"Tom was a man of impeccable integrity," shared Dennis Dawson, associate executive director for IBSA and editor of the Illinois Baptist. "He had an amazing ability to combine humor with truth and wisdom in his writing. He was my friend. He was a true friend to Baptists from across the state. His legacy will be evident for years to come."

Baptists in Illinois best knew Adams for his column in the Illinois Baptist newspaper. Adams’ writings have been a fixture on its pages since the debut of his column, "Problem Corner," in 1972. The column evolved over several years into the current "Speaking Out." After 34 years of reading about Adams’ thoughts and memories on everything from the teacher who first told him he was a good writer to witnessing to a waitress while eating in a restaurant, many readers considered him an old friend. To many the pages of the Illinois Baptist will not be the same without his faith-filled words, full of wit and wisdom, and most importantly - his love for God.

In Oct. 2000, Adams wrote a special 28th anniversary column. He shared with his readers about the overwhelming blessings in writing the column. "I am overwhelmed with the matchless grace of God. Through 28 years of sunshine and shadow, mountaintops and valleys, ups and downs, His goodness has pursued me. He has given me something to say and the ability to say it. He has opened doors I couldn’t have budged with a crowbar."

He also expressed his deep appreciation for his readers and the special relationship he shared with them. "I am overwhelmed by the grace of our readers. No editor would keep someone whose work wasn’t read. To my continued amazement, you’re out there by the many thousands. There are more of you than are on the subscriber list. I am at awe at who and where I hear from.

"I am deeply touched by the myriad of letters, calls and personal words I receive telling me of you gratitude for my efforts. You’ve said this column has made a difference in you life; that God has used it to bless, inform and inspire."

He finished the column with a few words for his critics about his appreciation of them. "I also want to thank my critics who sometimes have been very vocal and vitriolic. You have caused me to grow. (Sometimes you’ve been right.) And some of you have become dear friends."

Adams was born in Murray, Ky. On Oct. 3, 1930 to Edward and Gussie (Wood) Adams. He married Romelia Ann Hooks on Dec. 23, 1951. Adams graduated from Murray State University with a Bachelor of Science degree and received a Master of Divinity degree from Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. He was Writer-in-Residence at Judson College, where he received an honorary doctorate degree. Adams served as a pastor in Kentucky at Charleston Baptist Church, Charleston and Airline Baptist Church in Henderson. In Illinois, he pastored First Baptist Church of Johnston City and First Baptist Church of Des Plaines. He served as Area Missionary for the Illinois Baptist State Association from March 1978 until Dec. 1984. Adams became Director of Missions for Fox Valley Baptist Association and served there until his retirement in 1997.

A compilation of his Illinois Baptist columns, also titled "Speaking Out," was published in 1995.

Survivors include his wife, Romelia; four children, Nevin (Mary Ann) and their children, Jennifer, Erin and John, of Fairfield, Conn.; Nate (Beth) and their children, Caleb, Noah and Ethan, of Duluth, Ga.; Carey (Julie) and their children, Hannah and Evan, of Springfield, Mo.; and Alita (David) Wrobel and their children, Claire, Joseph and Elijah, of Bloomingdale, Ill.

Nate Adams was recently named Executive Director of the Illinois Baptist State Association.

Funeral services took place on April 5 at Calvary Baptist Church in Elgin. Pastor Craig Furtick officiated.

Memorial gifts may be given to the Tom Adams Church Planting Fund through the Fox Valley Baptist Association, 1590 Weatherstone Lane, Suite 2, Elgin, IL 60123.

(Contributions were made to this article by Dennis Dawson, associate executive director for Illinois Baptist State Association and editor of the Illinois Baptist).

The Barna Group, a Christian research company located in Ventura, Ca., defines a born again Christian as someone who has "made a commitment to Christ that was important in their life, and believed they would go to Heaven after they died solely because they had confessed their sins and accepted Christ as their Savior." Born again Christians were asked about their "religious activity related to five of the seven core religious behaviors studied by the company."

The study found weekly Bible readership to be at 47 percent. According to the organization it "is the highest readership level achieved since the 1980s." In 1995, Barna studies reported Bible readership at just 31 percent.

Church attendance has "increased slowly in recent years" the study states. In 1996, 37 percent of born again Christians reported weekly church attendance. It has now risen to 47 percent, but is still below the 49 percent high recorded in 1991.

Weekly small group involvement has also increased. Twenty-three percent of those questioned reported involvement in small group activity. This is up from the 17 percent reported in 1996.

Church volunteerism has equaled its highest level of participation, which was set in 1991, of 27 percent. The Barna Group has found this to be "one of the more stable measures during the past 15 years, ranging from a low 20 percent to the current high."

Weekly adult Sunday School attendance is now at 24 percent, up seven percent from the mid-1990s. The report notes the decline of Sunday School in the nineties, but believes it to be on the rebound.

Prayer and evangelism were the only two core religious behaviors that did not show an increase. Weekly prayer participation stands at 84 percent, which according to the report, "has been the case since Barna began tracking the frequency of prayer since 1993." Born again Christians were asked "if they had shared their belief with non-believers in the past twelve months." The study shows no significant change in the past ten years, reporting six out of ten Christians had shared their faith.

George Barna, the company’s founder and directing leader, was encouraged by the study. "It is typical for us to see one or maybe two measures surge forward in a given year, only to stabilize or perhaps retreat to prior levels in subsequent years. The intriguing possibility is that with most of our key behavior measures showing increases at the same time, there is the possibility this may herald a holistic, lasting commitment to engagement with God and the Christian faith," he said in a media release.

The report was based on telephone interviews in January of this year with 1,003 adults within the continental United States.

To find out more about this and other studies go to www.barna.org.

It probably also won’t surprise you to read that lately I’ve been thinking a lot about my dad. On April 1, Tom Adams stepped from this brief portion of his eternal life into the glorious part that will never end. If you’re one of the thousands that have read his column in this paper for even part of the past 34 years, you are part of a "family" that both mourns his departure and celebrates his home-going.

These two streams of thought - impacting Illinois and my dad’s life - are flowing through my heart these days. In fact I find them flowing together. Dad was a "humble hero" that was committed to the Lord Jesus, committed to God’s Word, committed to his family and friends, committed to the local church and committed to local churches working together for the sake of the Great Commission. Those simple commitments resulted in a quiet "ripple effect" of influence, and only now with his passing am I beginning to fully appreciate the impact of that influence.

Funerals are times when families come together, and last week I watched numerous families assemble, or call, or write - to honor my dad and quietly demonstrate the impact of his life. Of course there was his biological family, and the churches and workplaces where they serve. There were members of church families he had pastored, or served as Director of Missions in the Fox Valley. There was the Judson College family that he and my mom have served in various roles. And the "family of friends" that wrote or called included international missionaries, reminding me that this humble hero had literally touched the ends of the earth. Just as a local church can impact its own Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria and ends of the earth, my dad’s life reminds me that one humble hero can create quite a ripple.

One of those [ripple effect families] was the Illinois Baptist family, ranging from IBSA staff to other Directors of Missions and pastors, to church members and even those who hardly knew dad except for his writing. Each one reminded me that my dad’s life had done what I still hope to do - impact Illinois.

I wasn’t really ready for dad to leave yet. Our last phone conversation the night before he died was about IBSA and our work together as Illinois Baptists. He loved IBSA and so many of you that he came to know personally over the years. He was committed to our Mission here. And I was counting on his wisdom and help for a while longer. But our Lord’s timing is always perfect. And reflecting on dad’s life has given me at least part of the answer to how we will impact Illinois in the days ahead. With the Lord’s help, we will do it one humble hero at a time.

Last August, Blagojevich’s emergency rule requiring all pharmacists in the state to fill contraceptive prescriptions regardless of personal objections, became law. Since then five Walgreens pharmacists in Illinois have been suspended for refusing to fill Plan B prescriptions. They and two other Illinois pharmacists have filed a federal lawsuit challenging the law. The American Center for Law and Justice (ACLJ) is providing their defense.

At least two cases have been reported of pharmacists claiming not to have the drug in stock, when in fact, the drug is available. Neither pharmacist provided referrals. One of those pharmacists was located in West Peoria. According to the governor’s office the pharmacist "demonstrated unprofessional behavior by allegedly lying to healthcare provider about the availability of contraceptives at her pharmacy." The healthcare provider called back the next day and spoke with someone else who said the drug was in stock, and had been in stock on previous day. The Illinois Department of Financial and Professional Regulation (IDFPR) has filed a formal complaint against the pharmacist involved.

On March 27, the same day the complaint was filed, the governor released a statement saying, "The law in Illinois is very clear: women should be able to get the birth control doctors prescribe for them. Last year, I issued and emergency rule to stop pharmacists from turning away women with valid prescriptions for birth control. But since then, we’ve learned that some pharmacists are still trying to get around the law. Lying to a patient about any prescription is wrong and illegal, and we won’t stand for it."

The IDFPR is issuing a rule requiring pharmacies to post signs explaining the options available to people whose prescriptions cannot be filled by the pharmacy they have chosen. A release from the governor’s office states the signs will inform, "If the drugs requested are not in stock, the pharmacy must do one of the following: 1) provide a medically acceptable alternative to the drug, or, 2) at the request of the patient, order the drug from their supplier, transfer the prescription to a different drug store or return the prescription to the patient." A toll-free number will be provided for customers to call if they feel they have been unfairly treated.

There is a movement to allow pharmacists to refuse to fill prescriptions for Plan B based on personal and/or religious beliefs. The governor has said he would veto any such legislation reaching his desk.

I comforted myself with the thought that, at least, I could hear my own pastor, which is an infrequent occurrence. Oh, sure, some of my usher buddies would tease me by giving me a visitor’s card and saying, "Hello, stranger!" But that’s to be expected when you have to mail your tithe much of the time.

Then my wife came up with this weird idea. She suggested, "Why don’t we volunteer to work in the nursery Easter Sunday?" Now I know that nursery workers are noble and necessary, but frankly, I don’t think that’s my gift. Why, I never got excited about changing diapers or pacing the floor with colicky kids, even when they were my own. I thought surely the idea would pass and she would come to her senses. It didn’t, and she didn’t.

Easter Sunday morning arrived, and I marched into the nursery with the enthusiasm of a man facing a firing squad or getting a root canal. Along with several other volunteers, I dug in to do my duty.

Then it happened. I was assigned the care of a 6-month-old girl. Immediately I fell in love with this delightful, fragile little person dressed in pink. I learned that she was the biracial daughter of an unwed teen-aged mother. One of the elderly ladies who lived in the same apartment complex had been inviting her to church for months. Now, on this Easter Sunday, she had finally ventured out to this new place with much hesitation. She was in the auditorium hearing the gospel, probably for the first time. Her daughter was in my care.

The little doll finished her bottle and went to sleep in my arms. My wife said, "You can put her down now." I ignored her. Later, the same suggestion, "You know, you can put her down!" But I couldn’t. As I pressed her close to my chest, I began to pray silently, "Lord, I don’t know if this is kosher, but this little girl doesn’t have a daddy or a granddaddy to pray for her. And Lord, I wand to dedicate this precious child to you and your will." I hope the Lord received that prayer. I’m inclined to believe He did.

Have you prayed for and dedicated a child lately? Take my word, it will make your day and it might just make a difference in a child’s life.

Tom Adams was a longtime columnist for the Illinois Baptist and former director of missions for the Fox Valley Baptist Association.

God’s not a lab animal, subject to clinical trials. Neither is He an automatic secretion which can be triggered by one stimulus or another. He is a person with a sovereign will, with the highest dignity and honor, and experiments can be right undignified. I’ve been in a couple myself, and I can’t say the experience was all that gratifying.

In my college days, a fellow student enlisted me for a psychology test. The best I recall, I was supposed to do math problems with my right hand while holding some sort of weight with my left hand, maybe with music playing or the heat turned up in the room. The stress and discomfort were supposed to degrade my skill at calculation. I don’t remember the outcome. I was just one of a dozen guinea pigs he’d chosen for his class project.

Then, in graduate school, another psychology student put me to the test. While I was standing in the trade book section of the campus bookstore, a young man swooped through, took a volume from the rack, and then proceeded past the checkout line without paying. All the while, somebody with a clipboard was watching for my reaction. Would I shout in protest or chase the fellow down, or would I simply turn back to my reading, unconcerned with the theft that had taken place before my eyes?

The experiment was, at least in my judgment, inconclusive. I wasn’t sure what I’d seen, whether the man had tossed money on the counter in a scramble to class ("Keep the change!") or had already worked out a quick exchange for a damaged copy. The counter was about 20 feet to my left, and I only glimpsed the exit in the corner of my eye. Then, not five seconds after the incident, the monitor was on me, asking why I hadn’t stopped him. I think I mumbled something about not knowing for sure what the "thief" had done and about my reluctance to make a scene under such circumstances. I do remember feeling put upon and unfairly judged.

But the big test came with a cash incentive. A doctor at the university’s medical school had been studying the low incidence of heart disease among the Masai of Africa. Reports of his cardio-vascular research had even made its way to Reader’s Digest. And now he had a new theory: Because these tribal herdsmen drank soured cow milk (among other unpleasant things), their cholesterol stayed at optimum levels. Accordingly, he devised a test wherein a group of folks would consume large amounts of yogurt over a six-week period and then give blood samples to measure the impact.

In those graduate school days of 1974, a hundred dollars for eating yogurt seemed like a lot of money, so my wife and I signed on. I’d already turned down $300 from another doctor to let him run a wire through some vein into my liver ("You’ll get a free physical checkup!"), but my interest in pay for clinical scrutiny was piqued.

It turned out to be a miserable, inconclusive experiment. We had to fix our own yogurt on the stove at home, with dollops of live cultures from a mother source. And though the assigned consumption started reasonably enough, with a half-pint a day, we were eventually eating (or drinking) a half-gallon a day. "Gag a maggot!" And to make it palpable, we were purchasing cans of pie filling for the mix. Some of the experimental subjects dropped out, with tears and angry words as we gathered for our weekly bloodletting. Most of us hung on grimly to the end, muttering as we finally drew our checks.

So what shall we make of the intercessory prayer test? Well, first, I assume that the STEP team was well-meaning, even hoping to find a strong connection between prayer and recovery. That way, they could encourage the enlistment of intercessors to speed or secure healing. But their approach was wanting. Reading through STEP’s press release, I see that the praying volunteers (both Catholic and Protestant) followed prescribed start and stop times, employed at least some formulaic wording, and worked only with first names and last initials. This seems to fall short of James 5:16, which teaches that the fervent prayers of the righteous are effective. "Fervent clinical prayer" may be an oxymoron, and who knows if those praying were sold-out Christians?

But more than this, how could God submit Himself to this trial? In a sense, the STEP team held a hoop in front of the Lord and said, "It’s showtime." That He did not jump is not surprising.

Some believers have retreated to the position that prayer doesn’t change the world, just the praying person. It is meant only to bring the heart of the petitioner or intercessor in line with the will of God. Well, certainly that is an important component of prayer, but I think that view fails to do the biblical witness justice. Prayer is more than personal consecration; it is also, under God’s sovereignty, strategic, impactful work in the world.

If all the data for all the righteous, fervent prayers for the sick in church history were in, I am confident that intercessory prayer would be shown to "work." (Though, of course, Christianity is more about how to die than how not to die.) I am just as confident that God is not amused at calls to perform healing feats on cue, and that He will ignore and resist the ringmasters, whether they wear lab coats or preacher garb.

Editor’s note: Mark’s column appeared previously in Baptist Press.

I found March Madness and the Final Four mentioned everywhere while traveling across this great state in the past few weeks. Ah, sports! Maybe we can find good role models among the ranks of athletes! Maybe. Perhaps.

So, where can we find good role models? I am glad you asked.

I received a copy of a letter received this past week from Stan Hunt and Rich Stuckey, both leaders in the Crossroads Baptist Church, a new congregation that began two years ago. The letter tells the story well; so, read along with me:

"Dear IBSA leaders,

Today is a very special day. A day that both the IBSA and Crossroads Church can celebrate! Two years ago this month, we joined together to follow God’s will in starting a new work in Brighton. (God) He has been so faithful and blessed us so much we can’t express it in words. We are now averaging 115-120 in worship, 70 in small groups, and our offerings have been great. We will baptize another 5 young people this month, which will be about 30 we have baptized in two years. We rejoice in His working in our church’s life.

We thank you for your financial support these two years. We wouldn’t have had the success we have had with out it. We feel it is time to stop the money support at this time. Take the money and use it to help another new work, and watch the Lord bless!

Thank you for your gener-

ous giving, for trusting in

us, and praying for us. May

God continue to bless!"

IBSA Evangelism and New Work Team Leader Ron Hale shares, "This is a great story! My thanks to this church and to IBSA Church Starter Strategist Bob Burton, who has helped with this!"

Oh, by the way, this letter was accompanied by Cooperative Program checks for December, January, February, and March! Wow! A new congregation, exponential growth, multiple baptisms, generous CP giving from the start…and now self-supporting! Now, that’s a good role model.

And, now, I mourn the passing of Tom Adams, one of the greatest role models that I have ever known. Tom was a man of integrity, wit, and wisdom. I thank God for role models such as he.

God has blessed Illinois with great role model churches like Crossroads in Brighton whose future is bright and with great (role model) men of God like Tom Adams whose legacy will continue. Is this a great state or what?