{"id":7937,"date":"2004-02-14T23:18:34","date_gmt":"2004-02-14T23:18:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/viamedia\/2004\/02\/sb_in_nyc.html"},"modified":"2004-02-14T23:18:34","modified_gmt":"2004-02-14T23:18:34","slug":"sb_in_nyc","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2004\/02\/sb_in_nyc.html","title":{"rendered":"SB in NYC"},"content":{"rendered":"

A NYTimes piece on the Southern Baptist strategy in New York City<\/a><\/p>\n

“If you give them something of value, that kind of sets it apart,” said Kelley Searcy, a missionary from Atlanta, in a Midtown office on a recent Thursday as she and six other missionaries stapled thousands of cereal bars to postcards advertising a series of church services on the theme of “Sex in the City.”<\/p>\n

While laying the groundwork for the 2004 “New Hope New York” campaign, the Southern Baptists have already founded two new churches in Manhattan, but one has to look hard to find the Southern Baptist connection.<\/p>\n

One called the Journey was founded a year and a half ago by Ms. Searcy and her husband, the Rev. Nelson Searcy. Its Sunday morning services nearly fill the Promenade Theater on the Upper West Side. Each service opens with a soft rock band playing Christian music, followed by other performances, skits and prerecorded video displays.<\/p>\n

The theology, however, sticks closely to the Southern Baptist tradition. “For those who are Christians, you will have eternal life,” Mr. Searcy told the mostly 20-something crowd that filled the theater in a recent Sunday morning. “For those who are not, Jesus describes it as eternal punishment,” he continued, warning, “You don’t want to go there.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A NYTimes piece on the Southern Baptist strategy in New York City “If you give them something of value, that kind of sets it apart,” said Kelley Searcy, a missionary from Atlanta, in a Midtown office on a recent Thursday as she and six other missionaries stapled thousands of cereal bars to postcards advertising a…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":180,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7937","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"\nSB in NYC - Via Media<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2004\/02\/sb_in_nyc.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"SB in NYC - 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The Catholicism comes from her side. Amy grew up in a number of places - Indiana - Washington, DC - Lubbock Texas - Arlington, Virginia - DeKalb, Illinois - Lawrence, Kansas - and Knoxville, Tennessee, where the family settled in 1973. She attended Knoxville Catholic High School, then the University of Tennessee where she majored in history. She received an MA in Church History from Vanderbilt University, where she wrote a thesis on the changing role of women in 19th century American Protestantism, and the ways Scripture was used to justify those changes. She worked as as a teacher in Catholic high schools and a Parish Director of Religious Education and started writing for the diocesan press - the Florida Catholic - in 1988. Amy has written columns for Our Sunday Visitor and Catholic News Service at times over the past twenty years. Her articles have been published in venues ranging from Our Sunday Visitor to the New York Times to Commonweal. She has written 17 books. 18, if you included the as yet tragically unpublished novel. Amy has five children, ranging in age from 26 to 4 and was married to Michael Dubruiel, who died unexpectedly in February 2009. She lives in Birmingham, Alabama.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/author\/awelborn"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7937","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/180"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7937"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7937\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7937"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7937"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7937"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}