Volume 69, Number 10
Campus Newspaper of Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary • Fort Worth, Texas
Thursday, March 20, 2014
a look inside »
the scroll
Gala provides time of worship, musical enjoyment pg 3 »
Former evangelistic atheist becomes passionate Christian evangelist By Michelle Tyer | SWBTS Students and faculty at Southwestern can easily recognize first-semester student Putti Sok riding her longboard, often with a flower in her hair. Even more recognizable is her passion for the Gospel and evangelism. But just a few years ago, she did not even know the Gospel. Sok’s parents are both Cambodian, but she was born in Long Beach, Calif., and grew up in Dallas. Despite being raised in the United States, the Cambodian culture still influenced her life. “My identity as a young girl, I saw myself as a Cambodian Buddhist girl,” Sok says. “Why? Because my parents told me.” Cambodia is about 95 percent Buddhist, Sok says, and her family continued to carry out the religion’s traditions when they came to America. But those traditions meant little to Sok. “As for the meaning behind what we did in the Buddhist belief, it was confusing to me,” Sok says. “I didn’t really understand it.” Sok considered Buddhism a ritual that came with the culture, just as she saw Christianity as a religion only for Americans. In junior high and high school, Sok began to realize that religion is a decision and not inherited culturally. But instead of choosing either belief, she became an “evangelistic atheist.” She would ask others what they believed about God, challenging them to try to convince her that God exists. Beginning her college education at the University of Texas at Arlington in
by James R. Wicker | Associate Professor of New Testament
2008, one of Sok’s goals was to build deep relationships. She succeeded in that as she made many friends, several of them Christians and active in the Baptist Student Ministry on campus. Despite the differing beliefs, Sok participated in Bible studies and attended church with her friends, whom she says were faithful in telling her about Christ. “They shared the Gospel with me over and over again,” Sok says. At times, Sok would even serve neighbors alongside her Christian friends, doing chores or other projects for those they met. While her friends would tell those they served that they did it because they wanted to show Christ’s love, Sok could only say that she was doing it because of her love.
“It wasn’t until later that I saw everything I was doing was becoming meaningless and in vain if it didn’t have eternal meaning,” Sok says. Her sophomore year, Sok began to realize that if God were real, He would be able to hear her prayers. Each night, she began to pray that He would help her understand what she heard from her friends and read in the Bible because it seemed like foolishness to her. Then one day, Sok entered a closet in the BSM’s building that had been turned into a prayer room. Inside, she found a bowl filled with pieces of paper with the names of students’ lost friends. One after another, Sok looked at the slips of paper, Putti Sok pg 2 »
Get to know your professors: Paul Gould By Michelle Tyer | SWBTS Jan. 1, 2014, brought not just a new year but a new home and position to Paul Gould, a recent addition to the faculty at Southwestern. Spending the past 16 years serving with Campus Crusade for Christ (CRU), Gould now serves Southwestern as a professor of philosophy and Christian apologetics. Born in Milwaukee, Wis., Gould came to know Christ as a college student through CRU, despite his initial doubts. “I didn’t believe that stuff, but if it’s true then I missed the boat, is essentially what I believed,” Gould says. Wanting to discover the truth, Gould began asking questions, reading about
Thank You for Bringing Jesus Back to the Big Screen: Movie Review of “Son of God”
Christianity, and speaking with Christians. Finally, while reading the Bible while home from school, Gould realized the foolishness of unbelief. “I knew in my mind that it was true,” Gould says. Gould’s wife also became a Christian through CRU’s efforts, and they both became active in that ministry. “We had a huge heart for college students, so it was a real natural fit to join staff with them when we graduated,” Gould says. His first few years on staff with CRU, Gould began to see himself not just as a generalist but as someone with a specific calling.
“I realized that in my evangelism, I always seemed to veer toward the intellectual types,” Gould says. Those first few years with CRU, Gould treated his love for truth and defending that truth like a beach ball that he would push under water, only for it to reappear. But he began to realize that God would use this passion in a more specific way. That third year, Gould began to teach an apologetics class and came to realize he had an ability to teach. His students’ desire to learn how to give a reason for the hope they had also encouraged him. Paul Gould pg 2 »
Jesus has been missing from the big screen for too long. It has been 10 years since Mel Gibson’s “Passion of the Christ,” and it focused only on the end of the Passion Week. But for a Bible-based full life of Christ, it has been 35 years since the “Jesus” movie (1979) and 49 years since “The Greatest Story Ever Told” (1965). Roma Downey (star of the television series “Touched by an Angel”) and her husband, Mark Burnett (producer of “Survivor,” “The Voice,” “The Apprentice,” and “Shark Tank”), said the idea Son of God pg 4 »
Preaching workshop explores 1 John By Keith Collier | SWBTS Several hundred pastors and students developed a better understanding of the book of 1 John and how to preach it during Southwestern’s 10th annual Expository Preaching Workshop, March 3-4. Sessions led by seminary faculty and guest speakers ranged from sermons on specific passages to helpful resources and strategies for preaching through the book to handling difficult texts. “Do you want to know how to have power in the pulpit?” asked Robby Gallaty, senior pastor of Brainerd Baptist Church in Chattanooga, Tenn. “Start preaching what God says.” “When you preach what God says, that’s what motivates and moves the hearts of men and women.” Gallaty led two sessions during the workshop, his first being a sermon on 1 John 2:28-3:3 and his second being “Five Pitfalls that will Sidetrack Your Preaching Ministry.” During this second session, Gallaty explained his sermon preparation process and gave helpful instruction on understanding the meaning of the text, delivering a text-driven sermon and developing as a preacher. Steven Smith, vice president for student services and communications at Southwestern, gave instruction on preaching EPW 2014 pg 2 »