On Nov. 9-10, messengers and guests will gather at Hyde Park Baptist Church in Austin as the SBTC convenes its 2020 annual meeting. This year’s theme, “Together For the Unfinished Task,” reflects the convention’s ongoing goal to see the gospel spread to all people, both at home and abroad, and echoes a continuation of last year’s “Who’s Your One?” theme with an encouragement toward fulfilling the Great Commission.

“This year in Austin our convention theme is ‘Together for the Unfinished Task,’” said Kie Bowman, convention president and host pastor. “We will focus as much attention as possible on the Great Commission of Jesus while remembering all of the protocols to keep every messenger safe. It will be different, but join me for a convention we will not forget!”

The Scripture attached to the theme this year is the Great Commission, found in Matthew 28:19-20 where Jesus commands his followers to “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”

Similar to years past, multiple sermons are scheduled throughout the convention, each focusing on the theme. Bowman will bring the president’s message Monday night, and Danny Forshee, pastor of Great Hills Baptist Church in Austin and SBTC executive board chairman, will preach the convention sermon Tuesday morning. 

SBC Executive Committee president Ronnie Floyd will be joining the convention on Tuesday night to bring the closing sermon.

“Prior to his role with the Executive Committee, Dr. Floyd was one of the most evangelistic pastors in the SBC and has served as president of the National Day of Prayer,” Bowman said. “For years he has led by example and in numerous leadership roles calling on the SBC family to prayer and revival. I’m thrilled he has agreed to come to our convention in November.”

Mickey Henderson, who leads worship at Hyde Park Baptist Church, will serve as worship leader of the 2020 convention along with the church’s choir, band and praise team. Julio Arriola, who serves as executive director of Hispanic relations and mobilization at the SBC Executive Committee, will join as a special guest.

Time has also been carved out in the convention schedule this year to highlight and provide time to pray for revival and spiritual awakening. 

As is usual, messengers will hear updates from the convention’s cooperative ministries, which includes Criswell College, Jacksonville College and the Texas Baptist Home for Children.

Bowman, who was elected president at last year’s convention, will be nominated for reelection by Todd Kaunitz, pastor of New Beginnings Baptist Church in Longview, and currently is running opposed.

Although there has been much uncertainty throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, convention leaders say they are emphasizing preventive measures and doing everything in their power to minimize risk for messengers and guests who plan to join as the convention gathers in Austin next month.

“We’re taking strenuous steps to conduct our meeting with due prudence,” said Gary Ledbetter, SBTC director of communications. “Our staff will be wearing masks and we encourage all our folks to do that. We have also reduced the number of displays and meals. The meals we do provide will be boxed to minimize the risk to those eating. Of course, we are also streaming our meeting for those who want to observe but shouldn’t attend.”

Pre-registration for messengers is currently open and is encouraged for anyone who plans to attend as a messenger. Otherwise, messengers will be required to stand in line at the Credentials desk before checking in to receive ballots and materials.

Resolutions for the Annual Meeting 

Resolutions give convention messengers an opportunity to express a consensus statement on timely public issues, or to speak prophetically regarding issues of specific interest to Southern Baptist churches. Any member of and SBTC church may submit a resolution to the resolutions committee. The committee will consider submitted resolutions and produce a report to convention messengers for their consideration. 

The deadline for submitting a resolution for the 2019 annual meeting is Monday, Oct 26. All submissions must include the name, church membership, phone number and email address of the submitter. Mailed submissions must be typewritten for the sake of legibility. Email resolutions to Gayla Sullivan at gsullivan@sbtexas.com or mail to SBTC, Gayla Sullivan, PO Box 1988, Grapevine, TX 76099.

Although childcare has been offered in years past, due to the pandemic it will not be available this year.

For more information about the annual meeting or to find out how to join the livestream, visit sbtexas.com/am20. 

Southern Baptists were among several invited speakers at a public policy forum presented by Texas Values and hosted by Great Hills Baptist Church in Austin Sept. 18-19. Topics at the Faith, Family, and Freedom Forum included the state of religious and personal liberties, education, abortion, identity politics and the role of the church in each arena, especially, in the midst of a pandemic.

“There’s got to be that education,” Jonathan Saenz told the TEXAN. “They’ve got to understand what’s happening and have a true appreciation of it before they’ll ever make a decision to care about doing something and then decide to back that up with some action.”

Saenz is president of Texas Values, a non-profit, conservative public policy advocacy organization.

Is the Church Essential?

Danny Forshee, pastor of GHBC, joined fellow pastor and state representative Scott Sanford, and religious liberty attorney Hiram Sasser in a panel discussion about the essential role of the church in society. In March and April government authorities ordered all “non-essential” businesses to shutter, including churches, in an attempt to slow the spread of the coronavirus. Churches had to convince authorities of their essentiality.

Sanford said the church’s role in promoting a civil society and caring for their communities often goes recognized and, therefore, unappreciated. The oversight contributes to the notion of whether or not a church is “essential.”

“It helps feed the poor. It helps alleviate poverty and hunger and serving the widow and the orphan,” Sanford told the forum audience. “So, the government needs to take a hard look at the very practical things that churches do through its ministries day in and day out that reduces the cost and excessive services that the government has to provide.”

Forshee said the church’s essential nature might be more recognizable if churches were “more conspicuous” about serving their communities.

Getting Schooled

The pandemic has given parents and teachers unprecedented views into each other’s worlds – for better or worse. Remote learning made the classroom accessible to parents like never before said Texas Sen. Angela Paxton, R-McKinney.

Parents who don’t like what they see in their child’s virtual classroom have told school administrators. But Paxton, a former math teacher, said the feedback can be constructive as she reminded the audience that some of their students’ teachers and principals are fellow believers.

“One of the things we need to recognize is that [their] ministry and they are under attack from both sides many times. We have to remember to give our public schools support to do the right thing,” she told the audience of 500 that attended in-person and on line.

“I think we are seeing, because of the COVID situation, public schools are more responsive and engaged with parents, and parents with their kids’ schools more than I’ve ever seen,” she said. “I think parents are more aware of what’s happening in the schools these days. They’re more aware of their own responsibility.”

But some criticism is well-deserved, according to speakers on two separate panels discussing sex education.

Critics decried the graphic nature of the material making its way into the classroom and Texas textbooks. They reserved their harshest criticism for the Austin Independent School District. Last year AISD approved K – 12 curriculum created by Planned Parenthood.  But legislation authored by Sen. Donna Campbell, R – New Braunfels, ended taxpayer funding of Planned Parenthood and its affiliates.

AISD sought to circumvent that law by using sex education material crafted by a Canadian abortion provider. But AISD withdrew the curriculum after it was discovered they did not obtain permission to use the copyrighted material.

Paxton and Saenz praised a group of well-informed and determined school district residents who fought against both plans. Their work should serve as an encouragement to others to stay informed and engaged they said.

Life issues 

Pro-life discussions covered protecting human dignity from assaults by abortionists and transgender ideologues.

Former Bryan, Texas, abortion clinic director Abby Johnson and Central Texas Coalition for Life director Heather Gardner recounted their story of being on opposite sides of the abortion debate until God convicted Johnson of abortion’s harsh realities.

Johnson founded And Then There Were None, an organization that has helped 600 abortion industry employees, including physicians, leave that trade.

Janet Porter, president of Faith2Action, and Rep. Briscoe Cane, R – Baytown, discussed heartbeat laws that ban abortion after a heartbeat can be detected in an unborn baby. Porter’s pro-life organization secured passage of a bill in Ohio. Cane authored the Texas Heartbeat Bill in 2019 that never made it out of committee.

Two panel discussions addressed the rapid accommodation of transgender ideology into society, courts and the law.

One discussion featured Walt Heyer and Jeff Younger. Thirty years separate the beginning of their stories, but their tales illustrate the rapid cultural shift that has taken place in that time.

When Heyer was 42, he succumbed to his gender dysphoria and underwent “gender reassignment surgery.” He lived as a woman for eight years. But, according to his biography “through effective psychotherapy and faith in God,” he accepted his God-created male body. He shares his sex-change regret story and his faith in Christ – much to the chagrin of transgender activists who deny the reality of transition regret.

Thirty years later, Jeff Younger, is fighting to save one of his twin sons from their ideologically driven mother, doctors, counselors, courts and activists. When Younger and his wife, Anne Georgulas, divorced, Georgulas began presenting one of their now-8-year-old sons as a girl. The mother insists it is at the boy’s request.

Younger contends his son has not indicated to him that he wants to live as a girl. The parents are waging a custody battle and Younger is asking the courts to give him a say in their son’s medical treatment.

When Heyer sought medical transitioning three decades ago, his counselor advised therapy first. Today, some states have outlawed counseling that allows patients to discuss their gender confusion before beginning “gender reassignment” that can leave them sterile. Not ironically, a court ordered Younger and his sons to attend weekly counseling with a judge-appointed therapist.

High ranking Texas politicians have advocated for Younger and his son. But whether those same politicians will support legislation prohibiting “gender reassignment” for minors is yet to be seen.

Some measure of protection against transgender ideology was introduced, and passed, in Idaho. The bill, signed by Gov. Brad Little and immediately challenged by transgender-affirming American Civil Liberties Union, requires student athletes to compete on teams according to their biological sex and not gender identity. (See sidebar “Fair Play Act”). Similar bills have been introduced in other states and would prohibit biological males from competing in girls’ and women’s (college level) sports.

Trusting God or Caesar?

The Texas Values forum starkly contrasted the divide between secular and Christian ideology. Participants were encouraged to stay informed and engage their local authorities.

But how do Christians strike a balance between civic engagement and relying on God’s will for the outcome?

It begins with a high view of Scripture, not politics, the pastors said.

“The Bible has become, regrettably, one of the most neglected sacred books in the church today,” said Forshee. “While affirming what we can in the Constitution, Bill of Rights, Magna Carta, etc. is always helpful, our allegiance must always be first and foremost to Christ and the Word of God.”

And leave the results to God.

“By staying focused on God’s word and teaching it faithfully with love, the Holy Spirit will honor and move in the hearts and minds of those who would hear,” said Sanford.

I don’t hear much reference to “mid-life crisis” anymore, but it was a thing in the 1980s. The idea is that a person, usually a man, reaches a point when he realizes he will not be an astronaut or write the great American novel; he’s tubby, struggling to pay the bills and disappointed in himself. This leads to an irrational fling with a red Corvette or a swimsuit model. There were movies about this but they weren’t great. 

Something true lurks behind the silliness of the concept. Things happen to us, sometimes terrible things, which “unfairly” change the arc of our lives. I know people who are bound to the infirmities of a beloved family member. Others were hobbled earlier in life by the death or misbehavior of a parent. Some are victims of crimes or accidents that leave them permanently changed. None of this was supposed to happen, we think, and this lament becomes the dark cloud that rests on our heads for the rest of our days. 

There is certainly a temptation toward this hardwired into the aging process. I remember being outraged at the universe when I was told my eyes were going bad 30 years ago. The hits keep coming but I’ve stopped being outraged by them. Nearly everything will disappoint us if we live long enough. 

I find the story of Joseph, starting in Genesis 37, encouraging when my expectations of life aren’t met. Joseph expected to be exalted over his brothers, but he didn’t expect to be enslaved, betrayed and imprisoned. He lost years out of the prime of his life. Even after his release he did not go home. Where did Joseph go to get back those years? The Lord was in Joseph’s life, start to finish, but when he was in prison for years he had only faith that the Lord was in it. 

Joseph’s expectations as a young man were not what the Lord had willed to give him. My youthful expectations and yours have not come to pass and we don’t know how many times we’ve been blessed by that. We can only project an idyllic “what might have been.” 

It goes on from there. Moses was a member of Pharaoh’s household until he lost that and became a fugitive shepherd with a nice, safe life. From there he became the enemy of Egypt and later the object of scorn by the people he led. He wandered until the end of his life. Elijah was likely a shepherd on the east side of the Jordan until the Lord sent him to confront, become the enemy of, an evil king. Mary was on track to be the wife of an honorable craftsman in Nazareth. The Lord made her the best-known widow in history. 

These things are only blessings from God in hindsight. In the midst of the suffering it is tough, discouraging, bitter. 

We don’t enter our seniority having accomplished the exact things we set out to do. That’s okay. But what about physical infirmity? Can we leave behind the dream of being as strong, handsome and whole as we were at 30? I know the choice is not entirely ours but I also know a lot of people who are hesitant to let others see them as they’ve become, the best they’ll be for the rest of their lives. Our bodies are scarred by accidents, illness and life-saving surgeries. We lose things—teeth, organs and appendages. Each one of those is a nail in the coffin of our perfect youth. As chipper as we might be about the seriousness of aging (“It’s not for sissies!”), we also groan a little at the loss; it changes our view of ourselves and of life if we’re not careful. 

But these are our lives. None of us gets all we wanted, thank the Lord. 

There’s more to our lives, though. We know that but it’s hard to move our focus from this existence, so familiar to us, to an eternal one. The Lord helps us with that. He began helping me when my eyes starting going bad. Little by little we become less enamored with the perfection of our bodies and our dreams as God gives us years to see them more clearly. 

In our spirits, our eternal selves, we live as God’s children, but in our flesh and in this place we live as his creatures. We gather experience, skill, scars and failures as we serve God here. But we must not forget that we are his creatures, vessels made for his purposes, to be used and used up. 

Our dreams and expectations are trifling things; again, we know that. My stubborn heart resents that the Lord’s path is not the course I set. I only regret it in the present tense though. Looking back I see his hand, his goodness and his sovereignty in it all. 

Take comfort today in the goodness of the Lord to you thus far. Trust him while you’re still in Joseph’s prison that he means it all for good.