For more than 47 years, I have held my commitment to and cooperation with both the Southern Baptist Convention and the Baptist General Convention of Texas as a sacred trust. Attending the annual gatherings as a pastor and now dean of Christian Studies for Howard Payne University has been a highlight of every year.
For most of those years, the 1963 Baptist Faith and Message spoke with clarity to both kingdom movements. However, in 2000, as the SBC sought to define its stance on a number of significant issues, the 2000 Baptist Faith and Message fell short of creating a place where all Texas Baptists could stand in good conscience.
This challenge of finding a place to stand together should not surprise those of us who know and love the BGCT. Our Texas Baptist family is a miracle of cooperation, where brothers and sisters strive together for the Great Commission and the Great Commandment under a “big tent” of collaboration and commitment.
Search the world over, and you will be hard-pressed to find a Baptist convention as diverse as ours. In recent years, walking together has not gotten easier; it has gotten harder.
At our 2024 annual meeting, when messengers considered a motion to affirm the 2000 Baptist Faith and Message, I stood to speak against the motion by pointing out why that faith statement could not draw us together, noting: “It was written by Southern Baptists for Southern Baptists. It represents well many of the values of Southern Baptists, but it wasn’t written for us. It doesn’t represent us.”
An opportunity to draft a shared confession of faith
A motion will be presented to BGCT messengers on Nov. 16 during our 2026 annual meeting in Waco to approve the drafting of a Texas Baptist Confession of faith. I believe the proposal to draft this confession comes at a critical juncture in our history. It invites Texas Baptists to look ahead to the kind of people we want to be in the decades to come.
Historically, Baptist confessions have often emerged at turning points in our story, and I believe we stand at just such a defining moment.
I am not naïve. This path could prove divisive and push us farther apart. But it also offers a sacred opportunity, a divine appointment, to find a place to stand together with a common testimony of faith—a common kingdom language for the convictions that bind us together—while providing clarity on the issues we see through different lenses.
I am honored and humbled to be both a Southern Baptist and a Texas Baptist. With a clear conscience and a firm commitment to the greater good, I urge us to take this step of faith and position ourselves for the kingdom work that lies ahead.
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This proposal offers us the opportunity to draft together a confession that articulates the tenets and convictions of our Texas Baptist family for “such a time as this.”
David Lowrie was pastor of First Baptist Church in Decatur and now is dean of the School of Christian Studies at Howard Payne University. This opinion article represents the views of the organizers of the Texas Baptist Confession of Faith Project.
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