The South Carolina Great Commission Resurgence Task Force appointed by outgoing state convention president Fred Stone has begun its work of developing a plan for how the South Carolina Baptist Convention will respond to the GCR initiative approved by messengers at the June 2010 meeting of the Southern Baptist Convention.
The South Carolina GCR task force held its first meeting Jan. 13.Thirty-one of the task force’s 35 members met at White Oak Conference Center Jan. 13 for a day-long session aimed at building trust among members, deciding on the phases of what is expected to be a 10-month process and then setting a general timetable for the completion of the report.
Ralph Carter, pastor of Brushy Creek Baptist Church in Taylors and chairman of the task force, said the document should be completed in September or October, in time to make it available to all South Carolina Baptists prior to the annual SCBC meeting in November.
“Our initial meeting went well, in my estimation,” said Carter. “We spent time getting to know each other and trying to gain an understanding of everyone’s perspective. I believe we were successful in our effort to begin creating a climate of transparency and trust in which members of the task force feel the freedom to express their fears and hopes about the task the convention has charged us with fulfilling.”
The chairman continued, “Every member of the task force recognizes that we bring personal opinions and presuppositions to the table. We openly confessed to each other what those were, and spent much time in prayer asking the Lord to help us free ourselves from them so that we might do what is in the best interests of the kingdom of God and the South Carolina Baptist Convention.”
Also, Carter pointed out, “We created a tentative timeline and pathway to the completion of our task.”
Phases of the “pathway” are information-gathering, evaluation of the SBC Great Commission Resurgence Task Force report, exploring the possibilities for South Carolina, the creation of a plan, finding ways to make that plan work and, finally, communicating that plan to South Carolina Baptists.
At the time of his selection as chairman, Carter had said, “We want to try to answer any questions before the convention so that there will be no surprises and everybody will be well-informed.”
With a primary purpose of developing trust among task force members, the Jan. 13 meeting included small-group discussions centering on topics ranging from overcoming biases brought to the assignment and avoidance of being “territorial” to modeling a spirit of cooperation and pinpointing the perceived goals and hoped-for outcomes of the work.
In addition to task force members chosen by former convention president Stone, messengers to the November SCBC meeting voted to include the presidents of the institutions on the task force. All attended the Jan. 13 meeting.
“To make sure that there was no confusion as to their place on the committee,” Carter told the Courier, “one of our first items of business was to determine the status of every member of the task force. It was unanimously agreed that every member has equal standing with the same rights and responsibilities. All are voting members of the task force.”
The task force will hold its second meeting at the SCBC building in Columbia on Feb. 7 beginning at 10 a.m. It will focus on gathering pertinent information on the institutions of both the SBC and the SCBC. Each of the presidents of the SCBC institutions will report to the task force, along with Jim Austin, executive director-treasurer of the state convention.