The Baptist Paper staff members continue their review of the audio files from the 2009–2010 meetings of the Great Commission Resurgence Task Force. (See the first three articles here.) This report is part 2 of the third meeting of the task force. Staff members are currently working through audio files from the fourth meeting and will release highlights from that meeting in the coming weeks.
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Picking back up on the third meeting, which took place Oct. 27, 2009, Dallas-Fort Worth, here are a few more highlights:
• Ronnie Floyd, chair of the GCR Task Force, asked the members to share their thoughts and “download” on David Hankins’ report covering the work of Baptist state conventions shared earlier that day. At that time, Hankins served as executive director of the Louisiana Baptist Convention.
‘Download’ on state Baptist conventions
Ken Whitten, then pastor of the Tampa-area Idlewild Baptist Church in Lutz, Florida, opened the discussion saying the “information was very helpful,” but noted that some of the comments were “unnecessarily dismissive or adversarial and not helpful.”
John Cope, senior pastor of Keystone Community Fellowship in North Wales, Pennsylvania, near Philadelphia, shared his overall thoughts on the Southern Baptist Convention, noting “there is a lot of good here.”
“The reason I’ve stayed SBC — and a lot of my friends have pulled out of the SBC — and the reason why I stay is … I stay because of the cooperative effort.” He added, “I’m all about team, and I like that emphasis.” With that said, Cope noted, he believes the SBC lacks “clear vision.” “I feel like we’ve done a poor job casting clear vision. And it really frustrates the crud out of me because we’ve got more resources than any denomination in America. And I think we do as poor a job as you can communicating what happens across our convention.”
Kathy Ferguson Litton, a women’s ministry speaker who previously served on church staff with Floyd, said she’s still not convinced Southern Baptists are overall satisfied with how Cooperative Program dollars are allocated. “(Hankins) made a statement that the structure works … but I think the question we have to ask, based on what we see, is it working?”
J.D. Greear, pastor of The Summit Church in Raleigh-Durham, North Carolina (and future SBC president), noted that “what was a little frustrating, I felt like there were a few times that it seemed like we were talking … right past each other. … The question I’ve got with the state convention that I was trying to bring up is when they sell themselves to me in our state as we do international missions, we do a really good Easter outreach project, and we have a soup kitchen in your city. I look at all three of those things, and I’d rather have the International Mission Board doing missions than you guys. I think we, the churches, can do a better Easter outreach than you can here in the Raleigh-Durham area. And thirdly, I think we can probably do a better soup kitchen, too, because we’re the local church and we feel like this is our place. That doesn’t sell me at all.”
He added, “Now if they were to develop some things we could not do as churches — and that other agencies couldn’t do — I would more gladly be able to give my money to them,” Greear said. “For example, one thing that comes to mind is in our city, we’ve got all of these international students. There is no way a church like ours can have 19 different language ministries to Iranian, Iraqi, Africa (etc.). That would be something I would say that’s something that I can get excited about, and I can tell our church that ‘these guys do it and we partner with them.’ … If they can be valuable, we will support them.”
Larry Grays, a church planter and then senior pastor of Midtown Bridge Church in Atlanta, shared how he didn’t appreciate the dismissive tone of the meeting. Grays specifically referred to a quote by an executive director noting he had socks older than Greear, who asked a question about the work of Baptist state conventions.
“Even as a pastor [if] you feel that way, you don’t say that to your people,” he said. On a positive note, Grays said he thought it was encouraging that the state executive directors seemed “willing to challenge state conventions to move toward a 50/50 arrangement (holding 50% of funding for state ministries and sending the remaining to SBC causes) as long as churches were challenged to increase their CP giving.” He added, “I do think that’s positive if the state execs are open to moving toward challenging state conventions to go 50/50.”
Johnny Hunt, SBC president at the time and pastor of First Baptist Church Woodstock, Georgia, said he felt like the state executives were “biting the hand that feeds them” by criticizing churches for not giving more. He added that he wished “one” state Baptist paper would report more positive things about the task force’s work and the positive impact that “mega” churches have on the Cooperative Program. “I think if we check, the mega church in the Southern Baptist Convention may be what’s keeping the Convention from showing greater loss of percentage. … The state convention has no right to speak back and tell the local church what to do. … I think it came across that the state convention is the headquarters of the Southern Baptist Convention, not the local church.”
Bob White, then executive director of the Georgia Baptist Convention, pushed back on Hunt, noting that most state convention executives he knows would be the first to say the church is the headquarters of the SBC. (See related comments from White below.)
Danny Akin, president of Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary, noted that what he heard from the state executives’ defense of the CP structure and unwillingness to change will not “come close to inspiring a vision that will move our convention forward.” Akin said he interpreted the state executives’ message as saying, “Bottom line, for the most part, things are good and if our folks will give more, our problems will be taken care of.”
He added, “Things are not good. I don’t know how you can look at where we are, even with pointing out that we’ve grown by 3 million over the last 20 years. If you look at the demographics of the American population and our growth, we have not kept up — not even close. I understand why they have the perspective they do, but I am very convinced that perspective will not promote or enable their viability for the future. … I don’t think this committee is their enemy. I think we are their friends, and I want to see them have a viable future, where they are making a very significant impact for the Kingdom of God and the Great Commission.”
Al Gilbert, then pastor of Calvary Baptist Church in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, said there seemed to be a lot of defensiveness when it comes to protecting the current structure of the CP. He added he didn’t agree with the assessment “we have the boots on the ground everywhere.”
“That kind of summary statement is what’s killing us,” said Gilbert, who would go on to serve the North American Mission Board as executive director of Love Loud, a revamped ministry evangelism arm of NAMB following GCR. “We don’t have boots on the ground everywhere. We don’t even have boots on the ground everywhere in the U.S. That kind of talk that we’re doing such a good job because we’re so comprehensive, that’s what’s going to be the killer of this convention if we don’t find a way to own the fact we are not doing a good job, instead of spending all of our time defending.”
Outside chatter
White also shared how “the blogs and the twitters are not our friend in this process.” There are many in the SBC, he said, who are concerned about potential changes that GCR is going to bring to the Convention. “I think some of the defensiveness that you heard this morning is a pretty good reflection of what I’m hearing, and (the state executives) are hearing out in the state.
“I’m afraid that if we don’t get a positive act together, we’re going to have an explosion in Orlando that’s not going to be pleasing to the Lord — or to any of us and it’s going to hurt our efforts.”
White later added — after Floyd pushed back on his assessment — that most Southern Baptists were generally on board with the Great Commission Resurgence efforts when they voted for it during the previous SBC annual meeting, but some have since raised concerns. “Nobody wanted to vote against the Great Commission,” White said, alluding to the label put on the proposed task force and study effort. “I’ve had folks say to me, ‘I had concerns about what this study would involve, but I’m not going to vote against the Great Commission.’ ”
Floyd expressed a need for more help, materials, information and feedback.
“Send me ideas. Tell me how to do this. We don’t know, and I don’t think they think we know. … I want to testify to everybody: I don’t know, and I’ve been all over this for months — and it’s very, very challenging.”
Task force ‘strategy team’ & ‘core values’
• Near the end of the session, Floyd shared how the task force “strategy team” — eight members of the task force who were selected by Floyd to work together between large group meetings (more details to come on this subset) — had met in person the day before and previously once by phone. “We met yesterday, and we talked about several things in relationship to what we’re going to talk about today. That group is helping me chart what we deal with, which is difficult and challenging.”
Floyd also discussed efforts to create a “new culture” in the SBC. He specifically addressed how the “core values” the strategy team had discussed in their meetings could “run through everything” and were up for discussion among the entire task force. He also noted that the core values should determine the structure. The values were Christ-likeness, truth, relationships, trust, teamwork, future, local church and Kingdom.
‘Funding mechanism of the SBC’
• Among a major part of one of the sessions, was the task force discussing the “funding mechanism of the SBC.”
The strategy team developed a proposal that Floyd presented to the group for adoption to be presented to messengers at the upcoming SBC annual meeting: “That the Southern Baptist Convention affirm a national giving option for the Cooperative Program, that would allow churches to send contributions directly to the Executive Committee of the Southern Baptist Convention, and for those churches to designate the percentage to be distributed between the respective state convention and the Southern Baptist Convention Cooperative Program Allocation Budget.”
White immediately voiced opposition to the proposal. Ultimately, White noted, these types of changes could cause the convention to “fly apart.” “I don’t see this as healing. I don’t see it as a positive move or helpful for our future at all, and I’m opposed to this statement.” He said if the proposal is going to sign off on an option to designate funds to SBC causes, it should also include designating funding to state convention causes as well. His comment ignited more discussion.
Al Mohler, president of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, expressed a need to reach out and “provide another way” of support than traditional CP giving for younger pastors and others who struggle to support their state conventions. He noted, “the mall approach” of expecting people to come to one place to find everything no longer appears to work for a new generation of Southern Baptists. While “die-hard Southern Baptists” will remain, he noted, the SBC needs to reach out to others that are “on the fence.”
Mohler later added the “elephant in the room” is that “state by state it’s different. It all depends which state you’re in on how bad the squeal is. … There are some states where the squeal is really loud. In particular — where there is a sense of violation — the people are not going to give if $1 million is going to be distributed to three or four colleges that they don’t support and call it missions money.”
He noted, “that’s why in those states, you try to sell the Cooperative Program, and you can’t get past the fact that in some states over 50% of what’s called the Cooperative Program dollar is going to colleges that the church won’t send anybody to. I’m going to say bluntly, that ain’t going to sell. And if that’s where we’re stuck, I’m going to teach the Cooperative Program, I’m going to promote the Cooperative Program, and we’re going to lose — if that’s where we’re stuck.”
‘Breakthrough’
After much discussion, White proposed changing what Floyd had presented to calling it a “Southern Baptist Plan of Giving,” with the addition of what would be defined in that meeting as “Great Commission Giving.”
• The task force agreed to not change the formal definition of the traditional way of giving through the Cooperative Program, which was adopted by SBC messengers during the annual meeting in 2007.
Instead, the task force worked on wording to add a “Great Commission Giving” option, which formally recognized “Cooperative Program giving and designated gifts given to the Southern Baptist Convention, the state convention or the local association.”
Mohler noted, “That’s one step beyond what we thought this proposal was… I think that is a transformative idea.”
Roger Spradlin, co-senior pastor at the time of Valley Baptist Church in Bakersfield, California, expressed concern that this had some potential to cause long-term “danger” and create competition that has “entrenched all our agencies one against another.” He added that 20 years later, “we’re celebrating Great Commission Giving, when in reality we’re celebrating churches that excluded everything except one entity.”
White agreed this was a legitimate risk.
Mohler noted the SBC’s financial giving plan, which restricted entities from directly approaching churches for money, should help deter much of the issue Spradlin addressed. But, he and other task force members also recognized this could not completely stop competition between the entities or entities or associations from all together ignoring the plan and approaching churches for funds.
The task force went on to add minor copy edits to the Great Commission Giving proposal and adopted it in that meeting. Floyd would agree to rescind the strategy team’s initial idea and have it “bow” to White’s proposal.
The team closed out the meeting discussing the significance of future meetings and the release of the next press statement.
White asked Floyd, who referred to the addition of Great Commission Giving as a “breakthrough” moment, if they wanted him to “mine” that proposal “a little bit” with some of the state executive directors. Floyd responded, “Not yet. I think we need to be real careful. … I’m real hesitant. I don’t want to see disarray in our report before we get to February in Nashville (the SBC Executive Committee meeting).”
Looking ahead
Floyd concluded, “I think we need to wear this for 30 days. Look at it and feel it. There are some things I thought we’d have already done by now, and right now they’re not even on my agenda.” He did not specify specifically what those things were, but among the big issues he mentioned on the radar included the future of the North American Mission Board.
EDITOR’S NOTE — This report was written and compiled by Shawn Hendricks, content editor for The Baptist Paper.
