By Karen L. Willoughby, Managing Editor BATON ROUGE – High school juniors and seniors from across Louisiana joined during Mardi Gras weekend with a Baptist Collegiate Ministries missions team from LSU. Their destination: Mission Arlington, in the Dallas/Fort Worth metroplex. It was designed as a Transitions missions trip, said Steve Masters, BCM director at LSU. “Transitions” is the term used with students in their last years of high school and first years of college. “The goal – besides spending time and sharing Christ with kids, teenagers and adults in Mission Arlington’s multi-housing ministry – is helping students connect with each other and with BCM,” Masters said. “If we can get juniors and seniors connected with BCM when they’re still in high school, we aren’t as apt to lose them in the transition to college.” Masters said though he knew the timing wouldn’t be right for many youth groups that had already planned their Mardi Gras break activities, he invited 100 youth ministers in the state to participate in the Feb. 13-16 transitions mission trip, in what is designed to be the first of a three-year initial commitment to minister at Mission Arlington during the Mardi Gras break. Mission Arlington includes 294 … [Read more...]

By Staff, Louisiana Baptist Foundation ALEXANDRIA – The January 2010 Board of Trustees meeting of the Louisiana Baptist Foundation opened with a word of encouragement from Brent Cating, chairman of the Investment Committee. As he drove from his home in Lake Charles to Alexandria in the early morning hours, he noticed how the casinos had plenty of lighting to attract potential patrons. But he noted how this light was the “light of darkness,” drawing people in to the sins that the world offers. He encouraged the other trustees, in their personal lives and in the oversight of the Foundation, to present the Light of the World, who is Jesus Christ our Saviour. Cating introduced Lee Morris, managing director of Graystone Consulting, to give the Investment Committee an update on the investment returns of the assets managed by the Foundation for the most recent quarter and the year 2009. Morris began by pointing out that the 10-year period from 2000 through 2009 was the worst decade in history for investment returns in the stock market. Marked by two major retractions in the financial markets, the period he calls the “decade to forget” shows only a 2.1 percent return for a conservative blend of stocks and fixed income … [Read more...]

RUSTON – Pastors of two cowboy churches recently helped a third one start. Gary Brewster of Cowboy Church at the OK Corral in Eros, and Clyde Miley of Red River Cowboy Church at Lake End, organized a Ranch Rodeo at the Ruston fairgrounds to help start the Circle Cross Cowboy Church with Chuck Johnston as founding pastor. “Chuck’s been wanting to get this started since last summer,” Brewster said. “We got together a month ago to put this together.” The “this” he referred to was a four-hour, four-event rodeo on a brisk Saturday morning that involved cow mugging, sorting, doctoring, and wild cow milking. With youngsters off to the side, practicing their bronc-riding skills on an “almost-real” apparatus, and toddlers bundled in strollers, ranch folks watched as men and their horses showed their stuff. Only five teams came from the churches, indicating strong community interest in the event, Brewster said. Read more about these three cowboy churches, their ministries and strategies, at www.baptistmessage.com. … [Read more...]

Compiled by Joanne Brechtel COMINGS AND GOINGS Jay Avance, Jr., new as pastor First Baptist, Baker. Charles Malone, new as pastor of First Baptist, Bernice from Mt. Zion Baptist, Independence, Miss. Jack Bell, new as pastor of First Baptist, Hornbeck. NEEDED Full-time pastor at First Baptist, Boyce; send resume to First Baptist Church, PO Box 278, Boyce LA 71409 or call Randy Bond 318.793.8857. DEATHS NASHVILLE, Tenn. - Charles Landrum Salley, 81, died Sunday, Feb. 7. He was Director of the Library and Adjunct Professor of History and Philosophy at Louisiana College and a pastor at First Baptist, Kentwood. He is survived by his wife, Nell, and two daughters. AVAILABLE KENNER - Ken Russell available for interim or supply worship leader; call 504.491.8335 or emailkrussell5@cox.net. REVIVALS BOYCE – St. Clair Baptist: Sunday, Feb. 28 through Wednesday, March 3; Gibbie McMillan, speaker; Kingdom Bound Quartet, music; Patrick Willis, pastor. HOUMA – First Baptist: Share the Peace of Jesus Evangelism Rally and Children’s Rally 6 p.m. Sunday, Feb. 21; Wayne Jenkins, speaker; Jim Chester, children’s evangelist; First Praise, music; Steve Folmar, pastor. BOURG – Bourg Baptist: 6:30 p.m. Monday and Tuesday, Feb. … [Read more...]

Compiled by Joanne Brechtel COMINGS AND GOINGS Jay Avance, Jr., new as pastor First Baptist, Baker. Charles Malone, new as pastor of First Baptist, Bernice from Mt. Zion Baptist, Independence, Miss. Jack Bell, new as pastor of First Baptist, Hornbeck. NEEDED Full-time pastor at First Baptist, Boyce; send resume to First Baptist Church, PO Box 278, Boyce LA 71409 or call Randy Bond 318.793.8857. DEATHS NASHVILLE, Tenn. - Charles Landrum Salley, 81, died Sunday, Feb. 7. He was Director of the Library and Adjunct Professor of History and Philosophy at Louisiana College and a pastor at First Baptist, Kentwood. He is survived by his wife, Nell, and two daughters. AVAILABLE KENNER - Ken Russell available for interim or supply worship leader; call 504.491.8335 or emailkrussell5@cox.net. REVIVALS BOYCE – St. Clair Baptist: Sunday, Feb. 28 through Wednesday, March 3; Gibbie McMillan, speaker; Kingdom Bound Quartet, music; Patrick Willis, pastor. HOUMA – First Baptist: Share the Peace of Jesus Evangelism Rally and Children’s Rally 6 p.m. Sunday, Feb. 21; Wayne Jenkins, speaker; Jim Chester, children’s evangelist; First Praise, music; Steve Folmar, pastor. BOURG – Bourg Baptist: 6:30 p.m. Monday and Tuesday, Feb. … [Read more...]

By Staff, Baptist Message   [img_assist|nid=6085|title=A crowd of 300 women gathered at First Baptist Pineville for the annual Kaleidoscope women s conference Feb. 6|desc=|link=none|align=left|width=100|height=67]PINEVILLE – About 300 women gathered Feb. 6 for the annual Kaleidoscope women’s conference at First Baptist Church of Pineville. Theme for the event was Transitions: A Journey into Oneness with Christ. “I loved it; it was so informative,” said Violet Adams, member at the Pentecostals of Alexandria. “The speaker made it so funny; she was wonderful, and the singer was awesome.” Adams was speaking of Leighann McCoy of Nashville, Tenn., and Kelly Garner of Franklin, Tenn. “Kaleidoscope is for all Louisiana women,” said Janie Wise, director of women’s missions and ministries for the Louisiana Baptist Convention. “The goal is to encourage, inspire, teach and motivate women to grow deeper in their faith and use that growth to share with others.” McCoy illustrated her “step out of your comfort zone” point by telling of going skiing with her family. Everyone did great on the bunny trail, she said. Then they moved to an intermediate trail. She got scared about half-way down, looked for a tree she could run … [Read more...]

ALEXANDRIA – An SBC Disaster Relief-trained team of a dozen medical professionals and chaplain from Louisiana, expects to be ministering this week in Port-au-Prince, Haiti. Led by Jay Johnston, associate pastor at First Baptist Church of Covington, and DR_trained chaplain, this team was to leave from New Orleans, Friday, Feb. 19, for a week in the hurricane-ravaged capital city. A 14-person medical missions team led by Dwayne Rogers, chief of security at Louisiana College and a frequent early-responder at global disasters, plans to leave Feb. 20. They plan to work in a ward at Good Samaritan Hospital in Jimani, Dominican Republic, on the Haiti border. “There’s going to come a time for more people to do hands-on ministry in Haiti,” said John Yeats, LBC director of communications. “Right now, the best thing for Louisiana Southern Baptists to do is to pray, to give, and to pack Buckets of Hope.” Instructions for all these, and Haiti updates as they come in, can be found on www.baptistmessage.com,www.baptistglobalresponses.com, www.lbc.org/haiti, and bpnews.net. “Many Louisiana Baptists would love to go to Haiti and lend a helping hand or hold a hurting child,” Yeats said. “However, unless you go as part of a … [Read more...]

By Paul F. South, NOBTS Communications NEW OLREANS – Two of the world’s best-known religious scholars will dialog at New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary on a question that has sparked debate for some 2,000 years: What did Jesus really teach? John Dominic Crossan and Ben Witherington III will be the featured speakers at the  2010 Greer-Heard  Point-Counterpoint  Forum, Feb. 26 and 27 at Leavell Chapel. The event marks the seminary’s sixth Greer-Heard Point-Counterpoint Forum. The Forum is designed to provide a venue in which a respected evangelical scholar and a respected non-evangelical scholar discuss critical issues in religion, science, philosophy, or culture. “Too often, public discourse on the sort of issues that Greer-Heard deals with is shrill in tone and piecemeal in content,” said  Robert Stewart, Ph.D, who occupies the Greer-Heard chair of Faith and Culture and of the seminary’s Institute for Christian Apologetics. “Our goal therefore is to give these issues legitimate expression and to do so in a public forum on a level playing field.” Crossan, Professor Emeritus of Religious Studies at DePaul University in Chicago, is the former co-chairman of the Jesus Seminar. Regarded internationally as one of … [Read more...]

By Michael Foust, Baptist Press NASHVILLE, Tenn. (BP) – Conservative groups are urging the Obama administration and Democratic leaders to take a second look at abstinence education after a federally funded landmark study showed that such programs were more successful than comprehensive sex education in stopping teen sex. The study, sponsored by the National Institute of Mental Health and published in the February journal of the Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine, should be a game-changer in the debate over teens and sex. It followed 662 African American sixth and seventh graders in urban middle schools over two years and found that 33.5 percent of those in programs promoting only abstinence had had sex by the end of the 24 months, compared to 48.5 percent of teens in a control group. The other two programs studied – one focusing only on safer sex and the other mixing an abstinence message with a safer sex message – did about as well as the control group in stopping teen sex. President Obama axed Bush-era abstinence programs from his budget submitted last year and conservatives now are encouraging him to place such funding back in the budget. “If we are serious about reaching teens with the skills they … [Read more...]

By Mickey Noah, Baptist Press [img_assist|nid=6090|title=North American Mission Board missionaries Jim and Myrtle Ballard serve in Idaho assisting new churches|desc=|link=none|align=left|width=67|height=100]BLACKFOOT, Idaho – North American Mission Board missionary Jim Ballard – all 243 lbs. of him – lay sprawled in agonizing pain on a snow-covered dirt trail high in the mountains of the Salmon National Forest in eastern Idaho. Four of his ribs and a vertebra were fractured, and his sternum was cracked.  His lung punctured, Ballard was spitting up pink, foamy blood, which dotted his full salt-and-pepper beard. Ballard prayed to God and thought of Myrtle, his new wife, who was back at their RV campsite some 10 miles away.  The nearest main road was a mile or two away.  Panic was creeping in like the big black crow that perched only 10 feet away, cawing and waiting for what it thought would be its inevitable Ballard “buffet.” “You’re not getting my eyeballs just yet,” Ballard yelled at the crow while whipping out his .45/.410 revolver and two boxes of shells.  At least neither the crows nor the wolves would get ‘ol Jim that day without a fight. Several hours earlier that day – Oct. 17, 2008 – Ballard’s final day of … [Read more...]