EDITORIAL: BGCT actions define relationships

Texas Baptists talked and talked about relationships at our annual meeting in Amarillo this past week. But as the old saying goes, talk is cheap. We will define our relationships by how we act throughout the year.

The key relationship that must be repaired is the rift between the Baptist General Convention of Texas and its churches. This year, the vast majority of Texas Baptists voted, but not in Amarillo. They voted from home by not bothering to show up. Their no-show ballots indicated they don't believe the BGCT matters to their churches. They voted to say it is irrelevant to their ministries and their lives. You may disagree, but perception represents powerful reality.

Those few of us who assembled in Amarillo talked about relationships because we debated how to relate to another vital part of our convention—our institutions.

Repeating history, Baylor University dominated the debate. The BGCT's relationship with its oldest institution came up twice. Baylor won one round and lost another. Messengers approved an agreement that gives Baylor effective control over the nominating process for the 25 percent of its board elected by the convention. (The other 75 percent is self-perpetuating.) But messengers also approved a 2012 budget shaped by a new funding formula that exacts a price for that control, and that price next year is a loss of about $900,000.

Messengers continued talking about relationships when they discussed a constitutional amendment that allows the other Texas Baptist institutions to select a larger percentage of their own board members. In recent years, each institution could elect up to 25 percent of its board, with the BGCT electing at least 75 percent. The amendment reduces the convention's share of slots on each board to a simple majority. As two university presidents explained, the change provides help for recruiting board trustees who live out of state, who are racial minorities and who support the institutions even when their churches do not support the convention.

In the debates, messengers frequently lamented what they described as increasingly distant BGCT relationships. As often is the case, those recoiling relationships can be divided into two categories—Baylor and everybody else.

Face reality—the BGCT?is powerless to fix the Baylor relationship. Baylor must fix itself. Loyal Texas Baptists populate both "sides" of the struggle for Baylor's future. If Baylor President Ken Starr can restore relationships with disenfranchised alumni and keep his job, he should be nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize. But the rest of the BGCT can't influence that outcome, no matter how much money it gives to or withholds from ol' BU.

As for everybody else, the BGCT can begin to mend relationships by affirming and supporting its institutions. For about a decade, many leaders have talked about "the BGCT" as if it were the Executive Board staff. While the Executive Board provides unique and important functions in proposing the convention's budget and planning the annual meeting, it is only one of about 25 BGCT institutions. This identity confusion has puffed up the importance of the Executive Board at the expense of universities, child- and aging-care ministries, hospitals and a few other organizations—to say nothing about the astronomical value of the churches and associations. With declining income, the convention can't disburse new money to show love for the institutions. But its leaders must vigorously and repeatedly demonstrate respect and appreciation for them. And perhaps, if it's not too late, the churches will begin to realize "the BGCT" includes the schools, hospitals and ministries they love and start providing more money to support them.

The next executive director of the BGCT Executive Board faces a daunting challenge. Proverbs reminds us, "Where there is no vision, the people perish." Unless the BGCT develops a vision that engages our faith, inspires our hope, compels us to cooperate again, and embraces our churches and institutions, our relationships will continue to drift further and further apart.

—Marv Knox is editor of the Baptist Standard. Visit his blog at www.baptiststandard.com.