CONSERVATIVE FELLOWSHIP/BAPTISTS COMMITTED GIFTS SHOULD NOT BE COUNTED IN COOPERATIVE PROGRAM

Miles Seaborn, pastor of Birchman Baptist Church, Fort Worth, is chairman of the Texas Conservative Baptist Fellowship. He is also a trustee at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary and he voted to fire Russell Dilday.

Seaborn has sent a letter to Texas pastors urging them to cut their support of the Baptists General Convention of Texas to 50 percent or only 10 percent, with the rest going to the Southern Baptist Convention. He is also urging that gifts to the Texas Conservative Baptist Fellowship be counted Cooperative Program gifts.

Local churches will make their own decisions. We respect that. Our feeling is that Miles Seaborn’s vote to fire Russell Dilday was much more divisive that the vote in Amarillo that simply granted equality to all gifts to Baptist mission causes. There was nothing punitive or restrictive, in the vote in Amarillo, only respect and fairness.

We want to clearly state that we at Texas Baptists Committed do not believe gifts to us or to the Conservative Fellowship should be Cooperative Program gifts. We are not mission organizations. We are advocacy organizations.

The Conservative Fellowship advocates that Texas Baptists follow the fundamentalist direction taken by the SBC. We urge Texas Baptists to remember our heritage and stay the traditional Baptist course. We did not start this disagreement within the Southern Baptist Convention and we would like to keep it out of Texas as much as possible.

Texas Baptists Committed is supported by individual gifts. We will have over 1,500 individual contributors this year. We appreciate their support. We do feel that we have a “mission” in providing education about our Baptist heritage and urging support of the traditional Baptist way of doing things. But gifts to us should not be Cooperative Program gifts. Neither should gifts to the Conservative Fellowship.