Messengers to the South Carolina Baptist Convention annual meeting authorized outgoing SCBC president Fred Stone to appoint a South Carolina Great Commission Resurgence Task Force.
On Nov. 19, Stone released the names of appointees to the task force. Ralph Carter Jr., pastor of Brushy Creek Baptist Church, Taylors, will chair the group. (The full list of task force members can be found on page 3.)
The group will be charged with scrutinizing the final report of the Southern Baptist Convention’s similarly-named GCR task force (the report was adopted overwhelmingly in Orlando in June) for the purpose of developing a plan for South Carolina Baptists to respond to its recommendations.
The South Carolina task force is expected to present a report and recommendations at next year’s SCBC annual meeting in Columbia, Nov. 15-16.
The national GCR report calls for channeling more funds to international missions and to major metropolitan areas and Western states in the U.S. To help pay for the initiatives, the report urges state conventions to increase the amount of Cooperative Program monies they forward to the SBC.
The motion to create the South Carolina GCR task force to “develop a plan for how the South Carolina Baptist Convention will respond to the Great Commission Resurgence of the Southern Baptist Convention” was offered by Chris Gray, pastor of Kings Grove Baptist Church, Central.
In addition to Stone’s appointees, the makeup of the task force includes the presidents of the seven SCBC-affiliated institutions: Anderson University, The Baptist Courier, the Baptist Foundation of South Carolina, Charleston Southern University, Connie Maxwell Children’s Home, North Greenville University, and South Carolina Baptist Ministries for the Aging.
An amendment to appoint the institution presidents (or their designees) to the task force was offered by Wayne Dickard, former SCBC president and pastor of Northbrook Baptist Church, Boiling Springs, who said one of the discussion components might be the future of the institutions. “My amendment ensures institutions are represented in the discussion,” he said.
Dickard’s amendment passed by a ballot vote of 405-325. The motion to create the task force was approved by a show of uplifted ballots.
In an article published in the Courier Nov. 11, Stone said he would appoint to the task force “individuals who are in agreement with the Baptist Faith & Message 2000, are supportive of both the SCBC and the SBC, and come from churches of all sizes across the state.”
On Aug. 24, more than 500 South Carolina Baptist pastors and lay leaders gathered at White Oak Conference Center to begin talking about how to respond to GCR recommendations. The day-long “catharsis,” as SCBC Executive Board chairman Ed Carney described it, included a spirited, free-flowing discussion among the participants, although no consensus was reached.