Message from the Chair
Bill Brian, TBC Chair

Greetings from Amarillo.

These are great days to be Baptist and to be a Texas Baptist. Texas Baptists Committed is dedicated “to reach people for Christ through local churches, to uphold historic Baptist principles, and to cooperate with the mission of the Baptist General Convention of Texas and its related institutions.”

These are days to voice enthusiastically our support for our state convention. As opportunities abound for Texas Baptists to be the presence of Christ in their communities, it has never been more important for us to encourage and support our Baptist General Convention of Texas.

I hope that you will join me in praying regularly for Executive Director Charles Wade and his co-workers both in Dallas and in our communities across Texas. Charles Wade is giving excellent leadership to the efforts of our BGCT staff as my church and your church cooperate voluntarily through the BGCT to do missions in ways that neither your church nor mine could do, alone.

By the time you receive this newsletter, Texas Baptists from 13 cities across the state will have participated in open listening sessions with members of our state convention’s Networking Initiatives Subcommittee of the Missions Review and Initiatives Committee. I hope that you had an opportunity to participate in one of these sessions. If you did not, please write to the Networking Initiatives Subcommittee in care of the Baptist General Convention of Texas, 333 N. Washington, Dallas, Texas 75246. The subcommittee wants your input and ideas about Texas Baptist missions.

As your church enters upon budget season, I hope that you will remind those in your church responsible for presenting a budget to your church family that the gifts from our churches to the BGCT mean almost $13.4 million to a variety of ministries. They include Texas Baptist educational institutions, child care institutions, collegiate ministries, missions and evangelism, church health and growth ministries, associational missions and administration, Texas Baptist Men, Texas Baptist health care and Chaplain ministries, care for the aging, new church work, and other human welfare ministries, theological education, and Christian ethics and public life ministries.

These are ministries that Texas Baptists have come to depend on and trust as they educate and provide spiritual growth, as well as meet physical needs of citizens in our state. For example, did you know that collegiate ministries in Texas under the sponsorship of the BGCT provide salaries for Baptist student ministers, student mission programs, on-campus Bible studies, and evangelism efforts on more than 130 campuses throughout Texas?

I hope that you are praying for Southern Baptist Convention Missionaries who are deciding whether to make written affirmation of the 2000 Baptist Faith and Message Statement. As a matter of conscience, long-time, faithful missionaries have already decided not to sign such a statement. For many of them, the request from IMB President Jerry Rankin is at least a distraction from the work they have given their lives to do.

Mark your calendar for the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship General Assembly meeting in Fort Worth, June 27-29. While there, plan to attend the banquet of Mainstream Baptist Network on the evening of Thursday, June 27, and the breakfast for Texas Baptists Committed on Friday morning, June 28. Time is drawing short for reservations. Contact the TBC offices for further details. Dr. Foy Valentine will be the featured speaker at the TBC breakfast and members of Greater St. Stephen Baptist Church in Fort Worth will provide music. I look forward to seeing you, there.

As we approach the Fourth of July and the celebration of our nation’s Declaration of Independence, we do well as Baptists to remember the words of John Leland, a true Baptist patriot in the early days of our nation who said:

Government has no more to do with the religious opinions of men, than it has with the principles of mathematics. Let every man speak freely without fear, maintain the principles that he believes, worship according to his own faith, either one God, three Gods, no God, or twenty Gods; and let government protect him in so doing, i.e. see that he meets with no personal abuse, or loss of property, for his religious opinions. It is a leading characteristic of the Baptists, that without pope or king for head — without spiritual or civil courts established by law — without a conclave of bishops, or convocation of clergy — without legalized creeds or formularies of worship — without a ministry supported by law or any human coercion in discipline, they are so far united in sentiment, respecting the New Testament, that a free correspondence and communion circulate among them. “They have no king (on earth) yet go they forth all of them by bands.” The Bible is the only confession of faith they dare adopt — the final umpire they appeal to for a decision of controversies. Legal force is not the armor with which the captain of our salvation clothed the solders of the cross. An honest appeal to the reasons and judgments of man, is all the force that Christians should use to induce others to believe in and worship God as they themselves do.

We 21st Century Baptists need to hold fast to the moorings established by our Baptist forebears. Encourage your pastor and minister of education to provide in your church regular studies in Baptist beliefs that have distinguished Baptists as champions of the highest view of Scripture and freedom of conscience.

I hope that you read The Baptist Standard, week by week. Part of being a responsible Baptist is being an informed Baptist. I just do not see how a Texas Baptist can be informed about events affecting the people of God called Baptists without reading The Baptist Standard. I hope that your church subscribes to The Baptist Standard for every family. If it does not, contact The Baptist Standard office at P. O. Box 660267, Dallas, Texas 75266, or by telephone at 214.630.4571 to place your own subscription.

Pray for our TBC Executive Director David Currie.

Thank you for supporting Texas Baptist Committed in its mission.

June 2002