WorldconneX dissolved, BGCT staff assumes key functions

DALLAS—The Baptist General Convention of Texas Executive Board approved a recommendation to dissolve the WorldconneX missions network as a freestanding entity and incorporate its key elements into the convention’s newly realigned Center for Evangelism/Missions.

At its May 19 meeting in Dallas, the board approved the recommendation initiated by BGCT executive staff leaders and the mission network’s board.

The BGCT will receive about $1 million in assets from WorldconneX to be used for the convention’s global missions initiatives. Members of the WorldconneX governing board will be invited to serve on a mission advisory team through the end of 2010.

The recommendation also expressed appreciation to the mission network’s founding leader, Bill Tinsley, who will continue to work with the BGCT Executive Board staff through the end of this year to assist with transition.

Passing the mantle 

Van Christian, chair of the BGCT Executive Board’s Church Missions & Ministries Committee, used the Old Testament story of the prophet Elijah and his successor Elisha to describe the relationship between WorldconneX and the Center for Evangelism/Missions.

“I see Evangelism/Missions picking up the mantle from Worldconnex and continuing the best parts,” said Christian, pastor of First Baptist Church in Comanche.

Specifically, the center will assume three responsibilities from WorldconneX—helping churches send their own missionaries, providing tools to help churches discover God’s mission for them and networking churches with global missions opportunities.

BGCT Executive Director Randel Everett noted WorldconneX had struggled to find its footing because it was “understood differently by different people.” However, he expressed hope that insights discovered and global connections made over the last five years would continue to benefit Texas Baptists.

Everett presented to the board the realigned BGCT Executive Board staff structure, built around three centers—evangelism/missions, education/discipleship and advocacy/care.

To a significant degree, economic factors—including both a drastic market drop that meant less revenue from BGCT investments and a mandated decreased reliance on those investments—necessitated the realignment, he noted.

“The economy forced us to take a look” at organizational structure, Everett said.

Market value of assets declines 

Five years ago, the market value of BGCT investments was $129 million, but now they total about $79 million, he reported. At one point several years ago, the BGCT was spending up to 16 percent of those funds, Everett said. Changes in the law impose a 7 percent cap, and the BGCT is moving toward a 5 percent draw, he added.

Further complicating matters, the adopted 2008 budget was “too optimistic” and had to be revised, Everett said. Then hurricanes hit Southeast Texas, causing some churches in that part of the state to close—temporarily or permanently.

At the same time, he noted, Future Focus Committee discussions about priorities centered on three categories—evangelism/missions, education/discipleship and advocacy/care. Those priorities became the stackpoles for the new staff alignment.

In other business, the board approved a resolution submitted by the Baptist Distinctives Council and the Institutional Relations Committee marking the 400th anniversary of the Baptist movement.

Four hundred years ago in Amsterdam, Holland, John Smyth and a group of English refugees established “the first church in so-called ‘modern times’ known to hold the recipe of Baptist beliefs, polities and practices that characterize Baptists today,” the resolution stated.

Among the principles the church held included the Lordship of Christ, the Bible as the sole written authority for faith and practice, salvation by grace through faith, believer’s baptism, the priesthood of all believers, local church autonomy and religious freedom, the resolution noted.

It also pointed to the sacrifices endured, noting “the road that brought us to what we enjoy as Baptists today in a free land is a bloody one, soaked with the blood of our Savior who died for our sins, with the blood of patriots who fought and died for political freedom and with the blood of Baptist martyrs and others who died for the cause of religious freedom.”

The resolution urged Baptists to use the 400th anniversary as an occasion to “retell the Baptist story,” emphasize Baptist beliefs and practices, and pay tribute to Baptist heroes of the past.