INITIAL THOUGHTS ON THE EFFECTVENESS/ EFFCIENCY COMMITTEE PLAN
By David R. Currie,
Coordinator

I hope you read the Effectiveness/Efficiency Committee plan in The Baptist Standard. It is impressive and will be the big issue at this year’s convention. The SBC leaders are already criticizing it heavily and they will spend many thousands of your Cooperative Program dollars trying to defeat it. They will use the denominational machine they control to fight it.

They are saying the same things they said prior to the 1994 BGCT meeting in Amarillo. Just like then, they are saying this plan will destroy the CP, split the state convention, hurt missions, etc. None of this is true.

The attitude of SBC leaders amazes me. Basically they take over the SBC, fire the leadership, exclude those who disagree, turn the seminaries into indoctrination/Bible schools, publicly advocate the destruction of religious liberty and the separation of church and state, assassinate the character of great people and then act hurt and upset that someone (the BGCT) would say we might not approve of all this and might like to continue to cooperate, but on a well thought-out basis.

In my opinion, this plan (and the 1994 CP Giving plan) is about our state convention trying to get us out of politics and all the arguing over our relationship to the SBC, CBF, etc., and start to function more as a autonomous state convention that will decide for itself how it wants to relate to other Baptist bodies while continuing to respect the wishes of local churches. This is solid Baptist polity. I continue to believe that the biggest issue with fundamentalists is they do not like being Baptist. Freedom and autonomy are troublesome words to them!

Obviously there are those in our state who are thrilled with the radical right turn of the SBC and others who are not. This plan is an attempt to say we can be more effective as a state convention building the Kingdom of God if we try to stay out of that argument and do some things ourselves, i.e., literature, more partnership missions, more family emphasis, more ethnic ministries and better theological education here in Texas.

The key is to stay Baptist in our polity and approach. The BGCT should define its relationship with the SBC or CBF, not the other way around, from the top down. Local churches should have the freedom to decide how they relate to the BGCT, SBC or CBF. Every time we have a big vote like this, it always is about the same basic issue—Baptist polity and local church autonomy and the effectiveness of those principles in building the Kingdom.

The BGCT is the only state convention that has some manner of cooperative relationship with the SBC that is significantly growing in Sunday School attendance, giving, etc. You can check it out. I believe the reason for that is that we have not followed the path taken by the SBC, we still honor Baptist principles, we do not try to control local churches or the BGCT and we try to be fair to everyone.

More importantly, we, as Texas Baptists, have the right to define our partnership relationships on our terms and do what we believe is effective in building the Kingdom. We must preserve this freedom from those who want to place us in a “submissive” position. In light of what has happened to the SBC, I believe God is counting on Texas Baptists to stay the course in terms of our traditional principles and practices and move to a stronger leadership position in Baptist life. I urge you to come to Austin and support this plan.

September 1997