LEADERS DESERVE APPLAUSE, NOT ATTACK
By Brent Beasley,
Pastor, FBC Eagle Lake, Texas

Texas Baptists should be aware of some inflammatory literature an organization apparently is mailing out to all Texas Baptist pastors.  An organization called the Texas Baptist Layman's Association, which is apparently some kind of offshoot of the Missouri Baptist Layman's Association, has put together some propaganda saying the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship is improperly influencing the BGCT.

 The  material goes on to imply, using tactics best characterized as "guilt-by-association," that CBF and the BGCT have an agenda that advocates homosexuality.

All this although CBF Coordinator  Daniel Vestal is on record as stating that he believes homosexual activity to be a sin which the Bible prohibits.

I, for one, refuse to stand by silently while a fringe group of Texas Baptists, using information provided by a group from Missouri, attack by name people whom we know well as models of integrity and denominational and Christian service.

One reason the fundamentalist takeover of the Southern Baptist Convention failed in Texas is that we knew well many people whom they were attacking and falsely accusing.  We knew for ourselves that the accusers had it all wrong.

For example, their literature lists former Annuity Board President Darold Morgan as a BGCT leader who apparently is a bad influence in our convention.  Darold Morgan has been pastor to four generations of my family.  He preached at my ordination service and at my grandfathers funeral.  He is a shining example of what it means to be a Christian minister.  If he has influenced me in any way, I consider it a blessing.

This literature goes on to name in accusatory fashion other fine Texas Baptist leaders such as Charles Wade, Winfred Moore, Foy Valentine, Jerold McBride, Herb Reynolds, Dick Maples, Jimmy Allen, and many, many others.

The people listed in this material do not deserve to be attacked but applauded.  They don't deserve to be slandered but saluted.  They don't deserve to be run down as bad influences but held up as worthy examples.  I'd love to see the distributors of this material join these listed above in working for the cause of Christ rather than expending their money and energy tearing down the body of Christ.

September 1999