|
MAINSTREAM MESSENGER Vol. 3, No. 1 December 2000 Editor: Bruce PrescottHistory Made at Mainstream Brunch Addressing Mainstream Oklahoma Baptists last November, Dr. Herbert Reynolds, Chancellor of Baylor University, announced that articles of incorporation had been secured for a Baptist Convention of the Americas. The idea for creating a Baptist Convention of the Americas first surfaced in a speech that Reynolds gave at a Texas Baptists Committed meeting in November 1998. Since that time, Mainstream Baptist organizations have been springing up across the country. Not willing to abandon the Conventions that nurtured them and gave them birth, Mainstream Baptists in more than a dozen states are organizing to face the Fundamentalism that dominates the Southern Baptist Convention and is taking control of Baptist state conventions. Across the country Mainstream Baptists will be working to inform Baptist laity how revisions to the Baptist Faith and Message will impact local churches. We hope and pray that informed Baptist laity will restore respect for diversity and cooperation in Baptist Conventions by getting their churches to elect them as messengers to convention meetings. Unfortunately, as events at the New Mexico Baptist state convention show, we must also prepare to be entirely excluded from Fundamentalist dominated conventions. Should the Fundamentalists begin to refuse to seat convention messengers from churches that fail to approve their creedally binding revisions to the BFM, many Mainstream Baptists may be forced to explore new configurations and alignments such as a Baptist Convention of the Americas. The Baptist Convention of the Americas symbolizes the broad vision that unites Mainstream Baptists throughout the Americas — a fellowship of diverse peoples committed to historic Baptist principles cooperating to share the gospel. It could become something like a hemispherical Baptist World Alliance — a forum for Baptists from various conventions in North, Central and South America to dialogue, strategize, and pray together for the work of missions and ministry. Click here for the complete text of Dr. Reynolds address to Mainstream Oklahoma Baptists. |
|
Online since April 7, 1999
E- mail questions or comments about this web site to bprescott@mainstreambaptists.orgCopyright © 1999-2003 MAINSTREAM OKLAHOMA BAPTISTS P.O. Box 6371 Norman, OK 73070-6371 (405) 329-2266.
|