16,000 Decisions In San Diego Mission
The shy 13-year-old doesn’t seem like your typical evangelist. His voice cracks when he speaks. He has yet to fill out his not-yet-adult body. And pimples dot his face. But May 9, during the second evening of Mission San Diego with Billy Graham, Joseph Bekkedahl did something that the famed 84-year-old evangelist would commend. He personally led a 14-year-old boy through a prayer to accept Christ.
"It was good, but I forgot some of the words," said the humble teenager from East Clairemont Southern Baptist Church in San Diego and a three-year veteran of the FAITH program, a Southern Baptist Sunday School evangelism program to help laypeople share their faith.
Bekkedahl was one of more than 20,000 volunteers recruited by San Diego-area churches who made the four-day mission one of the most successful evangelistic initiatives in the history of Southern California. During the mission, more than 270,000 people piled into Qualcomm Stadium, including a stadium-record 72,000 on Saturday evening. More than 16,000 people made spiritual decisions in those four days.
Mission San Diego was Graham’s 413th crusade since his first in 1947. Many expect it will be one of the preacher’s final public missions. Although he has scheduled crusades in Oklahoma City in June and Kansas City in 2004, Graham’s health battles have caused the evangelist himself to discuss his mortality. – MCJ Online
Clergy Salary Survey Reveals ‘Harmful’ Effects
Competitive, free-market approaches to determining pastors’ pay are harming the church and distorting its mission, the directors of a new US clergy study say. Conducted by Duke University’s Divinity School, it says salaries of American pastors have increased faster than inflation in the last 25 years, but many ministers still face tough economic times, the Associated Press (AP) reported.
A typical minister’s median pay – including the value of any free housing - is now US$40,000, similar to that of schoolteachers and social workers, the survey found. In comparison, Roman Catholic priests, with no wives and children to support, receive a median of $25,000.
Still, about 60 percent of pastors serve small churches, with an average attendance of 100 or less. Among them, ministers in centralised denominations – those with centralised governments and recommended salary scales such as the Episcopal, Methodist, Presbyterian churches – receive a median $36,000.
Those in groups with congregational governments, including Pentecostals, Baptists, United Church of Christ and other congregations that act autonomously in determining clergy compensation, only get a median of $22,300. The survey found that only 30 percent of the small, congregational-type churches provide retirement benefits.
The survey found that only 30 percent of the small, congregational-type churches provide retirement benefits.
Becky McMillan, a Methodist minister and survey co-director, said the free-market approach forces pastors to compete for bigger, higher-paying congregations, turning the ministry from a "calling" into a mere "career". – Ministries Today
SARS causing panic in China
Hysteria is sweeping through China as a result of the SARS epidemic. On April 27, more than 10,000 people rioted in the rural town of Chagugang, two hours east of Beijing, ransacking a local school after word spread that it would be used as a hospital for SARS patients.
Meanwhile, Christian organisations are reeling from the impact of the virus. Some have withdrawn expatriate workers. One large mission has advised against visits to China until the end of June, when the situation will be reviewed. In this climate of fear, Christians in China have found new opportunities to share their faith, reporting a growing responsiveness to the gospel as neighbours and friends seek counsel and prayer. – Compass
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