Author: Baptist Press

Mother-daughter duo finds kindness the ultimate weapon against abortion

MARIETTA, Ga. – Suzanne and Rachel Guy exude kindness.

It shines in their eyes. It resonates in their voices.

The mother-daughter duo from First Baptist Church Woodstock, Ga., are on the frontlines of the continuing battle over abortion, but their approach is markedly different from the more militant pro-lifers often seen on television news programs in front of abortion clinics waving graphic signs and shouting hateful rhetoric.

The Guys’ placards say, “We Will Help You.” Instead of mere words, they dole out gift cards from grocery stores and restaurants, even small boxes wrapped in ribbons and bows, filled with goodies for newborns, including a baby-size shirt that says, “Best Gift Ever.”

Rachel Guy shows one of the gifts she gives to expectant mothers.

They spend a lot of time on a narrow strip of grass across the parking lot from a Planned Parenthood clinic in Marietta, some 50 feet from the front door. Each time a young woman arrives at the clinic, Suzanne beckons to her.

“We would love to talk to you,” she says sweetly. “We’re here because we love you. Would you talk to us while you wait?”

Suzanne, who has been a sidewalk counselor outside abortion clinics for years, always speaks in soothing tones. It’s a natural trait her daughter inherited. Together, they’re helping lots of young women choose life for their unborn babies.

“These young women are frightened and confused,” Suzanne said, standing on the patch of public property that Marietta police have told her she and Rachel are allowed to occupy. “They may be being pressured by boyfriends or their own families to get abortions. We want them to know there is help, that we’re here for them.”

A young woman hears Suzanne’s pleas and walks tentatively across the parking lot to where she and Rachel wait. They greet her with reassuring smiles and strike up a conversation. The connection is immediate. It’s as if they’ve known each other for years. It’s apparent Planned Parenthood has lost yet another customer.

Rachel explains all the resources available to the young lady through the many Christian ministries in Georgia. Some provide food and housing for expectant women in need. Some provide ultrasounds and prenatal care to ensure a healthy delivery. Some provide maternity clothing for expectant mothers and newborn outfits for babies. Some supply diapers and other necessities. Some provide counseling and training in how to be a mother. Some provide baby beds and other furnishings. No needs go unmet.

“The financial struggles are huge,” Rachel said. “Often, these young women feel they can’t afford to have a baby. We want to take away that concern We want them to know there is hope and there is help.”

Most of the young women going into the Planned Parenthood clinic in Marietta don’t respond to their invitations to talk. But enough do to keep Suzanne and Rachel motivated. In the past year and half, they have convinced 20 of them not to go through with abortions.

Saving unborn babies has been a passion for Suzanne since she was pregnant with Rachel, who is now 23 years old. Doctors insisted Suzanne abort Rachel, telling her during her first ultrasound that her baby wouldn’t live and that, if she somehow did survive, she’d likely have severe physical and mental disabilities.

“I’m lying on the table; the cold gel is on my stomach; and the ultrasound tech is moving the wand around,” Suzanne explained to Focus on the Family President Jim Daly in a nationwide radio broadcast earlier this year. “I’m excitedly looking at that beautiful baby, the humanity of that beautiful child on the ultrasound screen, and the next thing I know the technician says, ‘I need to excuse myself and go get the doctor.’ Now I knew in that moment that something was probably not right, but I was not prepared for what was about to happen.”

In the next moment, the doctor came rushing into the room frantically and repeatedly telling her she needed an abortion.

“Half your amniotic fluid is gone,” the doctor told her. “Your baby must have a chromosomal abnormality not compatible with life. You could die and your baby most certainly will die.”

When the doctor finally paused, Suzanne gave her adamant and emotional reply:

“I would never get an abortion. Stop saying that.”

When the pregnancy reached 26 weeks, Suzanne underwent a C-section. Her husband Peter saw Rachel the moment doctors lifted her from the womb. She weighed only 1 pound 2 ounces, but, he said, she was very much alive, wiggling and crying and waving her tiny arms around.

“My wedding band went over her hand and slipped past her elbow,” Peter said in the Focus on the Family broadcast. “That’s how tiny she was.”

That experience is what made the Guy family the pro-life activists they are today.

Rachel, now a student majoring in Christian ministry at Trinity International University and leader of the pro-life group Marietta 40 Days for Life 365, said she’s grateful her parents refused to listen to the doctors who wanted to abort her.

“It shocks me to think that they devalued me,” she said of the doctors. “It makes my heart hurt.”

So they stand on the grassy patch in Marietta, reaching out to frightened young ladies considering abortions.

“Will you come talk to us?” Suzanne pleads with another young lady. “Please? We can help.”

Mike Griffin, the Georgia Baptist Mission Board’s legislative agent who works on public policy at the state level to curb abortion, said the Guys are both passionate and effective in saving the lives of unborn babies.

Griffin has joined them on the grassy patch in Marietta, and he has marveled at the number of young ladies who heed Suzanne’s call to talk.

“I believe the Lord has anointed her voice, that when she’s talking to people, they can hear her heart, her compassion, and that makes the difference,” he said.

The Guys welcome like-minded people to join them outside the Planned Parenthood clinic, but not if they’re there wave graphic signs or shout angry rhetoric.

“We’d humbly ask that they not do that,” she said. “And if they persisted, we’d ask that they not stand near us. This place is holy ground.”

SBTC DR crews brave heat and humidity to help Ida survivors

SBTC Feeding Unit in Louisiana
Donate to Hurricane Ida Relief

HAMMOND, La.  Battling mosquitoes, poison ivy and the lack of electrical power, Southern Baptists of Texas Convention disaster relief volunteers endured sweltering temperatures and soaring humidity to assist survivors of Hurricane Ida, which struck Louisiana on Sunday, Aug. 29, 16 years to the day after Hurricane Katrina blasted ashore.

Crews continue to serve, even though Hurricane Nicholas made landfall as a category 1 storm at 12:30 a.m. on Sept. 14, southwest of Sargent Beach, Texas, and moved toward Louisiana.

The SBTC’s response to Katrina, led by the late Gibbie McMillan, the convention’s first director of disaster relief who died of COVID this August, marked the inaugural major deployment of SBTC DR.

SBTC DR crews continued building on McMillan’s legacy as they again traveled quickly to Louisiana, where they were joined by Southern Baptist Disaster Relief volunteers from across the country.

Even as Ida still raged, a four-person SBTC DR incident management left Texas for Alexandria, La., where they established operations from Aug. 30-Sept. 12 to help coordinate SBDR activities across the Bayou State. A feeding team staffing the mass feeding unit from the Unity Baptist Association was soon joined by another mass feeding team and unit from First Baptist Pflugerville in Gonzales, La. New volunteers have rotated in to relieve the original crews.

To date, the feeding teams have produced more than 190,000 hot meals distributed by the Salvation Army to survivors.

West Monroe, Hammond and six other sites

Other SBTC DR workers have since joined hundreds of Southern Baptist Disaster Relief volunteers to help Louisiana in a deployment with what Scottie Stice, current SBTC DR director, called, “many moving parts.”

Shirley and Cliff Spencer of Spring set up the SBTC DR shower and laundry unit from the Bowie Baptist Association on Sept. 2 in West Monroe, where they began doing laundry for survivors at a shelter there, work that is ongoing. Other SBTC DR shower / laundry units deployed to Gonzales and Denham Springs, La. to serve both feeding teams, power line crews and recovery units. Some of the shower / laundry units will demobilize by Sept. 17.

A quick response kitchen deployed to Denham Springs to feed DR volunteers. A second QRU set up operations in Kenner, La.

An SBTC DR utility support unit deployed to Houma to assist Alabama Baptist DR feeding efforts there, and a recovery team will work under the direction of Oklahoma DR in Morgan City, La., beginning Sept. 19.

SBTC DR recovery units also arrived, rotating in and out over ensuing weeks, working under an incident management team from Arkansas in the Hammond area.

The eight sites manned by SBTC DR volunteers by mid-September marked the most of any state Baptist DR team, Stice told the TEXAN.

Chaplains see fruit

In addition to feeding, shower / laundry and recovery crews, SBTC DR chaplains and assessors came to Louisiana.

Chaplain Wayne Barber of Jasper found unexpected opportunities to share the gospel in Hammond as he and assessor Jim Casten of Collinsville traveled through mostly middle-class and working-class neighborhoods to offer assistance.

Amazingly, Barber said, many of the gospel encounters happened seemingly at random, at addresses where the team had not intended to go.

“Every night, we just prayed for divine appointments the next day,” Barber told the TEXAN. “I asked the Lord to prepare their hearts and prepare my words.”

 

"Every night, we just prayed for divine appointments the next day. I asked the Lord to prepare their hearts and prepare my words.”

Wayne Barber, SBTC DR Chaplain Tweet

One elderly gentleman at first seemed reluctant to talk, telling Barber that he had gone to church. The men kept visiting.

“We talked. He started crying,” Barber recalled. “Then he prayed to accept Christ as Savior.” The new believer was 86.

“That’s pushing it pretty hard,” Barber, himself a young 77, said of the man’s late-in-life decision.

Another time, finding their intended road blocked by the fire department, Barber and Casten headed down an alternate route where they spied people sitting outside their manufactured home to escape the heat inside.

“We stopped and asked if they were O.K.,” Barber said. “Did they need anything?” After conversation, five of the men prayed to accept Christ.

“We weren’t supposed to even be there, but God had a plan,” Barber said.

Another God-ordained appointment came when the pair encountered a young mother with two small children whose military husband was enroute back from Afghanistan. The volunteers returned the next day with two packs of diapers.

“She was so appreciative that we came back. She said she sure could use [the diapers],” Barber said.

One man told the pair it was the first time anyone had ever told him about Jesus. Another man was alerted to the coming of the chaplain team by his Christian mother, whose home they had just visited. She didn’t need help, but he did.

“I hope they tell you about Jesus,” the mother said.

They did, and the young man, an EMT in his thirties, prayed to receive Christ. He also filled out a work request for his home.

Bringing hope and help in crisis is the heart of disaster relief. One survivor who had been helped at her home in Hammond texted her thanks to recovery team leader David Dean, adding this:

“Tonight, when things quiet down, I’m signing up with SBC to give back to my community. God is good.”

Efforts to help Ida survivors in Louisiana are ongoing, Stice said, even as SBTC DR also stays on alert to help survivors of Nicholas as needed. For more information about SBTC DR, visit https://sbtexas.com/disaster-relief.

SBTC DR response to Ida (as of Sept. 15)

       945 -- volunteer days
190,285 -- meals provided
                 23 -- professions of faith

SBTC DR response to Ida (as of Sept. 15)

       945 -- volunteer days
190,285 -- meals provided
                 23 -- professions of faith

Getty Sing! Worship Conference meant to ‘Reset. Restore. Reunite.’

Keith and Kristyn Getty

NASHVILLE (BP) – Several Southern Baptists were among the noteworthy speakers and worship artists at the 2021 Sing! Worship Conference, hosted by hymn writers Keith and Kristyn Getty.

The fifth annual conference, held Sept. 13-15, attracted a large crowd to Nashville’s Bridgestone Arena.

“When we sing, we’re singing worship to our Lord, but we’re also singing to one another and encouraging one another in what we believe and in what we affirm,” Keith Getty said as he opened the conference Monday (Sept 13).

After last year’s conference was hosted solely online with recorded videos, this year’s conference was live with an available online option. The theme for the conference was “In Christ Alone” and operated under the tagline “Reset. Restore. Reunite.”

The theme was appropriate, as this year marks the 20th anniversary of the Gettys’ well-known hymn “In Christ Alone.”

Monday’s evening session featured a time of worship, including a performance from the Gettys that included all the songs from their upcoming album.

Also Monday, songwriters and worship leaders Matt Papa and Matt Boswell premiered their full upcoming album. Boswell is pastor of Trails Church in Prosper, Texas, and assistant professor of church music and worship at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary.

Matt Boswell
Matt Boswell from The Trails Church, Prosper at Sing! 2021

Other notable musical guests at the conference included Chris Tomlin, Shane and Shane, CityAlight and Bill Gaither.

Notable speakers included Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary President (SEBTS) Danny Akin, John Piper, David Platt, Alistair Begg, Paul David Tripp, Dane Ortlund and SEBTS professor Karen Swallow Prior.

H.B. Charles, pastor of Shiloh Metropolitan Baptist Church in Jacksonville, Fla., spoke during the opening plenary session Monday afternoon about focusing on God alone during worship.

“True worship is God-centered,” Charles said. “We don’t gather to proclaim our cause. We gather to proclaim the virtues of Him who called us into the marvelous light.”

Charles, who has released two albums of original music himself, preached out of 1 Peter 2:4-5 about the Church both proclaiming Christ through worship and relying on Him in the midst of trials.

“We are not the ones who nurture the Church, sustain the Church or advance the Church,” Charles said.

“If this extended pandemic has taught us anything, I hope it has taught us the Lord doesn’t need us. Pastoral leadership, ministry leadership, worship leadership do not grow the Church. … The Church stands firm because Christ is the Cornerstone. In Christ the Cornerstone, we are safe, strong and secure.”

H.B. Charles
H.B. Charles at Sing! 2021

Charles acknowledged that the last year and a half has been challenging, but Christ is sufficient for meeting the needy where they are.

“It is in Christ alone that we find total sufficiency for all of the needs of our lives, especially the deep needs of our souls …,” he said. “There are many of us who gather here weak and weary and worn out. How do we reset, find renewal and restoration – as we come to Him.”

During the final conference session Wednesday (Sept. 16), Keith Getty had a conversation with Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary President Danny Akin about living a missional life and the role of worship in fulfilling the Great Commission.

“At Southeastern I’ve had music professors that were the most active in going to the nations in my entire faculty,” Akin said.

“They (music professors) recognized the value of teaching different people groups songs in their heart language, not just exporting our songs, but teaching them how to create, how to write, how to put melody to songs in their heart language.

“For the musicians here, I would say get your passports. … God can use you in an incredible way because music is universal and barriers come down very easily in that context. Barriers come down and friendships are quickly established around God’s great gift of music.”

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.

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.