Wearing T-shirts bearing the fleur-de-lis lily symbol long associated with the city of New Orleans, 200 participants traveled throughout the South Louisiana community to pray for its residents last month. Wearing T-shirts bearing the fleur-de-lis lily symbol long associated with the city of New Orleans, 200 participants traveled throughout the South Louisiana community to pray for its residents last month. Organized by the Louisiana Baptist Convention evangelism and church growth team in conjunction with the Baptist Association of Greater New Orleans, the prayerwalk attracted persons from Louisiana as well as Baptists from surrounding states. Wayne Jenkins, LBC evangelism and church growth team leader, described the event as “praying on-sight with insight.” He encouraged participants to look for opportunities to provide spiritual or physical help to residents they encountered while prayerwalking through neighborhoods. Jenkins said the participants’ T-shirts provided an in-roads for witnessing to the city’s residents. He designed the piece of clothing after a similar one used on T-shirts in New York City following the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center towers. “People would come up to us … [Read more...]

Week of November 28, 2005 Marriage policy Memphis recently became the 197th U.S. city to embrace a Community Marriage Policy. More than 175 faith and community leaders at Shelby County’s Second Annual Healthy Marriage Summit affirmed their commitment to equip “individuals, couples and families for healthy, successful relationships,” as stated in the Mid-South Community Marriage Policy. The goal of the policy is to reduce both the rate of divorce and the number of children born out of wedlock in participating communities by 20 percent by 2010. Results from an independent study revealed that over a seven-year period divorce rates in 114 Community Marriage Policy cities fell 17.5 percent compared to a 9.4 percent decline elsewhere in the country – and cohabitation rates fell 13.4 percent compared to a 19 percent rise in cities without such a policy. The study by the Institute for Research and Evaluation is posted at www.marriagesavers.com. GuideStone service GuideStone Financial Resources of the Southern Baptist Convention now offers free online retirement planning guidance to its retirement participants. The service offers personalized retirement strategies and resources designed to help … [Read more...]

What do you do when you run a homeless shelter and the city has evacuated all the homeless? That’s the situation facing Tobey Pitman, director of the Brantley Mission Center in New Orleans. What do you do when you run a homeless shelter and the city has evacuated all the homeless? That’s the situation facing Tobey Pitman, director of the Brantley Mission Center in New Orleans. As the city rebuilds from Hurricane Katrina, Pitman is among the many local residents who must adjust to a new sense of normal. “We’re retooling our ministry,” explains Pitman. “We’ve gotten out of the homeless business temporarily because there are no homeless.” Instead, the Brantley Center reopened last month as a 250-bed dorm for Baptist volunteers coming from throughout the country to rebuild churches and homes. “There’s at least a year’s work to be done,” he says. “We just hope the interest is not lost in coming to New Orleans.” Pitman and the Brantley Center, just a block away from New Orleans’ famous French Quarter, have generated a lot of interest in the past two months. Just weeks before Hurricane Katrina struck the Gulf Coast, Pitman and his wife, Cathy, were profiled in Missions Mosaic, the missions magazine of … [Read more...]

A hearty expression of appreciation is due New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary President Chuck Kelley and the trustees of the school for their determination to rebuild the school’s main campus in New Orleans! A hearty expression of appreciation is due New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary President Chuck Kelley and the trustees of the school for their determination to rebuild the school’s main campus in New Orleans! The school’s campus suffered severe damage during the hurricanes that blasted that city with wind, then hit it again with surges of water. At least one estimate is that the school suffered $90 million of damage. In addition, the lives of the faculty, staff and students have certainly been disrupted as they suffered the same losses as the other residents of the hard-hit areas. As the students have been distracted from school, one would imagine they have dropped out of school during the recovery. The school’s buildings were well insured, but nothing can pay the costs of the agony of the destruction and energy that will be needed to rebuild the school and the lives of many of their staff, faculty and students. The trustees could have voted for the school to walk away from the New … [Read more...]

“Big people” may think they have explained something to a four-year-old, but what the adult says and what the child hears can be quite different. “Big people” may think they have explained something to a four-year-old, but what the adult says and what the child hears can be quite different. The grandmother explained to the pert four-year-old granddaughter the purpose of the shoe boxes they were filling with small Christmas gifts. “We are gathering these toys so we can send them to children in a foreign country. They are very poor and their parents will not be able to give them any gifts, so we are sending them these toys so they will have a better Christmas.” The young lady shook her head, indicating she understood. Later, after the toys were rounded up from various stores, the grandmother took the lass home. When they went inside, the grandmother told the child,    “Explain to your mother what we have been doing.” “We have been getting toys and candy and things and putting them in shoe boxes. Then we are going to send them to children who do not live here.” “Tell you mother why we are sending the gifts to the children.” “Well, there are some really, really bad children,” the little … [Read more...]

Randy Harper admits he always has not given God his best. By Brian Blackwell LBM Newswriter Randy Harper admits he always has not given God his best. “One day God let me know I was hiding,” Harper, pastor of Bellaire Baptist Church in Bossier City, told messengers during the annual convention sermon last month in West Monroe. “I was giving him my best physically (at my construction job),” he said. “But I wasn’t giving him my best with faith. I (then) believed that he didn’t need me to break up a house to be able to have a platform for Christ.” He explained that God had called him to preach the gospel. “He convinced me that I didn’t need an attention-getting gimmick,” he said. “I just needed to tell others about the cross and the blood of Jesus Christ.” Harper explained there are four ways pastors can give God their best effort. • First, he said pastors must conduct an honest inventory of their spiritual life. “We need to come to grips with the why, you begin to understand who it’s about,” he explained. “It’s not about you and it’s not about me. It’s about God.” He asked pastors to examine their hearts. “Am I pleasing God with my life and my ministry?” he asked. “As you inventory … [Read more...]

Week of November 28, 2005 Potpourri ALEXANDRIA – Louisiana State University: Golf tournament; sponsored by the Baptist Collegiate Ministry; Dec. 29, 8:30 a.m.; $25 per person/$5 for carts on a “first come/first serve” basis; for information, call Clark Palmer at (318) 641-7309 or e-mail clark956@hotmail.com. Youth OAK GROVE – First church: “A Christmas Carol” dinner theater; Dec. 3, 6 p.m.; $12 per person or $20 per couple; for tickets, call (318) 428-2583; Kevin Miles, youth minister; Carl Gulde, pastor. EUNICE – Acadian center: Youth winter retreat; for boy/girls grades 7-12; Dec. 16, 5 p.m. registration - Dec. 17, 4:30 p.m.; Chip Dickey, guest speaker; The Heard, musical guest; for information, call (337) 457-9047; James Newsom, pastor. Christmas WEST MONROE – New Chapel Hill church: “Forever Gloria” musical; Dec. 18, 6 p.m.; Greg Green, minister of music; Charles Dupree, pastor. HAUGHTON – Koran church: “One Quiet Night” musical; Dec. 18, 11 a.m.; Hardy Yeatts, minister of music; George Rogers, pastor. PINEVILLE – Alpine First church:  “Come, Let Us Adore Him” musical; Dec. 18, 5 p.m.; John Frank Reeve, worship minister; Sammy Morrow, pastor. SHREVEPORT – Kingston Road church:  “The Colors of … [Read more...]

The sound of a computer booting up echoes throughout the house. Lori Funderburk hardly notices the familiar noise as she sips her cup of tea next to the monitor and settles in to work. The sound of a computer booting up echoes throughout the house. Lori Funderburk hardly notices the familiar noise as she sips her cup of tea next to the monitor and settles in to work. Funderburk, an International Mission Board missionary and former member of Calvary Baptist Church in New Orleans, lives in Abidjan, Cote d’Ivoire, but works with the Banta Themne people group of Sierra Leone. She is the strategy coordinator for a unique team — a “virtual missions” team — whose members live around the world. The computer and Internet make this type of team a reality as Funderburk uses e-mail to keep in touch. Today’s message to team members is a little different than usual. The ministry is coming to a close. So, Funderburk writes, “We have certainly had a purpose over these last six years, haven’t we?” She recruited “ordinary” American housewives to be members of this virtual missions team. All five women — Funderburk, Mary Sanders, Earline Ellis, Lou Ann East and Donisa Page — once were members of Calvary Baptist … [Read more...]

When 8-year-old Douglas Gresham met C.S. Lewis, the man who would become his stepfather, he was disappointed. When 8-year-old Douglas Gresham met C.S. Lewis, the man who would become his stepfather, he was disappointed. The American boy had expected the British author of “The Chronicles of Narnia” fantasy books “to be wearing silver armor and carrying a sword with a jeweled pommel.” Instead, Lewis “was a stooped, balding, professorial-looking gentleman in shabby clothes, with long, nicotine-stained fingers,” says Gresham, now 59, speaking on the phone from his home in Ireland. More than 40 years after Lewis’ death, people still have their own ideas about him. Depending on whom you ask, Lewis was a scholar, fantasy writer, Christian saint – or all that and more. As Disney releases its much-anticipated movie “The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe” on Dec. 9, more people than ever are asking: Who was C.S. Lewis? And what is his legacy? To many, Lewis is an icon of orthodox Christianity. Despite growing up believing that there was no God, Lewis turned to Christianity as an adult. He then dedicated himself to promoting the faith and did so, his admirers say, using simple … [Read more...]

“The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe” began intriguing readers well before the era of spectacular multimillion-dollar Hollywood special effects or sophisticated websites available to anyone with Internet access. “The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe” began intriguing readers well before the era of spectacular multimillion-dollar Hollywood special effects or sophisticated websites available to anyone with Internet access. On Dec. 9, both longtime fans and people unfamiliar with C.S. Lewis’ famous fable will have the opportunity to see it recounted with world-class technology on giant screens around the world. But LifeWay’s e-business group, meanwhile, is bringing aspects of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe to smaller screens with its website dedicated to providing background on Lewis and insights into the multiple Christian allegories worked into his story. “We believe providing conversation starters and other suggestions for discussing the film will help generate opportunities for one to share their faith with a friend or colleague,” said Gary McClure, LifeWay’s e-business marketing manager. “Simply put, LifeWay’s site is the Christian’s complement to Narnia.com.” McClure said LifeWay.com/Narnia is … [Read more...]