Currie: If Texas Baptists ‘build it, they will come’

Posted: 11/02/07

Currie: If Texas Baptists ‘build it, they will come’

By Ken Camp

Managing Editor

AMARILLO—If Texas Baptists move forward with a bold vision, other mainstream Baptists around the country will embrace the dream, Texas Baptists Committed Executive Director David Currie said.

Drawing from a line in Field of Dreams, Currie told a meeting of the moderate Baptist political organization, “If you build it, they will come.”

image_pdfimage_print

Posted: 11/02/07

Currie: If Texas Baptists ‘build it, they will come’

By Ken Camp

Managing Editor

AMARILLO—If Texas Baptists move forward with a bold vision, other mainstream Baptists around the country will embrace the dream, Texas Baptists Committed Executive Director David Currie said.

Drawing from a line in Field of Dreams, Currie told a meeting of the moderate Baptist political organization, “If you build it, they will come.”

Currie readily acknowledged he doesn’t fully know what “it” looks like, but he insisted the future means more than fighting fundamentalism.

“It’s time to make noise about who we are and stop making noise about what kind of Baptists we are not,” he said.

Currie rejected the assertion that Texas Baptists Committed had been a divisive force in the Baptist General Convention of Texas by organizing to resist a takeover by fundamentalists.

“We have been a unifying force in the convention. … We have tried to be inclusive,” he said, pointing out that due largely to his group’s influence, the BGCT elected its first Hispanic president, first African-American president and first woman president. “We did it because that was the right thing to do.”

The Southern Baptist Convention remains “closely tied to the Religious Right that is seeking to destroy religious freedom in this country,” Currie asserted. The SBC also demands that every missionary and teacher in a seminary “sign a creed”—affirm belief in the 2000 Baptist Faith & Message statement, he added.

Rather than fight the SBC, Texas Baptists Committed should challenge the BGCT to present an alternative vision of what it means to be Baptist, he said.

Currie offered four recommendations to help the BGCT move forward:

Stop forwarding money to other conventions or fellowships outside Texas.

“We need to figure out how to get out of denominational politics altogether,” Currie said. “We need a Texas-only budget that doesn’t pass any money to anybody else. We should prepare a budget that passes nothing to worldwide causes because we have our own worldwide causes.”

If churches want to send money to the SBC or the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship, they should “write their own check to Nashville or Atlanta” rather than channel the money through the BGCT offices, he said.

Fund Texas missionaries directly.

“We should stop missionaries from becoming political pawns in a political nightmare,” he said. “If there is any missionary from Texas who wants to go to the field, let’s challenge Texas Baptists to pay for it.”

Texas Baptists should provide at least a portion of the direct funding for any Texas Baptist who feels called to serve internationally with any missions-sending agency, he said. He recommended the World-conneX missions network either be reconfigured or replaced with an entity that can help Texas Baptists send missionaries.

Make the Christian Life Commission a national ethics agency for Baptists.

“Let’s be the leader in the Baptist world in showing that there is no division between ethics and evangelism,” he said. “The Christian Life Commission should be a national agency. … There should be a CLC presence in every state.”

Keep churches in the forefront.

Currie applauded recent BGCT efforts to place personnel and resources closer to churches in the field.

“Remember the local church,” he said. “And never forget small churches.”

At the close of the meeting, Texas Baptists Committed executive board Chairman Bill Tillman announced the board had voted to create four special committees.

The committees will study the organization’s fund-raising efforts; possibilities for educating Texas Baptists regarding Baptist distinctives, history, leadership and current issues; the feasibility of relocating the TBC office from San Angelo to Dallas; and improvements in technology.

The board also is making plans to hire an associate director, Tillman reported.

News of religion, faith, missions, Bible study and Christian ministry among Baptist churches, in Texas, the BGCT, the nation and around the world.


We seek to connect God’s story and God’s people around the world. To learn more about God’s story, click here.

Send comments and feedback to Eric Black, our editor. For comments to be published, please specify “letter to the editor.” Maximum length for publication is 300 words.

More from Baptist Standard