SBC Life Articles by Don Beehler

FRANKLIN, Tenn. (BP)--At a time of the year when most children are thinking about the gifts they'll get for Christmas, 7-year-old Rebecca Foster is busy handcrafting Christmas cards to raise money for missionaries serving overseas.       Rebecca has created her own line of Christmas cards and, for the second year in a row, is donating all the proceeds to the Lottie Moon Christmas Offering, which along with the Cooperative Program supports Southern Baptist international missionaries. Moon spent nearly 40 years in China as a missionary before she died in 1912.       "God gave me a gift for doing art. I want people all over the world to know about God," Rebecca, who is homeschooled, wrote in an e-mail to family and friends, explaining the Christmas card program.       Last year, she made $100 for missions and this year she doubled her goal to $200, which she achieved in November. Since then she has raised her total to nearly $500 and was taking orders through Dec. 20.       Rebecca bundles her cards in packages of 10 and asks for a minimum donation of $6 per package. Her mother Susan estimates she has spent 50 to 60 hours this year creating and assembling the cards. Her parents pay for the supplies so all the money received can go directly to missions.

GREENVILLE, S.C. (BP)--After successfully launching True Love Waits in six African countries a little over a year ago, the ministry has received an additional $350,000 to expand its abstinence-until-marriage message into two more countries.

WOODSTOCK, Ga. (BP)--The John 3:16 Conference, described by organizers as a biblical and theological assessment of and response to five-point Calvinism, was held Nov. 6-7 at First Baptist Church of Woodstock, Ga. About 1,000 pastors and laypeople attended.

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (BP)–Two Navy hospitals and a new ship are among the latest global points of contact for Holman Bible Outreach International, a ministry of LifeWay Christian Resources. HBOI has donated Bibles and a variety of new Christian books to the libraries at two facilities serving troops in Kuwait: the Warrior Recovery Unit at Camp […]

INDIANAPOLIS (BP)–The prayer emphasis at this year’s Southern Baptist Convention annual meeting was embraced by a number of pastors in the Indianapolis area long before the first messenger arrived. As pastors who have seen firsthand the power that is unleashed when people make prayer a priority, they could only imagine its potential for the SBC. […]

GLORIETA, N.M.(BP)--Expanding on the success of Ridgecrest Summer Camps near Asheville, N.C., which are running at nearly 100 percent capacity, LifeWay will hold its first summer camps at Glorieta Conference Center in New Mexico's Rocky Mountains.

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (BP)--True Love Waits has a new resource: A special New Testament focused on the abstinence-until-marriage movement and other challenges young people face.       The True Love Waits New Testament is a joint project of TLW and Holman Bible Outreach, both divisions of LifeWay Christian Resources of the Southern Baptist Convention.

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (BP)--"What the youth need today is love education, not sex education," says Derek Ross, who directs True Love Waits in the Philippines. He should know.       In metro Manila, a city with 5 million high school students, school officials don't need to be convinced of the need for abstinence education.       At Dasmarinas National High, with 20,000-plus students at its main campus and eight annexes, it only took a 10-minute conversation with the principal, David Atas, to generate interest in sharing True Love Waits' abstinence-until-marriage message there.       "You don't have to convince me, I know we need True Love Waits in our campus," Atas said. "We have girls getting pregnant." In 2006, the same year of the initial meeting with Atas, more than 2,000 Dasmarinas students made commitments not only to abstinence but also to Jesus Christ through True Love Waits.       "Schools have jumped on True Love Waits; nationwide, we receive initiations every day," Ross said, noting that schools with 5,000 to 50,000 students within a short distance of each other is not uncommon.

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (BP)—-True Love Waits International officially launched its initiative to expand its abstinence-until-marriage message throughout Africa during a three-day summit in Johannesburg, South Africa, attended by representatives from eight African countries.

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (BP)–LifeWay Christian Recourses’ new $29 million philanthropic campaign, “A Defining Moment,” has received a $1 million pledge from The Carolina Legacy Trust. The pledge, announced by LifeWay President Thom S. Rainer in early July, will be fulfilled in $200,000 annual payments over a five-year period by the Travelers Rest, S.C.-based trust, which focuses […]