2000: The Almost-millenium year in retrospective
___By Marv Knox
___Editor
___The first news of 2000 was no news, and that was good news: The world didn’t come crashing down around our ears.
___Y2K brewed a rarified concoction of excitement and dread for the self-proclaimed "final" New Year’s Eve of the second millennium B.C.
___However, when the last tick of 1999 introduced the first tock of 2000, not much happened. Celebrations abounded, of course. Who could forget the whiz-bang fireworks spiraling to the top of the Eiffel Tower or the crowds packed into Times Square? Almost everyone alive will remember where he or she was when New Year 2000 finally arrived.
___But the dreaded cyber-apocalypse--the catastrophe expected when millions of computers worldwide were to crash attempting to turn their digital clocks from 1999 to 2000--never reared its ugly head. One year quickly dissolved into the next, as has been the case for eons.
___ Yet despite its quieter-than-expected start, 2000 produced a dazzling array of results. Here are some of the top stories reported in the Baptist Standard during the past year:

January
___ More than 46,000 Baptist teens sang "Shout to the Lord" to usher in the new year simultaneously in seven cities nationwide as part of YouthLink 2000, a millennial festival

YOUTHLINK 2000

sponsored by four Southern Baptist Convention agencies as well as state Baptist conventions. Participants registered 1,492 professions of faith in Christ, 4,985 commitments to full-time Christian service and 9,131 pledges to missions service.
___ The Baptist World Alliance declared a "Decade of Racial Justice" and a new emphasis on evangelism at the 18th Baptist World Congress in Melbourne, Australia, Jan. 5-9. A resolution called on Baptists to seek "inter-racial and inter-ethnic harmony to achieve authentic justice for all persons without regard to race." Delegates elected South Korean pastor and broadcaster Billy Kim to a five-year term as BWA president.
___ San Marcos Baptist Academy administrators notified authorities, cooperated with the Hays County Sheriff’s Department and fired Brad Bartlett-Dixon after students reported alleged sexual misconduct by the 34-year-old dormitory director Jan. 15.
___ The Baptist General Convention of Texas’ State Missions Commission hired its first African-American evangelism staff member Jan. 20. Kenneth Blake became a church

WANDA LEE

CHARLES WADE

evangelism strategy consultant, a part-time position. He remained pastor of Westside Baptist Church in Lewisville.
___ The national Woman’s Missionary Union voted Jan. 22 to replace recently retired Executive Director Dellanna O’Brien with Wanda Lee, 50, a former foreign missionary, a pastor’s wife, the national WMU president and a registered nurse from Columbus, Ga.

February
___ Charles Wade succeeded Bill Pinson as executive director of the BGCT Feb. 1. Pinson, a former seminary president, ethics professor and pastor, held the post for 17 years. Wade had been pastor of First Baptist Church in Arlington for more than 23 years when he became executive director-elect in the fall of 1999. He was president of the BGCT from 1995 to 1997.
___ Baylor University’s Truett Theological Seminary broke ground for a permanent facility on the university’s Waco campus Feb. 2. The 64,000-square-foot structure is to cost $17 million and will feature a 550-seat chapel.
___Eleven North Texas churches formed a regional association to relate to the new Southern Baptists of Texas Convention, which split from the BGCT in order to affiliate

ROGER MORAN

more closely with the increasingly conservative Southern Baptist Convention.
___ Missouri layman Roger Moran utilized guilt-by-association "facts" to influence churches to turn their backs on the Missouri and Texas Baptist conventions in favor of closer association with the SBC.
___The BGCT adopted a report of the Church Health Task Force, making the well-being of the convention’s 6,000 affiliated congregations a priority for the coming years.
___ The BGCT Christian Life Commission celebrated its 50th anniversary Feb. 28-29 in Dallas.

March
___ The BGCT and the Baptist Standard began publishing Bibleway Bible Study for

TBM provided water filters after floods in Mozambique.

Texans lessons, featuring in-depth Bible study that also focuses on discipleship, ethical issues, church history, doctrine and polity.
___ About two dozen pastors of large Texas Baptist churches met behind closed doors at Prestonwood Baptist Church in Plano to discuss their relationship with the BGCT. Participants in the invitation-only gathering included pastors Jack Graham of Prestonwood, Claude Thomas of First Baptist Church in Euless and Ed Young of Second Baptist Church in Houston. Young is a former SBC president, and Thomas is chairman of the SBC Executive Committee.
___Texas Baptist Men volunteers spent much of the spring halfway around the world, providing purified water for victims of flooding in Mozambique.
___ New Testament scholar David Crutchley, who joined the Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary faculty in 1999 after 14 years at Cape Town Baptist Theological College in South Africa, was elected dean of Southwestern’s School of Theology, succeeding the late Tommy Lea.
___ Joy Fenner, executive director-treasurer of Texas

BAPTISTS helped Fort Worth tornado victims clean up.

Woman’s Missionary Union since December 1980, announced her plans to retire at the end of February 2001.
___Texas Baptist Men disaster relief workers responded with food and counseling to victims of rush-hour tornadoes that devastated downtown Fort Worth and Tarrant County suburbs March 28.
___ A dispute over prayer at Texas high school football games captured the national spotlight when the U.S. Supreme Court heard a case involving the Santa Fe Independent School District March 29.
___ The SBC International Mission Board appointed 38 missionaries in services March 31 at Travis Avenue Baptist Church in Fort Worth.

April
___ The SBC North American Mission Board announced plans to team up with Jerry Falwell and his Thomas Road Baptist Church to spend $500,000 during the next two years--

NAMB partner Jerry Falwell

$250,000 apiece--to start a church in suburban Chicago.
___ BGCT Executive Director Wade and five state convention representatives met with Southwestern Seminary President Ken Hemphill and seven SBC representatives for a "friendly and helpful conversation concerning ways the conventions can continue to work together in kingdom causes" April 6 on the seminary campus in Fort Worth.
___ A suit filed April 17 on behalf of a lesbian fired by Kentucky Baptist Homes for Children held potential impact for religious groups nationwide who use tax-funded dollars to provide social ministries.
___ A small army of East Texas Baptist disaster relief volunteers descended on Marshall after a tornado swept through the area Easter Sunday.
___ Joel Allison succeeded Boone Powell Jr. as head of the Dallas-based Baylor Health Care System. Powell had been leader of the system for 20 years, and Allison was his primary associate for the past seven years.
___ A group of about 100 Baptists from 15 states, with Texans sprinkled among them, agreed to form a national network to oppose the "fundamentalist domination" of churches and state Baptist conventions. The Network of Mainstream Baptists convened April 25-26 in Atlanta.

May
___ A May 5 announcement that Brad Creed would step down as dean stunned the 6-year-

BRAD CREED

old Truett Seminary. Baylor University President Robert Sloan, who praised Creed for his contributions during Truett’s founding years but said the seminary needs new leadership for the next phase of its development, initiated the change.
___ Texas Baptist Men dedicated the Robert Dixon Mission Equipping Center in Dallas May 6. The 45,200-square-foot building includes a garage for disaster relief vehicles, a communications center for disaster relief ministries, and a training and orientation center for volunteers in missions.
___ Conflict erupted between Baylor University faculty and administrators over creation of the Michael Polanyi Center at Baylor. Faculty members, particularly from the sciences, complained they were not consulted about the launch of the center. The concerns were elevated in the spring, when the Polanyi Center sponsored its first conference, which in part focused on the relationship between religion and science.
___ Texas and New Mexico Baptists joined forces to aid victims of forest fires in and around Los Alamos, N.M., in mid-May. Many of the victims found shelter at Glorieta Baptist Conference Center, near Santa Fe.
___ Houston Baptist University trustees voted May 16 to end the BGCT’s role in appointing the university’s entire trustee board, offering instead for the state convention to elect one-fourth of the board. The BGCT Executive Board subsequently voted to escrow funds for HBU and created a committee to study the situation and recommend a plan of resolution.
___ A committee charged with revising the SBC Baptist Faith & Message statement issued its report

BAPTIST FAITH & MESSAGE statement was revised.

May 18. Among other changes, the committee referred to faith statements as "instruments of doctrinal accountability," removed from the 1963 Baptist Faith & Message the assertion that Jesus is the "criterion" by which Scripture is to be judged, and stated that "the office of pastor is limited to men as qualified by Scripture." The committee also downplayed the historic Baptist principle of the priesthood of the believer. Supporters of the so-called "conservative resurgence" and recent changes in the SBC quickly endorsed the new document, while opponents of those changes criticized it for departing from "traditional" Baptist beliefs.

June
___The Chicago Declaration of Religious Freedom, signed by Southern Baptists and an array of evangelical leaders, maintained Christians’ right to evangelize all people. The document responded to criticism of a planned SBC evangelistic blitz in Chicago, which drew the ire of the Council of Religious Leaders in Metropolitan Chicago, an ecumenical group.
___ Messengers to the SBC annual meeting in Orlando, Fla., overwhelmingly approved the proposed new Baptist Faith & Message statement, turning aside attempts to modify the document to make it more inclusive of all Southern Baptists. SBC leaders said professors at the convention’s six seminaries and employees of its six other agencies would be expected to affirm the new statement. Messengers also voted down a motion to create a committee to work toward "reconciliation and restoration" in the SBC after convention leaders argued against it.
___The U.S. Supreme Court voted 6-3 in Santa Fe (Texas) Independent School District vs. Doe that a policy allowing prayer over the public-address system at public high school football games is unconstitutional.
___ The Hispanic Baptist Convention of Texas adopted Vision 2005, a five-year strategic plan, at its annual meeting in Houston. The convention also elected Antonio Estrada of South Main Baptist Church in Houston as president.
___The Cooperative Baptist Fellowship voted to seek membership in the 95-year-old Baptist World Alliance during the Fellowship’s annual general assembly in Orlando. While the 1,800-church Fellowship, a group of moderates in the SBC, is not technically a denomination, leaders said they believe it meets requirements to become the 197th member of the BWA.
___Texas Baptists voted to launch a state chapter of the Fellowship. Texas is home to 415 Fellowship-affiliated churches and provides the organization with the most money, almost $3.5 million, from any state or region.

July
___About 1,400 Texas Baptists gathered in the mountains of Glorieta, N.M., for the second Texas Baptist Family Reunion, July 1-7.
___ World Baptist leaders met with Cuban President Fidel Castro in Havana July 8, on the final day of the Baptist World Alliance's General Council meeting. BWA General Secretary Denton Lotz described the meeting with Castro and Cuban officials as a form of "pre-evangelism."
___ Buckner Baptist Benevolences reopened the 121-year-old Buckner Children's Home in Dallas July 14. The facilities include five new buildings constructed at a cost of $10.6 million.
___ In the midst of one of the state's worst droughts, Texas Baptist Men disaster relief workers supplied food for volunteers who built an emergency pipeline to provide water to the community of Throckmorton.
___ Participants used maroon shovels to break ground for the $1.5 million Aggie Baptist Student Ministry Center at Texas A&M University in College Station July 16.

August
___ More than 300 young adults concluded work as participants in Texas Baptists' student summer missions program. They served people in locales from Texas to Australia and reported leading 1,132 people to faith in Jesus Christ.
___James Semple, director of the BGCT State Missions Commission for 12 years, announced plans to retire Feb. 1, 2001.
___More than 72,000 people attended the Texas Panhandle Festival 2000, a revival in Amarillo lead by evangelist Franklin Graham, heir to the mantle of his father, Billy Graham. Almost 2,600 people registered spiritual decisions during the crusade.
___ All six SBC seminaries will require "non-negotiable accountability" to the 2000 Baptist Faith & Message statement, reported Bill Crews, president of Golden Gate Baptist Theological Seminary and chairman of the Council of Seminary Presidents.

September
___Texas Baptist Children's Home celebrated its 50th anniversary Sept. 5 on the campus in Round Rock.
___The BGCT Seminary Study Committee completed six months of investigation by recommending changes in state convention funding for SBC agencies. The proposal would reduce $5.3 million allocated to the six SBC seminaries to $1 million and provide the remaining $4.3 million to Truett Seminary, Hardin-Simmons University's Logsdon School of Theology and Hispanic Baptist Theological School. As justification, the study committee cited a number of concerns with the SBC seminaries, including creedalism, financial irregularities, faculty purges and replacements, trustee interference and enrollment declines. Supporters of the SBC seminaries vigorously denounced the proposal and related charges.
___In a similar move, the BGCT Administrative Committee, which approved the Seminary Study Committee report and recommendations, also ratified a proposal to defund the SBC Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission and to reduce funding for the SBC Executive Committee to $10,000. It earmarked the resulting windfall to be spent on Hispanic ministries, human welfare ministries and moral concerns.
___The BGCT Executive Board approved both SBC funding recommendations in late September, passing them along to be considered by messengers to the BGCT annual session in Corpus Christi later in the fall.
___ The SBC Executive Committee responded to the proposed budget changes by passing

BUCKNER Orphan Care International shipped 50,000 pairs of shoes.

two resolutions--one affirming the six SBC seminaries and another claiming the funding changes would set "a dangerous precedent in our larger Southern Baptist work."
___ Texas directors of associational missions met with all 12 SBC agency heads, pleading with them to do something to bridge the chasm they said was opening between the SBC and the BGCT.
___A committee assigned to consider how the BGCT should respond to churches dually aligned with the new Southern Baptists of Texas Convention recommended the BGCT keep its arms open wide to those churches.
___A committee that had been created to study the "basis of associational formation" affirmed traditional geography-based associations of churches but also recommended the BGCT relate to non-geographic associations. It suggested a two-year pilot project with the Norte Central Texas Baptist Association, a group of Hispanic churches spread throughout several geographic associations.
___ The BGCT Executive Board approved a plan to reconstruct the board's staff around six units--church missions and evangelism, church health and growth, associational missions and administration, Christian ethics and public life, institutional ministries, and financial management. The board passed the plan to the BGCT annual session for final approval.
___ Dallas-based Buckner Orphan Care International shipped 50,000 pairs of shoes to orphans in foreign countries through its Shoes for Orphan Souls project, more than doubling the previous record.
___ Texas Baptists launched 104 congregations in September as part of the BGCT Church Starting Center's Light Up Texas emphasis. The new churches brought the church-starting total to 1,418 congregations during Texas 2000, surpassing the 1,400 new-church goal with three months remaining in the five-year endeavor.

October
___ A behind-the-scenes, last-minute effort at dialogue between the BGCT and the SBC broke down. And the report of that failure by Baptist Press, the SBC's public relations arm, violated a gentleman's agreement between BGCT Executive Director Wade and SBC Executive Committee President Morris Chapman, Wade insisted.
___The Cooperative Baptist Fellowship's Coordinating Council voted Oct. 13 that the moderate organization is "welcoming but not affirming" of homosexuals.

CAROLYN PORTERFIELD

___ Despite protests that the reallocation of $5.3 million in funding from the BGCT would be devastating to national causes, the SBC announced it finished its 1999-2000 fiscal year with a budget surplus of $18.72 million.
___Woman's Missionary Union of Texas elected Carolyn Porterfield to succeed retiring Joy Fenner as the organization's executive director-treasurer. Porterfield, 47, served eight years as associate executive director. Previously, she worked with national WMU, Arkansas WMU and the SBC Foreign Mission Board as a missionary journeyman in Kyoto, Japan.
___ Texas WMU also elected Kathy Hillman of Waco as president, succeeding Jeane Law of Lubbock, who served the maximum four years.
___ By an estimated 3-to-1 margin, messengers to the BGCT annual session in Corpus Christi approved the $5.3 million reallocation of funds from the SBC to Texas Baptist causes. However, the 6,664 messengers refused to sever all ties to the SBC, overwhelmingly defeating a motion from the floor that would have cut all BGCT funding for SBC agencies, including the two mission boards.
___ Messengers also approved a constitutional amendment that will allow out-of-state trustees on BGCT institutional boards. And they affirmed the Executive Board reorganization proposed earlier in the fall.

BGCT messengers voted to reallocate funding from the Southern Baptist Convention .

___ Clyde Glazener, pastor of Gambrell Street Baptist Church in Fort Worth, was re-elected to a one-year term as BGCT president. Newly elected officers were First Vice President Mark Newton, pastor of Baptist Temple in San Antonio, and Second Vice President Joy Fenner, retiring WMU executive.

November
___ "As long as God gives me breath, I'm going to continue to preach," ailing evangelist Billy Graham told a Jacksonville, Fla., crusade audience Nov. 5. Graham, who spent much of the year hospitalized, officially passed the torch of his Billy Graham Evangelistic Association to his son Franklin.
___ The Southern Baptists of Texas Convention tightened its relationship to the SBC during the new group's annual meeting Nov. 14. It affirmed the 2000 Baptist Faith & Message statement and voted to give 51 percent of its budget receipts to the national convention.
___ Texas Baptist Men received the George Washington Honor Medal from the Freedom Foundation at Valley Forge for its work to relieve suffering of refugees in Kosovo.
___ The new BGCT Cooperative Program remittance form enabled churches to channel funds to the state convention's newly approved budget but also to prescribe their own individualized giving plans.
___ Texas Baptist encampments announced a record year for professions of faith in Jesus Christ, with 7,820 people reporting conversion experiences.
___ Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary trustees elected Phil Roberts, a vice president at the SBC North American Mission Board and former seminary professor, as president. He succeeded Mark Coppenger, who had been fired a year earlier for mismanagement of anger.

December
___ Wayland Baptist University trustees elected Paul Armes, president of San Marcos Baptist Academy, as president of Wayland's Plainview campus. His predecessor, Wallace Davis, was named chancellor of the Wayland University system.
___ Howard Batson, pastor of First Baptist Church in Amarillo, declined an offer to become dean of Truett Seminary. "Truett only has a very bright future ahead. … I jut never got a real sense of peace that God had finished my call here," he explained.
___ Smyth & Helwys Publishing, a moderate Baptist curriculum- and book-publishing firm based in Macon, Ga., announced plans to open a Texas office within the next year.



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