March 14, 1998 (David W. Cloud, Fundamental Baptist Information Service, P.O. Box 610368, Port Huron, MI 48061-0368, fbns@wayoflife.org) - The 180-member executive board of the Baptist General Convention of Texas (BGCT) (affiliated with the Southern Baptist Convention) voted on Feb. 24 to disassociate itself from a church that ordained a homosexual deacon (Religious News Service, Feb. 25, 1998). The board’s statement said: "We cannot approve of churches endorsing homosexual practice as biblically legitimate." It also notes the report of a 1996 study which stated premarital, extramarital and homosexual sexual relations "are contrary to God's purposes and thus sinful."

While we are glad to see this happen, it should have been done long before now. The University Baptist Church of Austin, Texas, ordained the homosexual deacon, Hans Venable, in 1995. Later that same year the University Baptist Church was removed from the local Southern Baptist association, but almost three years passed before action was taken at the state level. In 1996 a committee was formed to study whether the convention should amend its constitution to bar affiliation with churches that ordain homosexuals as pastors or deacons, but the committee eventually recommended no change. Political maneuvering and a lackadaisical spiritual attitude caused the issue to be shelved until now.

This is one of the serious problems with denominational or associational structures: they have no biblical disciplinary authority (only the New Testament assembly has this) and they are given to human politics rather than simple and unhesitating obedience to the Bible.

In 1997 the University Baptist Church contributed $6,010 to the Cooperative Program. The church’s pastor, Larry Bethune, expressed grief at the action of the executive board. He described the church as an "enthusiastic contributing supporter" of BGCT and Southern Baptist mission causes (The Baptist Standard, Feb. 11, 1998). Bethune said the decision would "add to the grief of homosexual persons and their families who have been told from many Baptist pulpits that God hates them." This is a clever smokescreen. The Bible does say that God hates sin, including homosexuality, but every Bible-believing preacher proclaims that God loves sinners and sent His only begotten Son to redeem sinful man through His death, burial, and resurrection. He died FOR OUR SINS, was buried, and rose again the third day FOR OUR SINS. This is the glorious Gospel that we preach (1 Cor. 15:1-4). Christ died for the sin of homosexuality, and any homosexual can be saved by the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, just as any adulterer or any murderer or any thief can be saved. Bible-believing pastors do not preach hate; they preach the love of God. But they also preach the holiness of God, which will judge all UNSAVED sinners in the lake of fire. The homosexual can be saved, but he is required to repent of his sin and turn to the holy God through Jesus Christ.

It is not hate which warns the homosexual or the adulterer or the thief that unless he is born again through repentance and faith in the Lord Jesus Christ he will go to eternal Hell. It is hate to pretend that God loves sinners in such a way that He overlooks their sin apart from the new birth.

Those who continue to live in sin in a habitual and presumptuous manner demonstrate that they have never been saved. "Know ye not that the unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom of God? Be not deceived: neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor abusers of themselves with mankind, Nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortioners, shall inherit the kingdom of God. And such WERE some of you: but ye are washed, but ye are sanctified, but ye are justified in the name of the Lord Jesus, and by the Spirit of our God" (1 Cor. 6:9-11).

Bethune also said that his church was "especially active in the movement to include women as equal spiritual partners in the church." This means he refuses to obey the Holy Spirit’s injunction against women usurping authority over the man (1 Tim. 2:12-14), supporting, instead, the unscriptural concept of women church leaders.

Sadly, this man is a product of Southern Baptist institutions of higher education.

See "When Was the Southern Baptist Convention Delivered from Liberalism?"