Southern Baptists wrap up LV effort

Stacy J. Willis

Monday, Nov. 19, 2001 | 10:56 a.m.

Although Southern Baptists are known for preaching that gambling is a sin, the group's North American Mission Board sunk $1.4 million into evangelism in Las Vegas this year and did not take on the gaming industry.

The "Loving Las Vegas" mission -- a yearlong effort to improve the Baptist image and develop new churches in Southern Nevada -- is wrapping up this month.

The result: 22 new churches were planted in Clark County.

Missionaries focused on building numbers by approaching minority groups -- they planted churches in the Las Vegas Japanese, Thai and Brazilian communities in addition to supplementing existing churches in the Hispanic and Haitian communities.

Harry Watson, mission director of the Southern Nevada Baptist Association, said it is impractical to fight gambling in a gambling-run town.

"Many, many Christians in Las Vegas work in the gaming industry," Watson said early in the campaign. "There is no reason for us to have a particular platform against gaming."

However, the Southern Baptist Convention leadership preaches to a different choir -- and has taken anti-gambling stances in other states. In South Carolina, Southern Baptists refused to support the governor because he encouraged the growth of organized gambling. Similar positions have been taken by Baptists in Alabama and Georgia.

In 1997 the convention passed the "Resolution Opposing Gambling and its Advertisements," which reads in part:

"The tidal wave of gambling in our country has left in its wake pain and destruction in the lives of countless people, especially the children, poor and elderly...

"Be it therefore resolved that we, messengers of the Southern Baptist Convention ... call on all Christians to exercise their influence by refusing to participate in any form of gambling or its promotion; and be it finally resolved that we urge our political leaders to enact laws restricting and eventually eliminating all forms of gambling and its advertisement."

But Martin King, North American Mission Board public affairs director, said the Las Vegas mission was not aimed at taking a stand on social positions, but on "sharing the gospel of Jesus Christ."

"We are very pleased with Loving Las Vegas and the thousands of opportunities it provided to share the gospel message with the greater Las Vegas area," King said. "It gave local Southern Baptists a leg up."

Las Vegas was chosen as a "strategic focus city" for 2001 by the the Atlanta-based Board, which chooses two cities each year to receive funds and hundreds of missionaries.

In 2000 those cities were Chicago and Phoenix; in 2001 besides Las Vegas, Boston was a focus. Philadelphia and Seattle are next on the Baptist's list.

The North American Mission Board's website said about the selection of Las Vegas, "This city, where gaming is a way of life, needs the gospel message of Christ shared in a variety of different and meaningful ways."

But Watson said the first step toward creating Baptist communities is introducing people to the faith in a non-confrontational manner.

In fact, the mission drew less controversy in Las Vegas than in Chicago, where a group of 39 interfaith leaders wrote a letter in 1999 expressing their discontent with the Baptists' selection of their city as an evangelistic target.

Chicago's religious leaders said the Baptist mission created a "climate conducive to hate crimes" because the Southern Baptist Convention had recently released prayer guides that suggested Jews and Hindus were spiritually lacking.

"Each community is different," Watson said. "The significance for Las Vegas was that people began to see that church can make a difference in their lives."

Campaign employees and volunteers recently vacated the Loving Las Vegas offices that served as a hub for Jesus video distribution, block-party planning and church starting.

There are about 100 Southern Baptist churches in Clark County and about 40,000 nationwide. The Southern Baptist Convention is the largest Protestant denomination in the U.S., with nearly 16 million members.

Southern Nevada's new congregations were in some cases broken off from existing churches and range in size from five to 200 people each, Watson said.

"But it takes time to build a lasting congregation," Watson said. The association will receive more than $500,000 from the Southern Baptist Convention's North American Mission Board to follow up on its Las Vegas work through next year.

The Rev. Shawn Jewell, a self-described "church-planter," credits the Loving Las Vegas funds with making his new church possible.

Jewell has been courting the Las Vegas Japanese community for six months. His new church -- now nine members large and housed in his home -- is called First Las Vegas Japanese Baptist Church.

"We put fliers (advertising the church) in the Japanese supermarket and in businesses where Japanese people go," Jewell, whose wife speaks Japanese, said. There are more than 6,000 Japanese Americans in Las Vegas; most come from a Shinto or Buddhist spiritual background.

"God put it in my heart to do this," Jewell said about his mission. "We're off to a good start."