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At least one board member questioned the prospects of the proposed budget, when about 63 percent of Texas Baptist churches continue to designate their gifts through the traditional option of 67 percent for BGCT causes and 33 percent for SBC causes.

Toby Druin, former editor of the Baptist Standard convention newspaper, asked officials where funds would come from for special projects if churches continued their current giving patterns.

BGCT treasurer Roger Hall answered, "It's our responsibility as staff to implement the [budget] plan approved."

When Druin pressed whether the convention would have extra funds, Hall responded, "I think we will."

Churches that do not indicate which giving plan they choose on their giving option form will be telephoned for a choice, Hall said.

Rather than presenting the entire theological education study committee report that prompted the budget recommendation, its chairman, Houston pastor Bob Campbell, said he needed to respond to criticisms being leveled against the committee by SBC leaders.

"First, they [the seminary presidents] accused us of not talking to their faculty and students," Campbell said. "I told them in a letter you are free to bring any students or faculty that you would like to meet with us. They chose not to invite a single student."

(Baptist Press obtained a copy of Campbell's letter to the SBC seminaries prior to the study committee's visits to their campuses in August. Campbell's letter asked each seminary to limit the number of their participants to the size of the BGCT delegation, which in one seminary visit, was 11 of the 16 committee members.)

Campbell stated that committee members did talk to current faculty and found fear and low morale. Faculty members were afraid to talk to committee members on the record, Campbell said.

Campbell also responded to criticism "for putting forth certain persons who are examples of people who were mistreated" but who conservative leaders say were incompatible with Southern Baptist theology in stepping away from such doctrines as salvation alone in Jesus Christ.

"We are not condoning their theology," Campbell said. "They perhaps should have been dismissed. It is the [unchristian] manner in which they were dismissed" the committee objected to.

Campbell also denied that the committee report was vindictive, noting "there is no glee" in the report.

However, "there is joy in redirecting the funds," he said, to BGCT needs. "Our state has become pagan. We need to reach the state." He referred to Texas WMU President Jeane Law's devotional earlier in the meeting when she said the number of lost people in Texas is 11 million, larger than many countries participating in the Summer Olympic games in Australia.

Campbell also noted, "This is not a report about [the anti-SBC shadow denomination, Cooperative Baptist Fellowship]. This is about what Texas needs."

Campbell offered a public apology to Charles Kelley, president of New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary, for a statement attributed to Kelley in the report.

"I quoted Dr. Kelley from something we were told was said at a faculty meeting. I withdraw that statement as provable," Campbell said, adding that he wrote Kelley and editors of several Baptist state papers to apologize for the error.

One of the SBC's six seminary presidents, R. Albert Mohler Jr., issued a statement after the BGCT executive board vote, noting: "It is tragic that the BGCT is cutting itself off from the world's most effective and faithful theological seminaries. It is tragic that the BGCT is willfully cutting the life support going to thousands of God-called ministers of the gospel training in our seminaries.

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October (Web-only) 2000, Vol. 44