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HOUSTON?A moderate leader’s call for Baptist churches in Texas to stop supporting the Southern Baptist Convention has been challenged by a Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary professor at the Houston campus. In an open letter to Texas Baptists Committed Executive Director David Currie, assistant professor John D. Laing described Currie’s April 2005 newsletter article as a ploy to get “faithful Southern Baptist churches to redirect their monies.”
Currie praised what he termed a “very popular” idea in “traditional Baptist circles” of “moving on from the SBC,” but argued that the “one huge crying need that must be met if we are going to move on to a glorious future” is money. In his column, “Moving on from the SBC: Bring the Money,” the TBC leader noted that Texas Baptist churches sent over $14 million to the SBC last year in addition to seasonal missions offerings.
In his rebuttal, the Southwestern Seminary theology and philosophy professor said it was difficult to follow Currie’s logic in calling the North American Mission Board and SBC seminaries as “particularly unworthy of financial support.”
Currie reiterated an argument he made several years ago when urging the BGCT to end its support of NAMB because missionaries appointed and funded by the Southern Baptist entity were expected to minister in accordance with the newly revised Baptist Faith and Message. In his recent column, Currie encouraged “individuals who are ready to move on” to give to “something you believe in” such as CBF’s Global Mission Offering in place of the Annie Armstrong Easter Offering for North American Missions, which he said netted $4.73 million from Texas Baptists.
Laing questioned Currie’s reasoning that NAMB is unworthy of support since the majority of missionaries do not receive full funding. Using himself as an example, Laing said he receives no pay or benefits from NAMB for his chaplaincy work although the mission board endorses him. “A number of church planters receive some income from the churches they pastor or the associations they serve in, while also receiving supplemental income from NAMB,” he added, citing the website at www.namb.net.
NAMB reports 3,126 of the 5,126 missionaries and their spouses are funded cooperatively with state conventions and local associations while another 2,000 are long-term Mission Service Corps missionaries with two or more years of service.
“While there may be some room for evaluation of payment policies of NAMB for home missionaries, it should be noted that the administration makes every effort to use the monies entrusted to NAMB for the glory of Christ,” Laing said, describing a range of funding from salary supplements to provision of health benefits made possible through Cooperative Program support by local churches.
“Whatever the case may be, it is simply ludicrous to suggest that the tithe monies that faithful SBC members give to the glory of God on Sunday morning are being wasted because there is not a large percentage of fully funded missionaries,” Laing added.
Currie also questioned the value Texas Baptists are receiving from the $3 million BGCT churches sent last year in support of the six Southern Baptist seminaries. He added that the BGCT-related seminaries of Logsdon School of Theology at Hardin-Simmons and Truett Seminary at Baylor also received about $3 million from funds that BGCT labels as Cooperative Program gifts.
“Now ask yourself, in fact pray about it?which seminaries had you rather support?” Currie asked TBC readers. “Which seminaries do you think will produce the kind of pastors you would want serving in your church?”
“We cannot have a glorious future apart from the SBC if we continue to support the SBC when doing so denies scriptural teaching as well as Baptist principles,” Currie wrote. Unless churches affiliated with the Baptist General Convention of Texas redirect their “cooperative contributions,” the recently established seminaries in Waco and Abilene, Texas, as well as the Baptist University of the Americas in San Antonio and other moderate-funded causes will lack needed funds, he said.
Laing again questioned the truthfulness of statements Currie labeled as “facts about the current Southern Baptist Convention,” including the assertion that only 460 of the 3,008 students enrolled in the fall of 2003 at Southwestern Seminary were considered full time. Currie drew on figures released in a report by the Association of Theological Schools, which Laing questioned and was found to contain a typographical error.
ATS communications director Nancy Merrill confirmed that the 2002-2003 ATS Fact Book on Theological Education from which Currie pulled what he described in his article as “the last head count available” included a full-time equivalency (FTE) figure for Southwestern Seminary that was in error and should have been 2,138 instead of 460.
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