Christianity Today      April 24, 1995, p.45

NEWS BRIEFS...

The missions committee of Christ Baptist Church of Houma, Louisiana, dismissed Jerry Moser, pastor of the Bayou DuLarge Baptist Mission Church of Theriot that it was sponsoring, after Moser publicly confronted Southern Baptist Home Mission Board President Larry Lewis regarding his endorsement of the EVANGELICALS AND CATHOLICS TOGETHER (ECT) statement. Moser, 42, and four supporters took control of a February missions conference as Lewis was about to speak, demanding that Lewis repent for signing the "heretical document." Christ Baptist pastor Lynn Fotenot called Moser's tactics "demeaning and humiliating" and said the firing was for "insubordination."

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

Comments and Corrections by Jerry Moser...

Individuals reading this news brief who have no other source of information would arrive at incorrect conclusions about this event. Christianity Today did not say where they got their information, but they never contacted anyone here at Bayou DuLarge Baptist Mission Church. There were also BaptistPress and Associated Baptist Press postings regarding this incident. In many cases, news reports about our confrontation of Dr. Lewis were so incomplete as to be, in effect, misleading.

For example, a reader of this short Christianity Today piece would get the impression that I and four others crudely took over the control of a meeting someplace, and that Dr. Lewis was totally unaware that this could happen at this meeting. Readers would think that we verbally attacked Dr. Lewis, accosting him in a humiliating and demeaning manner. Actually, this news brief sounds more like a hijacking of an airline by thugs than what it really was... a biblically mandated confrontation, orderly carried out by the brethren of a New Testament church.

The fact is that we were holding an associational missions rally at our own building. Every missions rally for the previous twelve years had been under the direction of the mission church hosting the event. We considered the fact that we had asked to host this meeting prior to Dr. Lewis' endorsement of the ECT to be one of many evidences that the Lord had orchestrated our involvement. Thus, although what we did was not on the program and certainly not expected by most in attendance, we did not just "take control" of a meeting someplace.

This was a meeting at our church in conjunction with our own association of churches, and we were in charge of conducting the program. (Our church has been a member of our association since 1943 and was one of the first seven churches in the Adolphe Stagg Baptist Association.) Previous to the meeting, we had sent word to Dr. Lewis through a denominational executive that there was great concern about his endorsement of ECT and that a confrontation was eminent. We simply maintained control of the program when Dr. Lewis was scheduled to speak. We announced at that time that we were suspending the regular program.

Appealing to our Baptist belief in the autonomy of the local congregation of believers, I TWICE announced that anyone who wanted to could leave, but that we would be handling some of our own business as a New Testament church, under the authority of the Word of God. Our confrontation of Dr. Lewis was a matter about which members in our church had prayed for almost a year's time. After watching the many failed efforts of HMB trustees, pastors, and individuals to convince Dr. Lewis to turn, our entire church had discussed this and prayerfully agreed upon this course of action. We considered that what we were doing was not culturally acceptable, but we also had prayerfully come to the conclusion the Bible illustrates that the endorsement of heresy is a matter that supersedes cultural norms of operation. We had chosen to follow Scripture, as in Paul's confrontation of Peter (Galatians 2), rather than what would be considered culturally correct, polite, etc. We confronted Dr. Lewis with love, respect, and compassion, yet with a seriousness worthy of his grave error (to which he had already admitted in private, yet without repentance).

From the pulpit I addressed several unbiblical passages in the ECT and urged Dr. Lewis to consider what his signature as HMB president meant to our witness in this Roman Catholic dominated area. I then asked four of our men to speak from the floor. None of them knew that they would be the ones called; all of our men were prepared to speak if called upon. No one accosted Dr. Lewis personally, but each man gave testimony of the harm that ECT, and in particular, Dr. Lewis' endorsement of ECT, was doing to their witness for Christ. The last man to speak asked Dr. Lewis if he would repent of endorsing the ECT. Standing, Dr. Lewis replied "No, I will not." No one demanded that Dr. Lewis repent, but we very definitely urged him and pleaded with him.

Dr. Lewis then asked for an opportunity to speak and, after a few moments, I granted this to him. Since he had refused to repent, I asked him to speak from the floor, behind the same podium that our men had each spoken from. He spoke for over twenty minutes, claiming that he had won more Catholics to Christ than I had, and that you don't win Catholics by criticizing them, something that none of us had done at all. The only criticism of Roman Catholics came from the reading of two pages out of an old Baptist Sunday School Board publication at the beginning of the confrontation. This publication had been given to me by our former Director of Missions.

Two of our men who spoke were former Catholics, one a former Episcopalian, and the other was raised in a Baptist home. I maintained control of the meeting from the pulpit. As serious as all this was, there was an amazing orderliness, and the congregation respectfully did not interfere in the business of our church. The only time in the whole meeting where there was disorder was when the (new) pastor of our sponsoring church stood up and demanded that he be allowed to speak. Interestingly, when he rose to interrupt our meeting, the moderator of our association, who was sitting just behind him, spoke up saying that he was "out of order" to interfere. This seemed to only enrage the man more, and he marched red-faced to the front and spoke to the congregation, demanding that we not continue with our confrontation. When he finished speaking we resumed our meeting.

After Dr. Lewis spoke, I prayed. Immediately, our (new) director of missions and a couple of pastors surrounded Dr. Lewis and hurriedly ushered him out to a waiting car as if he was in some sort of danger. The pastor of our sponsoring church came back in after most of the people from other churches had left and began to argue with some of our men, saying that this meeting would have no effect at all on Dr. Lewis' endorsement of the ECT. He shouted, "If Dr. Lewis removes his name, I'll be the first one down here to apologize to you!" and angrily jabbing his finger at me he threatened, "I'll have your job for this!" No one ever spoke to threaten this man, although he later threatened to have our people arrested.

According to required Louisiana Baptist Convention Mission Policies, the mission church had called me as their pastor in 1983. Our sponsoring church had confirmed this every year since that time. Even so, without consulting the mission church leadership at all, the sponsoring church pastor took several actions that contradicted required LBC policy. He convinced his church that I was a dangerous man, and that I had been mishandling mission funds, using the gifts of others to benefit myself. I was handed a letter that stated I had been "terminated," and that my family was evicted from our own home. Twice the sponsoring church pastor threatened to have any of our members arrested who might oppose his take-over. Our people met, without my being present, and voted to retain me as their pastor and to meet elsewhere until the sponsoring church pastor had a chance to rethink his ungodly actions and threats.

To this day we are still locked out of our own building. We continue to meet in members homes and enjoy good fellowship, although this situation is a very sad burden, not only for us, but also for our former sponsoring church. Most of the members of that church have had little or no involvement with the mission church and know very little of what really has happened and why.

The truth of this whole matter has been offered to all news medias by means of written documents and video and audiotapes of the confrontation meeting. Those who have viewed or listened to these tapes, some of them SBC leaders, verify that Dr. Lewis was not mistreated. Even though these sources of verifiable fact have been offered from the beginning, news medias such as Christianity Today have chosen to ignore this information, and instead have printed incomplete or misleading misinformation which has caused damage to the credibility of our church congregation and further complicated this difficult situation.

On March 14, Dr. Lewis published a four page letter to most of the SBC leadership, describing what he called "The Ambush on the Bayou." In this letter he gave his view of the meeting and labeled me an ungrateful person, recalcitrant, and "a man of questionable integrity." Though confronted by myself and several HMB trustees about this slanderous "attack" on my character, Dr. Lewis has offered no apology or correction. Instead, he has suggested that I need to apologize to him for the confrontation. On a close vote, our association leadership issued an apology to Dr. Lewis and later disallowed our continued fellowship.

On April 6, 1995, Dr. Larry Lewis and Dr. Richard Land issued a statement saying that they were removing their signatures from the ECT, "while at the same time, making clear that they maintain their personal endorsement of the (ECT) document." This is less than the repentance biblically mandated for such a serious betrayal of the Gospel of Christ.

The fact is that the ECT contains the promotion of another gospel and thus, according to Scriptural instruction and example, must be confronted. Particularly for us as Southern Baptists here in Roman Catholic dominated South Louisiana, the endorsement of this document by SBC executives is a serious threat to our witness for Christ

Slightly aside...

According to Scripture, our history, and the Baptist Faith and Message's definition, the Bayou DuLarge Baptist Mission Church is a local New Testament church of the Lord Jesus. Since our establishment in 1936, we have always associated with other Southern Baptist churches through a voluntary cooperative agreement, just like EVERY other Southern Baptist congregation. If we use the words "subordination" and "insubordination" to describe this relationship between two distinctly different Christian congregations, then do we not have at least the appearance of a form of hierarchy? This is not a matter of resisting accountability, but rather a matter of rightly viewing each other as Christian brethren and as sister churches of the Lord Jesus, equally loved by our Lord and equally respected by each other.