Dilday calls on Baptist Pride
By Dan Martin,
Texas Baptist Communications

As BGCT president, Dilday has been asked whether the Texas Baptist convention “is divorcing the Southern Baptist Convention,” he noted. “I replied, ‘Oh, my goodness, no. We have never been married.’

“We are a separate, Russell H. Dilday autonomous, free-standing convention, and we cooperate ... willingly ... link arms ... network with others. But this is an independent body of believers, and we are grateful for that.”

ANDERSON—Russell Dilday declared he is proud to be a Baptist and proud to be a Texan as he addressed the 150th anniversary celebration of the first Texas Baptist state convention.

“I was born into a Baptist family; grew up in a Baptist church; was saved in another Baptist church; met my wife at a Texas Baptist school where I was educated. I was called to preach in a Texas Baptist church and was ordained in a Texas Baptist church,” the president of the nearly 3-million- member Baptist General Convention of Texas, said, adding he served small, rural and large, urban congregations.

Individualism, autonomy, a rugged commitment to freedom and the can-do spirit of the pioneer come alive in a Texan, “and to say that I am a Baptist Texan and a Texas Baptist just puts icing on the cake,” he said.

Dilday, a professor at Baylor University’s Truett Seminary, said he is grateful for the Baptists who met at Anderson in 1848 to form the first state convention, setting the stage for Baptist work in Texas today.

“As president of the state convention, I have discovered a lot of new dimensions to our work,” he said. “It is a big convention, stretching across this massive state.”

Texas is home to 20 million residents, of which 10 million are not believers in Jesus Christ, he noted.

“We have nearly more Baptists in Texas than there are Episcopalians in the whole United States,” Dilday reported. “Our convention has strength that is enormous, and we would be larger than most free-standing conventions anywhere.”

“We would be the fifth- or sixth-largest convention in the United States if we were a free-standing convention,” he added. “We are autonomous, but we cooperate willingly, voluntarily with other conventions, groups, associations and national bodies.”

As BGCT president, Dilday has been asked whether the Texas Baptist convention “is divorcing the Southern Baptist Convention,” he noted. “I replied, ‘Oh, my goodness, no. We have never been married.’

“We are a separate, autonomous, freestanding convention, and we cooperate ... willingly ... link arms ... network with others. But this is an independent body of believers, and we are grateful for that.”

The BGCT is committed today to the same principles that brought about the creation of the Baptist State Convention in 1848—missions and education, Dilday stressed.

“Those are the reasons we come together— winning people to Jesus, spreading the gospel, carrying out the Great Commission and teaching and training. That is the only reason they joined hands and cooperated in carrying the name of the Lord Jesus Christ to the world.”

Texas Baptists are conservative “in the best sense of the word—theologically committed to the scripture as the word of God and to the Lord Jesus Christ as our only authority,” he stated. “Somebody said we are conservative without being cranky about it.

“You can have those beliefs without being negative and critical and self-righteous.But you have to do it in the spirit of the Lord, and that is what I find in most Baptists as I go across this state.”

As Texas Baptists face the new millennium, “missions have come right here to Texas,” he said. “We have more lost in our state than the total population of 43 states in our nation… more than the total population of 143 different countries.

“We have a basic responsibility right here in this state, and that ought to be primary. We do not want to exclude a world vision, but our first step is in our own Jerusalem and Judea and Samaria.

“It is right here. That is what the Lord told us to do. If we don’t win Texas, who will do it? Louisiana won’t. Mississippi won’t. Texans have got to do that, and if we do not do that job, we will be living in a pagan nation.”

Texas Baptists have set a goal of establishing a church a day until the year 2000, and “we are right on that target,” he observed.

“This is a time of great challenge, and a lot of Satanic enemies are out there confronting us. We need the power of the same Holy Spirit who blessed those people 150 years ago to keep us on track and on the same road—missions and evangelism, and harmony and unity and concert of effort, cooperating in the Baptist way.”

Dilday urged Texas Baptists to adhere to their initials, B-G-C-T. “Be Great Commission Texans,” he pleaded.

October 1998