After nearly a year of formulation and discussion among Southern Baptists and the pleas of proponents to “penetrate lostness,” messengers to the Southern Baptist Convention annual meeting June 15 adopted, after lengthy discussion, a list of strategic and organizational recommendations aimed at fueling a resurgence of global gospel advancement.
Southern Baptist Convention president Johnny Hunt looks out over nearly 11,000 messengers to the 2010 annual meeting of the Southern Baptist Convention in Orlando, Fla. Via uplifted ballot, messengers overwhelmingly voted to adopt the recommendations of the Great Commission Resurgence Task Force, a major emphasis of Hunt’s presidency.The seven recommendations offered by the 22-member Great Commission Resurgence Task Force, appointed in June 2009 by SBC president Johnny Hunt at the direction of last year’s messengers, included a 30-word convention vision statement, a list of core values, and five “requests” referred to the SBC Executive Committee and other specified entities that might affect changes in the convention missions enterprise.
Prior to the floor debate, GCR Task Force chairman Ronnie Floyd of Arkansas referenced the words of 19th-century abolitionist William Wilberforce in urging messengers to action.
“”There are literally billions of people in the world today who are enslaved in their sin and who will perish without the savior named Jesus Christ – but after today you can’t say that you did not know,” Floyd said.
Floyd closed his part of the task force report by pointing to previous watershed convention meetings in 1925, the year the Cooperative Program was adopted, and 1979, the year the conservative theological resurgence began.
“And today in 2010, what are we going to do? This is our moment. This is our time. The future is now,” Floyd said.
The raised-ballot vote was called at the podium following more than 90 minutes of debate. Floyd told reporters at a press conference after vote that parliamentarians estimated the report was adopted by 75-80 percent of voting messengers. Messenger registration at the Orange County Convention Center at the time of the vote was announced at 10,994.
The debate was spirited but polite. Objections to adopting the recommendations ranged from a desire for another year of study to concern that language recognizing non-CP missions giving would hurt missionaries on the field.
David Tolliver, Missouri Baptist Convention’s executive director, and a messenger from Concord Baptist Church in Jefferson City, Mo., made a motion asking the task force to refer the entire report the SBC Executive Committee for “study and evaluation.”
“I never want to be an obstructionist. I never want to vote, ‘No,'” Tolliver said in explaining his motion. “We haven’t counted the cost. Let’s take a year and then let us vote on the work with full knowledge,” he said citing Luke 14:28, where the scripture talks about counting the cost before undertaking a task. Tolliver’s motion was defeated after a show of ballots.
Ronnie Floyd, chairman of the Great Commission Resurgence Task Force and pastor of First Baptist Church of Springdale, Ark., speaks about the GCR before nearly 11,000 messengers at the annual meeting of the Southern Baptist Convention June 15. Messengers voted to adopt the recommendations of the task force.Several motions to amend the recommendations were offered and defeated, leading to a brokered amendment between John Waters, a messenger from First Baptist Church in Statesboro, Ga., and the task force. It was adopted by messengers after concern by Ohio messenger, Jan Bryant, a messenger from Morrow Baptist Church that messengers were “bullied” during the debate.
The amendment altered recommendation number three’s new language lauding “Great Commission Giving” to “enhance and celebrate” the 85-year-old Cooperative Program missions funding plan and the “generous support Southern Baptists channel through their churches.” The amendment added the words “and to continue to affirm the Cooperative Program as the most effective means of mobilizing our churches and extending our outreach. We affirm that designated gifts to special causes are to be considered as a supplement and not as a substitute to Cooperative Program giving.”
In addition to the convention vision statement to “present the Gospel of Jesus Christ to every person in the world and to make disciples of all the nations,” and eight core values of Christ-likeness, truth, unity, relationships, trust, future, local church and Kingdom, the recommendations request the SBC’s Executive Committee to:
– Consider new language honoring the Cooperative Program missions funding plan and designated giving to SBC causes be lauded under the title “Great Commission Giving”;
– Consider revising NAMB’s ministry assignment in light of the task force’s focus on more effectively reaching unreached peoples and regions in North America;
– In conjunction with the International Mission Board, consider a revised ministry assignment, freeing the IMB to help reach unreached and underserved people groups irrespective of geographic boundaries, including within North America;
– Consider working with states in a comprehensive CP promotion and stewardship education plan “in alignment with the report”;
– Consider recommending a CP allocation budget shifting 1 percent from its work to the IMB, increasing the international board’s CP percentage to 51 percent of the SBC budget.
The recommendations correspond with seven components, each outlined in the GCR Task Force’s report.
At one point in the debate, James Goforth Sr., a messenger from Campground Baptist Church in Alto, Tex., prompted a motion to end discussion, pray and vote on the motion at hand, leading SBC president Johnny Hunt to lead in prayer in the middle of the debate.
Hunt’s prayer noted the divergent views among the messenger body and awcknowledged the well known opposition to the recommendations by retiring EC President Morris Chapman, who spoke passionately against the GCR report earlier in the day, thanking God that he and Chapman were able to speak their convictions freely.
“Lord,” Hunt prayed, “we just ask that your sovereign will be done, not our will, Father, but your will be done.”
– Pierce is managing editor of the Southern Baptist TEXAN. With reporting by Joni Hannigan, Florida Baptist Witness.