56                                                                   A Documentary History

Document 11
News Story: Pressler's "Going for the Jugular" Statement
The Religious Herald, 18 September 1980, 8-10 

"Committee Appointments the Key"
 by Tom Miller

Pressler Sees Control of All Boards after Pittsburgh Convention

"We are going for the jugular," Houston Judge Paul Pressler said of Southern Baptist institutions. "We are going for having knowledgeable, Bible-centered, Christ-honoring trustees of all of our institutions, who are not going to sit there like a bunch of dummies and rubber stamp everything that's presented to them, but who are going to inquire why this is being done, what is being taught, what is the finished product of our young people who come out of our institutions going to be."
     Pressler, a layman who has gained national denominational prominence in the past two years, says the direction is firmly set and a shift in control is certain in three years.
      The judge was joined by Paige Patterson in a Lynchburg conference September 12 and 13.
      Billed as "A Conference on the Conservative Move in Our State and Our Convention," the meeting was sponsored by Old Forest Road Church and its pastor Arthur B. Ballard.
       About 175 persons, including a choir of more than 50, were present for the first session Friday evening. Attendance Saturday morning, without the choir, dropped to less than 40. 

"The Bottom Line Is Trustees" 

      Pressler said of the 1980 SBC resolution on doctrinal integrity, "the bottom line is trustees, not resolutions."
     "I'm going to be in Los Angeles to vote for the nominees of the Committee on Boards as a result of Adrian Rogers's Committee on Committees, because that's gonna make the difference.
       "And I'm going to be in New Orleans and I'm going to be in Pittsburgh to vote for the nominees that come out of the Committee on Committees and the Committee on Boards because that's going to make the difference.
      "By the time those three committees have gotten their trustees elected-and they will be-then we've got 60 percent good, reliable trustees on our institutions. Then they'll pay attention."