They’re called “challenges” in the final report of the Great Commission Resurgence Task Force.
They encompass nine pages in the report, apart from seven GCRTF recommendations to be presented to the Southern Baptist Convention during its June 15-16 annual meeting in Orlando, Fla.
A new “missional vision” for the Southern Baptist Convention is proposed in the first GCRTF recommendation reflecting the Great Commission of Christ as recounted in Matthew 28. Eight “core values,” such as Christlikeness and truth, are proposed in the second recommendation. The other five recommendations propose various structural changes to the SBC.
The report also includes a 1,700-word section on the GCRTF’s assessment of the urgent need for a Great Commission Resurgence among Southern Baptists and what they feel it will take to spark such a spiritual renewal.
The GCRTF report asks: What will it take to see a Great Commission Resurgence launched? The answer, it suggests, lies in “a Great Commission theology” and “a renewed commitment to the gospel of Jesus Christ, the message of missions and evangelism, the message that is found only in Jesus Christ and His atoning death for sinners.”
A Great Commission Resurgence also depends on local churches catching “a new missional vision – to present the gospel of Jesus Christ to every person in the world and to make disciples of all the nations” and on Southern Baptist entities at every level of denominational life acknowledging they exist solely “to serve our churches in this missional vision.” The “primacy and centrality of the local church in the life of the Southern Baptist Convention” must be affirmed, but each church “must accept the responsibility to reach their village, community, town, or city with the good news of Jesus Christ,” the report says.
“Every pastor must be a missionary strategist, and every church must be a missionary sending center,” the report says. “Every congregation exists to replicate itself and to plant other gospel churches.”
A Great Commission Resurgence can only happen as God’s spirit moves among his people, the GCRTF acknowledges. At the same time, however, “our Lord has given this assignment to His church, and we are commanded to get to this work. The Great Commission is a command, not a suggestion.”
The nine-page challenge section encompasses 10 different groupings, from individual Christians, to churches and pastors, local Baptist associations and state Baptist conventions, various SBC entities and SBC leaders.
The GCRTF, in an explanatory note regarding the challenges, states, “We hold to an ecclesiology that honors and affirms both autonomy and cooperation. The Great Commission Resurgence Task Force is well aware of this, and we realize that we cannot direct individual Christians, local churches, associations or state conventions to take any particular or specific action. This is as it should be. However, our doctrine of the church does not prevent us from challenging and encouraging, admonishing and advising one another at all levels of SBC life for greater passion and effectiveness in pursuing the Great Commission. We are a convention of churches with a missional vision to present the Gospel of Jesus Christ to every person in the world and to make disciples of all the nations. With all of this in mind, we wish to put forth the following as challenges for the future of the SBC that we might bring greater glory to the Lord Jesus as we seek to disciple all nations in the fulfillment of Matthew 28:18-20.”
[Editor’s note: The full list of categories and challenges can be found in the GCRTF report at www.pray4gcr.com.]
– Compiled by Baptist Press editor Art Toalston and assistant editor Mark Kelly.