The Best Thing About the SBTC…

…was that I had to come home to find out what had happened at the BGCT annual meeting.

Our church knew several years ago that we were very unhappy with the BGCT. But we were very slow about joining the SBTC for several reasons.

1. We wanted to be careful of the whole "rebound relationship" phenomenon. Being unhappy with BGCT is different from being happy with SBTC. You know, you can be a strong, healthy Baptist church without being affiliated at all. We prefer to be in cooperative relationship, but although this is needful, it is not a necessity. So, we resolved that we would consider a relationship with the SBTC to be a separate issue from our deteriorating relationship with the BGCT.
2. My interaction with one prominent member of the "opposition party" in the BGCT (before the SBTC organized) had left me with an unfavorable impression of the whole thing.
3. We had no intention of joining a "government in exile." If the purpose of the SBTC was nothing more than to snipe at the BGCT, rebuild a shadow copy of the BGCT, etc., then we weren't interested.

After dipping our collective toes into the water a few times, the only eventual question that we had left was, "Why didn't we do this [join the SBTC] a long time ago?"

It is the third point in particular that I have in view with this post. I just never hear much about the BGCT at SBTC events. I can count on one hand the number of times I have heard any reference to the BGCT at an SBTC event. I'm not just talking about from the platform—I'm talking about in the hallways and parking lots and in restaurants and hotel lobbies. The only reference to the BGCT that I heard this year was from a non-SBTC speaker.

The SBTC has moved on. FBC Farmersville is moving on, too. I have stopped reading the Baptist Standard. I almost never employ the words "Charles Wade" in a sentence any more. It's delightful. I enjoy state convention meetings again. Ten years ago, who could have thought that was possible?

Someone wise once told me, "Don't spend all of your time worrying about what people think of you; they don't think of you as much as you suspect!" I can honestly say that is my experience of the SBTC's relationship with the BGCT. The past is behind us. The future is before us. May God enable both conventions to do something worthwhile for the Lord in the future.