Mainstream Missouri Baptists abandon efforts

Moderate conservatives have thrown in the towel on efforts to reclaim control of the Missouri Baptist Convention (MBC), disbanding an organization that unsuccessfully attempted to counter gains by fundamental conservatives in recent years.

Mainstream Missouri Baptist closed its offices Dec. 31 and will officially disband in March, according to a report in the Missouri Baptist newspaper Word and Way.

A spokesman said discussions of forming a new state convention for disenfranchised moderates and the recent introduction of alternative giving plans signal the time is right to disband.

Conservative leaders said they were not surprised by the announcement and noted that Missouri would be the first state where moderates split off from a conservative-led convention. “Mainstream Missouri Baptists is closing its doors because it hopes to reopen in 2002 as a new state convention,” said Roger Moran, research director for the Missouri Baptist Layman’s Association.

Project 1000

Mainstream Missouri Baptists formed in 1998 to oppose a conservative movement named Project 1000. With Project 1000 leadership now firmly in control of the state convention, five MBC agencies recently changed charters to remove them from state convention control. Missouri Baptists responded this fall by withholding $2.1 million in convention funds earmarked for the agencies unless they rescind those actions and once again allow the convention to elect their boards of trustees.

In other recent developments, the MBC executive board voted Dec. 10-11 to create a task force to obtain a legal opinion about how to respond to the decision by related entities to elect their own trustees. While not ruling out lawsuits, leaders said any legal fees would be paid from investment funds and not from Cooperative Program dollars given by churches.

Another task group will study the feasibility of publishing a replacement news journal for Word and Way, which cited editorial freedom in its decision to go independent. A third will study use of convention facilities by groups that are no longer directly accountable to the convention.

(ABP)