November 6, 2000
TOGETHER:
Annual session leads Texas Baptists to go forward
___We had a full house in Corpus Christi for our 115th annual convention. Mission reports thrilled our hearts. We listened with joy and excitement to reports of record enrollments at our schools ... marvelous ministries offered by our child care, aging care, health care institutions ... new churches started ... development of church health strategies ... and the growth of ministerial/ church services. Texas Baptists are on kingdom business.I thank God for the progress being made in local churches as people all across Texas are saved and discipled.
CHARLES WADE
Executive Director
BGCT Executive Board
___I sense in the heart of Texas Baptists a new excitement and eagerness to serve. God's people prayed for him to help us through the expected distress of this convention, and God answered our prayers. Now, I beg of you, keep praying as churches make decisions about how to support Texas Baptist and Southern Baptist mission efforts. Churches can continue to give as they have in the past, and the Baptist General Convention of Texas will gladly honor their decisions. Churches that want to help enable students at our Texas seminaries to go to school at comparable cost to students in Southern Baptists seminaries will want to use the Texas preferred Cooperative Program giving plan. Get the facts. Invite Glenn Majors, director of Cooperative Program services, to send someone to discuss giving options with your finance committee or church. We are here to help you do what is best for the kingdom of God and for your church.
___Remember this: Your mission dollars to help our Southern Baptist International Mission Board missionaries and home mission efforts continue as before. Through our Texas mission efforts, you also are involved in River Ministry along the Rio Grande and Texas Partnerships missions in America and throughout the world. You are a part of ministry among Hispanics, ethnics and African-Americans. You help 1,200 Texas Mission Service Corps volunteers serve the Lord in mission projects for local churches to the ends of the earth!
___Several reporters from secular newspapers covered this convention. I am grateful for the efforts they made to cover Baptist news positively. They don't always get it exactly right. But they want to be accurate, and they work hard at it. I hope you felt the coverage in your part of the state was clear and helpful.
___One reporter asked me, "What would you say to a 70-year-old woman who has been a Baptist all her life about the changes that Texas Baptists made in Corpus Christi?"
___I replied: "First, Texas Baptists took steps that will protect the Baptist principles of fidelity to Scripture and soul competency before God. Second, the Baptist vision of loyalty to Christ, commitment to missions and religious liberty still lives so that her grandchildren and their children can have a Baptist conscience and freedom to exercise it.
___"Third, she can support missionaries as she always has. Fourth, she will be able to help Texas ministerial students go to Texas seminaries at a comparable cost to those going to Southern Baptist seminaries. Fifth, she can help Texas Baptists reach out to the mission field all around us as we minister to families, children, Hispanics, Asians and African-Americans.
___"Now is the time to go forward. We have looked back long enough."
___Whether 20 or 70, man or woman, I hope that answer helps. Together, for Christ, for Texas, for the world.
___We are loved.
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