see every vein, sinew, and muscle, it is a definite psychological boost.”

So out comes No. 2 son in Lycra, new helmet, gloves and bike and with shaved legs. What’s a dad to do? No, not that. I’d like to make a literary mash-up and write something about the hair and the tortoise, but it doesn’t work here because the hair was not the hare.

After feeling like the tortoise the first two-thirds of our first 40-mile spring ride, the dues of perseverance paid off in the end, and at the finish, the hair was there.

 

You need to check out Chris Boone’s blog, PainCave 2010. The good Baptist endurance rider is training hard to set a west to east across North Carolina record in the fall, in support of Baptist Children’s Homes. Keep up with his training regimen in his blog .  P.S. He shaves his legs.

 

 

 

In all the dialog about the Great Commission Resurgence Task Force’s study of processes in Southern Baptist life as it seeks efficiencies to get more money “to the nations,” the single most arresting fact that committee members quoted was that two-thirds of missions money and personnel allocated through the North American Mission Board was deployed in the old south states.

 

I still remember being shocked when Al Gilbert, task force member and pastor of Calvary Baptist Church, quoted that information. I thought that should not be.

 

Turns out, it’s not.

 

The North American Mission Board has informed the task force that it provided erroneous data, what NAMB called in a news release “a significant error.” That error resulted in the task force drawing conclusions that logically would have all of us saying something different definitely needs to be done.

Original data said that at the end of 2008 there were 3,515 missionaries serving in the 14 states where Southern Baptists are the strongest with only 1,735 missionaries serving in the remaining states.

Actually, the new NAMB numbers say, within the U.S. there were 2,573 missionaries serving in the old south states and 2,733 – or a slight majority -- serving in the new work states. If the 133 NAMB missionaries serving in Canada were included in the overall numbers, 53 percent of NAMB missionaries serve outside the old south states.

NAMB said the error occurred when it double-counted the states of Texas and Virginia, which each have two Baptist state conventions.

NAMB operates through cooperative agreements with state conventions to share missionary expenses and provide money for missions initiatives. Stronger state conventions pay a higher share, while NAMB’s funding portion is as high as 95 percent in Northeast and Northwest states where Southern Baptists have significantly fewer churches. Consequently, a NAMB  funding cut or cooperative agreement phase out – as will be recommended by the task force – would devastate those conventions, unless NAMB finds another process to fund Baptist outreach in those areas.

In 2008 NAMB invested $10.2 million in the form of cooperative agreements with state conventions in the south and southwest. During the same year, it invested $34 million in the newer work states.

In addition to money from cooperative agreements, NAMB sends money to state conventions through missionary benefits and national ministry funds. When these items are added, 77 percent of the $62 million NAMB distributed throughout the U.S. and Canada in 2009 went to areas where Southern Baptist church presence is the least.  

So, it turns out the single most arresting fact that on its face would demand change in NAMB’s mission investment focus is wrong. There’s egg on NAMB’s face for providing the erroneous numbers because they rightly fueled indignation and alarm in the GCR task force.

Thankfully, the numbers were wrong and Baptists’ greatest efforts through NAMB are in areas where Southern Baptists have the fewest churches.

 

I’m a passionate guy. When my son was playing organized basketball, I permanently damaged my voice in a passionate – and forever fruitless – effort to educate referees.

My eyes moisten during Olympic vignettes in which parents’ work with children who grow into Olympic athletes; just as tears ran down my cheeks Sunday to hear my pastor talk of inheritance – a ring from his earthly father and a crown from his heavenly father.

Not only do I understand when a person’s commitment to his or her ministry prompts a passion that excludes consideration that another ministry might be just as valid, I often applaud it. Every ministry needs advocates willing to stand on a hill and wave the banner for it or that ministry will suffer the ignominious fate that befalls the lukewarm and anonymous.

Freed from the shackles of propriety by the announcement of his retirement July 31, International Mission Board President Jerry Rankin is unleashing his passion to wave the banner for the IMB to a degree that threatens to carry his passion to a new – and harmful – level.

An early advocate and silent partner in the Great Commission Resurgence movement that is examining the historic processes of Southern Baptists in ministry, education, benevolence and missions, Rankin is becoming the vocal leader for those who believe the only worthy investment of any cooperative missions dollar is outside of the U.S. There are plenty of churches in America, these advocates say, to evangelize the lost population here – if they would just commit to the Great Commission.

Consequently the mission dollars Baptist churches contribute through the Cooperative Program should be invested much more heavily in pushing back lostness where there is little or no Christian witness, they say.

Who can argue against that? Well, there is a case to be made both from an historical and a future context for continued investment in certain levels of Baptist processes, but more on that later.

For now, Rankin’s legitimate passion for international missions has prompted him to cross the line of propriety in his criticism of Morris Chapman, president of the Southern Baptist Convention’s Executive Committee. In a blog published this week Rankin denigrated Chapman’s commitment to the Great Commission and unloaded his frustration of 17 years of jumping through the budget request hoops in Chapman’s committee without getting any significant increase for international missions – Rankin’s passion.

Rankin, as does any passionate proponent, believes the resources of the Southern Baptist Convention should be harnessed and focused for the entity he leads because its assignment should be the Convention’s singular purpose. That passion led him to write that Chapman believes “the purpose of our denomination is not the Great Commission but cooperation."

Rankin implied that persons employed in Baptist denominational ministry who have reservations about recommendations of the Great Commission Resurgence Task Force are simply afraid “to lose entitlements” – a charge I resent. I do understand his frustration with the budgeting process.

"Apparently it doesn't matter whether we impact a lost world or accomplish anything else as long as we cooperate together," Rankin wrote. "In fact, it was said that the formula for Cooperative Program allocations must not change. I now understand why for 17 years I and my staff have been meeting with the budget workgroup of the Executive Committee, presenting our required report on funding needs, but nothing is ever done. It is just a meaningless exercise of denominational bureaucracy."

Actually, when I was on the Executive Committee staff 1977-82 I had a similar impression. Every entity head made an impassioned plea for more funds and allocations remained the same. Of course, any increase for one entity could only come from a decrease to another and every entity had a passionate banner waver who believed his ministry was the most important. I admired the presenters and was ready to give each of them an increase – until I heard the next presenter.

Rankin called the one percentage point increase that the Great Commission Resurgence Task Force is recommending for IMB – to be taken from the Executive Committee budget – a “token.” Remember, that is not a “one percent increase” but one percentage point of the CP total, which equals $2 million, or nearly one-third of the Executive Committee budget.

Rankin’s rancor was prompted by remarks Chapman made to assembled Baptist state convention executives Feb. 10 that Rankin interpreted to mean Chapman valued cooperation above the Great Commission and that cooperation was the purpose of the Southern Baptist Convention.

Chapman said in a Baptist Press release, "I am saddened that Jerry so blatantly misrepresented my comments. The men who heard me speak know what I said, what I think of Christ and His commands, and where I think cooperation falls in any list of priorities. I would never say that cooperation is the purpose of our Convention. It is only a means to an end -- to assist Southern Baptists in working together for the common purpose of furthering the Kingdom of God."

Chapman said he hopes Rankin “will retract his unjustified remarks. They do not befit a man of his position and stature."

Passion is a great thing; nothing moves forward without it. But as passionate Christian men and women earnestly examine the issues that threaten to apply such a “shock to the system” that the system itself could fail, let us conduct ourselves amiably, frankly, and lovingly.

 

  

Chris Clayman wanted to live and work as a missionary in Mali. But he is susceptible to some bugs or virus inherent there so it is physically impossible for him. He and his wife searched their hearts that still beat for West Africa to find a way to minister among West Africans.

During a brief stopover in New York City Clayman went to a part of the city where West African immigrants settle to talk with some in their own language. In a God ordained meeting he struck up a conversation with a man who had fled West Africa after years of persecution when he converted to Christianity.

He was in New York, yearning to be an evangelist among his people there, but did not know how. A church was born in that meeting and the connections have given Clayman access in Mali that he never came close to before.

Speaking to a vision team from the Baptist State Convention in the Metropolitan New York Baptist Association offices in Manhattan, Clayman said 100,000 West Africans live in New York City. Back in Africa, those in New York are “big men,” heroes who are responsible for the economic support of their extended families in Africa.

They are often businessmen and are politically connected. Those connections have enabled Clayman to return for one-month stints to Mali and find open doors that never existed for him before. Connections made from New York have encouraged Mali wives to open their homes to Bible studies. Clayman has spoken on Mali television from New York three times.

When he travels to Mali he has open access and a vehicle, housing and an official’s word to tell him of any needs he has while in the country. Clayman, tall, thin, with eyeglasses and a long chin beard, tells that story to illustrate that New York City may well be the access point to hard to reach people groups all over the world: because virtually every group is present there.

“Churches will go all over the world and get excited about ministering to certain groups and they don’t realize those groups are here,” Clayman said.

He has spent four years deeply researching the largest 82 people groups represented in New York and has published a reference book to help Christians minister among them. He research reveals that the “180 languages” supposedly spoken in New York is greatly understated. He said Mexicans alone speak 100 languages there and says the total is closer to 500.

The book reveals that some people groups in the city are virtual underground slaves, smuggled into the States by “snake heads” for a high fee paid back through years of indentured servanthood. Baptism certificates help illegals get papers. Chinese Baptist churches are aware of this so they make the baptism process quite arduous, Clayman said, to be sure the act is sincere.

Related stories 
Team’s foray into N.Y. launches partnership
Planting N.Y. churches for the nations  
A Day on Long Island surpasses expectations
Translation needed from Ky. to Queens
Native son prays for change at home

The irony of life in the Southern Baptist corral is that for most of the past 30 years Southern Baptists have elected to national leadership men who did not demonstrate deep seated, heartfelt, convictional support of the Southern Baptist Convention. Being a convention with a majority of small churches, bivocational pastors, rural roots and minimal theological education, we’ve almost always elected men from large churches with charisma who could look sharp and speak well on the national stage and make us feel good about the Southern Baptist image.

 

Call it validation by corporate image.

 

But for the most part these men were not involved in Southern Baptist life before their elections as national president, except for working behind the scenes toward the election of Southern Baptist Convention presidents. They were never seen in their local associations and seldom at their Baptist State Conventions. Instead, they were very busy growing large, outstanding churches.

 

With four exceptions, mission gifts from those churches to the Cooperative Program, which is the foundational lifeline for the work of Baptist State conventions and the Southern Baptist Convention, have consistently been two to four percent of undesignated receipts. This was at a time when the national average was closer to 10 percent of undesignated gifts from churches to the wider work.

 

Today, the national average from churches is closer to six percent and in large part that drop is due to the fact we have elected leadership who did not support the Cooperative Program. Nothing leads like example.

 

Most of these presidents’ churches have been very generous in other missions support. They respond to capital requests from the International Mission Board; give significant Lottie Moon and Annie Armstrong special offerings and send mission teams around the globe. That is important, honorable and noteworthy. I applaud it.

 

But the work of the Convention is the work of churches working cooperatively. When the example is that the cooperative work does not merit support, the result is diminished support.

 

Now we come to the work of the Great Commission Resurgence Task Force. There is no question Southern Baptists need self-examination. We need somehow to see the world and open our hearts to be moved by the Spirit of God enough to weep for it as Jesus wept for Jerusalem. From that heart change all Baptist issues would be resolved.

 

In its initial report the task force recognizes the heart issue. But no task force recommendation can order up a heart change like a happy meal. So the task force moves on to recommendations it can make in the structure of how Southern Baptists organize their work.  

 

Several significant recommendations include phasing out cooperative agreements between state conventions and the North American Mission Board; cutting the SBC Executive Committee budget by one-third; having NAMB appoint missionaries directly; having NAMB operate from seven regional centers and erasing national boundaries – including in the U.S. – in which the International Mission Board should operate.

 

The issue here is Cooperative Program support because it is at the heart of the honest examination to get more resources to population centers in the US and overseas. In the task force report is a recommendation to change nomenclature for cooperative giving to “Great Commission Giving” and include in that basket both gifts through the Cooperative Program and “any designated gifts given to the causes of the Southern Baptist Convention, a state convention or a local association.”

 

Men in line to be elected president of the Southern Baptist Convention resent when their church’s anemic Cooperative Program giving is cited as evidence of paltry SBC support. They are seeking to lead a billion dollar organization for which they’ve demonstrated little support or previous involvement. So they point to their thousands of dollars of other mission gifts and say those gifts should “count” if someone is tallying gifts as a measure of support.

 

The “Great Commission Giving” nomenclature suggested by the task force is a balm for their perceived injury. But it is a dressing for disaster as it concerns the Cooperative Program.

 

When the average CP giving of task force member churches is less than five percent the report’s recommendation to “reaffirm the Cooperative Program as our central means of supporting Great Commission ministries” rings hollow. Nothing leads like example.

 

The Cooperative Program as a vehicle for missions support needs national leaders to rise in support, not look for ways to give around it and get “credit.” Already the Cooperative Program is buffeted by 85 years of being taken for granted. It has become a faceless funnel for effective missions support at a time when every para-church organization puts faces and names to their appeals and our own International Mission Board is forced to make more than half the missionaries anonymous for safety’s sake.

 

There is much talk in the task force report of churches owning the Great Commission responsibility individually. That is a biblical mandate. But the work of the Southern Baptist Convention is the work of churches cooperatively.

Changing nomenclature adds not a dollar in effect or motivation to missions. But it will have the effect of sticking another drain in the vein of the Cooperative Program, to the demise of ministries North Carolina Baptists have birthed and nurtured for Jesus’ sake.

 

 

Laughter reduces muscle tension, exercises the lungs, strengthens the immune system and draws friends according to Jack Hinson, pastor and 14-year chaplain who used the balm of humor to help patients heal at Harris Regional Hospital in Sylva.

Hinson has published a book of stories about healing humor called “Laughter Was God’s Idea.”

“It was His intention from the beginning to provide us with a mechanism to address the tension of existence,” Hinson said.

Hinson admits he discovered the healing balm of laughter only after 18 months as the hospital’s first chaplain. He did not feel effective and the burden of patients’ problems and pain weighed on him.

Then he took his annual week at the Pastor’s School of Furman University and heard a series of lectures by Conrad Hyers that reframed his perception of the healing power of humor.

“The fall into sin is the fall into seriousness,” Hyers said. “When you take yourself too seriously, you don’t take God seriously enough.”

Having a less serious view of ourselves makes us less judgmental and more open to accepting God’s grace, Hinson learned. That’s when he discovered he was taking himself too seriously and his ministry among sick and dying patients took on a new dimension.

“I believed the hospital deserved a joyful chaplain,” he writes. “My prayer was, ‘God, if you will furnish the joy, I will spread it all over the hospital – in every room, in the halls, in the cafeteria, in the chapel, in the lobby, on the grounds. I will deliver a joyful, cheerful spirit.’”

His 150-page book, published by Catch the Spirit of Appalachia, Inc., in Sylva, is filled with anecdotes of his ministry in the healing halls of the hospital. For pastors and chaplains and laymen involved in hospital ministry, the stories can help you understand the dynamics between the patient and visitor, and how a well placed, humorous word can provide not only a light moment, but a bridge to talking about something more serious on the patient’s mind.

Talking with a patient facing gall bladder surgery, Hinson learned that several family members also had the same surgery. The patient wondered if gall bladder diseases are hereditary.

He said he didn’t know if gall bladder disease was hereditary, but insanity is: “Parents get it from their children.” That comment opened the gates for the patient and her husband to share their sorrows over the wayward lives of their children.

Hinson talks about the cartoon ties he wears, that he calls “bridge ties” because they open conversation with patients who are strangers and have no real reason to share their feelings with a man who walks into their room and offers to pray with them.

He closes his book with a few bulletin bloopers to leave you with a smile.

“Don’t let worry kill you…let the church help.”

“The ladies of the church have cast off clothing of every kind and they may be seen in the church basement Friday.”

“At the evening service tonight, the sermon topic will be ‘What is Hell?’ Come early and listen to the choir practice.”