CP: 1.07% below last year’s pace
Year-to-date contributions through the SBC’s Cooperative Program are 1.08 percent below the same time frame in 2005. As of Feb. 28, the year-to-date total of $82,116,153 for CP missions is $891,885 under the $83,008,038 received at the same point in 2005. For the month, receipts of $16,243,662 were 0.91 percent, or $149,433, below the $16,393,095 received in February 2005. Designated giving of $79,734,314 for the same year-to-date period is 11.19 percent, or $10,044,405, below gifts of $89,778,720 received at this point last year. The $41,191,010 in designated gifts received last month is $11,007,376 below the $52,199,386 received in February 2005, a decrease of 21.09 percent.
Va. sends amendment to voters
Virginia’s legislature has officially placed a constitutional marriage amendment on the November ballot, giving voters in the state a say on the issue of “gay marriage.” The Virginia Senate March 8 unanimously passed the bill that places the amendment on the ballot, two days after a unanimous House had done the same. The two chambers passed the bill after Democratic Gov. Tim Kaine had sent it back to the legislature, suggesting only grammatical changes. Virginia is the seventh state to place an amendment before voters for 2006, joining Alabama, Idaho, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee and Wisconsin. If all of them pass, then a majority of states – 26 – will have adopted such amendments by the end of this year.
Hemphill leads study at Mid-America
In a first-of-its-kind gathering, Ken Hemphill shared his Empowering Kingdom Growth “passion” with faculty and students at Mid-America Baptist Seminary, kicking off their seminary-wide study of “A 40 Day Experience: EKG, The Heartbeat of God.” Mid-America is the first seminary to use EKG as retreat material for staff and students and the first to offer an EKG class for credit, with 33 students currently enrolled. Jere Phillips, the seminary’s director of extensions and distance learning, said 150 copies of Hemphill’s EKG book have been distributed to faculty and students, and 300 have been distributed to the larger seminary community to study together. “The exciting thing,” Hemphill said, “is this many seminary students studying EKG together, and the number of churches they can impact.”
ERLC addressing life, marriage, rights
Efforts to advance the sanctity of human life, human rights and protection for marriage top this year’s legislative agenda of the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission. The following measures will be promoted in the 109th Congress: the Unborn Child Pain Awareness Act, which would require abortion doctors to inform mothers of the pain an unborn child of 20 weeks or older experiences and to offer anesthesia; the Child Custody Protection Act, which would outlaw the transportation of a minor by a non-parental adult to another state for an abortion when the state requires parental consent; a ban on human cloning for research or reproduction; the Marriage Protection Amendment, a constitutional amendment to protect marriage as the union of a man and a woman; the ADVANCE Democracy Act, which helps bring an end to dictatorships and to promote democracy without military intervention; and the Workplace Religious Freedom Act, which would restore some protections to people of faith at work.