February 11, 2002
New Missouri convention will go on despite shunning by SBC official
___By Bill Webb
___Missouri Word & Way
___JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. (ABP)--Plans for a second state Baptist convention in Missouri will move ahead even if the Southern Baptist Convention doesn't acknowledge the new group or allow it to collect funds for the Cooperative Program unified budget.
___SBC Executive Committee President Morris Chapman said Jan. 25 he would not recommend that Southern Baptists recognize separate state conventions in Missouri, even though they do so in two other states.
___While breakaway conventions in Virginia and Texas were started by fundamentalists sympathetic to the SBC, Missouri's new body, scheduled to organize in April, is being supported by moderates, of whom Chapman said he would be "hard pressed to interpret as in friendly cooperation" with the SBC.
___Leaders of what is now being called the Baptist General Convention of Missouri met via conference call Jan. 31 to draft their response.
___"While the SBC leadership has chosen not to acknowledge or cooperate with the Baptist General Convention of Missouri, we will cooperate with the SBC," new convention leaders said in 1,700-word "open letter" released to the media.
___The release said the group would ask affiliating churches to send the national portion of their Cooperative Program gifts directly to the Executive Committee's offices in Nashville, Tenn.
___"It is our hope that at some future time the SBC leadership will choose to build a working relationship with the Baptist General Convention of Missouri," the letter stated.
___In the meantime, the convention will collect and distribute funds to agencies of the Missouri Baptist Convention, including five that had funding frozen by the Missouri Baptist Convention after moving to self-perpetuating boards of trustees.
___Leaders of the Baptist General Convention of Missouri said it is clear Chapman is collaborating with leaders of the conservative Project 1000 group now in control of the Missouri Baptist Convention to make it harder for their group to start up and to discourage churches from joining.
___"We regret very much that our Southern Baptist leaders would seek to become involved in the life of a state convention in this way," the breakaway leaders said. "We know of no historical precedent for this type of action."
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