International network hopes to draw Southern Baptists_41805

Posted: 4/15/05

International network hopes
to draw Southern Baptists

By Greg Warner

Associated Baptist Press

LYNCHBURG, Va. (ABP)– Fundamentalist Baptists in February formed a new international organization they hope will include Southern Baptists, who last year withdrew from the Baptist World Alliance, an international fellowship Southern Baptist leaders accused of being too “liberal.”

But the executive director of the new International Baptist Network said the group does not intend to become an “alternative” or competitor to the Baptist World Alliance, which unites 211 national and regional Baptist unions.

Several prominent Southern Baptists are involved in the new organization, including Paige Pat-terson, president of Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary and past president of the Southern Baptist Convention.

But Morris Chapman, president of the Southern Baptist Convention Executive Committee, said the SBC will proceed with its own plans to form an alternative to the BWA.

The International Baptist Network had its “first public meeting” in February at the Adolphus Hotel in Dallas, drawing “representatives from more than three dozen denominations, theological seminaries, colleges and mission boards, and individual churches,” according to an article in the April 2005 issue of the National Liberty Journal, published by Jerry Falwell's Liberty University.

The article, written by Liberty University co-founder Elmer Towns, said the International Baptist Network was “launched to counter (the) 'leftward drift' of Baptist World Alliance” and praised the SBC's withdrawal from BWA.

Southern Baptist leader Gene Mims, who became executive director of the new group in January, said the network “probably wouldn't work without Southern Baptists.” Mims, former vice president of LifeWay Christian Re-sources, said he was asked to lead the effort because “they needed someone who really knew Southern Baptists pretty well.”

But Mims insisted he does not expect the SBC to join officially. Instead, pastors and individuals likely will participate in the network.

“There are more Southern Baptists than there are any other Baptists,” he said. “This network would be incomplete without Southern Baptists.”

The International Baptist Network will function as a loose fellowship of individuals and churches, providing “relationships, information and opportunities” to “like-minded Baptists” around the world, Mims said. The network already has a confession of faith, membership policy and office in Atlanta.

In addition to Southern Baptists, the organization is targeting four independent Baptist groups–Southwide Baptist Fellowship, World Baptist Fellowship, Independent Baptist Fellowship International and Baptist Bible Fellowship International. The IBN is funded by the John Rawlings Foundation, named for one of the key leaders of the Baptist Bible Fellowship International. Rawlings deferred questions to Mims.

But Baptist denominations are not expected to join the network, Mims said, particularly given the history of independent and fundamentalist Baptist churches. Many of those groups considered Southern Baptists liberal until recent years, and none participated in the Baptist World Alliance.

“The independent Baptists see BWA as one big sort of a liberal playground that they would have no interest in,” Mims said.

“We're not interested in having an alternative to BWA,” Mims continued, noting the International Baptist Network would not have the “capacity” to replace the BWA. He said he met with the SBC's Chapman recently to inform him about the group's intentions. “I did talk to Morris about it, and I think he understands it's not an alternative.”

The February organizational meeting included Mims and Patterson, a former SBC president, Falwell said in a statement on his website. Falwell, a Southern Baptist and pastor of Thomas Road Baptist Church in Lynchburg, Va., called the International Baptist Network a “remarkable new venture.”

Patterson and Towns did not respond to requests to discuss the organization.

The Southern Baptist Conven-tion, which helped form BWA in 1905, withdrew its membership and financial support last June, citing a “leftward drift” in the organization.

Denton Lotz, general secretary of BWA, has denied the charges of liberalism and said an alternative organization would be a “slap in the face” of worldwide Baptists and contradict the stated intentions of SBC leaders.

The National Liberty Journal article says the SBC's withdrawal last summer from BWA “set the stage” for organization of the International Baptist Network. But the article does not claim SBC involvement or endorsement.

In voting to leave the Baptist World Alliance last June, the SBC agreed to use some of the funds withdrawn from BWA to form or support an alternative for “like-minded” Baptists.

But the International Baptist Network is not that group, Chapman insisted.

Chapman said he met with Mims and was aware of formation of the network, but Southern Baptists have not joined or pledged support.

He reaffirmed that members of the SBC's Great Commission Council “are participating in an exploratory meeting in Warsaw (Poland) to talk about how best to fellowship with conservative Christians around the world.”

Chapman said the meeting with conservative European Baptists will be the springboard for whatever alternative group the SBC forms. After the July meeting, the council will advise an SBC task force, which will recommend “how best to proceed in building a fellowship of like-minded Christians around the world,” he said.

Mims acknowledged only U.S. Baptists have participated in the International Baptist Network so far but added, “We're already contacting people overseas.”

Mims, 55, resigned Sept. 30 as vice president of church resources for LifeWay, the Southern Baptist curriculum and publishing arm, saying he wanted to return to the pastorate.

Mims said he had several opportunities to return to the pastorate since leaving LifeWay but was intrigued by the possibility of the International Baptist Network.