Texas Baptists Committed to focus on prayer & missions
___By Marv Knox & Mark Wingfield
___Editor & Managing Editor
___DALLAS--The time has come for Texas Baptists to move their momentum from politics to missions, speakers at the Texas Baptists Committed annual convocation stressed.
___"We're here to talk about the future, about missions," Executive Director David Currie told the group in Dallas July 20-21.
___Supporters of the Baptist General Convention of Texas started Texas Baptists Committed in 1989 to thwart a fundamentalist political movement similar to the one that gained control of Southern Baptist Convention agencies and institutions in the past 20 years.
___"Texas Baptists Committed saved the BGCT ... for folks who want to be a beacon and focus on Jesus," Currie claimed.
___However, he conceded, he's "hearing from more and more folks who are tired of the controversy" that has engulfed both the state and national conventions. "But you have to choose to get out of it ...
___"We face a new challenge--that Texas Baptists Committed will become an organization of prayer as well as action."
___Currie did not disavow the political strategy that has secured the BGCT for "traditional Baptists" while the SBC has come under control of fundamentalists. "We've still got to go to the convention and practice good stewardship" by winning officer elections and key strategy votes, he said.
___But the challenges looming before Texas Baptists--including a state with more and more non-Christian residents, increasing ethnic plurality and escalating poverty--demand attention to spiritual ministries, Currie maintained.
___"We can move the BGCT out of this" controversy through the strength of prayer and the energy of a passion for missions, he added.
___One way Texas Baptists Committed will support an increased emphasis on prayer is by producing a daily prayer guide that will feature the various ministries, ministers and missionaries associated with the BGCT, Currie announced.
___Throughout the convocation, held at the Doubletree Campbell Center, speakers echoed the themes of missions and prayer.
___"I hope we will not ignore missions and go about our business," said Keith Parks, former leader of both the SBC Foreign Mission Board and the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship's global missions program. "Many churches have done that; many individuals have done that."
___In forsaking missions, a church forsakes its position with God, Parks said. "Let a church cease to be missionary, and it ceases to be holy."
___And although Baptists have conducted missions activity for generations, "we never did get very serious about it," Parks alleged. "Three percent to 4 percent of a church budget committed to spreading the gospel is not something I want to stand before the Lord and brag about."
___Still, Southern Baptists seem convinced "the only way to do missions is the same way we've always done it," Parks said, noting the Southern Baptist Convention no longer does missions the way it always has done it. He particularly lamented what he called the loss of a "contextual perspective" that shapes missions strategy to meet needs in specific areas of the world, as well as a decline in the number of career "incarnational" missionaries.
___He offered "some directions to consider" regarding the missions task.
___"We must be as committed to praying as we have been to political activity," he told the group, which has excelled at politics.
___"Help us find ways to fulfill this basic, unchanging calling of God that is given to every Christian, every church," he added. "The commitment to missions has to be from the local church, the wellspring of missions.
___"But most local churches cannot do it by themselves. So, how can we find a way where this God-given, Jesus-stated, Baptist-convinced idea that every church must be involved can be fulfilled? ...
___"What I'm talking about is bigger than Texas. We must never try to reduce the kingdom of God to the state of Texas. We serve a bigger God than that."
___Texas Baptists must not "alienate others--the stakes are too great for that," he cautioned. "We must work with any who will work on this cause that is greater than all of us together."
___In time, national and state conventions will decline as vehicles for conducting missions activity, he predicted. "Groups with passion, retaining their autonomy, will join together for this common task."
___Indeed, it is a new day for missions, agreed Ron Cook, former Brownwood pastor and now director of the doctor of ministry program at Truett Seminary.
___Today is "a remarkable time of revisioning and recommitting," he said, noting the rapid pace of change all across modern life.
___Yet this is a time like that prophesied by Old Testament prophet Joel, when sons and daughters are prophesying and old men are dreaming dreams, Cook reported. He specifically cited the willingness of teenagers and young adults to answer the missions call and of older statesmen like Parks to see things in a new light.
___In such a time, Baptists must remain anchored to a sound theology of missions, Cook said. And at its core, a proper theology must acknowledge that missions is about God, not about man.
___"We think too much about ourselves," he said. "It's more about him than it is about us. ... It's about his work to establish his kingdom."
___The need to acknowledge a changing missions context was emphasized further by Bill O'Brien, former vice president of the SBC Foreign Mission Board and director of Samford University's Global Center.
___"We live in a new global era, ... (and) we live in a new apostolic era," he reported.
___It is not a matter of waiting for the missions paradigm to shift, O'Brien said. "The paradigm already has shifted. ... We already live in a non-Christian culture."
___In such a changed time, O'Brien urged Texas Baptists to learn, look, lose control, listen, live and love.
___"What kind of radical reform will it take for our acculturated churches to reach their full potential?" he asked.
___The answer, he suggested, is to become "missionpreneurial."
___Texas Baptists must understand the unique role they have been given in modern history, O'Brien warned. "You've only got one chance to make a good impression, only one chance to make a radical transformation.
___"We've got a chance to do it right," if Texas Baptists will break out of old patterns and act creatively, he added. "It doesn't have to look like your grandfather's Oldsmobile."
___Given a new chance to be missionary in a modern context, Texans should move beyond the Baptist battles of the past, asserted Charles Johnson, pastor of Second Baptist Church in Lubbock.
___"Let's quit telling this world how much more we believe the Bible than the fundamentalists," he suggested. "We need to get out of this reactionary posture and quit letting fundamentalism set our agenda."
___Instead of placing full-page ads about who believes the Bible, Texas Baptists ought to be running ads announcing that the BGCT is determined not to let any child in Texas go to bed hungry, Johnson said. Or in conjunction with agencies like Buckner Baptist Benevolences, the BGCT ought to running ads announcing Texas Baptists' willingness to receive any unwanted child in the state and commitment to care for those children, he added.
___"If we get dedicated to that, Jesus will show up," Johnson declared. "We will have all the money, all the resources we need."
___The bottom line, he said, is the call to help every person in
___Texas claim the spiritual inheritance offered them through faith in Christ. "How will they know they're rich if you and I don't read them the will?"
___Women must play a key role in spreading the gospel to the whole world, asserted Dellanna O'Brien, a native Texan and retired executive director of the SBC Woman's Missionary Union.
___She recounted the remarkable rise of women in all sections of society in the 20th century and noted, "God has uniquely prepared women to be God's emissaries in a hurting world."
___Unfortunately, in "the game" of missions, "more than half the players are in the dugout," she lamented, pointing out men often think of women as too incompetent and fragile to be effective in missions.
___"Today, the united effort of men and women is urgently needed," she said. "Women were last at the cross, first at the tomb and first to witness Christ's resurrection. Women never shirked the task" God gave them.
___"Our competency is from God, who has made us competent," she insisted. "May we find new strength in our partnership--men and women--for these new days."
___Texas Baptists do not engage in missions under their own power, but through the strength of God, reassured Paul McBride, pastor of Friendship Baptist Church in The Colony.
___"We serve a God who can do all things but fail," McBride stressed. "He has a plan for us. ... We need to quit focusing on our condition, our situation, our circumstances and focus on him who is in control."
___Texas is vast, and its challenges are immense, he admitted, acknowledging the temptation to grow discouraged. But he recalled the New Testament story of the Apostle Philip baptizing an Ethiopian convert in a river as they traveled in a desert.
___"Think of the power of God," McBride urged. "If God can put water in the desert, just think what he can do with Texas Baptists."
___Such missions miracles are possible only if Texas Baptists walk through the "open door" of opportunity God is placing before them, insisted Dennis Harris, a rancher and lay preacher from Fredericksburg.
___"We don't have the time, money, energy or people to win the world to Christ ... in our own power," he said. "We see a door of opportunity, and we say: 'It's impossible. Let's just don't go through it.'"
___But with God, all things are possible, Harris countered. He illustrated with the story of the Apostle Peter, who saw Jesus walking across a stormy sea and got out of his boat to walk to Jesus.
___"Peter was just a fisherman who got it in his mind that if he trusted the Master, he could walk on water," he said. "Most of us would have just stayed in the boat, and most of us will now.
___"We can't duplicate the works of our Savior, but in his power we can do things beyond our wildest imaginations. We can get out of the boat and go where no one has ever gone before. ... It is possible to lead the world to Christ."
The Baptist Standard
News of religion, faith, missions, Bible study and Christian ministry among Texas Baptist churches, in the BGCT, the Southern Baptist Convention ( SBC ) and around the world.
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