Month: September 2021

FIRST-PERSON: 5 things I’ve learned about children’s ministry and volunteers

Children’s Ministry is difficult in a lot of ways. It’s not even working with kids that makes it so challenging. Instead, having enough people ready and able to serve is the most difficult part. I have often wondered if this is a unique problem to my local church context, but having talked with dozens of churches — big, small, rural, and urban — I’ve discovered that we all seem to struggle with the same difficulty: finding great volunteers!

I’ll admit that I haven’t cracked the code, but I wanted to share a few things I’ve learned that not only help us staff our classrooms with able and trusted people but have also allowed our leaders to flourish and enjoy serving in ministry.

Not everyone can do children’s ministry 

It sounds strange to suggest it, but one way to get more volunteers, and the right ones, is to narrow your audience. What I really mean is that when you are talking to leaders or potential leaders, make sure they know you need skilled laborers. Highlighting the specific and unique qualities needed for service will empower volunteers to step into service with the confidence that they are gifted for the role. How would it make you feel if your boss walked into your office and said, “We just need more people doing your job, and literally anyone can do it!”? When we lower the bar by saying, “Anyone can serve in kids ministry,” we can unintentionally belittle the work of our current volunteers, alienate high capacity leaders, and inadvertently welcome the wrong or even unsafe volunteers.

Litton talks crises, stewardship of suffering at SWBTS

SWBTS President Adam W Greenway and SBC President Ed Litton

FORT WORTH (BP) – In a conversation during chapel at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary Tuesday (Sept. 14), Southern Baptist Convention President Ed Litton addressed topics ranging from God’s work through suffering, racial reconciliation, the crisis facing the SBC Executive Committee and the accusations of plagiarism that have dogged him since early in his presidency.

SWBTS President Adam W. Greenway opened the dialogue by asking Litton to address “what has come to be known as the sermon plagiarism controversy.”

“I take preaching very seriously,” Litton said before recounting the events surrounding the sermon series in question, parts of which tracked closely to a series preached by former SBC President J.D. Greear.

Litton, longtime pastor of Redemption Church in Saraland, Ala., near Mobile, said the prospect of preaching through Romans was “intimidating” and during his preparation, he listened to Greear’s series from the same book.

“And I was really moved by the way he handled some very challenging passages in Romans,” Litton said. When Litton called Greear to ask about using some of his material for the series at Redemption Church, Greear gave his permission.

Litton admitted that portions of his sermon “line up” with Greear’s sermons, but added “I don’t consider that plagiarism. But let me tell you where my sin was. My sin was that I did not credit him to my church. I’ve been asked why, and I’m a little mystified by that too, because I’m very transparent with my people.”

Litton said he has repented to his church for not crediting Greear and has been “fasting” from listening to preaching.

“I have a capacity to remember statements that are made in an audible sermon that I hear that’s a little too good,” Litton said. “Sometimes it gets mixed up.”

The controversy has been very painful, Litton said.

“I feel like that I’m in a refiner’s fire,” he said. “It’s easy to criticize the source of the fire, but nowhere does the Scripture tell us to do that. Scripture tells us to put our eyes on the Refiner. … I have accepted the reality of this fire, and I embrace it by the grace of God.”

Litton said he has learned more about his own insecurity “that needed praise for my preaching,” but that “God has been in the process of burning out. And it is a painful thing.”

Greenway then asked Litton to share with seminarians and pastors any “pastoral words” drawn from what he has been through.

“It is frightening to think about what can happen to your reputation. It is terrifying,” Litton said. “But that is a danger. … Proverbs 29 says ‘the fear of man is a snare.’”

Southern Baptists are terrified of being ruined in public, Litton said, adding that when he has asked others to serve in Southern Baptist life, he is often asked “Will they do to me what they’ve done to you?”

“What we’ve done is created an atmosphere that is quite toxic,” he said. “Good people will not serve for fear that a mistake or a sin that they committed five years ago could be brought up on YouTube or that they could be paraded out or embarrassed or ashamed. … It’s not fun. But by the grace of an almighty God who died naked on a cross for me, you can overcome it. …

“Repent often of pride.”

Southern Baptists have the best tools and training for ministry, he said, “but the reality is, nothing happens apart from brokenness.”

People don’t remember sermons, but they will remember that you “take time with those that are broken, that you hug and pray for those who ask you to pray for them,” he said.

Litton went on to discuss brokenness in his own life, not just from recent controversy, but from tragedy.

“God uses our brokenness, and He uses the pain and the things that we suffer more than anything else to communicate His Gospel to people,” Litton said.

Litton said his “street cred” in his own city is the death of his first wife Tammy 14 years ago.

“People know that at 25 years of marriage, a woman I desperately loved … was suddenly, instantly killed,” he said. “My life spun off. I didn’t know if I’d ever want to preach again. I didn’t know if I wanted to live.”

Litton said God’s grace as well as a loving church and family sustained him. He also shared how his current wife, Kathy, experienced a similar tragedy when her husband Rick was killed 19 years ago.

“God has blessed us and graced us with a ministry to broken people,” he said. “… It’s a stewardship of your suffering that will give you more progress in the Gospel than you ever imagined as a pastor.”

Reflecting on the 2021 SBC Annual Meeting in June, during which he was elected, Litton said he has fought the perception that the SBC has taken a “moderate” turn.

“Nothing about our theological statements changed,” he said he told secular media outlets. “And frankly they’re not going to. There’s not a moderate left in the Southern Baptist Convention. We’re all on a spectrum of conservative. We believe in the fundamentals of Scripture.”

But, he said, messengers to the meeting sent a clear message that “we’re tired of abuse, and it has to be dealt with. It needs to be dealt with. It needs to be looked at thoroughly.”

The focus on abuse is not a “witch hunt,” Litton said, but “an opportunity to pave the way for the future, and ultimately to get back to the Gospel.”

Despite conflict, Litton said he is positive about the future of the Southern Baptist Convention. “We are a grassroots people. We are not a top-down denominational structure.”

This structure allows average Southern Baptists to have great influence, he said, just as they did during the Conservative Resurgence. The concern now, however, is not a slide into liberalism, but a slide into fundamentalism.

The Baptist Faith and Message “is sticky enough to hold us together,” Litton said, “and at the same time allow us to have a variety of culture. … We have variety and different ways of reaching people.”

That room for diversity allows for racial reconciliation as well, something that Litton has been involved in a long time.

“Reconciliation is a call of God on us,” Litton said. “We are reconciled to Christ, and we are to reconcile to others.”

Litton shared a bit of the troubling racial history of both the SBC and the city of Mobile and said of racial reconciliation: “It’s not the culture that’s pressing us to do this. It’s the Gospel that’s pressing us to do this.”

Through years of weekly meetings with other pastors in Mobile, God has brought “miraculous” reconciliation, Litton said.

“A lost and dying world sometimes knows our theology better than we do,” he said, “and they expect us to act like Jesus. So we need to act like Jesus.”

Litton and Greenway ended the conversation looking forward to next year’s SBC Annual Meeting as well as next week’s SBC Executive Committee meeting in Nashville, during which the third-party review of the EC’s handling of sex abuse cases will be at the forefront.

“What’s up to the Executive Committee now is to fully fund [the review] and to release at least limited attorney-client privileges,” Litton said.

“… A lot is at stake. The Gospel is at stake. Our credibility is at stake. Our unity is at stake.”

Litton also stressed the important of maintaining Southern Baptist polity throughout the investigative process.

“We are autonomous churches, in autonomous associations, with autonomous state conventions and an autonomous national convention,” he said.

Several times during the dialogue, Litton asked for prayer—for himself, for unity, for racial reconciliation, for the EC review and other issues.

Highlights from Central Asia

Editor’s note: This is the third post in a 10-part series that highlights information found in IMB’s Annual Statistical Report. The report is based on 2020 research data. A full copy of the report is available at imb.org/asr.

STORIES FROM THE FIELD — CENTRAL ASIAN PEOPLES

Evangelism

A church planting team received a list of people requesting New Testaments as a result of digital outreach efforts. Before anyone of the team could follow up, a man on the list showed up at a worship time, thanks to the invitation of a local believer — evidence that God was pursuing him through a variety of ways and people. Some workers met up with him a few days later and shared the gospel with him. Within a few weeks he stopped drinking, repented of his sins and began following Christ. He said, “I used to think that I was free, but I was blind… Through you, the Lord reached me and opened my eyes.”

Discipleship

Central Asians understand intuitively the value of life-on-life discipleship. During a COVID-19 lockdown in his town, a pastor welcomed a family from another people group to live in the same house as his family for the purpose of ministry and starting a new house church. A single woman and her children, representing yet another unreached people, also moved in at the same time. Initially an unbeliever, she soon put her faith in Jesus and followed Him in baptism. Every evening the group gathered to read Scripture and pray together, and others from the community began to join them.

Exit to Partnership

Many Central Asian peoples spent much of 2020 under government quarantine due to COVID-19. Despite this, in an effort led by local believers to bless and evangelize their own people, one unreached group saw more than 13 people come to faith. Several believers who had been out of fellowship returned to church. Over 67 families received food, and more than 30 received copes of Scripture. According to IMB workers, the growth among this group exceeded that of any three month period in years.

All data, except for active field personnel and unreached people group counts, reflects information from the 2020 Data-Year Annual Statistical Report (IMB).

Your giving to the Cooperative Program and Lottie Moon Christmas Offering® enables IMB workers in Central Asia to engage with the lost through digital outreach, train local pastors and equip Central Asians to grow in their faith.

The post Highlights from Central Asia appeared first on IMB.

Son leads 85-year-old father to Christ through online Bible study

NASHVILLE (BP) – Barry Calhoun opened the Bible study book on his desk and thought about Jesus’ parable of a man who refused to stop knocking on his neighbor’s door for help. It reminded Calhoun to say one more time the prayer he had been bringing to God for almost 40 years: “Lord, please save my dad.”

Calhoun opened his eyes and logged on to Microsoft Teams where his extended family who live more than 600 miles away were waiting for him to lead them in an Explore the Bible study on the book of Luke. He scanned the room – Mom was there; so were several siblings. But where was Dad?

“He has to be here,” Calhoun said. “He’s the main reason we’re doing this.”

A long road of evangelism

Calhoun, a church mobilization strategist with the International Mission Board, became a Christian at age 9. But his father, Charles, had always kept his distance from Christianity.

“When we were growing up, he sent us to church with our mother and would give us a quarter to put in the offering, but that was it,” Calhoun said. “He would be gone on the weekends to go hunting and come back on Sunday nights.”

Calhoun described his father as a hard man who didn’t like to show his feelings. A steel worker by trade and a shade-tree mechanic, his father preferred to work out his own problems rather than acknowledge his heart needed repair. He had been inside a church twice, as far as Barry could recall – once for a funeral and once to attend his son’s first preaching assignment, which he walked out in the middle of.

Despite his father’s callousness toward Christ and the church, Calhoun never gave up hope that the Lord might save his father. He had preached the Gospel to him many times – once in the early 1980s when Calhoun first left his hometown to pursue a job with Texas Instruments. His father “prayed the sinner’s prayer,” but it proved to be mere words, Calhoun said, as “nothing really changed in his life.”

Throughout the years, Calhoun and others continued to encourage his father to repent and believe in Christ. Still, there appeared to be no fruit from these efforts. At a surprise party for his father’s 80th birthday, Calhoun told him, “There is still one thing missing in your life you need to get right before it’s too late.”

That was five years ago. A long five years, Calhoun said, because it seemed like nothing was happening.

Then a pandemic hit.

While many churches began experimenting with ways to take discipleship classes online, Calhoun had the idea to start an online Bible study with his family. His mother – a long-time Christian – wanted to study the book of Revelation, but Calhoun insisted they begin with Luke so his father could hear more clearly the message of the Gospel. His father was, after all, his motivation for leading the study.

Nothing short of a miracle

“Where’s Dad?” Calhoun asked his family members through his laptop screen. The senior Calhoun was downstairs but made his way back up at his family’s request to join their study on the book of Luke. It was the first of many Sundays he would make Bible study a regular part of his weekend – if nothing else, to appease his son.

Then, over the course of several months, Calhoun finally got a yes to the request he’d been asking of God for four decades. As Calhoun led his father through Luke’s account of God becoming a man, living a perfect life, dying a sacrificial death in the place of sinners, and rising again to eternal life, the senior Calhoun’s heart was softened. He repented of a lifetime of unbelief, turned to Christ for salvation, and declared Jesus the Lord of his life.

His son called it nothing short of a miracle.

“Salvation is a miracle, but I think the older you get the more of a miracle it becomes because typically the person has grown more calloused,” Calhoun said. “I’m pumped. I’m ecstatic. I don’t think I’ve ever prayed for something for so long. It wasn’t just a work God did in him, but a work He did in me too.”

Calhoun says that unlike a past profession of faith his father made, this one has been accompanied by observable fruit. Taking a short break in the study of Luke, Calhoun plans to lead his father through a four-week series he teaches as a pre-membership class at his own church, North Garland Baptist Fellowship in Garland, Texas, where he’s been a member for 31 years. The study will cover salvation, prayer, church discipline and stewardship.

Still, the study on Luke – part of the same curriculum Calhoun’s church uses on a weekly basis, will always be special to him.

“Walking through Lifeway’s Explore the Bible series crystalized it for my dad,” he said. “You can’t miss Christ in Luke. The writers did an excellent job in putting the series together and walking us through it. I just want to take my hat off to them and say thank you.”

When asked to summarize what this past year has meant to him, Calhoun said it’s about staying the course and not giving up, believing that God is faithful.

“At the end of the book of Job, he says, ‘I had heard reports about you, but now my eyes have seen you,’” Calhoun said, citing Job 42:5. “I haven’t seen God, but His work in my father’s life has given me a new take on what it means to persevere. Sometimes you want to give up knocking on the door, but you can’t.

“I always teach that it’s never too late. If there’s still breath in someone, there’s still time for them to get things right with God. When we get to the other side in heaven, I’ll get to see just what God was doing in my father to bring him to this point.”

‘Tremendous sense of urgency’ as See You at the Pole returns onsite

SAN DIEGO (BP) – See You at the Pole organizers voice a “tremendous sense of urgency” as they prepare for the student-led event to return onsite at schools and other venues Sept. 22.

“Our youth are being shredded by the results of the pandemic and the dysfunction in our culture (and) desperately need for us to pray for them,” said Doug Clark, event promotion coordinator. “There’s not even the right word that’s superlative enough I think to capture the tremendous sense of urgency that we feel for adults to pray for students and for students to pray.

“I implore you that you would pray for students this year.”

The Global Week of Student Prayer Sept. 19-25 surrounds the day of prayer at flag poles and other community locations in the emphasis designed to mobilize students in disciplined daily prayer for various concerns impacting schools, friends, families, churches and communities. “Just Pray” is the 2021 theme, drawn from James 4:10.

Suicide and psychological devastation are among students’ ills even as the COVID-19 pandemic that has killed more than 662,000 people in the U.S. lingers.

See You at the Pole (SYATP) engaged students and others with an online event in 2020 as many schools were only meeting online to stem the spread of the coronavirus.

“Last year COVID was just an enormous distraction. There was so much confusion at the start of the year,” said Clark, who promotes the event in his role as national field director of National Network of Youth Ministries. “I think we’re experiencing that somewhat less this year, but … I’m not sure last year it was much on people’s radar to be doing a See You at the Pole.”

Students will benefit from returning to the classroom, he said, but things won’t return to pre-pandemic conditions overnight. Clark encourages churches to pray for students, schools, teachers and administrators.

“Please come around your students, the ones you see in your neighborhood, the ones you see in the halls of the church, and let them know that you’re praying for them, and pray with them. Pray for our schools,” Clark said. “I can’t even imagine how difficult it is to be a teacher and to be an administrator in a school right now. It’s so chaotic and difficult all across the country, and we can change that by praying.”

The Campus Prayer App is among free resources available to students through SYATP’s partnership with Claim Your Campus, a 10-year-old student-born movement that actively encourages daily student prayer in 1,000 U.S. schools, according to ClaimYourCampus.com.

SYATP will retain its online presence this year for those unable to meet onsite, with viewing information available at SYATP.com.

Clark is encouraging students to follow local COVID protocols and work with school systems to meet onsite this year. Events are constitutionally protected, but if SYATP causes any contention among school administrators, organizers encourage students to meet elsewhere.

“Find a way to accommodate that instead of fight against it,” Clark said. “It’s not a time for more fighting. It’s a time for praying.”

The event has been held in 66 countries, but organizers have focused mainly on the U.S. this year. Still, students in the Dominican Republic and Korea have been among consistent participants, Clark said.

SYATP grew from a 1990 DiscipleNow weekend in Burleson, Texas, when a small group of teenagers were burdened to pray for their friends onsite at several schools. The first annual event months later drew 45,000 students to school flagpoles in numerous states, and quickly grew to include a million students in its early years, and has been observed in 66 countries. Growth has leveled in recent years.

“I don’t know that we have a million right now, especially after COVID, but there continues to be this spark of revival and hope and expectation and prayer among students all across America as they gather to pray,” Clark said on a recent podcast.

Among more than 100 groups and Christian ministries supporting SYATP are Lifeway Christian Resources, the North American Mission Board, the Baptist General Convention of Texas, and the Youth Lab at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary.

Does justice or profit drive abortion?

By now, the controversy in Texas over the Supreme Court allowing its near total ban on abortion to take effect has become part of the public ether. For some, the current moment offers a foretaste of what a post-Roe world could look like.

For others, it is a dystopic descent into a religious theocracy. But in this intervening period where the Texas Heartbeat Act is in effect, it is worth wondering if the threat of financial ruin brought on by the prospect of the law will lead to the continuation or a decrease in abortion.

Whether it continues or abates is a valuable opportunity to unearth what is really at the center of abortion and why abortion receives the degree of protection it does in our country. In short, it’s a question of justice. Is abortion a natural right worthy of pursuit and protection no matter the cost, or is it something else?

Abortion, justice, and civil rights

There is no right to an abortion before God or before the Constitution. Legal rights are enacted to protect natural rights. Natural rights are those attributes of human personality so essential to human happiness and human flourishing that to deny the exercise of these faculties is to deny citizens their right to basic self-constitution. Abortion fundamentally negates this. Rather than allowing life, it ends a life. In the Christian tradition, abortion is never a right, and the only reason it is in our public lexicon is because “rights” talk has been completely severed from its Christian beginnings.

But that brings us to our central concern: If abortion is not happening with the frequency its proponents demand is essential, it raises the question of whether the cause of abortion is grounded in the sacrosanct category of a right, or whether access to abortion is about something more fundamental, namely, profit.

If abortion access is about a so-called “right” to reproductive justice, it would seem essential that for the sake of justice and the common good that abortion providers break the law, engage in civil disobedience, and pay the consequences for their prophetic indignation.

This is what the classic formula is when it comes to engaging in civil disobedience. It is what motivated Martin Luther King Jr., and he appealed to it in his famous Letter from a Birmingham Jail. Citing the Christian natural law tradition, he appeals to the existence of a moral law that offers a higher standard to define what is just. “A just law is a man-made code that squares with the moral law or the law of God,” King writes. “An unjust law is a code that is out of harmony with the moral law. … Any law that uplifts human personality is just. Any law that degrades human personality is unjust.”

Abortion as predatory and lucrative

If abortion is morally right, it should align with the moral law of God and be pursued regardless of the consequences. In this scheme, a failure to offer abortion services for fear of legal challenge is, in effect, a refusal to honor one’s conscience. But as of right now, there is no push for civil disobedience in Texas. It is likely that abortion numbers will dramatically decrease. Why, though? If the cause is righteous and truly grounded in a right, these so-called enablers of justice should be bursting through the legal barricades to do what they know is right.

But they aren’t.

All of this just exposes the abortion lobby for what it is: a predatory scheme that traffics in “compassion” while garnering rich profits in the form of human death. Abortion providers do not really care about women. They do not really care about rendering justice. They care about the profit margin that an unplanned pregnancy garners them and their investors. It is an unspeakably sordid reality – in America, people are becoming rich off murder.

God is the author of life (Acts 3:15). The truth is that every person is made in God’s image (Genesis 1:27). The Bible tells us that. Human embryogenesis tells us this, too. Every person was once a “fetal heartbeat” or “cardiac activity.” We only use such inane, vacuous euphemisms because our morally bankrupt culture has no honest reckoning with teleology.

The problem with culture is not that personhood is not known or apparent, but that we know it is real and suppress this truth with euphemisms, reducing human origins to “electrical activity,” as NPR did. We are a Romans 1 nation drinking from the cup of judgment. Only biblical judgment means getting what we want no matter the cost to ourselves.

This article originally appeared at ERLC.com.

Christians urged not to forget brothers and sisters in Afghanistan’s new day

NASHVILLE (BP) – While the Taliban’s reemergence in Afghanistan brings concern for its Christian population, the situation isn’t as grim as it could be.

Stories of Christians being targeted by the Taliban over the last month have grown, largely on social media. But those reports remain difficult to substantiate, Voice of the Martyrs spokesman Todd Nettleton said.

It’s important to continue to pray for those enduring persecution, he said, but also for Christians to take note of the current place for the Afghanistan church.

“We’ve heard reports of the Taliban looking for Christian materials on cell phones,” he said. “Those are difficult to independently verify, but we do know the Taliban doesn’t want the Christian church to spread.

“There is a lot to pray over. Many Christians have fled the country, but many others have chosen to stay. Right now, Voice of the Martyrs is working to help equip them and keep them safe. That’s the focus of our work.”

He said that work is guided by prayer, a sentiment echoed by the SBC Executive Committee and other Convention leaders.

Due to security considerations for International Mission Board personnel and those believers with whom they work, IMB spokesperson Julie McGowan said, locations are not revealed but contact is maintained to confirm their security and safety.

“We always ask that you please pray for the people of the area affected by the events,” she said. “For the people of Afghanistan, pray that God would intervene and glorify His name in this tragic situation. Please pray for Afghan believers whose lives are being threatened. Ask God to give them courage and strength and to help them be light to those around them.

“Pray for seekers, asking that they will find God and put their hope in Him, and that the millions of Afghans who have never heard the Gospel will have an opportunity to hear. Pray as well for those in other countries as they attempt to host the surge of refugees coming out of Afghanistan.”

Send Relief’s efforts regarding the situation reflect those of the IMB, said North American Mission Board spokesman Mike Ebert.

“Send Relief works with believers and churches throughout the world. Because of security considerations for personnel and the national believers with whom they work, we usually don’t discuss their locations,” he said, adding that “times of increased threats” require extra attention to safety.

“We always ask that fellow believers please pray for the people of the area affected by the events,” he said.

One of the more immediate prayer needs was met at the end of August when banks in the country began to reopen, something Nettleton said provides outside groups like VOM to get money to their people in-country.

On Aug. 28 Nettleton interviewed author John Weaver, a longtime Gospel worker inside Afghanistan, about the current situation in the country.

“It’s a dangerous time for our brothers and sisters,” Weaver said. “They are like sheep among wolves. Some have already fled; some are in different locations and hiding. And yet we know that for some, God will call [them] to stay there.”

Many have been threatened and forced to move.

“The Taliban is on a vengeance,” he said. “They’re trying to cleanse the land in their strict view of Islam and a lot of it is directed to our brothers and sister who we want to be praying for in these days.”

After the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, Weaver was strongly advised like all Americans to leave the country. He said no. Just as then, he feels the Christian witness in Afghanistan is positioned to prosper despite the threats being laid at the church’s door.

“We can pray and celebrate that God is using this to advance His kingdom and further the Gospel,” he said. “There is an increased Gospel witness through social media, projects that VOM supports, and frontline workers in ways that is getting the Gospel into the country. … As people plant and water, God is going to give the increase.”

Nettleton agreed. Due to the Taliban’s relative absence, a generation has grown up with more opportunities to hear the Gospel, and yet even last year, Afghanistan was still the second-most dangerous country in which to be a Christian.

“It’s never been safe to be a Christian there,” he said. “But the scope of the church is far greater than the last time the Taliban controlled the country.

“The church in Afghanistan has grown over the last 20 years. There are Christians in every province and hundreds of Bible studies in house groups or friends who get together to listen to praise choruses and study the Bible. The idea that the Taliban is going to shut all of those down … that’s not going to happen.”

Adrian Rogers’ sermons, life drive ‘Nothing But the Truth’

MEMPHIS, Tenn. (BP) – Years ago as Bellevue Baptist Church teenagers, John Sanders and his friends would prank their pastor by banging on the front door of his home and running away. Adrian Rogers was apt to open the door.

“We would sneak up to Dr. Rogers’ house, bang on the door and run away and then we’d hear that voice of his, ‘Now boys …,’” Sanders said. “Once or twice, he’d open the door and have us in, and cut up with us. He was a very kind, loving pastor.”

Rogers’ influence stays with Sanders, who named his fourth child after the late pastor and produced a film showcasing clips from Rogers’ sermons on biblical truth and inerrancy.

“Nothing But the Truth,” which debuts Tuesday (Sept. 14) on digital platforms and DVD, promotes a biblical worldview at a time when Sanders says the U.S. is drifting in a sea of cultural relativism.

“We’re coming to a secular age where we’re being told, ‘Live your own truth,’” Sanders said. The film looks “at the tension between the traditional view and the current view. And it just poses the question: ‘Is there absolute truth, or what we’ve been taught, is that incorrect, and does everyone have their own truth?

“We went to the leading experts in the areas of religion, finance, marriage and a few other topics to see if we could get some insight into the truth and what it actually means.”

Rogers served three terms as president of the Southern Baptist Convention and was widely considered a champion of the SBC’s Conservative Resurgence in the late 20th Century. Many of those involved in the documentary were among Rogers’ close friends and mentees, including Johnny Hunt, North American Mission Board senior vice president of evangelism and leadership.

“Adrian Rogers” is Hunt’s succinct explanation of what attracted him to the documentary.

“I’ve been asked a lot of times if I thought of the person who I think influenced and shaped my ministry style for being a pastor,” Hunt told Baptist Press, “undoubtedly, Adrian Rogers. … He definitely is noted as one of the finest preachers that lived in the 20th Century.

“I would observe him in his church, … or if I saw him out at conferences, and just the way he always walked slowly through the crowd and cared for people,” Hunt said. “I just thought I really would like to follow in his ways and footsteps in the way he cares for people.”

Hunt hopes the documentary will encourage viewers to examine whether they’re holding on to truth and allowing God to speak into their lives.

“I believe the Bible is the eternal truth. … It was inspired and given to us for every generation that will ever live,” Hunt said. “I think we’re living in a day today when some would say the Bible might have been written differently if it was engaging the culture today. And I understand what they’re saying, maybe the way you present it. But one thing we must never do is move away from its truthfulness and the integrity of Holy Scripture.”

Ken Whitten, senior pastor of Idlewild Baptist Church based in Lutz, Fla., also cites Rogers and his legacy displayed in the “Love Worth Finding with Adrian Rogers” media ministry as a major motivator in Whitten’s participation in the project.

“One of the greatest privileges in my life was getting to serve for almost eight years at Bellevue Baptist Church under Dr. Adrian Rogers,” Whitten said. “So he is a spiritual daddy to me and I still miss him. I think about him every week and just the impact that he had upon my life.”

The documentary, which Whitten describes as focused on God’s Word, recognizes the truth.

“There’s only one solution for all that we’re going through in every area of our life, whether it’s political, whether it’s racial, whether it’s generational, whether it’s familial, in our families, in our work,” Whitten said, “and Jesus Christ really is more than just a byword. (He) really is our answer.

“(Jesus) has truth to say, and He has something to say about every area of our life.”

Whitten hopes the documentary draws viewers back to a proper respect for God’s Word. He encourages viewers not only to embrace Scriptural inerrancy, but Scriptural sufficiency that answers how we should live and relate.

Southern Baptist Theological Seminary President Albert Mohler, First Baptist Church of Dallas Senior Pastor Robert Jeffress, political commentator and former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee and financial guru Dave Ramsey are among other Southern Baptists featured in the film. They are joined by leading ministers and authors including Dallas pastor Tony Evans, Lee Strobel and other influencers. James Merritt, senior pastor of Cross Pointe Church based in Duluth, Ga., and actor Kirk Cameron are among endorsers.

The film and educational resources are available here.

How the church can serve Afghans and other refugee communities

Refugee image

Fady Al-Hagal was born and raised in Damascus, Syria, mere steps away from the house of Judas where the Apostle Paul came after meeting his Lord on the road to the city (Acts 9). Although Al-Hagal was aware of many things about Christianity in this context, he never experienced a personal relationship with Christ until a pastor in Martin, Tennessee, began to take interest in the young Syrian man who was attending his congregation in 1983.

Today Al-Hagal serves as the executive director of the International Leadership Coalition, a ministry focused on creating awareness of the international community in Middle Tennessee, supporting international ministers in the United States and creating partnerships between the the international church and local church in the States.

Over 300,000 internationals live in the area of Middle Tennessee, with 91 people groups represented in Nashville alone. Al-Hagal’s ministry regularly connects him with immigrants and refugees in the state and Christians all over the world. He is currently ministering to local Afghani families that are still trying to help their relatives leave Kabul, Afghanistan, as well as corresponding with Christians leaders who have remained in the embattled nation.

He shared with the ERLC his perspective on the Afghani church, as well as the ways Christians and local churches can serve refugees.

Jill Waggoner: What are you hearing from Afghani believers? What is the ILC doing at this time? 

Fady Al-Hagal: We are trying to provide instant humanitarian support for people who are wanting to come out [of Afghanistan]. We have an active efforts to generate resources and support for things like flights or transportation to nearby nations.

We are also in communication with several house churches in the underground church of Afghanistan where the believers have decided that it is their mission to stay. According to history, any time there is a shift politically, historically, geographically, there is always a shift spiritually. Just as it was after 9/11, for example, the Holy Spirit brought about an awakening and an awareness, and the underground church was empowered through suffering and endurance to continue the mission. Many believers in Afghanistan and the surrounding nations feel like these coming few months are critical to reimpress the story of the gospel into the hearts of those who are searching. This type of shifting politically creates an opening for the gospel spiritually, and many people will be open to hear where mercy, goodness, purpose and eternity can be found.

The physical danger is awakening many to the fact that they need to examine their safety and survival eternally. Is it found in the religion they grew up with and had no choice in? The gospel provides them with a will and a choice to follow. Many believe this is our time and what we do today is what will last for generations in Afghanistan and the surrounding nations.

JW: How can American Christians remain involved after the public attention has faded from Afghanistan?

FA: Believers in the West should become involved with refugees in four ways:

1. Practically: We must engage the suffering nations, such as Afghanistan. This is the ‘what’ we need to do. First, we must learn. What is a refugee? What do they go through? Why do they leave? Most people don’t know that a refugee is a person who has been pushed out because of race, religion, nationality, or social affiliation. What do they go through to get to America? What are the stages? What is their experience like? They have tough decisions to make, and they must make them instantly. There is a lot of waiting. And when they do arrive in a new place, a refugee has to live with a new identity, most often in a place where they don’t speak the language. It is good for American believers to know what refugees, as well as immigrants, go through. Then we are able to better relate to them and learn how to assimilate them in a healthy way.

Secondly, we must practice the goodness of God to refugees. This means you take the fruit of the Holy Spirit and flesh it out: peace, kindness, long-suffering. Practice hospitality in a way that their ethnic community understands. This requires relationships and availability.

2. Ethically: ‘Why’ are we doing this? Our mandate comes from no other place than the Word of God. God cares about the alien and sojourner. He is the provider to those who are vulnerable (See Psa. 9; 146:9; Deut. 10:18; Isa. 25; 58:6-11; Luke 10) Scriptural mandates give us the ethical reasons for why we do what we do. We demonstrate God’s love for those in need. We become God’s ambassadors to fulfill what he desires in people’s lives. We become God’s healing agents for those who have gone through suffering and persecution. We become God’s way of bringing joy and celebration in people’s lives. We become an expression of God’s kingdom to people who have never known there was another. We display God’s peace to people who haven’t had peace. We show God’s sufficiency to those who are without.

3. Intentionally: Our engagement must become intentional, having direction and goals to accomplish. We should all have the missionary spirit about us. Not everyone is going to another country, but every believer in America should have a missionary spirit. The Holy Spirit is the Great Commission Spirit, making disciples of all nations. The missionary spirit leads us to the ‘where’ we should go and makes us consistently aware that we have a mission to fulfill. This is why some Afghani believers are remaining in the country, but also why others are headed into Pakistan. The missionary spirit is leading them. The church in America needs to come alive to the missionary spirit inside of us so that he can lead us to our neighbors, as well as the refugees in our midst.

4. Eternally: If things are shifting all around us, they are not shifting in the story of God. In spite of calamities and disasters, the kingdom is the Lord’s, and he rules over the nations (Psa. 22:28). God will give Jesus the nations as his inheritance (Psa. 2). Even if the nations rage against God and his anointed, God’s eternal mission hasn’t changed. He is not willing that any would be lost but that all would come to salvation in Jesus (2 Pet. 3:9).  He desires that all mankind would be saved (1 Tim. 2:4). This means we present the gospel to all. The body of Christ needs to stay focused. While we hand [out physical] bread, we remember that the eternal bread is Jesus Christ. While we give clothing and shelter, we remember that eternal shelter is through Jesus.

We [must be] prepared in prayer and ask God for opportunities to share our story. We are to be prepared by being informed and not just instructed. Take the time to learn and discern what needs to happen—not just instructed by news, but informed by the Holy Spirit. Learn the people groups in your city. Learn how to associate with them and how to help them assimilate. And at some point, we are called to invite them into the hope of Jesus Christ. There are some organizations that will shy away from this point, but this is our mandate. Many people will feel cheated if you do not invite them to follow Christ. They have been longing for the message of freedom all their lives. Let the Holy Spirit guide you.

JW: What can a reader do to become involved in this type of ministry in their city?

FA: Connect with nonprofits with a gospel intention, like ILC, or other resettlement ministries who serve refugees. They have practical programs to help you get started. Look for churches that are actively involved in international communities. Retired missionaries are an amazing resource who can educate us about people groups, as well.

The most important thing is for every church to make margin in their ministry life to “do international missions” locally, training their people to look for internationals they can serve in their own communities. When the church makes that an intentional purpose, the missionary spirit is developed, and people will create their own mission opportunities.

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FIRST-PERSON: Have we forgotten?

NASHVILLE (BP) – On Saturday, Sept. 11, 2021, America will observe the 20th Anniversary of 9/11. On this day, it seemed the world stopped as all eyes and hearts observed the horrific events that were occurring before us on live television.

The events of 9/11 were shocking

Terrorism struck our nation in a devastating manner. A total of 2,996 people were killed in America on that day, and more than 6,000 others were injured by the deadliest terrorist attack in world history. It was the most devastating attack on American soil since the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, almost 80 years ago.

On the morning of 9/11, I was in my home office studying. Jeana walked in and said, “You need to see what is happening in New York City.” Immediately, my eyes became fixed upon these events as I simultaneously was on the phone with my church staff. The entire day, evening and days to come were altered as we lived with a tangible fear of what was happening in America.

Has America forgotten 9/11?

I will never forget the way our nation unified and resolved that we would “never forget” this tragic day in American history. Under the courageous leadership of President George W. Bush, America resolved to bring an end to terrorism around the world. Unity with this cause was resounded by millions upon millions of Americans.

This was not a partisan decision, but a resolve to advance freedom throughout the entire world, beginning right here in America.

Nothing has been the same in this nation since 9/11. In fact, as I think back through the last 20 years, I cannot recall a time since that day when our nation has been more moved, more resolved and more unified.

In many ways, America will never forget. This is true for those of us who were and old enough to recall the effects of 9/11 on us personally and nationally.

However, sadly, some Americans have forgotten and perhaps have created or imagined some revision of it in their minds that would be more accommodating to their worldview today. For example, the heroes of 9/11 were the first responders and many ordinary Americans who lost their lives that day as they tried to save the lives of others.

What America needs to remember on the 20th anniversary of 9/11

America needs to remember that evil still exists in this world, including in our own country. We need to always be on the alert and never dismissive of the evil that may be around us.

America needs to remember that as a nation, we need God and we need one another. On 9/11 and the days following, people were not cursing God and berating the importance of religious freedom. Attendance in local churches surged greatly for a season, as millions upon millions saw the need for God and to join together.

America needs courageous leaders today who will consider others more important than themselves. Americans need to realize the value of our first responders and the members of our military as we face these uncertain days.

The 20th anniversary of 9/11 should Be a new call to the church

We are Christians. We are the Church. We believe in the power of prayer, right?

Prayer brings the walls down! Prayer crosses over the perceived barriers of ethnicity, race and generations, bringing down the walls that divide us. Let the walls fall down! It is our sinful nature and choices that have built these walls. But, it is Jesus’ work on the cross that has brought them down.

On this 9/11, I believe God is calling us back to Himself. He is saying, “Come back to Me!”

This is why the Church should wake up and return to God in humility, in prayer, in seeking His face and in deep repentance of our sin. We need to repent of our unbelief! We need to get right with God and with one another.

When the unchurched, the lost and those away from God enter our churches, they need to see us believing in the power of prayer and the power of God.

Jesus alone is the answer. He always has been, and He will always will be.

On this 20th Anniversary of 9/11, may each of us turn our eyes on Jesus.