Baptist Pastor Trumpets Another Call for 'Exit Strategy' from Schools
by Jim Brown
May 25, 2006
(AgapePress) - - A Southern Baptist pastor from Florida says Christians are losing the battle in public schools. The pastor, a member of the committee that brings resolutions forward for the denomination's consideration, says the Southern Baptist Convention should consider developing an "exit strategy" for children from those schools.
Pastor Darrell Orman is the pastor of First Baptist Church - Stuart, Florida, and a member of the Resolutions Committee for the upcoming SBC annual meeting in Greensboro, North Carolina. He says the denomination should consider a proposed resolution that encourages Baptists to develop a strategy for leaving the nation's public school system. Another education-related resolution that has been submitted for consideration urges Baptists to support public schools.
The Southern Baptist Convention has voted on similar education-related resolutions in the past, and last year approved a resolution calling on its churches to investigate what impact the homosexual agenda is having on public schools. Orman believes evangelical churches underestimate the influence of the public education system to silence even godly Christians working in it.
"Evangelism's down across the nation. People are intimidated. Our kids are not being the salt and light that a lot of times they should be," the pastor shares, "and that's why right now, the statistics I keep seeing over and over again say 85 to 90 percent of our kids, when they leave high school, ... also leave our churches and never come back." The Florida pastor says according to information he has been told, that ratio corresponds almost directly with the number of children in churches who are in public school.
Pastor Orman cites reasons he sees for the effectiveness of efforts to squelch the Christian message in public schools.
"I think the public school system has moved so far [to the] left, part of it with the influence of the teachers union and the left leanings of the teachers union across the nation," he says. "And then you've got the ACLU and others, the separation of church and state people, who are trying to inoculate the public system from Christianity, pretty much."
Orman suggests that churches, if they are able to do so, would be wise to start Christian schools that provide families an alternative to public education.
Jim Brown, a regular contributor to AgapePress, is a reporter for American Family Radio News, which can be heard online.
