LAREDO?The first week of a two-week mission effort by church groups resulted in more than 70 percent of Laredo’s households receiving a gospel witness in written form and at least 100 professions of faith from block parties and outdoor revival services.

“We had a really good response,” Chuy Avila, SBTC church planting missionary, said on March 22. “We had revivals in 15 city parks and block parties in five different neighborhoods through the week. It was neat to see how the Lord worked in our community.”

Eleven out-of-town church groups?one from as far away as Borger in the Panhandle? and four from Laredo joined to distribute information packets to 35,000 of Laredo’s 50,000 households. The effort involved 252 volunteers, Avila said. Each packet contained a gospel presentation in Spanish and English, along with tickets to an April 17 event at the Laredo Energy Arena featuring Team Impact, a strength demonstration group that ends each performance with a gospel invitation.

Avila is praying for five new churches resulting from the evangelistic fruit of the next month, he said.

“My expectation was that we’d be able to hit 30,000 households the first week; we did 35,000. We still have some local churches who are willing to take the lead for the remaining 15,000 homes.”

Some of the churches that brought groups to Laredo included First Baptist Borger, First Baptist Farmersville, North Garland Baptist Fellowship in Garland, Great Hills Baptist in Austin, and Church at the Cross in Grapevine.

College student Jessica James of FBC Farmersville was one of about 25 people from the Collin County church that made the spring break trip. They ranged in age from 4 to 69.

“Our family was going,” James explained. “It’s just something I felt like I needed to do.”

“It’s a family mission trip,” explained Courtney Aston, wife of missions pastor Matthew Aston. “All sorts of families came.”

Gunther Getting, a high school senior, gave up his spring break to travel the 12 hours from Borger with his church group to canvas neighborhoods and entertain children at nightly block parties like the one he was working in El Cenizo, a small community just outside of Laredo.

Getting said he has been to Mexico on previous spring breaks, but this year the church decided to help with the Laredo effort. They rose early each day to leave door hangers in area neighborhoods and invite people to block parties.

“Hopefully,” Getting said looking around at a gathering of children, “they start coming to church and get saved.”

Meanwhile, the folks back home were praying for the group while they were there, Getting said.

“We just pray for God to work in us and through us while we are here,” he added.

Another FBC Borger member, Layne Rusten, a Texas Tech University student, was on her fifth consecutive spring break mission trip.

“These people just truly love you and want to hear what you have to say, most of the time,” Rusten said. “Being able to minister to them in the smallest ways?painting somebody’s face or giving them popcorn or nachos or playing games with them and talking to them about your relationship with Christ?they care and they want to know what you have to say, and I think that’s so neat. I’m so blessed to be able to be used by God in the simple ways.”

In addition to an anticipated five new congregations being birthed after April’s evangelistic events conclude, churches such as Iglesia Bautista Nuevo Desafio, a year-old congregation of about 30 people, will be following up with new converts who live in their area of the city. With only 2 percent of Laredo residents identifiably evangelical, there are plenty of spiritual fish for everyone, pastor Marco Valdez said.

“As we are working together, everybody remembers we are working for the King. Nobody is working for themselves,” Valdez said.

Iglesia Bautista Nuevo Desafio is helping a sister church begin work in the nearby town of Rio Bravo. Their efforts outside their walls include three soccer camps planned in different areas of Laredo this spring and summer.

“We are working hard,” Valdez said. “We are a small church and everybody is working hard.

“We need to make a better effort to impact Laredo for the gospel. The advantage here is we have no earthquakes, no tsunamis, no tornadoes. No excuse to make a huge impact.”

SBTC Missions Director Terry Coy said the effort of participating churches would yield fruit for months to come.

“God blessed the efforts of SBTC churches working in Laredo,” Coy said. “A heartfelt thank you to the churches who walked the streets and worked the events in Laredo. We expect even greater fruit?new believers, transformed lives, and church plants?after the upcoming Team Impact event and following a summer full of churches on mission trips in the city.”

The following are testimonies from some Texas Southern Baptists about the vital role of the Cooperative Program, Southern Baptists’ shared missions funding mechanism. Begun in 1925, the CP replaced the old “societal” method of agencies competing against one another for funding. Prior to the CP, funding often went to the last missionary to visit a given church, or perhaps the most persuasive. Today, more than 10,000 domestic and international missionaries, church planting, six seminaries, a social concerns entity and Disaster Relief are among the ministries underwritten by the CP. Through CP, with every dollar given local churches are able to reach Texas and touch the world.
For a free CP promotional DVD, e-mail sharmon@sbtexas.com.

At SWBTS, I think one of the best things has been the quality education I’ve received. Being able to go into a classroom and have some of the finest minds in the United States and even the world teach me Scripture and how to relate Scripture to my people has been one of the greatest blessings in my life. The Cooperative Program makes that education possible for people that normally wouldn’t be able afford it. In fact, it’s going to cut my tuition in half, just from the giving that people all around the country give through the Cooperative Program.

?Craig Seals, Southwestern student

Our giving allows us to join with tens of thousands of other Southern Baptists across the state of Texas, across the U.S. and around the world as we seek to be a part of what God is doing to reach the nations for Jesus Christ. When you give through the Cooperative Program, you make sure that you’re connected to God’s plan to save the world. From West Texas to West Africa, it’s all a part of being connected through the Cooperative Program.

?Clayton Griggs, pastor, First Baptist church, Snyder

Often when I think of the Cooperative Program, I think “many hands make light work.” We’re intentional about the Cooperative Program for several reasons. Probably one of the most important would be church planting?being able to be a part of something bigger than ourselves, providing funds for new church planters, for young pastors to be able to have resources, to our schools, which I have personally benefited from ? and I am forever indebted and grateful for those opportunities.

?Alex Gonzales, pastor, Hickory Tree Baptist, Balch Springs

God has blessed us tremendously through the Cooperative Program, not only in carrying on our ministries, but we are only a few weeks away from being able to close on what we believe will be our permanent church home. We were able to purchase property and that is a result of the Cooperative Program and obviously God changing hearts and changing lives to give according to his biblical principles. We again want to thank you and encourage you to give through the CP. It goes to glorify God and help build his kingdom.

?Josh Henry, pastor, Trail of Life Cowboy Church, Conroe

God has blessed and continues to bless the cooperative efforts of Southern Baptists to give support and sustain the various agencies and entities of our denomination. We are honored to support the Cooperative Program at our church here at Great Hills in Austin. I take great joy in knowing Great Hills is able to cooperate with other Bible-believing Baptist churches and we can support our local, state, national and international ministries through the Cooperative Program.

?Danny Forshee, pastor, Great Hills Baptist Church, Austin

Christ has given us a command to go into all the world and baptize believers and teach them the Word of God. When we find ourselves moving and blessing lives with the Word of God, we’ve got to know that God is pleased with that.? [Whenever] you see calamity around the world, Southern Baptists are always one of the first there, and I know that the SBTC is there?. Not only are we saving souls, but we’re making sure that those caught in calamity are taken care of and supported as well.

?Terry Turner, pastor, Mesquite Friendship Baptist Church

Aren’t we flighty? I am reminded of the perverse pleasure I took in throwing gravel on the tin roof of my granddad’s chicken house. The stupid creatures within never failed to squawk, fly around and stir up dust at the always unexpected clatter of the small rocks. Every time a Christian celebrity writes a theologically strange book or explodes morally, we, like those chickens, fly around the room squawking before finally settling down to continue our business. The devils scamper in delight and we mill around in discomfort, unnecessarily I believe.

Celebrity makes us care too much about what even an orthodox communicator thinks about things way beyond what he knows. The influence of celebrity magnifies the harm when a communicator reveals that his message is not up to the standards of his delivery. Isn’t that the Rob Bell flap (see page 15 for an article) in a nutshell? Cool videos, stylish delivery and attire, when added to tired liberal dithering on doctrinal basics equals only doctrinal confusion. None of the rest really matters, or it shouldn’t. Celebrity gives Ted Haggard a reality TV show a few years after his behavioral issues disqualified him for ministry leadership. That same celebrity status rocked the ground under his parishioners and admirers when his problems became public. In some cases, celebrity?an assumed importance of a leader?has led those near him to cover up terrible problems for inexcusable years. Nothing good came of that. Well-intended delusion actually did more harm than removing a false leader could have ever done.

A moral or doctrinal crash on the part of any mere man should not result in a crisis of faith for any maturing Christian. Disappointment, yes; sorrow, yes; but not a crisis of our faith in God. The fact that it does for some?or that it doesn’t for those who simply follow him down the new path?indicates a failure of disciple making on the part of many otherwise serious congregations.

Consider the example of the unsaved Bereans in Acts 17. Notice in verses 11 and 12 that the Bereans examined the Scriptures to see if Paul’s preaching was true before they believed. How much more should we be motivated and equipped to compare the messages we hear with what God has said in the Bible after we are redeemed and indwelt by the Holy Spirit? Notice the Bible describes the Bereans as more open-minded than those who rejected the gospel outright. Those who accept the message of a preacher without testing him are also closed-minded, I think. Unthinking tolerance seems similar to knee-jerk rejection. Those who have a reason for accepting or rejecting the assertions of another will be stronger in their beliefs than those who respond without thinking.

Many will wrongly blame a prominent communicator for the lack of diligence practiced by his fans. It’s on us, whether our pastor or mentor has a 30-year reputation or if he is the edgy new kid. He must pass the test every time he writes or speaks. And we must be courageous to test him, every time. A Christian communicator who takes a defensive attitude to questions or critique is warning us to listen more carefully. It is not gossip or slander or pharisaical judgment to parse carefully the words a man uses when describing the gospel. It is simply exalting the message of God above the interpretations of men.

And a leader found false is a serious matter. Paul spoke strongly of this in Galatians 1:8, 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. There is a place for mercy and restoration of some sort when a man fails catastrophically. But the message is more important than the man; it is always more important than the man and his position. Paul considered the message more important than himself. Without the true gospel message, the preacher is a useless seller of personally aggrandizing nonsense. Examples are plentiful.

A good church will raise up Bereans who test the claims of men against the claims of the God who made men. A true preacher will welcome inquiry, will teach his people to hold him accountable to the revelation he claims to declare. A growing Christian will be increasingly uncomfortable with personality cults that exalt a man without testing his message by revealed truth.

DALLAS?”We were your typical American family?two kids, a dog and house in the suburbs,” Ryan Williams shared as one of dozens of testimonies offered March 16 at an International Mission Board missionary appointment service hosted by First Baptist Church in Dallas.

Before following God’s call overseas, Williams was a general contractor. His wife, Melinda, was a math teacher. After an evangelism-focused Sunday School series at Cottonwood Creek Baptist Church in Allen sparked their interest in sharing their faith, the Williamses couldn’t imagine doing anything else.

The Williamses are trading their “comfortable Christian life” in McKinney, to share Jesus and plant churches in Romania, where they will serve as logistics coordinators for a small IMB team.

Sebastian Vazquez and his wife, Erin, are carrying on a family legacy, serving among international university students in Toronto, Canada, as fourth-generation church planters.

Nearly 100 years ago, Vazquez’s great-grandfather, Angel, was led to Christ in Argentina by a Southern Baptist missionary from Mississippi. Angel, a baker who immigrated to Argentina from Spain, eventually became a church planter, as did his son, Ramon (Vazquez’s grandfather). Ramon’s son, Raul (Vazquez’s father), became a pastor and church planter in Texas after the Vazquez family moved there.

“At first, I carried it (his family’s legacy) as a burden because I thought that it was something that was pushing me into ministry, sort of like the family business,” Sebastian Vazquez says. “But now I really have peace with it and love to share the story because I really think it shows God’s faithfulness?a missionary 100 years ago who probably never realized that the one little baker he led to the Lord would be the first of four generations of church planters.”

The Vazquez’s, Williams’ and two other couples are the only Texas-related missionaries who can be identified publicly with the other 18 going to areas where their security would be compromised. David and Chara Paul from Grand Prairie will be serving the European Peoples affinity group, having first recognized God’s leading them while seeing him work in Vietnam. John and Suzie Hailes of Commerce will minister among Sub-Saharan African Peoples.

Unidentified Southern Baptist representatives have ties to these SBTC-affiliated churches: Cottonwood Creek Baptist in Allen, First Baptist and Southcliff Baptist in Fort Worth, Mosaic of Arlington, First Baptist in Newark and Northwest in Houston.

For Matt Hartwell,* who pastors a Southern Baptist church in Texas, affirmation of God’s call came on a short-term mission trip to Ecuador with his wife, Lilly.* A year later, on another short-term trip, God revealed where they would be serving. As the Hartwells prayerwalked an unreached mountain village in North Africa and the Middle East, His direction was clear.

“We really felt God speak to both of us, saying ‘This will be home,'” Hartwell remembered. The couple is preparing to return to that same mountain area where they will pioneer Southern Baptists’ efforts to spread the gospel.

Fifteen of the 67 appointees are bound for service in North Africa and the Middle East?a region that’s experienced an unprecedented season of unrest since the beginning of 2011. Those missionaries include Hank and Ruby Greene,* who have the unique challenge of sharing Jesus with Deaf Muslims.

“If governments that have previously opposed the gospel are toppling, this is a pretty good opportunity to go in,” he said. “We may as well take advantage while the foundations are cracked and let the gospel fill the gaps.”

The appointment service was a historic event for Southern Baptists’ Deaf missions work. The Greenes were among six missionaries specifically appointed to reach the Deaf, the largest number in a single appointment service. More than 250 Deaf attended the service, including several Deaf pastors and Jim Dermon, president of the Southern Baptist Convention of the Deaf.

Missionary calling isn’t reserved for pastors and those with careers in ministry. Many of the new appointees came from secular careers with little or no professional ministry experience. Their work won’t necessarily fit the stereotypical missionary mold, either.

George Dyer has spent much of his life in front of a computer. But after a short-term mission trip to Russia, the 50-year-old Nebraska man felt God leading him to give up his job in information technology to serve overseas. Dyer and his wife, Laura, are going to Chile, where he’ll use his computer skills to provide technical support for hundreds of Southern Baptist missionaries working throug

EDITOR’S NOTE: All International Mission Board personnel in east Japan began relocating southwest of Tokyo March 18 in response to deteriorating conditions following the earthquake, tsunami and nuclear power crisis,. They will be given temporary assignments south of Nagoya. The relocation is expected to be complete by Saturday, March 19. Navy Admiral Robert Willard had announced Thursday that the military has developed contingency plans to evacuate 87,000 Americans ? including Defense Department personnel ? from Tokyo and the surrounding areas. TOKYO (BP)–Thousands of the little wooden prayer tablets rattle softly in the cold, spring breeze, a symphony of soft clattering that drifts out from the Shinto shrine.Images and characters burned on one side of the tablet symbolize hope. On the other side, carefully handwritten prayers and wishes are written to the deities of the Meiji Jingu Shrine.Not surprisingly, the “prayer wall” focuses on Japan’s triple disaster — a 9.0-magnitude earthquake, a tsunami and nuclear crisis.”My sister is missing. Please bring her back.””Prayers for the victims.””These disasters will not destroy us. Be strong.”One young Japanese woman spends 15 minutes writing her request in perfect characters. She stuffs her prayer, “? protect my family from nuclear radiation ?,” in a waist-high box. Don’t try to estimate the number of these requests — people just keep stuffing whether there is room or not.”I do not normally come here to pray,” the young woman explains, “but given the disasters, I am not sure what else to do.”Proud of their secular society, most Japanese are not religious. But in a time of crisis, International Mission Board missionary Gary Fujino says they tend to fall back on an old Japanese expression, “The god that you depend on in times of crisis.””What that means is when things are bad, you will go to the temple and shrine because nothing you’ve tried thus far worked,” Fujino explains. He notes that, once the crisis is over, no one goes back to the temple or shrine. Thousands of prayer tablets hung in one-day testify that the crisis in Japan continues to grow and people are trying to find ways to cope. The Fukushima Daiichi nuclear site has been rated a 5 on a 7-point international scale for atomic incidents, just two levels lower than the Ukraine’s 1986 Chernobyl disaster. The head of the UN’s nuclear watchdog warns that stabilizing the plant is a race against time. In Japan’s disaster-ravaged northeast, 6,405 people are confirmed dead and about 10,200 are listed missing.While most Westerners often are preoccupied with causes of disaster — the questions of why God would allow an earthquake, for example — Eastern traditions like Buddhism and Shinto focus on behavior in reaction to tragedy. It is very important in Japanese life to react in a positive way, to be persistent and to clean up in the face of adversity.Fujino says it’s always been like this. His elderly Japanese neighbor assures him this is just like World War II — a time when the nation pulled together and persevered. The neighbor has no doubts that Japan will rebuild and make it on their own.”They really believe that in themselves they have what they need, which makes it very difficult to share the Gospel” Fujino says. “What we need is for people to be shaken and realize that you need something outside of yourself — God.”The 1995 Kobe earthquake did just that for Yoko Dorsey. She lost everything. In Japan, she explains, people work for material things. They are defined by what they own. So when it is lost, you lose everything — worth, pride and value. The 60-year-old member of Tokyo Baptist Church says she thought at the time she could depend on herself, just as many Japanese feel today.”I learned in the Kobe earthquake that I needed God. I learned that I don’t need material things. My heart opened up,” she says. “I think God saved me back then because He wants to use me now.”Dorsey took in a single mother and her daughter whose other family members remain missing. As people evacuate from the disaster zone to Tokyo, she plans to bring even more to live with her.She explains that the Japanese government will take care of things and rebuild houses in a few months, but she can do something even bigger — introduce people to the God who can rebuild their lives. “I have a really strong God,” she says. “I want those people in the disaster to know my God’s strength and power.”Dorsey cannot make it to the disaster zone yet because of radiation fears, not to mention the lack of government permits, but she’s doing what she can in Tokyo. From her church just a few miles from the Shinto shrine, she prays for her country.<br styl

BOSTON?A
burn victim whose face was badly marred in an accident suffered while
painting a Baptist church in Forth Worth has become the first person in
the United States to undergo a full facial transplant.

The
trailblazing surgery on 25-year-old Dallas Wiens was completed sometime between March 14-18, physicians at Boston’s Brigham and Women’s Hospital
announced on March 21. For privacy reasons, the hospital did not say which
day the surgery occurred. It required a deceased donor, whose identity
and date of death was not disclosed, and included a team of more than 30
physicians and nurses led by Bohdan Pomahoc, plastic surgeon and
director of the hospital’s burn center.

Speaking
to reporters on Monday, Bohdan praised Wiens “for his courage and
strength” while calling the donor’s gift “the most selfless gift one
human can give another.”

Bohdan
also thanked the New England Organ Bank, the Department of Defense,
whose research grant helped fund the surgery, and the surgical team who worked for more
than 15 hours to transplant the nose, lips, facial skin, “muscles of
facial animation and the nerves that power them and provide sensation,” a
hospital news release stated.

Del
Peterson of Fort Worth, Wiens’ grandfather, told reporters he thanked
God “for walking with us through this amazing journey.” Peterson told
Pomahoc that he “inspired confidence” in his grandson the first time
they met him and that Wiens, when he is able, plans to be an advocate
for facial transplant surgery.

In
November 2008, Wiens suffered life-threatening burns when he came in
contact with a high-voltage wire while painting his church, Ridglea
Baptist in Fort Worth. Through hours of painstaking surgery, physicians
at Dallas’ Parkland Hospital were able to save Wiens’ life but with
severe facial disfiguration and blindness resulting from the accident.

Early
on, Peterson said, Wiens decided “he could choose to get bitter, or he
could choose to get better. Thank God, today he is better.”

Bohdan
said so far Wiens is “meeting all the milestones,” even speaking with
close family and friends on the phone. On Monday morning he had yet to
eat, “but that will be soon.”

Reflecting
on the surgery, “I was very pleased with what we were able to do,”
Bohdan told reporters. Asked what Wiens’ appearance would be like when
his face is healed, Bohdan said he would look neither like his old self
nor would he resemble the donor, but “probably somewhere in the middle.”

Doctors
used the donor’s skin and some nasal bone to provide some added
structure to Wien’s new face, which should regain most of the sensation
lost in the accident and functionality of the mouth and nose. Attempts
to restore sight to Wiens’ one remaining eye failed last year.

Bohdan
told reporters the surgery is not merely cosmetic and functional but
also involves some ethical considerations. For example, he told of a
former patient who underwent multiple grueling procedures to improve his
physical appearance. Asked by the hospital staff why he continued to
seek treatment with so little promise of significant improvement, the
patient said, “I just want a cab to stop when I’m at the curb.”

Two other people are on a waiting list for similar surgeries, Bohdan said.

Wiens
will spend several months in Boston recovering from his surgery before
returning to Texas for more care and recovery, physicians said. He will
be taking a low dose of anti-rejection drugs for the next year, Bohdan
said.

Wiens spoke to the Southern Baptists of Texas Convention’s Empower Evangelism Conference on Feb. 28.

“They
say I’m tenacious but we know differently,” he told those at the
conference. “On the very first line of my medical record it says, ‘This
young man is a miracle of God.’ Even they cannot deny that it was God
who saved my life ? The doctors that I had?God put their skill to work
in the right place and at the right time to keep me alive.”

The accident, Wiens said, put him in a position to hear from God after running from him since his teenage years.

Wiens’ grandmother, Sue Peterson, wrote in an e-mail on March 22 to friends and family, “We are thankful that we serve an awesome God and that He indeed has all the details under control.”

She added, “We continue to lift the donor’s family in prayer for comfort and for peace. Through their loss, Dallas has been given a gift. We are grateful.”

An earlier article in the Southern Baptist TEXAN chronicled Wiens’ injury and recovery, accessible at http://texanonline.net/default.asp?action=article&aid=7069