Task Force members cast their vision for re-energized SBC

NASHVILLE — The Southern Baptist Convention will not lose any agencies in a new era envisioned by the Great Commission Resurgence Task Force, but tweaking of the denomination will result in substantial changes nonetheless.

In a nearly two-hour presentation to the SBC Executive Committee on Feb. 22, Great Commission Task Force members shared their vision for a re-energized SBC. In doing so, they opened their findings to four months of public discourse that will culminate in a vote at the SBC meeting in Orlando in June.

If approved by messengers this summer, the report will be the most far-reaching document regarding SBC structure since they approved the Covenant for a New Century, which dissolved the Brotherhood Commission, Radio-Television Commission, and Home Mission Board and created the North American Mission Board in 1997.

The Cooperative Program, the denomination’s primary funding channel, remained intact and was reaffirmed as “the central means of supporting Great Commission ministries.” But the document does call for employing a new term to be called Great Commission Giving that includes gifts to the CP as well as designated gifts to the causes of the SBC, state conventions, and associations.

Such designated gifts will not be counted as CP giving, according to the report.

“We are urging Southern Baptists to celebrate what all churches are doing for the Great Commission,” the report outlined on page 28. “Our Task Force does not see this [the Great Commission Giving designation] as being competitive with the Cooperative Program as our central means of giving, but complementing it for the sake of the Gospel.

“The churches of the Southern Baptist Convention are giving to support the Great Commission; therefore, we need to celebrate what they are doing,” the document stated.

Non-SBC causes, such as church-based missions or church planting efforts or support of parachurch ministries, would not be allowed to be counted under the Great Commission Giving designation.

“In the spirit of one of our desired core values, which is unity, we need to work together in love for the sake of the gospel,” Floyd stated. “We do not know of a church in our convention that will be motivated to give more by receiving lectures from our denomination or by bearing the brunt of attack” when its CP giving may not be as high as other churches but gives generously to designated SBC causes.

The term “Great Commission Giving,” if approved by messengers, would appear on the Annual Church Profile (ACP) forms that churches annually fill out, and would include Cooperative Program “Great Commission Giving” as well as designated giving “Great Commission Giving,” they said. The report emphasized that the task force was “not recommending any changes to the Cooperative Program.” Said Floyd, “Our heart is to just celebrate what churches are doing.”

 

Motivating churches to give more through the CP

“We are convinced that the vast majority of churches … will be motivated to give more through the CP when they are presented a compelling Gospel vision that will will result in global advance,” he added.

The chairman then called on Task Force member and GBC Executive Director J. Robert White to address that change in how Cooperative Program gifts are viewed. See related story adjoining this article.

The Task Force’s suggestions for a more effective SBC were outlined in six areas in a historic 32-page document. The first dealt with the North American Mission Board.

First, Floyd said the committee will ask Southern Baptists “to rally towards a clear and compelling missional vision and begin to conduct ourselves with core values that will create a new and healthy culture” within the denomination.

That goal would be fleshed out by embracing eight core values of Christ-likeness, truth, unity, relationships, trust, future, and local church.

Second, NAMB “needs to be reinvented and released. Therefore, in order to do this, we will ask Southern Baptists that the North American Mission Board prioritize efforts to plant churches in North America and to reach our nation’s cities and clarify its role to lead and accomplish efforts to reach North America with the gospel.”

 

A streamlined, decentralized NAMB

In order to accomplish that goal, NAMB must:

• become streamlined in order to be a true missional leader in reaching North America;

• become decentralized so it can serve the churches more effectively. “We envision up to seven different regional offices existing with a limited staff, responsible for three main emphases of the board.”

• be “decentralized” into seven regional offices existing with a limited staff, responsible for the three main emphases of the board – identified as planting churches, sending more missionaries, and directing more resources to the two-thirds of the American population of which most is lost and perishing.

• be released in order to budget for a national strategy. The releasing would come through a four-year phase-out of the Cooperative Agreements which the agency has used to jointly fund missionaries with state conventions.

Under this scenario NAMB would adopt a missionary-sending model similar to the International Mission Board where it directly funds missionary staff rather than sharing those expenses with state conventions. NAMB would keep the funds it currently returns to state conventions to help fund more missionaries in areas it deems most critical.

Two other specifications regarding NAMB called for the agency to “commission missionaries focused on fulfilling the tasks of the board,” with emphasis on reaching the nation’s metropolitan areas, and to develop the Leadership Center of North America, which will exist to provide a process for in-depth assessment for church planters, equipping them in a much more effective way.

Floyd also said it was the Task Force’s desire that “at least 50 percent of the ministry efforts of our North American Mission Board be given to assist churches in planting healthy, multiplying, and faithful Baptist congregations in the United States and Canada.”

“Regardless of the size or location of our churches, we want each to have a vision for and get involved in planting churches some way, somewhere in North America.”

Besides church planting, the report said it also “envisions NAMB assisting churches in the ministries of evangelism and discipleship.”

In a press conference following the meeting, Task Force members Johnny Hunt, Ronnie Floyd, and Al Mohler did not elaborate just how the decentralization would be achieved, or how strong the decentralization would be – whether a considerable downsizing of the agency or just the addition of branch offices. But they did say they would expect some kind of hub or central office that would remain, though it was too early to say where or what size it would be.

 

IMB would be able to deploy missionaries in the U.S.

While freeing up NAMB to fund its own missionary force similar to how the International Mission Board operates, it called for the “unleashing of the International Mission Board upon American soil to reach the unreached and under-served people groups without regard to any geographical limitation.

Floyd then called on Task Force members Ted Traylor, senior pastor of Olive Baptist Church in Pensacola, Fla., and chairman of NAMB’s Presidential Search Committee, and J.D. Greer, lead pastor of The Summit Church in Raleigh-Durham, N.C., who endorsed the two new approaches.

The next proposal from the Task Force called for moving the ministry assignments of Cooperative Program promotion and stewardship education from the Executive Committee and returning them to state conventions.

David Dockery, president of Union University in Jackson, Tenn., was then called on to speak to that component of the report from a historical perspective which showed that state conventions originally shouldered that responsibility.

A final component of the Task Force’s presentation called for raising the IMB’s allocation of the CP budget to an historic 51%, “a move that is both symbolic and substantial.” In order to accomplish that, the committee will ask for the percentage allocated to Facilitating Ministries be reduced by 1 percent.”

The 1% will be available when the promotion and education of the Cooperative Program and stewardship is shifted from the Executive Committee to state conventions.

In closing, Floyd described the upcoming June SBC meeting in Orlando as “a watershed moment for the reaching of the nations.

“We believe God wants to do it. We believe God can do it. We believe God will do it.”

Immediately following the program, White told The Index that he felt Floyd “spoke with great compassion the convictions shared by the Task Force. This is the day for all Southern Baptists to respond with a fresh zeal to the lostness in our own nation and in the world.

“That basically is what this effort has been about … how can we best penetrate the darkness and awaken Southern Baptists to a fresh conviction to the Great Commission, the Cooperative Program, and unity?”