Texas Baptists continue to make clear that they have no intention of following the path of the Southern Baptist Convention. Year after year messengers to the BGCT have rejected fundamentalist candidates for convention leadership. Year after year we have declared our
autonomy as a state convention. We are distancing ourselves from the Southern Baptist Convention and rightly so. To do otherwise would be to ignore "the high calling we have in Christ Jesus."
As we declare our autonomy we face new questions. If we are not a "farm team" of the SBC, and we are not going to embrace the fundamentalism which identifies the SBC, what will identify us as Texas Baptists? What will people think when they think of us?
This is a serious question for our future as Texas Baptists. We face a crossroads, a crisis of identity.
Certainly part of who we are is well established. We are traditional Baptists. We believe the Bible is our final authority in all matters of faith and practice. We believe in the priesthood of all believers. We respect local church autonomy. We are zealous about religious liberty. We continue to believe that missions is what should unite Baptists in the midst of our diversity.
These historic Baptist principles are vitally important to the spread of the Gospel, the growth of individual Christians, the health of local congregations of the body of Christ and the freedom we enjoy as Americans. They protect our freedom as believers and congregations, challenge us to grow and minister, hold us accountable to the Scriptures and safeguard the freedom we all enjoy as believers and non-believers.
Baptist principles are crucial and I have spent my ministry defending them, teaching them and advocating them. Baptist principles are "tools" that help us live out our Christian faith and share our Christian faith. But Baptist principles are not the Gospel.
The Gospel is about one thing, and one thing only -- Jesus. I oppose fundamentalism, and have led this effort for 10 years for one reason -- I do not think fundamentalism is focused on Jesus. I
think fundamentalism is about control, power and judgment. I believe Jesus is about love, mercy and grace.
If we as Texas Baptists are going to be effective as a religious body of cooperating churches, we must focus everything we do on Jesus and his message of love, mercy and grace.
People come to know Jesus from an experience of being loved by someone in the name of Jesus. If TBC is not about Jesus, we have no business being an organization. If the BGCT is not about Jesus, it has no reason to exist.
If our universities are not about Jesus, they meet no need not met by others who can educate. If our hospitals are not about Jesus, others can heal the body.
If a local church is not about Jesus, it has no real purpose in a community. The Boy and Girl Scouts can teach morals and values as well as anyone. The Lions Club can do service projects.
What we can do, that no one else can do, is be the church, the body of Christ. We alone can be Jesus to a lost and dying world desperately in need of a word and example of grace.
As we as Texas Baptists forge our own identity, as we cooperate in new partnerships to spread the Gospel, we must invest our lives and resources in programs and ministries that are about Jesus. We must follow his own instructions and "preach good news to the poor... proclaim freedom for the prisoners and the recovery of sight for the blind" in both the spiritual and physical sense.
The identity of Texas Baptists must be fused with the person, work and character of Jesus. And what was Jesus about? He proclaimed and demonstrated the Good News that everyone is loved, accepted and forgiven who is in Christ Jesus and this love, acceptance and forgiveness is available and unconditionally given to everyone. All anyone has to do is accept it as a free gift of God.
When people think of Texas Baptists, when they read about us in the papers, they need to think about Jesus.
When we publicly resist fundamentalism, we must make clear why we do so. We resist fundamentalism because we are about Jesus and we want the programs, institutions and ministries of Texas Baptists to be about Jesus and not legalism
- The law never saved anyone.
- Judgment never saved anyone.
- Condemnation never saved anyone.
- Boycotts never saved anyone.
Only Jesus saves. And Jesus saves when his Spirit, through our cooperation and partnership with Jesus, and our proclamation of Jesus, brings someone to an experience of grace.
What will people think of Texas Baptists when they think of us in the 21st century? My hope and prayer is they will think about Jesus and his unconditional love, mercy and grace. I hope they will think of a people who seek to set those in the bondage of sin and despair free, who seek to feed the hungry, visit the prisoner and cloth the naked.
If they do not, we should be ashamed of ourselves. We know better. We are Texas Baptists. God is calling us to take up the mantle the SBC laid down when it turned to secular politics and tell the world about Jesus.