Posts by Karen L. Willoughby

Black denominational network gives key award to Mohler June 22, 2004

INDIANAPOLIS (BP)--R. Albert Mohler Jr., president of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, received the highest honor given by the Black Southern Baptist Denominational Network at its annual meeting in Indianapolis.

Mohler received the Dr. Emmanuel L. McCall Denominational Servant Award June 13, with the presence of McCall adding to the occasion. McCall, through his work at the Home Mission Board (precursor to the North American Mission Board) was one of the pioneers in the movement to bring African Americans into the SBC.

Sid Smith, the network’s executive director, said Mohler received the award for four reasons.

“Because Dr. Mohler has embodied the commitment to train Baptist ministers ..., because he has embraced black church studies at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, because he has embraced intercultural studies at the seminary, and because he has put in place Lawrence Smith as vice president of communications, Dr. Mohler, we present you this award,” said Smith, director of the Florida Baptist Convention’s African American ministries division.

The words on the plaque presented to Mohler said he received the award for “role modeling the highest characteristics of the Black Southern Baptist Denominational Servants Network embodied in the life and ministry of Emmanuel L. McCall.”

“What a humbling experience to receive this award,” Mohler said. “I accept it on behalf of the seminary, which is working hard at its commitment to fulfill its role in building the Kingdom of God throughout all tribes and peoples and nations.

“The Lord God our Creator thrills in the differences among the nations,” Mohler said in brief remarks to the 75 people attending the banquet meeting at Gabriel Missionary Baptist Church in Indianapolis. “This is the way He made us, for His purposes.... We rejoice in the unity of all the saints across the world testifying before the Lord.”

The network’s annual meeting also included various reports, other awards and the presidential address by Rosevelt Morris, director of prayer and spiritual awakening with the South Carolina Baptist Convention.

Morris spoke from Revelation 3 about defining moments, and about the danger of losing your first love, during his presidential address.

“There must be a passion for Christ in denominational servants,” Morris preached. “We’re becoming more and more involved with religious activity. We do the leading, the training and the hoping, but if God isn’t in the business, it ain’t happening,” he said, speaking in the vernacular to make his point.

“God addresses religious activity by saying, ‘I know your deeds,’” Morris continued. “We’re not working for ourselves.... In the midst of doing good things, don’t let the main thing slip away. The key to having a defining love with Jesus is to stay in touch with Jesus the way you did at first.”

“We are progressing; the momentum is building,” Smith said during his executive director’s report. “We need more members and more involvement, but things are coming along well in the Black Southern Baptist Denominational Servants Network.”

About 80 of the 200 or more African Americans employed by associational, state and national entities of the SBC are current dues-paying members of the network, which was established in 1997 to mentor and encourage denominational servants.

Hall of Servanthood awards were given to Tom Kelly of California, Jim Culp of Texas and Willie McPherson of Illinois. Victor Ketchens of New York received the Founders Award.

Kelly, former director of the California Southern Baptist Convention’s African American ministries department, is now in what he calls his “fourth career” as African American volunteer mobilization coordinator for the North American Mission Board.

“Ephesians 6:7: Serve the Lord wholeheartedly. That has sort of been the driving force of my ministry,” Kelly said in accepting the award.

Roy Cotton, DFW Metroplex regional consultant for the Baptist General Convention of Texas’ church-starting center, accepted the award for Jim Culp, who for 19 years was director of African American ministries for state convention.

James Herron, new work strategist for the Illinois Baptist State Association, accepted the award for Willie McPherson, longtime leader in African American ministries in Florida, who now is a consultant in Illinois.

Ketchens, a founding member of the denominational servants network and now a pastor in the Bronx, New York, is the retired director of African American church planting for the New York Baptist Convention.

“As you go forward, do not leave anyone behind,” Ketchens said, cautioning network members to continue their encouragement of each other.

Roy Cotton, one of the co-chairs for the network’s African American Southern Baptist History Project, spoke of the 21 conference calls involved in the development of the second volume of the project’s journal, released at a June 12 presentation of historical papers. The journal is available through Sid Smith’s office.

“We have already begun work on the 2005 project,” Cotton said.

Milton Boyd, African American church development department director for the Florida Baptist Convention, reported on updates to the network’s website: http://members.aol.com/revmwboyd/BlackSBCServant.html.

The network’s program has been matrixed into three main components, reported Wayne D. Faison, consultant for African American and ethnic evangelism and church planting strategist for the Virginia Baptist Mission Board. The three areas -- all with new leaders --- are orientation, growth and development, and ongoing communication.

The network’s officers for 2004-05 include Rosevelt Morris, president; Dennis Mitchell, director of the church planting team at NAMB, vice president; Ken Ellis, chaplaincy evangelism associate at NAMB, secretary; and Maxie Miller, coordinator for African American church planting for the Florida Baptist Convention, treasurer.

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Seminary’s Hispanic conference offers training, networking to enhance leader effectiveness July 24, 2003

LOUISVILLE, Ky. (BP)--If anyone doubts that God is moving among Hispanics, just look at the numbers.

In 1999, 29 people of Hispanic heritage served through the International Mission Board in global missions, according to records kept by Jason Carlisle, who works with Hispanics at the IMB. Today there are 80, including 22 new workers in 2002.

A conference July 18-19 at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Ky., is another indicator. More than 175 people -- mostly church members rather than pastors, and an equal number of men and women, participated in the two-day event.

They drove in from as far away as South Carolina, New York and Michigan as well as states near Kentucky. And they weren’t all Southern Baptists.

Rene Disotaur brought 10 members of the Christian congregation he pastors in Louisville.

“We know this seminary has a great reputation and we want to learn more about Jesus,” Disotaur said.

The Hispanic Leadership Conference was a low-budget, grassroots event built on relationships.

Twyla Fagan, a former IMB missionary journeyman in Argentina, organized the conference. She is now director of Great Commission ministries in the Billy Graham School of Missions, Evangelism and Church Growth at Southern Seminary.

“This conference was a dream for many years for many people,” Fagan said. “Dr. [Thom] Rainer knew of the need for more Hispanic leaders.” Rainer is dean of the Billy Graham School.

Many Hispanics don’t have the educational background to pursue an M.Div. degree, Fagan said. She and Rainer talked about leadership training that would be effective; the idea for a Hispanic leadership conference grew out of their discussions.

“We hope to do this on an annual basis,” Fagan said. “We hope to grow it into a weeklong event and that people would know to set aside the third week in July for training.”

Starting last January, Fagan drew on people she knew in the Hispanic community to help with and attend the conference.

Plenary speaker Guillermo Montalvo was a longtime friend, holding several university degrees in Mexico and now a doctoral student at Southern as well as pastor of Crossroads Community Baptist Church in Ann Arbor, Mich. He spoke on characteristics of biblical leadership, the process of training leaders and Hispanic leadership in the 21st century.

Juan Sanchez, Ruth Salazar, Carlos De la Barra and Fagan led workshops on prayer, and on ministry to men, women, youth and children.

The worship team came from Fagan’s church, Iglesia Bautista Getsemani in Bloomfield, Ky.; her pastor, Carlos De la Berra, led workshops on men’s ministry.

Participation was nearly double what she had anticipated, Fagan said.

“It’s obvious there’s a pent-up need for training in the Hispanic community,” she said. “We had to add extra sessions of some workshops in order to accommodate everyone.”

Those who came had roots in many nations -- Mexico, Cuba, Guatemala, Nicaragua and more.

Bibiano Librado of Woodruff, S.C., came with his wife, Josefina, and three young daughters as part of his training to be a pastor, he told translator Molly Sills. Because of his limited formal education, he has much to learn, he said, before he goes back to Mexico to pastor there.

Librado is an assistant to his pastor, Ponciano Acevedo of Mision Bautista Calvario in Lincolnton, N.C., who had brought him to the Hispanic Leadership Conference in Louisville to learn more of what he needed to know to help his pastor more effectively and to become a pastor himself, Librado said in Spanish.

Baltazar Alonzo Pables, born in Guatemala, was one of many sponsored by the Kentucky Baptist Convention to attend the conference.

His street punk appearance, with pants slung low and hair slicked back, masked what he said was a strong interest in the ways of the Lord.

Two years ago, he explained, he was bored, so when a woman he’d passed on the street invited him to church, he went.

“It was good to hear about God,” Pables said. “It was interesting.” He was in the habit of drinking, but God took that from him, he explained to translator Sills, and now he is studying his Bible all the time though he doesn’t know what his future holds.

“I come [to the conference] to learn,” he said.

Florencia Naranjo of Louisville said as a child in Mexico, whose father took her to an evangelical church, she had heard many of the things she was hearing at the conference, but she disregarded them years ago and life took a downward turn.

Now, three months back in church after a long absence, she is absorbing all she can of the Bible and the ways of God and His people. The training she was receiving at the conference was to help her learn; not until she learns more will she be able to teach a Sunday School class and help her church in other ways, she acknowledged.

In Fagan’s opening remarks at the Hispanic Leadership Conference, she explained the purpose of the event.

“This conference is about methods and strategies, but most of all, it’s about learning to be like Christ,” she said. “We need leaders who search for God’s face.

“I think God is going to use Hispanics to reach out to the United States and hopefully to revive all the churches,” she added. “This conference is to help everyone participate in the Great Commission.”

Carlisle of the IMB talked about missions in the United States and around the world.

“Now is the time for the Hispanic people,” Carlisle said. “Where is God in the midst of all these Hispanics coming to the United States? As he did with Israel in Egypt, God is preparing Hispanics to reach the nations. He brought you here to bless the nations.”

A missionary movement among Hispanics is growing, Carlisle said. One example is the adoption of a city in Iraq by Hispanics, who work through a similar relational culture to spread God’s love to people who have never felt it before.

Mexican soap operas are popular the world over, and evangelistic television programs in that style are being dubbed into a local language to reach into a restricted-access country, Carlisle said, adding, “People love these!”

More Hispanic missionaries are working outside the Spanish-speaking world than are working in it, the IMB strategist said. He spoke of Hispanics with unusual ministries in regions unnamed for security reasons.

A Hispanic man from Los Angeles skilled in graffiti now is a muralist with a ministry in an artist’s colony in one of the Last Frontier countries.

A woman called to missions felt thwarted because she thought she had no skills and cried out to God, “All I can do is cook!” She now has a thriving Mexican restaurant in another country where about 20 believers worship.

In the conference’s closing session, Montalvo spoke on the challenges and opportunities for Hispanic leadership in the 21st century.

The world is changing, he said. Social, moral, family, cultural and religious values all are declining in the secular world.

For Hispanic churches, the problem lies in making people realize the relevance of God’s Word to their lives, Montalvo said.

“We need to change the strategies or messages to make them more applicable to the public that we are trying to reach,” he said. “We need to study the culture and social dynamics.”

The message doesn’t change, but just as Jesus spoke of easily understood illustrations meaningful to the people of his day, so should today’s pastors and leaders, Montalvo said.

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