Joe Westbury/Index
GBC Executive Director J. Robert White, center, and Roger Spradlin, left, co-pastor of Valley Baptist Church in Bakersfield, Calif., hear a report while Jim Richards, right, executive director of the Southern Baptists of Texas Convention, takes notes.
SAN ANTONIO, Texas – Great Commission Task Force members have wrapped up three days of deliberations in advance of making a preliminary report on their findings next month.
At the meeting’s adjournment on January 28, Task Force Committee Chairman Ronnie Floyd said the 23-member group will make a “progress report” to the SBC Executive Committee when it meets in Nashville on February 22-23. – but Southern Baptists will need to wait until May 3 to read the entire document.
Floyd, pastor of First Baptist Church of Springdale, Ark., said the Task Force “still has a lot of work to do between now and June but we want to take this opportunity to bring Southern Baptists along in our work.”
Floyd said the update will contain “several items, such as where we are at this point, how we see the final document shaping up, how our vision is coming together.” He declined to be more specific.
There will be another meeting or two of the work group as it coalesces around a definitive statement on the spiritual condition of Southern Baptists and suggestions for how the denomination could be more effective.
The San Antonio meeting occurred three days before Southern Baptists were to set aside January 31 as a day of "concentrated" prayer for the future of the denomination. SBC President Johnny Hunt, pastor of First Baptist Church of Woodstock, made the request after input from Richard Harris, interim president of the North American Mission Board, and Frank Page, NAMB's vice president for evangelism.
Floyd, as spokesman for the group appointed by Hunt last June, underscored the considerable amount of work yet to be done and the limited amount of time in which to accomplish its goals.
“Our task is very large and we all have fulltime ministries and other normal demands on our time. We continue to be in the process of developing that vision and will continue to meet until we have finished the task,” he added.
“We still have a document to write.”
The Arkansas pastor did not say how many other times the group may meet, but did say an unofficial timetable was to have the final document released by May 3 on its pray4gcr.com website.
“Southern Baptists will be able to go online and see for themselves what we believe” the future holds for the denomination. “We will spend the month of May tweaking the document, if any tweaking is needed, before it is formally presented to messengers to the annual meeting in Orlando on June 15-16.
Joe Westbury/Index
The 23-member Task Force met for its fifth meeting in late January in San Antonio, Texas. Previous meetings were held in Atlanta (twice); Springdale, Ark.; and at the Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport. Chairman Ronnie Floyd says the group will meet another time or two before the final document is presented to Southern Baptists on May 3.
All 6,000 individuals who have registered at the site will also receive an email copy of the document as soon as it is released.
The task force was the brainchild of Hunt, who made the call for a Great Commission Resurgence the hallmark of his presidency. He will complete his second term as convention president at the Orlando meeting. With only five months to go, no one has yet been nominated as a candidate for the open position.
The San Antonio meeting was the first public appearance by the Woodstock pastor since his successful prostate surgery on January 7.
The Task Force has met on five occasions; twice in Atlanta, and once in Springdale, Ark.; at the Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport; and San Antonio.
Hunt’s seminal document, called A Great Commission Declaration, was first posted to the website www.greatcommissionresurgence.com on April 27 of last year. That site has since morphed into pray4gcr.com.
“The purpose of this is so that we may be a more effective people to carry the good news of the gospel to the ends of the earth,” he said at that time. The 10-point declaration calls for:
1. A Commitment to Christ’s Lordship;
2. A Commitment to Gospel-Centeredness;
3. A Commitment to the Great Commandments;
4. A Commitment to Biblical Inerrancy and Sufficiency;
5. A Commitment to a Healthy Confessional Center;
6. A Commitment to Biblically Healthy Churches;
7. A Commitment to Sound Biblical Preaching;
8. A Commitment to a Methodological Diversity that is Biblically Informed;
9. A Commitment to a More Effective Convention Structure;
10. A Commitment to Distinctively Christian Families.
Joe Westbury/Index
Ted Traylor, left, pastor of Olive Baptist Church in Pensacola, Fla., greets J. Robert White during a break at the Task Force meeting.
Joe Westbury/Index
SBC President Johnny Hunt, right, pastor of First Baptist Church of Woodstock, visits with Durham, N.C., pastor J.D. Greer during a break in sessions of the Great Commission Resurgence Task Force meeting. The San Antonio, Texas, meeting was the first public appearance of Hunt since his successful prostate surgery on January 7.
Joe Westbury/Index
Larry Grays, pastor of Midtown Bridge Church in Atlanta, takes notes on his computer as a presenter gives a report at the Task Force meeting. His congregation, one of Georgia Baptist’s newest church plants, meets at Atlantic Station in downtown Atlanta.