c. 1997 Religion News Service

UNDATED _ At least two moderate-dominated state conventions _ Texas and Virginia _ in the conservative-controlled Southern Baptist Convention are looking beyond national church agencies for places to invest their mission dollars.

At stake, potentially, is the final disposition of millions of dollars used to build new churches and fund evangelism and other mission programs.

The move by the two state conventions, according to Baptist officials, is part of a larger moderate effort to redirect money away from the national SBC.

Officials of the denomination’s home and foreign mission board could not be reached for comment.

But the effort is being fueled as much by the general national mood favoring decentralization as well as by the longstanding theological and institutional split between moderates and conservatives over the direction of the SBC, the nation’s largest Protestant denomination, according to some.

“It’s correct that there is a decentralization under way,”said Reginald McDonough, executive director of the Baptist General Association of Virginia, one of the bellwethers of the movement.

“While there are some churches and ministers angry with the Southern Baptist Convention, this move, I think, would have happened whether or not there was this great division,” added McDonough. “It was inevitable with the trends that were going on in the nation toward more localized decision-making.”

As other denominations have discovered, church members controlling the direction of missions money are increasingly part of the baby-boom generation and suspicious of national institutions. They look more favorably on meeting needs closer to the front door _ where programs can be monitored _ than farther away in the hands of others.

How any shift in funding will play itself out will be tested beginning this week as the denomination’s state conventions begin meeting.

In Texas, the largest of the denomination’s state conventions with more than 9 million members, Baptists are meeting Nov. 10-11 in Austin. Debate on a radical new state missions system to refocus missions inward is high on the agenda.

On the heels of the Texas meeting, McDonough’s half-million-member Baptist General Association of Virginia meets Nov. 11-12 in Roanoke to approve ways the state will expand its local and international involvements. That meeting will deal with ways to reach out to other state conventions in its Mid-Atlantic region in joint mission projects.

Virginia’s new project of state and regional mission work is called “Mission Virginia.”

“The pattern of cooperation is moving from what I would call a linch-pin style to more of a networking style,”McDonough said. “We’ve always believed that each unit in the Baptist tradition has been autonomous, and we’ve always acted that way. We’ve reacted in the past to what I’ve always called a monolithic style.

“There is a trend toward `affinity groups’ _ there’s much more of a movement toward groups with whom they have an affinity,”he said.

McDonough said Virginia and Texas _ historic strongholds of moderate congregations _ are moving in the same direction.”I think we’re on the same page (as the Texans) and I think what they’ve developed is unique for their state and I think what we’ve developed is unique for our state,”McDonough said.

But the Rev. Terry Harper, president of the Southern Baptist Conservatives of Virginia _ a breakaway convention with 10 percent of the state’s Southern Baptists as members that has the blessings of the national SBC mission agencies _ thinks differently.

Harper is confident conservatives will win the hearts of Virginia’s congregations.

“It’s just a matter of whether (the moderates) will leave the Southern Baptist Convention and just be another denomination,”he said.

In Texas, meanwhile, a conservative group also with allegiance to the SBC’s leadership is ready to follow Harper’s model in Virginia.

For moderate Texans and Virginians the issue is historic local control over the way missions dollars are spent.

“Texas Baptists are doing what Texas Baptists have always done,” said the Rev. Dan Martin, a newswriter for the Texas Baptist Convention.

The Texas convention’s new missions program is called the Effectiveness/Efficiency project. It will concentrate on Texas programs while including the possibility of aligning with other state conventions.

In 1994, the Texans, following the lead of Virginia moderates, approved a new system of distributing mission dollars that already is diverting an increasing amount of money from national to state programs.

The new Texas report suggests that the convention focus on family and multicultural ministries, theological education, partnerships with the denominational agencies and national moderate groups outside conservative control, and develop Texas Sunday school materials to be used in place of material generated by the denomination.

The Texans also will consider a constitutional change to shift membership in the state convention based on the amount of money contributed to the Texas budget. That shift, if approved, effectively will take power away from conservative congregations giving only minimally to the state’s budget while giving a larger share directly to denominational coffers.

MJP END BRIGGS