The Christian IndexNovember 15, 2017 | Reaching the World Through Mission Georgia | www.christianindex.org

be it.Ministry opportunities

continue following the night’s final bow. After the play, homemade cookies and brownies accent a meet-and-greet with actors.

“It’s really cool,” says Oliver. “Kids and adults con-nect with a character on stage and then get to talk to them afterwards. Other volunteers lead prayers groups and fol-low-up teams for those who made decisions. We work on developing those relation-ships.”

An offering to God“It’s a play, but more so

a missions offering to God,” adds David Self, associational missionary for Washington Baptist Association. Self ’s wife and daughter are involved in the play, and exemplify the time commit-ment needed.

“[The cast and crew] give up a lot of their time to do this well. It tells the story of ‘A Christmas Carol,’ but adds more to it. Change doesn’t

focus needed to be elsewhere. And for a message like this to have maximum impact, focus is required.

John Gilmore says it’s worth it.

“A large number of peo-ple won’t come to church for normal church stuff,” he expresses. “Maybe just for Easter and Christmas, but that’s it. This is for people to invite others. It’s entertaining and fun. I’ve enjoyed it every time I’ve done it.”

It’s a physical role, though. The 61-year-old Gilmore admits his knees remind him of that fact more often, and louder, these days.

“Throughout this play you see examples of the gospel leading Scrooge to change. In him, we see our humanity reflected. We recognize that although we may not act like him on the outside, on the inside we feel like it.

There’s an identification with the lostness of Scrooge. But, we realize there’s hope for us.”

By Scott BarkleyWeb Content Editor

MILLEDGEVILLE — The first weekend of December, folks attending a play at First Baptist Church will see a slightly different take on one of the Christmas season’s most well-known curmudgeons.

Many aspects of the classic story “A Christmas Carol” remain. Ebenezer Scrooge begins a miser. He doesn’t value his assistant, Bob Cratchit. Three ghosts visit him on a pivotal Christmas Eve. At the end of it all, he makes a vow to become a different man.

The gospel presented in various ways

“When John and Joy first came to our church a number of years ago, they talked about this particular ministry,” remembers Tim Oliver, Lakeside’s pastor. The play reflected Oliver’s view of outreach, saying, “I try to be open to present the gospel in our community through vari-ous ways.

“It’s a lot of work and requires around 50 people to do it, between the cast and crew as well as others helping in areas like hospitality and parking.”

The level of involvement becomes remarkable when considering Lakeside aver-ages 160 in Sunday School and 225 in worship. Church members’ connection to each other, says Oliver, spills over into the audience. Indeed, Lakeside members are encouraged to bring friends who haven’t given their lives to Christ.

To that end, if it comes to giving up your seat, then so

occur with a change of heart, but when Christ makes a difference in your life.”

Lakeside performed the play in 2009, 2010, and 2012. This year will be the first since then, due to various reasons around the Gilmores’ ability to lead its production. The biggest detour came following Joy Gilmore’s diagnosis of, battle with, and victory over Stage II ovarian cancer.

As Scrooge, John appears on stage around 95 percent of the time.

Understandably, his

John Gilmore, as Ebenezer Scrooge, holds Tiny Tim, played by Adrian Scranton, in a prior performance of “The Gospel According to Scrooge” at Lakeside Baptist Church in Milledgeville. After a five-year hiatus, the church will again present the play on Dec. 1-3. JOY GILMORE/Special

When Ebenezer Scrooge meets Jesus …

There’s a difference here, though. A big one.

In “The Gospel According to Scrooge” – written in 1981 – the lead character makes a confession of faith in Christ, asks for forgive-ness, and beings a new life of redemption.

Lakeside member John Gilmore first portrayed the lead character at his Houston church in the late 80s, doing so twice. When work in the oil and gas industry took Gilmore and his wife, Joy, overseas the couple intro-duced the play to others. First came the Netherlands. Later, they would do so again in Trinidad.

And whether presented in Texan, Dutch, or Caribbean accents, the message of hope resonated.

“I call it a dramatic musi-cal comedy,” says Gilmore. “We consider it an offering to the community instead of a performance. It’s unapol-ogetically entertaining, and unapologetically presents the gospel.”

The ChrisTian index | November 15, 2017 2

Shuford Jones honored with Lifetime Achievement AwardBy Gerald HarrisEditor

BRASELTON — Mulberry Baptist Association rec-ognized Shuford and Ann Jones for their faithful minis-try with a Lifetime Achievement Award at their associational meeting on Oct. 26, 2017.

Alan Hall, Mulberry Baptist associational mission-ary, presented the Lifetime Achievement Award to Shuford and commented, “This is an award we do not give often and certainly do not give it lightly. This award is significant because it is given to recog-nize a whole lifetime of service.”

Hall commented later, “Shuford’s min-istry has been exten-sive and profound. Shuford and Ann are

is like the Atlanta Journal, because he has covered Georgia from Rabun’s Gap (Wolffork Baptist) to Tybee’s Light (First Baptist Bloomingdale).

“He ministered for 20 years through the Georgia Baptist Convention (now Georgia Baptist Mission Board) with a surrendered heart. During that time he assisted in guiding the start-ing of over 500 new church-es.”

Impacting livesShuford has written widely

for newspapers and journals, having served as news editor of the Franklin News and Banner in Franklin, GA and has been a feature writer for the Newnan Times Herald.

He also served as lec-turer in Old Testament at the Atlanta branch of New

Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary. Ann has faithfully worked alongside of him throughout his ministry and her advice and support have been invaluable.

Shuford studied at Truett McConnell College and Mercer University. After graduating from college, he continued to study at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, KY, and Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena, CA.

He has written two books on the Psalms – Psalms: Fresh Hope for Today, Vol. 1 as well as … Volume 2 and is nearly finished with a book on the Revelation of John. His volumes on the Psalms are beautifully crafted, incred-ibly rich, and remarkably inspiring.

Mark explained, “My dad has not only been in the min-

istry for over 60 years, but has impacted the lives of hundreds of ministers, including my brother and me.

“People often stop me and tell me stories of how he discipled them, inspired them, or led them to know Jesus Christ in a deeper and fuller way. He has made a deep impact on people here in Georgia and elsewhere that will be felt for many years to come.”

A personal noteAs the editor of

The Christian Index, I would like to add a personal note to this article, because Shuford and Ann blessed and encouraged me when I was a student a Mercer beginning in 1959. He was a friend and a source of encourage-ment and inspiration to me when we were young adults.

Shuford and Ann Jones celebrate with their family upon Shuford’s receiving Mulberry Association’s Lifetime Achievement Award. Standing in back, left to right, are Johnathan Doss, Sara Doss, Teri Jones Ware, Todd Ware (pastor of First Baptist Monroe), Elizabeth Jones Doss, Stephen Doss (retired pastor), Trevor Doss, Mark Jones III (pastor, First Baptist Greensboro, and Kay Jones. GERALD HARRIS/Index

deserving of such recogni-tion. It was a precious time for our association.”

Shuford pastored 12 churches: Mt. Yonah Baptist (Cleveland), Ocee Baptist, now Clear Springs Missionary Baptist Church (John’s Creek), New Hope Baptist in Greshamville, Immanuel Baptist (a mission of Cross Keys in Macon), Ruth Baptist (Cochran), Wolffork Baptist (Rabun Gap), First Baptist of Franklin, Sargent Baptist, Sligo Baptist (Kentucky), First Baptist of Bloomingdale, Eastern Heights Baptist (Statesboro), and Cedar Creek Baptist (Winder). He also served as interim pastor of many churches, including two in Mulberry Association.

The Jones’ son, Mark, who is pastor of the First Baptist Church in Greensboro, stated, “Dad

Shuford and Ann invited Martha Jean and me to their home for dinner when I was a student at Mercer. As I recall, the Jones’ lived in the Cross Keys section of Macon and Shuford had purchased a very small European auto-mobile (I think it was a Fiat). He asked me if I wanted to drive it. I circled around the block and when I came back to their home I couldn’t find the very small brake pedal in the car. The car ended up wedged between two trees, both fenders seriously dented.

I was suddenly submerged into a fit of despair, but Shuford said, “Don’t worry about it. We have insurance and we are not going to allow that to diminish the good time we are going to have tonight.” He never said another word about it.

The ChrisTian index | November 15, 2017 3

In the early 1970s Karl Menninger wrote a book entitled Whatever

Became of Sin? Menninger was an American psychiatrist who concluded that while almost everyone grapples with a sense of guilt and shame, the word “sin” has almost vanished from our vocabulary.

I am beginning to won-der if “evangelism” has not disappeared from the vocab-ulary of many of our church-es. Several years ago Thom Rainer, president of LifeWay Christian Resources, wrote an article that appeared in The Christian Post. He stated, “Any prayerful approach to evangelism is better than what most churches are doing, because most churches are doing little or nothing.”

Southern Baptist mem-bership has declined for ten consecutive years. That trans-lates into 1.1 million fewer Southern Baptists than in 2006. Baptisms, long con-sidered the benchmark for church and denominational

J. Gerald HarrisEditor

OPEN DOOR

health, dropped to the lowest level in 70 years. The ratio of baptisms to total members was one baptism for every 54 members. That simply means that it takes one whole year for 54 Southern Baptists to win one person to faith in Jesus Christ. That is a trag-edy!

The number of church-es cooperating with the Southern Baptist Convention grew by 479, but that does not come close to reversing the decline in the number of baptisms.

One of the more disturb-ing statistics is that in 2010 Southern Baptist churches averaged 6,195,449 in wor-ship and in 2016 the aver-age worship attendance was 5,200,716. So, in the last seven years worship atten-dance has declined by almost one million in our SBC churches.

Mark Tooley, writing for The Institute on Religion and Democracy, stated that the Methodist Church had

10,331,574 members in 1965 and became an 11 million-member denomina-tion when it merged with the United Brethren Church in 1968. However, the merged denominations now called the United Methodist Church have only 7.3 million members due to a continual decline since the late 1960s.

“A 1967 survey found 60 percent of Methodist clergy disbelieving the Virgin Birth and 50 percent disbelieving the Resurrection. Absent the imperative for soul saving and confidence in Christian doc-trine, gaining new adherents became more of a sociological exercise or a bid for institu-tional preservation. Neither inspires great zeal.”

Our seminaries seem to be committed to the inerrancy of the Holy Scripture, so what is the problem? We profess to believe every word of the Bible, but have we allowed our evangelism efforts to lapse into a sociological exer-cise? Are we more interested

in institutional preservation than aggressive soul winning? Have we gotten to the place that we are satisfied with our Laodicean lifestyle? Is it possi-ble that many of our mission trips and outreach events are reinventions of the social gospel we so vehemently con-demned in the 60s and 70s?

We have the right message. We have the right education. We have more lost people to reach than ever before. What we need is a burden, a com-passion for the lost. It is time for pastors and their churches to develop a soul-winning strategy and use it to saturate their communities with the story of God’s redeeming love.

Someone on the scene of the mass murder

at First Baptist Church of Sutherland Springs, Texas said, “If this can happen here, it can happen any-where.”

I trust that we all know this is abundantly clear. Tragedy happens anywhere and everywhere in our world today. We also understand that there is no way to pro-vide 100 percent protection all the time. The best we can do is prepare a plan for the worst possible scenarios, but then to assure that we will not live in fear of being caught up in a terrorist attack, some guy driving his vehicle at high speed down a sidewalk, or an active shoot-er coming into our church, shopping mall, place of busi-

J. Robert WhiteExecutive Director

EDITORIAL

Whatever happened to evangelism?

ness, or school.First Baptist Sutherland

Springs is a relatively small church in a relatively small community. No one could have anticipated what occurred during the 11 a.m. worship service on Nov. 5. We all grieve at the loss of life and pray for the families who lost dear loved ones. We pray for the injured, for the healing power of God to be upon them. As believers, we understand that evil will show its ugly face time and again until Jesus returns, and He will return, as He promised. It is looking more and more like that time is surely near.

In the meantime, what shall we do?

I will be meeting with our Georgia Baptist Mission Board leadership team to

discuss ways we can assist our churches in developing security plans. Simply pre-tending there is no need to be concerned is no longer a valid argument. I urge all of our pastors to gather your leadership to discuss how you might best be prepared for the unexpected.

You might wish to invite your local police or sheriff ’s office to join you to assist and provide direction with such things as arming the security team in your church, escape plans for the members should something occur, some kind of alarm system that alerts local authorities, and restrict-ing backpacks, nap sacks, and similar containers from being brought into the church. Locking certain doors to restrict access during services

is probably a wise thing to do. Then at unlocked entry points, it may be necessary to post security at those doorways to control access for the protection of those inside.

I want every Georgia Baptist church to take the event in Texas very serious-ly, especially the reality that if it can happen there, it can happen anywhere.

ACROSS 1. Large department

store 6. First letter of the

Arabic alphabet 10. Animal covering 13. Jesus went into the

___ of the high priest (John 18:15)

15. Do it again 16. Jerusalem to Jericho

(dir.) 17. Mount Sinai is in ___

(Gal. 4:25) 18. “For they ___ that

he was Christ” (Luke 4:41)

19. Sixth sense 20. Wine bottle 22. The “disciples went

away into ___” (Matt. 28:16)

24. Penny 26. Welcome rugs 28. “Ye have ___ him

go into heaven” (Acts 1:11)

29. Governing authority (abbr.)

30. Waistband 31. “Noah offered ___

offerings on the altar” (Gen. 8:20)

32. Alias (abbr.) 33. Jesus gave them ___

and bread (John 21:9) 34. Twelve (abbr.) 35. Dogmas 37. Injuries 41. Laden with fish,

Simon’s ___ broke in Luke 5:6

42. The vine’s “blossoms ___ forth in Gen. 40:10

43. Moose relative

44. “His ___ is not changed” (Jer. 48:11)

47. Peter gets into this to go fishing in John 21:3

48. “The ___ Ghost” (Matt. 1:20)

49. Egyptian river 50. “The fallow ___”

(Deut. 14:4-5) 51. Damp 52. Bitter tasting 54. Dreadful 56. Pastor (abbr.) 57. Wager 59. “Thou waterest the

___ thereof abun-dantly (Ps. 65:10)

63. Before (poet.) 64. Competition at the

Greek games 65. Happenings 66. “God. . .hath glo-

rified his ___ Jesus” (Acts 3:13)

67. “___, thou art God” (Acts 4:24)

68. Elicit

DOWN 1. Resort hotel 2. Peter cut off

Malchus’ right ___ (John 18:10)

3. Wing 4. Jack or bunny

follower 5. Descendant 6. “The ___ of the

covenant” (Heb. 9:4)

7. “___ of days is in her right hand” (Prov. 3:16)

8. Thoughts 9. “Winged ___ after

his kind” (Gen. 1:21)

10. Toucher 11. Undetected

This special edition of The Christian Index is distributed online bi-weekly at www.christianindex.org to provide additional content to readers who prefer a print version of the publication. To read additional stories of how God is working through Georgia Baptists, visit the website daily for stories that inspire and inform.

The Christian Index is a publication of the Georgia Baptist Convention, 6405 Sugarloaf Parkway, Duluth, GA 30097. Our editorial office can be reached at (770) 936-5590. J. Gerald Harris serves as Editor.

12. “Peter said unto them, ___, and be baptized” (Acts 2:38)

14. “Rise, Peter. . .___” (Acts 10:13)

21. Accumulate 23. Car manufacturer 24. Pepsi rival 25. Elliptic 27. “Planteth an ___”

(Isa. 44:14) 29. Idle talk 30. Satan wants to ___

as wheat (Luke 22:31)

31. Fishing trade necessity

33. Peter to Jesus: Wash not only my ___ but also my hands and head (John 13:9)

34. “The mountains shall ___ down new wine” (Joel 3:18)

36. Outer’s opposite 37. “Go to Caesarea. .

.at the ___ hour of the night” (Acts 23:23)

38. Cry like a cat 39. Associate 40. “The ___ is red”

(Matt. 16:2) 42. “___ knew Peter’s

voice, she opened not the gate for gladness, but ran in” (Acts 12:14)

44. “Depart from the ___ of death” (Prov. 13:14)

45. Roman statesman 46. Jesus had ___ disci-

ples (Matt. 28:16) 47. Land plot 48. Listened to 50. Wild dog 51. “When the ship was

caught. . .we let her ___” (Acts 27:15)

53. There were 450 prophets of this (1 Kings 18:19)

55. Fierce wrath, as in Ps. 88:16

58. God to Noah: “The ___ of all flesh is come before me” (Gen. 6:13)

60. African antelope 61. And so forth

(abbr.) 62. Directional

points