Board hears reports, moves through agenda

By Norman Jameson

BR Editor

The Baptist State Convention (BSC) Board of Directors moved through an agenda that included a delay on final 2008-09 budget approval and approval of staff positions to strengthen church planting and campus ministry.

Meeting Sept. 26 at Caraway Conference Center, directors approved the hiring of Amaury Santos as Hispanic church planter; approved a new fulltime associate campus minister at UNC-Chapel Hill; returned a campus ministry position to fulltime status at Appalachian State University; approved naming the renovated and expanded chapel at Fruitland Baptist Bible Institute for President Kenneth Ridings; and approved "cosmetic" adjustments in articles and bylaws.

Santos, a native of the Dominican Republic, will help North Carolina Baptists start churches among the burgeoning Hispanic population.

Baptist Men reported they have rebuilt 600 homes in Gulfport, Miss., and plan to reach their goal of 700 homes by Jan. 1, 2008.

Based on the successful work station model utilized in Grifton and in Gulfport, Baptist Men intends to locate other permanent work stations in eastern, central and western North Carolina. These sites would be staging areas for hands on missions and missions training.

Baptist Men remains active in projects around the world, and coordinates partnerships or continued activity in Vermont, Hawaii/Pacific, Wyoming, Montana, Eastern Canada, Honduras, Cuba, Kenya, Armenia and Sri Lanka.

Projects to adopt villages in India are being investigated, as well as work with a gypsy church in Ukraine and a partnership in eastern Pennsylvania.

Baptist Men response teams also built four homes in Riegelwood, NC and helped in Florida, Ohio and Oklahoma disasters this year and a medical team left Sept. 27 for Honduras.

North Carolina Baptist Men's Director Richard Brunson reminded board members of the statewide Operation Inasmuch taking place April 19, 2008 with as many as 50,000 Baptist volunteers blitzing communities across the state with volunteer service projects.

Bob Boone of Macclesfield asked Brunson if any issues exist in the relationship of North Carolina Baptist Men and the Baptist State Convention that would prompt Baptist Men to seek a change in relationship.

"No there is nothing I know of," Brunson said. "Our hiring process involves our three vice presidents, plus three members of the executive committee, plus our president who serves as chairman. We're pleased with how it works. We have a great amount of respect for Milton (Hollifield, BSC executive director-treasurer) and we're excited about things that are coming up."

Brunson told Hollifield later, "We have no desire at all to leave the building and we are very excited about our future in the BSC."

The new associate campus minister at UNC-Chapel Hill will be responsible to raise his own funding, in a pilot similar to that used by Campus Crusade workers. Several churches already are helping.

If successful, the model may be used to expand campus ministry elsewhere "without adding budget cost for staff," Hollifield said.

Board members also rejected a request from Hayes Barton Baptist Church in Raleigh to ask messengers to reconsider the 2006 change in Article 6 that defined membership in part by saying churches are not in friendly cooperation with the Convention if they accept as members persons knowingly active in homosexual behavior.

The letter, signed by pastor David Hailey, and the chairs of the diaconate and denominational relations committee, said the church was "extremely disappointed" by Convention action they felt "violates the historic Baptist principle of the autonomy of the local church by seeking to dictate whom a church may not accept into its membership without losing its status of being in 'friendly cooperation.'"

"The convention easily spoke to this issue last year," said Steve Hardy, Winston-Salem. "The vote was obviously more than the two-thirds required for passage. I see no reason to try to bring this back before the Convention after such overwhelming response."

Committee Reports

In committee reports, board members rejoiced to hear the growth story of Elevation Church in Mathews. Only 18 months old, it has 1,200 attending services at Providence High School, and expanded to a satellite facility, where 1,100 attended on the first Sunday and 162 made decisions for Christ.

Also in Mission Growth Evangelism, Executive Leader Don McCutcheon reported 61 churches were represented at the second Intentionally Evangelistic Church Strategy conference held at Caraway. Board President Allan Blume said his entire staff is attending, and the first half came back "excited" about the "great material." Lisa Horton, wife of former BSC president David Horton, said they felt it was the best evangelism training event they'd ever attended.

The final 2008 training is Oct. 23-25 at Fruitland Baptist Bible Institute in Hendersonville.

Woman's Missionary Union reported 40 professions of faith among the 1,800 girls attending various camps at Mundo Vista this summer. In WMU's continuing involvement with restorative justice, they held Camp Angel Tree for children with an incarcerated parent, youthful offenders camp and a prison retreat for women currently incarcerated.

One joy of the prison retreat is to see several women volunteers back to help, who first came as prisoners themselves, said Sandra James, WMU president.

James mentioned one youthful offender camper who burst into tears when hugged by a volunteer, and told that "God loves you and so do I. "

When the inmate regained control of herself, she told the volunteer, "You are the first person who has ever hugged me in my life."

"I'm thankful that we're able to have these ministries and be in the life changing business in North Carolina," James said.

The Baptist Retirement Homes study committee was unable to present an initial report to the board, as it had hoped. It has scheduled a meeting with BRH leadership for Oct. 5.

Luther Osment of Baptist Retirement Homes said in the Council on Christian Social Services meeting that the study committee "will discover...it is no longer needful for Baptist Retirement Homes to receive budgeted amounts through the Convention cooperative giving plans."

BRH needs the ability to continue their special offering among North Carolina churches, but Osment said BRH "is fully capable of generating resources to maintain an outstanding program of benevolent care." That includes, he said, a willingness to forgo 2007 Cooperative Program funds being held in escrow.

Osment said BRH "desires an on-going, strong, positive relationship with the Baptist State Convention," including by helping churches which seek to start or strengthen their own ministries to aging adults.

Scott Davis, chairman of the articles and bylaws committee, said the minor changes presented involve no policy changes and were only to "clean up some language" to make the articles conform with each other, following 2006 annual session decisions. Messengers "voted down changes to Article 2, but approved changes to Articles 3 and 7," Davis said. "Now cosmetic changes bring the articles back into compliance with one another."

The Executive Committee voted 13-4 to distribute the BSC public relations office release related to developments with WMU and centered around the called meeting Sept. 10, to each church, either through a letter or through the Biblical Recorder, if possible.

Michael C. Blackwell, president of Baptist Children's Homes of North Carolina, said BCH has assumed operational responsibility for Oak Ranch and boys are being admitted there three months ahead of schedule. This newest facility will enable BCH to utilize large animal therapy. Girls are scheduled to be admitted by January 2008.

Lynn Sasser, executive leader for Congregational Services, explained some fine-tuning in staff responsibilities and said, "Our focus is on helping North Carolina Baptist churches change lives, to transform lives through congregational life."

Sasser said Doug Pagitt, who was scheduled to speak at the October Wired2Grow conference and has a blog, "will no longer be a conference speaker," since we "recently learned information about him that we were not previously aware of."

Steve Hardy reporting for the Strategic Initiatives and Planning Committee, reminded board members of an important service available to all North Carolina Baptist churches called www.Link2lead.com. At this site church leaders can garner demographic information related to their church community. "I'll almost guarantee you'll learn something about your church area you didn't know before," Hardy said.

Mike Sowers, pastor at Hope Mills Baptist Church for five years, was introduced as the new youth missions coordinator for Baptist Men. Sowers is a graduate of UNC-Greensboro and Campbell Divinity. "Missions is my passion," said Sowers, who grew up involved in Royal Ambassadors at Oak View Baptist Church in High Point.