A former Taylors pastor and now the president of the SBC Executive Committee in Nashville has told a select panel of South Carolina Baptists that the task of winning souls to Christ is an “awesome, massive task,” and it will take a “God-size vision” on the part of Southern Baptists if there is to be unity within the denomination in its efforts to carry out the requirements of the Great Commission.
Page, left, and state convention president Sonny Holmes chat prior to the Feb. 7 meeting.Frank Page, who left First Baptist Church in Taylors for the staff of the North American Mission Board before being elected in June for the top SBC post, spoke to the state’s Great Commission Resurgence Task Force at its meeting Feb. 7 at the Baptist building in Columbia.
Pointing to statistics that tag the United States as the third-largest “lost” country in the world and thus “the third-largest mission field,” Page called for a “mobilization of resources, both human and monetary, to accomplish the mission.”
“We have resources not found anywhere else,” he declared, “and our greatest resource is our churches. I hope to see every church involved in some kind of church-planting project. We simply must find ways to revitalize existing churches so they can become kingdom outposts.”
A major challenge, he said, is to saturate all areas with the gospel message – and with prayer. “We must ramp up our prayer ministries,” he said, “and pray as we’ve never prayed before.”
He called for a “motives check and level of commitment” in undertaking the worldwide responsibility of making disciples as commanded by Jesus. “We’re an extremely divided convention,” he admitted, “and must find a way to build a bridge connecting the younger pastors with those who have traditionally made up the base of the SBC,” and asked, “Can’t we come together?”
The SBC executive stressed the need for conservatives, as the unchallenged leaders of the Southern Baptist Convention, to consistently exhibit “a spirit that is Christlike in selflessness” rather than “turning on ourselves as many moderates predicted we would.”
Page said the Cooperative Program, still promoted as the primary tool for raising the money to fund SBC ministries, will “work and even flourish” in a spirit of selflessness.
He also mentioned a drop in the trust level of Southern Baptists, suggesting that it is at an “all-time low.” He said there is “pervasive pessimism” in the SBC, which is afflicted by attitudes among its members that are “self-centered and self-serving.” Unless this changes, Page declared, “our convention is lost; we will have lost the day.”
Jim Slack, a researcher with the International Mission Board for four decades, told the task force that while Southern Baptists are “pressing to fulfill the Great Commission,” an estimated 70 to 80 percent of church members do not even understand the scope of Christ’s words recorded in Matthew 28:19-20.
He emphasized the need to reach every ethnic group “in their languages, beginning where we are and going everywhere.” He said the Great Commission – the final words of Jesus to his followers – is “the primary task of believers.”
This was the second meeting of the task force appointed by former convention president Fred Stone and commissioned by messengers to the 2010 SCBC annual meeting to draft a report for convention approval suggesting how the state convention can, and should, be involved in the SBC’s Great Commission Resurgence.
After the Feb. 7 meeting, Ralph Carter, pastor of Brushy Creek Baptist Church, Taylors, and chairman of the task force, told the Courier, “The thing that stands out in my mind about the meeting is that our world is becoming increasingly spiritually dark.”
Carter said the growing “lostness” of the world pointed to by both Page and Slack “either alarms us or it is a fact to which we have resigned ourselves, and I pray that resignation to that trend is not an option for Baptists.”
He said now is the time for Southern Baptists, who in the past have “worked feverishly to fulfill the Great Commission,” to “carefully re-evaluate our efforts to make disciples of the nations.”
“To accomplish the task given to us by our Lord,” Carter said, “we must develop and maintain effective strategies, and for the task to be successful, it will require intentionality, cooperation, change and sacrifice.”
Prior to the Feb. 7 meeting, the presidents of the seven South Carolina Baptist institutions – who by convention mandate serve on the task force – submitted documents to other members of the task force containing primarily financial information regarding the operations of the institutions. Each made a presentation to the task force and then answered questions.
“Every bit of the requested information was given to the committee in a timely and thorough manner,” Carter explained. “South Carolina Baptists can be proud of our denominational and institutional leadership team. They are passionate about their work, professional in their manner and committed to being team players. They want what is best for South Carolina Baptists and the kingdom of God.”
The chairman emphasized that the task force has been “praying, listening and asking questions” and, to this point, “we have reached no conclusions.” He said that “any report you hear contrary to that is misinformation.”
Carter told the Courier he wanted to step aside from his role as task force chairman long enough to speak “as one pastor,” saying that “as convenient as it would be to place the blame for our failure to fulfill the Great Commission on the backs of our denomination, state convention, its workers or our institutions, we must recognize that the real problem rests in the local churches.”
He continued, “I am confident we can find a pathway for delivering more money to the mission field, and I hope we will. But that alone won’t change the spiritual darkness of our own communities.”
Carter, at the Feb. 7 meeting, asked all task force members to set aside a time – 6 a.m. each Monday was recommended – to pray specifically about “the issues we face” as task force members, while calling on all South Carolina Baptists to “join us.”
The next task force meeting is scheduled for March 8.