BWA honors Texas Baptists as ‘full members’

Posted: 11/15/05

BWA honors Texas Baptists as 'full members'

By Craig Bird

AUSTIN—Denton Lotz, general secretary of the Baptist World Alliance, presented Baptist General Convention Texas Executive Director Charles Wade with a framed membership certificate signifying the recent acceptance of the BGCT as a full member in the 100-year-old Baptist fellowship.

Lotz noted when the BWA was founded 100 years ago, “85 percent of the world’s Christians lived in Europe and the United States, but now 60 percent of Christians live in the southern hemisphere. There are 400 million believers in Africa, 550 million in Latin America and 360 million in Asia.

“The church has moved south—and I don’t mean south to Texas but south of the equator,” he said during the BGCT annual meeting. “God didn’t call just the NATO countries when he gave us the Great Commission. He gave it to Christians everywhere.”

Lotz pledged that BWA will continue its work supporting Baptist churches around the world as they preach the gospel, will help the needy through Baptist World Aid and work to promote and protect human rights and religious freedom.

“We want religious freedom for everyone, everywhere,” he said. “We want Hindus and Buddhists and Muslims to be free to worship—but we demand the same freedom for Christians.

“We will continue to tell countries like Saudi Arabia and Yemen that since you take advantage of your freedom to build mosques in the United States and Europe, then you need to grant us the freedom build churches and freely share our faith in your countries.”