Late into the afternoon of Aug. 24, as the South Carolina “Great Commission Resurgence Conversation” drew to a close, Ed Carney counted to three, and the several hundred people who had remained for the entire day – scattered now in a score of clusters across the expansive floor of Beacham Auditorium at White Oak Conference Center – rose on instruction and shouted: “So what?”

“Great question,” Carney said to church leaders who had traveled to Winnsboro from points all across the state to discuss how South Carolina Baptists might begin responding to sweeping initiatives called for in the report of the GCR Task Force, which was adopted overwhelmingly in June by messengers at the 2010 Southern Baptist Convention annual meeting in Orlando.

“Where do we go from here?” Carney asked. “We need to have a consensus. Our prayer is not to keep things as they are.” Carney compared Southern Baptists – who voted in Orlando to commit themselves more fervently to reaching lost people groups throughout the world as well as in major metropolitan centers in North America – to the wandering tribe of Israel debating whether to attempt entry into the promised land.

“Did they know what they were up against? No,” said Carney, pastor of Riverland Hills Baptist Church and chairman of the SCBC Executive Board. “But they were on the verge. If we can come to an agreement that we don’t like living in the desert, we’ve accomplished what we needed to accomplish today. I know you’re not leaving with any ideas, except maybe a few here or there, but we’re on the verge. And if you’re on the verge, you’re where you need to be.”

Carney’s comments concluded a day-long “catharsis,” as he termed it, that included, in the first half of the day, a demographic presentation and challenge by Ed Stetzer, LifeWay Christian Resources’ missiologist in residence and president of research, and messages from SCBC executive director-treasurer Jim Austin and state convention president Fred Stone.

In the afternoon, the crowd of more than 500 broke into about 20 smaller groups to brainstorm GCR questions and opportunities. Rich Carney (no relation to Ed Carney), metropolitan strategist for the North American Mission Board, facilitated the two-hour group session.

Austin told The Baptist Courier he hopes “concrete proposals” will emerge after convention officials have time to “get synthesis of the feedback” from the group session, which he described as a “collaborative learning environment.”

Austin said he anticipates that a state GCR task force, appointed by Carney in April, will convene to evaluate the feedback from the Aug. 24 “Conversation.” Task force members include Austin, Carney, Stone, Connie Maxwell Children’s Home president Ben Davis, and Executive Board officers Wofford Caughman and Keith Davis.

Nearly 600 people were registered for the meeting, and at least 525 attended. Austin characterized the gathering as a “phenomenal response” from a “cross-section of folks – representing big and small churches, multiethnic, male and female, younger and older.” Austin said he believes “prayer prior to their coming was evident,” noting the distribution of an e-mail prayer guide in the weeks leading up to the meeting.

 

Ed Stetzer

Appearing on two large video projection screens via internet from his office in Nashville, Tenn., Stetzer, widely acknowledged as an expert in analyzing Southern Baptist demographics and trends, told South Carolina church leaders, “We need to know that facts are our friends.”

Stetzer shared sobering statistics that point to a diminished Southern Baptist Convention, both in size and in influence. He noted that Southern Baptists have been declining as a percentage of the U.S. population since 1986. Despite a slight uptick in baptisms last year, Stetzer said, “we don’t have any evidence that we have turned the [downward] trend around.”

“South Carolina Baptists should not be satisfied with a flat membership,” he said. In the face of a “season of membership challenge and baptism challenge,” Stetzer exhorted listeners to be “men and women of this time,” and he reminded leaders of the importance of partnering together to advance the gospel. “Denominations exist because churches can’t do what God told them to alone,” he said.

Stetzer said Southern Baptists should embrace “confessional consensus and missional cooperation. If the boundaries of cooperation are agreed upon, our integrity demands that we don’t shift them,” noting an “explosion of diversity in the way people do church.”

“We can do more together than we can apart,” he said.

Citing statistical data, Stetzer also reminded listeners that Southern Baptists “are a rural people in the midst of an increasingly urban world.”

“As North America becomes an ethnic milieu and Southern Baptists do not,” the SBC will continue to decline, he warned. “We’ve got to cross cultural boundaries.”

Stetzer also said Southern Baptists have a “dysfunctional” church-planting system. “NAMB is not a Southern Baptist church planter,” he said. “You are a Southern Baptist church planter. Part of the Great Commission Resurgence is to get to the place where church planting is part of the [church’s] desire. We’re better at being missions-minded than we are at living missions locally. We need to join God’s mission more faithfully.”

Alluding to the potential for conflict as state conventions begin weighing the costs of implementing the GCR initiatives – including sending a greater percentage of funds out of state for international missions and for North American metro church planting, while decreasing funding for state ministries – Stetzer said, “There’s need here, there’s need there. We don’t want to pit one against the other.”

Answering questions submitted by audience members, Stetzer predicted that in 20 years, if current trends continue, the Southern Baptist Convention “will be smaller in membership but more focused on missions.”

 

Jim Austin

Following Stetzer’s presentation, Austin began by saying, “We’re all trying to figure this out together.”

“We’re a graying, aging denomination,” he said. “We are facing some difficult days and tremendous challenges as Southern Baptists.”

“It’s easy to fight with each other. The real fight is out there,” he said, pointing to a “losing battle” with our young people, a “breeding ground for militant Islam” in the prison system, and the fact that, “on any given Sunday, 70 percent of people are not in anybody’s church.”

Nevertheless, there are Great Commission opportunities, he said, including the 42 percent of South Carolinians who reside in multi-housing complexes, the availability of 500 children on South Carolina’s adoption rolls, and the “unprecedented” opportunity for the state convention, through the International Mission Board, to partner with an unreached people group in a distant part of the world.

“By God’s grace, we’re going to turn this around and be successful,” he said. “Our history as South Carolina Baptists has been one of a pioneer spirit.”

The turnaround will require that “we educate our churches [to be on mission],” he said. “Firing the preacher can’t always be the first option.”

“If we trust the Lord, he will supply resources beyond our imagination,” he said. “Don’t back down just because the obstacle seems too great. We can do this.”

 

Fred Stone

Over a lunch of barbecue in the conference center’s dining hall, the SCBC president called on church leaders to try to avoid conflict while discussing adoption of GCR initiatives. “Our purpose for being here today is to have GCR conversation; we didn’t come for a GCR fight,” he said. “We [all] are for a God-sent Great Commission resurgence throughout our denomination,” he added.

Stone echoed Stetzer’s and Austin’s assessment of a convention in decline. “If we are declining, something is wrong or outdated or just is not working,” he said. “That means it’s time to make some changes. Business as usual just won’t work.”

Acknowledging what he called the “elephant in the room,” Stone said, “We don’t have as much money as we used to. That may sound unspiritual, but it’s one of the major issues we must face. CP giving continues to decline. As a result, we can’t fund everything we have historically funded, at least not at the level we have in the past. We’ve got to make some hard decisions about funding missions, ministries and institutions.”

Stone encouraged leaders to evaluate “everything we are currently funding – through the lens of Scripture, especially the Great Commission. Theology should drive everything we do.”

“We must make this evaluation as objectively as we possibly can, realizing that we can’t fund everything – even every good thing,” he said.

Stone said he believes there are “worthy Great Commission partners” among the state convention’s institutions. He praised South Carolina’s three SCBC-affiliated universities for being “theologically conservative and teaching a Christian worldview.” He said Connie Maxwell Children’s Home is the “last hope for many children who have no home” and said The Baptist Courier is “an important and unique” source for convention news.

(Stone later told the Courier, “As we objectively evaluate everything we are funding in our convention, we must ask the question: Can we continue to fund seven institutions?”)

Stone also called on church leaders to discern what South Carolina Baptists are funding through the convention that “local churches either are or should be doing.”

Repeating a call he issued on his first day as SCBC president last November, Stone said the convention needs younger pastors and lay leaders involved in the decision-making process. “Shouldn’t those who will be leading the convention in the next 10 to 20 years be involved in the next process of helping to shape their future convention?” he asked.

At the conclusion of the Great Commission Resurgence Conversation on Aug. 24, eight South Carolina Baptist leaders representing a range of age and ethnicity were asked to take the stage and share their impressions of the day. Here are some of their comments:

“I didn’t hear a lot that excited me. We need real strategies, to define the role of the state convention. We had the opportunity to talk about funding, but we didn’t.” (Curt Bradford, pastor, Riverbluff Baptist Church, North Charleston)

“We’re going through a necessary identity crisis. It’s easy to get excited here. How to get [church] members to catch the vision? That’s the challenge.” (Travis Biller, pastor, Kilbourne Park Baptist Church, Columbia)

“It’s a good start. Not just one church can get it done – we need collaboration among our churches. It’s going to take our folks doing it, not our leadership.” (Alex Sands, pastor, Kingdom Life Christian Center, Greenville)

“I’ve heard lots of heartbeats today. It all boils down to lostness and the gospel.” (Gail Hodson, president, South Carolina Woman’s Missionary Union)

“We need to raise up the emphasis of church planting, with serious dollars allocated to it. At stake are the three-fourths of our state population that are lost.” (Jay Hardwick, pastor, Awaken Church, Columbia)

“It’s fun to do God’s work. I’m beginning to feel the sweetness of planting churches. There’s got to be connectedness – pastors praying for pastors.” (Joe Martinez, pastor, Greer Iglesia Bautista Hispana)

“All of our opportunities are also really hard. A lot of this is difficult work. We need to go and tell instead of expecting them to come to us.” (Ryan Goodroe, pastor, Hartsville First Baptist Church)

“We’ve got to get busy doing something. Something needs to change. We’ve got to have an unction of the Holy Spirit.” (David Gallamore, pastor, Rock Springs Baptist Church, Easley)