After seven months of deliberations, the South Carolina Baptist Great Commission Resurgence Task Force will unveil its recommendations in a video to be released Aug. 1.
The South Carolina Great Commission Resurgence Task Force began meeting in January 2011.Ralph Carter, pastor of Brushy Creek Church, Taylors, and chairman of the GCR task force, told the Courier the panel’s report will be unveiled at the website of the South Carolina Baptist Convention (http://www.scbaptist.org). DVDs of the video report will be mailed to all SCBC pastors the same day, he said.
Carter said the full text of the GCR report will be published in the Aug. 4 issue of The Baptist Courier.
The task force’s recommendations, which will call for channeling more money to the International Mission Board and reinvigorating South Carolina Baptists’ efforts at church planting and revitalization, will be considered for adoption Nov. 15 by messengers from South Carolina Baptist churches during a special Tuesday night session of the SCBC annual meeting in Columbia.
Carter was named chairman of the task force last November by former SCBC president Fred Stone. The task force, whose 35 members were also appointed by Stone, was authorized by convention messengers to “develop a plan for how the South Carolina Baptist Convention will respond to the Great Commission Resurgence of the Southern Baptist Convention.”
The SBC’s GCR task force report calls for directing more funds to international missions and to major metropolitan areas and Western states in the U.S. To help pay for the initiatives, the report urges state conventions to increase the percentage of Cooperative Program funds they forward to the SBC.
The South Carolina GCR task force first convened in January 2011 and met monthly. In May, Carter reported that the panel was making progress and predicted the task force would “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 – in a fashion that is amenable to all those laboring under the umbrella of South Carolina Baptist ministries.”
In an open letter to South Carolina Baptists published June 9 in the Courier, Carter said the plan crafted by the task force will “allow us to contribute substantially more money to the IMB without crippling the ministries of our ministry partners [SCBC institutions].” He said the plan also calls for a “concerted effort” to encourage churches to increase Cooperative Program giving and for South Carolina Baptists to “sharpen their focus and raise the level of attention given to church planting and church revitalization.”
“The desire of the committee throughout this process has been to come with recommendations that would unite us as South Carolina Baptists and not be divisive,” he said.