November 5, 2001

Missouri requires affiliation with SBC,
escrows funding for five institutions
___CAPE GIRARDEAU, Mo. (ABP)--Messengers from Second Baptist Church of Liberty, Mo., were forced to turn in their credentials and walk out of the annual meeting of the Missouri Baptist Convention Oct. 30.
___The church was ousted from the state convention because it had voted last spring to no longer relate to the Southern Baptist Convention. The Missouri convention's credentials committee ruled that only churches supportive of the SBC can be part of the state convention.
___Although the Liberty church was the only one challenged at the annual meeting, the ruling effectively removes from the convention other churches in Missouri that have broken ties with the SBC.
___The ouster of non-SBC churches and legal wrangling over the ownership of five institutions that have declared self-perpetuating boards in an effort to escape fundamentalist control highlighted the Missouri convention, described as perhaps the most contentious state Baptist convention meeting in decades.
___While some moderate-led state conventions have said churches may affiliate with them without relating to the national body, Missouri is the first major state group to officially require loyalty to the fundamentalist-led SBC.
___About 2,100 messengers at the Missouri convention's annual meeting, held Oct. 29-31 in Cape Girardeau, voted overwhelmingly to uphold a credentials committee ruling that Second Baptist Church no longer qualifies to elect messengers to the annual meeting.
___Twelve messengers from the church were unseated and required to walk to the front of the meeting hall to turn in their ballots before leaving.
___Credentials committee Chairman David Tolliver said the committee reviewed the church's membership status in response to a challenge issued from the floor at the start of the convention's second day.
___Article IV of the state convention's constitution defines an affiliated church as one "in sympathy with the objects of the convention and desiring to cooperate with the convention in her program of single alignment with the Southern Baptist Convention."
___Tolliver said the credentials committee interpreted that to mean, "You have to be an SBC church to be an MBC church."
___Steve Graham, pastor of the church in suburban Kansas City, appealed the credentials committee's ruling. "We ask you to extend to us the freedom that is every congregation's," he pleaded with messengers.
___Tolliver responded by acknowledging the church's long ties with Missouri Baptists but said the congregation's members had forfeited their right to be represented at the annual meeting. "They chose as an autonomous body of Christ to leave the Southern Baptist Convention," he said. "In our opinion, that violates the constitution."
___In traditional Southern Baptist polity, local churches decide whether to seek denominational affiliation with local associations, state conventions and the SBC, with each entity cooperating in missions while autonomous in its own sphere.
___Don Wideman, a former executive director of the state convention, said in an interview that the credentials committee got its interpretation of the constitution "absolutely wrong."
___The article, which has been in the constitution for many years, originated because as a border state, the Missouri convention early on had churches from both the Southern Baptist and American Baptist conventions, he explained. When the convention determined to affiliate solely with the SBC, it changed its constitution to grandfather in already-affiliated ABC churches while stating its intent that the convention would in the future be exclusively Southern Baptist.
___Before now, according to Wideman, the membership article never had been viewed as binding a local church to affiliate with the SBC.
___"I think we have just seen the demise of the convention as we have known it," he said. "It's very distressing to me, as a former executive director," to see a church that has long supported and worked with the convention now excluded.
___Graham said the Liberty church voted in April to sever ties with the SBC. The church desired to continue a relationship with the state organization despite differences with the national body, he noted.
___The church's messengers "felt a great sense of sadness" as they marched to the podium to turn over their ballots, Graham said. "Our church predates the Southern Baptist Convention. We were Missouri Baptists before we were Southern Baptists."
___Members of Second Baptist have led Missouri Baptists many times, he said. "In one way, they were accustomed to coming to the front," he added of their walk to the podium, noting they are people willing to lead faithful Baptists forward.
___Messengers from some other churches voluntarily turned in their credentials to show solidarity with the Liberty church. They included John Baker, pastor of First Baptist Church in Columbia; Keith Herron, pastor of Holmeswood Baptist Church in Kansas City; and Bill Prather, pastor of Bethel Baptist Church in Liberty, who grew up in Second Baptist.
___In other business, Missouri messengers approved motions to escrow $2 million in funding and perhaps sue five convention agencies that recently moved to self-perpetuating trustee boards.
___Messengers voted overwhelmingly to amend a $19.2 million budget and freeze $400,000 earmarked for the Baptist Home, $200,000 for the Missouri Baptist Foundation, $150,000 for Windermere Conference Center, $450,000 for the Word & Way newspaper, money for four campuses of Missouri Baptist College and any other funding for agencies that in the future might become self-perpetuating.
___The funds are to be held in escrow until trustees of the affected institutions "rescind their actions and reinstate their former charters" that gave power for electing trustees to the Missouri Baptist Convention.
___On the final day of the convention, messengers approved a separate motion by Monte Shinkle, a messenger from Concord Baptist Church in Jefferson City, Mo. The motion instructs convention leaders to seek a legal opinion on actions taken by the five agencies and "take any and all steps necessary to restore them to their former relationship with the Missouri Baptist Convention."
___Messengers defeated an amendment that would have instructed that the Executive Board not "violate the clear, inerrant, scriptural injunction that Christians not sue one another in secular courts to settle their disputes."
___"The thief has come, and it's time for us to wake up and get out of bed," messenger Tom Willoughby said in supporting escrowing funds.
___"We have a handful of trustees who have taken it on themselves to say, 'These institutions are ours. Missouri Baptists, you send us your money and we'll run your institutions for you. ... You'll have absolutely nothing to say about them,'" said messenger Gerald Davidson. "This is absolutely repulsive."
___Representatives of some of the agencies responded that they took the action on advice of legal counsel out of concern about ascending liability.
___Randy Fullerton, pastor of Fee Fee Baptist Church in St. Louis and trustee chairman at Missouri Baptist College, said the convention three times has investigated the ownership of agencies. Each time, he said, the conclusion was the trustees own the agencies.
___"I am sure that we can get many legal opinions," Fullerton said. "I am sure there are many unemployed lawyers around who would like to take our money. I would urge our convention to seek reconciliation rather than lawsuits."
___"We're not the first to hire the lawyers," Shinkle responded. "These institutions belong to the Missouri Baptist Convention, in my opinion."
___The convention referred to the Executive Board a motion by Rodney Albert of Hallsville Baptist Church to appoint a committee to "investigate the feasibility and procedures of publishing a periodic news journal that is directly accountable to the Missouri Baptist Convention."
___The motion also would authorize convention leaders to secure funding to begin immediate publication and distribution "until such time as the Word & Way restores its previous relationship" to the state convention.
___Events at the annual meeting further fueled speculation that moderate and centrist Baptist churches in Missouri might begin a new state convention. These churches say they have been disenfranchised from the Missouri Baptist Convention by the success of Project 1000, a political campaign directed by layman Roger Moran.
___Jim Hill recently resigned as executive director of the state convention, saying he could not work with the fundamentalist-controlled board he would face after the annual meeting.
___Project 1000 supporters used the convention's nominating committee this year to institute a new set of rules about trustee selection for convention committees and boards. As a result, a number of individuals who would have been eligible for additional terms of service were bumped and replaced by individuals supportive of Project 1000's agenda.
___Based on reporting by Bob Allen of Associated Baptist Press

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