December 1, 1999
1970-1979: New leadership,
new challenges appear
___By Jesse Fletcher
___The 1960s did not go out like a lamb, but the '70s did roar like a lion in the beginning, and for Texas Baptists they would constitute a dynamic and perhaps defining 10 years.
___T.A. Patterson was in the twilight of his often-controversial tenure as executive secretary of the Baptist General Convention of Texas when the decade turned. The potential of the people he had tried to lead was uniquely showcased in a huge Southern Baptist student meeting in Atlanta called Mission 70. By far the largest contingent of young people came from Texas colleges and Baptist Student Unions.
___Largely quiet during Civil Rights and Vietnam protests, Texas Baptist students had been dramatically engaged by the Southern Baptist Foreign Mission Board's Journeymanprogram and the Home Mission Board's US-2 program. Texan Baker James Cauthen continued to lead the FMB, while former BGCT leader Arthur Rutledge guided the Home Mission Board. Mission '70 may have more nearly highlighted the missions interest among Texas young people than caused it.
IN 1979, Texas Baptist Men organized Texas Baptist volunteers to serve as builders of churches. This photo shows Olen Miles (right), founder of the program, talking to a young pastor at a construction site. (Photo: Texas Baptist Historical Collection)
___A rancorous Southern Baptist Convention annual meeting in Denver that May challenged the good feelings of that meeting, however. Messengers, led by Houston pastor K. Owen White and others, required the SBC Sunday School Board to withdraw and rewrite the first volume of its Broadman Bible Commentary. That meeting provided an introduction to a major fault line developing in Baptist life between its more conservative and more moderate constituents that became graphically apparent by the end of the decade and was led by Texans.
___Patterson, whose major legacy was in the area of missions, with both the River Ministry and Partnership Missions bearing his fingerprints, stepped aside in 1973.
___James Landes was the popular pastor of First Baptist Church in Richardson when he was chosen as Patterson's successor. He set out to correct directions taken by Patterson that he felt were wrong. In memoirs recorded much later, he was very critical of his predecessor and said he felt Patterson had divided Texas Baptists. Calling Patterson a Landmarker, Landes was especially critical of what he felt were independent missions programs. Accordingly, Landes determined to (1) unite the brethren, (2) raise Cooperative Program unified budget giving, (3) improve relations between Texas Baptists and the Southern Baptist Convention and (4) improve the image of Texas Baptists. He later said he felt he achieved the last three but sadly watched divisions increase in the first.
___An Institutional Study Committee, which was started under Patterson's tenure, reported in 1974 and more nearly determined Landes' agenda, however. One of the immediate results was to change the title "executive secretary" to "executive director." The goal was to give Landes' position more clout and enhance his ability to bring needed change. It was a testimony to how far Baptists had come from their Landmark-fed suspicions of denominational structures. In some ways, that was the most definitive outcome of the report, although it did allow Landes to build better support for Texas Baptist colleges and universities.
___Patterson's River Ministry gained significant momentum in the '70s, allowing Texas Baptists who liked to study missions, pray for missions and give to missions to actually do missions.
___The taste of missions issuing from the New Life Crusade in Japan in the '60s and River Ministry produced a Landes-led mission to Brazil. The Brazilian Baptist convention voted to invite Texas Baptists at their convention in 1978, and Brazilians Nilson Fanini and Joao Faclao challenged Texas Baptists to train 1,500 workers to pay their own way to Brazil. In 1979, the project blossomed into a sister cities program with Texas Baptist associations acting as the local sisters.
___The predominant missions emphasis in the '70s was evident on a Southern Baptist level when U.S. President Jimmy Carter and Jimmy Allen, pastor of First Baptist Church in San Antonio, helped bring about the Mission Service Corps. Not surprisingly, Texas Baptists aspired to produce 1,000 of the proposed 5,000 Mission Service Corps volunteers.
___But Texas Baptists' missions spirit also included their own territory, and Good News Texas also was launched in 1977. Lloyd Elder and L.L. Morris served as co-chairs, and a Madison Avenue savvy was employed to assess Texas Baptists' image and best approach to the task. Radio, television, newspaper and billboards were utilized. During a phase called Living Proof, dozens of celebrities were enlisted.
___Christian higher education also enjoyed a high profile in the '70s. It not only reflected Landes' goals to increase Texas Baptists' support of their colleges and universities but also a series of recurring financial crises with Dallas Baptist University and later Howard Payne University.
___In the mid-1970s Landes' team faced growing tensions around the appearance of charismatic practices among a few Texas Baptists churches. In the 1976 annual session, messengers from several of these churches were challenged. The credentials committee denied the challenge under the chairmanship of Presnall Wood.
___That ruling in turn was challenged on the floor, and the challenge prevailed, effectively denying the disputed messengers their seats. But a later committee chaired by Houston pastor Kenneth Chafin reaffirmed the convention as a functional rather than creedal body. In time, the charismatic issue ceased to be much of a problem, but the question on the creedal nature of a convention was heating up on the SBC stage.
___This new challenge was led by Houston Judge Paul Pressler and Criswell College President Paige Patterson, the son of former executive director T.A. Patterson. The two men were convinced Baptist institutions were following mainline denominations into liberal thought. They insisted a return to what they called an inerrant Bible was the only solution. Catching the wave of a national political and social conservatism, they began building a grassroots organization of like-minded Baptists as early as 1973.
___At the SBC in 1976, Pressler and Patterson tried to talk Memphis pastor Adrian Rogers into running for president, since they were convinced the president's ability to influence appointment of agency trustees would allow for a definitive change in the direction of the convention if they could keep electing people committed to such a program. Rogers withdrew his name at that time, and retired Sunday School Board President James Sullivan was elected.
___But in the SBC meeting in Houston in 1979, an emotional launching of a new missions initiative called Bold Mission Thrust took a back seat to the highly organized Pressler-Patterson coalition's successful effort to elect Rogers.
___It was the beginning of a major new challenge for not only Southern Baptists but for Texas Baptists.
___Landes' tenure was extended several times by the Executive Board, so he was still fine-tuning his vision for Texas Baptists as the decade came to the same roaring end that had characterized its beginning. But Landes and the times both had left their marks.
___Jesse Fletcher is chancellor of Hardin-Simmons University in Abilene
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