Texas Baptist Committed focuses on priorities
by Marv Knox
Associate Editor

FORT WORTH—Focusing on Jesus Christ is Christians’ highest priority, Russell Dilday told participants at Texas Baptist Committed’s third annual convocation, May 31–June 1.

About 400 moderate Texas Baptists heard speakers emphasize Christian priorities at the TBC meeting in Fort Worth.

Jesus is priority No. 1, stressed Dilday, assistant to the president of Baylor University.

“We want to see Him. We want to know Him,” Dilday said. “He is the highest priority.”

To know Jesus is “to completely assimilate him into your own life,” he added.

Such a focus on Christ is not superficial, and it’s not merely intellectual, Dilday stressed. Instead, it’s deep and life-changing, giving Christians the power to face life’s most difficult challenges, including suffering and death.

“When you know Him, you know His power—the power of His resurrection,” Dilday promised.

Some speakers highlighted views that set Southern Baptist moderates apart from the more conservative element of the convention.

Strong churches result “when people are led to recognize their priesthood” and not dominated by pastors, said Paul Kenley, pastor of First Church in Dimmitt. “Strong churches are Christ-centered and people-centered, but not pastor-centered.”

Many conservatives believe that pastors have ruling authority in a local Baptist church, while moderates view the pastor as a “servant leader” or first among equals.

Although many Christians are “consumed with the idea of authority in the Baptist church,” Baptists must emphasize the concept of the priesthood of all Christians, said Ed Hogan, pastor of First Church in Crockett.

That concept—that all Christians are Texas Baptist Committed focuses on priorities both free and responsible to relate directly to God—stands against the notion of domination of churches by pastors, Hogan said. He called “pastoral authority” an oxymoron, a phrase in which the parts are incompatible.

Baptists “love and respect the Bible,” noted Bruce Prescott, pastor of Easthaven Church in Houston, but Baptists have undermined their witness with the battle between conservatives and moderates over inerrancy.

Two things undermine the credibility of the Bible, Prescott said: “The first is that too many people proclaiming it do not live it. The second is that too many people proclaiming it insist on replacing the Bible’s ‘living’ metaphors with ‘dead’ metaphors.”

He called inerrancy—a belief that Scripture is literally true in all respects— a dead metaphor. “Neither the word nor the thought it summarizes is used in scripture,” he said.

David Abney, a Cooperative Baptist Fellowship missionary working through Ross Avenue Church in inner-city Dallas, said God is working miracles to cause Texans to come to faith in Christ. The Fellowship is a moderate Baptist group that supports missionaries and other alternatives to programs of the conservative- dominated Southern Baptist Convention.

“God’s plan was so much greater than ours,” he said, describing developments in the neighborhood that facilitate telling people about Christ. The Abneys are the first Fellowship missionaries to serve in Texas.

Missions also strengthen Christians involved in it, added Esther Abney, who works with her husband at Ross Avenue.“Missions needs to be a priority because God wants a deeper relationship with us,” she said.

Fortunately, missions “is the heart of Texas Baptists,” declared Mary Humphries, president of Texas Woman’s Missionary Union and a former missionary to Vietnam.

“We are facing greater positive opportunities in missions than at any time in our history,” she added. That’s because Baptists’ Texas 2000 campaign aims to present the Gospel to every person in the state, she said.

Texas 2000 is a huge vision that will draw upon the combined resources of Texas Baptists, said Phil Strickland, director of the state convention’s Christian Life Commission.

But even though the vision is enormous, it also is personal, he added. “The vision ultimately is not the vision of the Baptist General Convention of Texas,” he said. “The vision ultimately is yours.”

The Gospel message at the heart of that vision is relevant not only for saving souls but also for meeting human needs, said Michael Bell, pastor of Greater St. Stephen Church in Fort Worth.

“To Jesus, religion meant service, healing and helping,” Bell said. “Jesus did not suffer ‘compassion fatigue,’ (yet) we’re so bound by creedalism we forfeit the opportunity to meet human need.”

Strong churches can help meet people’s needs, insisted Phil Lineberger, pastor of Williams Trace Church in Sugar Land.

“People need a redemptive message,” he said. “They need a loving fellowship. (And) they need an outlet for ministry.” Those needs are best met through churches, he added.

Evangelism also is a major priority, said Richard Jackson, president of the Richard Jackson Center for Evangelism and Encouragement in Brownwood.

“The priority of Jesus on this earth… was to seek and to save the lost,” he said. “He just loved people… And the Bible teaches us that whatever He did, we’re supposed to do.” Consequently, evangelism— presenting the message of Christ to other people— “is our priority assignment,” Jackson said. “All the other assignments and priorities are part of it.”

Reprinted by permission of the Baptist Standard

August 1996