A small-scale awakening continues in Agojo, the Filipino fishing village in the province of Capiz devastated by Typhoon Haiyan last November, as disaster relief workers minister there under the direction of Garry and Sherry McDugle of Bois d’Arc Baptist Church in Palestine.

The McDugles, coordinators for the effort and disaster relief chaplains with the  Southern Baptists of Texas Convention, have been in the area since early January and will extend their stay until the end of April.

Volunteer teams from churches in Georgia and Texas have assisted in the efforts.

Nearly 80 Filipinos have made decisions for Christ followed by dozens of ocean baptisms and the start of multiple Simbalays, or Filipino home churches.

These new believers face challenges and need prayer, volunteers said.

“Some will be ostracized from their families, friends and communities,” Garry McDugle said. “Here, it is not well received for one to be baptized outside the Catholic faith.”

At the conclusion of an ocean baptismal service, the McDugles’ driver, Bert, expressed curiosity and after hearing the gospel, he too asked to be baptized.

Filipino pastor Ronald Calina conducts the beach services. On March 8, at one evening service, 30 adults and 15 children prayed to receive Jesus.

The scene could have occurred on the Sea of Galilee, Sherry McDugle said. Fishing boats rocked gently offshore, nets cast out, while the families of the fishermen—women, elderly parents and fishermen themselves—listened attentively to the gospel.

A young boy took Sherry McDugle’s hand and explained, smiling and pointing aloft, that he was not going to hell but to heaven.
While the gospel is at work, the physical work of recovery and rebuilding also continues.

Much progress can be seen at the local elementary school, painted by volunteers from the Georgia Baptist Convention. The Georgia contingent completed work on 80 sites and even installed windows in the Agojo daycare, Garry McDugle said.

“I just showed them the need and they went for it,” said McDugle of the team who returned to Georgia on March 14.

Teams from Texas, including volunteers from First Baptist The Colony and First Baptist of Brownsville, have rotated in.

“We have over 250 work orders,” said Garry McDugle, who noted that 30 of the needed 55 10-foot by 10-foot shelters have been completed and that 10 carpentry teams remain busy.

Baptist Global Response and the SBTC have provided $100,000 in funds to meet the region’s needs, but individuals are still encouraged to donate to the effort. More DR teams are also needed, said McDugle, who emphasized the effectiveness of smaller two-person teams like First Baptist The Colony’s Wally Leyerle and Jake Martinez.

SBTC DR teams have assisted schoolteachers who live outside the Agojo neighborhood but work at the Agojo elementary school. One, a mother of five named Gina whose husband had suffered a stroke and pneumonia prior to the typhoon, commutes to work 45 minutes twice daily by motorcycle. Her home was in the eye of the storm and debris remained scattered about. As DR workers gathered to pray with Gina’s family, neighborhood residents joined them.

The family of Belinda, another teacher who lives just outside Agojo, had huddled underneath a table during the typhoon’s blast. Belinda’s husband lost his fishing boat, the family’s means of livelihood, to the storm. Tears welled up in Belinda’s eyes as DR workers arrived with sheets of corrugated metal to repair her home.

Just as Belinda will never forget the November day when the typhoon destroyed her island, neither will she forget that March day when SBTC DR workers arrived to help and to pray. She requested and received a new Bible to replace hers that was lost during the storm.

Stories abound of Filipinos coming to the Lord. There is Nenitea, a laborer likely in her 40s, recently widowed, who with her grown daughter trusted the Lord. Jessa, a 16-year-old who was befriended and given a Bible by the McDugles more than a month ago, recently trusted Jesus, as did her best friend, her father and family of six. Even the wife of the local Agojo elected official or captain has expressed interest in learning more about Jesus.

“Please, please keep praying for everyone here,” Garry McDugle said.

“Jesus is wooing the community,” Sherry McDugle added.

FORT WORTH—Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary trustees approved the formation of a Board of Visitors and elected new faculty members, among other business, at a meeting on the school’s campus April 9.

The Board of Visitors acts as purely an observatory and feedback-supplying body, and its members have no legal responsibility or authority to the seminary.

“They don’t have any oversight over the campus,” said Steven Smith, Southwestern’s vice president of student services and communications. “What they do is they come and they look around and generally gain awareness themselves of what’s going on, on campus, and they’re able to give us feedback. It’s one more avenue to engage people who are not formally or vocationally in the ministry, necessarily, and for them to come on to our campus and see what we’re seeing everyday.”

Pending approval by the seminary’s accrediting agencies, students may soon have another degree program from which to choose when they begin studying at Southwestern. The trustees voted to approve a master of arts in Christian apologetics degree as well as a certificate in the same field of study.

Provost Craig Blaising said interest in apologetics has been piqued among laypeople and academics alike and continues to be on the rise, especially among many students studying in the College at Southwestern. The creation of a degree focused on that area seemed a natural response to that interest, he explained.

“With the interest that has been communicated to us, we felt the time was right to go ahead and create this degree, as well as the certificate, because the certificate is there for maybe laypeople who have interest in apologetics, science and culture and who want to focus and get some training in that area.”

Though approved in concept by the trustees, the degree will still have to go through the approval channels of the accrediting agencies before students can begin the new degree.

Faculty Elections
The trustees also voted to elect four professors to the seminary’s faculty: Paul Gould as assistant professor of philosophy and Christian apologetics; Craig Kubic as dean of libraries; Vern Charette as assistant professor of preaching; and Keith Loftin as assistant professor of humanities. Additionally, the board voted to endow the Jesse Hendley Chair of Biblical Theology and elected Blaising to occupy it. Matt Queen, assistant professor of evangelism, was elected to fill the L.R. Scarborough Chair of Evangelism, also known as the Chair of Fire, formerly held by Patterson.

“Due to Matt Queen, this place is a different place than it was three years ago,” Patterson told the board early in the meeting, before the professor’s election to the chair. “Matt Queen has done exactly what I asked him to do. I told him, ‘I don’t care what you teach, I just want you to electrify this campus with evangelistic outreach. I want there to be only two kinds of people that set foot on Southwestern’s campus: those who are soul winners and those who are desperately ashamed of themselves and miserable because they’re not going to get involved in it.’ And he has done that unbelievably. The longer he is at it, I see how big of a failure I was during my first eight years here, and my hat is off to him, and I thank God for the others who have joined him.”

Officer Elections
The trustees made elections to their own board as well, voting to select Steve James of Lake Charles, La., to serve a second term as chairman, Bart Barber of Farmersville, to serve as vice chairman and John Brunson of Houston, to serve a second term as secretary.

Budget and other business
Trustees approved a $35.1 million budget for the seminary for the 2014-15 fiscal year, which represents a slight increase over the $32.9 million budget approved for 2013-2014. The board also approved audits for the seminary and the seminary’s development foundation for the fiscal year ending July 31.

Patterson requested the board “receive the report of the successful conclusion” of the 2009-2013 strategic plan, which it did unanimously. He then also asked that they approve the 2014-2019 strategic plan, which Patterson said includes items such as libraries, faculty and staff compensation, and upkeep to the physical plant.

Diverse racial and ethnic roots of church planters reflect SBTC focus on reaching the world in Texas

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The Southern Baptist Cooperative Program has taken a beating over the past few decades. It is well known that the total received for worldwide missions has declined in real, post-inflation dollars. We have more churches and wealthier churches, but those churches have reduced their giving significantly in many cases. On the local level, church members give a drastically smaller percentage of their incomes than did their parents and grandparents. I maintain that the decline of the Cooperative Program is not a failure of marketing or branding but one of discipleship in the lives of Christians and nearsightedness on the part of churches. And no one has a better idea for addressing the Great Commission.

That last point matters. Even as some outside the SBC, those who’ve lived with societal missions for 100 years, express admiration for the CP, some more familiar with our cooperative giving plan have started to admire societal giving. As you’d expect, this “new” idea is only better for those ministries the innovators like best. I do respect the missionary heart of those who rob Judea to reach the uttermost parts of the world, but I also think it is shortsighted.

The dalliance with societal missions within the SBC has often aimed at blessing the International Mission Board. IMB President Tom Elliff has been careful to uplift CP, but he passionately lays out the problem—too little money means too few missionaries around the world. This reality has drawn many of us into a version of societal missions. It can only work for a short time and it will not address the causes for long.
Here’s what I mean: It may start when pastors decide to send more money around the world by reallocating mission funds in favor of some causes and to the detriment of others. By some, theological education is deemed less important, so world missions gets some of the money that would go to the six SBC seminaries through the adopted SBC allocation budget. It’s important to note that many of these supporters of world missions continue to uphold the importance of the ministries being cut. This is a bit of a mixed message.

When prominent pastors in the SBC make this case, saying, “This may not be for everyone. It’s just what we think we should do,” they are downplaying their real influence among the churches. We know their names because they lead high profile ministries, host pastor conferences and speak at denominational meetings. What they do, some others will do, and partly because they’ve done it. There is a stewardship of influence that should be given more consideration.

That stewardship of influence is why I say it’s a mixed message to claim that ministries to which a church lowers or cuts funding are important but not important enough to receive adequate support. If the ministry, seminary or state convention still has an important role and if a prominent leader leads his church to lower funding, and if that leader has influence across his region, is he actually OK with other churches, maybe most churches, doing as he has done partly because he did it? He should be OK with it and say so. In fact, he’d better be comfortable with those ministries declining or shutting down if he’s going to lead a parade away from supporting them. 

Yes, I affirm the right of churches to discern for themselves God’s will regarding what they fund and support. It’s only on my worst days that I wish some mortal man could tell Baptist churches what to do. I also affirm the leadership of pastors in helping their churches discern and pursue God’s will. In fact, I don’t reject the notion that some ministries, even some aspects of denominationalism, can pass out of importance or relevance. What I do have trouble affirming is the idea that something is still significant, it has even benefited our own ministry at times we can remember, and we actually believe it should continue to benefit ministries more needy than our own, but somebody else needs to carry that ball because we’ve moved on to another level of understanding what missions means. Others inevitably will want to join us on that higher plane and the ministries we’ve affirmed with our mouths will starve to death.

Southern Baptists have a significant presence in and strategic vision for the nations for exactly the same reasons that we have cutting-edge Baptist scholars teaching our pastors and missionaries-in-waiting. It is for exactly that same reason we have a strategy for reaching American towns and people groups few have heard of. It is for the same reason that rock star “yellow shirts” show up almost as soon as the tornado sirens stop wailing. It is the same reason that Southern Baptists are doing serious work in revitalizing dying churches. We can do these things because the Cooperative Program funds ministries your church doesn’t need at this moment. We can do these things because some people are empowered to study unreached corners of Texas or to prepare disaster relief volunteers with the same intensity a local pastor gives to his own church.

Yes, we need more missionaries. That will take money currently going to other things. But those competitors for funding are rarely other ministries. The money needed to reach the nations is in the same place as the money you need to reach your own community—largely tied up in credit card interest, cars, clothes and entertainment. As I said, it’s a discipleship issue. And that is what your church and mine should be about: making disciples, joyful givers, out of lost people and the spiritually immature.