The Christian Chronicle (Oklahoma City, Okla.), Vol. 69, No. 12, Ed. 1 Saturday, December 1, 2012 Page: 3 of 34
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THE CHRISTIAN CHRONICLE 3
DECEMBER 2012
BY TED PARKS | FORTHE CHRISTIAN CHRONICLE
Inside Story
Bobby Ross Jr.
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DANNY SIMS
A child plays in Mafraq, Jordan, home to tens of thousands of refugees from nearby Syria.
BY ERIK TRYGGESTAD | THE CHRISTIAN CHRONICLE
Sims
Jones preaches to nearly
a thousand people every
Sunday The church tutors
children, sponsors leader-
ship training and academic
enrichment programs and
supports missions in Africa.
Jones recently celebrated
five decades of ministry for
IB
□
TED PARKS
David Jones visits residents at the Schrader Acres
Assisted Living Center, a ministry of the church.
NASHVILLE,Tenn. — When the Schrader Lane
Church of Christ moved to its current
location in 1968, members occasionally
had to chase cows and hogs off the prop-
erty, minister David Jones recalls.
Forty-four years later, the 15-acre cam-
pus is home to a licensed child-care cen-
ter, a 21-apartment senior center and an
assisted-living facility. .------- -----
Jones
the church, which met on Jefferson Street
before moving to Schrader Lane, north of
downtown Nashville.
Those who know him say Jones has
done much more than just talk about the
Gospel these past 50 years. He has given
the message hands and feet, empowering
the church to take on problems Nashville
shares with many American cities: under-
performing schools, crime and the hopeless-
ness fostered by discrimination and poverty.
“He takes the doctrine of sin very seri-
ously, but he also takes the doctrine of
redemption very seriously,” said Rubel
Shelly, who ministered for Churches of
Christ in Nashville from 1978 to 2005. “He
See JONES, Page 16
For a half-century,
ones has os tered
hands-on ministry
Eastern nation —
whose capital, Damascus,
was the site of the apostle
Paul’s baptism — has
claimed more than 30,000
lives in the past 18 months,
according to news reports.
Sims, executive director
of Global Samaritan
Resources, traveled to
neighboring Jordan recently to listen to
refugees from the war. “Hands-on love and
peace” are needed desperately, he said.
So are blankets.
Sims visited the city of Mafraq, about 10
miles south of the Syrian border, on behalf
of the Christian humanitarian nonprofit,
which receives support from members of
Churches of Christ. The longtime minister
became executive director of the Abilene,
or Christians in America, it’s time to
engage in the Syrian conflict, says
Danny Sims.
The bloody civil war in the Middle
Texas-based nonprofit in March.
Refugees have flooded Syria’s neighbors
since the “Arab Spring” of 2011 when
Syrians began demonstrations against
President Bashar al-Assad. In Mafraq, a
United Nations camp houses 33,000 refu-
gees — nearly half under age 18.
Other Syrian families live in borrowed
houses, Sims said. In the courtyard of one
such home, he spoke with a refugee named
Hussein, who lived in the city of Homs, the
focal point of the conflict between the Syrian
government and anti-government fighters.
In Homs, soldiers went from door to
door, threatening or killing anyone believed
to support their enemies, Hussein told the
minister. As the family prepared to flee,
Hussein’s 70-y ear-old father distracted the
soldiers while they hid.
‘When the family ... came out of their
hiding spot, they found their father dead,”
Sims said. “The army had decapitated him.”
Now Hussein and the surviving
members of his family huddle in a small
house with rusted pipes and a leaky roof.
See SYRIA, Page 14
Modern-day
parables: This
is country music
drive a minivan, not a
truck. I drink Diet Coke,
I not beer. I wear a baseball
cap, not a cowboy hat.
I don’t cheat on my wife,
dance in the neon light or
party all night with my rowdy
friends. On my best days, I
don’t intentionally do some-
body wrong.
But I do
love country
music, much
to the cha-
grin of the
queen of my
doublewide
trailer. (By
the way,
honey, would
you please
stop switch-
ing the preset radio stations
to classic rock?)
My friend David Duncan,
minister for the Memorial
Church of Christ in
Houston, and I entertained
our children recently with an
ear-piercing, out-of-tune ren-
dition of George Jones’ “He
Stopped Loving Her Today.”
Granted, this musical
genre is chock-full of bump-
kins who fall to pieces, deal
with achy-breaky hearts and
face temptation when the
devil goes down to Georgia
looking for a soul to steal.
However, I seem to recall
reading n the Bible about
a prophet who’s swallowed
by a fish and a prodigal son
who longs to dine on pig
slop. And Jesus certainly
had friends in low places.
In its 2002 hit “My Town,”
Montgomery Gentry sings
about a “For Sale” sign on a
rusty tractor, the mill clos-
ing down, a whistle blowing
every day at noon and the
interstate coming through.
See COUNTRY MUSIC, Page 4
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McMillon, Lynn. The Christian Chronicle (Oklahoma City, Okla.), Vol. 69, No. 12, Ed. 1 Saturday, December 1, 2012, newspaper, December 1, 2012; Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth1509323/m1/3/: accessed July 9, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Abilene Christian University Library.