Effectiveness and Efficiency Committee Recommends Vision for the Future

DALLAS (ABP) — A Texas Baptist committee is recommending that the state convention publish its own church literature emphasizing Texas missions and Baptist distinctives.

The material could supplement or replace products of the Southern Baptist Sunday School Board, which the committee claims are increasingly geared and marketed toward a non-Baptist audience.

The 20-page report of a committee named to study “effectiveness and efficiency” of the Baptist General Convention of Texas calls for increased emphasis on reaching the state’s growing non-Christian population.

A huge population influx has turned the traditional Baptist stronghold from “the missions base” to “a mission field,” the committee reported. The unchurched population of Texas is greater than the total population in 42 of 50 states and in 143 different countries.

To address the growing unchurched population, the report calls on Texas Baptists to magnify multi-cultural and family ministries, theological education and “partnership missions” involving volunteers to travel abroad for hands-on international missions experience.

It also notes that growing numbers of people who join Texas Baptist churches come from non-Baptist backgrounds. They need “literature that is rooted in Scripture, which emphasizes missions and honors Baptist distinctives and history,” the report adds. But it notes, “It is unrealistic to expect such material from those who must provide for the entire nation and who increasingly focus on a non-Baptist market,” an apparent reference to material produced by the Sunday School Board.

The committee recommends “that literature and other resources for Sunday school, discipleship training, missions organizations and other Bible study groups be developed as either a supplement to existing materials or a substitute for existing materials.”

It urges that the literature “provide information on Baptist missions (with a special emphasis on Texas missions), Baptist distinctives, stewardship, ethics and other subjects.” And it calls for the literature to be delivered “as inexpensively and soon as possible.”

Jimmy Draper, president of the Sunday School Board, objected to parts of the Texas report.

“While the report does not specifically name the Sunday School Board, it suggests that the best possible biblically based materials to meet the needs of Texas Baptists cannot be provided by a national entity. We take exception to that,” he said in a prepared statement. “We have the ability to customize resources for a geographical area such as Texas and even for individual churches.”

“The report also suggests, without naming us, that we are ‘increasingly’ focusing on a non-Baptist market,” Draper continued. “That is not accurate. Serving Southern Baptist churches is our No. 1 priority. Our conservative, biblically based materials, including their references to Southern Baptists, are increasingly appealing to non-Baptist churches because they are relevant to life needs, high in value and quality, and assist churches in making disciples better than any other resources available.”

Draper noted sales of Sunday School Board materials to Texas churches are increasing and lamented the fact his agency was not consulted by the Texas committee before the report was issued.

The full effectiveness and efficiency report will come as a recommendation at the state convention annual meeting Nov. 10-11 in Austin.

In addition to Texas’ growing and changing population, the report says “dramatic change is occurring in the way Baptists worship and relate.”

“Some recent changes in Baptist life have raised questions that Texas Baptists must address,” the report says. It cites the recent reorganization of the Southern Baptist Convention, which “some view as centralizing authority.”

It also claims: “Efforts to control state conventions are obvious. Vital issues are at stake that must not fall prey to a mind-set of control. One of the most important issues is that the BGCT continue to function as a servant, not an authoritarian, organization. Texas Baptists must continue to embrace historic Baptist principles that honor local church institutions and individual religious freedom.”

The committee clusters its recommendations for convention messengers in six primary categories: ministry to families, multicultural ministries, theological education, partnership missions and “biblically based, Texas-focused literature.”

Among specific recommendations, the report calls for the state convention to:

— Appoint missionaries for outreach to different cultural groups, especially in cities.

— Emphasize multi-cultural hiring for staffs of the state convention and agencies.

— Develop programs of theological education for lay church members and ministers unable to attend seminary.

— Establish a system to permit “lay en- voys” to be trained to minister on international mission fields.

— Expand partnership missions to include not only the SBC’s International and North American Mission boards but also the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship and Baptist World Alliance.

— Explore membership in the Baptist World Alliance, an organization of national Baptist bodies worldwide.

— Affirm the convention as “an autonomous body which will support mission causes in Texas, the nation and the world” that will “cooperate reciprocally with organizations and affiliations that complement its mission and its statement of purpose.”

Committee chairman Darold Morgan called the report “a tremendous vote of confidence in the work and ministry of the Baptist General Convention of Texas.”

“The recommendations we’re making are based on the strength of the denomination, not its weaknesses,” said Morgan, former president of the SBC Annuity Board.

Some observers have claimed the committee’s study has been conducted merely as a Texas response to the Southern Baptist Convention’s rightward shift. Morgan said that is only partly true.

“In light of the SBC controversy, in light of the obvious sociological changes and trends of the day, in light of peculiar denominational attitudes — it’s time for a massive vote of confidence in the BGCT and the way they do denominational business,” he said.

“Still, the study’s context includes SBC developments that have left many Texas Baptists feeling disenfranchised,” said BGCT president Charles Wade.

“There’s no question Texas Baptists have seen what has happened in the SBC and said this won’t happen in Texas,” he said. “We’re going to protect Texas from a control mentality. We’re going to do our very best to maintain an openness to every Texas Baptist who wants to participate and help. We’re going to do our best to see that everybody has a part.”

“Even in that context, the committee’s report does not conflict with the SBC,” Wade added.

“This document says we are not in opposition to the SBC,” he said. “We want the SBC to do what it does as well as it can. We’re not in opposition to the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship. We’re willing to help them where we can.

“But Texas Baptists will go their own way. We’ll work with those who want to work with us, but we will not be held hostage to the demands of those who would tell us how we must operate.”

September 1997