Editorial: BGCT must seize singular moment for significant change_30804

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Posted: 3/05/04

EDITORIAL:
BGCT must seize singular moment for significant change

If the coming months live up to their potential, our children and grandchildren will look back on 2004 as a “kairos” time. A holy and sacred season. A divine moment. A blessed occasion when Texas Baptists stepped forward with unusual faith, vision and spiritual creativity.

Their verdict will hinge upon the work of four revisioning teams that have been asked to take a thoughtful, intense look at the Baptist General Convention of Texas. BGCT Executive Director Charles Wade named and President Ken Hall affirmed the committees–one comprised of laypeople skilled in corporate leadership, two made up of church ministers and another formed from Baptist Building staff–to analyze the structure, mission, vision and ministry of the convention. (An article about their work can be found here.)

The BGCT's revisioning challenge has been discussed among concerned Texas Baptists for several months now. Strategically, this is the most important task our convention will undertake this year. It's not merely speculative or theoretical. The results will chart our course far into this century.

This is true because of something we all know: Texas is changing–changing more rapidly every year. We're on the verge of becoming a non-majority state, where no ethnic group comprises a majority of the population. But not long after that, we'll become a Hispanic-majority state. We're also becoming a younger state, with the median age descending, even as the age of many of our most-noted churches is increasing. We're becoming more and more urban, not just because some of our rural areas are declining, but because our cities and suburbs are burgeoning. And if economic and political trends continue, we're likely to become even more divided between the haves and have-nots.

So, if Texas Baptists intend to be the “presence of Christ” to a state that looks radically different from the Texas of today and almost inconceivable compared to the Texas where we grew up, we've got to be willing to make drastic changes, to re-tool so that we can apply our resources to meet the spiritual and physical needs of Texans as they really exist, not as we imagine them to be.

We know that talk about change makes people nervous. It's frightening, mostly for two reasons.

First, we understand that change impacts people–people we love and respect. Baptists, more than members of most subcultures, are averse to making people change. That aversion draws from a strength; we don't want to hurt or inconvenience people we care about. And in Texas, we have some of the best Baptists anywhere. Not only do we not want to hurt them, but we don't want to lose them.

But such change, even serious reorganization, doesn't mean we hurt people or remove them from ministry. We need the best efforts of all of us, and we have the resources to channel willing and able Texas Baptists toward places of useful service to God.

Second, when we've been working hard, we're a little bit insulted by a call for change. It implies we haven't completely succeeded, that we've missed the mark somewhere. This especially stings here, where Texas Baptists have earned a wonderful reputation for ministry innovation. Baptists and other Christians across the country and around the world have copied our innovations.

But the change we face is too deep and broad to be accommodated without significantly stepping up the depth and breadth of our innovation. We've got to distinguish between program innovation and strategic structural reformulation. Of course, we'll always need to adapt and modify our programs. But if we're going to have the resources we need to minister to Texas of tomorrow, we've got to reallocate resources on a scale we've never approached.

You know what this means. Unless we start cloning workers and printing money in the basement of the Baptist Building, we've got to find ways to re-channel our human and financial and spiritual resources to meet overwhelming needs. They're too numerous to name here, but some of the most pressing include training multitudes of vocational and lay ministers, starting and resourcing local churches to represent Christ in their shifting communities, reaching the escalating numbers of Hispanics who call Texas home, banding together to do missions across our state and far beyond, educating the coming generations of leaders, providing for the human needs of the “least” among us, and on and on.

Remarkably gifted and creative Texas Baptists make up the revisioning teams. They will consider many issues. They would do well to look at these three areas, seeking to harvest enormous financial, human and spiritual resources:

Convention organization. The BGCT conducts its business through myriad committees, commissions, boards and other groupings. Overlap and redundancy abound. And participation in the Executive Board, with more than 200 members reflecting all the wonderful diversity of our convention, is reduced to three mind-numbing, seat-flattening endurance tests called “meetings” each year.

The revisioning teams could suggest how to reduce and streamline the committee-commission-board system to save money, involve members more productively and make participation more worthwhile.

bluebull Institutional consolidation. God has blessed the BGCT with tremendously vibrant institutions. Not only do they provide amazing ministry, but they also supply richness and texture to our life together as Texas Baptists. We need them and value them tremendously. But they also are extremely expensive, and our institutions' ministries often suffer because of the cost of doing business.

The revisioning teams could suggest how to consolidate key business and operational functions of our institutions to achieve maximum cost-efficiencies. If they could save dollars while preserving the institutions' functional autonomy and corporate identity, our cause would advance.

bluebull Service placement. A dominant theme of the BGCT is service to churches. Unfortunately, research indicates many, if not most, of those churches are plateaued or declining. We've got to do a better job of helping our churches embody the presence of Christ in their communities.

The revisioning teams could suggest how to channel resources more directly to the churches. Perhaps we need to place resources closer to the churches, or team up with other groups who offer resources, or enable strong churches to resource weaker churches. These are vital challenges that will become significant opportunities.

The appointment of the revisioning teams comes at an appropriate time, coinciding with the service of this year's convention officers. They represent much of Texas Baptists' ethnic diversity–Anglo, Hispanic and African-American. All three officers have been pastors of vibrant, growing congregations, and their hearts beat for local churches. President Hall now is president of Buckner Baptist Benevolences, one of the BGCT's strongest institutions, who has managed significant change during his decade of leadership. First Vice President Albert Reyes now is president of Baptist University of the Americas, the most crucial institution in Texas for shaping the spiritual dimensions of the state in the next century. Second Vice President Dennis Young remains pastor of Missouri City Baptist Church, which he founded after succeeding in the business world. When Wade receives the revisioning teams' reports, they will help him chart the BGCT's map into the future.

Pray for the revisioning teams, that they will see clearly and think creatively. Pray for Wade and the other convention leaders, that they will be inspired as they synthesize the revisioning reports into a cohesive concept. And pray for all of us as Texas Baptists, that we will follow God's leadership through changing times so our changeless Savior will be exalted and millions of lives will be saved.

–Marv Knox
E-mail the editor at marvknox@baptiststandard.com

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