Click for AUDIO; Click for PART 6, 2001-2004 at our church in Plano: The beginning of the end
Link in this post: Bill Jones article, Texas Baptists Committed Newsletter, January 2001
2000: Connecting with David Currie at Texas Baptists Committed
Months after I sent my letter and statement to the pastor in March 2000, I started thinking that I should let David Currie, executive director of Texas Baptists Committed (TBC), know what was going on in my church – and my response to it. On October 4, 2000, I wrote David a letter, in which I detailed the actions of my pastor, my conversations with him, and the deliberations of our task force, and enclosed copies of the letter and statement I had sent to the pastor in March. On December 11, I received an email from David apologizing for his delayed reply (yes, I found both the October letter and December email – still on my computer; otherwise, there’s no way I would have remembered the dates), telling me he had been “very moved” by my letter, and asking me to call him at my first opportunity. I called him later that week, and we started talking regularly about these matters.
In January 2001, I got a call from Charlie McLaughlin, TBC’s associate executive director, asking to excerpt – in an upcoming edition of the TBC Newsletter – my statement on the SBC controversy. The part he wanted to excerpt? The story about James Sullivan – the one for which Jim Denison had provided me with documentation. My byline appeared on the same page as Jimmy Carter’s, in which the former president took the same stand that I had taken in that task force meeting the previous June (see part 4) – leaving the SBC over its denial of historic Baptist principles.
In October 2001, I received an email from David, telling about upcoming training, to be conducted by the Texas Baptist Laity Institute (TBLI) at Wilshire Baptist Church in Dallas, to become a “mentor” (teacher) of TBLI courses. This led to what turned out to be a wonderful opportunity – as well as a friendship that came to mean a lot to me. Dan Williams, TBLI president, soon became one of my closest and dearest friends. We would be close friends until Dan’s passing – from prostate cancer – in April 2016.
The training was divided into two sessions – a general session introducing us to the Laity Institute and the format of its courses; and a session in which we were to choose a specific course and learn more about that course. I chose the Baptist Distinctives course. Dr. Bill Pinson led our training on the course that day at Wilshire. He was a longtime friend of my father and had been a student of T. B. Maston, as was my father. I had a deep respect and admiration for him, so it was a privilege to get to study under him – however briefly – that afternoon. A few years later, I would find myself sitting next to him at my first meeting of the T. B. Maston Foundation board of trustees.
In 2002, I began serving a three-year term on the Baptist General Convention of Texas (BGCT) executive board. How did THAT come about? One day I received a call from Ray Vickrey, pastor of Royal Lane Baptist Church in Dallas. At this point, I still had not seriously “plugged-in” to the BGCT, so I was still pretty ignorant of names, agencies, etc. I had never heard of Ray Vickrey (who later became a dear friend). Ray asked me if I would be interested in serving on “the executive board.” I had never served on any board of any kind, much less an executive board; in the back of my mind, I wondered whether Ray had gotten hold of the wrong Bill Jones. I displayed my ignorance of Texas Baptist life when I asked, “WHAT executive board?” Ray replied, “the executive board of the Baptist General Convention of Texas.” Now I was sure he had the wrong Bill Jones! I asked, “Where in the world did you get my name?”
“David Currie,” was Ray’s reply. David Currie would be the answer to a lot of similar questions over the years, for he continued to play THE key role in getting me more involved in Baptist life and leadership, as he had for hundreds of laypersons before me and would for many more in the years to come. David loves the laity. So I said yes and served a 3-year term.