Influential Southern Baptists Johnny Hunt and Ed Stetzer will join state convention president Fred Stone in welcoming messengers to the 190th annual meeting of the South Carolina Baptist Convention, Nov. 16-17, at the Columbia Metropolitan Convention Center.
The Columbia Metropolitan Convention Center will again be the site of the annual meeting of the South Carolina Baptist Convention, Nov. 16-17.Gathering under the banner, “For the Glory of God,” messengers from many of the state’s 2,100-plus Southern Baptist churches will convene to consider a shrinking budget and to choose a president from two announced nominees.
Messengers could also be asked to approve the appointment of a state-level Great Commission Resurgence task force to consider the GCR recommendations adopted overwhelmingly last June at the Southern Baptist Convention annual meeting.
Hunt, pastor of First Baptist Church, Woodstock, Ga., and immediate past-president of the Southern Baptist Convention, appointed the national GCR Task Force, whose recommendations could result in the most significant re-prioritization of SBC funding in decades. The GCR report calls for increased funding to international missions and to major metropolitan areas and Western states in the U.S. To help fund the initiatives, the GCR report urges state conventions to increase the amount of Cooperative Program monies they forward to the SBC.
Hunt will bring the final message during the SCBC annual meeting on Wednesday, Nov. 17, at 10:45 a.m.
Stetzer, president of LifeWay Research, will deliver the convention sermon on Tuesday, Nov. 16, at 3 p.m. Later in the day, at 5 p.m., Stetzer will be the featured speaker at a “Young Leaders Dinner.”
Stetzer
HuntIt will be Stetzer’s second appearance in South Carolina in recent weeks. On Aug. 24, he appeared by video at the SCBC’s “Great Commission Resurgence Conversation,” where more than 500 South Carolina Baptist pastors, church leaders and laypeople gathered to discuss ideas about implementing GCR initiatives. Stetzer, widely acknowledged as an expert in analyzing SBC demographics and trends, told those at the meeting that Southern Baptists “are a rural people in the midst of an increasingly urban world” and that a major purpose of GCR “is to get to the place where church planting is part of the [church’s] desire.”
Stone told South Carolina Baptists attending the GCR Conversation in August that, in the face of declining effectiveness as a denomination, “It’s time to make some changes. Business as usual just won’t work.”
In a first-person article on page 3 of this issue, Stone said he hopes to appoint a South Carolina Great Commission Resurgence Task Force at this year’s annual meeting that will be “charged with the responsibility of developing a plan detailing how the SCBC will respond to the GCR Task Force’s recommendations.” If the motion for establishing the task force is approved, Stone said he would appoint approximately 24 members from across the state with the hope that the group would present a plan and recommendations at the November 2011 SCBC annual meeting.
SCBC messengers will elect a new president to succeed Stone. As the Courier went to press, there were two announced nominees: Sonny Holmes, pastor of Northwood Baptist Church, North Charleston, and D.J. Horton, pastor of Anderson Mill Road Baptist Church, Moore. At the request of The Baptist Courier, both men released statements in advance of the annual meeting.
Messengers will also consider a recommended $29.5 million SCBC budget for 2011, which represents a reduction of more than 8 percent from 2010 and a decline of 13.6 percent from the SCBC’s high-water mark of $34.3 million in 2009. The scaled-down budget reflects a continued slippage in budget receipts from SCBC churches in 2010, down 5.5 percent through September of this year after ending down about 6 percent the previous year.
The Cooperative Program portion of the proposed budget calls for forwarding 41 percent of CP receipts to the Southern Baptist Convention (up from 40.4 percent) and retaining 59 percent for in-state ministries.
If messengers approve the budget, it will mark the second consecutive year that South Carolina Baptists have reduced their spending plan, something that has not happened in recent history. In fact, since 1970, the only time South Carolina Baptists cut their budget was in 1993. (From 2003-2006, the budget was steady at $32.2 million.)
Messengers will also be asked to consider a slate of resolutions. At press time, the proposed resolutions had not been published at the SCBC’s website. Copies of the resolutions will be available at the meeting hall.
A menu of “Lunch & Learn” sessions will be offered on topics that include estate planning, prudent employment practices for churches, multisite worship services and online tithing.
More than 50 ministry organizations and businesses will have displays in the convention center’s exhibit hall.
For more information on the 2010 SCBC annual meeting, including a full schedule and registration information, visit http://www.scbaptist.org/annualmeeting2010.