October 9, 2000
Reynolds, Gregory share
platform at Texas Baptists Committed rally
___By Mark Wingfield
___Managing Editor
___HOUSTON--The last time Herbert Reynolds and Joel Gregory both took stands on a Baptist General Convention of Texas issue, they stood on opposite sides of a very public, very bitter battle over Baylor University.
___Exactly a decade later, the two well-known figures of Texas Baptist life are singing from the same hymnbook. They appeared side-by-side Oct. 2 at a Texas Baptists Committed rally urging Texas Baptists to focus on the supremacy of Jesus and reject recent changes to the Baptist Faith & Message.
___Gregory, who in 1990 opposed the efforts of Reynolds and the Baylor trustees to create a self-perpetuating board, called Reynolds someone he has always admired and "a man of unimpeachable character."
___Reynolds, former president and chancellor of Baylor, introduced Gregory by recalling fondly their first meeting when Gregory was a student and Reynolds was executive vice president.
___"Along about 1989 or '90, he and I grew apart, you might say," Reynolds acknowledged. "But God brings people together. God gives us all second chances."
___He said of Gregory: "There is no better preacher in Baptist life." And although Gregory has not been a pastor since resigning from First Baptist Church of Dallas in 1992, Reynolds affirmed his future by declaring: "I know the Lord is not nearly through with you yet."
___Both men spoke softly, humbly.
___Gregory acknowledged some might consider him a "Johnny-come-lately to this conversation."
___"For a long time I did believe this was about the authority of the word of God," he explained in his trademark bass voice, gently emphasizing key words.
___But "now I know it is about the interpretation of the word of God," he continued. "When a document is set down and people are told to sign this addendum and then another addendum ... that is no Baptist I know."
___In other words, the conservative movement within the Southern Baptist Convention that Gregory once endorsed went too far with this summer's changes to the Baptist Faith & Message, he implied.
___"Time brings perspective, and distance brings understanding," he explained later.
___Gregory recalled the lessons he learned as a child attending Connell Baptist Church in Fort Worth, where Mrs. T.L. Williams taught him a foundational truth of Baptist belief: "You are a believer priest."
___He recalled the influence of ethicist T.B. Maston, who taught him to look for the eternal truths in Scripture.
___And he recalled the influence on modern Baptists of early Anabaptists who were martyred for insisting they had the right to read and interpret the Bible for themselves without aid of a pope or bishop.
___"The heritage we have had as a free people ... was bought by the martyrdom of people like that, so that we would be able to sit in a Sunday School classroom and say, 'I believe that ...,'" he asserted.
___Gregory preached from the New Testament, recalling the time Jesus called Peter a rock upon, and then recalling Peter's later writing where he called Jesus the "living stone."
___The New Testament, he said, teaches that Jesus is the foundation of the Christian faith and that individual believers are to be "chips off the old block," a line of smaller living stones strung through the ages as a witness to God's plan.
___Peter, the rock, "connects Jesus the living stone with a priesthood of living stones," Gregory said.
___The contradictory term "living stone" applied to Jesus indicates someone who is indescribable, he said. Yet leaders of the Southern Baptist Convention, in their zeal to defend the Bible, have attempted to "define the undefinable."
___Though some from outside Texas claim to know what Texas Baptists ought to believe, they do not, Gregory said, citing his own credentials of having preached in churches throughout the state.
___"I know that Texas Baptists represent something I've always been," he said. "From top to bottom, east to west, Texas Baptists are the same people. ... Let no one insinuate himself into what God has done."
___Reynolds joined Gregory in declaring the importance of religious liberty and the priesthood of all believers.
___"If we do not keep our soul freedom, we don't have anything," he insisted.
___He admonished Texas Baptists to come to the BGCT annual session in Corpus Christi and vote for changes that would redirect funding from the six SBC seminaries and give it to three Texas Baptist schools.
___That call was echoed by David Currie, executive director of Texas Baptists Committed.
___"God is challenging us to lead in a new way by following an old way ... to show the rest of the country you can still be a traditional Baptist," he said.
___Despite what's happened in the SBC over the last 20 years, Texas Baptists have managed to keep their focus on Jesus, Currie said. Outside forces want to undo that and make Texas Baptists worship the Bible over Jesus, he added. The result is, "we have to make some choices."
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