November 25, 2002
Virginia and Texas both charting new courses in Baptist missions
___By Adelle Banks
___Religion News Service
___WASHINGTON (RNS)--Southern Baptists in Texas and Virginia, at recent meetings of their state conventions, have approved measures that will prompt new approaches to foster missions in their states and beyond.
___The Baptist General Convention of Texas and the Baptist General Association of Virginia are moderate-led state conventions in a Southern Baptist Convention that has been dominated by conservative leadership for more than two decades. But their decisions to take steps that move them further beyond the activities of the denomination's missions boards is not solely political, some say.
___"It's not just the divisions between moderates and conservatives," said Bill Leonard, dean of Wake Forest University Divinity School in Winston-Salem, N.C., and a Baptist church history expert. "It's a changing paradigm for missionary support."
___Although executives of both state conventions acknowledge political differences with the leaders of the nation's largest Protestant denomination, they say the early November votes in Waco and Virginia Beach, Va., reflect a desire for more hands-on involvement in mission work.
___"Folks no longer want to give somebody else the money to do missions," said Craig Wilson, leader of the Mission Resource Group of the Virginia convention. "They want to be involved themselves in missions."
"It's not just the divisions between moderates and conservatives. It's a changing paradigm for missionary support."
—Bill Leonard
___Part of the "Kingdom Advance" initiative approved overwhelmingly on Nov. 9 in Virginia is called "glocal missions and evangelism," reflecting the convention's decision to combine local and worldwide missions.
___Messengers to the Texas convention gave their overwhelming approval Nov. 11 to a new world missions network that will allow churches to be involved in mission work in various ways, from sending money to a particular cause to collaborating with different mission-sending groups to help groups of individuals go abroad.
___"It moves our missions more to church-driven," said Clyde Glazener, chairman of the Missions Review & Initiatives Committee that recommended the network. "What it does allow is for every individual church to be involved in missions in the way and to the level that that church wants to be."
___The interest in personal evangelism, Leonard said, comes in part because people can travel more easily across the globe for short periods of time to do missions work, like an upcoming trip he'll take with Wake Forest students to finish building a school in Vietnam during Christmas vacation.
___"It's what I call 'boutique missions,'" Leonard explained. "You can get on a 747 and go do missionary work in two weeks, whereas in the old model--19th and early 20th centuries--it took you months to get to the foreign mission field."
___SBC officials question the need for any kind of new missions efforts when its North American Mission Board and International Mission Board already send missionaries across the country and the globe and involve church volunteers in mission efforts as well.
___Responding in particular to Texans--who make up almost 25 percent of the International Mission Board's 5,400 missionaries--IMB President Jerry Rankin said: "Southern Baptists in Texas already have--in the International Mission Board--an excellent network for personalized involvement. The IMB's role is to facilitate churches, associations and state conventions in their efforts to be obedient to the Great Commission."
___Officials of the two state conventions say they expect to continue to work with the Southern Baptist mission boards to respond to that command by Jesus to make disciples worldwide, but they'll work with others too.
___"We're looking for more mission partners, not less," Wilson said.
___Glazener, immediate past president of the Texas state convention, said he expects the new network will link interested individuals with the IMB, but they have to be "willing to sign their creed."
___The IMB has requested that all missionaries affirm the latest version of the Baptist Faith & Message, a faith statement that Southern Baptist officials deny is a creed.
___Wilson acknowledges that some Virginia Baptists also are displeased with that request, but he said that was not a key factor in the decision to pursue the Kingdom Advance effort.
___"I think overall, one of the big issues is to make sure we do concentrate back on the kingdom's work as opposed to dividing into camps and fighting over small things," he said.
___Likewise, Glazener said, "Our hope is that before very long this will move us past the controversy."
___Some Southern Baptist leaders have questioned whether the Texas convention is on its way to forming a new national convention with its addition of a mission network to its structure. Texas convention officials deny that's where they're headed.
___But Bill Merrell, spokesman for the SBC Executive Committee, said: "It would be very unfortunate if anyone used the strong mission focus ... to cover a crass political move."
___Despite the stated optimism about moving beyond the politics and concentrating on something else Baptists are known for--missions--the November votes demonstrate continuing divisions.
___"It's a continued illustration of the fragmentation of the old Southern Baptist connectionalism and network," Leonard observed. "As the Southern Baptist Convention has imposed ... greater doctrinal guidelines on its missionaries, that's given permission for states like Texas and Virginia to begin a disconnect of mission support and start their own."
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