Pastor urges Texas Baptists to leave behind 'Great Commotion' 
By Dan Martin 

CORPUS CHRISTI, Texas (ABP) -- Texas Baptists "must leave behind the Great Commotion for the Great Commission," Jim Denison said in the annual convention sermon at the Baptist General Convention of Texas. 

Denison, pastor of Park Cities Baptist Church in Dallas, said Texas Baptists must take two simple but life-transforming steps: "First, love the lost with all your heart. . Second, preach Jesus with all your strength." 

Texas Baptists "exist to take the gospel of God's love into our fallen, dark, dying, decaying, immoral world. Not wait for them to find us -- to find them. To go to them with the incredible good news that God loves us," Denison insisted. 

The BGCT annual session in Corpus Christi was held "in the midst of the greatest conflict and commotion we have ever known as Texas Baptists," he acknowledged.

Denison said there are an estimated 10 million unchurched persons in Texas, "and we Baptists have not been famous in recent years for loving them." 

A survey of residents who live near the North Dallas church where he is pastor discovered that people associate the words "pushy," "self-serving," "cliquish," "discriminates," "fundamentalists" and "hateful" with Baptists, Denison said.

"You and I must determine to love the lost people we know, today, with all our hearts. Only then can we prove to them that God loves them," he added. 

"Today, we Texas Baptists say to our world: 'We love you and Jesus loves you. We are committed to fellowship, to friendship, to unity for the sake of the gospel. We love you, and more importantly, Jesus loves you,'" he stressed. 

To critics, Denison said, Texas Baptists say: "We believe that the Scripture is the word of God, his truth for the world. We believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God, his hope for the world. We believe that the Great Commission is his purpose for the church, his mission for the world. And we are ready to get on with it."