November 5, 2001
Messengers receive missions committee's report
___By Mark Wingfield
___Managing Editor
___DALLAS--The report of a Baptist General Convention of Texas committee that spent nearly two years studying missions-sending agencies was received by messengers to this year's BGCT annual session but not acted upon.
___No action was necessary by messengers this year because the Missions-sending Agencies Study Committee was assigned at its creation to report back to the BGCT Executive Board, explained President Clyde Glazener.
___Jim Denison, chairman of the study committee and pastor of Park Cities Baptist Church in Dallas, highlighted the major findings and recommendations of the report.
___He specifically addressed what he said has been a frequent question. That concerned the committee's recommendation to change the way money is passed between the BGCT and the SBC's North American Mission Board, then sent back to the BGCT for state missions work.
___The committee recommended keeping in Texas about $1.2 million in Cooperative Program funds that are sent from the BGCT to the SBC, then to NAMBand then returned to the BGCT.
TOM BILLINGS, director of missions for Union Baptist Association, told about Baptists' response to Houston floods.
___"Our committee is simply recommending that we change the efficiency of that arrangement," Denison said. Eliminating the long trail of passing money from Dallas to Nashville to Atlanta and then back to Dallas "somehow made sense to us," he explained.
___Contrary to reports distributed in some quarters, "this recommendation will change no relationship between the BGCT and NAMB," Denison asserted. "It will change no funding between the BGCT and the NAMB except for the efficiency."
___The committee notes in its report that a similar practice was adopted by the Mississippi Baptist Convention several years ago.
___The change has not yet been enacted in Texas, Denison reported, because the committee recommended that it be part of a larger negotiation between BGCT and NAMB officials. Talks currently are under way to draft a new "cooperative agreement," which is the document that spells out how NAMB and the BGCT will work together in cooperative missions opportunities in Texas.
___The new cooperative agreement should be finalized by the first of next year, he said.
___New negotiations are essential, Denison said, because the existing cooperative agreement was signed in 1991 between the BGCT and the Home Mission Board, NAMB's predecessor agency.
___Among other problems cited by the committee regarding the cooperative agreement is formation of an alternative state Baptist convention in Texas, which NAMB funds in violation of the 1991 cooperative agreement between the BGCT and HMB.
___Denison also highlighted the committee's concern that NAMB is enforcing a different doctrinal standard for missionaries candidates serving in Texas. NAMB requires affirmation of the 2000 Baptist Faith & Message, a statement the BGCT has repeatedly rejected.
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