The men and women who serve on our state convention’s Great Commission Resurgence Task Force have done a tremendous job of putting together a workable plan to help South Carolina Baptists become more intentional about penetrating our spiritually dark world with the gospel. While this plan features a stronger emphasis on international missions and church planting, it also demonstrates the value and importance of our state convention ministries and institutions. These faithful task force members have obviously laid aside their personal preferences and joined together to develop a balanced and effective plan of action to help South Carolina Baptists move forward in Great Commission missions and ministries.
Fred StoneIt appears that most South Carolina Baptists are generally pleased with the majority of the task force’s report. However, two recommendations concerning trustee selection have generated a lot of discussion. Recommendation 8 calls for trustees to be nominated through a process of mutual agreement between the institutional presidents and the state convention’s nominations committee. It should be noted that this does not introduce a new process. The nominations committee worked in a similar way with the institutional presidents in 2006 and 2007, when I served as chairman of the nominations committee. In our meetings both years, we openly spoke about how thankful we were to have seven institutional presidents who were effective leaders, biblically sound, and loyal to the South Carolina Baptist Convention. We expressed our trust in these men, and encouraged them to recommend trustees to us who could best serve their institutions. Our committee carefully evaluated their recommendations, and then gave them most of the trustees they asked for. I do not remember the exact figures, but I believe most of the presidents received at least four of the five trustees they requested. From what I have observed since rotating off the nominations committee, it appears that this informal process of mutual agreement has continued.
Recommendation 8, therefore, has already received an informal “trial run” and was found to work well. As a result, this recommendation does not actually introduce change in our trustee selection process. It simply formalizes the process that has been followed in recent years. It should also be noted that recommendation 8 does not change the final authority for selecting trustees. The nominations committee will still recommend all new trustees to the South Carolina Baptist Convention for final approval every year.
Recommendation 9 would allow institutions to nominate qualified Southern Baptists from outside South Carolina to serve. It seems that most of the opposition to this recommendation centers around our universities, so I will direct my comments accordingly. South Carolina Baptists no longer have three struggling colleges with questionable theology. Today, we have three intentionally Christian universities that are gaining national reputations as leading evangelical universities. Each of them has a strong, theologically conservative Christian studies faculty. All three are in a position to attract the attention of Southern Baptist laypersons and pastors outside our state who have the ability and desire to invest in Christian higher education. Many of those men and women are successful alumni of our universities who would welcome the opportunity to return and serve their alma mater. Our presidents know their needs and have the contacts to reach out to qualified Southern Baptists from around the country who can help meet those needs. Let’s empower our presidents to strengthen our universities by removing unnecessary geographical limitations. Keep in mind that only a small percentage of any institution’s trustees may come from out of state, and that all trustees must be approved by both the nominations committee and the state convention.
If our institutional presidents and institutions really are our ministry partners, let’s demonstrate it by including them in the process of selecting qualified trustees who can best help our institutions, regardless of where they live. We can trust our presidents and trustees to keep our institutions theologically conservative and meaningfully connected to our convention.
– Stone, pastor of Pickens First Baptist Church, was president of the South Carolina Baptist Convention in 2010 and appointed the members of the SCBC’s Great Commission Resurgence Task Force.