Commentary: Required: Vision, Leadership … by Don Kirkland

The 2012 gathering of South Carolina Baptists in their annual meeting was my last as the editor of your Baptist Courier. It was memorable to me for that reason, but not for that reason alone.

Kirkland

I looked for, and found, signs of promise that prompted cautious hope on my part for a future that will be different from, but a continuation of, the journey of faith and hope that our body of Baptists have walked together, with still some distance to go.

The election of Ralph Carter to lead the SCBC as its president provides us with a voice and a heart that can and must rally South Carolina Baptists to be on their best behavior with each other. “For us to reach the nations,” the Brushy Creek pastor said after his election, “it’s going to require all of us working together, at times overlooking minor differences, for the sake of communicating the gospel to those who are lost.”

As chairman of the Great Commission Resurgence Task Force, Carter sought consensus, when it was possible, to advance goals that could be achieved only with unity of purpose. He can be expected to do the same as president. He has called on Baptists to be “less competitive and less territorial” in their outlook and attitude and to “unify to advance the gospel.”

Carter, whom I first met at Anderson College when I worked there and he and his pastor-father both were students there, answered a call to the ministry at the age of 14 and “preached a good bit while in high school,” according to an article I wrote for publication in the Courier in 1972. At the time, Carter was youth director at Flat Rock Baptist Church in Anderson.

Drawing upon a memory of ministry that stretches back that far, Carter sadly said, “I don’t think I’ve seen in my lifetime a concerted effort on the part of churches to come together and say we’re working as a unit to get the gospel out, to see the world won.”

To whatever extent this is true, it should cause us as a body of Baptists committed to the Great Commission — even before it became a “resurgence” — to humble ourselves before God and seek forgiveness. It means we have failed at the foundational level of our assigned task of building the kingdom of God on this earth and showing that we are Christians by our love of God and each other.

We are an orthodox people held together and moving forward spiritually with beliefs common to all of us. The question we must answer for our future is this: How wide is the stream of orthodoxy in which we swim? For us to function effectively as a body of Baptists united in purpose, we must keep that stream wide enough to include more of us than it excludes.

This is necessary if we are to prevent what is less important from usurping the rightful place in Baptist life of that which is most important. It is about, as I have heard for most of my life in Baptist work, “keeping the main thing the main thing.” The “main thing” that will keep us resolutely on a path of obedience to carrying out the demands of the Great Commission is obeying the Great Command to love God with all we are, and others as ourselves. Jesus could not have put it more simply, or more forcefully.

Another sign of promise and hope for a brighter future for South Carolina Baptists was the adoption of bylaw changes that will allow the ministry partners — that is, the institutions — to have more say in the trustee selection process and permitting for the first time non-residents of South Carolina on their boards. This empowerment, which is not without its limits, will strengthen rather than weaken the ties of our institutions to the body of Baptists whom we serve, and will enhance the ministries of each.

No one in Baptist life can fail to see that the landscape is changing, as it must. The discovery of new vistas is necessary as we look to the future. We must look even beyond the horizon, knowing there is much we cannot yet see. We must also look to the future with new eyes — the eyes of our Lord. Only then will our way become clear and our focus fixed on God, whose plans for us are for our good and his glory.

Messengers made a move in the right direction by approving the appointment of a 40-member panel to determine as best it can a “ministry concept and plan that will guide the future work of the state convention and its churches.”

Convention president Brad Atkins, who is responsible for appointing members of the task force, declared that the South Carolina Baptist Convention needs a “compelling vision to rally behind, as we had under Empowering Kingdom Growth and Experience Kingdom Life.”

At this critical juncture in our life together as South Carolina Baptists, a unifying vision that can inspire us all to pursue with persistence and purpose our God-assigned mission and leadership at the highest level in the SCBC that can challenge and guide us in the direction of that vision are essential if our denomination is to be effective, or even to remain relevant, in these changing times.

Vision. Leadership. South Carolina Baptists can ill afford the lack of either and certainly not the absence of both.