A modern children’s book about the Christmas story tells of Joseph and Mary seeking refuge in several lodges before finally, an innkeeper pities them enough to offer an animal stall across the road from the inn. The color drawing on the adjacent page depicts a small, covered stall with a manger, lots of straw and a few animals.

Such embellishment is common in Christmas narratives, with Joseph and the virgin teenager Mary seeking a hotel room in a booked-up town, though Scripture only tells us Christ was placed in a manger because no room existed in the “inn.”

Well-meaning Christmas carols often capture the tenderness of the moment by depicting a world and a Messiah in peaceful slumber (all is calm and bright); a few dare foretell of the Savior’s destiny and the manner in which his peace will come.

One such song, “What Child Is This?” probably won’t be sung at children’s Christmas pageants this year.

“Why lies He in such mean estate

Where ox and ass are feeding?

Good Christian, fear; for sinners here

The silent Word is pleading.

Nails, spear shall pierce Him through,

The cross be borne for me, for you;

Hail, hail the Word made flesh,

The babe, the son of Mary!”

Are our popular notions accurate, biblical? Is the popularized nativity the way it was? “It is a fine thing, I suppose, that we honor a sacred holiday with such homey sentiments,” writes Philip Yancey in his book “The Jesus I Never Knew” about the warm Christmas of pop culture. “And yet when I turn to the Gospel accounts of the first Christmas, I hear a very different tone and sense mainly disruption at work.”

Barry Creamer, associate professor of humanities at Criswell College, said the world Jesus inhabited was eclectic, with four or five times more Jews living outside of Palestine as inside, and many Gentiles among the inhabitants of Galilee where he would grow up.

There was religious and political division, Creamer noted. Some Jews sought a Messiah to establish his rule and throw off Roman tyranny; more liberal Jews saw messianic prophecies such as Isaiah 53 as representing Israel as a nation and not an individual leader. Politically, many Jews sought freedom from Rome while others wished to meld with the dominant Greek culture and Roman rule.

“Always, when I’m dealing with these issues every year, I like going back to the New Testament stories and just reading them to make sure we remember what it does say and not try to read into it more than it says. That’s one of the keys,” Creamer remarked.

The Gospels record that angels summoned lowly shepherds to the scene to witness God’s incarnation in the manger. Later, though Scripture doesn’t record when, mysterious wise men from the East arrive, though there’s no mention of three kings from the Orient.

“There’s no implication there that (the birth) was any more known than just among the shepherds and the few people that were surrounding them and the few relatives that were part of the process of the pregnancy and all, and then those few likely Jewish diaspora (those dispersed) who came back or who taught others who came back to worship, like the magi.”

Creamer said the wise men could have been devout, learned Jews who had moved East, or Gentiles trained by devout Jews to discern the Scriptures.

But the Messiah’s humble arrival went mostly uncelebrated, Creamer said.

“I love the implication that God does great things through small things. What people consider insignificant at a particular moment has nothing to do with its significance in eternity. It’s just like the seed that God compares the kingdom to. You plant the smallest seed and it becomes the greatest herb. I love the fact that even when Christ is born in an individual, meaning when a person gets saved, what looks like just a prayer of confession and acknowledgment really becomes a life-changing and community-changing and sometimes world-changing event.”

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The Empower Evangelism Conference Jan. 31-Feb. 2 at First Baptist Church of Euless will feature renowned speakers such as James Merritt, Junior Hill, Voddie Baucham and Mac Brunson and award-winning musicians Jaci Velasquez and Larnelle Harris.

The theme for the annual conference, sponsored by the Southern Baptists of Texas Convention, is “Jesus?Hope of Glory.”

Bible teacher and frequent conference speaker Jerry Pipes and Vonette Bright, wife of the late Campus Crusade for Christ founder, Bill Bright, will also appear.

“I urge churches from across Texas to bring buses and vans filled with people to this conference,” Don Cass, SBTC evangelism director, said. “This could be the beginning of spiritual awakening among churches in Southern Baptist life. Pray that the Holy Spirit’s power will fall on us during those days. This will also be the beginning of the emphasis of ‘The Year of Double Harvest’ for 2005 in our Southern Baptists of Texas Convention. Don’t miss the Empower Evangelism Conference. Your life will never be the same as we look to ‘Jesus ?The Hope of Glory.'”

The Conference of Texas Baptist Evangelists (COTBE) will meet Monday afternoon, beginning at 1 p.m. A concurrent women’s session will be held featuring Bright, who will speak at 3:40 p.m.

The Empower Evangelism Conference begins at 6:30 p.m. Monday evening, featuring music from Velasquez, preaching from Baucham and Patterson and a testimony from Dale Perry, pastor of Friendly Baptist Church in Tyler.

Tuesday morning’s session starts with an 8:30 a.m. concert by Velasquez, followed by more music from Katie Griffin Dyke and Velasquez and preaching from Michael Lewis, pastor of Great Hills Baptist Church, Austin, Frank Harber, pastor of First Baptist Church, Colleyville, and Patterson.

Patterson is also the scheduled speaker for the annual Cooperative Program Luncheon immediately following the Tuesday morning session.

Tuesday afternoon’s session begins at 1:30 p.m. and will feature Velasquez and sermons from Stan Coffey, pastor of San Jacinto Baptist Church, Amarillo, Guidestone Resources (SBC) President O.S. Hawkins, and Merritt, former SBC president and Atlanta, Ga.-area pastor.

Tuesday evening’s session begins at 6:30 and will feature music from the Grammy-winning Harris and preaching from Pipes and Brunson and humor by Sylvia Harney.

The closing session Wednesday morning begins with an 8:30 a.m. mass senior adult choir concert, music by the Jim Bob Griffin Family and preaching from Pipes, Baucham and Junior Hill, Alabama-based evangelist.

A senior adult banquet will follow Wednesday morning’s closing session featuring the Griffin Family and Harney.

HOUSTON?If the International Missions Mobilization Conference and Celebration held at Seoul Baptist Church in Houston was any indication, Koreans and Korean-Americans are rising to the challenge of reaching the world for Christ during a time of great opportunity.

By the end of the weekend meeting last month, more than 200 people had committed to short and long-term missions projects, said Dong Kim, a deacon and director of missions for the Korean language congregation. Seoul Baptist Church hosts two autonomous, interdependent congregations?one Korean language, one English.

Friday evening worship services in both languages drew 800 people and featured speakers home from the mission field, International Mission Board representatives, and IMB President Jerry Rankin. Saturday included IMB workshops and seminars and Saturday evening culminated in a celebration service that saw 187 people commit to short-term mission work and 33 to long-term service.

The Houston conference was the seventh in a series of gatherings across the nation that focus solely on the Korean population of the Southern Baptist Convention.

There are 750 Korean churches with a combined membership of 177,150 affiliated with the SBC. Recent years have seen an increase in missions work by Korean nationals and Korean-Americans. IMB statistics show that, with the exception of Caucasians, more Koreans serve as IMB workers than any other ethnic group.

According to research by Steve “S.C.” Moon, director of the Korea Research Institute for Missions (www.krim.org), there were 8,103 Korean national missionaries working with 136 agencies in 162 countries as of 2000. Those figures exclude independent missionaries sent by local churches, Koreans who gave up national citizenship and are mission representatives from another country, or Koreans serving less than two years on the field. So the count of 8,103 Korean missionaries in the field, Moon concluded, is a conservative one. Moon’s research shows, after Americans, that Koreans make up the largest body of missionaries worldwide.

Jonghwan Kim, director of Undergraduate Lay Theological Studies and international liaison for Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, said he is not surprised by the numbers and that Koreans are appreciative that someone shared the gospel with them; they want to return the favor.

The Korean conferences introduce the resources available through the IMB. Meetings have been held since January 2003 in California, Texas, Maryland, Washington, and Virginia. Warren said there will probably be more scheduled for 2005 because the response has been overwhelming. Organizers had hoped to have at least 100 Korean Christians commit to mission work. But when 200 came forward in the first meeting alone, they knew they were expecting too little.

Congregations like Seoul Baptist in Houston have long been missions minded. For 2005 the church has tentatively planned 20 missions trips by both their Korean and English-speaking congregations. Also, each of the churches’ home Bible study groups sponsors an overseas missionary.

Warren said many people leave the conference saying, “We can do that?” in response to information provided. He said the primary goal of the conferences has been to introduce these churches to “the Southern Baptist way of doing [missions work]?we can do a lot more together than individually.”

Church members and visitors from other congregations as far away as Dallas heard presentations on such subjects as “Connecting Your Church to God’s Global Mission,” “Prayer Walking Training and Opportunities,” “Strategic Involvement in International Missions,” and “Strategic Ways for Student Involvement.”

Most of the missions representatives are serving or have served somewhere in Asia, the most lost region of the world with 4 billion people. “There’s a huge challenge in Asia,” said Elvin McCann, IMB director of Church Services. “There is a dearth of messengers in Asia.”

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AUSTIN–A stay-at-home mom fed up with the influence of “liberal-leaning groups” and unelected bureaucrats on textbook content developed a simple strategy for change.

State Board of Education (SBOE) member Terri Leo of Spring, near Houston, argued that the agency must “uphold state law” in adopting proposed textbooks, compelling publishers to change language that subtly endorsed same-sex “marriage” in secondary-level health books.

Texas is one of 22 states with a formal textbook adoption process, but because it is the second-largest buyer in the country, publishers typically accommodate changes proposed by the state agency. With a conservative-led SBOE majority influencing the final product, books that meet Texas standards often make their way into other states, extending the board’s influence.

When the education board met Nov. 4 to replace 11-year-old health textbooks, Leo presented a list of changes necessary for the agency to be in compliance with state law. The former public school teacher, elected to the board in late 2002, cited every suspect reference that put the textbooks at odds with the state’s definition of marriage as the union between a man and a woman and a statute mandating an abstinence-based message in sex education.

Textbooks offered by Holt, Rinehart and Winston for middle schoolers and Glencoe/McGraw Hill for high school students “totally censored out any heterosexual definition of marriage,” Leo told the TEXAN. Earlier appeals to the publishers to include the definition of marriage based on Texas law were ignored, she said. “They did not want to change without board direction.”

However, “Publishers could sense on Thursday (before board action) that things were not going in their favor. The board gave them a little direction,” Leo said, referring to their willingness to delay final voting to allow publishers time to offer changes. She withdrew her earlier motion seeking dozens of changes with the condition that the publishers would return with their own revisions. “If I found those acceptable, I would not bring mine up,” she recalled.

“I’ve never seen the national media fly in so fast,” Leo said. “The motion [to delay] was made and everything broke loose,” she said. “When we came back on Friday, they asked the board if they could make those revisions and the board gave permission to do that.” Leo’s motion to adopt the commissioner’s report to accept all health textbooks, including the corrections, passed 14-1. The lone dissent came from a Dallas board member who wanted more comprehensive information on contraception options.

With the addition of “a solid definition of marriage as a lifelong commitment between a man and a woman” at the beginning of pertinent instruction in the Holt textbooks, Leo gladly dropped her concern that words like “partner” and “couple” could be misconstrued as references to same-sex couples.

The Glencoe books traded “partners” for references to “husbands and wives” or “a man and a woman.” A passage that spoke of a person being “attracted to others” was changed to “attracted to the opposite sex.”

“We took an oath of office to uphold state law,” Leo said, “and state law defines marriage.” Because the SBOE is a state agency, Leo argued they must abide by the Texas Marriage Act’s stipulation that the state “may not give effect to a public act, record, or judicial proceeding that creates, recognizes or validates a marriage between persons of the same sex or a civil union.”

The same reasoning motivated the board’s preference for textbooks that uphold abstinence as the only way to prevent pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases, pointing to a 1995 Texas law mandating that abstinence be taught as the only effective means of preventing pregnancy or sexually transmitted diseases.

Left-leaning groups argue that the board ignored the need for teenagers to learn about AIDS and STDs; local Texas school districts are assigned responsibility for determining the content of human sexuality instruction, drawing upon recommendations of local school health advisory councils composed primarily of parents.

“It is not teachers and health experts, but parents who are picking the curriculum,” Leo said, “which is as it should be.” Texas law also gives parents the right to remove a child from any portion of sexuality instruction and opens curriculum up to inspection.

SBOE member Patricia Hardy of Weatherford, a Southern Baptist, told the TEXAN, “When the legislature did this, they said abstinence is the basis of all sex education programs.” What is taught is “left up to local school districts through health advisory councils,” she explained.

Hardy said she is pleased with additional resources in the teacher’s edition and a clear message on abstinence in student texts.  “The books are very explicit about sexually transmitted diseases.  The far left would have you believe all of that is left out,” she said, frustrated by the misrepresentation of their action in most media accounts.

In a Sept. 9 Houston Chronicle article, two staff reporters led with these words: “High school students in Houston and elsewhere may not learn about preventing pregnancy and disease in proposed new textbooks that teach abstinence exclusively.”

The Houston paper quoted Texas Rep. Jessica Farrar, a Houston Democrat, as saying, “It is a sad day in our state when we rank first nationally in the number of teenage pregnancies but we are on the verge of approving health textbooks that do not mention contraceptive methods.” An Arlington state representative disagreed, reiterating that decisions regarding sex education are the responsibility of the local school board, a process that encourages parental involvement.

One publisher agreed to remove a chart listing types of contraceptives while teacher editions retain such comparisons. The lone opponent of the textbook adoption motion expressed disappointment at the lack of extensive information comparing contraceptives.

Hardy reiterated that the adopted health textbooks are not the only resources teachers have available for the two to three weeks spent on sex education. While she and others pressed for updated information that accurately states the failure rate of various barrier protection methods, the Texas Education Agency’s legal counsel agreed that including the material in teacher resources satisfied state education standards.

Hardy also notices an inaccurate statistic in one of the adopted textbooks that estimated the homosexual population at between 3 and 10 percent. The sales representative for the publisher pledged to review the accuracy of the reference which Hardy said should be between 1 and 3 percent.

While many parents traveled to Austin to convey their preferences as to how abstinence is emphasized, Hardy said most don’t realize the influence they can have on the local level through the health advisory councils. “Everything taught in sex education class is totally local option and each school district by law should have a health advisory council.  That was a very smart move on the part of the legislature because sex education can be such a controversial issue,” she said.

Homosexual activists argued that the revised texts did not include information that might have given homosexual students a sense of belonging, according to reporting by the Houston Chronicle.  “The books talk about abstinence until marriage,” stated Randall Ellis, executive director of the Lesbian/Gay Rights Lobby of Texas.  “That’s not an option for gay and lesbian students.  So they feel alienated.”

Leo countered: “There is nothing in the [approved] book that is derogatory toward homosexuality.  I don’t think liberal New York publishers should be able to nullify Texas law,” she said, accusing homosexual activists of “misportraying” the board’s action.

She said Planned Parenthood would prefer to make its case on the state level, putting more distance between the decision-makers and parents. “They are losing the battle at the local school district level,” she observed.

Planned Parenthood and other opponents also tried arguing that because state educational standards require barrier protection be studied, the SBOE should adopt health texts that give students more than an abstinence message. If local school districts vote to teach lessons on other forms of contraception, resources are available in the teacher’s edition of the approved text.

Other objections by Leo went beyond the definition of marriage and an abstinence message. She asked publishers to state in teacher editions that homosexuals “are more prone to self-destructive behaviors like depression, illegal drug use and suicide,” according to the Houston Chronicle report.  Another board member was successful in his call for updating a chart on the failure rates of various contraceptive methods.

“We’d like to have seen more changes,” stated SBOE member Gail Lowe, a community newspaper editor in Lampasas. “At least in Texas school children will know that marriage is between a husband and a wife.”

Texas became a battleground for textbook review during the late 1960s when Mel and Norma Gabler of Longview began independently assessing the academic content of books under consideration. Their volunteer efforts continue through an organization named Educational Research Analysis (www.textbookreviews.org) and have prompted more conservatives to run for election to SBOE.

The Texas Education Agency offers the public a chance to review potential textbooks before panels and staff make recommendations and report to the SBOE. After public hearings that often draw hundreds to testify in the summer, publishers advise TEA of any revisions that are planned.  The state board decides which textbooks are placed on the approved list recommended to local school districts.

Due to a 1995 interpretation of the state education code, the SBOE must confine its critique to factual errors, inadequate production quality and failure to meet Texas standards. Last year, Leo argued, “Without SBOE authority to establish general textbook contents standards, editors and publishers are unaccountable and allowed to pursue personal agendas.”

Now, with passage of DOMA and the abstinence instruction mandate, Leo based her objections on the failure of proposed textbooks to reflect Texas law. It’s an argument that may be used in other states wrangling with textbook issues as citizens define the terms of marriage.

“Going into the meeting, I did not have the majority of board member support,” Leo acknowledged. “However, board members run for re-election and the huge victory [by Republicans] on Tuesday factored into helping me garner the votes I needed.”  Some board members endorsed her motion out of conviction, she said, while others responded to political pressure of their constituents.

The SBTC’s legislative consultant, Keet Lewis of Plano, said, “This is an example of why it is important for the people in our pews, the public, our citizens to be aware of who they elect to state boards of education. This is a ‘down ballot race’ that rarely gets attention,” he said.

“The numbers throughout the state are the same as around the country—people in America believe that a marriage is between a man and a woman.” Lewis added, “Editorail committees and publishers need not carry their minority view political agenda into the textbooks of our children.”

While conservative Christians in other states often trusted a secular textbook that made it past the rigorous expectations of the Texas review board, there’s no guarantee that publishers will offer the same edition of the approved health text beyond the state. A spokesman for Holt, Rinehart and Winston told the Associated Press that the publisher does not plan to add its definition of marriage in books that will be sold outside Texas.

“Our founders designed a ‘we the people’ form of government—citizen leaders,” he said, praising Christians who give their time to serving on boards and making their moral influence known locally. “This State Board of Education is absolute proof that citizen leaders have a voice and can speak with clarity on these issues.”

Lewis added, “There is a movement to strip authority and power away from the State Board of Education as it relates to this textbook issue. We should absolutely oppose that.  If anything, they need more authority to protect our children.”

Three Texas women are taking a stand on biblically-based morality in the settings where they live and work.

Terri Leo of Spring, near Houston, described herself as the least likely person to have led the charge on including a definition of marriage in public school textbooks. The former teacher and now stay-at-home mother of three children said, “That’s the way the Lord does this. He’ll call you outside of yourself so you know the success is not your own.”

Pat Hardy, a social studies coordinator in Weatherford, is eager for parents to realize the influence they can have at the local level through health advisory councils that recommend a sex education curriculum that reflects community standards.

“Everything taught in sex education class is a totally local option,” Hardy noted.

Arlington schoolteacher Yolanda McPherson believes God directed her to teach in a public school setting where she “wrestles against all kinds of principalities.” She admits it is a day-to-day challenge when the culture presses for accommodating unbiblical views. “It’s important, especially during this time, that Christians stand firm and hold fast to our beliefs.”

Looking back on the recent election cycle, Leo, a State Board of Education District 6 member, said, “I think we saw that Christians who were sleeping are finally not going to take it anymore.”

Having enrolled her own children in a private school, Leo draws questions from people who wonder why she seeks to influence public schools. “I could not in good conscience sit by and do nothing,” she stated. “We all have a stake in the next generation of kids. They’ll make the laws we’ll live under.”

Leo, a member of an Assemblies of God church, acknowledged the influence of her faith on her convictions. “That’s what I rely on for strength.”

When it comes to defending the inclusion of a traditional definition of marriage in public school textbooks, Leo said she is simply upholding the Texas law that defines marriage as the union of a man and a woman. “I’m standing on the law, not my personal conviction, even though that’s what I believe and what a majority of Texans voted for.”

While political opponents questioned how she got elected to public office on a low-budget grassroots campaign, Leo said, “You cannot outdo mad moms?somebody who is impassioned about the issue.”

Hardy has been an educator for more than 30 years and was honored recently as the outstanding Educator of the Year at the Texas Council for Social Studies Conference. In her role as the District 11 member of the State Board of Education, Hardy is convinced that “knowledge is power” and encourages parents to get involved in the process of selecting proper sex education material for their local schools.

“Each school district by law should have a health advisory council. It should not be predominantly school people, but community people?ministers, doctors, parents, community activists. They should decide what reflects that community and what should be put in by way of a health and sex education curriculum.”

Hardy said she is pleased with the curriculum called Worth the Wait (www.worththewait.org) that was selected by her local school district in Weatherford. Developed by doctors at Scott and White Hospital in central Texas, the curriculum promotes abstinence as the healthiest choice for adolescents.

“Parents can call Podunk Independent School District and say, ‘Do you have a health advisory council and who’s on it?’ If the council is all teachers, that’s not what the law requires,” she said.

In Arlington, McPherson has seen homosexual activists influencing what children are taught in public schools with library books depicting two lesbians as parents of a child. When that scenario became reality for a student in her elementary classroom, McPherson was careful “not to push my beliefs on anyone,” adding, “but they knew I

DALLAS?Students from The Criswell College took a field trip?one very different from trips to the zoo and the museum they might have taken in junior high school. This field trip had eternal significance.

On a recent Wednesday morning, students, faculty and administrators of the college met for Harvest Day, a one-hour evangelism blitz in the neighborhood around the college. Students met first to pray in the chapel, pick up “Heroes” gospel tracts and receive brief instructions. The instructions, given by Alan Streett, evangelism professor at the college, were simple: gather in groups of three, be yourself, be friendly and introduce yourself to the people in the neighborhood.

After the instruction time, the 300 missionaries flooded the streets around the east Dallas campus in the shadows of downtown’s skyscrapers. The groups entered businesses, knocked on doors, talked to people on the streets, prayed with folks at nearby Baylor Hospital and passed out nearly 3,000 tracts.

The neighborhood around The Criswell College is multi-faceted. Once an affluent part of the city, during the last couple of decades it has become an area known for crime, drug deals and gang wars. One street, Swiss Avenue, with its spacious homes, still gives a glimpse into the area’s more prosperous past.

In recent years, however, a renaissance of sorts has taken place. Crack houses have been torn down to make way for town homes, Brownstones, and other newly renovated upscale apartments. Some of the newer residents are doctors and nurses who work at Baylor, as well as business people working downtown.

The students and faculty from Criswell wanted to let all their neighbors?wealthy and poor?know that they were there and they cared and most importantly, God cared.

College President Jerry Johnson said he told the students to first introduce themselves and then ask, “How can I pray for you?”

When Johnson was a student at The Criswell College in the mid-1980s, Paige Patterson, then the college president, was the first to implement this type of evangelistic blitz.

“We [students] all thought it was a radical idea, an exciting idea, but everyone was a little uncertain, too, because we were going out,” Johnson said.

After he returned from his first missionary journey on the east Dallas streets, Johnson began seeing the vision God had given Patterson.

“It was a wonderful experience and I remember it even today,” Johnson said.

The current crop of Criswell students walked the streets for an hour, then returned to the chapel on campus for a time of sharing. About 20 people stood before their peers for 35 minutes and told of their experiences. They spoke of the fear and apprehension they felt before they left. They spoke of having to get out of their “comfort zone.” They laughed about the negative experiences (being cursed, avoided, etc.). And they rejoiced at the positive experiences (prayer, hugs, sharing the gospel, people accepting Christ).

But the most constant theme of the wrap-up time was the “divine appointments” students described as experiencing.

One student told of talking with a man holding a baby outside Baylor Hospital. The man had a patch over his eye from recent eye surgery. The student prayed with the man and shared the gospel with him and the man accepted Christ. The student said the man had surgery on his physical eyes, but God opened his spiritual eyes.

As Greta Canfield and the two others in her group began to witness in a small east Dallas convenience store, Canfield said she felt the Spirit’s tug to approach a female customer.

“God just directed me to that person,” Canfield said.

She told how the woman believed she had too many problems for God to overcome. She didn’t want to talk. Canfield, however, pressed on. She began asking questions to break down walls. With each answer the bricks in the wall began to crumble and the woman slowing began to understand that she had much in common with this particular messenger of G