by Sandy » Sun Dec 26, 2010 8:34 pm
The current relationship structure between churches, state conventions, associations and the SBC is under the strain of the pressures of post-denominational paradigm shifts, so the way things are developing in Texas may well set the tone for the way Baptists work through it. Though it may not go according to preferences, these kinds of things usually wind up creating a more effective, efficient way of doing things in the long run.
Southern Baptists in general, and Texas Baptists in particular, have some cultural baggage that has a tendency to hold them back and interfere with genuine change. They tend to be very klannish and cliquish, and choose their leadership in a way that is not unlike the heirarchial denominations they criticize. Getting the prestigious, sugar plum denominational leadership positions is more a matter of who you know rather than what you can do, and that's just the way it is. The pastorate is the base occupation for launching careers. That's how someone can be promoted from a newspaper editor to seminary president, which would normally not be possible in the real world.
The advance of the "resurgence/takeover" from 1979 onward in the SBC narrowed the BGCT leadership too, into a "circle the wagons" perimeter designed more to protect the influence and self-appointed prestige of those in power than to advance the aims and vision of a Baptist state convention. I can name a dozen churches from which most of the TBC and state convention leaders of the past three decades have been drawn. That they are churches which are most definitely theologically and doctrinally to the left of most of the rest of the churches was unfortunate for the convention's institutions. The formation of the SBTC was the open opposition, an eruption of dynamic proportions given the size of the BGCT. What appears as apathy and disinterest in the BGCT itself, sagging convention attendance and rapidly dropping CP support, is actually the more passive opposition to the leadership, something characteristic of Baptists who would rather not make a fuss.
What will it all look like in the end? I'm no prophet, but I can see that, with the exception of Baylor, which doesn't really need financial assistance from its Baptist constituency to survive, the other universities will become dually affiliated with both state conventions, once the BGCT is either normalized by leadership that moves to the right of where it is now, or until it dwindles down to the point where it is too small to control them with money and trustee leadership. Baylor led the way when the convention approved its self-perpetuating trustee board and that will preclude any legal wrangling when the other schools eventually decide to do the same and take steps to do so. There may be some churches which determine to operate independently, others whose participation in denominational structures will be marginal to satisfy some members who still want to do so, and still other, new associations which we don't even envision at the present. But the BGCT, as it now exists, has no future except in the event of a move to the right, back into closer association with the SBC, to stabilize its financial situation.