2nd Opinion: A year of transition & opportunity_30705

Posted: 3/4/05

2nd Opinion: A year of transition & opportunity

By Albert Reyes

We are the generation of Texas Baptists who have lived through some of the most dramatic transitions in world history–the fall of the Berlin Wall, the Tiananmen Square Incident and the Russian coup, all in the summer of 1989. We were ushered into the 21st century 11 years prior to the chronological birth date of the new millennium. This triplet alarm changed our world in one summer, and we have not returned to the way things were since then.

The second major alarm alerting us to a changing world was the terrible events of Sept. 11, 2001, when terrorists slammed into the World Trade Center towers in New York City. The ends of the earth came to our shores and redefined our way of life.

A third alarm alerting us to our changing world was the tsunami that hit our globe on Dec. 26, 2004. Devastation was redefined that day in ways we could never have imagined.

So, what will be our response, our perspective to these changes? Will we respond in fear or faith?

Modern-day prophets like Steve Murdock of the Texas State Statistical Center at the University of Texas at San Antonio and Phillip Jenkins, professor of religion and history at Pennsylvania State University, have attempted to exegete our emerging context.

Murdock predicts that between 2000 and 2040, the Texas population will grow from 20 million to 50 million, with 96 percent of the change in population coming from non-Anglo cultural groups. His inference is that Hispanics will comprise the largest increases in our future population shift.

Jenkins, in his book The Next Christendom: The Coming of Global Christianity, predicts the center of Christianity will firmly shift to the southern half of our globe by 2050 and only one in five Christians worldwide will be non-Latino white.

Our world, even our state, began to radically change in the summer of 1989 and promises to be an incredibly different place in the next 35 years.

As I reflect on the challenges of the future, I do not believe it is an accident or coincidence that Texas Baptists are in the midst of the most dramatic reorganization in the last 50 years. We are revising our constitution, developing new bylaws, and we are encouraging and supporting Charles Wade as he reorganizes the Executive Board staff to increase our effectiveness, increase accountability and increase our sensitivity and service to our 5,700 congregations and 23 institutions.

In short, we are redefining what it means to be Texas Baptists in the 21st century, and we should. Now is the time for us to rethink and review our ministry together, because the door of opportunity for the gospel is wide open.

We are considering new ways to partner, new ways to cooperate and new ways to touch the world through our cooperative giving plan. We are finding new ways to do more together than we could possibly do alone.

Our greatest challenge may not be to change our denomination; rather, it may be to change ourselves. Leo Tolstoy said, “Everyone thinks of changing the world, but nobody thinks of changing himself.”

Let's renew our minds, and let's be transformed into the kind of people who will boldly become new hope for the 21st century.

Keeping our eyes focused outward will lead us from transition to strategic opportunity. The world next door is waiting for us.

Albert Reyes is president of the Baptist General Convention of Texas and president of Baptist University of the Americas in San Antonio.