wfn.org | Baptist Moderates Looking to Shift Funding

[PCUSA.NEWS@pcusa.org]

14-November-1997 
97433 
 
    Baptist Moderates Looking to Shift Funding 
    Away From National Church 
 
    by Ed Briggs 
    Religion News Service 
 
WASHINGTON--At least two moderate-dominated state conventions -- Texas and 
Virginia -- in the conservative-controlled Southern Baptist Convention 
(SBC) are looking beyond national church agencies for places to invest 
their mission dollars. 
 
    At stake, potentially, is the final disposition of millions of dollars 
used to build new churches and fund evangelism and other mission programs. 
 
    The move by the two state conventions, according to Baptist officials, 
is part of a larger moderate effort to redirect money away from the 
national SBC.  Officials of the denomination's home and foreign mission 
board could not be reached for comment. 
 
    But the effort is being fueled as much by the general national mood 
favoring decentralization as well as by the longstanding theological and 
institutional split between moderates and conservatives over the direction 
of the SBC, the nation's largest Protestant denomination, according to 
some. 
 
    "It's correct that there is a decentralization under way," said 
Reginald McDonough, executive director of the Baptist General Association 
of Virginia, one of the bellwethers of the movement.  "While there are some 
churches and ministers angry with the Southern Baptist Convention, this 
move, I think, would have happened whether or not there was this great 
division," he added.  "It was inevitable with the trends that were going on 
in the nation toward more localized decision-making." 
 
    As other denominations have discovered, church members controlling the 
direction of mission money are increasingly part of the baby-boom 
generation and suspicious of national institutions. They look more 
favorably on meeting needs closer to the front door -- where programs can 
be monitored -- than farther away in the hands of others. 
 
    Virginia's new project of state and regional mission work is called 
"Mission Virginia." 
 
    "The pattern of cooperation is moving from what I would call a linchpin 
style to more of a networking style," McDonough said. "We've always 
believed that each unit in the Baptist tradition has been autonomous, and 
we've always acted that way. We've reacted in the past to what I've always 
called a monolithic style.  There is a trend toward `affinity groups' -- 
there's much more of a movement toward groups with whom they have an 
affinity," he said. 
 
    McDonough said Virginia and Texas -- historic strongholds of moderate 
congregations -- are moving in the same direction. 
 
    "I think we're on the same page [as the Texans] and I think what 
they've developed is unique for their state and I think what we've 
developed is unique for our state," McDonough said. 
 
    But the Rev. Terry Harper, president of the Southern Baptist 
Conservatives of Virginia -- a breakaway convention with 10 percent of the 
state's Southern Baptists as members that has the blessings of the national 
SBC mission agencies -- thinks differently.  Harper is confident 
conservatives will win the hearts of Virginia's congregations.  "It's just 
a matter of whether [the moderates] will leave the Southern Baptist 
Convention and just be another denomination," he said. 
 
    In Texas, meanwhile, a conservative group also with allegiance to the 
SBC's leadership is ready to follow Harper's model in Virginia. 
 
    For moderate Texans and Virginians the issue is historic local control 
over the way mission dollars are spent. 
 
    "Texas Baptists are doing what Texas Baptists have always done," said 
the Rev. Dan Martin, a newswriter for the Texas Baptist Convention. 
 
    The Texas convention's new missions program is called the 
Effectiveness/Efficiency project. It will concentrate on Texas programs 
while including the possibility of aligning with other state conventions. 
 
    In 1994, the Texans, following the lead of Virginia moderates, approved 
a new system of distributing mission dollars that already is diverting an 
increasing amount of money from national to state programs. 
 
    The new Texas report suggests that the convention focus on family and 
multicultural ministries, theological education, partnerships with the 
denominational agencies and national moderate groups outside conservative 
control, and develop Texas Sunday school materials to be used in place of 
material generated by the denomination. 
 
    The Texans also will consider a constitutional change to shift 
membership in the state convention based on the amount of money contributed 
to the Texas budget. That shift, if approved, effectively will take power 
away from conservative congregations giving only minimally to the state's 
budget while giving a larger share directly to denominational coffers. 

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