Board seeks greater cross-cultural efforts among churches

The Southern Baptists of Texas Convention’s Executive Board unanimously approved an initiative encouraging the 2,400-plus SBTC churches to engage in more cross-cultural fellowship and worship and celebrate its growing ethnic diversity during its Aug. 6 meeting in Grapevine.

The motion from the ad hoc “Look Like Heaven Committee” commits the board to encourage “the building of cross-cultural relationships among SBTC pastors and churches” and requests promotion of cross-cultural events during the next five SBTC annual meetings. Additionally, the motion calls for an emphasis on cross-cultural relationships during the month of July for the next five years.

Chairman of the ad hoc committee, pastor David Fleming of Champion Forest Baptist Church in Houston, said the latest list of affiliations the board approved was an example of the growing ethnic diversity in SBTC congregations, with Fleming noting Filipino, Hispanic, Japanese, Korean, Anglo and African American congregations among them.

“The notion is that we really do have a very diverse convention. …” But “unity is more than the absence of strife, right?” Fleming said.

Noting the importance of the July emphasis on cross-cultural relationships, Fleming said this could include something as simple as pastors meeting for coffee or swapping pulpits or joint mission efforts. In the fall during the annual meeting, the fruit of such ministry would be reported.

Fleming said the committee’s work was aimed at celebrating the convention’s ethnic variety, not blurring it.

OTHER BUSINESS

Also, the board elected two new ministry staff associates in the missions and minister/church relations (MCR) departments, and approved a recommended 2014 budget of $27,149,526—a 3.06 percent increase over 2013.

The board extended its ministry affiliation with Waxahachie-based Texas Baptist Home for Children and its related ministry agreements with Baptist Missionary Association of Texas, Korean Baptist Fellowship of Texas and Baptist Credit Union. The board also approved a related ministry agreement with the Conference of Texas Baptist Evangelists (COTBE). The convention has worked closely with COTBE during the annual Empower Evangelism Conference, providing a venue for the COTBE session that immediately precedes the conference.

The affiliated agreement with Texas Baptist Home is for five years while the related ministry agreements are reviewed annually.

The board elected Ted L. Elmore, who has served the convention part-time as a field ministry strategist, to fill a vacancy as minister/church relations associate, and Devendra (Dan) Acharya, a Nepal native who came to faith in Christ as a 15-year-old Hindu, as missions strategies associate.

Elmore fills the spot left by Heath Peloquin, who succeeds Tom Campbell as MCR director. Campbell left the convention staff last spring to become pastor of First Baptist Church of Van.

Elmore is a Tennessee native who surrendered to the ministry as a police officer in Dayton, Ohio in the early 1970s. He served as pastor of Calvary Baptist Church in Hamilton from 1977-79 and for 34 years has led the Ted Elmore Evangelistic Association. Elmore served in several capacities with the Baptist General Convention of Texas as well. He is currently interim pastor at North Euless Baptist Church.

Elmore told the board of the day as a young adult that he knew for certain he had surrendered his life to Christ as he sat on a front-row pew filling out a decision card and puzzled with which box to check. Having checked “other” because of earlier decisions as a child to take steps toward God, he wrote simply, “I want Jesus to have control of my life from this day forward.” From that moment, he said his will, emotions and understanding converged as he began to grow spiritually.

Months later, he surrendered to a ministry calling. Through many years of service as an evangelist and through a recent bout with cancer his wife Cheryl experienced, “Matthew 6:33 (‘Seek first the kingdom of God …’) has been brought out time and time again,” he said.

Acharya told of coming to saving faith in Christ as a 15-year-old after he said God spoke to him clearly about the person of Jesus while Acharya while steeped in Hinduism as a member of a high-caste family of Hindu priests. When he became a Christ follower after reading the Gospel of John, he was kicked out of his village and estranged from his family for 16 years.

“Life was very difficult but I decided to live in Christ by faith,” Acharya told the board. In 2006, his mother and brother contacted him and invited him back home. Reunited after 16 years, he said he spent an entire evening and most of the next day explaining the gospel and filling in the blanks of lost time.

Soon, his mother and brother were both saved and today they are involved in a church planting ministry in Nepal begun by Acharya. In Dallas, Acharya and his wife Moanaro won converts and began New Life Family Church among Bhutanese immigrants. In his new role, Acharya will be helping the SBTC participate in new works among the growing number of international people groups in Texas.

Board vice chairman Bart Barber of Farmersville, who presided in the absence of chairman Hal Kinkeade of Springtown, told the board following Acharya’s election that when his time comes to rotate off the board, “The thing I am going to miss most are these testimonies.”

FINANCIAL REPORT

The budget increase of 3.06 percent amounts to $805,900, with 55 percent of Cooperative Program (CP) receipts being passed on to Nashville and the remaining 45 percent funding Texas ministry. Messengers to the SBTC annual meeting, Oct. 28-29 in Amarillo, will vote on the budget recommendation. The 55 percent passed on for SBC national and international ministry remains the highest percentage of any state convention.

Chief Financial Officer Joe Davis reported to the board that CP receipts through June were $358,064 above budget and $371,226 ahead of last year’s first six months. The total net operating income through June was $990,273. Davis said several factors contributed to the net operating income: Staff vacancies reduced spending, seasonal expenditures were lower than expected and the convention’s annual liability insurance payment is not yet reflected. Health insurance expenditures were lower than expected also, he said.

Meanwhile, giving through the Reach Texas Offering was up by $125,477 compared to last year with 10 months reported. Giving through the Lottie Moon Offering for International Missions was up $12,327 with one month reported. The Annie Armstrong Offering for North American Missions was down $47,330 for the first six months of the giving year compared to 2012.

In a letter to SBTC Executive Director Jim Richards shared with the board, Oklahoma Baptists’ executive director, Anthony Jordan, thanked the convention for its financial gift following the deadly May tornadoes that devastated parts of Moore, Okla., and Shawnee, Okla.

“Your generous gift of $10,000 has given us the opportunity to turn hopelessness into hope, darkness into light, and tears into smiles of joy,” Jordan wrote.

EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR’S REPORT

Richards told the board of the hospitality he and his wife June experienced during a seven-day tour of West Texas churches. He said the trip was meant to encourage pastors and churches and to invite participation at the SBTC annual meeting in Amarillo.

“But instead of encouraging, we were encouraged,” Richards said, noting the blessing of preaching four times on Sunday during the trip.

New churches continue to affiliate with the SBTC at a rate of about one church every three days, Richards told the board. Of those, about 80 percent have a Southern Baptist history while others come from among missionary Baptists and even a few Bible churches, he said.

Also, the Borderlands ministry is engaging people with the gospel from El Paso to the southeast Rio Grande Valley while the SBTC’s people groups effort seeks to win souls from “a huge conglomerate of globalization” that exists in the state’s largest cities, with Houston now being the nation’s most ethnically diverse metropolis.

The successful effort this summer to pass life-affirming legislation in Texas that will curb abortions is an example of how resolutions passed by messengers at annual meetings are useful, Richards noted. Because messengers in recent years have spoken clearly that life begins at conception, “the SBTC staff was able to speak definitively about life” during the intense debate that ensued in the weeks leading up to House Bill 2’s passage.

Church planter and church sponsor recruitment will be ramped up in the coming months, Richards said, with the convention able to fund about 100 church plants if qualified planters and sponsoring churches are available. He added that sponsoring churches’ spiritual support and involvement are even more crucial than their financial support.

Richards lauded Campbell, the former MCR director who returned to the pastorate last spring, and Ken Lasater, who has served 11 years as a church ministries associate. “Tom has one of the sweetest spirits of anyone I know,” Richards said. Lasater, meanwhile, is leaving the SBTC staff to join the staff of First Baptist Church of Bowie. Richards called Lasater a “true renaissance man; he has incredible gifting and does so many things so well.”

In closing, Richards asked board members to encourage their church families to come to Amarillo for the annual meeting, where the business of the convention “makes it possible to reach Texas and touch the world,” he said.

The board voted to present O.S. Hawkins, GuideStone Financial Resources president, with the 2013 H. Paul Pressler Award. Of Hawkins, board member James Nickell of Quitman told the board, “He has provided encouragement and support to SBTC during our 15 years.” Hawkins served as pastor of First Baptist Church in Hobart, Okla., and then Ada, Okla., then First Baptist Church of Fort Lauderdale, Fla., and First Baptist Church of Dallas. He has led GuideStone since 1997.

The Pressler Award is presented at each SBTC annual meeting.

Also, the convention’s facilitating ministries area will now be called ministry relationships. The former facilitating ministries committee—a committee of the Executive Board—will now be termed the ministry relationships committee. As director of facilitating ministries, Gary Ledbetter of the SBTC staff acts as liaison between the committee and the affiliated and related ministries of the convention. Ledbetter also serves as SBTC communications director.

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