Kevin Ezell attempted to force Texas Baptists to adopt the 2000 Baptist Faith and Message or lose church planting partnerships with the Southern Baptist Convention’s North American Mission Board. Texas Baptists overwhelmingly said they would not do it.
Ezell, president of NAMB, based in Atlanta, has closed off church planting partnership with the Baptist General Convention of Texas because the BGCT affirms the 1963 Baptist Faith and Message rather than the 2000 version put in place after conservatives gained control of the national denomination.
Among the key differences in the updated version is removal of language that said Jesus is the criterion by which Scripture should be interpreted and the addition of a line that says, “The office of pastor is limited to men as qualified by Scripture.”
Kevin Ezell
Last year, messengers to the SBC annual meeting further amended the section on the church to define “pastor” and “pastor/elder/overseer.”
While the SBC has made emphatic statements against women in ministry, the BGCT has not. Instead, Texas Baptists have honored the autonomy of the local church to recognize that some churches affirm women in ministry and others do not. But that issue has not become a test of fellowship in Texas.
Twenty-six years ago this month, the most conservative wing of Baptists in Texas split off from the BGCT and created a new state convention called the Southern Baptists of Texas Convention. That new convention siphoned off hundreds of churches by vowing absolute conformity with the more conservative direction of the SBC.
The BGCT — in various stages and times — has resisted the rightward turn of the SBC, which has caused friction. Last year, only 63% of churches that supported the BGCT financially also sent offering money to the SBC. Still, the BGCT has backtracked on its original tolerance of pass-through funding to the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship, a breakaway group that started a new national body in 1991.
And the BGCT forwards more money — about $72.8 million — to the SBC than the Southern Baptists of Texas Convention, noted messenger David Lowrie, pastor of First Baptist Church of Decatur, Texas.
Yet Ezell will not allow NAMB to work in partnership with the BGCT — even with churches that do affirm the 2000 Baptist Faith and Message — because the state convention won’t affirm the more restrictive doctrinal statement.
NAMB cooperates with SBTC in church planting but not with the BGCT.
“How do you define cooperation if $72.8 million does not represent a good faith commitment to the mission of the Southern Baptist Convention?”
“How do you define cooperation if $72.8 million does not represent a good faith commitment to the mission of the Southern Baptist Convention?” Lowrie asked. “Our Texas Baptist Southern Baptist churches are being treated as second-class citizens — even as stepchildren — and that is simply not appropriate.”
Jeff Williams, pastor of First Baptist Church in Denton, Texas, made the motion Nov. 12 “that the Baptist General Convention of Texas affirm the 2000 Baptist Faith and Message.”
After lengthy debate, messengers to the BGCT annual meeting in Waco “soundly defeated” the motion, according to the Baptist Standard, which publish a blow-by-blow account of the debate.
What effect this principled stand by the BGCT will have on church affiliation is not clear. The BGCT counts 5,300 churches in voluntary cooperation. The SBTC counts about 2,300 churches in its network.
Ezell, who has led NAMB 14 years, already has a contentious relationship with numerous other state Baptist conventions because of his church planting strategy. A decade ago, NAMB cancelled the longtime partnership agreements it had with state conventions and diverted tens of millions of missions dollars to NAMB’s direct control. Previously, state conventions had a shared say in how that money was spent and where and how churches were started. Now, NAMB works directly on church planting, often not telling state conventions where it is starting churches.
Meanwhile, the number of new churches Southern Baptists are starting has plummeted even though millions more dollars are being spent.
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