November 18, 2002
Messengers approve BGCT world missions network
___By Marv Knox
___Editor
___WACO--The Baptist General Convention of Texas will create a world missions network to help Baptists spread the Christian gospel.
___Messengers to the 2000 BGCT annual session overwhelmingly approved the network Nov. 11 in Waco. The convention's Missions Review & Initiatives Committee, which spent the past year studying Texas Baptists' involvement in world missions, proposed the network, which is to be launched next year.
___"This is a marvelous expression of the possibility of missions," insisted Clyde Glazener, the Missions Review & Initiatives Committee's chairman and pasto
r of Gambrell Street Baptist Church in Fort Worth.
___The world missions network will link churches, associations, institutions and individuals to missions resources that will strengthen their involvement in missions, noted Keith Parks, chairman of the subcommittee that researched and drafted the proposal.
___The network grew out of denominational disagreement regarding missions. From 1999 to 2001, a special BGCT committee studied missions agencies of the Southern Baptist Convention and the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship, as well as mission work done by the BGCT.
___The committee reported last year, citing recent changes in philosophy and methodology of the SBC's missions agencies, the International Mission Board and the North American Mission Board.
___The Missions Review & Initiatives Committee grew out of that study and started its work a year ago. In the meantime, the International Mission Board and the North American Mission Board began requiring their fully funded missionaries to affirm the latest version of the Baptist Faith & Message statement, approved by the SBC in 2000.
___Three times, the BGCT has refused to endorse the 2000 Baptist Faith & Message. Opponents have said it functions like a creed, which counters Baptist doctrine and tradition. They also have noted it seems to elevate the authority of Scripture above Christ, refutes the Baptist doctrine of the priesthood of the believer and supplants local-church authority.
___Earlier this year, the BGCT created a missionary transition fund to support missionaries who resign or are fired because their consciences will not allow them to affirm the new Baptist Faith & Message.
___Still, the world missions network transcends denominational discord, Parks told reporters after BGCT messengers overwhelmingly approved the proposal.
___"This would have happened, even without the controversy," he said in a news conference. "Maybe controversy speeded it up, ... but this is the right decision."
___That decision came about after countless hours of study, Glazener said. The committee held listening sessions to learn what Texas Baptists are doing in missions and to determine what they need to do in missions. The committee also listened to BGCT institutional leaders and leaders of other state conventions to discover how they are doing missions. They also traveled all over the globe to learn about possibilities for partnership with Baptists from other countries.
___"We did the best we could to listen to everyone we could and should hear from," he said. "Our concern was to put forth a new thing, ... to provide a place at the table for every Texas Baptist.
___"There is a place for you," he said, referencing the exclusive attitude expressed by the SBC mission boards. "But it is not possible for you to order the menu for everyone else at the table."
___The world missions network will be established as a not-for-profit affiliate of the BGCT and will have "a permanent, strong connection to the BGCT," the founding proposal said.
___The network will be governed by a 32-member Baptist board. The BGCT will elect three-fourths of the
board, and the board itself will elect the remaining one-fourth.
___The initial board will be selected by the BGCT president; the chairs of the BGCT Executive Board, Administrative Committee and Missions Review & Initiatives Committee; the presidents of Woman's Missionary Union of Texas and Texas Baptist Men; and the BGCT executive director.
___The network also will form an advisory council of missions experts and representatives of Baptist conventions worldwide.
___The 2003 budget earmarks $300,000 for the network.
___Parks, who was president of the Southern Baptist Foreign Mission Board (later re-named the International Mission Board) and global missions coordinator for the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship, described the world missions network for BGCT messengers.
___"The network is inclusive," he pledged. "Everyone involved in missions is welcome. No one has to change activities or beliefs. If you are satisfied working through the IMB, NAMB or CBF or any other kind of channel, the network will offer its services to make you more effective."
___The network will extend to churches beyond Texas and will seek to build up "every legitimate mission effort," he said.
___"The multitudes are too vast, the lost are too lost, time is too short and the witnesses too few for us to be a stumbling block to anyone sharing the gospel, whether their actions and beliefs conform to ours or not."
___The network also will enhance missions already being done by Texas Baptists, he predicted, noting Texas Baptist churches and institutions are heavily involved in missions but sometimes overlap in their work. The network will meet needs and reduce duplication, he said.
___It also will revitalize missions zeal, he said, noting experience has demonstrated that missions commitment in a church results in increased financial giving, evangelism and discipleship.
___The network will be church-centered, Parks added. "The New Testament teaches the church is the only group that has Christ's power to batter the gates of hell and to fulfill Christ's plan on Earth. It is central in the missions task. The network is not an agency that receives personnel and money from churches and then does missions. The network's purpose is to connect churches with whatever is needed to enable churches to do missions better."
___Contrary to some detractors' claims, the network will avoid confrontation and duplication, he said.
___"The network's mandate is to strengthen all that is going on in missions and stimulate new things," he said. So many missions opportunities exist that "no one has a handle on it," he added. "We're not recreating what is already being done."
___The network will encourage "cutting-edge mission strategy," have a contemporary organizational structure and involve creative international participants, he stressed.
___"We believe God has worked through hundreds of his people to shape a common vision, and we want to be obedient," Parks said. "We believe it is imperative for Texas Baptists to move to a new level of excitement, participation and support of missions.
___"We believe this will energize every other good thing being done. We believe this network can be used of God to help us forget some of those things in the past that have debilitated and hindered us. We believe it will help us move forward excitedly to fulfill God's high calling in Christ Jesus for Texas Baptists."
___During discussion, Gary Hillyard, messenger from First Baptist Church in Anahuac, opposed the proposal. The network could become a clearinghouse from churches to the BGCT, rather than a church-to-church channel for ideas, he said. He also expressed concern that the network would become a missionary-sending agency and duplicate the work of the International Mission Board.
___"You are asking us to give you power to coordinate missions and give you money to fund it," Hillyard said.
___James Heffington of West Oaks Baptist Church in Bryan added, "Everything I'm seeing here I already see through the International Mission Board."
___He characterized the network as "a duplication of bureaucracy" and noted he is comfortable contacting the IMB for missions help.
___Parks countered that many Texas Baptist churches are not comfortable calling on the IMB. Still, "this network would in no way hamper or hinder you from doing what you are doing, but it would enable churches to follow their convictions," he said.
___Five messengers spoke in support of the proposal before voting to approve the network.
___In the post-vote news conference, Glazener said the network is not the beginnings of a new denomination, as some have claimed.
___"This has nothing to do with establishing a denomination," he said. "We're more interested in developing ways to facilitate missions, ... to be used of God to reach the world for Christ.
___"There is no design in starting a denomination. Whether that may happen someday depends upon how exclusive others choose to be."
___Parks predicted the implications of creating the network are more extensive than Texas Baptists can realize.
___"This is the kind of decision we will look back on and say, 'Wow, I didn't realize we did all that.'"
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