The chairman of the South Carolina Great Commission Resurgence Task Force plans to convene the 35-member panel in mid-January for the first of what likely will be several meetings over the next 10 months.
Ralph Carter Jr., pastor of Brushy Creek Baptist Church, Taylors, told the Courier Dec. 2 he was trying to finalize a date and location for the meeting and hoped to send a letter to task force members within a “day or two.”
Ralph Carter Jr.Carter said he anticipates the task force will meet about once a month, but said he doesn’t speak for the group and that the meeting frequency could change. At the January meeting, Carter hopes to “establish an agenda and timetable for completing” the task force’s report.
“There are several steps we’ll have to go through,” he said. “It’s probably going to take a full year to do that.”
Carter said he believes the task force can complete its work one to two months before the SCBC annual meeting in November 2011, so that South Carolina Baptists “can understand here’s where we’re going and how we’re going to get there.”
“We want to try to answer any questions before the convention – so that there will be no surprises and everybody will be well informed,” he said.
Carter was named chairman of the task force Nov. 19 by outgoing South Carolina Baptist Convention president Fred Stone. The task force, appointed by Stone, was authorized by SCBC messengers last month at the state convention’s annual meeting to “develop a plan for how the South Carolina Baptist Convention will respond to the Great Commission Resurgence of the Southern Baptist Convention.”
The SBC’s GCR task force 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 percentage of Cooperative Program funds they forward to the SBC.
At last month’s annual meeting, South Carolina Baptist messengers adopted a 2011 budget that is 8 percent smaller than the current budget. Messengers also approved a slight increase in the percentage of CP funds forwarded for SBC causes – from 40.44 percent to 41 percent – but not without debate, as some messengers argued for a more cautious approach. Ultimately, an amendment to freeze the SBC allocation at 2010 levels failed by a 429-366 margin.
A messenger rises to speak to a motion during a business session at the 2010 SCBC annual meeting.Some of the discussion during the SCBC budget debate centered on funding the convention’s seven 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. Acting on a motion from the floor, messengers voted to include the presidents of the institutions on the GCR task force.
Carter said the downturn in Cooperative Program giving from churches does not reflect a “lack of love, or lack of zeal” for the 85-year-old united-giving system of the Southern Baptist Convention, for which contributions have declined over the last two years.
“I don’t think that’s the case at all,” Carter said. “I think people still believe and have confidence in the Cooperative Program. I just think we’re living in difficult economic times. Every charity I know about, and every church I know, has been impacted by the economy.
“[We just have to] encourage people to be more charitable and more sacrificial. That’s something individuals, churches and all of our institutions have to do.”
Despite a slow economy, Carter said he remains optimistic. “I believe South Carolina Baptists have a vision for reaching the world, and we have a good opportunity to try to accomplish that mission by bringing [the GCR task force] together and coming up with a plan that South Carolina Baptists can live with,” he said.