FORT WORTH?John Mark Caton of Fairview was elected chairman of the trustees at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary during their April 8-9 meeting. Caton has been pastor of Cottonwood Creek Baptist Church in Allen since 1995 and earned the master of divinity degree and Ph.D. from Southwestern. He previously was trustee vice-chairman.

Geoffrey Kolander of Austin was elected vice-chairman. He is vice president and general counsel of Citizens, an Austin-based insurance holding company, and a member of Hyde Park Baptist Church. Re-elected as secretary is Harlan Lee, a Phoenix restaurant owner and member of North Phoenix Baptist Church.

During the informal trustee forum held prior to the official plenary sessions, thetrustees received “a report from the president where he provided his annual disclosure of his compensation information and entertained questions related to it and the same information for the rest of the seminary’s senior administration,” according to a Southwestern news release.

In his comment to Southwestern’s reporter, McClain said, “Since Southern Baptists expect that their entities supported by the Cooperative Program will be governed with integrity and accountability, I am glad the salary of the president of Southwestern has been fully and willingly disclosed to all of the trustees of the seminary, even though Dr. Patterson has refused an increase in compensation since his arrival in 2003.”

Trustees approved a 2008-’09 budget of nearly $37 million, representing a 2.4 percent increase. Initially, the business affairs committee considered a proposal to increase the budget by 5.8 percent, but asked that it be reduced in light of economic indicators. Chairman Jack S. Smith of Dallas praised the business administration vice president, Greg Kingry, as “a self-starter” who quickly responded to the concerns of the committee.

The board encouraged the institutional advancement office to consider recruiting and training volunteers to assist them in fundraising and endowment growth. Trustees will be surveyed to determine how much they wish to be involved in the effort.

Newly elected faculty recommended by the academic administration committee included Herbert Bateman and Aaron Son as professors of New Testament, and Laura Zettler to teach homemaking in the College at Southwestern. Bateman formerly taught at Moody Bible College and Grace Theological Seminary. Son comes from a teaching position at Dallas Baptist University. Zettler taught at the University of Alabama and directed children’s ministries for Calvary Baptist Church in Tuscaloosa, Ala.

Three Texas couples will be honored next fall with the L.R. Scarborough Award, as approved by the board. They include Dr. and Mrs. James “Jim” W. Richards of Keller. Richards has served as the SBTC’s executive director since its founding. Also named for the honor are Dr. and Mrs. John Earl Seelig of Fort Worth and Dr. and Mrs. John “Jack” W. MacGorman of Fort Worth.

Recommendations of the bylaws and policies committee were approved to strike one article to reflect a previously amended trustee committee structure, and allowing the executive committee the option of a teleconference as a cost-savings measure for their required meeting between semi-annual trustee sessions.

FORT WORTH—A controversial documentary released nationwide on April 18 could foster a cultural shift “equivalent to the fall of the Berlin Wall,” says William Dembski, research professor of philosophy at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary.

The seminary hosted a private screening of “Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed” (PG) in early March. In the film, host Ben Stein tracks down scholars who have been “expelled” by the academic community for their support of intelligent design (ID), a research program that flies in the face of Darwinism. Dembski is featured in the documentary.

“This film exposes the hypocrisy of an academic and cultural elite who pretend that they value freedom of inquiry and expression but in fact suppress it when it clashes with their deeply held materialistic convictions,” Dembski said. 

He and other proponents of ID have suggested the universe shows signs of having been designed by an intelligent being.

Many fields of study within modern science involve intelligent design, including archeology, forensics and the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI), Dembski said. An archeologist, for example, examines the evidence—such as a curiously shaped stone—to determine whether it might be the product of a human intelligence.

“These sciences, however, are uncontroversial because any intelligence detected through them could be an ‘evolved’ intelligence,” Dembski said. “Most of the action with ID, on the other hand, centers in biology, so that any intelligence involved with the emergence of living things is likely to be an ‘unevolved’ intelligence. ID therefore challenges materialistic theories of evolution, such as Darwinism.”

Unlike biblical creationism, ID does not begin with the Genesis account of creation, nor do its proponents attempt to describe the nature of the intelligence that designed the universe. Despite this fact, Dembski noted, “ID is friendly to Christian theism in a way that materialistic forms of evolution never have been.”

“One of the biggest obstacles to people coming to Christ in Western culture is the impression that science has disproved the Bible and Christianity,” he said. “ID therefore helps to correct this false impression by showing that our best science supports belief in a higher intelligence responsible for life. ID does not give you the Christian God as such, but it puts you in the right ballpark.”

Dembski’s trials at Baylor University?which describes itself as “the world’s largest Baptist university”?from 1999-2005 are not documented in the film. Among other things, he drew the wrath of the science, philosophy and religion departments early in his tenure there when it was learned that he was heading up an ID think tank on campus. Dembski’s role in the documentary is mainly as someone explaining Intelligent Design for the audience.

Dembski told the Southern Baptist TEXAN that those who most need to see the movie are “parents of children in high school or college, as well as those children themselves, who may think that the biological sciences are a dispassionate search for truth about life but many of whose practitioners see biology, especially evolutionary biology, as an ideological weapon to destroy faith in God.”

Robert Marks, who holds the title of “distinguished professor of engineering” at Baylor University, also appears in the film as one of the “expelled” academics. Although he remains at Baylor as a tenured professor, Baylor officials last year forced Marks to return grant money it received related to ID research and forced his ID research website to an off-campus server.

“I sat there and I laughed,” Marks said of his reaction watching the film. “I laughed because I have seen this atheistic, big-science mafia squad come out and kill the careers of many of my friends. Guillermo Gonzalez, who I knew at the University of Washington. Richard Sternberg, who I recently met. And to see their motivation and goals so clearly exposed in a Ben Stein sort of dry humor was incredible. I really, really enjoyed the movie. I think it is going to have an enormous impact. I hope it does.”

Information on the film can be found at expelledthemovie.com. The TEXAN has an archived interview with one of the film’s executive producers, Logan Craft. The interview is accessible at texanonline.net and was first posted on Jan. 28.

For the time will come when they will not tolerate sound doctrine, but according to their own desires, will accumulate teachers for themselves because they have an itch to hear something new. ?2 Timothy 4:3 (HCSB)

Give Oprah Winfrey a break. Through hard work and intelligence she has built an empire that makes her the queen of all media. Her name on a product or idea guarantees some level of success. At this point in her life, people jump when she says “frog.” That kind of influence leads many people to believe their wisdom in one endeavor should transfer into any realm they can imagine.

Her latest imagination is that she has religious ideas that will benefit all in range of her voice and pen. It’s only natural. She’s as wrong as I would be if I invented or bought into some man-made religion. No more and no less. And while we are right to note the errors in the ideas of a teacher, as we have with Joel Osteen, The Secret, New Age gurus like Deepak Chopra, and so on, let’s not forget the sin of those who nod like bobble heads every time someone says something in print or on screen. The problem of false teaching is as much one of demand as it is of supply.

And yes, the problem is sin as well as deception. When I read 2 Timothy 4:3 I think of our neighbors accumulating best-selling books on spirituality. The latest from Marianne Williamson (one of Oprah’s gurus) goes on the night table in the stack with “Your Best Life Now,” “The Purpose-Driven Life,” and a Bible. Maybe we’ll take an idea from each book until we come up with a spiritual smoothie that comforts and affirms all we like but only condemns mean people. Sure, it’s toxic, but we chose the ingredients and we drank it. As Paul says, our deception, our customized collection of teachers, is “according to [our] own desires.”

The apologists we interviewed and quoted for our special report on false teaching in this issue agreed that we all must be more discerning. It’s critical that we know the gospel, and the Bible that contains it so that we can recognize counterfeits. I agree. The question of getting the large number of us from where we are to being motivated to study and apply God’s Word to our world is harder to answer. We’re not nearly there. Until we stop loving some aspect or another of the lie, we’re not even in the same building with discernment.

Here’s a selection of what the Bible says about the problem. We, who lack wisdom (or understanding or discernment), are described in James as never asking for it or being too unstable and double-minded to receive it. In 2 Timothy 4:6-7 those ready victims of false teachers are said to be weighed down by sin and their impulses. They are also said to be unable to recognize even the truth they hear. Romans 1:25, after describing a horrible decline into sin, says that this slide starts when we exchange the truth of God for a lie. Strong words, and they attribute our gullibility to rebellion against God.

And this same rebellion rightly describes the false teachers, although they bear even a heavier responsibility. They are conceited (1 Timothy 6:4) to think that their distortion of the gospel can ever be sufficient for any good purpose. False teachers are rebellious, empty talkers and deceivers (Titus 1:10). They are men of a depraved mind (2 Timothy 4:8 and Romans 1:28). In his harshest condemnation, Paul says, in Galatians 1:8 (NKJV), “But even if we, or an angel from heaven, preach any other gospel to you than what we have preached to you, let him be accursed.” Accursed? In looking at the word more closely, we see that he is turning such a person over to God for condemnation of his actions.

Does it seem like overkill to condemn someone who merely, though wrongly, wants to make people feel better about things? Are we also willing to drop our condemnation of people who impersonate medical personnel? How about if someone you believe is a physician tells you the pain in your side is gas when it’s actually appendicitis? Spiritual truth is more important than medical truth but we don’t act like we believe it.

Modern false teachers lead some to believe that they are alright with God based on their works?the lie of manmade religion from the beginning. Others tell folks that their poverty or sickness is a sure sign that they are bad or faithless. This is a negative version of the first error. In this one, you could be good enough but you just aren’t. New Age religion teaches that all religions are the same. You can worship a demon (Hinduism) and it’s all the same as worshipping a tree (Wicca) or an impersonal life force (Buddhism) or the God of Abraham and Paul who condemns all those forms of idolatry?it’s all the same. Surely the horrible deception of this is Satanic?worthy of condemnation.

False teachers like this stuff because it sells, and maybe because it comforts them also. We like it because it empowers us by freeing us from a personal God who, uninvited, involves himself in our daily affairs. It’s just the age-old rebellion of Satan dressed up and pushed to the top of the best-seller list.

“Gospel,” of course, means “good news.” And there can be only one. While we often love the idea of a new take on the old story, the new version can’t be rightly called good news. When we go from revealed truth to some novel imagination we also go from certainty to “I hope so.” We might like the appearance of tolerance in the “many ways to some god” language, but it throws us back on our own opinions or those of another.

I will disappoint myself and be wrong about the most mundane of matters, thus my opinion is suspect. The opinions of a celebrity preacher or media queen tarnish with temper tantrums, drunk driving arrests, unguarded words, or some other foible common to mortal folk. Whatever it is that offends us, our new and shiny authority figure will eventually fall prey to that temptation.

All this is Satan’s way. After we’ve pledged allegiance to some old, but newly packaged, lie, he lets us build our worldview around it and scoff at the narrow fools who believe God. Then he opens door number three and there’s nothing there. We despair and embrace some less religious religion more absurd than anything we ever thought we’d believe. Hell begins in the here and now.

But so does Heaven. As we live according to revealed will of our creator, we’re doing what he’s determined will work in the world he made. Through God’s son, Jesus, and only through him, we can have spiritual peace now and eternal life starting now. That’s the good news. And there is no substitute for the real thing.

Estos son días excitantes para el Departamento de la Iniciativa Hispana y Ministerios Étnicos. Nuestro ministerio continúa creciendo debido a nuestros esfuerzos de apoyar los ministerios de nuestras iglesias.

Para mantenernos al corriente de la obra, le damos una grata bienvenida a la SBTC a Philip Levant, el nuevo asistente de ministerios. Philip estudia en el Seminario Bautista Teológico del Sudoeste en Fort Worth. Está casado con Patricia y tienen un hijito, Lucas, de siete meses.

Estamos trabajando en los eventos del 2008 que han sido intencionalmente diseñados para fortalecer y apoyar a nuestras iglesias y familias hispanas. Estos eventos son como siguen:

La Conferencia Cristiana para la Mujer de Hoy que será el 11 y 12 de julio. El lema para este año es “Una Mujer de Excelencia”, basado en Tito 2:7. La Conferencia se llevará a cabo en el hotel Omni at the Colonnade en San Antonio. Las oradoras especiales incluyen a Esther Quiñones de Garland; Noemí Vera de San José, California; Elizabeth Márquez de Puebla, Puebla, México; y Liliana Lewis de Austin.

El campamento de jóvenes Youth Week @ Alto Frio se tendrá el 4 al 8 de agosto en Leakey. El lema es “I Will Not Be Silent” (No Callaré), basado en I de Reyes 18:21. El campamento es para estudiantes que han completado el sexto grado, hasta el duodécimo grado. El evangelista del campamento será el Pastor Loui Canchola de McAllen. Otras personalidades son: la banda de Sammy Ramos de Fort Worth; el equipo de drama The Skitiots de Houston; Melvin Adams de Houston, anteriormente de los famosos Harlem Globetrotters; y el titiritero Ron Johnson de Carolina del Norte.

La segunda Conferencia Cristiana para Matrimonios está programada para el 12 y 13 de septiembre en el hotel DFW Marriott en Irving. El lema es “Corazones Unidos”, basado en Mateo 19:5. El orador principal será Rudy Kish de la Sección de Español de Enfoque A La Familia (Focus On The Family).

Se está planificando la segunda conferencia Hombres de Impacto para el 17 y 18 de octubre en el campamento Mount Lebanon en Cedar Hill. Se ha escogido el lema “Hombre Nuevo, ¿Mito o Realidad?, basado en II Corintios 5:17. El invitado especial es Daniel Catarisano de la Sección de Español de Enfoque A La Familia.

El primer campamento para los adultos solteros hispanos se está planificando para el 3 y 4 de octubre en Lake Pointe Church, Town East Campus, en Mesquite.

Para más información sobre cualquiera de estos eventos, por favor llame gratuitamente a Philip Levant al 1.877.953.7282, extensión 316.