New cooperative agreement between SBC and BGCT

Hot off the press:

http://www.baptiststandard.com/2002/8_26/pages/bgct.html

This is good news for everyone. Now Baptists in Texas can work together and be faithful to God without there being a rift between the SBC and BGCT over it.

 

As you probably already know (but some of the other readers may not) the state Baptist conventions that cooperate with the SBC are complete autonomous (at least in theory).

The Baptist General Convention of Texas has historically been the largest Baptist Convention and giver of the most money (because of sheer size) for at least the last 70 or so years. So in that regard, the BGCT has no need to become "new".

I think what you are asking is whether the BGCT will become more of a national convention, possibly changing its name to become less territorial and allow churches from other state to join.

As far as the name change goes, "Baptists of the Americas" has been seriously put forth and been fairly well-recieved by many Texas Baptists, although the convention is not yet ready to take that step. "Baptists of the Americas" would receive churches from anywhere on the North American or South American continents.

The convention voted a few years ago to let New Mexico churches join the convention as full member because of problems some were facing with the New Mexico convention. There's been a lot of support to completely open up membership to the BGCT to any church in the United States, but I don't think it has actually been voted on yet.

As far as endorsement of chaplains goes, I believe the BGCT was recently approved to perform that function.

The BGCT is already sponsoring its own Sunday School literature (essentially, just Baptist heritage guides for use with other literature) and will probably expand the literature if demand increases.

The BGCT has begun a new emphasis to reach the state and provide much stronger support for Spanish-speaking cultures. The population of Texas has been growing at an enormous rate -- especially from Mexican immigration (much of it not legal) -- and we need to take the gospel to them.

I really don't know much about the SBTC group. They have spent a lot of time slandering the BGCT, but it doesn't work as well in Texas as it does elsewhere because Texas Baptists generally know each other (or they know someone who knows the other person) -- that's one of the main reasons why the "conservative resurgence" was not nearly as effective here. The second reason is that Texas fought the battle with fundamentalism long before the Patterson-Pressler group. J. Frank Norris, pastor of First Baptist Church Fort Worth was slandering the Baptist General Convention of Texas long before Patterson and Pressler were born. The local association and the state convention took action in the 1920s and expelled him. The SBC didn't expel him until 1947 or 1948.

Perhaps an SBTC person (if there are any here) could explain it.

 

Thanks for pointing that out. I suspected it might have already happened, but I didn't know if it was my imagination or wish fulfillment or something.

I appreciate the correction/clarification.

 

I'm not sure about entire churches, but I personally designate all my gifts to be divided between the BGCT and the local Tarrant Baptist Association. Our church allows a number of giving options for the members, so our church supports the SBC, CBF, BGCT and the association. There may even be some support for Southern Baptists of Texas coming through our church, but I haven't seen it reported in the budget yet...