Whither Texas Baptists . . . after Texas Baptists Committed?by Bill Jones, TBC executive director

In the 1990s, David Currie and Texas Baptists Committed fought tooth-and-nail to keep Texas Baptists free to be faithful. As the Fundamentalists, in the late 1980s, neared their goal of achieving full control of the Southern Baptist Convention, they set their sights on the Baptist General Convention of Texas (BGCT) . . . because it was far and away the largest state convention, owning the most assets and institutions, the most prized of which was . . . Baylor University. More than anything, Paul Pressler wanted control of Baylor.

But he didn’t get it.

To gain control of the BGCT, they used the same strategy that had been so successful in the SBC . . . go after the presidency and its appointive powers . . . win the presidency enough years consecutively to place a majority of people on all convention boards and committees who have pledged their loyalty to your cause, and the BGCT will be yours.

In the 1980s, they had caught SBC leadership napping. SBC leaders trusted the people’s wisdom to see through the lies told by Fundamentalists, to resist their use of secular political tactics, and to hold to the Baptist principles that they were so blatantly violating.

Texas Baptist leadership learned from the mistakes of their SBC colleagues. They determined that, to keep Texas Baptists free, they would need to organize, educate, and fight. If Fundamentalists expected to catch Texas Baptist leadership napping, they were in for a rude awakening.

Led by David Currie, Texas Baptists Committed organized the state. David traveled the state, speaking to churches, educating Texas Baptists on what was at stake, and mobilizing them to vote for Moderate candidates at the BGCT Annual Meeting.

As for Baylor, President Herbert Reynolds and the Board of Regents voted for freedom and a measure of independence from the BGCT, ensuring that – if Fundamentalists were successful in taking control of the BGCT – Baylor would nevertheless be saved.

In 1998, after losing election after election, the Fundamentalists gave up their efforts to win the BGCT presidency and formed the Southern Baptists of Texas Convention (SBTC). Their strategy shifted from controlling the BGCT to luring BGCT churches to leave the BGCT & join the SBTC. That has been their strategy ever since . . . though Paige Patterson’s overtures to David Hardage and the BGCT in 2015 cause me to question whether there is a new strategy of infiltration & influence toward current BGCT leadership.

The BGCT executive director position has always been a balancing act . . . balancing various constituencies and priorities. It has been even moreso since 1990. There is a spectrum along which BGCT-affiliated churches reside, a spectrum that is not all that balanced. Though the BGCT was kept out of Fundamentalist hands, and BGCT churches by-and-large hewed to Baptist principles of freedom, most BGCT churches – and the people in their pews – continue to support the Southern Baptist Convention.

The Cooperative Baptist Fellowship (CBF) – which was formed in 1991 by Moderates who no longer had a home in the SBC – is still supported by very few, relatively speaking, BGCT-affiliated churches. Let’s be honest – most Texas Baptists consider CBF “liberal.” Ironically, this perception of “liberalism” (the same accusation that Fundamentalists leveled against SBC seminary professors in the 1970s & 1980s) is based, essentially, on CBF’s faithful recognition of the freedom inherent in the Baptist distinctives of Bible freedom, soul freedom, church freedom, and religious freedom, as described so cogently by Walter B. Shurden in his book, The Baptist Identity: Four Fragile Freedoms (1993, Smyth & Helwys Publishing). (And fragile they are!)

Fundamentalists will say that “the Controversy” was an argument over correct doctrine. Nothing could be further from the truth. We Moderates did not seek to control how Fundamentalists interpret the Bible. We sought to focus on those things that unite us as Baptists rather than on those that divide us . . . first and foremost, our love for Jesus and our desire to share Him with a hurting world . . . our worship of a gracious Father who created and sustains us . . . and our need for the work of the Holy Spirit within us to motivate, guide, and comfort us.

We Moderates recognized that none of us – Moderate or Fundamentalist – has a monopoly on God’s truth. We are all imperfect creatures, trying our best to understand God’s Word – both the Word made flesh and the written Word – and the call of that Word upon our lives. As my Daddy told me many times, “we should never presume to know the mind of God.”

Therefore, we can cooperate with each other in humility, cooperating as sisters and brothers, to share Christ. Missions have unified Baptists from our earliest days.

But Fundamentalists said no, you must agree to our interpretation of certain Scriptures and even our description of Scripture (“inerrant”), or else we don’t want to have anything to do with you.

Moderates didn’t leave voluntarily . . . we were told to leave.

In my tenure as executive director of Texas Baptists Committed (January 2011-July 2017), our focus has been on helping churches as they search for a pastor. The Southern Baptists of Texas Convention (SBTC) has an effective network, just as their Fundamentalist forefathers had in the 1980s. When a church loses a pastor, the SBTC finds it out quickly and offers an interim pastor and proposes candidates for pastor. 

We’ve heard this story from so many corners that it appears to be typical – that when an SBTC candidate goes before a search committee, he (always he) tells the search committee he is a servant pastor, that he has no political agenda, and so forth. Then, when he is called as pastor, it isn’t long before he fires anyone on the staff who dares disagree with his interpretation of scripture. He soon begins to impose his will on the church and lead it away from the BGCT by slandering the BGCT. That church inevitably winds up in conflict and dissension, a broken fellowship that takes years to repair and, in many cases, is broken beyond repair.

At TBC, my priority has been to develop our own network – which we did in 2014, with the TBC Advisory Network – of pastors and laity who would keep us informed of churches going pastorless, a network of people to whom we could turn with questions from search committees about the qualifications and track records of prospective pastors, and a network that would keep us supplied with resumes of reliable prospective pastors. 

Unfortunately, strapped for cash, TBC has operated with only one executive staff member – me. That has handicapped us in terms of getting the word out to churches. Also, our TBC Advisory Network didn’t respond to my requests for information as I had hoped they would. Year after year, I get about four or five calls a year from search committees asking for my help. That doesn’t make a dent in Texas. So we haven’t had the impact I had hoped we would.

The SBTC continues to steal churches.

But that isn’t my only concern. Many of us are disturbed by the rightward, inward turn of the BGCT under David Hardage’s leadership. When David was announced as executive director in January 2012, he immediately announced that the BGCT’s policy of regarding homosexual behavior as sinful would remain in place. I guess I understand why he felt that was necessary – because the SBTC had lied repeatedly about the BGCT’s stance on this issue.

Nevertheless, in May 2015, I raised this issue with him, following a warning letter he had sent to churches and pastors. My point to David was that churches were increasingly having to wrestle with how to minister to the gay people in their congregation and community, and his hard-line stance toward pastors and churches was making their task more difficult. I asked him, “Couldn’t you just not make an issue of it? Just recognize the autonomy of the local church and let them minister to these people in the way they feel led of the Holy Spirit.” David replied, “I don’t know.”

I thought his reply was more encouraging than a “no.” Then came 2016 and his letter to Wilshire Baptist Church of Dallas and First Baptist Church of Austin. At our TBC Breakfast the following week, David didn’t attend, but Steve Vernon, BGCT associate executive director, did. In my remarks, I called Hardage’s action a violation of local church autonomy. Later that morning, the convention voted – narrowly – to affirm his stance. In February, the BGCT Executive Board made it official – Wilshire, FBC Austin, and Lake Shore in Waco were out.

I wrote a blog post, “When family doesn’t want you anymore.”

So a lot of us are concerned that the BGCT is focusing on division rather than unity, exclusion rather than inclusion. Not exactly the spirit I see in Jesus Christ.

David Hardage embraces Paige Patterson and gives the back of his hand to Bill Jones, George Mason, Griff Martin, and Kyndall Rae Rothaus.

My only encouragement is this: David Hardage is NOT the Baptist General Convention of Texas. Since I made my remarks at that November TBC Breakfast, numerous BGCT staffers have thanked me privately. Also, please note that, in my remarks that morning, my disagreement with the BGCT was prefaced by all I love about the BGCT.

The Baptist General Convention of Texas is its Hunger Offering (which Wilshire began and has now been told will not be allowed to support any longer); its Christian Life Commission; its nine wonderful universities with their great faculty and students; Buckner International; Disaster Relief . . . and I could go on. So I haven’t given up on the BGCT; I still love the BGCT . . . and miss it, because David Hardage and a majority of messengers have said they don’t want me anymore.

There will be no official “watchdog” anymore; as individuals and churches, all of us have to be watchdogs, supporting those things we love about the BGCT (those of you who are still allowed to support it), praying for it, and holding its leadership accountable for the bedrock principles . . . those "fragile freedoms" . . . on which Baptists have stood for over 400 years.

Is the BGCT becoming “SBC lite”? I hope not, I pray not.