SAN ANTONIO (ABP) — Directors of Associated Baptist Press honored the Baptist General Convention of Texas and announced a $100,000 matching-funds challenge from a Texas Baptist family during their semi-annual meeting, held April 14-15 in San Antonio.
“Every year, since almost the beginning, the Baptist General Convention of Texas has been an important part of ABP,” said Executive Editor Greg Warner at an April 14 banquet honoring the BGCT with the ABP Founders Award. The state convention has long been one of the major financial supporters of the independent Baptist news service.
In accepting the award, BGCT president Joy Fenner said the convention supports ABP as part of its wider mission of promoting religious freedom.
“Texas Baptists support ABP because we believe in the freedom of the press,” she said. “But freedom of the press is just one piece of the bigger picture of religious liberty…. [I]n a day when truth is handled so carelessly … it has reminded me that freedom does not give license to do anything or nothing. Instead, for the Christ-follower, it calls us to a standard far different than any court or convention could place upon us.”
Longtime Baptist leader Hardy Clemons, who currently serves as interim executive pastor at Trinity Baptist Church in San Antonio, said in a keynote address that such religious freedom is one of the reasons he’s still thankful and hopeful to be a Baptist.
“Baptists have stood for freedom; we have stood for liberty and justice for all. And sometimes we’ve talked the game a whole lot more than we’ve played the game,” he said. “But sometimes we’ve quit even talking the game of how important it is that religious freedom is one of the deepest values in biblical literature; it is one of the deepest values in the history of the Christian church.
“I’ve got a lot of hope for ABP and its mission …. It’s been a tough time to be Baptist, but it’s been a good time to be Baptist. And God is counting on us and our grandchildren’s children are counting on us to be people of freedom and people of integrity.”
Clemons has been prominent in moderate Baptist life and served lengthy pastorates at churches in Texas and South Carolina prior to retiring in 2005. His wife, Ardelle, was a longtime campus minister and a member of ABP’s founding board of directors when the service was established in 1990. They were surprised with an announcement at the banquet that longtime friends had named an ABP fund in their honor.
ABP board member Jimmy Nickell announced the establishment of the Hardy and Ardelle Clemons Endowment. Nickell and his wife, Kaye, have been friends of the Clemonses for decades and donated the seed money for the endowment. He and Warner said the goal for the fund is to attract other donations in the Clemonses’ honor, eventually growing large enough to endow an ABP staff position.
In addition, Warner announced a $100,000 matching-funds challenge from the Eula Mae and John Baugh Foundation. The foundation, which manages funds from a Texas family prominent in moderate Baptist philanthropy, has promised to match all individual donations to the news service, up to $100,000, until the end of 2008.
“No family in Baptist life is more committed to preserving Baptist freedoms than the Baugh family,” Warner said in a statement. “Now that family is challenging other Baptists to increase their commitment to freedom of the press, and we couldn’t be happier about that.”
John and Eula Mae Baugh’s granddaughter, Jackie Moore of San Antonio, serves as an ABP director and on the Baugh Foundation board.
The board also heard reports of a record year in ABP news production and the ongoing implementation of a strategic partnership with three other Baptist news organizations.
ABP produced 689 news stories in 2007 — the most in the agency’s 17-year history, Warner noted in his report to the directors. He also highlighted the continuing implementation of a multimedia partnership, dubbed New Voice Media, with three historic statewide Baptist newspapers — the Texas Baptist Standard, the Missouri Word & Way, and the Virginia Religious Herald. The agencies are already cooperating in the production of themed biweekly news-and-feature packages, and they plan to launch a joint New Voice Media website later this year.
In personnel actions, directors authorized the staff to move forward with replacing former assistant editor Hannah Elliott, who resigned in March to take a position with the Forbes news organization. They also approved a six-month contract extension with fundraising consultant Todd Heifner to direct ABP’s development work.
In other actions, the board gave final approval to a 2008 budget of $598,515, an increase over the previous year’s budget of $530,300. They also elected Virginia’s Jim White as a member of the board. White is editor of the Religious Herald and is appointed to the ABP board after nomination by the Baptist General Association of Virginia.
The directors’ next meeting is scheduled for Oct. 2-4 in Providence, R.I. It will coincide with an ABP-sponsored heritage tour of New England sites important in Baptist and American history, such as the First Baptist Church in America, founded by Roger Williams in Providence.
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ABP fills two positions, affirms strategic alliance (9/20/2007)