Ken Hall BGCT is a ‘work in progress’_111703

Posted: 11/14/03

Ken Hall: BGCT is a 'work in progress'

By Mark Wingfield

Managing Editor

LUBBOCK–The Baptist General Convention is a “work in progress,” newly elected President Ken Hall told reporters Nov. 10.

Hall, president of Buckner Baptist Benevolences, was elected to the post without opposition earlier that day during the BGCT annual session in Lubbock.

He is the first institutional executive to hold the voluntary convention presidency in 38 years. The founder of Buckner Benevolences, R.C. Buckner, served as BGCT president 19 years in the early 20th century. The last institutional leader to hold the post was Abner McCall, then president of Baylor University.

Hall will serve alongside another institutional president, Albert Reyes of Baptist University of the Americas, who was elected BGCT first vice president. Dennis Young, pastor of Missouri City Baptist Church of Missouri City, was elected second vice president.

Ken Hall

Hall commended BGCT Executive Director Charles Wade's leadership and said he expects to follow Wade's leadership in guiding the convention.

However, Hall acknowledged more change is likely in store for the BGCT as it reshapes itself to meet changing missions and ministry needs.

“We as a convention need to simplify who we are so churches can easily connect with us,” Hall said.

“We are just beginning to catch the vision of what we are going to be as Texas Baptists,” he added. “We are in transition from a model that worked in one generation but needs to be adapted.”

God will not limit what Texas Baptists can do in the future, but Texas Baptists themselves must be careful not to limit themselves, Hall urged.

He commended Wade's executive director's report given a few hours before in which Wade said: “Nothing we do has to continue to be done just because it is what we have always done. We should ask questions about how what we do relates to our priorities and our passion.”

Hall predicted the BGCT will become “more lean in getting resources to the greatest needs.”

The shortfall in giving to fund BGCT ministries in recent years is indicative of both a poor national economy and years of conflict among Baptists, Hall said. But the BGCT will encourage greater giving to its missions causes by “telling the story of what we're doing well.”

Hall said he hopes to set a tone of “non-criticism” in his tenure as president. “We're not going to fight old battles.”

Asked by a reporter what kind of relationship the BGCT will have with Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, a Southern Baptist Convention seminary in Fort Worth, Hall said that even though he is a graduate of Southwestern, he no longer identifies with Southwestern.

“My heart and my soul were broken several years ago when a man I respected was fired,” he said, referencing President Russell Dilday's firing by fundamentalist trustees. “My support is for the Baptist General Convention of Texas' two seminaries,” Truett Seminary and Logsdon School of Theology, as well as the Baptist University of the Americas.

Hall wished the best for Southwestern under the leadership of new President Paige Patterson. “I hope they succeed in their narrow slice” of theological education, he said. “I see their model being limiting and narrow.”

Hall was nominated by Jim Denison, his pastor at Park Cities Baptist Church in Dallas.

“I am convinced Dr. Hall is God's man to guide us in these days and to lead us into our future together,” Denison said.

He cited the precedent of R.C. Buckner's service as convention president and predicted Hall “will enable us to move forward in the same way.”

Hall is a deacon and Sunday School teacher at Park Cities. Before taking the helm at Buckner in 1994, he was pastor of four Texas Baptist churches, including First Baptist of Longview.

Reyes has led Baptist University of the Americas, formerly Hispanic Baptist Theological School, since 1999. Previously, he was pastor of Pueblo Nuevo Community Church in El Paso, in addition to other church and business experience. Reyes was nominated by Charles Johnson, his pastor at Trinity Baptist Church in San Antonio.

Young has served the Missouri City church since 1992 and previously was minister of music at South Park Baptist Church in Houston. He was nominated by Marvin Delaney, pastor of South Park.

Other officers are David Nabors, BGCT treasurer, who was re-elected recording secretary; Irby Cox of Dallas, who was re-elected registration secretary; and Bernie Spooner, a Dallas Baptist University employee, who was elected secretary of the corporation to succeed Gene Greer, who died.