Editor's note: Some have been surprised that Joel Gregory has spoken at two of our TBC Focus on Jesus rallies. We appreciate Dr. Gregory's support. We asked him to share some of his journey with our readers.

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.

A great privilege of my life was to serve as its president for two terms. With all my heart I support the integrity and unity of the Baptist General Convention of Texas. It is a mighty force for Christ that should not be split, divided, diminished or lessened in any way. Any church that would leave the Baptist General Convention of Texas is leaving an aircraft carrier to get into a canoe.

Time brings perspective and distance brings prudence. I have functioned as a layperson for the last eight years. During that time of relative distance and total inactivity in Baptist life, I have discerned a shift in the agenda of the prevailing party of the Southern Baptist Convention.

The apparent agenda has moved from the inspiration of the Bible to a given interpretation of the Bible. This culminated in the pronouncement on Ephesians 5 decreed at the Salt Lake City convention. I am friends with more than one person who was either fired or resigned a denominational position because he was forced to sign the latest version of the Baptist Faith and Message imposing that decree.

That is not the quality of the Baptist faith in which I was reared, nurtured, educated or that I proclaimed. Baptist people are those people who each individually go to the scripture guided by the Holy Spirit and interpret that word as she or he understands it. Individual Texas Baptists have never knelt under a decreed interpretation of that word. That seems to be the new agenda.

In the aftermath of the rather belated discovery, I met with Dr. Herbert Reynolds, the distinguished chancellor and former president of Baylor University. Dr. Reynolds and I spoke and prayed for hours in the mutual reflection of our life and times. We both embraced the fact that we are "mainstream Baptists," traditional Baptists who grew up in Texas with the same roots and values in Baptist life.

We buried the hatchet from our battle of a decade ago and experienced the joy of Christian reconciliation. I affirmed to him, as I did to Dr. Moore, that I agree with outcome of those actions, which now seem to be so long ago. I rejoice that my friend, classmate and colleague Dr. Robert Sloan has continued to lash Baylor to the Baptist mast.

The Baptist people of Texas can be trusted to do right. There is an old business school demonstration, in which the professor asks a class to guess the number of jelly beans in a jar. The individual guesses of the students are wildly inaccurate. Yet the average of all of the individual guesses is always within 3% of the correct number. Texas Baptists need no one to tell them how to interpret the word of God. No one person can interpret for us. Trust the Lord and the people.

October 2000