September 30, 2002
EDITORIAL:
BGCT's actions preserve stability as SBC drifts away
___The Baptist General Convention of Texas Executive Board last week approved several initiatives that could chart the BGCT's course for years to come. Get ready to hear Southern Baptist Convention spinmeisters claim a couple of those decisions are part of a master plan to move the BGCT further away from the SBC. Don't believe them.
___First, you can expect to hear SBC leaders rail against a BGCT world missions network, designed to link Texas Baptists with partner churches, agencies and conventions, including the SBC's mission boards. The network was proposed by the BGCT Missions Review & Initiatives Committee to help Texas Baptists do what they've always demonstrated they love--hands-on missions endeavors.
___The network is not, as SBC leaders would have you believe, a full-blown missionary-sending agency in competition with the International Mission Board. It simply is a flexible organization that will enable Texas Baptists to spread the gospel more effectively and efficiently.
___Second, SBC leaders already are criticizing the Executive Board's decision to remove one sentence from the BGCT'scooperative agreement with the North American Mission Board. The sentence stated that all missions personnel appointed jointly by the BGCT and NAMB would be required to "comply with" the 2000 Baptist Faith & Message statement. Actually, removal of the sentence was based on principle and will not impact policy. Twice the BGCT has declined to affirm the 2000 BF&M, citing its distortions of key Baptist doctrines. Executive Board members said they believe inclusion of a favorable reference to the 2000 BF&M would be inconsistent, since the BGCT repeatedly has refused to endorse the document.
Of course, the SBC indeed has moved. It has broken from its moorings and drifted increasingly further to the right.
___Even with this principle in place, policy will not change. BGCT leaders have acknowledged the missionaries' right and NAMB's right to affirm the faith statement if they desire. But the BGCT already announced it would not participate in requiring missionaries to sign. Instead, missionaries in Texas who cannot comply with the document will be fully funded by the BGCT, so they are not required to violate their consciences and NAMB can keep its policy. Still, you can expect NAMB to refuse to ratify the covenant agreement and to try to blame the BGCT. This will be consistent with SBC leaders' attempts to blame discord between the conventions on the BGCT. Their mantra has been, "The BGCT has moved away from the SBC."
___The latest manifestation of this mantra may be the most disingenuous, preposterous statement made in a quarter century of Baptist battles. Richard Land, president of the SBC Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission, said the conventions remind him of a farmer and his wife traveling in the family truck.
___"The farmer's wife is sitting all the way on the other side of the truck cab, as far as possible from her husband," he said. "She says, 'We don't sit as close as we used to.' The farmer, from behind the steering wheel, replies, 'I haven't moved.' The Southern Baptist Convention hasn't moved. The BGCT has moved ... ."
___Land's claim is absurd.
___First, if the SBC "has not moved," then why did fundamentalists in the 1970s vow they had to take over the convention? If it "has not moved," why did a string of SBC presidents closely control trustee nominations to gain control of SBC agencies? If it "has not moved," why did those trustees systematically replace agency presidents with fundamentalists like Land? If it "has not moved," why did those agency heads fire or run off scores of faithful, God-anointed denominational workers? If it "has not moved," why have extreme fundamentalists like Jerry Falwell embraced the convention?
___If the SBC "has not moved," what has Land been doing for more than a dozen years, and why isn't he in trouble with his board of directors? He was put in place by trustees who were put on the board specifically to get rid of his predecessors. If the SBC "has not moved," then Land has failed them badly and failed to live up to his pledge to turn the place upside down.
___Of course, the SBC indeed has moved. It has broken from its moorings and drifted increasingly further to the right. And yes, the BGCT has taken actions--actions to preserve and protect historic Baptist principles and practices.
___Through the last decade, the BGCT has modified the Cooperative Program, but only after the SBC destroyed the trust upon which it was built. The changes preserved churches' freedom to fund Baptist ventures cooperatively without coercion, the true legacy of the Cooperative Program.
___The BGCT has established new avenues for obtaining theological education, but only after the SBC forever changed its seminaries. The BGCT ventures preserve traditional Baptist values that affirm the miraculous synergy between the Holy Spirit's guidance, the loving tutelage of committed, godly professors and the passionate quest of Christians seeking to fulfill God's call.
___Now the BGCT is launching a missions network, but only after both mission boards have abandoned missiological principles that were admired and emulated by other Great Commission Christians the world over. We can expect great things for God as the Spirit breathes new life into this missions venture.
___Yes, the BGCT and the SBC are further apart. Who knows how the Spirit of God, who brings order out of chaos and redemption out of pain, will direct us? But be not deceived: The BGCT has remained true to traditional, conservative Baptist theology, and its actions have advanced the preservation of historic Baptist principles and practices. From that standpoint, we have not moved.
___ --Marv Knox
E-mail the editor at marvknox@baptiststandard.com
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