September 25, 2000

Funding proposals receive strong support
___By Mark Wingfield
___Managing Editor
___ DALLAS--Two proposals to reduce funding for Southern Baptist Convention causes received strong support from the Baptist General Convention of Texas Executive Board Sept. 26.
___ The proposals to reduce funding for SBC seminaries from $5.3 million to no more than $1 million, to nearly defund the SBC Executive Committee and to completely defund the SBC Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission now go to the BGCT annual session in Corpus Christi Oct. 30-31.
___ After about an hour of debate, the 200-member Executive Board approved the report of a Seminary Study Committee. That report said the six SBC seminaries have undergone radical change and no longer teach in accordance with the beliefs of most Texas Baptists. The report recommended capping BGCT Cooperative Program funding for the SBC seminaries at $1 million next year, with the remaining $4.3 million distributed to three BGCT-related schools.
___ The changes in seminary funding were approved on a standing vote with an estimated 25 to 30 votes in opposition.
___ By an even stronger majority, Executive Board members also approved a recommendation from the BGCT Administrative Committee that no funds be sent to the Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission and only $10,000 be sent to the SBC Executive Committee.
___ The $1.1 million redirected from these two SBC agencies will be given to "special Texas needs," including ministry and church starting among Hispanics, human welfare ministries statewide and the work of the BGCT Christian Life Commission.
___ This set of funding changes was approved on a show-of-hands vote, with an estimated 12 votes in opposition. Though there was discussion about the precedent and effect of the changes, no one rose to speak in defense of the work of either the Executive Committee or the ERLC.
___ SBC leaders have begun a campaign to encourage Texas Baptists to attend the annual session in Corpus Christi and vote against final approval of these budget changes. The BGCT, they contend, is unilaterally destroying the cooperative fund-raising mechanism shared by the SBC and state Baptist conventions since 1925.
___ "We believe the people of the Southern Baptist churches in Texas have not been fully informed of the extreme nature and destructive results of this recommendation," said Morris Chapman, president of the SBC Executive Committee. "Fractious elements in Texas have driven an extremely poor decision that is bad for the Baptist General Convention of Texas, bad for the Southern Baptist churches in Texas, bad for the Southern Baptist Convention and bad for the common mission causes dear to our hearts."
___ The report of the BGCT Seminary Study Committee, on the other hand, contends the conservative movement that has swept the SBC since 1979 has caused a huge faculty turnover at the SBC seminaries, has treated professors in an un-Christian manner and denied them due process, has changed the theological focus of the seminaries and has created unbalanced boards of trustees at the schools. The committee's report draws special attention to the SBC's adoption of a revised Baptist Faith & Message statement in June--a statement that identifies itself as an "instrument of doctrinal accountability" and that BGCT leaders believe elevates the Bible above Jesus.
___ "I will gladly sign God's word on every page, but I will not allow our people to be put in a position where they will have to sign man's word about God," BGCT Executive Director Charles Wade told the Executive Board in his own report. The comment was greeted with sustained applause.
___ While a group of conservatives fought to gain control of the SBC because of perceived problems with liberalism in the denomination, liberalism "has never been a problem in Texas," Wade asserted.
___ The funding changes enacted by the BGCT are not done to support liberalism, Wade said, but to promote religious liberty.
___ "In seeking to eliminate the perceived problem of liberalism, (SBC leaders) have willingly sacrificed liberty," Wade said. "You do not have to sacrifice liberty in order to maintain biblical fidelity. Texas Baptists intend to show the way."
___ During debate over the seminary funding changes, Executive Board members agreed that major changes have swept the SBC and that conflict exists. But that should not be reason for reducing funding to the seminaries, several argued.
___ The problems in the SBC are "impossible to reconcile," said Jim Ginnings, a layman from First Baptist Church of Wichita Falls. Battles between the "extreme right and extreme left," he said, "leave very little place for some of us to go."
___ Ginnings said he opposes the seminary study report. "I don't disagree that abuses have occurred," he said. "But most are the result of individuals who will pass from the scene."
___ If Texas Baptists are going to invest more money in schools such as Truett Seminary at Baylor University, he asked, "how are we going to hold Truett accountable when we don't control their board?"
___ The difference, responded study committee chairman Bob Campbell, is in trust. "I have a great deal of trust in (Baylor President) Robert Sloan," he explained. "He assured us we would have a conservative, Texas-based seminary. It is very important that we have presidents of these institutions we can trust."
___ Even though the BGCT controls only 25 percent of the seats on Baylor's board of regents, that board is "representative of Texas Baptists," said Brian Harbour, pastor of First Baptist Church of Richardson and a Baylor regent. "It is very strongly in line with where Texas Baptists are."
___ Frankie Rainey, pastor of Crestmont Baptist Church in Burleson and an adjunct professor at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, said current events in Baptist life have placed him in a dilemma. "I feel like some of the leadership in the SBC curved off to the right and some of the leadership in the BGCT curved off to the left, and I'm left without a denomination."
___ While the research presented by the Seminary Study Committee is cause for concern, Rainey said, the students attending the SBC seminaries are the ones who will suffer from the funding cuts.
___ Debbie Chisolm, minister to youth at Royal Lane Baptist Church in Dallas, responded that she, too, is concerned about the students. But Texas Baptists should not be asked to fund the education of students at seminaries where the beliefs of Texas Baptists are not taught, she added.
___ "Our Southern Baptist theological seminaries are not teaching the doctrine Texas Baptists love and support," Chisolm said.
___ Elvin Gibson of Nederland asked whether churches desiring to support the SBC seminaries more strongly would be allowed to do so through the BGCT.
___ BGCT Treasurer Roger Hall said yes. "There will be a continuation of the church-directed or church choice plan," he explained.
___ Vie Marie Taylor of Austin commended the committee for its work, saying the charges of heresy that had been lodged against some former seminary professors by the SBC's current leadership were reminiscent of the Middle Ages and the Inquisition.
___ Mike Chancellor, vice chairman of the study committee and pastor of Crescent Heights Baptist Church in Abilene, responded that the committee had become deeply concerned about the way people were treated by SBC seminary administrators and trustees.
___ He recalled a conversation the committee had with Paige Patterson, president of Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary and an architect of the conservative movement in the SBC. When asked by the Texas committee about those who had lost jobs or whose beliefs had been called into question, he said, Patterson responded: "You have to understand these are casualties of war."
___ At that point, several Executive Board members called for the question, and the vote was taken to approve the study committee's report and recommendations.
___ The proposal to reduce funding for the SBC Executive Committee and ERLC drew less debate but did generate some discussion.
___ In response to a question about the rationale for these changes, Wade briefly explained the work of the two entities. The Executive Committee is the central governing body of the SBC and administers a news service, Baptist Press. The ERLC was formed out of the SBC's former Christian Life Commission and also inherited new responsibilities in Washington after the SBC defunded the Baptist Joint Committee in 1991.
___ "The BGCT has been routinely criticized and critiqued" by the Executive Committee and by Baptist Press, Wade said. "Texas Baptists have been slandered by both these groups."
___ The ERLC, he added, has become involved in "overt political campaigning" rather than simply making a case for Christian ethics.
___ Wade said the BGCT first created a Christian Life Commission in Texas 50 years ago, an idea that soon was copied by the SBC. The early and most influential leaders of the SBC's agency came out of Texas, he said.
___ The current director of the ERLC, Richard Land, "also is a Texan but did not learn his Christian ethics from Texas Baptists," Wade said. He described Land and the current ERLC's agenda as coming from "a different world."
___ Several board members spoke passionately about the need to use the redirected money for Texas missions. Others questioned whether taking money from SBC entities to use in Texas would set a dangerous precedent.
___ Steve Washburn, pastor of First Baptist Church of Pflugerville, asked if the BGCT would be setting a pattern it would encourage associations and churches to follow as well. For example, there are many pressing ministry needs in Austin, he said, so should churches in Austin be encouraged to keep more of their mission money there rather than send it to the BGCT?
___ BGCT President Clyde Glazener clarified for the board that the two SBC entities to be defunded in this case are not missionary agencies. "None of these funds has anything to do with reaching people around the world," he said.
___ "We're talking about Executive Committee funds, not funds the Executive Committee sends on to international missions," said Glazener, pastor of Gambrell Street Baptist Church in Fort Worth. "And we're talking about … the so-called Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission, which is really a political action committee."
___ Land was not available for comment, according to an ERLC spokesman.
___ Southern Seminary President Mohler, however, issued a statement after the Executive Board vote saying Texas Baptists are "on the wrong side of the Great Commission" and have an "uncooperative attitude."
___ "It is tragic that the BGCT is cutting itself off from the world's most effective and faithful theological seminaries," Mohler said. "It is tragic that the BGCT is willfully cutting the life support going to thousands of God-called ministers of the gospel training in our seminaries.
___ "This action demonstrates that the leaders of the BGCT are determined to set themselves off as an island from the rest of the Southern Baptist Convention," he added. "The only explanation for this action is anger and hostility on the part of the BGCT leadership."


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