Carlisle DriggersThe new year is here for South Carolina Baptists, and I look forward to all we will experience together. However, I must admit that as I anticipate the happenings of 2006, I cannot help but first reflect on the past year in certain phases of our Baptist way of life around the state.
In so many regards, 2005 was an unprecedented year of accomplishments but also marked at times by stress and uneasiness all merged together.
We began the year with a reluctant decision by the board of trustees for South Carolina Baptist Ministries for the Aging to sell our two retirement homes because of a number of disturbing circumstances, especially financial shortfalls and debt retirement. The Executive Board of the South Carolina Baptist Convention met in an emergency session in January and delayed voting on the recommendation in order to give our people in the churches additional time to respond to the crisis. The traditional Mother’s Day Offering was promoted vigorously for Bethea and Martha Franks, and many of our churches responded by giving nearly $1.2 million.
Since then, remarkable progress has been made in a number of ways, and our determination to care for older persons has certainly improved. One of the Bethea residents said to me recently, as she observed maintenance repairs being made by volunteers from churches, that she “had not felt so loved in years.”
Another welcomed development during 2005 was that several gifted individuals were added to fill vacancies on the convention staff. As a result, we increased our ability to serve our churches even more with competent and compassionate leadership skills. Also, after working carefully for months on strategic plans for the starting of new churches, we realized significant progress by the end of the year. Some 47 new church plants were started in 2005. That total represented our greatest gain in one year in church multiplication for at least 25 years. Who can deny the population growth over much of the state and the emerging need for new churches even as we seek to generate positive growth in all our existing churches?
Yet another inspiring development in 2005 included the expansion of our disaster relief ministries. Volunteers from the churches went overseas to Sri Lanka, South India and Pakistan. They also went to Florida, New Hampshire, Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi and Texas. Our churches sent more than $1.8 million to the South Carolina Baptist Convention building in Columbia to be used to relieve suffering from Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. In addition, an anonymous gift of $1 million was given to the South Carolina Baptist Convention near the end of the year to be used specifically in disaster relief work across America, along with $316,000 from the same donor for various mission causes in distant lands.
At the end of December, we met our 2005 South Carolina Baptist Convention Empowering Kingdom Growth budget of $32,150,000 and actually exceeded the budget goal by $43,209. Realizing that the budget might be over-subscribed, the Executive Board on Dec. 8 established a Kingdom Challenge Fund and voted to apply overage monies to that resource to be used for urgent mission and evangelism needs in South Carolina, the country, and among people groups of other nations. I applaud that wise decision. For the first time in our history, all monies sent to the South Carolina Baptist Convention in one year for our numerous opportunities and causes exceeded $50 million. How hopeful that is for our future, as South Carolina Baptists continue to rally around the call of Jesus to go throughout the world with the gospel of salvation for everyone.
An action that created some confusion this past fall was a report to the Executive Board by a special appointed Empowering Kingdom Growth task force. The report was entitled, “A Great Commission Initiative” which featured several much-needed advancements for our present and future ministries. In November, the Executive Board voted not to move ahead with the report due mainly to genuine, unanswered questions. However, in my judgment, much of the work of the task force will not go unheeded by the Executive Board because they helped to focus deeper conversations about the overall life and work of South Carolina Baptists.
All in all, 2005 was a God-honoring year for the South Carolina Baptist Convention. Now for 2006. I sense that we will witness this year a real ingathering of new members in the churches by personal profession of faith in Jesus as Savior and Lord. Our new evangelism and missions leader, Marshall Fagg, is calling for a “first” to occur in South Carolina in 2006. He is encouraging all our churches to reach and baptize new believers this year. Everybody, everywhere needs the love of Christ to fill their hearts and lives. What Marshall is projecting is kingdom growth at its best. Just imagine how it surely will please our Lord if baptisms take place in every one of our 2,057 churches this year! That is kingdom thinking for a fact. God help us to see record numbers of new believers and baptisms in 2006. How spiritually thrilling and electrifying that would be! If that should occur, all areas of our ministries as South Carolina Baptists would be encouraged and strengthened. Sadly, each year we have churches that do not reach and baptize anyone. All of us should yearn and pray for 2006 to be a year of every church reaching and baptizing new persons for Christ.
We have seven institutions related to the South Carolina Baptist Convention. As this new year begins, all of them without exception are doing well and are united in vision and purpose with the state convention. The tie that binds us together should only get better as 2006 unfolds.
South Carolina Baptists feed and clothe people. We go around the nation and world to help relieve physical and spiritual needs. We give generously to mission causes. In the name of Jesus, we provide hope to the hopeless time after time. Through the efforts of the convention staff members, many events are arranged each year for training in church leadership and evangelistic growth, and much work is done to assist churches that are experiencing serious conflicts. By the end of December, we may well look back on 2006 as a remarkable year. If so, our total dependency on God will have become clearer than ever. May it be so is my prayer for the new year.
One closing request: Pastors, you need to bring your people to our statewide Evangelism Conference Feb. 27-28 at Trinity Baptist Church, Cayce. It will be outstanding in every regard. We will sing to the glory of God, preach up a storm, laugh until we hurt, and weep over spiritual darkness. For more information, call 1-800-723-7242, ext. 5000 or visit online at www.scbaptist.org. We should have the largest attendance we have had in years!