[img_assist|nid=7189|title=Medical Missions|desc=A dentist from First DeRidder medical mission team works on a childs mouth during a 2010 mission trip to Honduras in partnership with the Baptist Medical Dental Mission International, which is planning its annual meeting in Shreveport on April 7-10.|link=none|align=left|width=100|height=75]By Staff, Baptist Message   DERIDDER – First Baptist Church sent one of more than 50 medical/dental (and other ministries) mission teams to Honduras and Nicaragua in 2010, as part of the national Baptist Medical Dental Mission International that is based in Hattiesburg, Miss.   The 70 or more people from First DeRidder paid about $1,600 each, in addition to buying supplies packed onto 12 pallets shipped two months earlier, so they would have what they needed when they arrived.   They’ve been doing this since the mid-1980s, in a mission endeavor started by Henry Carter M.D., a First DeRidder member. His cousin got him involved, said Rod Pollard, team captain for 10 years.   In 2010, the mission team subdivided into 10 units:   Evangelism reported 327 professions of faith in Jesus; Vets took care of 311 animals and saw 13 POF; 970 youngsters … [Read more...]

By Staff, Baptist Message Comings, Goings and Kudos Miss Myra Gulledge, NSU Baptist Student Director for 37 years (1951-1988) died March 10 in the Natchitoches Hospital. She was 86. Deanna Corbett to Crockett Point Crowville/Winnsboro as youth minister. Jonathan (wife Amy) LaFleur to Mulberry Houma as interim minister of music. Josh DeLoach to New Ramah Castor as interim pastor. Roy Strother to Calvary Springhill as interim pastor. Marty Romero to Baldwin Baptist Mission as interim pastor. Charles “Chuck” Mitchell to First Berwick as pastor. Beau Guidry to First Milton as pastor. Phil (wife Fran) Smith to First Bastrop as minister of music and senior adults, from First Many as music minister and associate pastor. Thomas Chapman to Macedonia Holden as minister of youth. Pastor: Roger Dunlap. Boomer (wife Abbie) Cates to The Church at Pisgah Bernice as staff missionaries, to oversee missions and outreach. Pastor: Jerry Dark. Daniel G. Stanley Sr., new as pastor, Bethany Lake Charles. Renee Bennett of Tioga First recently was invited to perform at Carnegie Hall in New York City. She was one of four from Louisiana high school band students, and one of 125 nationally, invited to perform in this special concert. Robert … [Read more...]

By Philip Timothy, Message Staff Writer   Many of Louisiana’s 1,600 churches are eligible for a tax credit as part of the ‘Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act,’ and should take advantage of it, LBC leaders say.   The new small business health care tax credit is specifically targeted to help small businesses and tax-exempt – 501 (c)(3) – organizations, such as religious, educational and charitable groups.   Included in the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, the credit is one of the first of several new health care reform provisions to go into effect. Available for 2010, the credit encourages small businesses and tax-exempt organizations to offer health insurance coverage for the first time or maintain current coverage.   “Assuming the law is not repealed, this tax credit will impact quite a few of our churches in the state,” said Rusty Johnson, supervisor of the LBC accounting department. “All applicable participants should really take advantage of the tax credit.”   Last April, the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) sent out more than 4 million postcards – more than 60,000 in Louisiana alone – to alert small businesses and tax-exempt organizations about the health … [Read more...]

By Staff, Baptist Message   PINEVILLE – Despite inclement weather, leaders were pleased with the attendance and spirit at this year’s Kaleidescope.   At last count, 211 women registered for the event that had been postponed because of snow and ice concerns.   Kaleidescope participants heard Elizabeth Luter – pastor’s wife at Franklin Avenue Baptist Church in New Orleans – speak on being molded by God to carry the treasures of His Word.   “The things I couldn’t do just for [people,] I can do for Christ,” Luter said in challenging her listeners to be all that God designed them to be.   Kaleidescope has been an annual event for more than 25 years, and called “Kaleidescope” for at least 15, said Janie Wise, LBC’s women’s missions and ministry director.   “It’s for all women,” Wise said. “It has elements of both WMU and women’s ministry. ... Reaching all women at their point of knowing, living and growing Christ. That’s our ‘why’ statement for Kaleidescope.” … [Read more...]

By Staff, Baptist Message   WOODWARD – A pinewood derby, soapbox derby, campcraft, RA Olympics and missionaries, plus a Power Team demonstration, are just some of the non-stop activities planned for this year’s RA Congress April 9-10 at Tall Timbers Baptist Conference Center, for boys in grades 1-6.   Cost is $55/multiple occupancy; April 1 is registration deadline.   For more information see www.lbc.org/RACongress. Ricky Boothe is RA director. … [Read more...]

By Tristan Tayor, IMB Communications   Chile recently observed the anniversary of the 8.8-magnitude earthquake that shook the coastal nation in 2010.   While concern following such a disaster is often given to immediate physical needs, emotional needs are sometimes overlooked. But International Mission Board missionary Dick Price didn’t miss them.   After serving 20 years as a U.S. Air Force psychologist and more than 10 years as a missionary to Chile, Price was uniquely qualified to counsel Chileans following the quake.   In the six months afterward, Price made 14 trips to Chile’s most damaged areas to deliver educational and preventive presentations about processing stress after traumatic events.   “These two-hour interactive talks stressed the importance of talking about our experiences, our thoughts, our feelings and the impact in our lives of emotionally traumatic events,” Price said. “In every talk, a clear statement was made about God’s promise in Romans 8:38-39 that nothing, not even death, can separate us from His love in Christ Jesus.”   The training reached about 3,000 people, including 37 medical professionals and nearly 500 military, police and … [Read more...]

By Mark Kelly, Baptist Press   NASHVILLE, Tenn. (BP) – The percentage of SBC missions dollars going to overseas work will increase and a category of “Great Commission Giving” will be added to annual statistical reports if two recommendations from the Southern Baptist Convention’s Executive Committee are adopted during the June 14-15 SBC annual meeting in Phoenix, Ariz.   Also during the Feb. 22 meeting in Nashville, Tenn., EC President Frank Page reported that state convention executive directors unanimously agreed to affirm a 50/50 division of Cooperative Program (CP) receipts – after consideration for shared ministry funds – between state conventions and the Southern Baptist Convention, as suggested in a portion of the Great Commission Resurgence report.   That affirmation was adopted during the annual meeting of the Fellowship of State Executive Directors on Feb. 14-17 in Williamsburg, Va.   During the Nashville meeting, Executive Committee members voted unanimously to recommend increasing the International Mission Board’s percentage of budget receipts from 50 percent to 50.2 percent and decreasing the Executive Committee’s percentage by the same amount.   The committee … [Read more...]

By Karen L. Willoughby, Managing Editor   DUBACH, La. (BP) – The forests and farmland surrounding Sharon Baptist Church don’t block its global vision.   [img_assist|nid=7197|title=Pastor Carroll Holmes|desc=|link=none|align=left|width=72|height=100]Church members – with perhaps 40 in worship on Sunday mornings – still give 48.6 percent of their offerings to missions.   “We just simply try to give what the Lord is doing for us to somebody else,” said Caroll Holmes, pastor of the Dubach church since 2004. “We don’t see ourselves as a money-making church, but we put the money that comes in to work for the Lord.”   The congregation in the northeast rural part of the state is older and mostly living on fixed incomes. Their missions giving does what they can’t by going where they can’t, the pastor said.   “The Cooperative Program is such a tremendous program,” Holmes said. “We see it as one of the most beneficial ways we as a church can participate in supporting seminaries, missionaries and all the areas covered by the Cooperative Program. It gives us the opportunity to support so many different ministries, which is why it was founded.”   The Cooperative Program supports … [Read more...]

By Susie Rains   SOMA, Japan (BP)--Just 30 miles from Fukushima Daiichi's troubled nuclear plant, anyone in the town of Soma who could evacuate did. But thousands still remain, squeezed into a high school gymnasium serving as a makeshift shelter. Children try to play but there's not much room. Some people sit and stare off into the distance in a state of shock. Others talk in low murmurs, reliving the horrors since March 11: a massive earthquake that buckled highways, a tsunami that left a carpet of debris -- shattered buildings, wrecked cars and washed-up boats -- a food shortage, a snow storm, and no electricity or gas. Then, of course, there's the nuclear crisis. [img_assist|nid=7200|title=Japanese Disaster|desc=Baptists are finding a variety of ways to minister in Japan. In the photo above, Baptists from North Carolina and Hungary unload boxes of food at an evacuation shelter in Japan.|link=none|align=left|width=100|height=68]Everyone wonders what is going on when an empty bus pulls up outside the shelter and a young, energetic Japanese man jumps out and bounds into the packed gym. The stench of 2,000 people living for days in a confined space startles Koji Imanishi, but it doesn't deter him from his task … [Read more...]

By Jennifer Rogers Spinola   TOKYO—After a devastating tsunami and the worst earthquake in Japan’s recorded history, four nuclear power plants in Fukushima continue to deteriorate and release rising levels of radioactive emissions.   According to Lana Oue, International Mission Board missionary in Shibuya, Tokyo, “all efforts to get water into the cooling tanks have failed.”   “This (nuclear disaster) has the potential to directly affect a large part of the nation, if reactors continue the meltdown process and emissions blow directly over the land,” says Carlton Walker, an International Mission Board missionary in Narashino City, Chiba. “If the emissions rise to the jet stream, they will be carried as far away as Europe.”   Walker, a Richmond, Va. native, believes an east wind that stays low and out of the jet stream—toward the Pacific Ocean and away from Japan’s land mass--may limit the damage from high radiation.   Not only is prayer for an east wind critical to containing the damage, but Walker says the idea of wind is an intrinsic part of Japanese culture.   While best known for suicide attacks on Allied forces during World War II, the Japanese term “kamikaze” … [Read more...]