Newsletter
Jan/Feb 2001

 

Clyde Glazener, president, Mark Newton, first vice president
and Joy Fenner, second vice president.

In December, Robert and Anne Fowler, of Houston, gave Texas Baptists Committed a $25,000 donation in honor of former South Main Baptist Church pastor, Kenneth Chafin and his wife, Barbara.
An Unhealthy Faith System 
by Charles C. McLaughlin
In Stephen Arterbum and Jack Felton's book, Toxic Faith, one chapter identifies 10 characteristics of a toxic faith system.
Baptist state conventions in Alabama and Tennessee are the latest to give qualified support to more conservative theology expressed in recent revisions to the Southern Baptist Convention's official faith statement. 
BGCT Takes Historic Steps 
Greg Warner and Bob Allen 
Texas Baptists agreed by a 4-to-1 margin Oct. 30 to cut $4.3 million from six Southern Baptist seminaries they say have abandoned some traditional Baptist beliefs and forced doctrinal conformity on their faculties and trustees.
Do Texas Baptists Have Amnesia? 
By Billy Ray Parmer  
This is a very good question to ask considering what I hear in conversation with Texas Baptists and as I listen to Texas Baptist pastors and people. Many Baptists have some type of lost memory.

To my TBC friends, It has been a great five years!
The Baptist Faith and Message book published in 1971, written by Herschel Hobbs, which was revised in 1996 and last reprinted in 1998 has the following endorsements on the back cover: 

I was literally born a Baptist, you might say. My dear grandmother, who has since passed on, joined a Baptist church in the early 1940s, where she worked teaching Sunday School, served faithfully in Woman's Missionary Union, and later went on to work in the church nursery for 39 years. 
In the wake of a state annual meeting where debate over the "Baptist Faith and Message" family amendment captured some of the limelight, a gathering of Southern Baptists has announced the formation of a group to keep Illinois a free-Baptist state, its first president said. 
In a May 1986 address to Sunday School Board employees, retired President James L. Sullivan told of a 1970 conference with an associate editor of a magazine in an eastern state.
Texas Baptists "must leave behind the Great Commotion for the Great Commission," Jim Denison said in the annual convention sermon at the Baptist General Convention of Texas. 
The Baptist General Convention of Texas recently held its annual meeting in Corpus Christi.
Each of you receiving this newsletter should also have received a direct mail plea to give support the last week in December.
"The Baptist Convention of Texas is not a farm club of the Southern Baptist Convention," Dr. McBride of First Baptist Church, San Angelo, said almost a decade ago.
Thank you Texas Baptists
by Albert L. Reyes
Thank you Texas Baptists! Thank you for overwhelmingly approving the Baptist General Convention of Texas Seminary Study Committee's recommendations and the 2001 Proposed Budget at the annual meeting.
Texas Baptists find themselves in a battle to keep from being dragged back into an Old Testament legalism that has resurfaced in Fundamentalist creedalism.
The Church: Being The Body
By Hulett Gloer Professor
Revisions on the 2000 Baptist Faith and Message are vitally important for Baptists to consider.
The crisis that prompted Texas Baptists to eliminate more than $5 million in funding for the Southern Baptist Convention was caused by "rigid limitations" imposed by SBC leaders, Charles Wade told messengers to the Baptist General Convention of Texas annual session Oct. 30.
In 1994, the SBC's Executive Committee held a seminar for conservative Southern Baptist reporters, where Olasky taught his concept of Bible-based journalism.
Today in the mail I received 25 copies of a mailing from the Southern Baptist Convention Executive Committee entitled "The Truth about the SBC and Texas."

 

Quotes to Consider 

Resources Available From TBC

 

A Letter from President Jimmy Carter, October 2000 

To My Fellow Baptists, Like millions of other Baptists, I have been deeply distressed by the unpleasant and counterproductive divisions within our denomination...(Continue)

 

Powerful novel about claims of Jesus Christ to be released 

Though Dennis Harris' first novel -- Liar, Lunatic or Lord -- is a chilling tale that could have been ripped from today's headlines, it defies a genre classification.

The Fredericksburg, Texas, businessman/evangelist uses a blending of the New Testament Gospels in conjunction with a contemporary story that is insightful and suspenseful, weaving within a context of both reality and doubt the perception each of the novel's characters have about religion and Jesus Christ...(continue)

 

New Mainstream Groups Organize

North Carolina
Illinois

BAD THEOLOGY
by David Flick

The Baptist Faith and Message 2000 reminds me of the story about the elderly gentleman who was taking his wife for a drive in the country on a Sunday afternoon. Feeling a bit romantic, the wife reminded her husband that during their dating days they sat snuggled close together in the old jalopy during the drives. She asked her husband, why they no longer sat close together.

The gentleman replied, “Well, my dear, I ain’t moved a solitary inch. You’re the one who moved.”

God So Loved the World: 
Traditional Baptists and Calvinism 
by Fisher Humphreys and Paul E. Robertson 

As Baptists near the four hundredth anniversary of their founding, they find themselves once again face-to-face with questions that claimed the attention of their spiritual ancestors.

What Happened to the Southern Baptist Convention I grew up in?
Mike McKinney

All of my life I have been in a Southern Baptist church. Both my parents were strong Christians with a Southern Baptist heritage.



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