SCBC’s Public Affairs Committee presents awards

Churches and individuals were honored at the South Carolina Baptist Convention annual meeting for their efforts in promoting biblical values in the arena of public opinion and legislation.

The SCBC’s Christian Life & Public Affairs Committee presented awards to Forestville Baptist Church in Greenville, foster children’s advocate Randy Harling, and S.C. Rep. Garry R. Smith.

Forestville Church received the 2014 Impact Your World Award for its impact on local public policy issues and other ministries. Church members are active in their community through weekly Bible studies in assisted-living facilities and a women’s shelter and perform a variety of ministries at a rehabilitation center and in public schools. The church holds a Bible study at a local boy’s home twice a month and regularly provides assistance with repairs to three women’s homes and a children’s home. The church is active in national and international ministries, having supported urban church plants in Michigan and a church in West Virginia. Teams from the church have led sports camps and ministries to handicapped persons and orphans in Trinidad, Belarus and Nicaragua.

Randy Harling was the recipient of the E.A. McDowell Award. Prior to beginning his service as president of Connie Maxwell Children’s Home, he served as senior pastor at First Baptist Church in Simpsonville. Under his leadership, the church began an adoption and foster care ministry called “A Home for Me,” and he has led other churches in creating similar ministries. Harling has served on the board of Children Come First, an advocacy group for children in the foster care system, and has worked with the South Carolina Department of Social Services in a number of capacities. Harling has said that the most urgent mission field in South Carolina is “abused and neglected children and their parents,” and that James 1:27 is a mandate for the body of Christ to be involved in this mission.

State Rep. Garry R. Smith received the Public Servant Award. He received national attention for challenging two public institutions that had required freshmen to read books of a pornographic nature with homosexual themes. He endured criticisms from the lesbian/gay/bisexual/transgender community, the academic community and some of his fellow lawmakers. He co-sponsored a bill that closed a loophole that would allow video poker to reemerge in the state and another that would have prevented abortions after 20 weeks. Smith also supported legislative efforts to strengthen public school students’ religious liberties, to make it easier to convict child pornographers, to prevent child abuse and to prevent a liberalization of sex-education curriculums.