The annual meeting of the South Carolina Baptist Convention is set for Nov. 15-16 in Columbia. The talk among Baptists now, and the action to be taken by messengers then, centers around the report of the Great Commission Resurgence Task Force appointed last year by then president Fred Stone.
It is impossible to say with certainty how the vote will go, or what the 11-point document might look like by the time for balloting.
KirklandThere will be a push to break the report into 11 separate parts and vote on them one at a time. This effort should be rejected. The strength of the report, which was not easily arrived at, lies in its balance. No point lacks importance. Broken down and changed in ways not intended by the task force, the report should not be adopted. Messengers should honor the spirit of goodwill, cooperation and sacrifice exhibited by task force members who sought for consensus to the greatest extent possible, and their wisdom in producing a document with the best chance of wide acceptance
At the recent meeting of the SCBC Executive Board, task force chairman Ralph Carter said the GCR recommendations set three goals of spreading the gospel, continuing its support of state ministries, and to reviving failing churches and starting new ones. Carter said the recommendations of the GCR report would accomplish the three goals within the reality that Cooperative Program receipts from the churches are declining each year.
As to the division of CP money between SCBC and the SBC, Carter said simply, “We must keep less and give more.”
Recommendation 10 of the report calls for churches which give less than 10 percent of undesignated contributions to the CP to up their percentages by at least 1 percent.
A lukewarm response to an effort to jump-start this upward movement of CP giving is discouraging. The task force hoped to carry to the convention $1 million in pledges from churches onboard with this initiative. The campaign has netted slightly more than a fourth of that goal.
Are churches unable to give more through the Cooperative Program due to a poor economy? Are they unwilling? Is the GCR movement failing to get traction in South Carolina? If the GCR report is adopted and CP giving does not measure up to mission, what then?
These are not questions that should prompt any messenger to vote no on the report. They are questions, however, that should be, and are being, raised. These questions must influence the thinking of messengers to the November convention in particular, and of South Carolina Baptists in general, if the report is adopted and implemented statewide.
If the report is adopted at the convention, the initial “surge” of the “resurgence” would get its power from money trimmed from the budgets of the institutions and the convention itself.
Anderson, Charleston Southern and North Greenville universities, Connie Maxwell Children’s Home, Ministries for the Aging, and WMU would find a 10 percent reduction in their 2012 budgets. That dollar amount would be locked in for five years, to be followed by an evaluation of their financial situations.
The Baptist Courier’s budget would be reduced by 10 percent each year for three years, adding up to a 30 percent loss in convention funding. The Courier’s financial situation would be examined after three years.
The Baptist Foundation would be on a schedule that would end CP funding for its ministry at the end of five years.
The convention building and the staff there would see budget cuts of 1 percent each year for five years.
These reductions would provide South Carolina Baptists with a “grace” period for the purpose of channeling more money into the coffers of the International Mission Board, which is the primary intended beneficiary of the GCR movement.
The money given up by the institutions and the convention would permit sending the same amount of dollars to Richmond as if South Carolina’s CP receipts were actually divided 50-50 between the SCBC and the SBC. Thus, a 50-50 “equivalency” would be achieved.
This five-year period of instant success for freeing up more South Carolina money for international missions would be expected to transition into a true even distribution of CP funds between the SCBC and SBC.
To do this, however, the Cooperative Program must gain strength through increased contributions — or, at the end of five years, the convention could have to decide whether to give spending priority to state ministries or to SBC causes, including the Great Commission Resurgence, if it cannot do both without harm to either.
The conversation and controversy surrounding recommendations 8 and 9, which would give the institutions negotiating rights for selection of trustees (including the admission of a percentage of out-of-state trustees on the boards) possibly have overshadowed the importance of recommendation 10, which alone can bring lasting success to this ambitious GCR endeavor.
Fears that the recommendations regarding selection of trustees for the institutions would, or even could, loosen and perhaps threaten the ties which institutions have with the South Carolina Baptist Convention have no basis in fact. Such fears should be put to rest.
The Cooperative Program — that is the main thing. It moves the GCR forward or the resurgence will move slowly, sluggishly — if at all. Messengers to the November convention will cast ballots punched yes or no and counted by a computer. If the vote count in Columbia favors adoption of the report, a more general process of voting throughout the state among South Carolina Baptists would begin. Rather than being punched, their ballots would be placed in the offering plates of the churches of the SCBC, put there by members of those congregations who embrace the goals of the resurgence. They would vote with dollars — and a large, generous and sustained turnout of voters would be required.