EVANGELIST Richard Jackson (center) came to the meeting armed with several Bibles he had signed on every page as the only creed he said he would embrace. The Bibles were imprinted on the cover with the words "Baptist Faith & Message." He presented the Bibles to David Currie (left), Charles Wade, Clyde Glazener, John Baugh and Herbert Ryenolds. (Photo by Johnny Pierce)

Mainstream Baptists taking shape as national network
___By Bob Allen
___Associated Baptist Press
___DALLAS (ABP)--Another Southern Baptist Convention splinter group opposed to its ultra-conservative leadership is taking shape.
___The Mainstream Baptists Network, a loose coalition of state groups modeled after thehighly successful Texas Baptists Committed, has named co-chairmen to lead the year-old national network and is developing a mission statement and structure.
___"We are turning a corner as a Mainstream or a Baptists Committed organization," said Co-chairman Bill Wilson, pastor of First Baptist Church in Waynesboro, Va. "This is a new day. ... By organizing and being a little more deliberate about our structure, ... we're sending a message about this organization we want to be sure is heard clearly across the country."
___One part of that message, Wilson said, is in choosing a Virginian as co-chairman. Sugar Land pastor Phil Lineberger is the other co-chairman.
___"This is not a Texas organization," Wilson said. "For the Mainstream organization to be successful, it must be a partnership from every part of this nation."
___Texas Baptists Committed is credited with defending the Baptist General Convention of Texas against forces that moved the Southern Baptist Convention sharply to the right during the last two decades. Ten similar Baptists Committed or Mainstream groups have started in other states, with mixed results.
___Second, Wilson said, "This is not a movement or an organization that is either in competition or aligned with the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship."
___The Atlanta-based Fellowship is a 10-year-old organization supporting alternative missions, theological education and church-resource programs to Baptists disaffected by the SBC's leadership change.
___"Some of us are ardent supporters of the CBF," Wilson said. "Others are not. That is not prerequisite for being involved or not being involved in this organization. Our intent is helping people be Baptist."
___The Network's main objectives for the coming year are to publish a national newsletter, grow its mailing list and add members. Nearly half of a $207,000 budget for 2001 has been pledged.
___Another message is that the group is not at present seeking to form a new Baptist convention, according to a draft of the Network's plan of operation. However, leaders acknowledge no one knows what the future may hold.
___David Currie, who heads Texas Baptist Committed and now assumes administration of the Mainstream Baptists Network as a part-time consultant, told a Feb. 5-6 consultation of about 170 invited leaders he is confident the voice of non-fundamentalist Baptists in America will prevail in the long run.
___"The Network of Mainstream Baptists isn't even an organization," Currie said. "It is simply a network to say, 'Folks, fight fundamentalism where you are.'"
___"We're not going to send any missionaries," Currie said. "We're not going to give any money to theological education. We're not any sort of a movement, per se.
___"Go fight fundamentalists in your state. Don't let those beggars do in your state what they did in the Southern Baptist Convention."
___Yet after more than two decades of denominational infighting, the vast majority of Southern Baptists remain "largely uninformed" about causes of the conflict, Houston layman John Baugh said during the Mainstream consultation.
___Of the 13 million "mainstream" Baptists he estimated are still on the sidelines of the SBC controversy, Baugh said "it is unlikely that even 10 percent" are keenly aware of the dangers of "fundamentalism" facing their churches and the nation.
___Mainstream Baptists, meanwhile, "are only four or five major decisions away from arresting the progress of and breaking the fundamentalist hold," Baugh said.
___To do that, the movement must "enlist fellow Baptists in this ministry of freedom, and they are there to be enlisted," he said. To Baptists who say, "I don't think we can do that," Baugh said, "Please don't say that, or just get out of the way."
___While any conflict has two sides, Baugh said, "the actions of some fellow Baptists create a third side that inadvertently aids the cause of fundamentalism and impedes our efforts to arrest the growth of that movement."
___Some non-fundamentalist Baptists "seemingly wish us to be mute in spite of all that has been seen and heard in 20 years," Baugh said. "Their demand is don't be unkind and don't be strident. ... Don't talk about the Baptist mess to anyone."
___"Some of the very finest of our fellow Baptists have worked for reconciliation among our people," Baugh said. "I wish reconciliation were possible," but "our capitulation is the only response acceptable to fundamentalists."
___Perry Sanders, pastor of First Baptist Church of Lafayette, La., urged churches to enlist their full quota of messengers for their state conventions and to enlist others to do the same. "One victory is not enough," he said. "We've got to persevere 10 years at the minimum."
___"We've got enough people if we simply have the perseverance ... to stay with it and not to falter and hold back."
___"Neutrality is complicity with the opposition," Sanders said.
___Meanwhile, former Texas pastor Joel Gregory told the group those in the "mainstream" are in the "broad stream" of the kingdom of God.
___Gregory, former pastor of First Baptist Church of Dallas, at one time supported the SBC's fundamentalist leaders. He left the ministry in 1992 and now works in the publishing business.
___"It did take me a good while to figure it out, but there are those for whom the kingdom of God is nothing but pronouncing the 'shibboleth' in the right way," he said.
___"Sometimes the Bible can become little more than a fetish," said Gregory, who has been regarded as one of Southern Baptists' premiere preachers. "We need to recognize and say clearly that we do not exalt the Bible by making it a fetish. We diminish the Bible by making it a fetish."
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The Baptist Standard