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Baptist2Baptist
Sixth and Final Report of the SBC Funding Study
The Fifth and Final Report of the SBC
Stand For Marriage
Final Report of Ad Hoc CP Committee
Final Report of Ad Hoc CP Committee (Appendices)
Cooperative Program Advance Plan
Fourth Report of the SBC Funding Study Committee
Review of NOBTS's Sole Membership Charter Amend.
Response to reservations about sole membership
Reservations Concerning a Charter Amendment Prop.
Sole Membership - A Florida Layman’s Perspecti
A Letter to Dr. Denton Lotz
Letter from Albert W. Wardin
The Relation of the SBC to its Entities
SBC Funding Study - State of Giving
What is Sole Membership?
Sole Membership
Letter to Missouri Churches
Questions and Answers
Behind the Scenes at the SBC
Response by Morris H. Chapman to the BGCT
Does It Matter What Missionaries Believe?
Letter to the Baptist Standard
On Facts and Fallacies
Letter by SBC EC President to Dr. James L. Hill
A View from the Other Side
Carter's rift with SBC not a new development
SBTS Response to BGCT Seminary Study Committee
Response to BGCT Seminary Study Committee Report
SBTS Response to BGCT Seminary Study Committee
Exec. Comm. Interacts with BGCT Funding Proposal
The Pastor's Point of View on the BGCT
Feasibility Study for Name Change
Report of the SBC Peace Committee
Doctrine, Cooperation, and Association
Report to the Fellowship of Deacons
Too High a View of Scripture?
The Truth about the SBC and Texas
Christ, The Bible, and Human Experience
Bibliolatry — A Fraudulent Accusation
BFM - Still Thoroughly Baptist!
Texas First, Texas Only - Not the Spirit
Anti-SBC Leaders Threaten Cooperative Program
Southern Baptists and Women Pastors
The Root of the SBC Controversy
Your Church Reaching the World for Christ
Together We're Carrying Out the Great Commission
Doctrinal integrity paramount for Serminary
Have Baptists replaced Jesus with a book?
Why theology matters for the Great Commission task
A survey of the 2000 BFM
Baptists, the Bible and confessions
Southern Seminary and the Abstract of Principles
An Open Letter to Southern Baptists
A Statement About the Baptist Faith & Message
An Example of the Need to Change The BFM
Incredible Vanishing Corporations
Committee on Cooperation - Report and Findings
An Open Letter from Dr. Allen to Dr. Wade
Why Cooperate?
The Southern Baptist Convention is Alive and Well
Letter by SBCEC President to TX Church Leaders
  Home > Reports, Articles & Papers
Selected Quote

"There should be an 'Abstract of Principles', or careful statement of theological belief, which every professor in such an institution must sign when inaugurated, so as to guard against the rise of erroneous and injurious instruction in such a seat of sacred learning."

James P. Boyce
from "Three Changes in
Theological Institutions"
- summarized by John Broadus, 1856



Letter by SBC Executive Committee President & CEO Morris H. Chapman to Texas Baptist Church Leaders
by Morris H. Chapman

January, 2002

Dear church leader:

"Where were you when the world stopped turning on that September day?"* Music City's Alan Jackson captured the emotions of all of us here in Nashville and across the country with his timely and thoughtful song about the September 11 attacks on America. Where were Southern Baptists on that September day? What was our response?

Our response was the immediate dispatching of chaplains, volunteer teams, and disaster units to Ground Zero and the Pentagon. Our response was hundreds of thousands of dollars given for the emergency efforts. Pastors counseled and prayed with their churches and communities all over the United States, and the president of the Southern Baptist Convention offered personal words of encouragement and prayer for the president of our nation.

Baptist Press personnel went to New York to give first-hand perspectives to Baptists and the world. SBC spokesmen, through print and television, offered biblical perspectives, words of consolation, and a loving gospel witness to a stunned and grieving populace. Television spots heralding the Christ of Christmas as the Hope of the world were aired in New York City. Our web site, www.sbc.net, featured a moving video memorial of the events. Southern Baptist volunteers from across the nation spent days in New York helping residents near Ground Zero clean their homes and begin to put their lives back together. The SBC president and the Executive Committee president called all Southern Baptists to join in prayer for the victims' families, emergency personnel in New York, Washington, D. C., and Pennsylvania, leaders of our nation, and members of our armed forces. They were encouraged to register to pray on a special web site, www.acalltoprayer.net. These are just a few of the responses, and our work and ministry are still under way.

Southern Baptists, like our whole nation, had to reach deeply into our faith and resources to respond to this crisis. But we did not have to invent a way to minister. By the grace of God and the faithfulness of our people, our ministry framework (human resources, financial ability, communications networks, equipment, and material, etc.) was already in place on 9/11. How thankful I am for our churches, our denominational structure, the Cooperative Program, and our convictions and commitments. We were ready to be used by God.

As part of a Southern Baptist church in Texas, you have performed a strategic role, not only in these crisis ministries, but also in everything God has been doing through the Southern Baptist family. Your faithfulness in praying and in giving through the Cooperative Program has literally fueled the work of our Lord Jesus across the world.

I am writing to ask you to remain faithful in these urgent days. We need your partnership in the gospel. In light of the drastic changes in the budgeting plan of the Baptist General Convention of Texas, I have enclosed materials** designed to aid your church as you decide how you will respond to the missions giving options before you. We want to assist you in your continued generous support of the effective, far-reaching missions and ministries of the Southern Baptist Convention.

This is my concern: If you give through the Baptist General Convention of Texas and select the "BGCT Cooperative Giving Budget" on the remittance form, you will severely limit your gifts to SBC ministries. Therefore, if you desire to fully support SBC seminaries, mission boards, and other work as you have in past decades, you will need to direct your gifts utilizing the "Other" option.

How significant is this? One of our new missionaries appointed last month will be returning with his wife and four sons to serve in a Muslim dominated nation where it is unsafe to openly declare he is a missionary. He is a recent graduate from Southeastern Seminary and was enrolled in their two plus two program that allowed him to serve overseas the last two years while he completed his seminary degree. The BGCT Cooperative Giving Budget does not provide any support for this man's seminary education because he is not from Texas. Thousands of other Southern Baptist seminary students will be similarly deprived of Texas Baptist support because the BGCT has voted to shift millions of dollars of support from them to a couple of hundred Texas students at two new seminaries in Texas. I am so grateful most Baptists in Texas want to support all our student missionaries and ministers regardless of which state they call home.

In addition to these unprecedented reallocations in the BGCT budget, this year the BGCT Cooperative Giving Budget redirects over a million dollars from money the churches had previously earmarked for the North American Mission Board. BGCT leaders say they want to direct this money for Texas missions work by themselves. I believe most Baptists in Texas recognize the value of the national strategy of our North American Mission Board and desire to continue the historic partnership, especially in these days of dramatic opportunity for outreach to the whole nation. This is no time to turn inward. This is no time to abandon the nation and the world. I urge you to stay with the traditional Cooperative Program giving method and remain firm partners with the thousands of Southern Baptist churches in all fifty states who are committed to Cooperative Program missions.

Gratefully, the SBC has not yet had to reallocate any resources among its entities due to the defunding actions of the BGCT. If your church continues to give through the traditional model outlined in these materials, we can maintain the distribution pattern among our mission boards and seminaries.

It is our desire to have a traditional partnership in the Cooperative Program with the state conventions in Texas, and we have expressed this to state convention leaders. Some churches, however, because of the budgeting changes in the BGCT, have requested directions for sending their monthly Cooperative Program gift directly to the Executive Committee in Nashville. If you think this may be a necessity for your church, feel free to contact us with questions and comments.

Please know that I, along with the staff and members of the Executive Committee, and the staff and trustees of all our SBC entities, are praying for God to give you clear direction for the future of your church, the Southern Baptist Convention, and God's kingdom. May God bless you "exceeding abundantly above all you ask or think."

In Jesus' Name,
Morris H. Chapman

*Alan Jackson, "Where Were You." ©2001 EMI Music/Tri-Angels Music (ASCAP)

**View PDF version of the brochure on CP Giving

Order Brochures on CP Giving and Texas Churches

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