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454 C H A P T E R 13 Focus on Texas, 1974–1982 13.1 James Landes Following the retirement of T. A. Patterson, James Landes was chosen as the next Executive Secretary of the BGCT in September of 1973. Landes believed that more emphasis should be placed on Texas missions rather than on foreign missions. In particular, Landes and the majority of his staff were not advocates of the Japanese Crusade. Under the leadership of Landes, the heads of the different commissions met weekly with the Executive Secretary in order to keep him appraised of their progress, their leadership skills were constantly evaluated, and an attempt to rescue Dallas Baptist College from debt was undertaken. A. Thoughts on Patterson: Oral Interview Pitts: How did you find things there as you went in to take the office? Landes: The fact of the matter is that I was elected in September and by October 1, the men who work directly with me and are in category two— we have two categories there, insofar as leadership levels are concerned; we have five levels of people. There’s only one person in level one and that’s the Executive Director, but there are ten or eleven who are on level two. Those people began to come to visit me at the church, and I saw that it was absolutely necessary for me to set up conferences with them for planning for the year that was ahead. They wanted to know what I thought about everything, you know. So, I did go on down to the Baptist Building periodically from October 1, on. But you will recall that I stayed through stewardship time at the First Baptist Church of Richardson, which meant, I believe, through the first Sunday of November. On the first day of December I moved down to the building into an office on the first floor, not into Dr. Patterson’s office, or the Executive Director’s office, but into a vacant office on the first floor. By that time, I had already established a relationship with the men—all the men who were on level two, the administrators or the directors of the various commissions and coordinating boards and so forth. I found things at the building in very interesting shape. Dr. Patterson was a strong man in many ways, and was a strong leader. He had one consuming ambition which is a very noble one; the same ambition as the apostle Paul had when he said, “I am willing to become all things to all men if, by any means, I might save some.” Dr. Patterson’s strong forte, and continuous forte and great dream was that he was going to save the world for Christ’s sake, and he gave himself, during his tenure as Executive Secretary, which was the longest any man’s ever had— thirteen years—to the matter of world evangelism. As you know, he’s now with the World Evangelism Foundation, whose office is across the street from our building. In doing this, it was necessary for him to neglect some other things; no man can do all things, and in order to do this well, he had to let some of the other things go. I found that on the part of some of the men there was a earnest desire to get in close with the Executive Secretary. Dr. Patterson is a very warm man to meet personally, but as an administrator, he operated in a pretty lonely fashion, which is not my way of operating. And so, I had to establish my personal relationships with each one of these men. It was not hard to do. They were hungry; they were anxious for a personal relationship with the executive director. He had met with them regularly, but, as I say—this is certainly not a reflection; it’s a compliment—he was a man with one mind and one purpose, and going about one thing. That left the schools to run themselves; he left the other institutions to run themselves, and so forth. It was my job to move in immediately and work with Dr. Armes at the educational level. Dallas Baptist College was in desperate trouble, and the first year and a half I was there, I was consumed with the interests of Dallas Baptist College. We had some other institutional problems that I don’t need to mention, JAMES LANDES ⁄ 455 [3.136.97.64] Project MUSE (2024...

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