BaptistLIFE Online

By David Roach, Florida Bapatist Witness correspondent

NASHVILLE (FBW)—The first “Component” of the Great Commission Resurgence Task Force’s interim “progress report“ calls Southern Baptists to rally around a missional vision focused on the Great Commission and to “create a new and healthy culture within the Southern Baptist Convention.”

However, a vice president at the SBC Executive Committee says the task force is wrong to suggest that convention leaders and meetings have failed to champion such a vision in the recent past.

The report, released Feb. 22, proposes a “missional vision” to “present the Gospel of Jesus Christ to every person in the world and to make disciples of all the nations.”

To that end, the “progress report” lists eight core values the GCRTF says will help create a changed culture: Christ-likeness, truth, unity, relationships, trust, future, local church and Kingdom. It argues that the present SBC culture is very different from the ideal.

“Our present culture represents 1 Corinthians 3 much more than 1 Corinthians 13,” the report reads.

GCR Task Force chairman Ronnie Floyd went further in comments to Florida Baptist Witness, suggesting the Convention’s website and many of its meetings fail to emphasize the Great Commission and the eight core values it has determined to be essential to Southern Baptists.

“The core values we want our Convention to embrace can help us create a new culture in the way we talk to and relate to one another personally and in the way we conduct our business together,” Floyd said. “When one cannot find easily the content of a component of this nature on the Convention’s website and never hear our missional vision referred to in our meetings together, it is evident that it does not exist to a point that it is important enough to have visibility in our Convention.”

The SBC lacks clarity on this issue and the GCRTF wants “to see this changed radically,” he said.

Floyd said response to Component #1 of the report has been overwhelmingly positive with only one change suggested. The GCRTF is not considering any changes to this component at present, he said.

But Roger S. Oldham, Executive Committee vice president for convention relations, said the Empowering Kingdom Growth (EKG) initiative, adopted by the SBC in 2002, sets forth a vision that is very similar to that of the GCR Task Force. Denominational leaders have referenced EKG repeatedly since its adoption and gave it a prominent position on the SBC website (www.sbc.net), he said.

Oldham categorized Floyd’s criticism of the SBC website as misguided and ironic.

“In order to make room for the Pray4GCR.com banner that is now in the place of prominence on the front page of sbc.net, the EKG banner was moved to the bottom of the column,” Oldham told the Witness.

“Here is the irony: we moved it from its former prominent position in order to encourage prayer for the Great Commission Task Force,” he said.

Oldham added, “We will be glad to move the EKG heartbeat back to its position of prominence. It once was very easy to find on sbc.net. It can be again.”

Oldham also said that many Southern Baptists have renewed their focus on the Great Commission and the Kingdom of God because of EKG. He believes the GCRTF would do well to tie its vision in with EKG rather than criticize the SBC for failing to articulate a missional vision.

“Given that thousands of churches, dozens of associations, and several state conventions have already developed EKG strategies, I think it would strengthen the GCRTF’s Component #1 if they chose to link their newly articulated missional vision with EKG,” Oldham said. “New is not always better simply because it is new. New prominence? Absolutely. Stronger promotion? Definitely. This is what energizes people, no matter what the precise wording of the vision may be.”

Ed Stetzer, missiologist and president of the research arm of LifeWay Christian Resources, told the Witness the word “missional” has become a widely accepted term in evangelical circles during the last decade, though it may be unfamiliar to some.

“At its core, ‘missional’ is generally defined as joining God on His mission,” Stetzer said. “In other words, the church and Christians do not exist for themselves, but rather they are here to join Jesus on mission and to live sent for God’s agenda. We reorder our priorities to be focused on what God is doing rather than what we want.”

Greg Wills, professor of church history at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Ky., told the Witness the call to join God on His mission has long been a feature of Southern Baptist life. But he said the task force is right to call the Convention to renew its commitment to missions and evangelism.

“These emphases—or at least several of the emphases—are not new. They are a renewal of traditional emphases,” Wills said of the eight core values.

Now is an appropriate time for renewal because the SBC’s success and size have driven Southern Baptists to complacency, he said, adding that man’s sinful nature gives him a pro­pensity to drift from God’s purposes.

Wills noted the Convention has called itself back to Great Commission fulfillment many times in the past. Notable examples include the 75 Million Campaign of 1919, when Southern Baptists sought to raise $75 million for missions and ministries, and the inception of the Cooperative Program in 1925.

The GCR “represents the same kind of impulse because there was a growing recognition in the early 20th century that we were not being efficient in our stewardship of the Great Commission,” Wills said. “We were not fulfilling our responsibility as a communion of churches to get the Gospel out to the world in a way that was effective, in a way that was faithful to our resources and opportunity.”

As in the 1920s, Southern Baptists today must make all necessary adjustments to reach the nations for Christ, according to Wills. State conventions have a special responsibility to reexamine their priorities, he said, because they have the first opportunity to decide how CP funds are distributed.

Most Southern Baptists “feel that at least 50 percent of our Cooperative Program dollars should be going overseas, should be going to international missions,” he said.

In the end, Floyd believes adopting the task force’s recommendations is the best way to unite the SBC in evangelism and missions.

“We want the pastors and Convention’s employees of all of our entities to be able to say and live our missional vision,” he told the Witness. “We want them to be familiar with the core values where they call all of us to be more responsible and accountable to one another. Everything we do as a Convention should flow from this missional vision.”

By James A. Smith Sr., Florida Baptist Witness Executive Editor

NASHVILLE (FBW)—As Southern Baptists debate a Feb. 22 preliminary report of its Great Commission Resurgence Task Force, little attention is being paid to what Chairman Ronnie Floyd calls Southern Baptists’ “number one need”—a “return to God in deep repentance” and to “experience a fresh wave of [the Holy] Spirit.”

About 10 pages of the 32-page “progress report” address the spiritual condition of Southern Baptists, painting a bleak picture of spiritual lethargy and relative Great Commission ineffectiveness in the nation’s largest Protestant denomination even while pointing to signs the world is on the “brink” of a “global harvest.”

“I believe with all my heart that God is calling us to return to Him now in deep repentance of our sin, in brokenness over our sin, denying our pride and selfishness and returning to God with complete humility,” Floyd said in the progress report.

Rhetoric bemoaning “our dismal baptism numbers, our declining and plateaued churches, and our economic selfishness” should “cease and the repentance personally and corporately must begin,” he said.

Although Floyd’s report gives high priority to spiritual awakening and makes a general appeal for repentance, the GCRTF offers no recommendations on how Southern Baptists can seek renewal.

Asked by Florida Baptist Witness if specific proposals concerning spiritual matters may be forthcoming, Floyd said, “absolutely,” adding the final report to be released May 3 will address these matters “more effectively.”

Floyd said “we felt we could wait on some matters” in order to permit the initial report to deal with issues “our Convention needed to be aware of and be able to respond to us about.”

That may explain why most discussion about the progress report has centered on the GCRTF’s recommendations to re-structure various aspects of denominational life.

But the GCRTF asserts Southern Baptists’ first need is a spiritual awakening, and Southern Baptist leaders interviewed by the Witness agree.

Don Whitney, associate professor of biblical spirituality at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, said while there is “much to be grateful for” there is also “much to be concerned about” in the SBC.

Whitney is the founder and president of The Center for Biblical Spirituality and has written widely on spirituality issues.

According to Whitney, SBC seminaries are producing “record numbers of pastors who are committed to preaching the Bible and who care deeply about biblical reformation of churches,” and there is a “growing desire to return to basics such as, ‘What is the Gospel?’, ‘What is a Christian?’, and ‘What is a church?’”

Additionally, “I see a fresh emphasis on the Baptist principle of a regenerate church membership and a growing passion to take the Gospel to the
nations,” he said.

Yet, Whitney warned, “At the same time there are so many churches where many of these issues are taken for granted, and no sense of the need for eternal vigilance about them.”

Tom Elliff, former SBC president and former senior vice president of spiritual nurture and church relations at the International Mission Board, said an “awakening” is “desperately needed in our Southern Baptist churches,” noting he prefers “awakening” to “revival” because “revival presumes pre-existing life. We have clear evidence that such life in Christ does not exist in the hearts of many current church members.”

The need for awakening is broader than Southern Baptists, said Elliff, a former pastor for 42 years and founder of Living in the Word Publications.

“The United States is in dire need of a spiritual awakening on the order of the great awakenings in our earlier history,” he said. “We have completed the first century in our history without such an awakening.”

Don Walton, pastor of New Hope Baptist Church in Zephyrhills, Fla., and self-described “revivalist,” said while he is thankful and proud to be a Southern Baptist, the SBC deserves a failing grade because the “world’s influence upon us is increasingly pervasive.”

What are the appropriate indicators for assessing the spiritual condition of the SBC? Spirituality experts don’t point to church and denominational statistics.

“Love—for Christ, for Christlikeness, for His Word, for the Gospel, for His people and for the lost,” Whitney said.

“Contrary to popular opinion, I don’t believe the true barometer of spirituality is the counting of nickels, noses and baptisms,” Walton said, adding that “church purity is a better gauge of our true spiritual condition than church growth,” pointing to 1 John 2:18-29.

Elliff suggested a lengthy list of indicators of spiritual vitality: “Hunger for the Word; sacrificial living under the Lordship of Christ; selfless lifestyles marked by eager giving of ourselves and our resources; a comprehension of the need for evangelism and church planting on a global scale; fearless pastors; spirit-filled lives; passionate, faithful approaches to discipleship; love for others; and an eagerness for authentic worship.”

The leaders differ on the role of the Convention corporately in encouraging an awakening among the SBC’s 50,000 congregations.

“The task force is obviously eager for spiritual awakening, and is urging us to set the table for such a move of God, but they are aware that we cannot organize a spiritual awakening into existence,” said Elliff.

“Awakening is a sovereign act of God,” Elliff said. “We should not presume, however, that we are not in need of a fresh look at the manner in which Southern Baptists are structured.”

Walton counters, denominational streamlining is “laudable” but “it is no spiritual solution to what is obviously a spiritual problem.”

Walton, founder of Time For Truth Ministries, insisted:, “No matter how sleek a Convention we can build, it will prove to be nothing more than a pretty corpse without the life of the Spirit surging through it. … Revival is now a matter of our survival.”

In the progress report, Floyd points to Joel 2:12-17, which the GCRTF

embraced as speaking to the spiritual situation of Southern Baptists. In the passage, Floyd explains in the report, God calls on Israel to hold a sacred fast and solemn assembly to “return to Him in total surrender, complete humility, and with a new attitude.

Asked by the Witness if the GCRTF has weighed calling for a comparable special spiritual observance among Southern Baptists, Floyd said “we have considered this and still are considering this.”

Floyd noted his own church observed a 21-day fast in January, in part to focus prayer on GCR.

Whitney, who is completing a Doctor of Theology in Christian spirituality, said it would be a “great idea” for the GCRTF to call Southern Baptists to a fast and solemn assembly, noting in addition to “national fasts in the the­ocracy of Israel” that “congregational fasts” were practiced in the New Testament, such as the church in Antioch (Acts 13:2).

Walton has “no problem” with a call for a special spiritual emphasis, adding Christians should personally and corporately fast and pray, and “continue to do so until God meets with us in a solemn assembly, granting us repentance and revival.”

Nevertheless, Walton said, “Southern Baptists need to stop trying to calendar a move of the Spirit.”

The GCRTF progress report asserts the world is on the “brink of the mightiest outpouring of the Holy Spirit to have ever occurred in the world,” citing as evidence Christian conversions in some of the most difficult places for Christianity in the world.

Whitney expressed hope the progress report is correct, but said historically it’s difficult to “discern when a great outpouring of the Spirit is about to occur.”

Still, Whitney has seen more than ever before “widespread, growing interest in joining together with all those who love the Gospel of Jesus Christ,” citing various types of evangelicals.

“I believe this truly is a growing work of the Holy Spirit. The Bible
repeatedly promises that there will be a time when the knowledge of the Lord will cover the earth as the waters cover the sea,” he said. “There are various views of the end times regarding when this will come about. Nevertheless, it will happen someday. Wouldn’t it be wonderful to see it in our own lifetime?”

Elliff told the Witness many other Christians “around the world are
already crying out to God for a great moving of His Spirit.”

Southern Baptists should stop worrying “about whether we can be perceived as leading the way,” Elliff said. “It is high time for us to rend our hearts in a passionate cry for awakening, devoid of selfish pride and pettiness. We must cast ourselves on the Lord, frankly confessing our spiritual poverty, indifference and waywardness.”

Walton believes “our day is more indicative of the biblically predicted perilous times of the last days,” citing 2 Tim. 3:1-13, adding he hopes Floyd’s assessment is correct “and I am wrong.”

“One thing is for sure: whether revival ever again comes to this world, it can come to our Convention,” he said. “Whether it ever comes to our Convention, it can come to my church. And whether it ever comes to my church, it can come to me. And believe me, no one in our Convention needs revival any more than I do.”

IMB unlikely to appoint missionaries in North America, president says

By JONI B. HANNIGAN, Florida Baptist Witness

NASHVILLE (FBW)-A recommendation by the Great Commission Resurgence Task Force to remove geographical barriers preventing the International Mission Board from working with unreached people groups “on American soil” will not likely result in missionaries being assigned stateside, nor will it result in churches planted by IMB personnel.

IMB president Jerry Rankin told Florida Baptist Witness he supports Component #3 of the “progress report” the GCRTF made to the Southern Baptist Convention’s Executive Committee Feb. 22 which asks “Southern Baptists to entrust to the International Mission Board the ministry to reach the unreached and under-served people groups without regard to any geographic limitations.”

Rankin said, however, there should not be an expectation that the IMB will place missionaries throughout the United States because “it’s a matter of proportion” and indigenous strategies. Instead, Rankin said he envisions IMB’s primary role will be to mobilize, train, equip and mentor local churches, associations, state conventions and the North American Mission Board.

“It will be a partnership,” Rankin said. “It’s not an exclusive role that the IMB is going to do for Southern Baptists in this assignment. Our role is to facilitate, enable all Southern Baptists to fulfill the Great Commission and so that’s how I would anticipate our approaching this aspect of the Great Commission task in America.”

Although the “progress report” indicates the GCRTF is “unleashing the International Mission Board upon American soil,” Rankin does not see this as “very radical,” but said NAMB and others have encouraged IMB to help them reach ethnic and other peoples in the states.

“I don’t see this really as very radical. I don’t see it as conflicting and overlapping of turf with North American Mission Board, a potential conflict as some had conjectured,” Rankin said. He noted IMB and NAMB administrators and boards already meet twice a year to collaborate on some efforts.

UNENGAGED AND UNREACHED PEOPLE GROUPS

Rankin said the “top priority” for IMB are the Unengaged Unreached People Groups (UUPG) of which there are 41 with a population of more than a million and 469 with a population of more than 100,000. These groups have no churches, no Christians, no Scripture or Christian resources in their native language or culture –and no mission agency.

An Unreached People Group (UPG) Rankin said, is one in which less than 2 percent of the population are born again and there is no active church planting movement or witness making the Gospel accessible to the remaining 98 percent of the population. Of 11,000 people groups throughout the world, over 4,000 are considered unreached.

With hundreds of unengaged unreached people groups around the world who have no access to the Gospel, and over 4,000 unreached people groups who have had only very limited exposure to the Gospel, Rankin said he is positive about the proposed new strategy.

Rankin, who has served as IMB president 17 years, announced his plans for retirement last fall, to be effective July 31.

Citing prolific work among immigrant groups in the U.S. such as Vietnamese, Hispanics, Slavics and Haitians, Rankin said the state conventions “don’t have the capacity, the focus” to reach other people groups that are less populous. “They really don’t have the training or the expertise in those cultural worldviews that we would have,” he said.

Rankin noted a “Great Commission Initiative” he said grew out of a group of urban Baptist directors of missions, several from Texas, who traveled to London several years ago to participate in a lab sponsored by the IMB. The GCI website says the training is possible because of CP and “Associational Missions Gifts” and lists IMB and others who provide “intensive training and networking opportunities designed to equip highly motivated Christians to identify, engage, evangelize and disciple unreached people groups.”

Cecil Seagle, director of the missions division of the Florida Baptist Convention, told the Witness the challenge of reaching the lost is significant and he would welcome a partnership with the IMB to evangelize the unreached in Florida.

“I do not know of any serious missiologist that would not take seriously the expertise and the calling of a competent International Mission Board missionary who is spending his or her life in reaching people with the Gospel of Jesus,” Seagle said.

Because NAMB and IMB ministry statements limit involvement with state conventions, Seagle said the Florida Baptist Convention “has not been able to tap” the IMB successfully in ministry to a number of UPGs in Florida, but he hopes that will change.

The “progress report” does not appear to provide a framework for how the broadened assignment may work, Seagle said.

“My greatest hope for the sake of the Kingdom would be the revisiting of charters, documents, agreements, between IMB and the NAMB to take place—and whatever those barriers and barricades and obstacles are, that put us either in competition or disallows cooperation, they could be removed so that we can adequately and successfully cooperate for the Gospel’s sake,” Seagle said. “It’s as simple as that.”

Whether these partnerships will acknowledge the experience of local missiologists who will look at unreached people groups in Florida as compared to those in international settings “is the most serious question we could ask,” Seagle said.

“If an unreached people group person has been in the United States or North America for any length of time then the Americanization of that individual is a serious challenge and by that I mean their culture, their ethnicity, perhaps their language group, their religious persuasions—wherever they came from—is a vital issue and is a challenging issue in terms of sharing the Good News of Jesus,” Seagle said.

Additionally, Seagle said, he is not interested in what he calls, “unilateralism,” or an attitude he says “refuses to recognize the calling and the giftedness of the body of Christ and … it may assume an attitude of superiority that is neither biblical nor does it enhance the sharing of the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

“If the IMB is interested in reaching the whole world and that includes America, then I am also interested in reaching the whole world and there is a ‘C’ word that we need to remember,” Seagle said. “That’s that word of cooperation. … If we can learn to cooperate and we can learn to coordinate effectively and if we can learn to collaborate effectively, I think that would be the best of all worlds.

Tom Ascol, pastor of Grace Baptist Church in Cape Coral, Fla., affirmed Component #3 in a March 12 blog analyzing the “progress report.”

Calling the current limits an “irrational policy,” Ascol said most Southern Baptists “would blow a gasket” if they learned the IMB was not permitted to work in the US, noting he “found it hard to believe” when he first learned of the policy a few years ago.

“So I rejoice at component #3 of the report,” he added.

Ascol’s church is preparing to send a member later this summer to the Indonesian Island of Sumatra where of 60 people groups, 52 are considered unreached by the Gospel.

Seagle said in working among UPGs, differences in methods of church planting between NAMB and the IMB—and state conventions—may add layers in accomplishing the task.

Holding to what he called an “old-fashioned,” but New Testament view based on Acts 1:8, Seagle said in the time of Jesus, there was a great harvest and thousands came to know Christ.

“The Body of Christ was dispersed all over the known world and out of that great harvest came congregationalizing,” Seagle said. “Now we’ve turned church planting into a program to be implemented instead of the harvest to be engaged.

“If we are going to invade the deep, steep, lostness of Florida, we’ve got to go back to that biblical pattern,” he continued. “Engage the harvest, share the Good News and as people come to Christ, we congregationalize them.”

CP INCREASE PROPOSED

Speaking to Component #6 of the “progress report,” a proposed increase of CP funds for the IMB that raises its allocation of total CP funds in 2011-12 to 51 percent, Rankin said he is appreciative of the increase, described by the GCRTF as “symbolic and substantial.”

Rankin admitted, however, the additional one percent of “diminishing” Cooperative Program receipts – about $2 million – is not going to make a lot of difference to a $283 million budget or “open up a flow of missionaries to the field.”

Less than half of the IMB’s funding comes from CP. The remaining budget comes from the Lottie Moon Christmas Offering and other sources. The task force’s final component suggests the increase at the same time it asks for a reduction of 1 percent in funding for the Facilitating Ministries of the SBC within the Executive Committee budget.

Tangibly, the increase in resources could mean 20 more couples on the field, Rankin said. Still, he said, it’s not enough.

“Is it enough for what? Enough for reaching a lost world? Not hardly. That’s how we gauge everything. The remaining lostness, what does it take?” Rankin asked “So, no, 1 percent is not enough.”

Rankin said the way CP funds are divided “will never work” and will always be a “win, lose.”

“I think it can be a win, win,” he said.

In addition to providing “adequate” funding for each entity, determining just how much each ministry needs to carry out its ministry assignment, Rankin said, could be part of thinking creatively and differently in order to adapt to new paradigms of doing missions.

Another way to adjust would be the GCRTF’s proposal related to the category of Great Commission Giving, Rankin said.

“The whole idea of Great Commission Giving is that anything a church designates to a recipient of CP funds, should count as CP funding, not as a separate category,” Rankin said is his understanding of how it should work.

Ultimately, Rankin said both of the Components are positive—and the increase in funding—even 1 percent, represents movement, something he said could have taken place when the SBC went through a restructuring in 1997.

“I think this is significant that once that 50 percent barrier is broken, it does create that flexibility to make adjustments in what our allocations are,” Rankin said.

By Tammi Reed Ledbetter , The TEXAN News Editor

NASHVILLE — When Southern Baptist Convention President Johnny Hunt took the stage at the first listening session of the newly appointed Great Commission Resurgence Task Force, no one doubted his desire to see the 22 members put any idea on the table to “discover how Southern Baptists can work more faithfully and effectively together in serving Christ through the Great Commission.”

Nor did it take long for critics to emerge, fearing change that would wreak havoc with the Cooperative Program. As recently as 2007, SBC messengers affirmed CP as “Southern Baptists’ unified plan of giving through which cooperating Southern Baptist churches give a percentage of their undesignated receipts in support of their respective state convention and the SBC missions and ministries.”

GCRTF critics predicted that any alteration to the definition of CP would return the convention to a pre-1925 era of societal missions when mission boards, seminaries and other entities competed for funds.

Instead, the fifth component of the progress report released by the task force on Feb. 22 and posted online at pray4gcr.com reaffirms the Cooperative Program as the preferred means of giving, placing it under a new umbrella of Great Commission Giving.

The recommendation as stated in GCRTF Component 5 states:
“We believe in order for us to work together more faithfully and effectively towards the fulfillment of the Great Commission, we will ask Southern Baptists to reaffirm the Cooperative Program as our central means of supporting Great Commission ministries; but in addition, we will ask Southern Baptists to celebrate with our churches in their Great Commission Giving that goes directly through the Cooperative Program, as well as any designated gifts given to the causes of the Southern Baptist Convention, a state convention or a local association.”

GCRTF member David Dockery, president of Union University in Jackson, Tenn., explained the rationale behind the new category when he spoke last month to faculty, students and area Southern Baptists.

“We are not taking away our commitment to the Cooperative Program. Since 1925 it has been the genius and the glue that has helped hold us together in so many ways,” he said.

Dockery also explained why the task force chose not to redefine CP.

“There is nothing better we can find . . . to work cooperatively in our shared work, our shared mission, our shared funding than the Cooperative Program.” In fact, state conventions would play a greater role in promoting stewardship and CP at a time when the average portion churches give to CP from undesignated receipts has slipped from around 10 percent in the 1980s to 6.08 percent in 2008.

Explaining the proposed addition of a new category for designated funds, Dockery said, “We want to add some icing onto the cake perhaps and that is to celebrate Great Commission Giving.”

By way of illustration, he cited the preference of some churches “to give directly to the North American Mission Board without giving to anyone else” or those that choose to fund the International Mission Board efforts through the Lottie Moon Christmas Offering. In his state, Dockery said local churches might favor particular Southern Baptist-related causes such as the Tennessee Baptist Children’s Home or Union University and see those gifts counted as “Great Commission Giving.”

GCRTF member Robert White, executive director of the Georgia Baptist Convention, said the term “Great Commission Giving” is intended to more clearly define the purpose and destination of mission gifts. He rejected criticism that the term “elevates designations and devalues the Cooperative Program.”

Instead, White said, the proposal seeks to “acknowledge, with gratitude, all that our churches are giving to kingdom causes through our convention.”

In Dockery’s words, “We are not asking Great Commission Giving to replace Cooperative Program giving, but asking Cooperative Program giving to be enhanced by, augmented by those who would choose to give differently.”

Numerous Southern Baptist causes not directly benefiting from CP allocations stand to gain more revenue from local churches desiring to see those gifts recognized in Annual Church Profile accounting. ACP reports often become the basis upon which local churches are evaluated in regard to total baptisms, attendance and contributions. It is also the criterion messengers to a state or national conventions often use in deciding between candidates for elected offices.

Messengers to SBC annual meetings repeatedly reject calls for a minimal 10 percent commitment to CP by the churches from which leaders are tapped for convention offices or trustee boards. Two-thirds of SBC presidents in the past 30 years have come from churches with CP contributions well below 10 percent, the exceptions being Jimmy Draper, Morris Chapman, Paige Patterson, Bobby Welch and Frank Page. When mission-related gifts to all causes are factored, the other presidents gain some credibility for the overall missions commitment of the churches they serve.

Currently, local churches record gifts to the Cooperative Program, associations, offerings that benefit the state convention, Annie Armstrong Easter Offering for North American Missions, and the Lottie Moon Christmas Offering for International Missions.

They use the category “other missions” to account for funding outreach efforts as defined by each local church. Some churches might include expenditures for projects in another state or directly funded international work whether it has a Southern Baptist connection or not.

Local churches first send their CP contributions to state conventions, which keep a portion for in-state ministries, forwarding the remainder to the SBC for distribution to SBC missions and ministries. Currently, CP allocations fund the International Mission Board (50 percent), North American Mission Board (22.79 percent), six seminaries and historical library and archives (22.16 percent), SBC Operations of the Executive Committee (3.4 percent) and Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission (1.65 percent). Further details on CP accounting are available at cpmissions.net.

The only change to CP allocations recommended by the task force involves taking 1 percent away from the Executive Committee and passing it along to the IMB to strengthen overseas work. With state conventions given primary responsibility for CP promotion and stewardship education in the proposal, the task force assumes the Executive Committee will have money to spare for what CGRTF Chairman Ronnie Floyd sums up as their primary goal — penetrating lostness.

The GCRTF proposal also accomplishes a priority SBC President Johnny Hunt set for it early on. At the first listening session before 300 participants on Aug. 25 in Rogers, Ark., Hunt said, “When we judge a person’s commitment on the Great Commission, we have the potential of elevating the Cooperative Program above the Great Commission.”

He reiterated that concern Feb. 22, telling reporters, “We talk about the difference it would make if everybody would increase [Cooperative Program giving] by 1 percent, but we never celebrate that type of movement.”  Instead, he said, the 10 percent level becomes “the badge of honor,” he said.

He explained that many churches have been focusing their efforts on a variety of causes such as becoming debt free, planting churches or directly funding missionaries, before turning their attention to increasing the portion given to CP. “But we never celebrate that type of movement. It’s almost as if, if you’re not at 10 percent, you’re not a cooperating Southern Baptist church.” That type of appeal has been “more of a turn-off than a help,” Hunt said. “I think we need to celebrate the Great Commission — all of it that we’re doing to bring people into the kingdom.”

Regarding ACP reporting, Hunt said, “It’s fine for them to list that, but if judged on our commitment to the Great Commission it ought to be to the Great Commission and not just the Cooperative Program. We’re committed to both,” he said, referring to an increase in the percentage of undesignated receipts at First Baptist Church of Woodstock, Ga., as well as designated giving to SBC causes and other mission efforts.

“Quite frankly, our church could care less about how folks outside count our loyalty,” added GCRTF member Al Gilbert, pastor of Calvary Baptist Church in Winston-Salem, N.C.

“It’s a game the next generation is sick of. They have no desire to have that kind of loyalty pin,” he said, garnering widespread applause at the Feb. 22 GCRTF news conference. “We’d better wake up and listen to that.”

In the same forum, Floyd insisted that churches are best evaluated by their effectiveness in penetrating the lostness of the world, reaching the community that surrounds them as well as the ends of the earth. The two church campuses he pastors in Northwest Arkansas launched 13 churches worldwide in the prior year and 33 since 2001 while increasing the amount given to CP by 44 percent when compared to the previous year.

Through the category of designated Great Commission Giving, churches like those pastored by Hunt, Gilbert and Floyd could report sizeable investments in planting churches in cooperation with the North American Mission Board in areas like Las Vegas, Baltimore and San Diego as well as overseas projects for which churches are recruited by the IMB to undergird.

Some churches also choose to bypass the state convention when contributing undesignated gifts to SBC causes, often as a way of voicing disapproval for the state convention’s priorities or leadership. Under the new plan, funds sent directly to the SBC would be classified as Designated Great Commission Giving, along with support for association, state, national and international offerings. The previously used category of “other missions” will become “Other SBC, State and Association Mission Gifts,” no longer reporting non-SBC-related giving, according to an explanation provided to the Christian Index by White.

The autonomy of the local church is highlighted throughout the GCRTF report and drives some of the thinking behind the recommendation for ACP reporting. When the subject arose at a recent meeting of the Georgia Baptist Convention Executive Committee, White told members, “Some of you are going to have to swallow real hard, but I think it is a godly thing to do. Acknowledge that churches are autonomous and they have a right to decide where their money is going to go. You don’t have to agree with them,” he said, favoring the effort to affirm the value of all missions gifts, whether directed through the Cooperative Program or not.

Southern Baptists who disagree with the priorities of their state conventions are in the best position to change how funds are allocated and how much remains in-state by voting at their annual meetings. The percentage retained for in-state ranges from a high of 87 percent kept by the Minnesota-Wisconsin Baptist Convention to a low of 45 percent at the Southern Baptists of Texas Convention.

However, many state conventions have been on a multi-year track of decreasing the portion they retain in order to advance more funds to SBC causes. In an open letter to the GCRTF, the Executive Committee of the Southern Baptist Conservatives of Virginia wrote that the trend of churches lowering their CP commitment makes the second of a dozen state conventions voting to raise the percentage forwarded to Nashville “all the more remarkable.”

Citing the Utah-Idaho Southern Baptist Convention for leading the way with a 4.5 percent increase, the SBCV letter added, “It is reminiscent of the churches in Macedonia who, out of their poverty, gave generously.”

The task force acknowledged this approach is visionary.

“When churches give more through the Cooperative Program and state conventions keep less of it within their respective states, and a compelling unified gospel vision is cast for Southern Baptists,” the task force believes “we will see giving through the Cooperative Program increase in a major way,” according to the report.

GCRTF member Tom Biles, executive director for Tampa Bay Baptist Association in Florida, predicted that the new means of recognition of all “Great Commission Giving” will “raise the level of association giving.”

Participants in a March conference call of the Network of Baptist Associations heard Biles and several other task force members explain the impact of the proposals included in the progress report released Feb. 22 in Nashville.

Combined with other proposals that prioritize church planting, evangelism and discipleship, Biles said, “The association is going to be at the heart of a movement for church planting across America.”

Floyd reminded directors of missions that the progress report is not the final document to be released in May for consideration by messengers to the SBC in Orlando. “One of the real positives about a progress report is we’ve been able to receive feedback, hear from our people.”

The final meeting of the task force is set for April 26 in Nashville with an early May release of the report to be recommended in Orlando.

White’s own board instructed him to present their concerns at that meeting, stating, “The wide application of the phrase ‘Great Commission Giving’ for monies given through the Cooperative Program as well as to designated causes may cause some Baptists to surmise wrongly that the Cooperative Program is merely a subset of giving instead of the primary means of missions giving for Southern Baptists.” The committee wants the task force to formally state that designated or special gifts are best provided as a supplement and not a substitute for the Cooperative Program.

Following the meeting of convention officers and staff, SBCV Executive Director Jeff Ginn of Virginia wrote, “It is my personal hope and expectation that there will be revisions that strengthen our convention-wide commitment to a cooperative approach to mission support and practice.”

Floyd wrote in a column last month, “Within our GCR Task Force or in any report to this convention, there has not been nor will there be any desire or movement to reduce the Cooperative Program and its significance in supporting Great Commission Ministries.”

Southern Baptists are being asked “to celebrate with our churches the Great Commission Giving that is given through the Cooperative Program which is our priority, but also to celebrate with our churches those gifts they felt led to designate to the causes of the Southern Baptist Convention, a state convention, or a local association. When our churches give to offerings like Lottie Moon, Annie Armstrong, and state-related mission offerings, the gospel is being advanced,” Floyd said.

“When we celebrate with our churches what they are doing for the Great Commission, they will be much more likely to support with greater enthusiasm and commitment our priority in all of our giving, which is the Cooperative Program of the Southern Baptist Convention.”

Tammi Reed Ledbetter, The TEXAN News Editor

NASHVILLE — There’s no denying that Southern Baptists individually, corporately and as a denomination are lagging in their stewardship of God’s resources. While the Great Commission Resurgence Task Force recommends shifting primary responsibility for Cooperative Program and stewardship promotion to state conventions, task force chairman Ronnie Floyd is counting on local pastors to teach their members to honor God through tithing.

“Remember, the only people who ever get offended with the declaration of biblical stewardship are the ones who give little to nothing at all to your church,” Floyd said in the news conference that followed the release of the task force interim report.

“Christians need to repent of the sin of not honoring God with at least the first-tenth of their income,” Floyd reminded. “Can you imagine the spiritual revival that would consume our churches if God’s people would obey God in giving? Can you imagine the opportunities of advancing the gospel regionally, nationally, and globally if God’s people would obey God in giving?”

Seeking to discover “how Southern Baptists can work more faithfully and effectively together in serving Christ through the Great Commission,” the task force analyzed the means of funding that effort and reaffirmed the Cooperative Program as the preferred means of giving.

Early proponents of a Great Commission Resurgence called on Southern Baptists to cut a larger piece of the Cooperative Program pie for the International Mission Board in order to see more dollars sent overseas and appealed to state conventions to keep fewer dollars for in-state use. While recommending the IMB’s share increase by 1 percent, a move Floyd called “symbolic,” the task force chose to trust state conventions with more responsibility for stewardship and CP promotion.

Component 4 of the task force progress report states:

“We believe in order for us to work together more faithfully and effectively towards the fulfillment of the Great Commission, we will ask Southern Baptists to move the ministry assignments of Cooperative Program promotion and stewardship education from the Executive Committee of the Southern Baptist Convention and return them to being the work of each state convention since they are located closer to our churches. Our call is for the state conventions to reassume their primary role in the promotion of the Cooperative Program and stewardship education, while asking the Executive Committee of the Southern Baptist Convention to support these efforts with enthusiasm and a convention-wide perspective.”

The SBC’s Executive Committee did not welcome the recommendation. In a March 11 historical review of CP promotion, stewardship education and the SBC, EC Convention Relations Vice President Roger S. Oldham offered a 10-page rebuttal of verbiage he called “potentially misleading.” (Visit baptist2baptist.net/issues/gcr/rso-03-19-10.asp for the complete text of the white paper.)

Concerned that Southern Baptists could infer from the words “return” and “reassume” that CP promotion and stewardship education “were once ministry assignments entrusted to the states,” Oldham said CP promotion has been a joint venture of the SBC and state conventions since its inception in 1925 “with the responsibility for strategy development uniformly assigned to the SBC, and the ‘field’ responsibilities consistently shared with our state convention ministry partners.”

Based on his defense of the SBC’s “right and responsibility” to promote CP and engage in stewardship education (including the decade when LifeWay Christian Resources had the stewardship assignment), Oldham argued the adoption of Component 4 would be the first time in SBC history “that the Convention will have assigned away its rights, role, and responsibility to promote funding and support for its ministries of international missions, North American missions, theological education, and moral advocacy, each of which is rightly under its purview.”

In making the case for giving state conventions primary responsibility for both assignments, Floyd said in his Feb. 22 presentation, “History shows that we have struggled with where to place both of these assignments in order to serve our churches more effectively.”  He expressed appreciation for the work of the Executive Committee, calling state conventions “Great Commission partners” of the SBC that could participate in a consortium involving the EC president.

“Together they can plan and execute an annual strategy that will promote the Cooperative Program to our churches as well as challenge our churches in biblical stewardship,” Floyd said. Calling it a return to the strategy offered in 1929 that gave state conventions responsibility for promoting CP “in the field and gathering funds from the churches,” Floyd said historic precedence permits such a move.

The EC’s Oldham disagreed. While the SBC has recognized state conventions as full ministry partners that promote the work of their respective ministries as well as the “whole” Cooperative Program, he reiterated, “The states are autonomous Baptist general bodies in their own right; they are not sub-sets of the Southern Baptist Convention and cannot be assigned ministries for which the Convention bears legal, moral, and spiritual responsibility.”

History at the state level

State conventions have been working in concert for decades along the line that task force proposes, sharing resources and ideas for stewardship education and CP promotion through the Stewardship Development Association. Begun in the 1960s to provide fellowship and continuing education, SDA assumed a greater role in generating resources that state conventions can share with local churches, often keeping production costs lower than the price of materials from the national entity and sometimes customizing them for specific states.

While complimenting the CP resources generated by the Executive Committee, SDA resource coordinator David Waganer told the TEXAN, “Our organization has worked hard to try to come alongside and not be in competition with the national office.” With most of their material addressing stewardship, Waganer anticipates any reduction in the Executive Committee’s role would prompt SDA to enhance its CP promotion materials.

The peril of competition was on the minds of pastors who crafted the language of the early reports about cooperation, Oldham told Baptist Press, labeling them “very wise” in their effort to formalize “mutual responsibilities among local associations, state and national conventions.”

IMB gains

In another component recommended by the task force, the IMB stands to gain 1 percent of CP budget allocations through the reduction of the Executive Committee’s assignment in these and perhaps other areas.

As a former denominational employee in Missouri, Oklahoma and South Carolina, Waganer said state conventions have a need to promote the Cooperative Program ministries they fund. “CP is not something to be owned. It’s a channel of mission support. We’re not giving to; we’re giving through. If people don’t understand that, they think we’re holding onto something when really we’re just a channel, a river to allow ministry to go forward.”

Floyd added, “The greatest amount of money that exists for the causes of Christ and the advancement of the gospel is in the pockets and financial portfolios of our church members.” He encouraged pastors and churches to be unashamed in the teaching and preaching of biblical stewardship. “Stand on the authority of the Word of God and call the people of God back to him through the giving of the first tenth and additional offerings to your local church.”

He offered his sharpest tone for the lack of participation in stewardship by many individual Southern Baptists of over 42,000 local churches, citing evidence that the average church member gives away only 2.56 percent of his income.

“From the time I did my doctoral dissertation in the area of biblical stewardship until now, I have been astounded by the selfishness of God’s people,” said Floyd, recommending that every pastor preach a series of messages on biblical stewardship annually and reaffirm such principles in small group studies.

“Even though we are envisioning the stewardship assignment going to state conventions, it is the responsibility of local churches to challenge their people to walk in obedience to God by honoring him weekly with at least the first-tenth of all income as well as additional offerings to our local churches.”

Referring to SDA’s two-year plan for stewardship education that includes CP promotion, Floyd said, “If you don’t have a plan, you’re not going to have any change. It’s a long process that’s not going to happen overnight, but you’ve got to start somewhere.”

Floyd and Waganer agree pastors must work at maturing the flock in their stewardship.

“It won’t happen just because the task force says, ‘OK, we’re going to put this back on the states,’” Waganer said. “It’s one church at a time, one member at a time.”

By Martin King, Illinois Baptist

NASHVILLE (IB)—For nearly eight months prior to release of the Great Commission Resurgence Task Force interim report, the most publically debated question was whether the task force would propose merging the North American Mission Board and the Southern Baptist Convention’s International Mission Board.

The report does not make the suggestion, although GCRTF chairman Ronnie Floyd acknowledged in a Feb. 23 interview with four state Baptist newspapers, “We looked at it very seriously. We had conviction about it, but just did not feel it was the best thing for the SBC at this time.”

Floyd recognized what denominational and mission leaders are well aware of: the two mission boards operate very differently.

“The North American Mission Board is such a unique organization, compared to the International Mission Board,” Floyd said. On the question of whether GCRTF recommendations would make a merger easier in the future, Floyd responded: “Yes, I would hope so because right now it would be very difficult to do it. But, is that our goal?  No.”

The biggest difference in Southern Baptists’ two mission boards lies in NAMB’s commitment to work through partnerships with 41 state Baptist conventions, plus conventions in Canada and Puerto Rico, while the International Mission Board does its work independent of local or national Baptist bodies in the countries where it has workers.

Although the IMB has relationships with mission partners around the world, the agency itself decides what its strategy will be implemented in different regions and countries and with specific people groups. And it fully supports its missionaries who are recruited, assessed, commissioned, trained, paid, and supervised at the direction of the agency.

Prior to the 1950’s, the SBC’s Home Mission Board (HMB), NAMB’s predecessor, operated much the same way to plan and fund its mission work in the United States. The HMB responded unilaterally to mission needs anywhere in the country. But, in 1959, the Southern Baptist Convention, in an effort to eliminate duplication and competition between the national mission agency and state conventions, instructed the HMB to develop “a single uniform mission program for the United States” with various state conventions. The HMB negotiated a written agreement of understanding with every state convention to define the partnership and each partner’s responsibilities.

Today’s cooperative agreements between NAMB and state conventions describe how the partners will “jointly develop, administer and evaluate an annual strategic mission plan on a cooperative basis.”  The confidential agreements are brief, 5-7 pages, uncomplicated and fairly standard, despite assertions by some GCRTF members that they are complicated and difficult to understand.

On the other hand, the strategic mission plan developed with each state convention is a detailed document describing the strategies, ministries, personnel, goals, and funding for every cooperative endeavor between the partners. Day-long conferences are held at least semi-annually between each convention and NAMB representatives to evaluate current plans and agree on changes for the next year. The state convention defines the needs in their state that align with NAMB-developed strategies and ministry objectives. If approved as part of the mission plan, the state then recruits potential personnel who are interviewed by NAMB staff, and when approved are then trained, paid, supported and supervised by the state convention or association.

The strategic mission plan includes a negotiated funding ratio for joint mission projects. In larger state conventions, NAMB and the state usually share funding for ministry projects on an equal basis, while in states with fewer SBC churches, NAMB funds 60-90 percent of agreed-upon projects and personnel.

The GCRTF proposes current cooperative agreements, mission plans, and accompanying funding be phased out over the next four years so that NAMB can begin to plan and fund direct missions across the country, similar to the IMB strategy and funding model. Task force member R. Albert Mohler Jr., president of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, called the cooperative agreements “outdated and confusing … .

“There is simply no way Southern Baptists can be more effective and faithful in this task if we retain the funding mechanisms of cooperative agreement,” Mohler said.

Mohler, Floyd and other GCRTF members have affirmed the work of state Baptist conventions and say they believe the proposed changes will make NAMB and state conventions stronger. The task force continues to meet with various groups of state convention executives to discuss “common concerns.” Floyd said he has met by phone or in person with executive directors from 40 states.

With a great deal of the Southern Baptist strategy for their states and million of dollars in funding at stake, state convention executive directors have been most vocal in questioning this aspect of the report and have responded through a variety of open letters and blogs, many reported in Baptist Press.

Executive directors from smaller conventions say they will be dramatically affected by the loss of NAMB’s share of jointly funded missions
personnel and projects.

“This will put the state convention and associations in Montana out of business,” said Fred Hewett, executive director of the Montana Southern Baptist Convention. The convention currently has eleven missionary staff members, all of whom are funded by NAMB.

“I would lose them all,” if the GCRTF “progress report” is approved, Hewett said.

Joe Bunce of New Mexico agreed, calling the proposal “a death sentence for the western states.”

Kansas-Nebraska executive director Bob Mills said the proposed changes would eliminate “one-third of our state convention budget and more than one hundred personnel serving in our two states.”

Although larger state conventions would appear to be in a better position to absorb the effect of losing between $500,000 to a million dollars of NAMB funding, Missouri Baptist Convention executive director David Tolliver said it would “devastate the missions and ministries of the MBC.”

Alabama leaders agreed.

Alabama evangelism director Sammy Gilbreath told the Alabama Baptist newspaper the proposed changes would “change the face of evangelism in Alabama.”  State director of missions, Gary Swafford, said they would “eliminate major ministries across the state.”  And, Alabama executive director, Rick Lance said, “There’s no way Alabama Baptists can pay for all the ministries and mission now supported jointly with NAMB.”

However, some larger states believe their conventions should be able to assist their member churches in reaching their states without NAMB funding, including Don Cass, evangelism director for the Southern Baptists of Texas Convention. “Texas has enough churches, associations and believers that we should and could reach Texas without assistance and could—and should—help other parts of our nation as well,” Cass said. “We should not depend on others to do our assignment.”

Cass added, “As God continues to bless us with new churches, I believe He will provide for them so that NAMB can assist smaller, struggling states and large population areas that presently have limited resources.”

Other state leaders are taking a wait-and-see attitude, ready to adapt to whatever changes ultimately come about. Nate Adams, executive director of the Illinois Baptist State Association, acknowledged that the task force’s proposed direction will have a significant impact on IBSA.

“If Southern Baptists elect to direct their funds more through national entities, it would be uncomfortable for us, but we can and would make the necessary adjustments to live within the means of Cooperative Program giving from Illinois Baptists alone,” Adams said.

As journalists, state convention leaders and others have attempted to understand the task force’s vision for NAMB’s new relationship with state conventions, Floyd told a group of Baptist communicators meeting in Chicago April 7 NAMB cannot act on its own.

“NAMB can’t do anything in and of itself,” Floyd said. “NAMB needs churches, state conventions and local associations.”

In March, Floyd told associational leaders it was never the task force’s intent that NAMB should work independently of associations and state conventions.

“Our heart is that partnership continues,” Floyd said. “Whether they are called cooperative agreements or not, there will be some kind of commitment towards partnership.” In another interview with Baptist journalists, Floyd said NAMB funding “could go back into those states, but it’s going to be in there in a different way, tied differently because of new agreements and new strategy.”

In a departure from the more definitive language in the “progress report” about the termination of cooperative agreements between the state conventions and NAMB, Floyd in a brief statement following an April 5 meeting of some GCRTF members and eight state executive directors referred three times to the task force and executive directors as going to the SBC “together.”

“We talked honestly, heard each other, and made some real progress,” Floyd said.

One state executive who attended the April 5 meeting suggested the task force was considering changes to Component #2.

David Hankins, executive director of the Louisiana Baptist Convention, told “LBCLive,” the GCRTF is “willing to make an improved recommendation,” including recommending NAMB allow a longer “phase-out period” for funding of larger state conventions, suggesting seven or eight years, rather than four years, as recommended in the “progress report.”

Floyd told Baptist communicators on April 7 he was encouraged that “the final report will get us to Orlando together.”

Editor’s note: Marty King served as director of communications for the Home Mission Board and North American Mission Board for 14 years prior to joining the Illinois Baptist State Association in 2006 as associate executive director and editor of
Illinois Baptist.