2007 Family Action’s Year in Review

Please click here to help fund our 2008 budget before the year end.

With your gift of $50 or more we will give you a complimentary 8-issue subscription to World magazine.  It is current events, national and world news from a distinctly Christian perspective.

 

Christmas and New Year Greetings:

I hope and pray you are enjoying this Christmas season. At my house, we have our tree up and candles in the window.  Our Christmas cards have been mailed, and we are making our final rush to get things done so we can sit back and enjoy our family and friends next week. I expect things may be very much the same for you. 

And, for all of us, the year itself is fast running out of days. For Family Action, in what has been essentially our first year of operation, the whole year has flown by!  And December, with all its planning and budgeting for the coming year, has really seemed to fly by.

I trust you have enjoyed your complimentary subscription to Family Action News & Alerts over the past year.  I have certainly enjoyed writing each issue for you.  Currently, there are in excess of 27,000 recipients of our e-newsletter.  Obviously, if everyone participates in helping underwrite our work, even at a small amount, we can have a significant impact on our state in the coming year.  Would you consider a one-time donation of $25, $50, $100, $250, $500, $1,000 or more?  It is easily done online by clicking here, or you can mail a check to the address listed at the end of this review.

As we all reflect on the past twelve months, consider how we will finish out our year, and turn our thoughts toward the year ahead, I hope you will also consider how you might participate with us as we seek “to promote and defend a culture that values the traditional family, for the sake of our common good.”

Christians are often reminded how God honored marriage by making it the setting of Jesus’ first miracle.  How much more so, then, at this Christmas season, did God honor and esteem the family by choosing to enter our earthly existence through the means of a family!  The family is precious in God’s sight and worth the effort and sacrifice to defend and promote in Tennessee.

So, as you consider your year-end giving, I hope you would prayerfully consider Family Action of Tennessee.  Seldom, if ever, do I mention our financial needs in the Family Action News, but your help is definitely needed to maintain and expand our influence in our state capitol.

As you consider a year-end gift, let me share with you a partial list of what has been done in 2007 and what, with your support, lies ahead. We are: 

• ·         working to create a “culture” that values the family by helping churches equip their members to stand for righteousness through the Biblical worldview DVD series, The Truth Project.  344 people were trained to use the materials this past September and we hope to secure at least eight training sites across the state for next year;

• ·         expanding the number of churches have engaged. We have a growing list of more than 300 pastors in our network and, with your help, we will continue to the church in Tennessee so that she might, indeed, fulfill her role as the “conscience of the state;”
•  ·    building a coalition of crisis pregnancy centers, Christian adoption agencies, and abstinence organizations to help keep them be better informed and coordinate together regarding issues with which they are involved;

• ·         working to protect our communities from adult sex businesses.  This year we worked to put into law a 1000 foot buffer zone between adult businesses and our churches, schools, child care facilities and residences;   
• ·         establishing an initiative to let local governments know how to set up and operate adult oriented business regulatory boards to help control, limit and, when possible, shut down the smut peddlers in our neighborhoods;

• ·         putting together a strategy to re-establish the law in Tennessee that put the rights of adoptive children first by prohibiting them from being adopted by unmarried, cohabitating couples, whether heterosexual, or homosexual; 
• ·         hosting another Pastors’ Day on the Hill after this year’s encouraging start to this annual event. This year, with your help, we will have with us noted historian on  American’s Godly heritage, David Barton, of  Wallbuilders, and Tom Minnery, Vice President for public policy at Focus on the Family and former editor of Christianity Today;

• ·         hosting a pastoral conference in Knoxville with Dr. H.B. London to encourage pastors and help equip them with practical helps for dealing with the personal demands of ministry;  
• ·         stepping up our engagement with public opinion, by providing guest editorials for The Tennessean on family and cultural issues and beginning The FACT Report, a one minute commentary on the “culture wars” in Tennessee that will regularly air on the Bott Radio network and other stations, reaching as many as 70 of Tennessee’s 95 counties!

 

I could go on, but I hope in these few things you see with us a concerted and growing effort to make Tennessee a place that is good for families…. good for your children … and your grandchildren.  Here at Family Action, it is our mission, it is our vision, and it is the passion that drives us every day, and we do it for the sake of our common good.

If you would contribute toward the fulfillment of this exciting vision for families and culture in Tennessee as the year comes to a close, I would be most grateful.  You can make an on-line contribution to Family Action of Tennessee by clicking here.  If you prefer to send a check by mail, please make it payable to Family Action of Tennessee, 2479 Murfreesboro Road, No. 362, Nashville, TN  37217-3554.

It has been my pleasure to serve you and families across Tennessee this year, and I hope you will look to us more and more as the organization you go to for information on what is happening in Tennessee that affects families and the culture in which they grow and prosper.

  Sincerely,

 David Fowler

P.S. If you have enjoyed receiving email updates from me, I’d like to stay in better contact with you regarding events and our various activities that don’t typically get covered in my e-newsletter.  Please “Reply” to this email and I will add you to our list of contacts if you will give me your preferred mailing address.

 

Note:  “Family Action” of Tennessee is the political arm of the “Family Action Council” of Tennessee.  Contributions to our political effort, Family Action, are not tax deductible for federal income tax purposes.  However, if you would rather support our educational effort, you can make you donation to the Family Action Council of Tennessee.  The Family Action Council is an IRS designated 501 (c) (3) organization.  As such, gifts to the Family Action Council (not, “Family Action”) are tax-deductible as allowed by law.  You may make a contribution to our (c) (3), Family Action Council, by clicking here or mailing a check to the address designated above.