As the 35-member South Carolina Great Commission Resurgence Task Force prepared to convene May 10, chairman Ralph Carter reflected on the group’s efforts so far.
“Are we making progress? I believe we are,” said Carter, pastor of Brushy Creek Church in Taylors, who released a statement to The Baptist Courier following the committee’s April 19 meeting in Columbia.
“I fully expect that, by the time the [SCBC] convention is held in November, we will be able to put forth a plan that will help us do more to reach our world for Christ than we have ever done as a state convention in the past,” Carter said, “and that we will do so in a fashion that is amenable to all those laboring under the umbrella of South Carolina Baptist ministries.
“Are we there yet? No,” said Carter. “Will we be? I pray so and believe we will.”
The task force, which has met monthly since January, was appointed by outgoing state convention president Fred Stone last November to develop a plan for how the South Carolina Baptist Convention will respond to GCR initiatives approved by messengers at the June 2010 meeting of the Southern Baptist Convention.
In his statement, Carter said the the task force is not a “cookie cutter committee,” and said he “can’t imagine an opinion that [one] might have that someone on our committee doesn’t share and hasn’t voiced.”
Referencing “tension” in the task force’s recent discussions, Carter said he was not fearful of “admitting that things didn’t go as smooth as silk,” adding, “we just did all the things that people do when they discuss matters about which they are passionate and have heartfelt conviction.”
“I wouldn’t want it any other way,” he said.
Carter said in January he hopes the task force will complete its work in September or October, in time to make its recommendations available to South Carolina Baptists prior to the SCBC annual meeting Nov. 15-16 at the Columbia Metropolitan Convention Center.
The theme for the meeting, to be led by SCBC president Sonny Holmes, will be “Immeasurably More.”