Parentsunsure ifchild is readyfor preschool

Q: We’re considering enrolling our daughter in preschool this fall, but we’re not sure about the idea of consigning her to an institutional setting for hours every week.

Jim: When it comes to early childhood train-ing, Focus on the Fam-ily’s primary concern is to encourage a strong parent-child connection. We prefer to toss the ball back to the parents and let

them eval-uate their own unique situation. Does pre-school have the poten-tial to enhance or enrich the bond you enjoy with your daughter? Or do you sense that it might compro-mise that vital rela-tionship in some way?

Also, check your motives. There are

probably preschools in your area that can help, particularly with respect to language skills, cogni-tive development and edu-cational readiness.

However, if you’re merely attempting to turn your daughter into a genius or position her in the academic pack in order to “keep up with the Joneses,” you should reconsider.

Q: My son is almost 20 years old and currently is in college. He has really struggled, focusing on his classes the last two years and his grades have suf-fered in return. It is so important to me that he finishes college, but I don’t know if it’s appropriate for me to continue to moni-tor his work. When should a parent “let go” and let their adult child make his own mistakes?

Juli: Ironically, as kids get older, we prepare them most effectively by letting go. You wrote that it is “so important to me that he finishes college.” The key is whether or not it is important to him!

Motivation is something that a parent and child can’t both equally carry. When your son was little, it was your job to provide the motivation for him to do well and to try his best. Now that he’s a young adult, he has to learn to be self-motivated. This means that you have to let go of your goals for him so he can discover his own — which might or might not be graduating from college.

•Jim Daly is president of Focus on the Family, P.O. Box 444 Colorado Springs, CO 80903, host of the Focus on the Family radio program, and a husband and father of two. Dr. Juli Slattery is a licensed psychologist, co-host of Focus on the Family, author of several books, and a wife and mother of three. The website is www.family.org.

RELIGIONDEVOTION B2 | CHURCH EVENTS B3

Karen Gamble, managing editor | E-mail: newsreleases@vicksburgpost.com | Tel: 601.636.4545 ext 137

THE VICKSBURG POST

S at u r D a y, j u ly 21, 2012 • S E C T I O N B

DR. JuliSlaTTEryFOCUS ON THE FAMILY

JimDalyFOCUS ON THE FAMILY

Bowmar hosting two-day leadership conferenceBy Pamela Hitchinsphitchins@vicksburgpost.com

Bowmar Baptist Church is preparing to host a two-day leadership conference Aug. 9 and 10, featuring webcast addresses by a dozen nation-ally known business and political leaders, authors, pastors and inspirational speakers.

The local church is one of three sites in Mississippi and about 200 across the nation selected to host the Global Leadership Summit by the Willow Creek Association, a not-for-profit organization founded in 1992 and dedi-cated to building the effec-tiveness of local churches.

“The conference is designed for any Christian is in leadership or wants to encourage someone they know to get closer to God,” said Bowmar’s executive pastor, the Rev. T.J. Tenni-son. “It’s specifically targeted to a Christian audience and emphasizes leadership from a Christian perspective.”

But even those who don’t define themselves as lead-ers can benefit from attend-ing the summit, said the Rev. Terry White, Bowmar’s senior pastor.

“It’s a place to get a spiri-tual infusion, a spiritual jolt in your life,” White said. “You don’t have to think of yourself as a business leader or even a church leader to get something out of it.”

Featured speakers will include former U.S. Secre-tary of State Condoleeza Rice; William Ury, co-founder and senior fellow of Har-vard University’s Program on Negotiation; Harlem Chil-dren’s Zone CEO Geoffrey Canada; and Willow Creek’s founder, Bill Hybels.

Each day’s session runs from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. with a break for lunch. Attend-ees are on their own during that time, and the church has a conference informa-tion center with information on local places to eat. Out-of-town attendees may also find information on local hotels on the church website, www.bowmarbaptist.org.

Perhaps 150 people are expected to attend the Vicks-burg event, and Tennison said registrations will be accepted even on the date of the conference. To be sure of a place, interested individu-als should sign up by Aug. 7.

Cost of the conference varies by category, from the student rate of $79, mili-tary at $99 and up to $269 for individuals. Group rates for WCA members also are

available.Credit card registrations

may be made online at Bow-mar’s website. To pay by cash or check, contact or visit the church office, 1825 U.S. 61 South, telephone 601-636-2596.

Detailed information about the Willow Creek Associa-tion and its Global Leader-ship Summit may be found at www.willowcreek.com.

To registerBowmar Baptist Church

will host Willow Creek Asso-ciation’s Global Leadership Summit, a national webcast event featuring a dozen au-thors and business, institu-tional and political leaders Aug. 9-10, from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.

Register online at www.bowmarbaptist.org. The event, with costs ranging from $79 to $269, is open to all. To pay by cash or check, contact Bowmar Baptist, 1825 U.S. 61 South. For more information, call 601-636-2596 or visit the church’s website or www.willow-creek.com.

By Pamela Hitchinsphitchins@vicksburgpost.com

A new name is on the horizon for Bowmar Baptist Church.

Members polled last week voted 72 percent to 28 per-cent to approve changing the name of the church, one of the largest in Vicksburg, which dates to 1898.

“It’s a really exciting time for Bowmar Baptist,” said the Rev. Terry White, senior pastor. “A lot of

people are energized, antic-ipating our new name.”

The church is in the early stages of the process, which will not be finalized for a number of months, White said. Members have been asked to submit sugges-tions for the new name, which will be evaluated by the congregation in several phases.

A communitywide announcement will be made when the final deci-

sion is made, White said.Bowmar’s name change is

independent of and not in response to the vote in June by the Southern Baptist Convention to allow its affil-iate churches to call them-selves Great Commission Baptists, he added.

Originally known as Cal-vary Baptist Church, the local congregation met in churches on Cherry Street and at Clay and Adams streets before dissolving

and reforming as Bowmar Avenue Baptist Church in 1913, with 41 charter mem-bers, in a section of a mis-sion building on Bowmar Avenue.

The church remained at that site until purchasing 43 acres on U.S. 61 South in 1996, where its pres-ent church and fellowship buildings were built.

White has been senior pastor since December 1991.

on a missionFaith taking doctor, family to KenyaBy The Associated Press

BRISTOL, Tenn. — Dr. Aaron Jones had a plan from the day he started medical school seven years ago — he would go to Kenya upon fin-ishing his studies and resi-dency requirement and then practice medicine in one of the most rural settings in the world.

He graduated this past week from a residency pro-gram with East Tennessee State University’s Family Physicians of Bristol. By the first week of September, he and his wife and two young daughters will be in Kapso-war, Kenya.

Jones will work at Kapso-war Mission Hospital. Kenya is a small African nation on the equator. The nation is poor and Kapsowar is a small village of about 2,000 people.

“It’s a very rural area,” Jones said. “The hospital is about 140 beds. It has about 15,000 visits per year.”

An average of five children are delivered at the hospital each day.

He will live very close to the hospital in Kapsowar, which will eliminate the need for a vehicle. The village also has basic foods for purchase like flour, salt, sugar or beans.

But for things like meat and dairy, he will have to travel two hours.

But the electricity is fairly reliable, he said, and the drinking water is twice-filtered. Additionally, the nation of Kenya has invested heavily in communications infrastructure, so cell phones work well and there is Inter-net access.

“For third-world living it’s pretty comfortable,” Jones said.

Jones has been to Kenya twice, once with his wife.

“Her plan was to do mis-sions before we knew each other and I delayed that for her for eight years,” Jones said with a laugh.

Jones got his bachelor’s degree from the University of Tennessee — Knoxville. His medical degree was obtained from the medical school at Virginia Tech. He joked that he decided to split the dif-ference for his final leg of formal medical education

and accept a residency posi-tion with ETSU.

No one in Jones’ family was a doctor. His father is a pastor.

Jones decided in college he wanted to do missionary work overseas. Also in col-lege he worked as an orderly in a hospital, which piqued his interest in health care. He took trips overseas during this time and discovered he wanted to become a mission-ary doctor.

“The number one thing was, I was blessed to be born in America,” he said. “I wanted to take the gospel of Jesus Christ to people who haven’t heard it. Along the way I picked up medicine because I saw such a useful-ness for that as well.”

The Jones family’s two-year stint in Kenya was arranged through Samaritan’s Purse. Jones will be joining two other physicians there, who

Scientists, seminariansdebate evolution onlineBy The Associated Press

NASHVILLE — Public dis-cussion of evolution often turns into a nasty debate between young-Earth cre-ationists on one side and atheists who believe sci-ence disproves the existence of God on the other. But it doesn’t have to be that way.

Witness the gracious dia-logue taking place between Southern Baptist seminary professors and evangelical scientists on the BioLogos website.

In a series of essays titled “Southern Baptist Voices,” the two groups consider questions such as whether the existence of a histori-cal Adam and Eve created in the image of God is compat-ible with the gradual devel-opment of humans through evolution.

While there is disagree-ment, the authors are quick to emphasize places where they do agree, such as the reality of the mira-cles described in the Bible, including the bodily resur-rection of Jesus. And there is room for give-and-take on both sides.

The series came about after Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary Aca-

demic Dean Kenneth Keath-ley and BioLogos President Darrel Falk met at a Chris-tian scholars conference last year. Keathley agreed to invite seminary professors to contribute essays describ-ing their disagreements with BioLogos, a nonprofit foun-dation “committed to explor-ing and celebrating the com-patibility of evolutionary creation and biblical faith,” according to its website.

Keathley begins the first essay by noting that the Southern Baptist statement of faith is silent on how God created the universe. But he goes on to say that Southern Baptists’ very literal inter-pretation of Scripture leads many in the denomination to hold the view that God cre-ated the world in six, 24-hour days less than 10,000 years ago.

Many Roman Catholic and mainline Protestant Chris-tians today see parts of the Bible such as the creation as metaphorical, but for many evangelical Christians such a belief is untenable.

Southern Baptist Seminary President Albert Mohler, a young-Earth creationist, has called the attempt to recon-

‘I wanted to take the gospel of Jesus Christ to people who haven’t heard it.

Along the way I picked up medicine because I saw such a usefulness for that

as well.’Dr. AAron Jones

See Jones, Page B4. See Baptists, Page B4.

BrEndEn nEvillE•The Vicksburg PosT

Bowmar Baptist Church on Highway 61 south

Church members vote to change name