TOGETHER: Passion grows for being ‘on mission’

Posted: 12/15/06

TOGETHER:
Passion grows for being ‘on mission’

As 2006 draws to a close, I celebrate the growing passion I see in many churches for being “on mission” with God. This passion is exemplified in many ways.

Our cowboy church leaders are responding to God’s blessings in their lives and are starting new churches across Texas. People’s lives are being turned around. Folks who have never been to church or had felt they could never again be “at home” in a church are finding God’s promise of peace and salvation to be real.

Executive Director BGCT Executive Board

There are new churches in small towns on the edge of urban sprawl where God is using men and women who never before realized they could be leaders in a church to reach scores of people for Christ. Because of the passion for reaching people that bubbles up in the hearts of so many churches, we are starting 180 churches in Texas this year.

A Hispanic church in Texas is so eager for God to work through them that they started a Vacation Bible School in Guanajuato, Mexico, and now a church is there. They connected with the social needs of the people who live in that area, opened a school, now accredited by the Mexican Board of Education, which is teaching labor skills for an impoverished community. One of their families now lives as missionaries in that community, and other families have caught the vision of missions service.

I also celebrate the impact that some of our Baptist General Convention of Texas organizational changes have had on our work together.

Our new Executive Board completes its first year of service this month. They have faced several challenges—learning new responsibilities, getting acquainted with one another, working with the restructuring of our staff assignments, understanding a new budget process and facing the challenges of a report that revealed misuse of church starting funds. They have stepped forward to help me correct, in a very open and direct manner, the problems that have been identified.

All of us on the BGCT staff are committed to working through this crisis. All the motions passed by the Executive Board Nov. 13 are being addressed. The draft of the new church starting polices and procedures has been mailed to the Executive Board’s Missions and Ministry Committee; and by the time for a vote on these policies in February, members of the Executive Board will know more about church starting philosophy and methods than ever before.

I pledge that I will do everything possible to resolve all of these matters in a spirit of openness, fairness and justice. Furthermore, I am determined to work with everyone to put in place policies and attitudes that will restore to our church starting efforts the highest levels of trust and confidence.

Thank you for your many expressions of concern, support and prayer. Those who would like to use this painful episode as an excuse to undermine the future of our kingdom work through the BGCT are very few and very wrong. The BGCT has faced many critics through the years, but the spirit of our people is very strong and very united, and we know the work God has given us to do in Texas and the world is worth our commitment and our cooperation because we can do more together than we can do divided or alone.

We are all loved.