NEW ORLEANS—Counting it an honor and privilege to serve Southern Baptists as the wife of the president of the International Mission Board, Jeannie Elliff traced the hand of God in her life as she spoke to the Pastor’s Wives session of the annual Pastors’ Conference.

“He delivers me and he is near me when I’m broken-hearted,” she declared, recalling Psalm 34. “He saves me when my spirit is crushed. He delivers me from all our afflictions, and because he is so faithful, I cannot help but bless the Lord at all times; his praise shall continually be in my mouth.”

Aware that the “blinking lights” and “bouncers usher you off” the stage when speaking too long, Elliff quickly recounted the touchstones of her life that point to the promises of God’s deliverance described in verses 15-19 of the Psalm.

Growing up in a non-ministry family, she married a preacher who pastored nearly 20 years before God called them to the mission field of Zimbabwe. Their departure was bittersweet, leaving within a year after Tom’s father walked away from a 43-year marriage. “We were like two little kids holding on to each other,” she said, recalling the night her husband learned of his father’s lapse in moral character.

Still in their mid-30s at the time, Elliff said they were crushed and scared. “I can’t imagine what this does to a 7- or 5-year old,” she said, recalling how deeply his parents’ eventual divorce affected them as adults. “After that, things began to happen in our lives that really proved our faith.”

First, there was the act of sabotage that wrecked the car she was driving, throwing three of the four children out of the car and leaving their 14-year-old daughter on the highway pinned under the vehicle and eventually requiring a return to the States for medical care. Then, a 20-year pastorate began with recovery from the monumental debt the church had incurred in the years prior. Later, their 16-year-old son was hit by a car in which the driver was killed. In one year both of her parents died leaving her with the responsibility of selling their house and belongings.

Then there was the fire that destroyed their home in Oklahoma, followed soon after by the F5 tornado that exploded the condominium to which they had moved. A knee injury forced her husband to preach from a wheelchair during his three months of recovery and two battles with breast cancer taught her that he was a better nurse to her than she was to him.

Amidst those hard experiences there were many good ones as well—the weddings of all four children within a year’s time and the births of 25 grandchildren. When the second of two daughters left for the mission field, Elliff questioned her earlier thought that she’d be thrilled if all of her children were missionaries.

“That was my mouth, but it wasn’t my heart,” she recalled thinking. Once God gave her a love for the Cambodian people to whom her daughter would minister, she accepted his plan for her child’s life. Later, that love extended to the Thai people group that another daughter sought to reach, excited that they were “cousins of the Cambodians.”

At one time 11 of their grandchildren lived overseas. “Tom and I cannot grieve over the sacrifice we make in being away from our children, calling the nearly 5,000 Southern Baptist missionaries and their 4,000 children “the world’s unknown heroes.”

“When God broke my heart for missions as a pastor’s wife, and helped me get out of myself and the issues I was struggling with, I realized it’s not just about me,” she said. After developing an interest in the IMB, she realized it is only in eternity that the sacrifices of missionaries will be fully known. “Join me in getting to know who they are.”

PAM TEBOW

Another former missionary, Pam Tebow, challenged the wives of ministers to see their “fishbowl” lives as an opportunity for influence. “That’s not a bad thing. There are such advantages and great accountability. Use your influence intentionally because that’s why God created you—to glorify him.”

She taught them to get to know the Master, learn from his manual, discover the power of prayer, develop a biblical mindset that focuses on eternity, care about their mission and remain passionate about God and the opportunities he has given them to influence their children.

“When we invest in our kids, husbands, and ministries of our churches, those are things that last forever.” Her testimony provided highlights of her ministry with her husband in the Philippines and as the mother of five children, including NFL quarterback Tim Tebow.

Aware that many of those investments do not yield immediate appreciation, Tebow said, “We’re not patted on the back and we don’t get a lot of accolades when we do things on behalf of children, husbands and churches, but God notices and he rewards you eternally for what you do for the cause of Christ.”

ROUNDTABLE

Parenting preachers’ kids was the focus of a roundtable discussion led by Susie Hawkins, author of “From One Ministry Wife to Another,” joined by Elliff, as well as Carmen Howell of Daytona Beach, Fla., Elicia Horton of Kansas City, Mo., and Cindy King of Philadelphia.

Begun in 2005 as a pre-convention session of the annual meeting, the event is operated on a shoestring budget where speakers “might get a necklace” as an honorarium, according to one organizer. LifeWay Christian Resources and the North American Mission Board underwrite much of the funding necessary to rent the space and cover travel expenses of outside speakers.

The session was opened in prayer by one of the most experienced women’s ministry leaders in the country, Barbara O’Chester of Wake Forest, N.C., with Kathy Litton, national director of the North American Mission Board’s ministry to pastors’ wives, closing the session with a guided prayer applying the principles taught on behalf of preacher’s kids.

A triathalon competitor, Litton told of training at the YMCA where “the water’s real smooth, you can put your foot down when you get tired and hang onto the side.” In sharp contrast, the actual race held in Gulf Shores, Ala., was her first experience of swimming in the ocean.

“I was never a pastor’s wife until I was in a race,” Litton said. “Talking about being a pastor’s wife is like being in the lap pool at the YMCA. Being a pastor’s wife is like being in the ocean with salt water and lots of people. There’s not a good way to train for what we’re doing. You have to get in the water to figure out what’s going to happen when we get there.”

She encouraged wives of ministers to check out NAMB’s online resource at www.fourish.me as well as www.contagiousjoy4him.com for pastors’ wives and other women serving in ministry. A Facebook page labeled Pastor’s Wives of the Southern Baptist Convention provides information on the annual gathering and related resources.

Historically, governments have taken one of three approaches to church-state relations, according to Southern Baptist ethicist Richard Land. In his book “The Divided States of America? What Liberals and Conservatives are Missing in the God and Country Shouting Match!” he labels the approaches avoidance, acknowledgment and accommodation.

AVOIDANCE: According to this view, all recognition of the church should be removed from government, creating a secular society as in modern France.

John Wilsey, assistant professor of history and Christian apologetics at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary’s Havard School for Theological Studies in Houston, said many who champion “separation of church and state” espouse the avoidance view. Yet neither the majority of America’s Founding Fathers nor its early religious dissenters—including Baptists, Presbyterians and Methodists—held this perspective, he said.

Early American dissenters “knew that a separation of church and state, a wall of separation would eventually lead to a limiting of government as well as religion,” said Wilsey, author of “One Nation Under God? An Evangelical Critique of Christian America.” Under the avoidance view, “government can’t say anything or do anything to acknowledge religion, and the church can’t do anything at all in the public square, which inhibits religious freedom.”

Some believe avoidance is necessary to accommodate the broad variety of religious convictions in America today. But there is a better way, according to Wilsey.

Most Americans assume “separation of church and state” is “what the Founders intended from the very beginning,” he said. “And certainly some did. Thomas Jefferson favored that. But in terms of the religious dissenters who gained us religious freedom during the Revolutionary period and shortly thereafter, that was not really the intent.”

In terms of Baptists, Land in a 2008 speech at Criswell College, quoted Roger Williams, an early American Baptist writing decades before the Constitution was drafted, that there must be a “wall of separation” to keep the “wilderness of the world” from encroaching upon the “garden of the church.”      

Later, that “wall of separation” language made its way into Thomas Jefferson’s famous 1802 letter to the Danbury Baptist Association, defending the Baptists’ from oppression as a religious minority in Connecticut. Yet Land said Jefferson obviously didn’t intend for a radical “separation” like that championed by groups such as the American Civil Liberties Union or Americans United.

Land told the Criswell audience that if Jefferson had intended that government avoid religious expression in its domain, it is curious that Jefferson, the Sunday after penning his famous letter to the Danbury Baptists, attended Sunday worship services in the U.S. House of Representatives chamber led by his friend John Leland, a Baptist pastor from Connecticut.
    
ACKNOWLEDGMENT: This view argues that government should affirm a majority religion, as with the government of Iran affirming Islam.

“The problem with that is that it’s going to deny religious freedom to anyone who doesn’t hold [the officially recognized] view, anybody who’s not subscribed to that religion that’s acknowledged by the state,” Wilsey said. “You cannot have true religious freedom in a state that has an established church, or even an acknowledged church.”

Though America did not have an official state church, Protestantism served as a de facto state religion until the second half of the 20th century, he said. This resulted in groups like Mormons, Roman Catholics and adherents of Native American religions being persecuted and having their religious freedoms impinged, Wilsey said.

Speaking at Criswell, Land said of this, “The last thing we as Baptists should want is government-sponsored religion. Government-sponsored religion is like getting a hug from a python.”

ACCOMMODATION: According to this view, all religious perspectives should be respected by government and citizens should understand the value of religion in America’s past, present and future. Religiously informed moral values should inform public policy discussions under the accommodation view.

Accommodation “is the ideal situation and certainly the intent in the First Amendment,” Wilsey said.
In early America, religious dissenters were highly involved in politics, arguing for their right to practice their faith without persecution and allowing their religion to inform their political views in the public square, he said.

“The government did not see that as a threat,” Wilsey said of the dissenters’ political involvement. “The government of course welcomed this. So I think that model that we had at the very beginning was the model we ought to try to recover today.”

Land said the accommodation position most closely honors the American Founders’ intent and historic Baptist principles.

“The accommodation position would say, ‘If the people in the community want to have a manger scene on the courthouse lawn, then they ought to be allowed to collect the money and buy a manger scene and the government should accommodate their wish by allowing its display at the appropriate Christmas time, and they should provide police protection for it and the lighting for it and possibly even the storage for it during the Christmas season,” Land explained.

“But that also means that if there are Jewish people in the community and they want to have a Menorah scene at the appropriate time in the Jewish calendar, then they ought to be able to have a Menorah celebrating Judaism as well. And if there are Muslims in that community, then at the appropriate time they ought to be allowed to display a Muslim scene. Accommodation means the government is an umpire. And the government makes sure that everybody plays fair.”

—With reporting by Jerry Pierce

I was startled to see the rifles wielded by the local ROTC students as they marched down the aisle of my home church in 1970. Turned out the guns weren’t loaded, but my familiarity with firearms was too limited to have known the difference. Garnering the prized position as the American flag bearer for the annual Vacation Bible School processional was one thing, but unleashing an unexpected unit of soldiers-in-training as part of the morning worship service seemed a bit much at the time.

In the cultural context of America’s Vietnam era, our church set in a university town had some who viewed the inclusion of patriotic music as a defense of military intervention during an unpopular war. Still, the majority of the crowd tearfully sang “The Battle Hymn of the Republic” grandly accompanied by a pipe organ.

Penned by abolitionist Julia Ward Howe, a Unitarian who wrote the lyrics for federal troops in 1861 at her pastor’s suggestion, the words “mine eyes have seen the glory” was a Union battle cry. But that didn’t prevent Robert Coleman of First Baptist Dallas from including it in his Popular Hymnal in 1918, extending the tune’s circulation among Southern Baptists.

Just as I look forward to the incorporation of Christmas carols in worship services each December, the Fourth of July often prompts the singing of patriotic songs I enjoy like “America the Beautiful,” “God of Our Fathers,” “My Country ‘Tis of Thee,” or even “The Star-Spangled Banner.”

Many who plan music for our services would wince at including anything so secular, concerned that the focus must remain on the worship of God, not the concerns of man. Certainly, we’d find the Marines Hymn theologically flawed with its belief that “if the Army and the Navy ever look on Heaven’s scenes, they will find the streets are guarded by United States Marines.” I bet there’s a church in Texas that rationalizes singing Lee Greenwood’s more recently composed song “God Bless the U.S.A.” in light of the terror of little more than a decade ago.

The “love it or leave it” sentiment expressed the ‘70s and the renewed patriotism post 9/11 should be tempered among believers with a Great Commission heart that yearns to see our religious liberty extended to all people—wherever they live. We need to be careful when our patriotic zeal causes us to question why anyone would leave the freedom we enjoy to carry the gospel to people who hate or mistrust Americans.

If the selection of worship music really is all about the words we sing, then a holiday theme can be productive. “My Country ‘Tis of Thee” doesn’t just proclaim a love of God’s creation in our geographic borders, it reminds us of the Author of liberty to whom we sing and honor as our King. “America the Beautiful” reminds us of the mission of those who traveled to America in search of freedom and begs for God’s grace in dealing with the flawed nature of man that requires “liberty in law.”

While most churches will have to forgo the trumpet fanfare I enjoyed as a child when singing “God of our Fathers,” the hymn credits God with providing an “ever sure defense.” It was composed for America’s centennial at a time when most who sang it had endured the Civil War and needed the reassurance that “in this free land by thee our lot is cast.”

Sports fans only sing the first stanza of “The Star-Spangled Banner,” but the fourth verse of our national anthem praises “the Power that hath made and preserved us a nation” and reminds us to be sure that our cause is just, declaring “in God is our trust!”

So when the thoughts of our citizens are turned toward our nation’s freedom, how about giving them something to sing about by honoring God through a patriotic hymn?

Is America a Christian nation? It’s a lively conversation in which we spend a lot of time defining terms and extrapolating from the comments of our nation’s Founders. This is not a yes/no question. Still, I’m going to plant my flag with the “yes” side as long as you’ll let me explain.

Have you ever been in a place where much of the conversation takes place in a language you don’t understand? You might get a lot from context so that you know that the people are talking about auto repair rather than animal husbandry but you miss a lot of the details. If you have a basic understanding of the language spoken but are not proficient, you get a bit more but still miss the humor, nuance and subtleties of the conversation. You have a child’s understanding of what is going on. That seems to me to be a good metaphor for American citizens who have no basic familiarity with the Christian Bible. Our laws, art, literature, theatre, figures of speech, and customs are completely mixed with concepts from the Bible. You can be an engaged part of the American conversation having never read a word of the Koran or Book of Mormon, but you are a novice American if you do not know anything of the Book upon which Western civilization is significantly based.

Furthermore, even the nut of truth found in non-Christian worldviews has its source in the God who made us. Ignorant people talk as if the enlightenment of human reason has no source. Why do you think mathematics works or gravity functions in some predictable way? Our Maker is a rationale person who reveals himself in an ordered and purposeful creation. The fact that we can discern some of that is wonderful but the ability is not something we invented. Neither is the interaction between the various elements within creation that we study so diligently something for which we can take credit.

Enlightenment? Sure, our Founders were children of their day. They were optimistic about man’s ability to discover how the universe worked. Optimism has its source in the God who reveals himself, who approves of progress and who made man like himself in important ways. And light always has a source, doesn’t it?

Those most offended by the fact that our nation is a melting pot of cultures overwhelmingly based on Christian assumptions are those who are most offended by the gospel. Groups like the Interfaith Alliance or Americans United just disdain the biblical practice of Christianity. Their piecemeal efforts, in concert with more honest atheist groups, to purge our culture of references to Christianity are disastrous. You cannot purge a culture of a worldview that is arguably religious; you can only switch one religion for another. Name it what you like but the pale universalism of liberal Christians and the materialism of atheists both have the essential elements of religion—just not those of Christianity. For an illustration of a religiously atheist state, feast your eyes on the Soviet Union or People’s Republic of North Korea. For an example of the current state of Christian liberalism, toss a dart toward the map of Western Europe. I don’t see anything we want in any of those places.  

We are not a Christian nation in the sense that the Bible should be our law book or that God is our king. That has been tried many times over the centuries and it does not work. It cannot work unless God has chosen a people, given them a system of laws, and determined to guide them in detail. That nation is not the United States of America. Our own American experiment to build Jerusalem in New England’s green and pleasant land was a bit hard on Baptists and other dissenters. State religion always, always, always results in corrupt religion and bad governance. Show me an example of a truly state church and I’ll not show you a nativity scene on a court house lawn but rather cemeteries or prisons or stocks or whipping posts occupied by people who merely disagreed.

Neither does our Christian heritage imply that professing Christians should be, by definition, preferred as leaders. A president or governor with a credible Christian testimony can be a great blessing to those he governs, to the degree that he daily fears the God who appointed him to the office. And, I’d add, to the degree that he knows how to do the job. We’ve weathered for years and without complaint leaders who checked a box “Christian” but meant it only in the, I’m-not-a Buddhist-or-Moslem way. We elected them because we believed them to be the best candidate being offered. It’s silly to vote for an otherwise unqualified candidate because we like his denomination (remember Jimmy Carter?), or to reject one because we find his religion, though not his viewpoints, strange.

Our Christian heritage implies a few things. First, we have a place to start that many other nations do not. Of course we are less devout culturally than our great grandparents, but the influence of our heritage makes us an exceptional country for this day. Rather than argue about Thomas Jefferson’s faith, we can build on the remaining influence of biblical Christianity in our day to encourage mercy and justice in our communities. Some of the ways in which Christianity is built into the structure of our culture can help people recognize the gospel when our churches or neighbors tell the rest of the story.

Second, it implies a stewardship. In Acts 16:37 and elsewhere Paul called on his Roman citizenship as a way to further the gospel. Peter didn’t have that card to play; neither did most of that first generation of Christians. We live in a country where Christianity is not only tolerated but freely exercised and relatively familiar. As a part of that heritage, we also have the freedom to exercise the full rights of citizens. We can, so we should do. An American-citizen-Christian who can but does not vote is not only an ungrateful citizen but a disobedient Christian, I think. Not only that, I’d go on to say that Christians who do not attempt be informed values voters are also missing the admonition to be salt and light in a nation in which we have an amazing amount of influence.

Third, it implies that the liberty we experience here should never be limited to Christians. It is in our best interest—we who come from a tradition where our spiritual ancestors were persecuted for preaching without permission—to ensure that no man, nor our government, should attempt to coerce the conscience of any man. Christianity is the source of our principles but should not be the legally preferred religion of our nation. One of the most likely challenges we will see in our lifetimes is the move on the part of our government to provide tolerance of specified religious practice rather than liberty. Tolerance has parameters. You can believe what you like but perhaps one day you will not be allowed to preach or teach certain biblical precepts. Worship as you wish but you cannot run your business according to your doctrine. That is exactly the question at issue with the contraceptive mandate being forced on religious institutions by our department of Health and Human Services. When a person or entity can grant or withhold religious freedoms, “liberty” is no longer the right word for our condition.

Friends, it sounds sometimes as though we believe there is a legal remedy for the spiritual condition our nation. There is not. Yes, there is often a legal remedy for injustice or certain sorts of immorality. And I agree that some righteous things are worth fighting to preserve, families to name just one. Our nation is made up of people, some Christian as we would define it, and most not. Our nation can become more or less “Christian” according to who our people are—more Christians equals more “Christian.” Our culture is indeed based on Christianity because of the role the Bible played in defining Anglo-Saxon customs, and American customs specifically. Our laws are influenced by Christianity but there is no one-to-one correlation between biblical precepts and the laws of our land. Our government is not Christian, nor should it be, even if a large number of Christians serve in leadership positions. We have never given our government the right to determine religious doctrine or dole out permission for religious practice. Our government is in place to protect the rights we already recognize as the inherent possession of all men.

As I hinted at earlier, I think we spend too much time trying to guess at what our Founders thought in their private minds. I love history a lot; and the best way to enjoy history is to read the stories of those who lived through significant events. I enjoy the insights that we get into the hearts of those important people who’ve gone before. But it is their deeds that become most significant for the present. I am interested in what John Adams thought and even why he did what he did, but what he did is ultimately what matters. That is what we live with. Our Founders built a nation out of the culture that birthed and taught them—a Christian culture. Some of them understood the manifold mischief that coercive religion had caused during the whole history of mankind. They founded a nation, complete with a basis for laws unimagined, that would not abridge even unpopular ideas published, spoken, or religious in nature. They understood that officially mandated ideas or speech or religion are the enemy of liberty.

It is a vexing reality, but our liberty to practice Christianity is safe only if it exists alongside that of others to trumpet the worst ideas ever conceived. Especially we should understand that in this day when many opinion-makers consider biblical Christianity one of those worst ideas.

Cada año, en nuestro país, señalamos el tercer domingo en junio para honorar a nuestros padres. Es un día cuando reconocemos la importancia de un padre en la vida de una familia. La presencia de un padre y el respecto que los hijos deben darle es importante para cada hogar. La Palabra de Dios en Efesios 6:1-3 nos declara:

“Hijos obedeced en el Señor a vuestros padres, porque esto es justo, Honra a tu padre y a tu madre, que es el primer mandamiento con promesa; para que te vaya bien, y seas de larga vida sobre la tierra.”

Hoy en día los hogares están en guerra. Cada vez más vemos que nuestros hijos están alejándose de la cosas de Dios. Muchos niños ya no están asistiendo a ninguna iglesia y las estadísticas dicen que muchos jóvenes que están en nuestras iglesias cuando se van para la universidad ya no regresaran a la iglesia o a las cosas de Dios. La influencia de un padre en la familia es de suma importancia. El padre debe de ser honrado por sus hijos y el padre de cada familia también tiene una gran responsabilidad sobre ellos.

Tres cosas que un padre de una familia debe hacer para impactar, reforzar y afirmar la vida de sus hijos.

1. Impactar la vida de nuestros hijos con palabras. Padres hay que hablar con los niños. Hay que hablarles de las cosas de Dios, de la Biblia. Hay que decirles como Dios ha obrado en nuestras propias vidas y compartir esas experiencias con ellos.

Deuteronomio 6:1-2 dice:
“Estos, pues, son los mandamientos, estatutos y decretos que Jehová vuestro Dios mandó que os enseñase, para que los pongáis por obra en la tierra a la cual pasáis vosotros para tomarla; para que temas a Jehová tu Dios, guardando todos sus estatutos y sus mandamientos que yo te mando, tú, tu hijo, y el hijo de tu hijo, todos los días de tu vida, para que tus días sean prolongados.”

2. Impactar la vida de nuestros hijos con nuestras vidas. La manera como vivimos será un reflejo directo de lo que nuestros hijos aprenderán y serán. Ellos están mirando nuestras vidas, escuchando nuestras palabras y quieren ser como nosotros. Ellos son como esponjas absorbiendo cada hecho que hacemos y cada palabra que digamos. El ejemplo que le damos a nuestros hijos es muy importante. Debemos ser una Biblia viviente para ellos. Nuestros hijos deben ver en nuestras vidas que estamos caminando con Cristo y haciendo la voluntad de nuestro Padre Celestial.

3. Impactar la vida de nuestros hijos con nuestro tiempo. El problema número uno de los padres de hoy es que no tienen tiempo para los hijos.  Invertimos tiempo para el trabajo porque es necesario para sostener a la familia pero lamentablemente no apartamos tiempo para estar con nuestros hijos.
Es importante que los padres hagan tiempo para estar con sus hijos. Esto requiere planificar actividades con nuestros hijos de antemano y ponerlo en el calendario, se trata de hacerlo intencionalmente.

Un joven abogado que tuvo mucho éxito dijo una vez:
“El regalo más grande que yo jamás he recibido en toda la vida fue un regalo de navidad. Mi padre me dio una caja pequeña y dentro estaba una nota que decía, ‘Hijo mío, este año el regalo que yo te daré será de darte 365 horas, una hora cada día después de la cena. Esta hora será tuya. Podemos hablar de cualquier cosa, podemos ir a cualquier lugar, o jugar cualquier juego que quieras. ¡Esta hora será exclusivamente para ti! ’ Mi padre no sólo cumplió con su palabra, pero cada año después él renovaba esa promesa conmigo. Y fue el regalo más grande que jamás había recibido en toda mi vida.  Esa hora a través de los años que estuve con mi padre impactó mi vida para el bien y ahora soy lo que soy.”

La influencia de un padre sobre sus hijos vale mucho. Hay que tomar tiempo para estar con nuestros hijos e instruirlos bien para que ellos puedan hacer decisiones correctas para sus vidas y andar por los buenos caminos. Padres recuerden, el único que puede dar propósito a la vida de sus hijos es Cristo Jesús.