Facts of Life explained

"Do you really know the Facts of Life?" is the title and theme of a new salvation tract produced by the American Sabbath Tract and Communication Council. The 20-page booklet was unveiled at our General Conference in August.

The colorful tract features 7 facts of real (eternal) life. Powerful Bible verses and illustrations point readers to their need for Christ and his sacrifice. The booklet ends with an invitation to become part of the closest Seventh Day Baptist congregation.

The "Facts of Life" tract is available now through our E-Store, or by e-mail at media@seventhdaybaptist.org, or call the Center at 608-752-5055. Each copy is 20 cents.

For a complete overview of the tract, check out the feature article in the October Sabbath Recorder-- now appearing on-line, and soon in many of your mailboxes.

May the Lord bless this evangelistic tool and bring many new people into His forever family.

Time to Book your Off-campus Reservations!

Conference 2009 is at Lancaster Bible College in Lancaster, PA, July 26 - August 1.

If you plan to stay off-campus at a campground or other lodgings, you need to make your reservations early because this is a popular tourist area! Go to www.padutchcountry.com for listings and addresses.

SDB Peace Fellowship posts resources

This year’s General Conference session included a discussion on the topic of torture. Delegates, pastors and churches were urged to use available resources to “objectively and sincerely consider the issue of the use of torture in interrogation techniques.”

The Seventh Day Baptist Peace Fellowship's website now has a section "About Torture" to help with these discussions. Click on or go to www.forministry.com/USNJSDBGCSPFSP/AboutTorture/ for further study. There, the tabs to the left take you to the initial proposed statement against torture, the action taken at General Conference, and some other resources. An additional article should be of particular interest to those who continue to identify themselves as evangelical.

A story on the National Association of Evangelicals’ Declaration against Torture may be seen at www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2007/marchweb-only/111-54.0.html.

Pastor Appreciation Month

Every Sabbath we gather and express our appreciation to God. At the beginning of the Sabbath School year many churches focus on the dedicated teachers. In the spring we may have "advancement" for our Sabbath School students as they move from one class to another. We celebrate with our youth as they graduate from high school and college.

We all appreciate our pastors but sometimes forget to show our appreciation. October has come to be known as Clergy (or Pastor) Appreciation Month.

There are good resources which can be found on line. Also it is a great encouragement to a pastor to discover that their congregation cared enough to seek out a special date to remember, whether ordination or accreditation anniversary, wedding anniversary or milestone in service to this local congregation.

If you don’t think that you will have enough time to plan for this October, you might want to focus on one of the above special days or do something on the Martin Luther King Jr. birthday holiday in January. It is the only national holiday that honors a pastor, a baptist pastor.

Here is a website from Focus on the Family with a downloadable appreciation planning guide in English and Spanish.
http://www.parsonage.org/cam/index.cfm

Here is a site from Christianity Today with information and pastor appreciation e-cards.
http://www.christianitytoday.com/holidays/clergy/

Don’t overlook the e-cards at our SDB e-card site.
http://sdbe-cards.org/index.php?cat_id=112

There are other materials out there if you search the web.

If you want to know some of the milestones from your pastor's ministry life, contact me at com@sdbministry.org and I will try to get the information you would like.

Prayer for Houston / Galveston

I talked to my Dad this morning as they make preparations for Hurricane Ike to make landfall near Houston / Galveston this coming Sabbath morning. Mom and Dad live SW of Houston. The Houston SDB Church will not be meeting Sabbath day but will be "evangelizing from home."

Please pray for those communities as they prepare for the hurricane that those evacuating get to their destinations safely and those staying are kept safe from winds and flooding.

Out of Print SDB Publications Available Online

There is good news for Seventh Day Baptists regarding out-of-print SDB and SDB-related publications!

The Historical Society frequently receives requests for information which come from out of print volumes. These requests are sometimes accompanied by inquiries about where these out of print volumes can be found for purchase. Purchasing the books through used or rare books dealers is frequently very expensive, and so this alternative is less expensive. Through the Google Books project, many of these volumes are available online in .pdf format. In order to save the documents to a computer, Adobe Acrobat (or a reader program for Adobe files) is necessary, but it is a means by which rare volumes can be found for free on the internet. (You can find a free version of the Adobe reader here.)

In the interest of full disclosure, it was not the Historical Society that scanned these volumes for inclusion in the Google Books Project, but because the books are public domain, there is very little control over where the books are now propagated, and so their availability online is good news. To read more about this project Google has undertaken, click here. Many of the books were in the collections of large university libraries. These libraries are now making their older books available online, and that is the means by which these are now available. (The more careful users of the Google Book Search will even be able to tell which books were in which libraries by the stamps in the front of the volumes!)

A list follows of some of the volumes which are available in this way:

Seventh Day Baptists in West Virginia, by Corliss F. Randolph

The German Sectarians of Pennsylvania, by Julius Friedrich Sachse

It is important to note that not all of the volumes which are currently out of print are available in this way and not all books listed are available in a downloadable format, but searches of key topics like "Seventh Day Baptist" or authors names can be a tool used to determine what books may be available in your area of interest. Often the books which are not available for download are included in our archives, and so requests might be made of the Society regarding the nature of the information contained in different volumes.

2008 Worth's Income Tax Guide for Ministers

If you missed the Tax Seminar at General Conference you missed an invaluable presentation on IRS regulations that affect both your pastor and church. As part of the seminar the Memorial Fund purchased copies of Worth's Income Tax Guide for Ministers, 2008 Edition (For Preparing 2007 taxes). We currently have 17 copies available for churches and pastors who were unable to attend. They will be available on a first come, first served basis.

If you would like a copy please contact Morgan Shepard at the SDB Center at (608) 752-5055 or by email at mdshepard@seventhdaybaptist.org.

Revival in Leonardsville!

Jodi Hawes, clerk of the Leonardsville-Brookfield, N.Y., SDB Church, asked if we could pass along some information about an event taking place next weekend—at least for your prayers if not your participation:

On September 19-21 there will be a “Faith Revival” at the Seventh Day Baptist Church on Huey Road in Leonardsville.

This 3-day event starts on Friday with the kickoff at 7:00 p.m.
Saturday begins at 10:00 a.m. with music, food, games and fellowship all day! Sunday’s program starts at 3:00 p.m. with music and skits by our teens. Guest speakers every day. All are welcome!

This event is free. “Before you meet God, you need to get right with God.”

Large Print Helping Hand

A Large Print edition of The Helping Hand in Bible Study is available to churches in the USA & Canada who subscribe to quarterly. If you would like to see what a lesson looks like in large print, download a copy of the lesson for this Sabbath, September 6, 2008 and print it. The edition is made available as an adobe acrobat (PDF) file on CD-ROM.

To request your copy of the disk, please contact the Board of Christian Education and ask for a copy to be sent. If you cannot print a copy from the supplied PDF, let us know and a printed copy can be sent to you for a small fee to cover the cost of printing, packing, and mailing.

A new quarter for the Helping Hand in Bible Study began this week. The lessons explore New Testament passages that show the community God is creating by His work through our Savior, Jesus Christ. The large print lesson linked above is the first lesson from this newly started quarter.