The South Carolina Great Commission Resurgence Task Force will convene for its inaugural session Jan. 13 at 10 a.m. at White Oak Conference Center near Winnsboro.
The meeting of the 35-member panel was called by chairman Ralph Carter Jr., pastor of Brushy Creek Baptist Church, Taylors. Carter said he anticipates the task force will meet about once a month and believes the task force can complete its work one or two months before the SCBC annual meeting in November 2011.
Carter was named chairman of the task force Nov. 19 by outgoing South Carolina Baptist Convention president Fred Stone. The task force, also appointed by Stone, was authorized by SCBC messengers to “develop a plan for how the South Carolina Baptist Convention will respond to the Great Commission Resurgence of the Southern Baptist Convention.”
The national GCR task force report calls for channeling more funds to international missions and to 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.
In November, following debate, South Carolina Baptist messengers approved a slight increase in the percentage of CP funds forwarded for SBC causes – from 40.44 percent to 41 percent.