SBTC leaders insist they're not recruiting
By Mark Wingfield
Managing Editor

DALLAS—Leaders of the Southern Baptists of Texas Convention—formed as a fundamentalist alternative to the Baptist General Convention of Texas—insist they are not recruiting churches to leave the BGCT.

“The officers and staff of the SBTC have not become involved in a plan to increase the ranks,” convention President Rudy Hernandez wrote in the October issue of the Southern Baptist Texan, the convention’s magazine. “They have responded to requests from churches for information either by mail or in person and have been kept busy responding to the requests so that there has been no need for proselytizing.

“Individuals who may have sought out others to become a part of the SBTC have done so at their own discretion,” he added.

This claim is not true, according to Ken Hall, president of Buckner Baptist Benevolences, an agency of the BGCT.

Publication of an article critical of Buckner in the October issue of the Southern Baptist Texan was a direct effort to recruit churches by raising doubts about both Buckner and the BGCT, he charged.

He called the SBTC magazine and its article on Buckner “public relations terrorism.”

The Southern Baptist Texan is mailed without charge to 17,000 people every month, said Editor Gary Ledbetter. Additionally, 300 churches receive bulk shipments for distribution.

The mailing list includes thousands of pastors and leaders in BGCT churches that have no affiliation with the SBTC.

This does not amount to proselytizing, Ledbetter insisted, although he added he did not know how the current mailing list was developed.

“If we are mailing to churches that are not affiliated with the SBTC, that is not something we have begun since I came here six months ago,” he said.

The glossy four-color magazine is produced and mailed with funding from the SBTC budget, some advertising revenue and donations from individuals and churches, he said.

Most donations come from within Texas, but some come from beyond the state, he acknowledged. However, the magazine receives no financial support from the Southern Baptist Convention, he said.

One week after the October issue of the Southern Baptist Texan arrived in mailboxes with the assertion by Hernandez that the convention was not proselytizing, pastors of BGCT-affiliated churches received another mailing from Jim Richards, executive director of the breakaway convention.

That mailing included a letter, brochure and audio tape—all promoting attendance at the SBTC’s annual meeting, which is scheduled for the same dates as the BGCT annual session.

The BGCT will meet in Dallas, while SBTC has scheduled its meeting 30 miles away in Fort Worth.

In the letter, Richards invites pastors of unaffiliated churches to attend the SBTC’s annual meeting as his guest.

In the audio tape, he never mentions the BGCT by name. He gives a brief history of the SBTC and outlines his convention’s core values. A strong emphasis is given to the SBTC’s affirmation of biblical inerrancy, which was the rallying cry for fundamentalists who captured control of the SBC in the 1980s and ’90s.

Richards explains that the SBTC has adopted the SBC’s 2000 version of the Baptist Faith & Message as its doctrinal statement. Churches seeking affiliation with SBTC are “not expected to adopt the Baptist Faith & Message 2000” but do have to “affirm” it, he says, explaining that “affirm” means the church “is in agreement with and not opposed to” the statement.

The BGCT in annual session has declined to affirm the 2000 version of the Baptist Faith & Message, citing concerns with omission of key phrases such as “The criterion by which the Bible is to be interpreted is Jesus Christ” in the revised version. Instead, the BGCT has continued to affirm the 1963 Baptist Faith & Message.

October 2001