The Great Commission Resurgence Task Force has released a report, though not the final one.
Don KirklandIt came in a 90-minute presentation led by Ronnie Floyd, Arkansas pastor and task force chairman, at the Feb. 22 meeting of the Southern Baptist Convention’s Executive Committee in Nashville.
In the report, Floyd underscored the need for “urgent, wholehearted repentance” if Southern Baptists are to share in what he called “the evangelistic harvest that will accompany the outpouring of God’s spirit in the last days.” This is already “beginning in some parts of the world,” Floyd declared.
It was appropriate that the Arkansas pastor placed the accent on repentance. A Missions Service Corps worker recently said the resurgence might better be named The Great Commission Reminder. Indeed, the need for it is an embarrassing reminder and indictment of our failure as a denomination, and as individuals, to obey a command of our Lord clearly stated in Matthew 28:19-20.
This preliminary report from the task force will be the focus of much talk and prayer in the months to come. The group’s final report is set for May 3. A vote on the document will be taken at the annual Southern Baptist Convention meeting in Orlando June 15-16.
Southern Baptists do not differ significantly over what missions is. I like the definition someone gave: It is “joyfully advancing God’s kingdom by making disciples of all the nations until Jesus comes.”
Where Southern Baptists are more likely to disagree, however, is over the funding of missions — how, and how much.
We, as a denomination, must be good stewards of every dollar from the offering plates of cooperating SBC churches, making sure that the money does as much good as possible in carrying out the Great Commission.
We will, because we must, find some solution to the issue of the division of funds for missions. We must give due consideration to, and support for, ministry across the street as well as around the world. Neither must suffer if we are to be true to our Lord’s command and personal example. Jesus did not neglect Jerusalem in his concern for Judea, Samaria and the “ends of the earth.” Neither should we.
In the Nashville report, the eyes easily and quickly settle on what is said about the Cooperative Program. Since 1925, the CP has been the “sacred how” for funding Southern Baptist ministries. The task force reaffirms the CP as “our central means of supporting Great Commission ministries.” They call on Southern Baptist churches to “work diligently at giving more through the Cooperative Program.”
The report does not stop there, however. It recommends establishing an umbrella funding plan called “Great Commission Giving.” It would include and “celebrate” all financial support from the churches, both through the Cooperative Program and by designated giving. Further, it recommends that less emphasis be placed on the percentage of giving through the CP by SBC churches.
While vowing its loyalty to the Cooperative Program, the task force has given its blessing to designated giving, raising its status to the same level as the CP. Designated giving is not unified giving. Its tendency will be to weaken unified giving. The task force may simply be yielding to reality in this instance. It is proving difficult, if not impossible, to increase Cooperative Program giving. At the same time, many churches want to direct their offering plate money to specific causes of their own choosing.
For some, and perhaps many, this trend signals a return to the “societal” method of missions funding that existed among Southern Baptists in pre-Cooperative Program days. Baptist entities were expected to raise their own money to carry out their ministries. Their representatives went into Southern Baptist churches in support of their causes, often competing for the same offering-plate dollars. Surely, there was, and is, a better method — the Cooperative Program. Unified giving.
Task force chairman Floyd said in the Nashville report that the June meeting in Orlando “can become a watershed moment for the reaching of the nations,” a time when Southern Baptists can “join together like never before in presenting the gospel of Jesus Christ to every person in the world and to make disciples of all the nations.”
We must pray that it will be such a moment. We should also pray that in our zeal for the Lord’s work we do not go backward rather than forward in our methodology for funding this mighty missions endeavor.