Ralph Carter, pastor of Brushy Creek Baptist Church, Taylors, and chairman of the Great Commission Resurgence Task Force, was invited by South Carolina Baptist Convention Executive Board chairman Keith Davis to address the board on Tuesday morning during its fall meeting Oct. 10-11.
“We’ve done our best to serve South Carolina Baptists, and we appreciate the opportunity to bring our conclusions to the convention in November,” Carter told the members of the Executive Board.
He said the process began in January and involved monthly meetings and, at times, regional meetings of members throughout the state. He called attention to each meeting being covered with “earnest prayer and a season of prayer in small and large group assemblies within the task force.”
Consensus, he said, came together in May following a day of prayer and fasting at White Oak Conference Center. “After months of discouragement, the Spirit of God invaded our room in May,” he said. “We brought a proposal, and eight of 10 recommendations were approved unanimously. One recommendation had one dissenting vote, and a second had two dissenting votes.” An 11th recommendation was later added to the report.
Carter said the GCR report focuses on three goals for the South Carolina Baptist Convention:
– Getting the gospel to the 3,600 unreached people groups in the world. “Near my home, a person can’t go to hell without tripping over a Baptist church,” Carter said. “That’s not the case in large parts of our world. We have people in our world who have never heard the gospel.”
– Ministering to people through convention institutions and agencies, ministering to the aging and to children, and educating people through convention universities.
– Prioritizing convention staff work on revitalizing churches, planting new churches, and missions mobilization.
“I believe that if we don’t embrace all three of these goals, we are destined to die as a denomination,” Carter said. “We must keep less and give more.”
The GCR report, he said, accomplishes the three goals within the reality that Cooperative Program receipts from churches are declining each year. Carter encouraged board members to watch a GCR report video online at the convention website (www.scbaptist.org) and to prayerfully consider a 1 percent increase in their local church’s Cooperative Program giving. – SCBC