| EDITOR'S NOTE: "From the Seminaries" includes news releases of interest as written and edited from Southern Baptist seminaries. Today's From the Seminaries includes: SWBTS SBTS (2 items) Business professionals called to advance God's Kingdom By Benjamin Hawkins FORT WORTH, Texas -- Strategies for using business as a platform for missions worldwide was the focus of Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary's first Kingdom Professionals Conference at the Fort Worth, Texas, campus. "This is the point of the spear. This is very innovative," one expert* said during the sessions at Southwestern's Richard Land Center for Cultural Engagement. And William Goff, professor of ethics at Southwestern and former Southern Baptist missionary, agreed. This conference, he said, presents information on a cutting-edge effort -- commonly called "business as missions" -- for penetrating areas of global lostness. Goff added that the conference also aimed at facilitating contact by the International Mission Board with business people, students and faculty interested in the global marketplace initiative. For many years, Goff said, businesses from the U.S. have engaged the international marketplace, with experts now giving greater focus on how Christian professionals can make an impact for Christ through their business endeavors. But the challenge, Goff said, is "how to do this effectively and productively." According to experts who spoke at the conference, effective "Kingdom professionals" must be adequately equipped for and called to the professional tasks they are using as a platform for missions. They must gain both physical and legal access into the countries where they desire to serve. Their businesses must be legitimate, cost-effective and beneficial to the community and should provide professionals with opportunities to engage people with the Gospel. Professionals can gain access to the world, experts said, through tourism, agriculture, business, restaurants, disaster relief, water filtration, mechanics and medicine as well as various other venues. "It comes in a thousand different ways," Southwestern President Paige Patterson said during chapel, Oct. 26. "Here is the opportunity in China for a godly dentist to set up a practice that would enable him to work in the upper echelon of the Chinese people and through, that dental practice, to meet the needs of people who would never hear the Gospel in any other way." Although Southern Baptists must always send out career missionaries to proclaim the Gospel and nurture churches until they "grow to full spiritual maturity," Patterson urged seminarians headed into church ministry "not only to call out the career missionary but also to call out those who will go to countries of the world in business and, through that business, share Christ with people that the career missionary might never reach." During a later session, Gordon Fort, vice president of the International Mission Board's office of global strategy, called churches to stop dabbling in Great Commission endeavors and to enter wholeheartedly into the "spiritual war" that covers this globe. "There is a global war taking place, and while you may be looking forward to having a crown one day, on this side of eternity the only thing that you get is a helmet," Fort said. In every war, Fort said, there are casualties, voicing primary concern for those who have never heard -- and may never hear -- the Gospel, people "who have no hope because there is not even the shadow of a cross in their communities. There is no Scripture in their language. There are no churches in their villages. There is not even one believer in their extended families." Christians must engage people in the Gospel by all possible means, Fort said. "I hope that you have been captured by the idea, by the possibility, by the concept that sitting out amongst our churches … is an asset that, to this point, we have not really utilized to its potential," Fort noted. "Sitting out amongst our constituents are people with incredible gifts and skills and ability in the professional world." Many of these "Kingdom professionals" have been informed for years that missions is only for the seminary trained, Fort said. They believe that, as businessmen, doctors, school teachers and agriculturalists, they can play no part in this global spiritual war. "And I beg to differ," Fort said, praying that "Kingdom professionals" will act upon the Apostle Paul's words: "I have become all things to all men, that I might by all means save some" (1 Corinthians 9:22). *Names have been omitted to protect those serving in secure locations. Benjamin Hawkins is senior news writer for Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Fort Worth, Texas (www.swbts.edu/campusnews). ********** Trueman explains Luther as theological pastor in Gheens lectures By Alex Duke LOUISVILLE, Ky. -- Martin Luther, who sparked the Protestant Reformation, carries a complex legacy. While many laud him as a historical and theological harbinger -- the reformer who drove a nail through the heart of works-based righteousness -- others lambaste him as a derisive, ego-driven anti-Semite. Continued... |
