I have decried many things in the Southern Baptist Convention over the last couple of years, but I have to say that I have been a long time fan of Baptist Disaster Relief. This ministry is real “put your money where your mouth is” kind of stuff and it is well worth an “attaboy.”
When Bradley Whitford decried American evangelicals’ failure to act in the wake of hurricane Katrina on Bill Maher’s late night tv show, asking, “Where’s the compassion?” I wanted to jump through the TV and say, “Hey! Southern Baptists were there among the first and the longest, voluntarily meeting the needs of those hurting!”
In the last couple of months I had seen a news item referring to Oklahoma Disaster Relief, as if it were a state run entity, only to see our Disaster Relief Logo and yellow attire when they rolled the video footage.
But this post is not to decry the failure of the world to give us our due. They are lost. What more can you expect? As previously discussed on this blog, they have a negative view of us already, and it is going to be a long, hard haul to change that.
In the meantime, let me say that we are grateful to have a many teams on hand in Tulsa, including a team from Bellevue Baptist Church in Memphis who are staying with us the week before Christmas, after arriving at the tail end of a light snow storm last night. This team was raring to go and asked if we would object if they took the assessment sheets that had been turned in and started on them first thing this morning. They were very concerned that they would not offend
anyone, which I appreciated.
My response, which I repeated to loud affirmation this morning in the worship service, was that they were here to be a light to the lost and the last time I checked, the lost weren’t in church. They were making the most of the time, for the days are not only evil, but cold and powerless still for many.
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