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SBC Evangelists’ Easter livestream nears 400,000 views

SAN ANTONIO—When COVID-19 shut down the church and conference venues at which evangelists traditionally conduct their ministries, that didn’t slow the Conference of Southern Baptist Evangelists (COSBE). Over Easter weekend, the group held its largest evangelistic event ever—online.

Covered by the Cross, an hour-long Facebook Live event April 9, garnered nearly 400,000 views Easter weekend across several evangelism-focused Facebook pages. Nearly 90,000 viewers watched it from beginning to end, and reports of decisions for Christ have begun to emerge. The program featured singing, gospel presentations and testimonies—including the story of an evangelist who has been diagnosed with COVID-19.

“It was a historic moment for COSBE,” said the group’s president Sammy Tippit, a San Antonio evangelist. “I don’t think that the Conference of Southern Baptist Evangelists has ever hosted an event with 90,000 people who attended from beginning to end.”

In addition to the livestream’s U.S. success, a Pakistani television network translated the program into Urdu and broadcasted it three times on Easter Sunday. The network’s call center “could not handle all the calls coming in from people wanting to be saved every time the program was shown,” Tippit said.

The success of Southern Baptist evangelists’ online outreach came amid an overall spike in internet evangelism. Three of the largest online evangelism ministries—Global Media Outreach (GMO), Cru and the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association (BGEA)—told Christianity Today their volume of internet gospel presentations has increased since the coronavirus was declared a pandemic. GMO reported a 170 percent increase from mid-March to late March in clicks on search engine ads about finding hope. Cru has added 52 coronavirus resources to one of its most popular evangelistic websites and is on pace in 2020 to eclipse last year’s total online decisions for Christ by more than 300,000. The BGEA saw 173,000 visitors to coronavirus-focused landing pages the first four weeks they were online.

Southern Baptist evangelists are seeking to determine whether the surge of internet witness can be sustained.

Among highlights of Covered by the Cross, Louisiana music evangelist Price Harris, 78, shared his testimony of not being afraid despite a COVID-19 diagnosis. Feeling “a little feverish,” he went to the doctor, then learned on Palm Sunday he had the coronavirus. Harris’ lack of fear is rooted in “the peace of God,” he said. There are times in a believer’s life “when God just seems to take over, and that’s the way it’s been with us.”

Keith Fordham, a Georgia evangelist and former COSBE president, told about his cancer diagnosis and how an initial surgery was not able to clear the malignancy. Consequently, he likely will have a second surgery April 16, approximately the same time some models predict Georgia hospitals will be grappling with a peak in coronavirus deaths.

“I know if God wants to cure me, he can cure me,” Fordham said. “If he wants me home, he’ll take me home. I’m ready either way because the Lord Jesus indwells me.”

The livestream included four segments, each with a testimony and a gospel presentation.

“You may be wondering what’s going on in the world with this pandemic,” Tippit said in the program’s closing gospel presentation. You can “trust the heart of God. He loves you, but you’ve got to be willing to let go of trying to do it yourself.”

Tippit has been exploring various avenues of online evangelism the past four years, including preaching evangelistic meetings in India via Skype and launching a campaign through the messaging application WhatsApp that is expected to deliver gospel presentations to 10 million people in 70 countries next month. Now Tippitt is encouraging his fellow evangelists to consider similar ventures as COVID-19 limits their traditional ministry opportunities.

As its next online venture, COSBE is considering an apologetics-themed internet broadcast in June to coincide with the dates the Southern Baptist Convention was scheduled to meet. Last month, leaders canceled the convention due to coronavirus concerns.

The Easter livestream, Tippit said, “was a great start” to COSBE’s online ministry.

During shelter-in-place, Dallas man builds community with sidewalk art

DALLAS  With his once-busy suburban neighborhood now eerily quiet as residents adhere to Dallas County’s COVID-19 shelter-in-place order, one North Dallas man is seizing the rare opportunity to meet and encourage his neighbors with music and art, all from a safe distance.

Realizing his neighborhood “needed a time of community” amid the isolation, Dallas businessman Greg Rogers started playing his guitar outside.

“We have a circular driveway and our house is on a hill, raised up. There is a big hedge between us and the street,” he said, explaining that he could stand well apart from neighbors walking by below and still perform.

People stopped, made song requests and just visited, Rogers said. One woman confided she was struggling with family issues. They talked and she admitted she had wandered away from the faith of her childhood.

“I shared my testimony and my faith,” said Rogers, who with his wife, Amanda, and sons Ryan and Jackson, is a long-time member of Prestonwood Baptist Church. 

Looking down from his guitar-playing perch, Rogers saw another way to encourage his neighbors, a way that would last at least until the next rainstorm. 

The sidewalk in front of his home beckoned as a canvas.

“I thought, maybe I can go down and do something,” Rogers recalled. He decided to copy a piece people would recognize, creating a chalk rendition of Seurat’s A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte using children’s sidewalk chalk and charcoal sticks.

“He was Bert from Mary Poppins,” Amanda exclaimed as she watched her husband at work, referencing the 1964 Disney film.

Neighbors stopped, observing from a distance, taking turns walking across the street for close-ups of the artwork.

Soon they began leaving pictures for Rogers to do, sticking photos and suggestions in the yard’s large holly hedge. He complied with a ballerina inspired by the impressionist Degas and a landscape modeled after Hobbema’s The Watermill with the Great Red Roof. 

He worked from photographs of the Loire Valley’s Château de Chenonceau in France for another sidewalk masterpiece. After rains washed it all away, he created Parisian scenes: Notre Dame, the Eiffel Tower and the Arc de Triomphe.

One neighbor from the UK whose wife is from France has been taking photos that are now circulating among friends and family in Europe. Others have posted photos on social media.

The transitory nature of sidewalk art doesn’t bother Rogers. The self-taught artist has spent the last several years doing set design and painting backdrops for local theater companies and his children’s school, Trinity Christian Academy in Addison, where Amanda is the theater’s technical director and their younger son performs. 

He knows theater sets are meant to be deconstructed.

But for his neighborhood, even in a time of social distancing, Rogers is playing a part in seeing the community reconstructed.

With Easter’s approach, Rogers rendered the entire Holy Week account in chalk to bless his neighbors and share the gospel. Dallas television station WFAA featured his efforts on the nightly news.

“Everyone was so regimented before,” Rogers mused. “Calendars were so full with things they were doing, mostly circling around their children. Now we are not so busy with all the activities. There’s more interaction among neighbors even though there’s social distancing.”

Seminaries respond to COVID-19 by moving classes online, cutting budgets

As the COVID-19 pandemic and its ensuing economic crisis continue, the churches and entities of the Southern Baptist Convention are no exception to the effects being felt in every sector. 

For the convention’s six seminaries, the last two months have forced drastic changes, including moving students off campus, transitioning classroom instruction to an online format and adjusting budgets.

The TEXAN submitted questions to each of the seminaries to gain a clearer picture of how COVID-19 is affecting these institutions, among them inquiries regarding recruitment prospects, student enrollment, housing occupancy, finances and expectations for Cooperative Program giving.

The majority of responses indicated that, for many of these questions, it’s too early to tell precisely how extensive the impact will be.

“At this point many of these questions cannot be answered with any accuracy because we do not know as of early April of 2020, even when on-campus classes may resume and under what circumstances,” said Albert Mohler, president of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. “At this point, it is clear that the COVID-19 challenges faced by our seminaries are nothing less than massive.”

Most of the seminaries said that they are hopeful but cautious regarding fall enrollment, acknowledging that many of the traditional methods by which they would be recruiting students—or retaining current ones—are unavailable.

A statement from Gateway Seminary said the school is “focused on reaching prospective students through texting, phone calls and email” and that “more than 1,000 individuals have been personally contacted” by Gateway staff.

“It is too soon to know in granular detail how the coronavirus is altering the plans of current and prospective students,” said Adam Greenway, president of Southwestern Seminary. In order to adapt to a social-distancing world, they chose to move some of their planned recruiting events online, holding Virtual Preview sessions for prospective students.

Midwestern Seminary president Jason Allen said, “For us, we are projecting hours taken to be down this fall, but it is too early to tell by exactly how much. As far as applications initiated and completed, we are trending very similar to where we were this time last year. Again, it is still a bit too early to tell, but we are definitely planning for a downturn.”

Ryan Hutchinson, executive vice president for Southeastern Seminary, said fall numbers “continue to look strong.”

Hutchinson also indicated that, while some students have been forced to drop classes due to family circumstances, Southeastern still has record enrollment this semester and “the percentage that has dropped at this point is not much different than a normal semester.”

Mohler said that, while Southern is being forced to cancel graduation ceremonies for May—something many colleges and universities are doing to comply with national and local recommendations regarding social distancing—they are continuing with registration for summer classes, which they expect to be held online.

“We’re committed to return to on-campus instruction just as soon as this is possible and advisable,” Mohler added.

Greenway noted that SWBTS’s new 8-week online courses, planned to begin April 27, were already “in the final planning stages” before the seminary experienced any disruption due to COVID-19.

While the seminaries went into varying degrees of detail, each acknowledged they expect the economic end of the pandemic will affect their upcoming budget.

Gateway said that although they didn’t have firm data, they are “anticipating and budgeting for a decrease in CP giving.” According to Hutchinson, Southeastern has instituted a hiring freeze and “a halt to most non-critical spending,” though CP giving remained ahead of budget for the year.

Allen said that Midwestern “has taken a conservative budgetary approach towards next year as we anticipate that COVID-19 will have a negative impact on revenue sources,” though he again acknowledged that it is too early to know exactly what that impact will be. At Midwestern’s March 30 board of trustees meeting, Allen reported the seminary has “in reserve nearly one year of operating expenses” in cash and unrestricted financial assets.

“The leaders of New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary and Leavell College are currently assessing the potential impacts of COVID-19 on enrollment and finances,” a statement from NOBTS read. “A clearer picture of the impacts will come after the executive committee of the board of trustees meets later this month.”

Mohler and Greenway went into more detail regarding the financial impact for Southern and Southwestern.

“We already know that we’re going to be facing very significant financial challenges. We have lost virtually all auxiliary income, which at Southern Seminary amounts to millions of dollars,” Mohler said. “We also know that our endowments and investments have suffered significant loss in the midst of the economic downturn.”

Greenway, noting the “historically negative effects on the American economy due to necessary governmental measures to limit the spread of COVID-19 pandemic,” pointed out that SWBTS has already taken drastic measures to cut costs, including “budgetary reductions of approximately 25 percent campus-wide through a combination of faculty and staff position deletions, furloughs, and discontinuation of certain academic programs.”

Additionally, during their April 7 board meeting Southwestern trustees deferred action on the budget until July and authorized the seminary administration to execute special distributions of the unrestricted portion of the seminary endowment through the end of 2021. Unrestricted endowments were last reported totaling $13.3 million, according to Baptist Press.

Each seminary expressed similar sentiments regarding the value of CP giving for Southern Baptist theological education. The CP contributes a significant portion to each seminary’s operating budget. According to Allen, the CP represented about 27 percent of budget revenues for Midwestern in 2019-20. Southeastern reported about 35 percent of its operating budget comes from the CP.

“All this [financial loss] makes the support of Southern Baptists through the CP all the more important,” Mohler said. “This demonstrates all over again, for this generation, just how important the Cooperative Program is and just how vital it is to the work of Southern Baptists all over the world and in our programs of theological education.”

“Cooperative Program giving is fundamental to our mission of shaping leaders for gospel ministry,” said Gateway president Jeff Iorg, adding that it “represents the shared beliefs, vision and direction Southern Baptists hold firmly in one hand while they reach for the lost with their other.”

“In a more personal way,” Allen said, “the more than 4,000 students training for ministry at Midwestern Seminary are here in part because of Southern Baptist generosity through the Cooperative Program.”

“Ultimately, the seminaries can only be as faithful as the churches we serve,” Mohler said, “and our call is to be faithful to those churches no matter what challenges face us.”

SBTC DR chaplain hotline: 1-800-921-3287; call volume increases amid coronavirus concerns

The young man from the Rio Grande Valley who called the SBTC DR chaplain hotline last week said he needed help dealing with fear. The victim of a recent physical assault, he was afraid of contracting COVID-19.

He told chaplain Mike Flanagan that he had not been to church in many years.

Flanagan shared the gospel with the young man, asking him if he would like to pray to trust Christ with his life.

Without hesitation, the caller said, “Sure.”

“We prayed together and as soon as we were done, I recognized an immediate change in his voice,” Flanagan said. “Whereas before he sounded weak and afraid, now he spoke with confidence. It was like having a conversation with two different people, which, in reality, it was.”

To help people distressed by the coronavirus crisis like the young South Texas man, trained Southern Baptists of Texas Convention Disaster Relief chaplains like Flanagan are manning the toll-free hotline at 1-800-921-3287 from 8:00 a.m. to 8:00 p.m. daily, with voicemail available after hours.

The hotline began operations in March, but has seen a recent uptick in callers in April, said Gordon Knight, SBTC DR director of chaplains.

“Sadly, as long as this goes, the further we get into the crisis, the more calls we will get,” Knight told the TEXAN. 

Currently volunteers take turns fielding the calls, Knight said.

“Sometimes four walls can close in on you,” SBTC DR chaplain Brenda Jansen told Texarkana’s KTAL NBC 6 recently. 

“When people are going through a crisis, usually the question is ‘why me?’ So, we can take them to Scripture … read Psalms 46, or Psalm 91, or go to Proverbs,” Jansen said. 

“Some people think the Bible is old, but when they see that it’s the same thing happening from generation to generation, that gives them comfort,” Jansen said, adding that disasters cause many people to think about eternity.

“We all know that we’re all going to die someday, and so this gives them a chance to pause and think about, where would I be?” she said.

While providing spiritual comfort and prayer is the hotline’s main purpose, the chaplains are prepared to connect callers with local churches or resources to meet immediate needs—such as food or medicine—if the callers share their names and contact information, Knight said.

The SBTC DR chaplain hotline is one of several begun by nine Baptist state conventions in eight states thus far, including New York and California, he added.

SBTC DR task force member Daniel White provided technical assistance to help set up the New York hotline, Knight said.

While most calls have come from Texas, the hotline had received calls from as far away as Massachusetts and Florida from people who had seen news reports mentioning the number, Knight added.

Soon after the hotline was established, chaplain Dennis Parish fielded a call from a middle-aged woman from North Texas who had pre-existing health conditions that made her fearful of the virus.

“We began to talk. I asked her how I could pray for her. She was a Christian. She belonged to a Sunday school class. But she felt so isolated,” Parish recalled.

“I prayed that the peace that passes all understanding would just settle on her beyond that which she could comprehend,” Parish said, recommending the woman alleviate her isolation by phoning members of her Sunday school class to check on them and see how she could pray for them. 

“I can do that,” she said, brightening, finally ending the call with these words: “You have blessed me. You don’t understand how much this phone call means to me.”

“God takes turmoil and he makes good,” Knight said.

Southwestern Seminary will move forward “stronger than ever before,” Greenway tells trustees

In what President Adam W. Greenway called a “history-making moment,” The Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary Board of Trustees met for the first time via video conference due to the coronavirus pandemic for their spring meeting, April 7. During the meeting, trustees elected three new faculty members, approved nine new degrees and revisions to four existing degrees, deferred action on the 2020-2021 budget until July, and authorized the administration to consider a distribution from the seminary endowment as the institution evaluates long-term options for addressing the financial impact of COVID-19.

The meeting began with a report from Greenway, who assured trustees that “when challenges come to Southwestern Seminary, Southwestern Seminary always stands ready to meet the challenge.”

“We have, for now over 112 years, navigated a world that was filled with depression and war and strife and all of the other challenges that would have made lesser institutions crumble and fail,” Greenway said. “Southwestern Seminary is not, as our founder B.H. Carroll said, a ‘two-by-four’ institution. This is, indeed, an institution with a heritage that is unparalleled, with opportunities set before us that I believe are very unique and distinct. And in this moment of crisis, there is a calling upon each of us … to rise up to meet the challenge.

“It does mean a call to difficult decisions. It does mean a call to fiscal prudence. It does mean a call toward making cuts today that will enable us to not merely survive but to thrive moving forward.”

Greenway thanked the seminary’s faculty and campus technology team for making Southwestern Seminary’s transition to becoming an “all-online learning institution” for the spring and summer terms as “non-disruptive” and “seamless” as possible for students in a time of disruption because of the coronavirus pandemic.

“We’re going to come through this,” Greenway said. “We’re going to come through this stronger than ever before. We’re going to come through this in a way that I believe is only going to glorify God.”

Following the president’s report, trustees voted on recommendations from committees.

The Academic Administration Committee recommended the election of three faculty members, all of whom were serving under presidential appointment. Trustees elected the following faculty, effective immediately:

Upon the recommendation of the Academic Administration Committee, trustees voted to approve nine new degrees: in Scarborough College, the Bachelor of Arts in Political Economy, Bachelor of Arts in International Studies, Bachelor of Arts in Early Childhood Education, and the Bachelor of Arts in Business Administration; in the Jack D. Terry School of Educational Ministries, the Master of Divinity, Master of Theology, Doctor of Ministry, and Doctor of Education; and in the School of Church Music and Worship, the Master of Theology.

In addition, trustees voted to revise certain degrees within the Terry School, including the Master of Arts in Christian Education, Master of Arts in Biblical Counseling, and Doctor of Educational Ministry. Also, the Master of Arts in Christian Apologetics in the Roy J. Fish School of Evangelism and Missions has been revised and renamed the Master of Arts in Great Commission Apologetics.

Kevin Ueckert, chairman of the Academic Administration Committee, said of these degree additions and revisions, “Our administration is doing everything they can to make sure our degree offerings are going to produce the highest caliber servants and ministers, missionaries and leaders, that our convention, communities, and world can see.”

Ueckert said that the new bachelor’s degrees, specifically, are “a great indication of the vision for Scarborough College to flourish and become everything it can be for the Kingdom of God moving forward.”

“And so I am super thankful for all of these decisions that the board has affirmed,” he concluded, “and even more so grateful for our leadership; our faculty, who is going to carry this out; and the students who will be filling out these programs in the future and eventually making a significant difference across churches in our convention.”

Also at the recommendation of the Academic Administration Committee, trustees voted to rescind, effective immediately, the motion adopted by the Board of Trustees in its fall 2015 meeting to establish the School of Preaching as a separate school of the seminary. All areas of responsibility assigned to the School of Preaching—including faculty, curricula, degrees, centers, and programs—will be reassigned to the School of Theology, with full administrative implementation to be accomplished by Aug. 1, 2020.

“The ability to rightly understand the biblical text and to faithfully interpret the Scriptures as the written Word of God lies at the core of the mission of the School of Theology, and it is incumbent upon us to keep these disciplines inextricably linked in the training of pastors and preaching,” Greenway said after the meeting, reflecting on the action. “Administratively separating the academic disciplines of hermeneutics and homiletics by graduate school structure does not best serve our students nor accurately reflect our institutional commitments. This structural change in no way impacts current preaching students, as they will continue to receive the best homiletical instruction with all the same curricular and degree offerings that exist currently. We remain fully devoted to the task of training text-driven preachers for the churches of the Southern Baptist Convention and look forward to the discipline of preaching resuming its natural place of prominence back within its original and longtime academic home at Southwestern Seminary, the School of Theology.”

David L. Allen, who has served as dean of the School of Preaching, will continue in his faculty role as distinguished professor of preaching and as director of the Southwestern Center for Text-Driven Preaching, overseeing the seminary’s Preaching Source online resources, as well as conferencing and events related to preaching and preachers, Greenway noted.

At the recommendation of the Business Administration Committee, trustees voted to postpone the adoption of the fiscal year 2021 budget until a time on or before July 15, 2020.

John Rayburn, chairman of the Business Administration Committee, said in regard to this action, “Because of this COVID-19, the coming months are pretty hard to predict. We normally work on a budget this time of year and pass it in this meeting … but we’ve decided we need a little more time to watch what happens with this and all that’s going on in our world today before we can really come up with a realistic, informed budget.”

Trustees also voted to authorize the seminary’s administration to “execute special endowment distributions as needed on or before Dec. 31, 2021, up to the total amount of the unrestricted portion of the seminary’s endowment.”

Rayburn explained, “This is to give our administration the flexibility to deal with whatever comes up that they need to deal with, because, again, we don’t know what all of the ramifications and effects of this COVID-19 are going to be.”

Trustees also approved a routine annual recommendation from the committee to authorize the administration to designate any excess available funds at the conclusion of the current fiscal year for various purposes.

Following the Business Administration Committee’s report, Greenway introduced for the first time to the full board R. Clark Logan Jr., who was elected vice president for business administration by the Executive Committee in February. Greenway then prayed over Logan, thanking God for bringing him to this position “for such a time as this.”

“Bless his work, O Lord, as he continues with his team in preparing a budget in the midst of uncertain times,” Greenway said. “Father, we know that you own the cattle on a thousand hills—that you own a thousand hills—and we confess our trust and confidence in your sufficiency for us. … Lord, may you continue to move us toward fiscal prudence and ultimately toward Kingdom advancement because of the way our resources are stewarded here at Southwestern Seminary.”

The Communications, Policies, and Strategic Initiatives Committee brought two recommendations, both of which were approved by the full board. One recommendation was to amend the seminary’s bylaws. The second was “that the Nashville Statement be adopted and the Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy and the Danvers Statement on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood be reaffirmed as official guiding documents” expressing the seminary’s “convictional standards, expectations, and beliefs,” and functioning as “proper interpretations” of the seminary’s Confession of Faith signed by faculty, the Baptist Faith and Message.

The final recommendation brought to the board came from the Institutional Advancement Committee. The recommendation, which trustees voted to approve, granted approval to execute all documents pertaining to a foundation grant request to the appropriate administrative staff members.

Approval of new and revised degree programs and subsequent board actions were all passed without opposition.

The meeting concluded with the election of board officers: Philip Levant, pastor of Iglesia Bautista La Vid in Hurst, Texas, was reelected as chairman; Danny Roberts, executive pastor of North Richland Hills Baptist Church in North Richland Hills, Texas, was reelected as vice chairman; and Jamie Green, retired speech-language pathologist in Katy, Texas, was reelected as secretary.

Levant closed the meeting by inviting fellow trustees and administrators to remember that Easter Sunday is just a few days away.

“In these uncertain times, we have to remember that Sunday is coming,” Levant said, reflecting on the disciples’ uncertainty between Jesus’ crucifixion and resurrection. “We have to remember that the tomb was only a pause; that it was not the end, but was only the beginning—of our salvation, of eternal life, of God’s plan.”

“And I have that same faith for our seminary,” he continued, “that God still is going to be using Southwestern, not just in this generation, but in the generations to come. And I have the same faith that we have given our president and his administration the necessary tools to keep moving the seminary forward in these times of uncertainty. … The sun never sets on Southwestern Seminary.”

Multicultural Austin church reaches local Hispanics and beyond

AUSTIN—Oak Meadow Baptist Church in Austin is a multicultural congregation that emphasizes missions each Sunday with the goal of accomplishing the Great Commission in Austin and throughout the world.

“We have a missions moment every Sunday where we highlight some sort of mission activity, a missionary or a city where new churches are being planted, whether international or domestic,” pastor Mario Moreno told the TEXAN. “We try to keep missions in front of the people.”

Oak Meadow began as a merger in 2001 when South First Baptist Church in Austin, a congregation which had declined since its start in 1965, had a six-acre property and facilities that weren’t being fully utilized. They approached Genesis Baptist Church, which had started in 1997 to reach English-speaking Hispanics and was in need of a permanent space.

The two churches of different ages and cultures came together to reach Austin under the new name of Oak Meadow Baptist Church. In 2009, the church purchased a former Chrysler dealership on I-35 with three buildings and plenty of parking, positioning them for growth.

As the church members canvassed their new neighborhood, they found that “nearly every other house had Spanish-speaking residents,” according to the church’s website. They tapped Moreno, who had been pastor of Iglesia Bautista Fuente de Vida in Brenham, to launch a Spanish service.

In 2013, when Oak Meadow’s pastor, Gilbert Chavez, took a position with the Southern Baptists of Texas Convention, the church called Moreno as their senior pastor. Now Oak Meadow has an English service and a Spanish service each week, and combined they average 150 people.

The church also ranks as a strong Cooperative Program supporter in the SBTC. 

“We have very much used the opportunity to teach and preach that we can do the Great Commission no matter what language you speak and serve the Lord with our gifts, talents and abilities and especially our resources,” Moreno said.

“We can reach out to any of these nationalities that we have in our congregation. If the world has come to us, then we should be able to minister to them here at our doorstep and across the world no matter where it is. Through the Cooperative Program, that makes it possible.”

Moreno, who with his wife Anita is raising seven sons, had planted Fuente de Vida in Brenham. After 12 years at that predominantly Hispanic church, he was able to leave it as a self-sustaining congregation “very much involved in missions and giving.” He also has been a strong supporter of the SBTC, tracing his involvement to its beginning. 

“We’ve been with the convention ever since because we believe that the Bible is the inerrant Word of God. We stand with that, and nothing would change us from that,” Moreno said. 

Oak Meadow is “happy to participate and work with our brothers and sisters across the state who have the same convictions,” he said. “It’s very important for all of us to be of one mind and one purpose.”

One of the challenges Oak Meadow faces as it reaches a heavily Latino area of Austin is to unite cultures within the church, Moreno said. “It’s a challenge, but it’s doable,” he said, emphasizing that the congregation is one church with two languages. 

“Instead of having just a bilingual service with everybody in there, we have two services, so the ones that have their native heart language get ministered to in that language, and others also in the English language,” Moreno said.

The church is cognizant of the need to reach children with the language they speak, and they are careful to facilitate their spiritual growth, he said, adding that they also encourage people of different generations and languages to mingle and get to know one another. 

The missions moments in every service are a way of telling the congregation, “Now you can participate,” Moreno said. They’ve done mission trips in Texas and in Colorado, and they’re planning a trip to Philadelphia, where they have a missionary contact pioneering some Hispanic work. 

“Missions is not just something that we want to talk about. We want to be hands-on and actually do it,” Moreno said.

And in Austin, time and again Moreno has seen young people come in search of the American dream, thinking they’ll find a career and money. 

“But here is where they come to know Christ, and it makes all the difference in their life,” he said. “Now their family has a new direction, and all the things Jesus means to them are totally different from what they were thinking. That makes ministry all worth it, and we continue to work toward that.” 

“Love in Action” as SBTC churches respond to COVID-19 crisis with medical, food help

Southern Baptists of Texas Convention churches across the state are responding to the COVID-19 crisis by serving their communities in practical ways from distributing food to lending medical equipment.

Rio Grande Valley church lends mobile medical clinic to hospital

First Baptist Church of Brownsville has loaned its mobile medical clinic, once used to bring health care to migrant farm workers in California, to the Harlingen Medical Center. The center will use the medical truck’s examination rooms to screen patients and staff for the coronavirus, the Valley Morning Star reported on March 31.

The church received the medical unit from the California Baptist Convention Disaster Relief in January for use along the Texas / Mexico border, SBTC Disaster Relief Director Scottie Stice told the TEXAN. With California’s emission standards tightening, deploying the big unit was no longer possible in that state.

The church was in the process of determining how to use the medical unit when the coronavirus crisis struck.

“We were planning how best to serve the impoverished areas of the Rio Grande Valley and our church plants, planning to provide health screenings for blood pressure and diabetes, when the virus came and shut everything down,” Steve Dorman, First Baptist Brownsville pastor, told the TEXAN.

Church member Julie Bannert, the medical center’s director of surgical services, facilitated the loan of the mobile unit to the hospital, which had set up tents outside its emergency room entrance to triage potential COVID-19 patients—sweltering work, as temperatures soared into the 90s.

“The CEO of the medical center was thrilled to have an air-conditioned mobile medical unit,” Dorman said, adding that the unit’s exit and entrance doors make it possible to funnel patients through while minimizing the risk of the virus spreading.

“We hope it will help them, help people, that they will notice something about it being from the Lord and know that Christian people love and care about them,” Dorman said. 

The unit—the words “Love in Action” emblazoned in blue and gold around a large crown of thorns on its side—came stocked with medical supplies and PPE, much of which has been donated to the hospital or to other medical professionals for use in the crisis.

The medical unit is parked near the hospital’s emergency room entrance, where ER director David Salas and a team of nurses are using its two exam rooms to screen patients.

Dorman said the hospital may use the mobile unit as long as necessary in the battle against COVID-19.

“It wasn’t how we planned to use it, but it’s how God planned to use it,” Dorman said.

Food distribution accelerates for Arlington church

In Arlington, the DFW-area multi-campus Rush Creek Church has seen a dramatic increase in clients at its food pantry, the Rush Creek Compassion Center, during the coronavirus crisis.

The church has operated the food pantry at its Arlington campus at 2350 SW Green Oaks Drive for seven years, serving not only area families with food boxes but also 500 schoolchildren from 22 schools in Mansfield, Kennedale, Fort Worth, Arlington and Grand Prairie with backpacks of food for weekends.

The backpack program is part of a school-year-long effort in which Rush Creek works with local school districts to provide the food to needy kids. In Mansfield ISD, these efforts are funneled through the Common Ground network as the church joins other local congregations in providing volunteers and support to distribute the “backpacks,” grocery bags full of items children can prepare easily. 

Since the coronavirus crisis started, the Rush Creek Compassion Center has seen its clientele double for prepackaged food pickups at its Arlington campus. Before the crisis, clients made appointments, were interviewed and then allowed to pick up boxes of food once a month.

To meet the current needs, the screening has been largely abandoned as people living in the zip codes served by the church are allowed to drive up and get food, while volunteers load the food boxes into their trunks. 

The drive-through center is open from 10:00 a.m. to noon daily.

“We have revamped to accommodate the situation,” Shane Cavitt, Rush Creek’s local compassion pastor, said, adding that volunteers are gloved and masks are available. 

Volunteers keep track of who comes, asking people to come no more than every two weeks during the crisis.

The boxes of food come with staples such as rice, beans, pasta, canned tuna, canned vegetables and fruit, peanut butter and jelly. Bread and pastries are available also. 

Church members donate food items and a local Tom Thumb grocery store provides bread and pastries, but the church purchases most food in bulk from HIM, the Harvesting in Mansfield Center.

Each box is not a month’s worth of food, Cavitt explained, but would feed a family of five for 10 days and might last two to three weeks for a small family. It is designed as a supplement.

Normally, the average client may be someone who has lost their job, just gotten a new one, and needs a little help. Now, however, many are in need. 

The church gave out 300 boxes of food over the last three weeks, twice its normal distribution. Often people driving through pick up the kids’ backpacks of food, too, since schools are shut down.

Rush Creek has even developed and distributed homeless packs, easily prepared food with pop top lids and individual servings.

The church is also sending increased financial assistance to its campus in the suburbs of San Salvador in El Salvador, Brian McFadden, Rush Creek’s global compassion pastor, said.

The 700 who attend the San Salvador church include many day laborers who have lost their jobs as the country has been locked down. Through a family sponsorship program, Rush Creek normally sends support monthly but has increased the amount given, sending funds to feed 500 families this month with plans to continue, McFadden said.

Like other churches across Texas, congregations in the Panhandle’s Top O’ Texas Baptist Association are assisting local food pantries, such as the one operated by Good Samaritan Christian Services in Gray County.

“We are making sure Good Sam’s have personnel to unload the trucks that come in,” James Greer, Top O Texas director of missions, told the TEXAN. “Large cartons are unloaded by forklift and our guys help stack the items on shelves.”

Recent volunteers include those laid off from jobs in oil fields and other industries.

“They don’t want to sit at home if they can help,” Greer said, adding that as DOM for Top O’ Texas, he is informing food banks in his association’s 16 counties of the availability of volunteers.

How your church can help 

SBTC churches wishing to add their names to a databank of churches throughout Texas willing to help distribute food or minister in their local areas during the COVID-19 crisis are invited to provide their information at the following link, managed by SBTC Disaster Relief, who will help pair churches with needs in their communities: https://sbtcevangelism.wufoo.com/forms/z1oan9ht0yoy7pn/.

The Digital Memorial Has Arrived: A Practical Pastoral Guide

It happened to me. Our family had a loved one pass away JUST as his state was asking all funerals to wait two months. We were faced with the choice of waiting it out to grieve our loss and celebrate a life … or plan a digital memorial. Think about it. Wait months on end to grieve, or try moving forward through a means often thought of as a cheap alternative. We chose a Zoom conference call. Guess what?

It was amazing.

Every family member found extraordinary value, from the youngest to the oldest. This was true for the technologically challenged to the video chat pros in our family. We laughed. We cried. We remembered. We celebrated. We joked. We sang. We watch a slide show. The gospel was shared. In many ways it was more focused and memorable than a live funeral. In fact, it is the first funeral I ever shed tears on and off through its entirety. I imagine one day when we get the opportunity we may do something face to face. Until then, we had a meaningful evening where it was obvious everyone got to move forward in life.

I suppose I loved the digital because timing matters. No one had to stuff it in or try to live suppressing a loss for an unreasonable amount of time. I will say it again: We were able to move forward and deal with grief.

So, here are a few insights I found that might be helpful:

  1. Choose a platform that is accessible to everyone. Our family used Zoom and loved it. More than half of our family had never used it before that day. Some of you may choose Skype or FaceTime for smaller groups. There are plenty of helps available (just search Google or YouTube) to help the family understand whatever platform is chosen. Most families will have at least one tech-savvy person who can help everyone else get set up for the service. 
  2. Make sure the key family members are on board. This is an important step. The key family members usually are the spouse, adult children and sometimes a friend of the family. Make sure to consider any caretakers who may need to be involved. At first mention, the online memorial option may not seem right to some family members. In our COVID-19 climate, remind them the choice is not doing a live or digital funeral. It is a choice of how long they want to go before have a service in the grieving process. In short, the digital funeral is about personal health inside a reasonable time frame. In this instance, the digital platform can aid emotional and spiritual forward movement that may otherwise have to wait for months. Doing a digital memorial does not mean a family cannot meet in person with loved ones later on in the year. Once the key people are on board, encourage them to get the word out to anyone they see fit to include. An advantage of the online service is the cost of travel is no longer prohibitive to attend. That said, it might be more meaningful for a mid-sized group of 25 or less who can see each other without having to scroll through pages of people. This is something to discuss with the family. 
  3. Plan a date 4-5 days in advance. You will want to give people time to understand and implement the technology needed to participate. During this waiting period, enlist key family members and friends who can help other participants with technology. In some instances, a family member may need to drive over and be on the same camera together with another struggling to understand or lacking the equipment. Bonus thought: The key element in choosing the day for an online service often becomes the time of day more than the day itself.
  4. Plan out your time. Use elements of pre, during and post funeral pastoral practices to create your in service plan. This means the time before a funeral, where pastors are typically asking questions and learning about the person can be done together during the service. Feel free to take advantage of all the normal live memorial elements on a digital platform. Plan to share a eulogy, sing, read, pray, play recorded songs, view slide shows, read poems and provide a sermon opportunity. For special memorials involving military you will find many quality videos of songs like Taps or videos of flag folding online. Whatever the choices are, plan it out. A final major advantage is the digital memorial allows for a broader use of people. Think outside of the box when it comes to enlisting people for service elements. Your church may not have a musician, but maybe another would lend you one to jump online and play for the service? The following points will provide extra details to consider for your service elements.
  • Start out with ground rules. You will want to talk to everyone on screen about the need for kindness. Ask everyone to make this the best experience possible and save any difficult conversations for a face-to-face meeting or a phone call after the memorial is done.  It would not hurt to give a short rundown of how to use whatever platform is chosen. Finally, it will be wise to set expectations of when it is acceptable to let young children leave the screen to expend their energy.
  • Give plenty of space for people to share. This element holds the potential to be the most meaningful element of an online memorial. The modern world often creates distance between family and close friends. When they see everyone on screen together it will be moving in and of itself. It would be wise to ask one or two people to share ahead of time to get the ball rolling on conversation. It is possible that this element could take as much as 50-75 percent of your total time together online. Pastor, it is your job to facilitate this time together.
  • Have someone sing to a track or play a song. This element was very profound and organic feeling on Zoom. It had a more personal tone to it than an in person memorial performance ever did. It just felt extraordinarily personal. For the most part, computer and phone microphones will pick up acoustic instruments and vocals well enough to do the job. If you cannot sing, simply holding your phone to play a song into the laptop you are on will do the job as well. On a final note, during live performances it is helpful to ask all other participants to mute their microphones. If you do not do this, the sound from each individual will not be in unison and could be distracting. 
  • Give a simple gospel presentation. There is not an adequate way to express just how powerful this time can be. Is there anything more concrete than the death of a loved one to cause consideration of one’s own eternity and relationship with the Lord Jesus? On a personal note, I was able to share the gospel with parts of our family I never thought possible. Everyone was gracious and gave me ample time to communicate from God’s Word. I simply offered my cell, email or the opportunity to pull me aside the next time we meet in person if they were convicted to respond. A shorter sermon seemed to be more effective in the context. I would recommend keeping it around 5 minutes in length. In our memorial, I closed the message by asking everyone to describe the one we lost with one encouraging word. I will never forget the one-word descriptions from some of my family members.
  • Utilize screen share to provide a slide show. If you use a platform like Zoom, it is possible to load a picture slide show and have someone share the screen. During this time you can play a song over any computer or phone to have everyone enjoy the visual along with sound. 
  • Give prayer a place. This is where you as a pastor get a bonus opportunity. Prayer becomes far less formal in this context. You can pray as you would at any other memorial, but you may also take prayer requests and pray for the people in attendance. This is a special touch of pastoral care often unavailable at a normal memorial service.

  1. Think about recording it. It was very special that I was able to forward a link for the recorded memorial to our family just minutes after we were done. When recording in Zoom, it is best to choose the speaker mode rather than the gallery view and record to the cloud for faster sharing.
  2. Pastor, you will need to be more proactive in the planning. Different pastors serve in different contexts requiring varying amounts of effort. Some pastors are used to doing all the work of planning, while others only show up to give the message. In the case of a digital funeral, provide someone to give personal attention to the family to ensure the digital memorial will be a good experience. While it is great to delegate, more personal attention from a pastor will mitigate the lack of being present in person.


Whether from COVID-19 or every day life causes, you can be confident a well-planned digital memorial does the job. Admittedly, this method will not replace the warm embrace of a hug, but you will receive so much more than what you thought possible online and God will be glorified. Lord willing, there will be days ahead to see those you love in person. When those days return, you will have the fond memory of the time your family met online because it was the best you could do at that moment.

—Dave Carroll serves as the Worship and Student Discipleship Associate for the Southern Baptists of Texas Convention.

Disaster relief: More volunteers wanted

Looking for something meaningful to do while sheltering at home during the COVID-19 pandemic? In about two hours you can be trained in basic disaster relief by accessing the free online course Introduction to Disaster Relief, available at sbtexas.com.

Visit the Southern Baptists of Texas Convention website (sbtexas.com), scroll through the Church Ministries option and select the Disaster Relief link to go to the DR page. There, click on Training and then Online Training. You will be prompted to register, supply login information and create a password for the online course.

Before beginning the course, you may want to download and print the Intro to DR Manual, available at the bottom left of the page.

During the course, you will be required to answer questions after each section before advancing.

After completing the course, you must submit required documents using the links provided. This includes a Personal Information Form that may be submitted electronically via PDF; a volunteer agreement; release and waiver of liability; and an authorization for a background check. You will also need to submit a photo for your SBTC DR badge.

Once you have completed the course and submitted the documents, you will be a credentialed SBTC DR volunteer, able to deploy with a team.

All SBTC DR volunteers must be at least 18 years of age, members of a Southern Baptist Church, and willing to serve.

Online training in DR feeding and recovery—specialized courses available for those who have completed the introductory course—is expected to be available in mid-April, said Kelsey Melvin, SBTC DR ministry assistant.

All online classes are free.

Scottie Stice, SBTC DR director, told the TEXAN that efforts are currently ongoing among DR task force members to encourage college-age groups to pursue the online training.

Wally Leyerle, SBTC DR associated, expressed enthusiasm about the coming advanced training in feeding and recovery: “In times of large scale disasters, like Hurricane Harvey, we will be able to train new volunteers quickly, without taking our most experienced people from the field to do the training.”

“The Intro to DR class kicks all the doors wide open,” Stice said. “Students become credentialed DR volunteers at the completion of the course. We would like them to take advanced training, too.”

COVID-19 deployments will be different

Disaster relief deployments during the coronavirus crisis may look different than usual Stice said, even if there is a tornado or flood.

“Mass feeding as usual with our large kitchens is unlikely while the coronavirus is a threat,” Stice said. “We may engage in deployments with the QR (Quick Response) kitchens. Our deployments may involve smaller groups and be more localized, using facilities in area churches.”

The QR kitchens may be used to support medical or law enforcement personnel or first responders, Stice added. 

“We won’t have contact with those receiving the food and we must carefully handle the food in such cases. It can be done,” Stice said.

SBTC DR chaplains continue to staff prayer hotline

Concerned about the coronavirus or know someone who is worried? The SBTC DR chaplain prayer hotline at 1-800-921-3287 has expanded its hours, now open from 8:00 a.m. to 8:00 p.m. seven days a week, with voicemail capability. Callers may speak with a trained chaplain and receive comfort and prayer.

Darwinism or design? COVID-19 “evolution” references evaluated

GRAPEVINE—There has been much talk about “evolution” of the coronavirus. A Google search for “COVID-19” and “evolution” yields 180 million results. Media outlets from The Washington Post to The New Yorker have addressed the evolution of COVID-19, and a team of scientists at the Scripps Research Institute stated that the virus may be “the result of natural selection.”

So is the present pandemic evidence for Darwinian evolution? Hardly, say scientists and philosophers who have spent their careers critiquing naturalistic evolution. They urge Christians to carefully evaluate media references to COVID-19 “evolution” because the term has multiple meanings.

“People just need to be discerning when they watch the media and even read articles,” said Georgia Purdom, a molecular geneticist with the creationist ministry Answers in Genesis. While some commentators may attempt to cite the coronavirus as “evidence for molecules-to-man evolution,” COVID-19 actually arose from “change within a particular virus, not a mechanism that over time could lead the virus to becoming something else.”

COVID-19 has caused some 800,000 infections worldwide and nearly 40,000 deaths. It is part of a larger family of viruses known as coronaviruses that cause diseases in mammals and birds.

The evolutionary picture “really falls apart” when scientists attempt to explain the origin of COVID-19, said Paul Nelson, a senior fellow at the Discovery Institute’s Center for Science and Culture, a Seattle-based think tank which argues the universe is the product of intelligence rather than chance. “This is a major puzzle in evolutionary theory right now. The origin of viruses is totally unsolved.”

Nelson, a philosopher of biology, explained that COVID-19 arose through microevolution as RNA viruses mutated in ways that enabled them to bind more effectively to human cells and integrate into the respiratory system. But that is a far cry from molecules-to-man macroevolution.

Appealing to the concept of “irreducible complexity,” Nelson said viruses must possess multiple complex components to function. For a virus to originate, those components must all come together at the same time—a phenomenon that cannot occur through the random, undirected processes asserted by Darwinian evolution.

“The most powerful evidence the coronavirus is designed comes from the absolute impossibility of telling the step-by-step Darwinian story of how it could have arisen,” Nelson said.

But if something as deadly as COVID-19 was designed, does that suggest the designer was evil? Not necessarily, said Scott Minnich, a microbiologist at the University of Idaho and a fellow at Discovery’s Center for Science and Culture.

COVID-19 may have come into being through the loss of genetic material from a virus with a good purpose in the universe’s design, Minnich said. That is similar to the development of bubonic plague, which has killed more than 300 million people in recorded history. In a 2007 article, Minnich offered a counterargument to prevailing scholarly opinion when he suggested bubonic plague’s deadliness stems from the loss or mutation of genetic material from a more mild disease.

“Natural evil is derivative of good,” Minnich said. “It’s a perversion of good. It’s a perversion of the original design we still see in creation. From a Christian perspective, you would expect to see that in a fallen world.”

Purdom agreed that viruses “have been created by God, and originally they were very good.”

“The vast majority” of bacterium and viruses “still perform a lot of really good functions” like breaking down nutrients for plants and animals, she said. “Some viruses that are inside DNA in some mammals are responsible for the ability to reproduce.”

Although Christians and other proponents of design are at odds with Darwinists about the origin of COVID-19, they can still find common cause in combatting the deadly virus, said Barry Creamer, president of Criswell College and a philosopher of science. Compassion and self-sacrifice might appear inconsistent with the Darwinian tenet of survival of the fittest, he said, even while evolutionists themselves believe in helping suffering people.

“I want everybody to be saved,” said Creamer, who does not himself believe in evolutionary theory. But “if an evolutionist is out there saying, ‘Hey, we ought to be caring for those who are weak among us,’” Creamer says he appreciates “the moral value of that altruism.”

Christians and Darwinists should unite behind the science calling for social distancing, hand washing and limiting social gatherings to combat COVID-19, Nelson said. “The wise thing in this broken world is to take your knowledge” of science, “couple it with” Scripture’s teaching on love “and then behave yourself.”

Yet even as Christians partner with evolutionists to combat the coronavirus, they should remain leery of claims the pandemic validates Darwinism.

“The term evolution can mean lots of things,” Nelson said. “Be very careful when you use this word.”