DATE: Saturday, November 22, 1997           TAG: 9711210104

SECTION: DAILY BREAK             PAGE: E3   EDITION: FINAL 

SOURCE: From staff and wire reports  

                                            LENGTH:   64 lines

NEWS AND NOTES

Kinchlow tells breakfast

group to focus on Bible

Ben Kinchlow, minister and former co-host of ``The 700 Club'' on CBN, told the South Hampton Roads Leadership Prayer Breakfast on Thursday that the Bible can help young people make sense of their lives.

``People out there are trying to make life make sense,'' Kinchlow said. ``They have questions like, `Who am I? What comes next?' This is what young people want to know today. And they are dealing with things you and I never had to.''

In a half-hour talk peppered with gentle humor, Kinchlow told how he once had no use for church either, ``because it seemed to be entirely about death and `don't.' And all the things they said don't do, I was doing!''

He accepted Christ as his savior, Kinchlow said, simply because he sat down and read the Bible, not because of what any minister said.

Kinchlow now spends his time speaking, preaching and writing books.

``I travel around speaking and signing books, and sometimes people ask me to sign their Bible. I say, `Sure, I'll sign your Bible, on one condition.' They say, `What's that?' I say, `As long as you understand I didn't write it.' ''

Along with the mayors, council members, police officers and business leaders attending were Attorney General-elect Mark L. Earley and his wife, Cynthia, of Chesapeake. They didn't eat breakfast because they are using food stamps as part of the Walk-a-Mile program and are not eating out this month.

Outreach Center needs

donations of turkeys

The Judeo-Christian Outreach Center in Virginia Beach, which serves dinner to the homeless year-round, needs donated turkeys for its Thanksgiving meals.

In addition to serving the Thanksgiving day meals, the center also will give turkeys to low-income families to serve at home.

The center's work is supported by 93 churches, synagogues and civic groups. Turkeys may be donated at the center, 1053 Virginia Beach Blvd., near Birdneck Road.

D.C. Baptist Convention

alligns itself with PNBC

The District of Columbia Baptist Convention has voted to become the nation's first regional Southern Baptist body to align itself with the predominantly black Progressive National Baptist Convention (PNBC).

The convention will now be triply aligned because it is already affiliated with the American Baptist Churches USA, one of the most racially diverse Protestant denominations in the country.

Many of the Washington, D.C.-area convention's individual congregations are already dually aligned with two of the three Baptist denominations.

About 200 delegates voted overwhelmingly last week to affiliate with PNBC. Their action must be approved by two-thirds of the churches represented at the convention's annual meeting next year for the change to be added to the convention's constitution. Officials expect the second vote will affirm the first.

The Rev. Jere Allen, executive director-minister of the regional convention, said the convention recently reached the point where more than 50 percent of its churches are predominantly African-American.

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