Ubukata through the Japanese Church Planting Network is helping to plant a new Japanese congregation in Orlando, Fla., with a group of Japanese who have been meeting for about 10 years in a Bible study. Ubukata, pastor of Japanese International Harvest Church in St. Louis, has been traveling once a month to Orlando and has seen the local body secure a sponsoring church and begin working with a Japanese mission pastor and his wife.

MBC Multicultural Church Planting Specialist Ken McCune has long envisioned an MBC where church planters and missionaries would be working more intentionally over long distances toward a church planting movement. While the DNA for this type of dreaming is beginning to make itself known, it will take actual faith steps like the one Ubukata is taking as he leaves his church of 50-60 to go offer catalytic help in Florida, or the steps Hispanic churches in Missouri may take to go plant in Hispanic populations outside of the United States, to raise the level of Great Commission obedience to the place where it ought to be.

“We’re probably going to need to do more of that in order to reach everyone,” McCune said. “My term a lot of times is it’s simple, but it’s not easy. It’s as simple as the Great Commission, and it’s Acts 1:8, but then the doing it and having people do it is the same for all of our churches. Everybody knows that’s what we need to do. Some are doing it. Many are not.”

Ubukata is doing it in part because he sees the potential for a more stable work in Orlando due to the number of Japanese citizens who tend to be permanent residents. Since launching the Japanese church in St. Louis in February 2007 at The Rock Church, he and his wife, Hyeyeon, have seen steady growth but have also battled a trend of losing church members back to their homeland.

“God has been faithful in supporting our ministry, but one of the biggest challenges is developing leadership in our church because people move in and move out,” Ubukata said. “Most of the people here don’t stay long. They go back to Japan or move out of the state. So this year we want to more intentionally focus on discipleship and multiplication – reproducing leaders and growing small groups.”
A major part of his ministry is tied to the Japanese network. He speaks of their work in Orlando in terms of how amazing it has been to see God work, and he looks forward to attending their annual conference in Portland, Ore., this June.

“I can tell it has really strengthened him and his wife,” McCune said.

Tim Cowin, lead pastor, The Rock Church, has been able to walk alongside Ubukata from the beginning. Every Tuesday they are part of a group of ministers who meet to build relationships and participate in informal training times.

“He’s just got a real evangelistic heart, and the Lord just obviously gave him a call to come here and reach the Japanese who live in this area,” Cowin said.

Cowin went on to describe the Japanese pastor as a good preacher and communicator who is disciplined and focused within a strong work ethic.

“He’s a reader and a good biblicist,” Cowin said.

McCune said Ubukata is consistent and persistent.

“He has put his hand to the plow, and he’s going to keep going,” McCune said.

He is the type of church planting pioneer that the MBC is praying will be equipped to make a difference one day in a faraway land for the advancement of the gospel. Partnership missions and church planting are intertwined that way in a manner where they would be praying for and working toward a synergy that could ultimately result in the launching of several church planting movements among indigenous people. This is Acts 1:8 in action.

“Our church planting team has always encouraged church planters and new church starts to be able to connect in missions—obviously right where they’re at but also to other places in the state, the U.S., or the world,” McCune said. “We’ve been working on some things to try to make more of those a reality. Sometimes they happen and sometimes they don’t. We want them very much to see first-hand about doing missions. We want them to do missions but also to understand and to give more through the Cooperative Program as they see that.”
Japanese works in Missouri and Florida are clearly an example of this.

“With language groups, if there are people who are coming here but perhaps returning to their country of origin, missions is being done both on a local and on an international basis right here in Missouri,” McCune said. “For instance, there are many Chinese students who are coming to the U.S., and if through our Chinese church plants some are being saved, they may be here four years maximum, but then they return back to their country. So there’s missions being done here, but then they go back with the gospel to their country.” 

ALLEN PALMERI/associate editor
apalmeri@mobaptist.org

Rep. Thomas Long, R-Battlefield, has filed House Bill 1278 (HB 1278) which contains several tax credit reauthorization measures, among them the two listed above.

The pregnancy resource center credits will expire later this year and the food pantry credits expired last year. Some 51 other representatives have signed on as co-sponsors of the bill.

Kerry Messer, who lobbies for the Christian Life Commission (CLC) of the Missouri Baptist Convention (MBC), said the crisis pregnancy center credit expires this year. The food pantry credit is already gone.

“When people make large donations to food pantries, it’s possible to get a 50 percent direct tax credit, answering their needs at home rather than pointing people to government programs.”

Conscience rights are addressed in HB 1075 sponsored by Rep. David Sater, R-Cassville, in which licensed pharmacies would not be required “to carry or maintain in inventory any prescription or nonprescription drug or device.”

Messer explained, “A pharmacy that wants to maintain pro-life standards within their business would not have to face the ongoing fears that they currently struggle with regarding threats of civil lawsuits for not stocking abortion-related drugs.”

He is optimistic about the bill’s passage given that Speaker of the House Steve Tilley, R-Perryville, has identified the legislation as a priority item.

On the pro-life front, Rep. Andrew Koenig, R-Winchester, has sponsored a bill that would prohibit what is known as “telemed” for the prescription of abortion-causing drugs. This is the practice whereby a pregnant woman consults with a doctor by computer rather than in person.

In some parts of the country, Messer stated, the doctor literally controls an automatic vending device where abortion drugs are released electronically. The woman swallows the drug while sitting in front of an internet camera. She is never examined by a doctor.

Other topics of interest include: whether to make the Health Care Freedom Act a state constitutional amendment; whether Intelligent Design is to be taught in public schools along with evolution; whether the state should ban the sale of caffeine-laced alcoholic drinks; whether to open up a huge expansion of Sunday sales of liquor; religious liberty concerns; bills vying to advance a homosexual agenda; and bills protecting churches and ministries from potential judicial activism, including the imposition of international laws and treaties. 

BARBARA SHOUN/contributing writer

“I’ve always been in favor of a name change, but after I understood all that was involved, I made a switch in direction, and I believe that it’s best not to change it,” Patterson said in an interview.

The task force recommended, Feb. 20, to the SBC Executive Committee that there be no official name change of the convention but that a non-legal descriptor be added. They recommended the descriptor “Great Commission Baptists,” which will be presented for a vote at the 2012 SBC Annual Meeting in New Orleans in June.

Patterson hopes the descriptor—should it be approved—will have both an external and an internal impact.

“My first hope is that it will enable us to reach indigenous people in every state more quickly,” Patterson said.

“My second hope would be that by giving a specific emphasis in the descriptor to the Great Commission, that our people will take the opportunity to consider seriously with their churches what is the Great Commission, what it is to which we’re committing ourselves.”

Patterson noted two reasons he has historically been in favor of a name change.

“Reason number one is our name no longer reflects who we are as the Southern Baptist Convention. The problem is that we have churches in 50 states, so we’re no longer the ‘Southern’ Baptist Convention. Some of our best work is happening in states outside of the ‘Old South.’ So, it’s just no longer descriptive of who we really are.

“The second reason I agreed with a name change is you can build four separate Southern Baptist Churches on four opposite corners in any state in the United States, if you have the right people in those churches. It doesn’t matter where it is or what the name is out front. It’s absurd to think that people are that much influenced by what the title is, but it is true that there is initial reaction against the name Southern Baptist in certain parts of the country—some of it politically motivated; some of it regionally motivated.

“I’ve always been in favor of removing every barrier that we possibly can to someone coming to Christ. If it’s legitimate at all to change it, we should do it to get people to Christ.”

By Keith Collier

Pending action by messengers at the annual meeting of the Convention this June, the name of the Southern Baptist Convention would not legally change, but “Great Commission Baptists” would be used an informal identifier for marketing purposes, according to Jimmy Draper, chairman of the task force.

Look for more tomorrow.

During their Feb. 10 meeting, the board unanimously adopted a statement denouncing what HLGU’s president, Woody Burt, called a violation of conscience and religious liberty. The statement was drafted before the president announced a compromise that would shift the cost of the medication from the institutions to the insurance companies. The board members called that compromise an accounting gimmick and said their statement still stood. The statement reads in part:

“Hannibal-LaGrange University is in total oppositional to the Obama administration’s mandate that health insurance plans cover contraceptives, including ones that can cause abortions. We believe that this decision to require schools like HLGU to provide its employees medical coverage which covers abortion-inducing contraceptives is an affront to our religious liberties. We strongly oppose any governmental edict that infringes on the fundamentals of our beliefs.

“… we firmly believe that God holds human life to be sacred. We strongly object to legistlation that mandates providing abortion coverage (Plan B, Ella, morning after pill, or RU-486) to our employees and their dependents.”

The school currently provides its health insurance through GuideStone Financial Resources, and their group plan “does not cover abortion, abortifacients, or emergency contraception, procedures, services or medication that would yield similar results.

The statement praised and encouraged GuideStone for its vocal opposition to the mandate.

The board also approved a new missions policy, formally giving priority in its missions partnerships to Southern Baptist entities. They discussed directives related to implementing that policy, and will vote on them in a future meeting.

In a move to cut costs, the school has decided to cease holding a separate December graduation ceremony. All students will “walk” at a May commencement.

Pat Benson, chairman of HLGU’s presidential search committee, reported to the board that the committee is making progress and hopes to introduce a candidate by the board’s next meeting, which is May 5.

By BRIAN KOONCE/ staff writer
bkoonce@mobaptist.org

MBC President John Marshall, pastor, Second Baptist Church, Springfield, got right to the point. He called it “reprehensible.” David Krueger, chairman, Christian Life Commission, and pastor, First Baptist Church, Linn, agreed.

“This is one of the vilest decisions any American administration has ever perpetrated against American churches, and is one more example that the Obama administration has declared war on Christianity,” Krueger said.

MBC Executive Director John Yeats called it “a frontal attack on our religious liberty.” He then posed a question.

“Shall the stroke of a pen by a bureaucrat devalue the blood that men and women shed on the battlefields of Europe and Asia to guarantee this liberty? I pray not so.”

Yeats noted that Missouri Baptist universities are now being forced to deal with a ruling that “seeks to secularize the institutions of faith we have built for purposes of faith.”

The presidents of Southwest Baptist University (SBU) and Hannibal LaGrange University (HLGU) spoke as if they were now under siege.

“I am personally offended by it, and our institution is offended by it,” said SBU President C. Pat Taylor.

“This violates our liberties and freedom of choice,” said HLGU President Woodrow Burt said. “We are totally opposed to the imposition, to put it mildly.”

Taylor called it “a serious breach of our right to religious freedom. We see it as the wrong direction. This is one step. What will the next step be?”

Part of the difficulty with a school like SBU being hit with a federal government action like this is the reality that in the 2010-2011 academic year, SBU students received nearly $24.4 million in Pell grants and other government subsidized loans.

“I think we’ll be forced to comply with it,” Taylor said. “It may not be optional for us. We are tied to the federal government, but it’s through students.”

Taylor said the remedy may rest in litigation. In December, Colorado Christian University filed a federal lawsuit with Belmont Abbey College, a Catholic school in North Carolina, to challenge the mandate. Taylor said he plans to speak with trustees at their Feb. 21 meeting about possibly joining the lawsuit. Burt added that HLGU is also weighing that option.

Another MBC entity affected by the mandate is the Missouri Baptist Children’s Home (MBCH). Russell Martin, MBCH executive vice president and treasurer, expressed the same sentiment as the university presidents in that he said the Children’s Home feels as if the action is creating a violation of conscience.

“We don’t know yet exactly how it would affect us,” Martin said. “I’m meeting with our human resources office and speaking with our insurance provider to try to get a better idea.

“It’s on our radar. Staff members have come to me asking how this will affect us.”

Yeats mentioned a legislative remedy that could emerge through a religious freedom restoration act being sponsored by Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla. A companion bill is being introduced in the House of Representatives by Rep. Blaine Luetkemeyer, R-Mo. But Yeats is also a realist. He knows who occupies the Oval Office.

“The tragedy is that this bill will most likely pass the House by a wide bi-partisan majority, but the Senate will refuse to give it the light of day and if it did, the president would veto it,” Yeats said.
“Who says that values voting does not matter?”

ALLEN PALMERI/associate editor
apalmeri@mobaptist.org

Why the government, of course, one that embraces a secular worldview, triggering an inevitable lurch toward a godless socialism and all that comes with it – squalor and tyranny. Economist F.A. Hayek warned Britain and America about such calamity in his 1944 classic, The Road to Serfdom. Hayek’s basic argument was that government control of our economic lives amounts to totalitarianism.

Hayek came to mind as I listened to Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius tell private insurance companies, “We will be watching” you. This chilling pronouncement by Sebelius came as President Obama announced a so-called “compromise” of his birth control/abortion-causing drug mandate. Nowhere in the Constitution does it give some bureaucrat the authority to “watch” – much less dictate to – a private business like insurance companies. The Founders left that to the states, but “Big Brother” has other ideas as we’re discovering with the Affordable Health Care Act, known as ObamaCare. It was former U.S. Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi who told Congress to pass the bill so they can find out what is in it. Now we’re finding out and we don’t like it.

Under ObamaCare, the president was originally going to force religious employers (churches exempted) to pay for health insurance that includes drugs like Plan B, known as the morning-after pill, and ella, both of which can cause abortions. His action ignited a firestorm among religious organizations which rightly see it as an attack on religious liberty because it requires them – against the penalty of heavy fines – to go against their conscience by providing insurance coverage so women employees have access to free abortion pills. Obama then revised the mandate, having religious employers refer women to their insurance company for coverage, giving the appearance that religious organizations would no longer have to pay for the abortion pill coverage. But it did not take long for religious leaders to see through Obama’s gimmick.

Nothing is free and the insurance companies will raise their premiums to cover the cost of providing the abortion pills. So the religious employers will still be paying for them – indirectly – in violation of their deepest held convictions. In addition, the revised mandate does not address self-insuring organizations, like Guidestone (see page 9). Obama’s sophistry was simply a political decision, that by appearing to “compromise” he can win back some lost support, particularly among Catholic women. Even liberals and Democrats criticized the president for the mandate. U.S. Sen. Joe Manchen of West Virginia called it “unconstitutional.”

Southern Baptist and Roman Catholic leaders rejected Obama’s revised mandate in the strongest of terms. Some already declared they will go to jail rather than violate their conscience by submitting to Obama’s unjust law. We are not to that point, but with no one backing down and the new mandate to go into effect next year, for the first time in a long time Christians may have to consider civil disobedience.
Obama’s mandate mess came just days after his Justice Department was handed a defeat by the U.S. Supreme Court. On a 9-0 ruling the High Court said the federal government cannot tell churches (in this case a Lutheran) who they can hire. The case served as another example of the growing perception of a president who does not like religion – and especially Christianity – unless it is under government control.
A pattern of behavior by the president is developing. He resorted to rhetorical gymnastics in his announcement of the mandate revision, using terms like “cynical” to describe millions of people of faith who expressed their concern over the contraceptive mandate. One of the first actions Obama took as president was to revoke the Mexico City Declaration, which forces Americans – against their conscious – to pay for abortions overseas. He continues to be one of the biggest supporters of taxpayer-funded Planned Parenthood, America’s largest provider of abortions.

There are many other problems with Obama’s power grab and they are provided in great detail on other pages of this issue. I urge you to read them carefully. Pray and think about the implications. Southern Baptists – and all Americans of faith – can no longer afford to say, “We don’t mix religion and politics.” The stakes are too high.

DON HINKLE / editor

​“I’m glad that the trustee system finally worked,” Freeman said.

​The resignation was announced in the afternoon by means of a three-paragraph press release. A morning trustee vote to express lack of confidence in the executive committee failed, and at some point in the overall meeting there was a transfer of the chairmanship from Wayne LeGe of Southlake, Texas, to Kevin Shrum of Madison, Tenn., who emerged as the sole trustee spokesman for the day’s events and the interim board chair until April.

Shrum wound up taking a few questions from the media in mid-afternoon. In answering one inquiry, Shrum said Lee resigned.

​“He felt like he had done what he needed to do,” Shrum said. “He’s still on the board.”

​Roberts’ last day as MBTS president will be Feb. 29.

​Trustees met early in the morning, with the door of the Ambassador Meeting Room at the Embassy Suites Hotel left open, and after about a half hour Roberts was seen leaving the room. Roberts then greeted a representative of Baptist Press before walking down the hall to another room with staff and faculty. After saying a quick hello there, according to someone present in the room, he left that room and headed toward the front desk area. By that time trustees were fully engaged in executive session and had closed the door, and Roberts was not to be found.
​The resignation was announced in the afternoon by means of a press release. Part of the statement was worded to explain that a meeting to consider the performance of the president was “suspended,” and that before that meeting, Roberts tendered his resignation. The rest of the meeting time in the morning and afternoon was spent in executive session. The press release made no mention of a severance package.
​
Shrum said that Hadaway, as acting president, will serve through the April board meeting, when the board’s executive committee will be recommending the process that the seminary will use to move forward in a search for a new president. Hadaway, who is an associate professor of missions, has been with Midwestern for 8½ years. He previously served as International Mission Board (IMB) regional leader for eastern South America, supervising more than 300 missionaries in Brazil, Uruguay, and Paraguay.

​Missouri Baptists have been engaged in the process of seeking God’s will for Midwestern, and MBC Executive Director John Yeats signaled his level of spiritual concern after the news of Roberts’ resignation became public.

​“We just need to be in prayer for the institution, for the faculty, and for the students, for Dr. Hadaway, for Dr. Roberts and his family, and for all the seminary families,” Yeats said.
​
Roberts was elected as Midwestern’s fourth president in January 2001 and began  serving in February. Among facility projects during his time were the purchase of the Koehn-Myers building, constructing housing facilities and renovating many of the campus’ existing buildings. The seminary is currently building a 1,000-seat chapel complex.

He came to Kansas City after serving seven years with the North American Mission Board (NAMB), where he served as vice president for the Strategic Cities Strategies Group. He also was director of NAMB’s Interfaith Evangelism Department and vice president for urban evangelism and church planting.

In the early 1990s he was professor of missions and evangelism at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary, Wake Forest, N.C., and co-directed the Lewis Drummond Center for Great Commission Studies.

Roberts has written several books from an apologetics perspective, most notably on Mormonism, and is known in Europe for his pulpit work in international churches in England, Germany and Belgium. His Ph.D. is from the Free University of Amsterdam, and he also conducted post-graduate research at Oxford University.

Among the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) leaders who came to Kansas City for the Feb. 10 meeting was Bryant Wright, SBC president. He left the meeting room before Shrum released the official statement and had no comment.
 
By Allen Palmeri
 

The group met Jan. 23 to discuss the strategy for reaching the lost in the St. Louis metropolitan area. In addition, NAMB’s Midwest director, Steve Davis, and Scott Pittman, partnership missions director of the Kentucky Baptist Convention, joined the group.

“We see this as an opportunity to get more done,” Jerry Field, Missouri Baptist Convention (MBC) associate executive director, said. “Missouri Baptists have always been active in the area. However, this offers an opportunity to come together with a coordinated strategy to work with churches on both sides of the river to plant more churches.”

Ben Hess, MBC church planting director and NAMB church planting catalyst, agreed that the effort will help reach the lost.

“Send St. Louis holds potential for God’s blessing the kingdom in the greater metropolitan area,” he said. “We can focus on making disciples within the new church plants.”

Hess also sees the resources coming in as a blessing.

“Resources for the early stage of church planting will be a great help,” he said. “Resources including leadership will be a plus, but the ultimate goal for church plants is to develop stewardship. We want indigenous churches—we want it to be their church and for God to grow it.”

Efforts have begun to start more than 75 new Southern Baptist churches in the city over the next five years.

“I’m thinking that there can be a faithful gospel presence literally in every community in St. Louis,” said Kenny Petty, a Southern Baptist church planter in St. Louis who is starting The Gate in University City.

Only 14.8 percent of metro St. Louis’ 2.8 million people are affiliated with an evangelical church, according to the Association of Religion Data Archives. While Southern Baptists have been here since the 1800s, there is only one Southern Baptist church or church-sponsored mission for every 7,037 residents.

While there are vast church planting needs throughout the metro area, starting churches among the mostly African-American urban core is one of the highest priorities of those developing the initiative’s strategy.

“We’re like most Southern Baptists in urban environments in that we vacated our cities 30-50 years ago to go and move to the counties and suburbs,” said Jim Breeden, executive director for the St. Louis Metro Baptist Association. “So there is a huge need and gap for new church plants in the urban core.” (Tobin Perry, a writer for the North American Mission Board, contributed to this story.)

VICKI STAMPS/contributing writer