Committees to study HBU relationship, BUA financial needs_12604

Posted: 1/23/04

Committees to study HBU relationship, BUA financial needs

By Ferrell Foster

Texas Baptist Communications

DALLAS­The Christian Education Coordinating Board of the Baptist General Convention of Texas is setting up committees to deal with Baptist University of the Americas' financial needs and the convention's relationship with Houston Baptist University.

At its winter meeting, the board voted unanimously to create two committees. One will consider the Baptist University of the Americas' requests for additional funding this year. The school in San Antonio, formerly named Hispanic Baptist Theological School, is asking for $1 million to help with operating expenses and another $3.5 million to buy property across Interstate 35 from its current location.

The other committee will “evaluate” the BGCT's relationship with Houston Baptist University since the school entered into a “fraternal agreement” with the Southern Baptists of Texas Convention. A motion passed at the BGCT annual meeting in Lubbock last November instructed the board to study the BGCT/HBU relationship.

An agreement signed in 2001 between BGCT and the university called for the school to have a “unique affiliation” with the convention “by not affiliating or establishing a formal relationship with other denominations, conventions or religious entities.” Different views of what that wording meant surfaced in following months.

After the university signed its fraternal agreement with the competing Baptist convention in 2003, messengers to the BGCT meeting in Lubbock passed a motion offered by Robert Creech of University Baptist Church in Clear Lake to have the Christian Education Coordinating Board study the matter.

The committee looking at the Houston Baptist University-BGCT relationship will consist of two members of the current coordinating board, two members from the committee that drafted the original agreement between the school and the BGCT and two at-large members.

The Christian Education Coordinating Board will report its findings to the BGCT Executive Board May 25.

Baptist University of the Americas' issues are solely financial. University President Albert Reyes said the school's trustees requested the $1 million “to meet all obligations related to certification and accreditation standards recently attained.”

Last fall, the school received accreditation as a Bible college, an effort the BGCT has supported significantly with additional funding the past three years, according to Keith Bruce, coordinator of institutional ministries for the BGCT.

The proposed $3.5 million land grant would be used to buy 78 acres across the highway from the school's current 13-acre campus. Reyes said deterioration of current buildings, coupled with the existing campus' higher market value than the larger tract, moved the BUA board to request the funding.

Both requests would require approval of the BGCT Administrative Committee and Executive Board, as well as the Christian Education Coordinating Board. As a result, a committee made up of two people from each of those bodies, plus three at-large members, will consider the proposal.

A third financial request from Baptist University of the Americas is that the school be added to the formula used to fund the BGCT's other eight universities. That request will be considered by the coordinating board's administrative/finance committee. It will be part of a broader review of the funding formula sought by Dallas Baptist University. Other issues the review will consider are how students in online courses and at off-campus centers are counted in the formula.

Currently, Baptist University of the Americas is scheduled to receive $459,000 through the 2004 BGCT budget. It also is set to receive about $105,000 through the Mary Hill Davis Offering for Texas Missions. If it were treated like one of the eight BGCT-affiliated liberal arts universities, its funding from the BGCT budget would rise to more than $800,000, Bruce said.

Linda Brian, chairperson of the coordinating board's administrative committee and a member of First Baptist Church in Amarillo, said the committee is aware of the “strategic position” the school has in preparing leaders for Hispanic churches. “We need it and want it to do well. At the same time, we are very much aware of budgetary restraints here,” she said.

“There have been funds in the past” that have been sent to support the school, Brian said. “We want to look at what all can be done … without detriment to the other schools. … It's a tall request that has been made, unprecedented.”