Newsletter
October 2000

 



 
A Trip to Cold Mountain
By William M. Tillman, Jr.
We are known by the people with whom we walk. John tells us in his first epistle, "Whoever claims to live in him must walk as Jesus did" (2:6, NIV).
The Baylor Board of Regents passed a resolution to call upon Texas Baptists to support the recommendations of the BGCT administrative committee to be voted upon October 30 in Corpus Christi.
Beware False allegations
by Robert Campbell
Sixteen dedicated people make up the BGCT Seminary Study Committee. Unfortunately, unfounded allegations confront the committee.
DALLAS - A Texas Baptist committee finalized a proposal Monday that will make it possible for churches to give more money to support theological education at three Texas schools.
Institutions that will benefit if the Baptist General Convention of Texas reallocates millions of dollars away from the Southern Baptist Convention expressed gratitude for the additional financial support and described needs for even more money.
Former President Jimmy Carter, America's most well know Baptist layman, has joined efforts with Texas Baptists Committed and the traditional Baptist movement nationally.
The Baptist General Convention of Texas embraced the church I first remember, educated its pastor, sent me to Baylor University as a ministerial student and enhanced the life of the seven Texas Baptist churches I served from 1968 until 1992.

To My Fellow Baptists, Like millions of other Baptists, I have been deeply distressed by the unpleasant and counterproductive divisions within our denomination.

Truth, we hear, is the first casualty of war. It is with sadness our Seminary Study Committee presents evidence in its report that the infighting in the SBC inspires the slaughter of truth about seminary enrollment figures.
I undertook this Seminary Study Committee responsibility with the same attitude I had brought to two other committee assignments for the BGCT.
The Baptist General Convention of Texas administrative committee is recommending no money for the SBC Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, a moral-concerns agency with offices in Nashville, Tenn., and Washington, and only token funding for the SBC Executive Committee, also in Nashville.
Questions regarding Creedalism
Excerpts compiled from BGCT Seminary Study Report
Seminary administrators and trustees enforce this creedalism by using the 2000 BF&M and several other documents as an "instrument of doctrinal accountability."
Questions regarding Enrollment
Excerpts compiled from BGCT Seminary Study Report
Funds received by the six SBC seminaries are not always used for "graduate" theological education.
Questions regarding non-Southern Baptist Training
Excerpts compiled from the BGCT Seminary Study Committee
It has always been desirable for faculty to have at least one degree from a non-Southern Baptist or non-state Baptist convention-owned and operated school. This provided students with a wider spectrum of scholastic thought.
Questions regarding Faculty turnover
Excerpts compiled from The BGCT Seminary Study Committee
Most Southern Baptists are well aware of the purging of faculty or administrators who refuse to go along with the ideas and philosophies of the new SBC presidents and trustees.
One of the proposed changes in the Baptist General Convention's proposed budget to be voted upon in Corpus Christi on Oct. 30-31 is to reduce the amount of funding for the SBC Executive Committee from $706,000 to $10,000.
Southern Baptist leaders, led by Morris Chapman, president of the Executive Committee of the SBC, are calling upon their supporters to be at Corpus Christi to vote against budget recommendations passed by the administrative committee and executive board of the Baptist General Convention of Texas.
DALLAS (ABP) - A study committee recommending dramatic changes to the way Texas Baptists fund theological education filled in details at a called meeting of the Baptist General Convention of Texas administrative committee.
The SBC has certainly felt free to make its own unilateral changes - including major revisions to the faith statement that underlies the cooperative relationship - without consulting the states.
Please do not tell the members of First Baptist Church in Muleshoe, but we have been having "Training Union" on Wednesday nights.
View from the Pew
By Vie Marie Taylor
Although I have never attended seminary, the purging of our seminary teachers and leaders from the very earliest days of the present problems is to me one of the most frightening aspects of the whole scenario that has brought us into this year.
How often do church members check to see how their church spends money?
Laity across the state are asking: How do the changes in the SBC affect my church?
Keep it Simple
Charles C. McLaughlin
“Which way should our church go, the Southern Baptist Convention or the Baptist General Convention of Texas?”
Among those immediately affirming the work of a Texas Baptist committee recommending reductions in funding for Southern Baptist Convention seminaries were ousted faculty members who found vindication in the six-month study.
Political Power and Payoffs
By Forrest Newton

Shrewd politicians and power-hungry people know: political power does not require a majority vote.

 

 


Vote for These BGCT Leaders: Glazener, Newton and Fenner

Clyde Glazener, pastor of Gambrel Street Baptist in Fort Worth; Mark Newton, pastor of Baptist Temple in San Antonio; and Joy
Fenner, retiring executive director-treasurer of Woman’s Missionary Union of Texas will be nominated as officers of the Baptist
General Convention of Texas at the annual convention in Corpus Christi, October 30-31, 2000. TBC encourages messengers to vote for
these qualified Texas leaders!


Confusing Rhetoric

"We (ERLC) do not engage in partisan politics."

Richard Land, president of the SBC's Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission, in a Baptist Press story, Sept. 28, 2000

"The go-along, get-along strategy is dead. No more engagement. We want a wedding ring, we want a ceremony, we want a consummation of the marriage."

Richard Land at a coalition meeting intent on promoting the Religious Right agenda within the Republican Party, March 2, 1998



Quotes from Charles Wade, BGCT Executive Director

"I will gladly sign God's word on every page, but I will not allow our people to be put in a position where they will have to sign man's word about God."

"In seeking to eliminate the perceived problem of liberalism, (SBC leaders) have willingly sacrificed liberty. You do not have to sacrifice liberty in order to maintain biblical fidelity. Texas Baptists intend to show the way."

     -to the BGCT Executive Board in his own report.

 




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