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| We are known by the people with
whom we walk. John tells us in his first epistle, "Whoever
claims to live in him must walk as Jesus did" (2:6, NIV). |
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| The Baylor Board of Regents passed
a resolution to call upon Texas Baptists to support the recommendations
of the BGCT administrative committee to be voted upon October
30 in Corpus Christi. |
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| Sixteen dedicated people make
up the BGCT Seminary Study Committee. Unfortunately, unfounded
allegations confront the committee. |
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| DALLAS - A Texas Baptist committee
finalized a proposal Monday that will make it possible for
churches to give more money to support theological education
at three Texas schools. |
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| Institutions that will benefit
if the Baptist General Convention of Texas reallocates millions
of dollars away from the Southern Baptist Convention expressed
gratitude for the additional financial support and described
needs for even more money. |
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| Former President Jimmy Carter,
America's most well know Baptist layman, has joined efforts
with Texas Baptists Committed and the traditional Baptist
movement nationally. |
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| The Baptist General Convention
of Texas embraced the church I first remember, educated its
pastor, sent me to Baylor University as a ministerial student
and enhanced the life of the seven Texas Baptist churches
I served from 1968 until 1992. |
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To My Fellow Baptists,
Like millions of other Baptists, I have been deeply distressed
by the unpleasant and counterproductive divisions within
our denomination.
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| Truth, we hear, is the first
casualty of war. It is with sadness our Seminary Study Committee
presents evidence in its report that the infighting in the
SBC inspires the slaughter of truth about seminary enrollment
figures. |
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| I undertook this Seminary Study
Committee responsibility with the same attitude I had brought
to two other committee assignments for the BGCT. |
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| The Baptist General Convention
of Texas administrative committee is recommending no money
for the SBC Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, a moral-concerns
agency with offices in Nashville, Tenn., and Washington, and
only token funding for the SBC Executive Committee, also in
Nashville. |
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| Seminary administrators and trustees
enforce this creedalism by using the 2000 BF&M and several
other documents as an "instrument of doctrinal accountability." |
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| Funds received by the six SBC
seminaries are not always used for "graduate" theological
education. |
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| It has always been desirable
for faculty to have at least one degree from a non-Southern
Baptist or non-state Baptist convention-owned and operated
school. This provided students with a wider spectrum of scholastic
thought. |
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| Most Southern Baptists are well
aware of the purging of faculty or administrators who refuse
to go along with the ideas and philosophies of the new SBC
presidents and trustees. |
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| One of the proposed changes in
the Baptist General Convention's proposed budget to be voted
upon in Corpus Christi on Oct. 30-31 is to reduce the amount
of funding for the SBC Executive Committee from $706,000 to
$10,000. |
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| Southern Baptist leaders, led
by Morris Chapman, president of the Executive Committee of
the SBC, are calling upon their supporters to be at Corpus
Christi to vote against budget recommendations passed by the
administrative committee and executive board of the Baptist
General Convention of Texas. |
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| DALLAS (ABP) - A study committee
recommending dramatic changes to the way Texas Baptists fund
theological education filled in details at a called meeting
of the Baptist General Convention of Texas administrative
committee. |
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| The SBC has certainly felt free
to make its own unilateral changes - including major revisions
to the faith statement that underlies the cooperative relationship
- without consulting the states. |
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| Please do not tell the members
of First Baptist Church in Muleshoe, but we have been having
"Training Union" on Wednesday nights. |
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| Although I have never attended
seminary, the purging of our seminary teachers and leaders
from the very earliest days of the present problems is to
me one of the most frightening aspects of the whole scenario
that has brought us into this year. |
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| How often do church members check to see how their church spends money? |
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| Laity across the state are asking: How do the changes in the SBC affect my church? |
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| “Which way should our church go, the Southern Baptist Convention or the Baptist General Convention of Texas?” |
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| Among those immediately affirming the work of a Texas Baptist committee recommending reductions in funding for Southern Baptist Convention seminaries were ousted faculty members who found vindication in the six-month study. |
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Shrewd politicians and power-hungry people know: political power does not require a majority vote.
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