"From the outset, our committee has believed we were in more of a 'recognition' process than a 'search' process," said search committee chairman Jim Rahtjen. "We earnestly sought the Lord and prayed that He would allow us to recognize the man He had already set aside for this position. The committee believes Nate Adams is that man.

"Nate is passionate about the local church. He has a heart for reaching lost people, for starting and growing churches and he brings the experience and gifts to help us do that," Rahtjen said. "We have been particularly impressed with Nate's profound walk with the Lord, his passion for serving God with all his heart, and his love for the local church. Nate is a strategic thinker, a visionary, an effective leader and a gifted communicator. God has blessed him with a great sense of humor, an engaging personality, and yet a genuine humility that is refreshing in a man with his abilities."

Adams has served the past eight years as vice president of mission mobilization for the North American Mission Board, leading the work of more than 80 fulltime employees responsible for recruiting and mobilizing the Southern Baptist entity's national missionary force, its vast network of mission volunteers including disaster relief ministries and World Changers; creation of the denomination's mission education resources; and NAMB's corporate communication strategies including On Mission magazine.

He is the author of four books including, "The Home Team: Spiritual Practices for a Winning Family" and "The Acts 1:8 Challenge." He also has written numerous articles and columns for national magazines including Decision, Christianity Today, Campus Life and New Man.

Prior to joining NAMB, Adams served as corporate vice president of publishing for Christianity Today, Inc., in Carol Stream, Ill.  He has been a bivocational church planter, starting New Hope Community Church in St. Charles, Ill., and a youth minister at First Baptist Church in St. Charles. He also served as interim pastor for three churches in Georgia.

Adams shared with the search committee that returning to Illinois would be "coming home" for him and his family. Nate grew up both in downstate Illinois where his father, Tom Adams, pastored First Baptist Church in Johnston City, and in the Chicago suburbs where his father pastored First Baptist Church of Des Plaines (now Golf Road Baptist Church) and served as director of missions of Fox Valley Baptist Association.  Tom Adams is also known to Illinois Baptists as a longtime columnist for the Illinois Baptist.

"I see this as coming to a mission field in which 12.5 million people reside and yet where 8.2 million of those don't have a personal relationship with Jesus Christ," Adams said. "Through stronger churches, more churches and missional churches, I believe Southern Baptists in Illinois can welcome many people into the Kingdom of God."  

Adams and his wife, Beth, have three sons, Caleb, 17; Noah, 15; and Ethan, 12. 

We are grateful for God's guidance, and we praise Him for leading us to Nate Adams, currently Vice President of Mission Mobilization at our North American Mission Board, as God's gracious choice, and our Committee's unanimous recommendation to the IBSA Board of Directors as the next Executive Director of IBSA.

Please continue to support this process with your earnest prayers! 

Pray that the Board of Directors may enjoy God's guidance to complete the work of securing and installing a new Executive Director.  Pray that Board members will sense God's leading and move together in the unity of the Spirit.

Please pray for Nate his wife Beth, and their three sons as they enter a challenging time of transition.  Pray that God will show Himself mighty, wise and gracious as He leads them through the next several months.  Pray for great wisdom, discernment, strength and grace for Nate as he is presented to the Board and in the opportunities and challenges that follow.

Pray for Illinois Baptists, that we may experience a new season of effective work together under the leadership God provides.

We of the Search Committee thank every one of our faithful prayer partners for your support and participation in this process.  We are humbled, blessed and delighted to have had the privilege of serving you and our Lord in this way.

"God bless us every one!"

Search Committee Prayer Team

Carruthers, director missions for Sandy Creek Baptist Association; Woods, director of missions for West Central Baptist Association and Rains, pastor of Quincy First Southern Baptist Church in Bay Creek Baptist Association admired the job Ron Hale, an Illinois Baptist State Association associate executive director, did with the State Evangelism Conferences held each February and March.  But they wondered if there was a way to tailor such a conference to fit smaller congregations.  The Kingdom Building Evangelism Conference on Jan. 27-28 was their answer. 

Because small churches often have only one paid staff member and their pastors’ may be bivocational, they knew the conference had to be convenient to attend.  “We wanted to offer a conference that someone from that type of church could come to on Friday and/or Saturday and go home share what they had heard with the church on Sunday and the next week they could put into action what they had heard,” said Rains.

The men also understood the important role small churches play in the success of the state association and national convention.  Rains stressed the importance of the smaller churches saying, “Dr. Bobby Welch, the president of the Southern Baptist Convention, has urged us to seek to baptize 1 million (people) this next year.  It won't happen unless our smaller churches do their part.  That is what this conference is all about.  No matter what the size of the church is, we all are a part of building the Kingdom.  This conference will center in on developing kingdom building churches.”

“We want to encourage pastors and laypeople in the work that God has call them to do,” continued Rains. “God has these churches where they are to make an eternal difference. We want to give them some tools to help in that process and to say if you will be faithful to what God has called you do, He will make you fruitful.”

Not only are pastors and church staff encouraged to attend the conference, lay people are also invited.  “It (the conference) is for everyone,” said Rains. “It is every believer's responsibility and joy to be helping with building the Kingdom of Christ.  Our prayer is that when people leave the conference they will leave with a new sense of urgency to share their faith, to make evangelism the priority of their church and are encouraged.”

The Kingdom Building Evangelism Conference will be held at First Southern Baptist Church located on 900 Grand Avenue in Beardstown, Ill. Conference leaders include Darrell Davis, evangelist for Only Foundation Ministries (www.onlyfoundation.org), N.C.; Penny Davis, writer of children’s materials for LifeWay and a church music specialist for the North Carolina Baptist Convention; Phil Summerford, music evangelist from Indiana and many others.

The conference begins at 7 p.m. on Friday night and ends Saturday afternoon. For more information contact Carruthers at (217) 882-2231, Woods at (309) 343-1613 or Rains at (217) 222-8867.

Last April, Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich issued an emergency rule, which became permanent in August, requiring all pharmacists to dispense emergency contraception without delay.  This includes the “morning-after pill.”  The pharmacists involved in the suit believe life begins at conception and that by dispensing the “morning-after pill” they would be participating “in the moral equivalent of an abortion.”

The three pharmacists notified Walgreens of their objections to the rule and requested an accommodation of their religious beliefs.  According to the ACLJ, this right is guaranteed to them under the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (Title VII), the Illinois Human Rights Act and the Illinois Health Care Right of Conscience Act.

Walgreens began forcing the issue with its pharmacists in early November when it requested all pharmacists agree in writing with a new policy alleging their legal duty to comply with the emergency contraception rule.  All three pharmacists again requested accommodation of their religious beliefs from Walgreens.

Beginning at 4 a.m. on Nov. 28, 2005, Walgreens representatives went to stores and demanded pharmacists sign the new policy agreeing to comply with the emergency contraception rule.  Menges and Quayle refused and were put on “unpaid indefinite suspension.”  Muzzarelli was on a personal leave of absence and was told she could not return to work unless she agreed to sign the policy.

Another speaker surveyed a single year’s launches, as many as three a week in the US, as I recall. It was the age of niche magazines, and probably still is. For instance, the preceding twelve months saw the publication of, not just a new hunting magazine, but two new turkey hunting magazines. How could they possibly both survive? Again, it probably didn’t matter that much. The publishers were satisfied to simply be in print. It was the stuff of dreams.

Recently, I’ve been reminded of that workshop, but in a different connection. I never stop marveling at the way in which those who profess Christ will barge ahead with romances and even marriage plans where the Bible gives them no encouragement whatsoever. When the “love” bug bites, they will toss aside scruples, ignore Scripture, alienate their believing friends, horrify their family and embarrass the church. They will even fornicate and cohabitate as they slide into marriage. And though they may make a gesture or two toward breaking it off, they’ll then mope around as martyrs, only to spring back into each other’s arms at the slightest prompting from their fevered brows. As a ministerial colleague volunteered last week, there’s virtually no talking them out of it.

I have tried to dissuade them. And prayed. I remember one afternoon when Sharon and I were on our knees at home in the hour before an illicit wedding involving one of our church members was to occur. I had preached God’s standard pointedly, taken stands in my wedding policy and caught the heat publicly. Through it all, the man in question had been my friend, and then he went right out and “followed his heart” away from the wife of his youth to marry a woman who had “followed her heart” away from the husband of her youth, right before our eyes. It was astonishing. “But surely God wanted them to be happy – and he would forgive them.” So the reasoning went, I suppose.

Why is this so? I can think of two reasons right off: 1. relationship idolatry; 2. mission deficit.

Of course, some folks dream of riotous, hedonistic living. Still others fantasize about pulling the levers of power in the highest corporate or governmental councils, not for the public good, but for their own gratification and aggrandizement. But most people would be satisfied with someone who would hold them on a cold night, offer a sympathetic shoulder to cry on, darn their socks or chop their wood, laugh with them over the intricacies of domesticity, buy them presents, plan trips with them and accompany them to entertainments. They just want someone who will make them feel good in warmhearted sort of way. Who doesn’t? Relationships can be wonderful. Unless.

Unless, that is, they violate God’s counsel. But God’s counsel is usually displaced in this culture, relegated to the back shelves, well behind the prime stock of affections, affirmations and commiserations. Even in church. Some call it the “Oprahfication of America.” Holiness is nice, but it doesn’t have a chance up against feelings.

Second, being “unequally yoked” or “living in sin” has little effect on spiritually useless lives. If there is no ministry to damage, no ministry gets damaged. With or without the stain of sexual or marital indiscretion, a vapid life is still vapid, at least in Kingdom terms. If you have no sense of teamship in marriage for the sake of the Great Commission, you hardly notice the loss when the very ground of that teamship – holy matrimony between a consecrated man and woman – is ignored.

Which brings me to Lottie Moon, the namesake of Southern Baptists’ annual offering for International Missions. She was engaged to Crawford Toy, a rising star in the universe of Baptist, and indeed American, academia. But when she found his treatment of Scripture objectionable, she walked away from the relationship and chose a life of sacrificial solitude half a world away. Consider this passage from Irwin Hyatt’s book, “Our Ordered Lives Confess: Three 19^th Century Missionaries in East Shantung” (Harvard, 1976), found at the SBC Web site:

Professor Toy, as he had now become, wrote reproposing marriage and suggesting mission work together in Japan. … He was known as a brilliant linguist and theologian. Following the Civil War he had studied in Europe, where he was exposed to Darwinian theory and to "the new ideas of the German scholars" on Old Testament history and inspiration. … Her conclusion was that … evolution was for her an "untenable position." … Later in China, heated letters arrive, and "The temptation is great." The professor, however, now espouses theories that "do not square with God's Word." Rejecting C.H. Toy, Harvard and glory, Miss Moon says, "My cross is loneliness. …"

Of course, Lottie Moon was concerned with relationships, but those that mattered most were with her Lord and with the Chinese people to whom he sent her on mission. She could have consorted and snuggled with Professor Toy in Massachusetts or Japan, but she knew that he was not her soul mate on mission for the Lord. This was quite enough to end that romance and free her for heroic service in Christ.

Those seeking marriage outside the counsel of God often quote the Genesis verse that says it was not good for Adam to be alone. I’ve just passed the life-sized portrait of Lottie Moon, hanging in Southern Seminary’s Honeycutt Center, and I’ve been reminded that she was not at all alone. Standing around her are five Chinese beneficiaries of her life, prepared to say, “Thank you, Miss Moon” (not “Mrs. Toy”).

I’m sure a case could be made that the original crusades were for a worthy, even noble cause. However, one would be hard pressed to justify the excesses and atrocities committed by these well-meaning warriors in pursuit of their just cause.

Today there are no shortages of worthy causes. Take your pick: civil rights, cancer cure, AIDS research, Scriptural inerrancy, pro-family, anti-substance abuse, etc.  These are just a few of hundreds that could be mentioned.

Thank God for committed people who give unreservedly of their time, ability and resources to right wrongs and better the human condition. We can never have too many of these salt-of-the-earth folks. But even devoted people with an acute sense of injustice can be compelled to actions and attitudes that are incongruent with the noble purpose, which launched them.

Maybe I’m splitting hairs, but I don’t think so. I believe there is a difference between crusades and a crusader. The latter is particularly vulnerable to certain pitfalls, yet is seldom aware of them because the nobility of the cause supercedes all else.

One of these is that the end justifies the means. That’s why the crusaders could hold the cross aloft with one hand and pillage villages and slaughter innocent multitudes with the other. That’s why the Spanish Inquisitors were unmoved by the shrieks of the victims of their torture.

Crusaders believe that only they, their group and methodology can bring about the needed change. All others are enemies or obstructionists.

Psychologists speak of a “Crusader’s rage” which begins with a hatred of injustice and turns into a hatred of people. Issues are replaced by hatred of the opposition and even those who agree but aren’t as committed.

Crusaders tend to view others as objects. Everyone becomes an ally or an enemy, a co-worker or an obstacle.

Crusaders usually become single-minded in their devotion. The specific cause becomes the focal point of life. There is no room for any other passion.

"I enjoy working with our staff and feel honored to serve Christ in this ministry,” Thompson said.  “I am looking forward to serving as director of Angels' Cove and am excited to see what God is going to do in the lives of our families and residents.  God's grace, wisdom and love continue to surround our ministry and I am in awe of how He reveals himself daily through the families we serve.  Every need we have ever had, God supplied.  What an awesome place to serve."

Sometimes that Law kicks in at IBSA or in one of the nearly 1,100 magnificent bodies of Christ that make up our state convention. Less than desirable things happen. Old Smutty Face (Satan himself) makes his presence known in a variety of ways.  Sometimes the circumstances are giants; sometimes they are little deviations that could begin to mount up. Satan’s ultimate goal is to sabotage the lives of believers and to compromise the effectiveness of God’s churches. It could be tempting to give up.

HOWEVER, we serve a God Who is bigger than all our circumstances! I have shared in recent columns about Illinois churches that have experienced gigantic turnarounds. I talked with a person even this week that is involved in plans to “rebirth a church.”  Enthusiasm is running high as this group is seeing God do a magnificent retooling in the lives of people and in the life of the church so that His kingdom might be magnified. And I could share hundreds of similar stories of God’s churches thriving in their own unique contexts.  New works are being started and existing congregations are being strengthened.

Am I surprised to see God working through 1,100 different sets of circumstances? No! He is an awesome God! Am I surprised at the marvelous spirit of optimism, willingness and confidence in God among Baptists in Illinois? Absolutely not! Illinois Baptists are a great people. 

Time after time, wherever I go throughout Illinois, I find a great God doing a great work through a great people called Illinois Baptists. Murphy’s Law is only a minor distraction when it comes face to face with a great God and a great people.  Is this a great state or what?