The SBTC’s annual Men of Impact Conference helps churches develop men who will stand up and be who God is calling them to be. Lance Crowell, the SBTC church ministries associate in charge of men’s ministry, said the goal of the new conference is to benefit and aid ministers and churches in their ministry to men.

More than 350 men gathered at Metropolitan Baptist Church in Houston for this year’s conference July 20-21. Pastors and laymen attended, many of whom were in their 20s and 30s.

Topics chosen for this year’s conference sessions challenged men to deepen their walk by working through personal issues that might be holding them back, including their life stories, their marriages, families, communities, jobs and the legacies they will leave.

Popular men’s writer and speaker Steve Farrar delivered two keynote addresses. Books by Farrar include “Point Man,” “Standing Tall: How a Man Can Protect His Family,” “King Me: What Every Son Wants and Needs from His Father,” and “Finishing Strong: Going the Distance for Your Family.”

Farrar brought inspiration and conviction speaking on the topic of God’s divine assignment for Old Testament Joseph, and how after God developed his character through the trials, he raised Joseph to a position of highest influence.

“That [message] resonated with my men,” said Scott Moody, pastor of First Baptist Silsbee, who was a first-time attender of the conference along with 23 men from his church. Moody reported that his men were still talking about the conference in their Sunday School class the next Sunday, and that some had experienced some real heart changes through it.

He said, “One man became convinced that he needed to turn it all over to the Lord?he had never done that before in his life.”

Another man was deeply changed after attending Buddy Griffin’s session on dealing with your past. Griffin shared his own testimony of making peace with his father.

“It was very powerful,” Moody said. “We were touched.”

Watch the SBTC website (sbtexas.com/men) for forthcoming details on the 2008 event to be held in Arlington.

By personal experience, teaching golf professional Scott Lehman discovered a principle that many men’s ministries are discovering as well: Where there is a common interest in an activity, there is an inroad to a man’s heart.

About 10 years ago, Lehman for the first time in his life entered a Christian bookstore seeking help for his then-failing marriage. He soon noticed a book with a golf theme because golf was the sport he’d pursued from childhood.

Lehman picked up the devotional book “In His Grip” by Jim Sheard and Wally Armstrong and began to read it.

“In golf, the most important key fundamental is the grip and how your hands are placed on the club. The book started to talk about how the key fundamental in life is living a lifestyle in his grip. God began to open my heart to the message,” Lehman recently told Baptist Press.

Now Lehman’s greatest passion is to reach other golfers through In His Grip Golf Association (inhisgripgolf.com), a ministry he founded that uses the golf course as a mission field and golf as an evangelistic tool. In 2006 Lehman focused full time on developing the ministry. He conducts leadership training workshops teaching churches how to organize an In His Grip Invitational and how to implement a year-round golf ministry.

Also, at his Pastor’s Masters Golf Retreats held at LifeWay’s Ridgecrest and Glorietta Conference Centers, pastors do play golf. But, more important, they attend seminars on golf-related ministry and golf-centered life lessons?ideas they can take back and develop in their own settings.

Lehman presents a “reach, teach, and send” message, believing that golfers can grow in the image of Christ “through Scripture passages at every hole, small group Bible studies, [and] golf retreats,” and then be sent out to fulfill the Great Commission. Thus far Lehman has helped about 24 churches host In His Grip invitationals, which average about 100 men per tournament.

The Great Outdoors
Don Hamlin is a Southern Baptist education minister in Kearney, Mo., with a passion for ministry to men and boys. An avid outdoorsman, he has written two men’s devotional books: “Lock, Stock, and Barrel,” and a study guide, “Hook, Line, and Sinker,” both available on his website, dhamlin.hisurfer.net.

Hamlin has organized regular fishing and hunting events at his church for several years. Some are intended as outreach to unsaved men, and others for fellowship and spiritual growth.

“Our church is very sports and recreation minded,” Hamlin said.

“People have a passion for [different things], and our church is open to reaching people any way we can that is reasonable. Being minister of education and outreach, my philosophy is that when someone mentions they want to start something, I respond like Rick Warren says, ‘Sounds like a good idea. You’re in charge!'”

They have held deer hunting clinics in the fall and turkey hunting clinics in the spring to reach un-churched men. A church member with expertise in hunting a particular type of game will present his own tips and techniques, or possibly a talk on topics like guns or bow-making.

“We’ll also have a local wildlife official who is active in his church come and speak, and try to connect his topic with God’s Word. It’s more of a question-and-answer forum, and we might give away door prizes in that interest area,” Hamlin said.

Wild game feasts and “cowboy/horse-whisperer” events conducted in partnership with the local association are other outreach efforts in which the church participates. Three-day fishing retreats provide an opportunity for about a dozen men to fellowship and study Scripture together after fishing all day.

“And any kind of sports?football and baseball are big here. We don’t have organized leagues, we just kind of meet together and play,” Hamlin said.

SBTC evangelism consultant Joe Simmons can help churches organize creative evangelistic outreach events such as a wild game festival at which sportsmen display their trophies. (For information, contact the SBTC Evangelism Department at 877-953-SBTC or log on to sbtexas.com and click the “Contact Us” link.)

Bikers and Such
“Bikers Welcome” is a sign many churches are beginning to post, and Christian motorcycle riding clubs are rapidly forming to reach out to an interest group?many of them men?who often perceive they are not welcome in the traditional church.

F.A.I.T.H. Riders, a ministry that began 5 years ago in Lakeland, Fla., the Christian Motorcyclist Association based in Hatfield, Ark., and the Arkansas Baptist Bikers Association organized through the Arkansas Baptist State Convention are examples of a few of the chapter-based organizations for Christian bikers who want to use their leisure activity of choice to reach others for Christ.

Doug Hixson of Cornerstone Baptist Church, Pampa, said his church is working to birth a club for bikers in his church.

“I probably have 15-20 guys in my church who have motorcycles. And this town is full of men who ride motorcycles, so we want to try to create a fellowship/camaraderie thing among bikers,” he said.

Hixson told of a kind of rough looking man?a biker with a pony tail?who had been out of church for 40 years. The man went to a Sunday School class where the teacher, who is also a deacon and a biker, had a pony tail as well. The idea for beginning the biker ministry was spawned from that event.

Hixson said: “We’re missing a whole society, and we want to blow the idea that they aren’t welcome out of their mind. We don’t care what they look like; we just want them to feel comfortable and come to church.”

Their initial goal for the ministry is to schedule a few 1-2 day rides each year that members can invite their friends to. Another possibility for the club is participating in the evangelistic mission to the annual Harley-Davidson biker rally in Sturgess, S.D.

Reaching tomorrow’s men
Partnering with his 22-year-old son, Kyle, Don Hamlin’s most recent outreach effort has been to teenage boys in the form of a skate club. Each week the church takes about 25 boys to a skateboard park to just go and have fun.

“Boys were coming to our church parking lot to skate board, and we realized God had brought a mission field to us. These kids know I can’t skateboard, but that doesn’t bother them. If I tried to be like them, they would quickly see that I’m disingenuous,” he noted, adding, “Like if I tried to fly fish with a group of fly fishermen. I try to just be open to being a learner of their skills.”

As a result, they were able to take about 20 of the boys to an Extreme Sports event where Luis Palau spoke, and 11 indicated an interest in receiving Christ. They have confirmed three as true decisions thus far.

LakePointe Church in Rockwall offers a “Skate Church” ministry with Bible study on Tuesdays and Saturdays followed by fellowship through skateboarding.

Another opportunity to reach and disciple the men of tomorrow is a recent addition to the Men’s Fraternity curriculum, “Becoming a Man.” Rick Caldwell, director of Men’s Fraternity, recently went through the study with his 18-year-old son and a handful of his best buddies and their fathers.

Caldwell said: “I watched us struggle through it, but it became magical. The videos are the same [as the Men’s Fraternity videos], but slightly abbreviated, and packaged in a way that it applies to a high school son and his father.”

Caldwell said the five-week study is an extremely helpful tool for fathers and sons to dialogue together, and for father’s to impart the lessons they have learned from their own life experiences.

With the hundreds of recreational interests men pursue, points of connection between men are limited only by the number of men who will step up and use their healthy interest as an evangelistic tool.

They never just walk into the classroom and often they trip other boys on the way. Using a quiet voice is something they forget. They’d much rather head to the playground than listen to a teacher read out of a magazine.

And yet, many SBTC churches like Austin’s Bannockburn Baptist are committed to turning young boys into godly men who are on mission with God.

“We have a vibrant Royal Ambassador program at Bannockburn and greatly value its place in our overall ministry,” Pastor Ryan Rush explained. “Our principle mission as a church is connecting church and home, so this fits what we’re trying to do,” he told the TEXAN.

“It takes godly Christian men who are willing to share their hearts and their time with these young boys to make such a program work,” explained Carla Dillard, children’s minister at Bannockburn Baptist. “We are blessed to have those men at BBC.”

For 2.16 million boys, RAs has provided an opportunity to discover they are commissioned as Christ’s ambassadors to go into the world and tell the story of Jesus Christ. It’s one of the oldest Southern Baptist organizations, first formed in 1883 when a group of boys in Kentucky met with their pastor to study missions and collect money to support a young girl in famed missionary Lottie Moon’s school in Tengchow, China.

RA groups took off, growing to 4,500 chapters by 1935. In the past 10 years alone, a quarter million young boys have learned to live out the RA pledge: “We are ambassadors for Christ,” based on 2 Corinthians 5:20.

Royal Ambassadors saw its highest enrollment in the 1960s, ’70s and ’80s, but many churches abandoned RA missions education for children in favor of co-educational missions education that requires fewer male leaders or for other types of curricula.

At Bannockburn, Dillard is convinced it’s worth the effort to recruit adult men to lead a separate group for boys.

“We are huge fans of Royal Ambassadors. Year after year we see young boys and their dads, the RA leaders, spend quality time together learning about missionaries, participating in mission action activities, building cars for the RA racer derby, camping out, learning woodworking, and attending local boys camp together.”

Dillard said today’s boys are desperately looking for positive, godly, Christian male role models from whom they can learn.

“Unfortunately, our society has dropped the ball in this area.”

And yet she’s encouraged that young men at Bannockburn thrive on this time together with the men leading Royal Ambassadors.

“They learn not only about missionaries and other skills, they get to emulate the qualities of their RA leaders. In other words, they have role models?the kind they really crave and need. That’s why we love and are determined to keep RAs at Bannockburn.”

Andy Dodson is one of the church’s layman to whom Dillard turns for leadership in the RA program. “I fell into it accidentally,” the Austin civil engineer told the TEXAN.

Having grown up a Methodist then joining a Southern Baptist church, Dodson attended an information class to learn more about the church’s approach to teaching missions since his own kids were enjoying the children’s activities. Soon he was recruited to help out and three years later he’s sold on the value of Royal Ambassadors in which his own 7- and 9-year-old sons participate.

“The biggest things kids face today are choices. It doesn’t matter if it’s what to eat or what not to do. The magazines that go with the RA curriculum deal a lot with kids who grew up as RAs and then became missionaries. Now they’re faced with choices,” Dodson recalled.

“From a ministry standpoint we’re teaching kids to make the right choices and why they should do that. RAs learn about right and wrong choices,” supplementing the biblical teaching the kids gain from Sunday School and other programs of the church, he said.

Direction of the Royal Ambassador program for Southern Baptists is assigned to the North American Mission Board. Curriculum and training to teach missions to boys is available online at royalambassadors.com. Local Baptist associations typically have leaders who can help a church develop or reignite an RA program.

NAMB has also developed a one-on-one, father-son approach to teaching young boys about missions known as “Sons of Virtue.” The strategy is based on the Royal Ambassador pledge and delivers Christ-centered virtue studies and activities that develop personal relationships, commitments and an on-mission lifestyle. It can be used in a home small-group setting with several fathers and sons or as a program directed by men of the church.

Challengers is the mission organization for teenage boys. Information is available from NAMB at challengerscentral.com.

After nearly a century, Royal Ambassadors is now an international organization with groups in 14 countries reaching the world with the gospel.

The SBTC Executive Board approved a proposed budget increase of 7.2 percent for 2008, chose a longtime Amarillo pastor for the H. Paul Pressler Distinguished Service Award and elected a veteran of church revitalization and planting to the convention staff.

Addressing the board’s summer meeting July 31 at the SBTC offices in Grapevine, Chief Financial Officer Joe Davis said the proposed budget of $21,539,131 represents a “conservative approach” based on 2007 giving. The SBTC has continued its growth to more than 1,900 affiliated churches.

Messengers to the SBTC annual meeting Nov. 12-13 in Arlington will vote on the budget, which will continue the Cooperative Program split of 54 percent of funds sent to SBC missions and 46 percent retained for Texas ministry.

The 54 percent of undesignated giving to SBC causes remains the highest percentage of any state convention in the SBC. The missions and evangelism budgets comprise 39.13 percent of the in-state budget. Missions includes church planting.

Davis reported that through May the convention was $1.1 million above budget in CP receipts and $976,687 above the same period in 2006.

Designated giving for missions offerings was also significantly increased. Special offerings each have their own giving calendar year. Giving to the Annie Armstrong Offering for North American missions was $1.62 million, up $284,713 over the previous giving year to date; giving to the Lottie Moon Offering for international missions was $7.3 million, up nearly $1.5 million over the last giving year to date; and giving to state missions through the Reach Texas Offering was $923,284, an increase of $136,677 over the same giving period last year.

PRESSLER AWARD
In other business, the board chose longtime Amarillo pastor Stan Coffey to receive the 2007 H. Paul Pressler Distinguished Service Award for his work during the SBC’s Conservative Resurgence and in the formation of the SBTC, for which he served as the first president from 1998-2000.

“Prior to the existence of the SBTC,” wrote SBTC Executive Director Jim Richards in recommending Coffey for the award, “Stan Coffey pastored the largest church in the reformation group pushing for the formation of a new convention. Being a man of conviction, Stan was willing to put his reputation on the line for the cause of biblical inerrancy and cooperative work among Baptists?. He paid a high price for his efforts with challenges to his health and ministry. Through it all he has remained faithful to win people to Jesus.”

A native of Sweetwater, Okla., Coffey was saved at age 6 and took his first pastorate at 20. He earned degrees from Wayland Baptist University (1970), Southwestern Seminary and California Graduate School of Theology, where he received the doctor of divinity.

His pastorates have included: County Line Baptist Church in Morton; Hurlwood Baptist Church in Lubbock; First Baptist Church of Josephine; Trinity Baptist Church of Texarkana, Ark.; First Baptist Church of Albuquerque, N.M., and twice at The Church at Quail Creek in Amarillo (formerly San Jacinto Baptist Church), first from 1975-1979 and then from 1984 until now.

Under Coffey, the church has been a consistent leader among Southern Baptists in baptizing new converts. In 2004 Coffey received the W.A. Criswell Lifetime Achievement Award for Pastoral Evangelism. He is the author of five books, his latest being “The Return.”

He is and his wife, Glenda, have two married children and eight grandchildren.

NEW STAFF MINISTER
Also, the board elected Jim Gatliff as a shared strategist, serving the missions, evangelism and church ministries departments. Gatliff has been an SBTC church planting consultant while serving two associations?Kauf-Van and Hunt?in church planting and church revitalization.

Gatliff will also play a role in the SBTC’s “Ezekiel Project” to help plateaued or declining churches regain health.

In introducing Gatliff to the board before his election, Richards said Gatliff is committed to the SBTC’s vision and values and has vital experience in helping struggling churches revitalize.

“I felt like if I were an NFL coach, he is the best man on the draft board,” Richards said.

In addressing the board, Gatliff quipped that though he appreciated the accolades, “I feel more like the player to be named later in the Mark Teixeira (Texas Rangers baseball) trade.”

The Oklahoma native told the board he was saved as a youngster at a crusade sponsored by First Southern Baptist Church of Del City, Okla., and was called to ministry as a teen attending the Falls Creek youth camp in Oklahoma.

In addition to his theology training (MDiv. and Ph.D. from Southwestern Seminary) and work in church planting and revitalization, Gatliff said his greatest passion is “souls,” “particularly a heart for mass evangelism.” Gatliff begins working full-time with the convention Sept. 1.

BOARD MEMBERS FINISH TERM
Also during the meeting, the board honored five board members attending their last meeting after nine years of service dating back to the convention’s founding.

Richards presented each retiring board member a framed Scripture verse, noting the contributions of each. The board members rotating off are: Al Kawamoto of Arlington; Randy Davis and Alan Burkhalter, both of Amarillo; Ted Tedder of San Antonio; and Steve Burns of Aledo.

“These were the founders of the convention?these were the founders of the Executive Board,” Richards remarked. “We are losing our first generation, so this is a very significant transition time. We stand on their shoulders.”

MINISTRY REPORTS
Richards told the board he was honored with his election as SBC first vice president in June, “but it’s also an affirmation of this convention.” Richards said the SBTC staff was exemplary as ambassadors on behalf of the SBTC to Southern Baptists at the San Antonio meeting.

Reflecting on several weeks of physician-ordered silence after throat surgery and several months of rehabilitation, Richards said he has a new appreciation for the stewardship of the tongue and most importantly, the responsibility to witness of the gospel.

“We all struggle with being a strong witness for Jesus, confronting people with the gospel ? but it’s the right thing to do. One day, if Jesus doesn’t come, the tongue will go silent. Between now and then, I want to be a faithful witness.”

Senior Evangelism Associate Jack Harris reported that more than 32,000 “One-Verse Evangelism” packets have been distributed using Romans 6:23 as a simple entr�e to the gospel. Also, the convention has launched an evangelistic website, freegiftforlife.com.

In other business the board:
?Moved that churches voting to affiliate on or before Aug. 10 may enter the process to enable them to seat messengers at the SBTC annual meeting in the same calendar year.

?Approved a motion that effective next Jan. 1, “only funds given to the SBTC adopted budget shall be considered Cooperative Program gifts.”

The motion follows a definition of the Cooperative Program missions funding channel that SBC messengers approved in June in San Antonio, which read: “The Cooperative Program (CP) is Southern Baptists’ unified plan of giving through which cooperating Southern Baptist churches give a percentage of their undesignated receipts in support of their respective state convention and the Southern Baptist Convention mission and ministries.”

?Passed a motion, offered by Greg Simmons, pastor of Memorial Baptist Church in Grapevine, stating that Richards’ election as SBC first vice president was an affirmation of not only Richards but also the ministry of the SBTC.

A recent column by L.A. Times reporter William Lobdell chronicles his time as a religion writer for the Times, and his slide from being a “born-again” Christian to agnosticism. As a self-declared serious Christian, Mr. Lobdell was thrilled at the opportunity to match his calling to his vocation. He hoped to be able to report religion stories more seriously and respectfully than he had seen in the past.

And that’s the way it worked out at first. He told stories of forgiveness and faithfulness?stories about earnest and delightful people. During the time when he was converting to his wife’s Catholicism, he also began covering shocking stories of abuse by priests, cover ups, payoffs, and other disillusioning behavior by those who propped up the offenders. He saw what appeared to him to be widespread hypocrisy in religious leaders. Mr. Lobdell abandoned his plans to become Catholic and stopped going to his former church also.

Then he turned his eye toward television preachers as investigations revealed opulent lifestyles, tax fraud, and a list of unsavory behaviors that just couldn’t be told in an uplifting way. By the end of the column, William Lobdell says that he concluded he didn’t have the gift of making that leap of faith across all this sludge. He requested reassignment from the paper.

I find the story very poignant even though my inner apologist was firing comments as I read it: “Don’t equate religion with Christianity!” “Sincere Christians are also scandalized by these things!” “He’s chosen two of the most unbiblical laboratories ever for an evaluation of his faith!” and so on. Admit it, some of you were thinking the same things as you read my brief account of it. You’d be right. Those are important points to consider when someone becomes a poster child for faith that doesn’t take root.

There’s a human element to it also that we should recognize in those around us. Why is it that some pastors hesitate to hire a secretary from their own churches? Why does my Spidey sense start to tingle when a prospective employee rails against the pagans he formerly worked with and then expresses a certainty that God’s people won’t disappoint in the same way? It’s because expectations like this are often devastatingly unrealistic.

Sure, I’d hope that folks who get to know Christian leaders would see that they are in private what they are in public, and this is overwhelmingly true. To some folks this isn’t enough. I remember going to preach for a young pastor who seemed to very much appreciate my writing. I spent the night with his family and preached the morning service the next day. All weekend long I sensed that he was disappointed, especially that I preached from an NIV Bible. I never heard from him again after that weekend. It happens and there’s no way to guard against disappointing someone who expects you to be superhuman.

On the other hand, bad things happen in ministry that we should take more seriously than we often do. I’ve heard young believers berated for voting against a founding member in a church business meeting. It is to my shame that neither I nor my church initiated a Matthew 18 process with that older deacon. I’ve heard iffy jokes and cold-blooded comments made in the presence of young clerical workers with no thought about how this might affect their spiritual walk. I’ve seen leaders storming down the hall for some petty thing or another, all the time assuming that everyone will be more forgiving of them than they are of others. Hey, I’ve been that guy and someone should have jerked a knot in me.

The disillusionment we can inspire in those about us by being hypocrites may not be enough to shake their faith in God but it can surely ruin our ability to be ministers to them or to those they tell of their disappointment. The weaker brothers among us are a stewardship from God.

Our attitudes don’t have to be intentionally wicked and our actions needn’t be illegal for the impact to be horrible. But some of the things that churches and ministers blink at too readily are objectively bad, even to the lost world. These things have fallout way beyond the principals, although, as in the case of clergy abuse, that can be quite bad enough.

Our churches all contain some people who are very tender. Some of these are also a bit judgmental and arrogant. They look for flaws in others and dwell on them until their feelings are hurt irreparably. If these immature ones are offended by the truth of our lives or by the gospel itself, that’s regrettable but not something we can untangle for them. If they are offended because we are too timid to confront open sin or because we are self-absorbed louts, it’s another kettle of fish altogether.

Mr. Lobdell’s case sounds like the seed that fell among thorns (Matthew 13:22). Perhaps this look at the ugly underworld of Christian religiosity was his first experience with hypocrisy of this magnitude. I know that if he was ever born again he still is. All that said, when seed falls on hard ground, take care that we are not the birds that eat them up. And when a tender plant is choked by thorns, woe to us if Christians are counted among the thorns.