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AMARILLO—Veteran Texas pastors Jimmy Draper and T.C. Melton looked out at the youngest pastors attending a luncheon in Amarillo and expressed enthusiasm for their ministry among Southern Baptist churches.

“Without apology I’m very encouraged,” Draper told the Ministry Café luncheon during the annual Bible Conference hosted by the Southern Baptists of Texas Convention. “I really believe the younger generations of 20- and 30-somethings make one of the greatest generations ever seen.”

“Men coming out of our seminaries today can preach the Word of God,” Melton added, praising their faithfulness to Scripture.

For over an hour the two men drew from their experiences to answer questions posed by two of their younger counterparts in ministry—Wes Hinote, pastor of First Baptist Church of Plum Grove in Cleveland and John Powell, pastor of First Baptist Church of Hamlin.

Draper pastored six churches in Texas, including First Baptist Church of Euless for 16 years. Prior to being called to Euless, he served as associate pastor to W.A. Criswell at First Baptist Church of Dallas. In addition, he led Lifeway Christian Resources as president from 1991 to 2006.

Melton served in pastorates across Texas, including 30 years at Elmcrest Baptist Church in Abilene. He has spent the past decade serving in various capacities with the SBTC, primarily as an area ministry coordinator for churches in West Texas. Additionally, he has served as interim pastor of more than 15 churches, many of them in rural communities.

“God saw something in us that would meet the needs for the time in which we pastored,” Melton said. Looking to the younger men at the table, he said, “I believe God saw something in you guys specifically designed for a ministry today. Rather than feeling second class, you should feel something very special. I would not be nearly as successful today.”

Hinote and Powell led off by asking how to guard against moral failure and gain wisdom by being mentored by older pastors.

Melton told young pastors to be careful “never to take that first step” in succumbing to temptation. 

Draper agreed, adding, “It’s not rocket science. If you don’t want to get wet, don’t go out in the rain. It’s your choice,” he insisted, encouraging ministers to avoid situations where “it’s your word against someone else’s.”

Draper and Melton agreed to the priority of a pastor loving his own wife and including her in ministry. “Your wife is your greatest protector,” Draper said. “There are two reasons to take your wife with you when you visit—they will be nicer to you and she will be your protection against any kind of advance women may make toward you or you feel tempted to make.”

Melton said he had never heard his wife speak a negative word about the churches he served. “That probably has done more to keep me encouraged than anything.”

Both men said they sought to maintain contact with and to encourage friends who had failures in ministry. “All of us are going to fall sometime,” Draper said. “It’s not whether we are going to fall, but whether we get up when we fall.”

“A lot of times when a preacher does fail we tend to forget that person,” Melton said, recalling a friend who admitted feeling abandoned. “One day I just got him on my heart and called him up.

“Don’t give up on people. Look them in the eye and say, ‘You may never be able to pastor again, but God still has a purpose for your life.’”

Melton also encouraged older ministers to make the time to befriend and encourage younger pastors. “You don’t know what it means to a young pastor in a small church for you to call him up and say, ‘Let’s go to lunch.’”

 “I think you’d find that most older, more established pastors would welcome the opportunity,” Draper said, recalling the time he asked Oklahoma City pastor Herschel Hobbs to meet with him. “We built a relationship we maintained all through the rest of my ministry and until his death.”

Texas is a different kind of place, mysterious even to our Baptist brothers from other states. More than 14 years after the inaugural meeting of the Southern Baptists of Texas Convention newcomers and tourists are still surprised to find us here. Some write it off to the independent, even brash, spirit of the state. In reality, the recent history of Southern Baptists in Texas is interwoven with that of our national convention.

Those men who were best known in the Southern Baptist Convention during our Conservative Resurgence (1979-1995) were often from Texas—Paul Pressler, Dan Vestal, Russell Dilday, Paige Patterson, Paul Powell, O.S. Hawkins, Edwin Young, Winfred Moore, Jimmy Allen, Morris Chapman, Richard Land, Foy Valentine, Lloyd Elder and Jimmy Draper. They were convention presidents and candidates from both sides, new and former agency leaders, and spokesmen for moderate and conservative Southern Baptists. Texas’ convention messengers during those years would enthusiastically bring home ideas from the SBC meeting, hoping to apply them to the denomination’s largest state convention. They failed. While moderates did not win an SBC election during the decades of the Resurgence, conservatives did not win an election in Texas as the big state convention began to push back in the 1990s. The theological malaise that plagued our SBC agencies from the 1950s until the 1990s had not left Texas institutions untouched. The difference in Texas was that the problems were not as extreme as they were further east and the reformers were not able to get traction to change the direction of the existing state convention.

As their state convention began to make aggressive moves to duplicate and undermine the work of the SBC, the state’s conservatives began to look for another home. Between 1992 and 1998, the growing awareness among those who welcomed the SBC’s own reformation was that only something new would reflect that renewal in Texas. On November 10, 1998, 120 churches, meeting in Houston, formed the Southern Baptists of Texas Convention. During that meeting they welcomed Jim Richards as the convention’s first executive director, approved a budget of about $900,000, adopted a constitution and passed a pro-life resolution that had been rejected by their former state convention repeatedly since 1980.

Fast forward 14 years and the convention has grown by 2,000 percent to well over 2,400 affiliated churches—all of them joined together in a confessional fellowship. The convention remains committed to the same core values it embraced in 1998. These values have kept the SBTC accountable to churches according to priorities that led to the convention’s founding.

Doctrinal agreement—Unlike most Baptist bodies more general than a local association, the SBTC is confessional. Affiliated churches and institutions affirm the Baptist Faith and Message 2000. They don’t necessarily adopt the confession as their own, many have not, but they express agreement with our current BFM and understand that it is the basic document that describes our doctrinal identity.

A plainly stated and clear commitment to the inerrancy of the Bible is a core conviction shared by SBTC churches.

Starting a state convention at the end of Conservative Resurgence, the importance of doctrine, particularly the nature of Scripture, was very much in the minds of the SBTC’s founders. The state convention from which many of our churches moved would not officially commit to the inerrancy of Scripture, preferring “authority” or some other word that proved inadequate during recent SBC history. A plainly stated and clear commitment to the inerrancy of the Bible is a core conviction shared by SBTC churches. That belief’s denominational expression required the founding of a new state convention in Texas.

Priority of missions and evangelism—Making the Great Commission a priority required the SBTC to relegate some other things in importance. Our business and financial plan specifies that no more than 15 percent of our annual budget can go to institutional support, for example. The convention values its ministry relationships with like-minded institutions but it will not allow those institutions to become its primary mission. Neither is the convention likely to have a large number of affiliated institutions. Doing so would require that missions and evangelism be diminished to support institutions. The convention’s founders set a different course from the start. Pursuing that course in Texas required the founding of a new state convention. 

The SBTC has also expressed its commitment to missions and evangelism by keeping our staff organization minimal and by avoiding debt. From the start, convention leaders determined that the SBTC would not become bureaucratically heavy. That has required that we utilize the expertise of strong churches, SBC ministry partners, consultants, and retired part-time workers. It means that our staff operates at times like that in a newer work convention, wearing multiple hats. It means that there are some things other conventions do that we simply don’t do or do in a more modest way. In a day when long-established conventions are struggling to trim their numbers through attrition or buy-outs, the SBTC is blessed to have not let our staff size outrun our mission priorities. 

Commitment to cooperative missions—Many of the churches that founded the SBTC years ago and others that joined in the first three years might have not done so if they were not enthusiastic about the Cooperative Program. Most of those churches came out of a state convention that was steadily reducing the amount and percentage of undesignated funds passed through its adopted budget to SBC missions causes beyond Texas. The founders of the SBTC determined to demonstrate their own convictions by sending 50 percent of undesignated funds through the Cooperative Program in the first year’s budget, before the convention had three employees or even one institutional relationship. That percentage was set to climb to 55 within the first 10 years of the convention’s life. This percentage does not include designated missions offerings or “preferred” budget items that are sheltered from the CP formula. The only option for churches wanting a state convention partner that would encourage support for worldwide SBC causes was to start a new state convention in Texas.

Our founders, our churches, and our leaders believe that God is using the Southern Baptist Convention and are willing to express it in all ways available. The Southern Baptist Convention and its various agencies strengthen the ministries or Southern Baptist churches in Texas. This is a boost and not a detriment to the agenda of the state convention which consists only of Southern Baptist churches in Texas. 

In brief, that’s why we started something new. Those “battling Baptists” in Texas really don’t spend much time battling; we’ve got better things to do. Our state has five to six times the land and population of our neighboring states. Our population is increasingly made up of lost folks—we need new churches and healthy churches. The missionary task of reaching Texas is more than enough to involve all the gospel-preaching churches in our state. The monumental task of the SBC’s newest state convention is to help start and strengthen churches sufficient to reach Texas and touch all the peoples of the world. That is ultimately why there is a second state convention in Texas.

Editor’s note: As public and legal attitudes toward same-sex marriage shift in our nation, some churches are concerned about their rights to determine building use and even to decline to conduct a ceremony when doing so would conflict with biblical convictions. SBTC’s legal counsel, Jim Guenther, answers some of the pertinent questions below.

How does the recent U.S. Supreme Court decision to void the federal Defense of Marriage Act, along with other ominous signs, such as lawsuits against businesses that “discriminate” against same-sex couples, affect Texas laws regarding marriage? 

While the concept of marriage is rapidly changing in this country, marriage in Texas remains understood in the law as the legal union of a man and a woman. It is in both the state statutes and the state’s constitution. The recent decision by the United States Supreme Court to declare the federal Defense of Marriage Act unconstitutional did nothing to change the law in Texas.  So, for the present, same sex-marriage discrimination is not an immediate direct issue for Texas ministers and churches.

It is likely that someone will eventually challenge the constitutionality of the Texas law. The equal protection argument used to void the federal Defense of Marriage Act would likely be used in an effort to have the Texas law declared unconstitutional. It is more likely changes in Texas will be propelled by court decisions than it is that the legislature will alter the traditional legal understanding of marriage.

In anticipation of the possibility of same-sex marriage becoming legal in Texas, is there anything a church needs to do if it wants to maximize its chances of being able to continue its present practices?

No. The strength of the First Amendment’s right to freely exercise religion and to be free from state entanglement is at its greatest when it comes to the local church’s faith and practice, in its choice of its ministers and its members, in what may be preached from the pulpit and in its religious activities. The First Amendment shield remains in the closets of Texas churches. Time and events will tell when and how the shield might come to be needed, and how effective it will be when it is put to use.

Should churches amend their governing documents to specify their religious beliefs regarding marriage?

Although not necessary to support the church’s existing right to free exercise of religion, that suggestion is a good idea for many reasons. Simply naming the BFM 2000, or other statement confirming a biblical definition of marriage, as the church’s statement of faith would put this in place.

If a church allows non-church members use of church facilities for a fee, could that move the church closer to being required to allow use by non-church members for purposes that are inconsistent with the church’s statement of faith?

 Likely not.  However if a church is anxious about the law, it would make sense for it to establish polices which it would follow to avoid being “open to the public.”  The most reasonable policy might be to say the church facilities will only be used for purposes consistent with its statement of faith; specifically to include marriage ceremonies.

What might the future look like regarding this issue?

Ministers and churches in Texas will, in any event, continue to have their First Amendment right to freely exercise their religion. If it comes to pass that the United States Supreme Court declares there to be a constitutional right for same-sex couples to marry, the ultimate question in the law is going to be how that right fares when it comes into conflict with a minister’s or a church’s free exercise of religion.

LOUISVILLE, Ky—Southern Seminary announced a new academic chair in preaching in honor of the late W.A. Criswell, long-time pastor of First Baptist Church in Dallas, Southern Baptist statesman and two-time Southern graduate, during an Oct. 17 chapel service in Alumni Memorial Chapel.

Jack Pogue, a long-time friend of Criswell who was present for the announcement, funded the chair. After introducing him, seminary President R. Albert Mohler Jr. thanked Pogue for his generosity.

“It is my great privilege to announce today, at the great generosity of this friend, the funding of the W.A. Criswell Chair of Expository Preaching,” Mohler said.

Before the announcement, Mohler commented about Criswell’s gift of expository preaching.

“He, in many ways, exemplified not only for Southern Baptists but for evangelicals at large, a recovery of expository preaching,” Mohler said. “From the time of Charles Spurgeon to the time of W.A. Criswell, there are very few prominent preachers who are actually committed to what we would call biblical exposition.”

Mohler introduced a video of Criswell’s 1985 address, “Whether We Live or Die,” which the seminary community viewed as part of the service. Criswell preached the message, one of his most well-known sermons, at the Pastors’ Conference held before the annual meeting of the Southern Baptist Convention in Dallas.

In the sermon, preached during one of the most intense times of controversy over the inerrancy of the Bible among Southern Baptists, Criswell outlined how acquiescence to liberal theology leads to the death of denominations and institutions. As examples, he pointed to Charles Haddon Spurgeon’s defense of the Bible in the “Downgrade Controversy” among English Baptists in the late 1800s and the University of Chicago’s fall into liberalism after its founding as an orthodox school to train ministers.

Criswell illustrated the influence of liberalism within the SBC with the story of professor Crawford H. Toy’s dismissal from Southern Seminary in 1879, due to his acceptance of German higher criticism. He pointed to the seminary’s subsequent acceptance of Toy’s theology, citing a 1985 issue of Southern Seminary’s at-the-time academic journal, Review and Expositor. The issue—published shortly before Criswell’s address—included an article describing Toy’s beliefs as “perfectly acceptable, condoned, and defended,” were he to teach at the seminary then.

Later at the 1985 convention, Southern Baptist messengers elected Charles Stanley, pastor of First Baptist Church in Atlanta, as convention president. Stanley’s presidency continued a line of conservative presidents and helped secure the success of the conservative movement, known as the “Conservative Resurgence.”

Concerning the context of Criswell’s sermon, Mohler said the legendary preacher and former SBC president delivered the sermon under “conditions of maximum warfare.” The 1985 Southern Baptist Convention annual meeting, Mohler said, was one of the great turning points in the SBC.

“There is a line that runs very straight from that day in Dallas, Texas, to this day in Louisville, Ky.,” Mohler told Southern Seminary students. “We can look back at history and say, had not the convention voted as it did in the very day after Dr. Criswell preached that sermon, we would not be sitting in this chapel today. It would be a very different world and a very different institution.”

Pogue, a businessman from Dallas, is also the funder of the W.A. Criswell Sermon Library. The digital library provides for free Criswell’s more than 4,100 sermons in digital format. At the conclusion of the service, Pogue provided each chapel attendee with a copy of “Criswell Classics: Centennial Edition,” a DVD collection of 12 of Criswell’s most important sermons.

Also at the service was Jerry Johnson, the outgoing president of Criswell College in Dallas, a school that Criswell himself helped establish, which later took his name. The National Religious Broadcasters recently named Johnson as their new president.

Audio and video of the service are available at www.sbts.edu/resources.

NEWS RELEASE: Becket Fund for Religious Liberty

WASHINGTON—Last Friday the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty together with the national law firm Locke Lord LLP filed a class-action lawsuit on behalf of three non-profit religious organizations who cannot comply with the federal government’s mandate that they provide employees with free access to abortion-inducing drugs and devices:

• Reaching Souls International, a nonprofit evangelistic ministry dedicated to preaching the gospel and caring for orphans in Africa, India, and Cuba;
• Truett-McConnell College, a Georgia Baptist college dedicated to equipping students to make disciples of Christ among all the nations through a biblically-centered education; and
• GuideStone Financial Resources, the benefits arm of the Southern Baptist Convention. GuideStone has been providing retirement and health benefits to Southern Baptist churches and affiliated ministries like Reaching Souls and Truett-McConnell College for nearly 100 years.

The class, represented by Reaching Souls International and Truett-McConnell College, includes over 100 ministries that currently receive conscience-compliant health benefits through GuideStone. None of the ministries that comprise the class qualify for HHS’ narrow “religious employer” exemption, and they all face enormous fines if they do not comply with the government’s mandate by Jan. 1.

“The government’s refusal to treat these ministries as ‘religious employers’ is senseless,” said Mark Rienzi, senior counsel for the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty. “These people spend their lives teaching and preaching their religious faith—if they do not qualify as ‘religious employers,’ the government needs to get a new definition.”

The lawsuit is brought by Reaching Souls, Truett-McConnell, and GuideStone on behalf of all of the religious groups that participate in GuideStone’s health benefits plan and are not exempt from the government mandate to cover emergency contraceptives.

“The very purpose of the GuideStone plan is to provide ministry organizations with employee health benefits according to biblical principles,” said O.S. Hawkins, GuideStone’s President and chief executive officer. “The government shouldn’t prohibit us from continuing in that ministry.”

The government allows exemptions from the mandate for churches and certain other religious ministry groups, but Reaching Souls and Truett-McConnell do not qualify because they do not fall within a narrow tax law category of ministries that are “integrated auxiliaries” of a church.

Founded by a Southern Baptist pastor and evangelist in 1986, Reaching Souls’ mission is “to reach Souls for Christ” by training, equipping, and supporting African, Cuban, and Indian pastors and evangelists as they preach the gospel to their neighbors and countrymen. Through their dedicated preaching, pastors and evangelists trained and supported by Reaching Souls have reached out to more than 20 million people in Africa, Cuba, and India.

In addition to proclaiming the gospel, Reaching Souls has rescued hundreds of orphans in Africa and India by placing them into loving homes. If Reaching Souls does not comply with the mandate by Jan. 1, it will face $365,000 per year in IRS fines.

“Because everyone is made in the image of God, even the most vulnerable people in society should be respected, served, and loved. That’s why Reaching Souls is committed to reaching the neediest people with the gospel and caring for orphaned children, and it’s why we believe that human life should be protected from conception. We want to offer a health plan that reflects those commitments,” said Dustin Manis, Reaching Souls’ CEO.

Located on 200 acres in the mountains of Georgia, Truett-McConnell is a Georgia Baptist liberal arts college whose mission is to “equip students to fulfill the Great Commission by fostering a Christian worldview through a biblically centered education.” If Truett-McConnell does not comply with the mandate by Jan. 1, it will face nearly $3 million per year in IRS fines.

“We teach our students what it means to think biblically about all areas of life,” said Emir Caner, president of Truett-McConnell. “We can’t tell them that human life is sacred from the time of conception and then turn around and offer health benefits that are inextricably linked to providing abortion-causing drugs. Southern Baptists have a long history of standing up to government coercion in matters of conscience—it’s a tradition we’re honored to join.”

The lawsuit was filed by the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty and Locke Lord LLP in the federal district court in Oklahoma. This is the 74^th lawsuit challenging the administration’s mandate. The Becket Fund is also representing the Little Sisters of the Poor, Hobby Lobby, Belmont Abbey College, Colorado Christian University, East Texas Baptist University, Eternal Word Television Network, Houston Baptist University, Ave Maria University, and Wheaton College in similar lawsuits. This is the second class action file challenging the administration’s mandate. The other class action was filed in federal District Court in Denver by the Becket Fund and Locke Lord LLP on behalf of various religious organizations participating in the Christian Brothers Employee Benefit Trust, a national plan established for Catholic employers.