[Under the constitution, the following committees were appointed by the state convention president.]

REGISTRATION
Nat Simmons, chairman, Annaville Baptist Church, Corpus Christi; Larry Grimes, Yorktown Baptist Church, Corpus Christi; Josh McClary, First Baptist Church, Portland; Jo Sturm, River Hills Baptist Church, Robstown; Armando Torralva, Brighton Park Baptist Church, Corpus Christi.

RESOLUTIONS
Thomas White, chairman, Hallmark Baptist Church, Crowley; Sonny Hathaway, Northeast Houston Baptist Church, Humble; Andrew Hebert, MacArthur Blvd. Baptist Church, Irving; Ann Hettinger, First Baptist Church, Dallas; Philip Levant, Iglesia Bautista La Vid, Colleyville; David Lino, Faith Family Baptist Church, Kingwood. Kerri McCain, First Baptist Church, Katy; David Nugent, Hillcrest Baptist Church of Jasper.

TELLERS
Robert Simmons, chairman, Annaville Baptist Church, Corpus Christi; Bob Alderman, First Baptist Church, Rio Grande City; Steve Bain, The Believers’ Fellowship, Corpus Christi; Jesse Cole, Christ Point Church, Corpus; Gary Clements, Retama Park Baptist Church, Kingsville; Chris Deluna, Church of Grace, Robstown; Albert Lee Green, First Baptist Church, Rocksprings; Cliff Harden, First Baptist Church, LaCoste; Joe Mendoza, International Center of Joy, Rio Grande City; Rick Rice, First Baptist Church, Premont; Tommy Stogner, Oakville Baptist Church, Oakville; Jason Treadaway, Danbury Baptist Church, Danbury.

OTHER APPOINTMENTS

PARLIAMENTARIANS
Jim Guenther, Convention Legal Counsel; Terry Wright, pastor, First Baptist Church Vidor.

COMMITTEE ON COMMITTEES
Term Expiring 2013
Paul Boughan, First Baptist Church, Buna; Randy Kendrix, First Baptist Church, Odessa; Greg Pharris, First Baptist Church, Forney.

BEAUMONT–Eyebrows rose when Pastor Christopher Moody announced the church’s plan for last summer’s Vacation Bible School. But it wasn’t the first time the congregation of First Baptist Church of Beaumont had been thrown for a loop from the pulpit.

“We have been a church all about change,” said Carol Matherne, FBC Children’s Team director.

In its 140 years in downtown Beaumont, FBC has seen its share of change and some was no laughing matter.

“It was a mega-church before there were mega-churches,” said Moody who, for almost three years, has pastored the church that gave birth to such iconic Southern Baptist stalwarts as Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary President Paige Patterson and New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary President Chuck Kelly. Patterson’s father, T.A. Patterson, was pastor of the church from 1946-1960. At its apex there were at least 2,000 members and church services were televised every Sunday for decades.

But change came to the city of Beaumont in the 1970s in the form of school desegregation. Moody said there were those in the church who would have nothing to do with it. At that, he added, “God removed his hand from the church” and its membership dwindled to a fraction of its former self.

Those who remained were committed to the gospel and ministering to a community unlike their own–the very community that was avoided over 30 years earlier. Then about six years ago with a transitional pastor at the helm, the remnant began spending their Wednesday evenings serving hot meals to the homeless in the church’s downtown neighborhood. They provided personal and vocational counseling along with the gospel of Christ and have seen many freed from life on the street.

“That’s when the church started turning around. It was a work of God,” Moody said.

Deacon Chairman Mark Freeman said their work has been about “taking the love of Christ outside this big, red brick building.”

With that credo, the church began looking for a like-minded, full time pastor. Their search ended in Corsicana where Moody was pastor of an SBTC church plant. Moody said he was not looking for a new job but the call from this group of about 250 people committed to evangelism and outreach touched a chord.

The amalgamation of a young pastor (35 years old) with a passion for sharing the gospel combined with a relatively small band of believers who want to impact their neighborhood in a tangible way can cause the unexpected. That’s what happened one Sunday last April.

The congregation should have known something was afoot when they were told during worship that the next Sunday would be “casual Sunday.” Considering most folks attend FBC Beaumont in what could already be considered casual attire, the announcement should have piqued someone’s curiosity.

When casual Sunday rolled around, Moody gave a 10-minute sermon on the definition of church and then told the congregation they were going to live out that definition. Given a small bag with a Bible, a calendar of church events and a map, the congregation of about 400, including the members of the Spanish-language congregation at FBC, paired up and completed their Sunday morning worship by handing out 500 Bibles in a neighborhood about half a mile away.

A month later Moody did it again. Without warning and after another brief sermon, the church was sent back out into the same neighborhood to prayer walk. He said the older members of the congregation were especially excited about the effort. Those who could not take the trip to the neighborhood stayed at the church in a prayer room while their peers rode a bus and did “drive-by praying.”

Moody said the outreach emphasis is not his own but a continuation of the work begun by those who remained faithful to God’s call to FBC Beaumont. The Wednesday evening meals to the homeless were the first step in what would become a short walk outside the church building and into the neighborhood a previous generation might have left to its own devises.

FBC Beaumont chose to “adopt” the area of neighborhoods that feed into Charlton Pollard Elementary–predominantly black, struggling, inner-city neighborhoods. Downtown Beaumont is flanked by Interstate 10 to the north, the Neches River to the east, the oil refineries to the south and the west leads to the neighborhoods on the outskirts of Lamar University.

Inside are neighborhoods beaten by time and storms. “Blue roofs”–temporary tarp coverings–common to the Gulf Coast following a storm still adorn the tops of homes damaged by hurricanes Ike (2008) and Rita (2005).

FBC Beaumont is mostly white and middle class. Taking the gospel outside the big, red brick building could not be initiated without a discussion of race.

“That has required a lot of prayer and time. We are still a very segregated city,” Moody said.

SIMPLE KINDNESS
Although the staff considered their adoption of the neighborhood as a witness for Christ, they understood it could be perceived as a condescending gesture.

“We didn’t want to do something that would come across as demeaning. We didn’t want to hand out things that were loaded–that came across as being Santa Claus …. or white people gifts,” he said. The church did not want to appear as if they were trying to entice anyone out of their area to FBC’s “better area.”

There is nothing “loaded” about praying with people, giving them a Bible or leading their children in Vacation Bible School, Moody contended.
Yet another change to the natural order of things at FBC Beaumont was to host VBS at Charlton Pollard Park in the heat of June and in a neighborhood many considered unsafe. Matherne, the children’s director, said most everyone was receptive to the idea but there were some who rejected the move outright.

“The people who know the neighborhood, it has a lot of stigma from the past associated with it. There are those who didn’t want anything to do with it. You just can’t worry about those people,” Matherne said.

Moody said the concerns were not unfounded. The park does have a reputation, especially after dark, as a hangout for drug dealers and prostitutes.
But during the day, the city community center in the park hosts a bustling business of summer activities for neighborhood children and their families. That facility served as the location for the VBS craft activities.

Matherne said the park was very well maintained and provided the perfect outdoor view for their ministry.

“It was fun. We had a good group of workers. They threw their hearts into it.”

Thirty FBC volunteers oversaw the activities of 135 children–53 from the church and 82 from the neighborhood.

There were nine salvations during the week-long event which wrapped up with a hot dog dinner with the families. Matherne said initially there seemed to be little in common between the parents and the church volunteers; it was the children who gave them common ground.

It also opened the door for the advancement of yet another ministry to the neighborhood, Christmas in October, which the church held on Oct. 9.
The deacon-led event sent work crews into a neighborhood north of the church in 2009. This year’s crews returned, this time south of the church, where they have been concentrating their efforts this year.

“I think the response, without exception, was extraordinary,” he said of last year’s efforts.

Speaking of an 88-year-old widow who had been in her home for over 50 years, Freeman recalled, “I saw the thankfulness and graciousness on her face. She was just beaming. She was very appreciative.”

Freeman said some contacts made during the Vacation Bible School put him in touch with the individuals or families most in need of assistance.

Several businesses and contractors in Beaumont donated supplies needed for the one-day construction ministry, Freeman said.

Moody said the church’s year-long ministry to the neighborhood is part of a two-year project they are piloting. In 2011 the church will do most or all of the same outreach events in a neighborhood adjacent to the one they are currently ministering to.

“The primary goal is not to put them in the pews of First Baptist Church Beaumont,” Freeman said. The main concern, he said, is whether or not the people they encounter have a personal relationship with Jesus Christ.

Moody said that is the fuel that drives all that they do. What is done inside the church building focuses on worship and discipleship but everything else, he said, is being channeled to reaching people for Christ. He said he understands that such an aggressive approach to evangelism—something that is not standard fare in other churches or generations—can be off-putting, even to some in his own congregation.

“We have to be more committed to reaching people than keeping people,” he said.

Although the ministries to the neighborhood have been successful as measured by church participation and enthusiasm, Mood and Freeman are still seeking a “man of peace” within the area they desire to serve.

“I wish there was a deeper connection,” Moody said, referring to his relationship with the religious establishment in the Charlton Pollard Elementary School area. He said cultural and political rivers run deep and he has made little headway in charting those waters in search of a pastor who also desires to see kingdom work done.

Freeman said the goal of their efforts is “to let these people know that the love of Christ exists in this community.”

Proclaiming Christ is the message in the ministry and, if in the process of proclaiming that message race relations are mended, then, Freeman said, “Glory be to God.”

FREEPORT HARBOR?For 36 years volunteers with the Texas Port Ministry (TPM) have endeavored to meet the spiritual needs of the seafarers who make port here. But when TPM Director Bobby Fuller realized 200,000 trucks annually make their way in and out of the harbor, he knew his mission field had to expand and more workers would be required.

Each year 900 ships from 50 countries enter this harbor. The Texas Port Ministry Center, just beyond the port authority security perimeter, offers an onshore respite for the ships’ crews. Those ships, Fuller noted, transport cargo that must be hauled over land to its final destination. The truckers who make those trips are in need of a “touch” from Jesus just as much as their mariner cohorts.

Whether on land or sea Fuller said those in his mission field live very isolated lives. The TPM Center, an SBTC partnering ministry, and its volunteers seek to reconnect these travelers with their family and friends while sharing the love of Christ.

For Joel Quijano, a Filipino crew member of the Vliet Trader, the services of the TPM allowed him to call home to wish his 6-year-old daughter happy birthday. The Vliet Trader makes a weekly call to port and unloads its cargo of produce acquired in Honduras and Guatemala. The ship’s captain, Mykhaylo Kondretsky, said the TPM center is one of the best he has seen.

“We are lucky. It is very good,” he added in his heavily accented English.

Quijano said he didn’t know of any other port center like TPM. “All of us are very thankful for the Texas Port Ministry.”

“We think it’s very important for seafarers to stay in touch with their families,” said Fuller, who noted that some mariners are at sea for many weeks.

The TPM serves more than 10,000 seafarers annually. The Texas-themed great room provides visitors with computer and Internet access, discount long-distance calling cards, pool and air hockey tables, a big-screen TV, and bookcases filled with reading material that includes multi-lingual Bibles and biblical literature, and the “Jesus” film in multiple languages.

The center also supplies clothes and essential travel items free of charge. However, Fuller said money is usually not an issue for the seamen, but the free gifts afford the opportunity to share “the greatest gift of all.”

And that’s why the ministry exists, Fuller said. The gifts and services provided at the center come with the kindness and love of Jesus as expressed by the TPM’s volunteers, who have the opportunity to be witnesses to the “uttermost part of the earth” without leaving Freeport.

And as he and the center’s volunteers enter the port each day to greet the crews of arriving ships, Fuller sees an entire community in need of the gospel.

“There are two types of people in the world,” he said, “those who know Christ and those who need to know Christ.”

That desire to share the gospel with the entire network of people working the port has expanded the work of the TPM and its need for more volunteers. Currently, 14 people regularly visit the ships and four more meet the truckers as they wait in the queue to load cargo.

Fuller said the truckers can feel especially isolated as his conversations with them have revealed. Simply asking how he can pray for them has opened up opportunities to share the love of God.

“Monday meals” is the latest effort to reach those who work within the port. Each Monday a different area church provides lunch served at the center. As the Monday meals program has grown since its March inception, Fuller has added prayer and Scripture reading to the menu. Praying for the recovery of a longshoreman recently injured on the docks is a tangible way the ministry can show its care and concern for all who work at the port.

“It has opened the doors of conversation that we would have never been able to do. It has established a lot of good will.”

Fuller said asking churches to provide meals is a way of drawing those congregations into the work of the ministry and, in turn, affords the opportunity to recommend those churches to harbor employees.

Each of these ministries allows the TPM volunteers to share the gospel and provide a “touch” from Jesus. Fuller defines a “touch” as any time a ministry volunteer engages someone in the harbor community with the gospel either in word or deed. “And those touches are essential,” he said.

Fuller recalled one visitor from Myanmar (formerly Burma), a country hostile to evangelism and Christianity. The man saw a Bible on the shelf published in Burmese. “That’s my language!” Fuller recalled the man exclaiming. He gladly took the free Bible. “I find it very satisfying that God will bring Burmese people here, and they will go home with a Bible,” Fuller said.

A Muslim mariner from Bangladesh visiting the TPM center told a ministry volunteer that Muslims, Jews, and Christians worship the same God. The volunteer quoted John 14:6 which says, “Jesus said to him, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.” Stymied, the man responded by asking for a New Testament and a printed study of the Gospel of John.

“I’ve never seen him again,” Fuller said, “but I know God brought a Muslim from Bangladesh here” to hear this witness and receive the biblical reading material. Fuller likes to believe that the information made its way around the vessel and into the hands of other Muslims on the other side of the world.

It’s not only the words and deeds of ministry volunteers that send the gospel message out onto the seas and, hopefully, to other ports around the world, said Fuller, noting that scores of foreign-language Bibles and Jesus films have left the U.S. on countless ships. There’s also a Christian mariner from Costa Rica who regularly asks Fuller for Spanish-language Bibles and tracts to share on the docks of Columbia and Costa Rica.

More volunteers, resources needed
Since the terrorists attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, mariners no longer enjoy easy access to port cities, but are required to remain within 18 feet of their ships’ gangplanks. However, if accompanied by properly credentialed ministry volunteers, seafarers can be chauffeured to the TPM Center and into town for shopping, dining, and other errands. Without the services provided by TPM volunteers, crews would either stay on board their ships or pay a secular company for the same services provided free by the TPM.

Each volunteer must have a Transportation Worker Identification Credential badge, which is administered by the Transportation Security Administration and the Coast Guard. The badge allows the volunteers access to the ports and its vessels and permits them to escort crew members to the ministry center and points beyond. The ministry pays the $132.50 fee for the badge, a significant line item in the TPM budget.

Ministry to more than mariners
When TPM was first conceived by the Gulf Coast Baptist Association more than three decades ago, the mission was to reach seamen as they entered this port. The ministry’s former name?Seaman’s Center?revealed as much. But that mission has expanded. No longer do TPM volunteers pass the gate attendants, the truckers, the longshoremen, and port tenets to reach the mariners alone with the gospel. Reaching everyone within the harbor community with the gospel of Christ is the new mandate, Fuller said. The center’s name was changed in 2007 to reflect broadened ministry.

With an expanded mission field comes the need for more workers in the field. Fuller said there is little training required, just a desire to share Christ in tangible ways. New volunteers are paired with experienced ones in order to learn the rules and regulations of working within the port a

Several well-known incidents of people harassing others who later kill themselves has made “bullying” a hot topic. Maybe we are getting meaner as a culture but before we can even contemplate that question, the discussion is being turned to serve political agendas. Presto-change-o and an amazing number of things are being called bullying.

Of course it’s a tragedy when a tormented young person kills himself. It’s tragic for a family and a community, just as the suicide often intends. Add contemptible opportunism to tragic and you have the recent story of a 19-year-old Oklahoma man.

Zach Harrington has become a cause for the leftist agenda in our part of the country. He took his own life after attending a late-September city council meeting in Norman, Okla. Some reported that the things he heard during a four-hour debate “may have pushed him over the edge.”

The council meeting in question was a public discussion over whether Norman should let its freak flag fly by declaring October “Gay, Lesbian, Bi-sexual, Transgender History Month.” The declaration praised the “achievements” of GLBT groups that “promote understanding, acceptance, and equality” for GLBT individuals. The college town is also said to benefit from the “many GLBT citizens who own businesses within the City.” Doubtless there are many other groups within Norman that share behavioral or niche commonalities, many of them larger and thus better subjects for a resolution. Many of those groups contain productive citizens who own businesses also. But there was an agenda in the choice of GLBT citizens. What they have in common is a selection of abnormal sexual behaviors. That and the intense desire to have their behavioral interests called normal by cities where it is decidedly not normal. That agenda was where several community members saw the need to speak up.

After reading many comments that blamed the debate for this young man’s death, I was curious regarding what was actually said. Video clips of testimony, chosen by a GLBT advocacy group, showed the comments of six citizens, the worst of the lot. But they were soft-spoken, respectful, affirming of diversity, and used not one single offensive term to describe those with whom they disagreed. One man did offer a mild rebuke at council members who couldn’t help mugging for the audience every time a conservative spoke against the resolution, but that was it. And these were the worst comments liberal news sites could find to quote. I should point out here that Mr. Harrington was in no way the focus of the resolution or of those who did not favor it. No one called him names or used his name as best I can tell. He was simply an observer. After “listening” to the testimony, the council did as I expect they came determined to do; they voted 7-1 to be silly and disrespectful of their constituents.
The conservatives who became the focus of the later discussion on bullying did disagree with the resolution, and their reasoning included concerns about what negative results might follow the council’s effort to normalize an anti-family behavior. That opposition, the very fact of that opposition, has been called harsh, harmful, slander, toxic, hateful, and of course, bigoted. If we are to follow the reasoning of some commentators, one I read was a Baptist pastor, the claim of some Normanites that the Bible was their guiding light in opposing the resolution contributed to the suicide of a 19-year-old man.
Let’s go back a little further to the discussion surrounding the building of a mosque near Ground Zero in New York City. Sure, there were screamers; the hysterical you have with you always. But even those who made a very reasonable, “Of course we should not forbid the building of an otherwise legal mosque, but it should not, for sake of wisdom and courtesy, be built here” statement were said to engage in overblown, hateful rhetoric. And, as in the Norman event, the mere act of disagreeing is enough to force some to craft overblown rhetoric against overblown rhetoric.
There is real bullying, I know. Nearly everyone remembers that miserable kid from childhood who seemed to loom around every corner to taunt or abuse. It’s not fun and the fact that it’s common doesn’t make it normal. There have always been kids whose homes are dark dungeons of depravity. I think that is more common with each passing year. Experts on the subject say that incidents of violence and intimidation are on the rise, and that some of the bullies now are popular kids who just don’t know how to related to other people without dominating or objectifying them.
A home that has real monsters, or even mere morons, in charge will produce little monsters worse than their mentors. It is fitting that the caretakers of our children, in every context, should correct the cruel children of abusive, neglectful, and missing parents. None of us should stand by while the pack tortures a kid they’ve singled out. Most of us know by common sense the difference between a smart aleck comment and relentless torment. This is a real problem that becomes a casualty of efforts to co-opt the term in service of unrelated agendas.To whom do we trust a definition of the problem, though? Groups of people with common sense almost always become a committee or institution with none at all. What blunt instrument of regulation or “zero tolerance” policy will we implement to address the problem? The institutions that start with the safety of school kids as their concern end up suspending a boy who brings an inch-high, rubber gun-wielding toy soldier to school in his backpack. Dearborn, Mich. begins by trying to nurture peaceful communities and morphs the intent into handcuffing Christian students for having a quiet discussion of religion with a group of young Moslems. A country willing to accept peace at the price of chains and slavery forbids preachers from quoting Romans 1:27. Pardon me if I’m a little leery of letting petty bureaucrats find the difference between free speech and disturbing the peace. If a soft-spoken housewife can’t speak to a city council meeting without being accused of pushing a young man to suicide, the conversation is not in safe hands.

Maybe it’s an example of the undisciplined way our people often think. All the things that upset me are not part of the same trend. Not everyone who frustrates me is part of the same conspiracy. To think otherwise is to make every issue like a piece of legislation insiders call a “Christmas Tree.” The term refers to a bill that includes all manner of disparate riders and amendments. If our nation can’t talk about the increasing meanness of our culture and its children without every aspect of public discussion being thrown into the pot, we’ve lost the ability to speak English to one another.

This confusion seems intentional, cynical, and opportunistic. Pragmatic advocates of one thing or another glom onto every issue that gets any press with little regard for pertinence. It is detrimental to any serious discussion between people with clear and honest but specific disagreements. To call a very appropriate city council debate “bullying” or a disagreement regarding a provocative building project “overblown” dissipates our ability to productively talk about civil speech or a minimal level of tolerance.

A second problem with this melding of all issues into one is the inability to address important questions such as the nature of families or public morality. Those who take an unpopular viewpoint may be shouted down with any old epithet that’s handy. The easy answer is to censor by means legal or sentimental those who hold the more traditional position.

Instead of letting someone’s revisionist definition of civil conversation or gentle speech suck all the oxygen out of the room, let’s occasionally give due respect to the subject actually at hand. Maybe