Aiken Baptist Association messengers have adopted a statement that expresses non-support for the report of the South Carolina Baptist Convention’s Great Commission Resurgence Task Force “as it is being presented” at the upcoming SCBC annual meeting. An accompanying statement requests that convention messengers be permitted to vote on each of the report’s 11 recommendations individually.
Gathering Oct. 11 at Redds Branch Baptist Church for the association’s quarterly meeting, approximately 125 messengers from among the association’s 73 churches approved, in separate votes, each of the two statements by a “clear majority,” said director of missions Jim Diehl. “This [vote] wasn’t down the middle,” he said. The messengers were “not in favor of the report as it now stands,” he said.
The motion for the first statement, presented from the floor, proposed that “we, the Aiken Baptist Association, issue a statement to the South Carolina Baptist Convention, going on the record, that we as an association do not support the GCR task force report as it has been publicized by the GCR task force of the South Carolina Baptist Convention; and as it is being presented to the annual meeting of the South Carolina Baptist Convention on Tuesday evening, November 15, 2011.”
After the motion passed, a second statement was presented by way of a motion: “We, the Aiken Baptist Association, request that voting on the GCR report be done by a line item vote for each of the recommendations.” The second motion also passed.
The statements were released in the form of a letter from the association, which included the closing statement, “It is with respect to the GCR task force that we submit this statement, realizing that yours was a burdensome responsibility.”
In addition to The Baptist Courier, a copy of the letter was being sent to GCR task force chairman Ralph Carter, said Diehl.
Diehl said Aiken Association messengers had questions and objections concerning some of the GCR report’s recommendations, including proposals that would alter the way trustees are elected to the SCBC’s seven institutions. Some messengers questioned whether the state convention should be sending more funds out of state at a time when giving from churches is declining and staffing at the Baptist building has been cut, Diehl said, and some expressed concern that funding for ministries for the aging might be reduced.
“These other concerns were decisive in the second motion to request that we vote [on the GCR report] on a line-item basis rather than in totality,” Diehl said.
“Everybody was in agreement that there are some very good things about the task force report,” Diehl added. There wasn’t anyone who said, ‘I’m not for any of this,’?” he said.