EDITOR’S NOTE — 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 related articles here.) Staff members are currently working through audio files from the remaining meetings and will release highlights from those meetings in the coming weeks.
At the beginning of a GCR Task Force session in San Antonio, Jan. 26–28, Johnny Hunt, then president of the Southern Baptist Convention who appointed the task force and sat on it as an ex-officio member, addressed the task force.
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Hunt affirmed chair Ronnie Floyd’s leadership, and he encouraged the task force to adopt a “Robin Hood mentality that we feel we need to take some from the more prosperous and give to the poor. People like that … so I think when we stand up between the presidential address, which will be hand and glove with this address, and say to our people, here’s where we want to take Southern Baptists, and what we’d like to see for our greater days, I believe there is going to be a rally cry that will shock us.”
Hunt, then pastor of Woodstock Baptist Church in Woodstock, Georgia, contended that despite some pushback by SBC Executive Committee leadership — what he referred to as a “cheap shot” — to his call during the last SBC annual meeting for the Great Commission Resurgence Task Force, “95% of messengers” still approved it.
“Are they listening to the pastors of 43,000 churches or to Executive Committee leaders?” Hunt asked. “I want them to listen to both, because I want us to be on the same page. We did not go into a convention last year on the same page. And God has done a deep, deep work. … I’m encouraged. And I think we’re on the right page.”
Hunt ended his remarks by noting “Ronnie, again I affirm you for your tenderness and affirm you for your conviction to be able to say, ‘Here is somewhere I think we need to stand.’ So, for what it’s worth, God bless you, Robin Hood.’”
Streamlining
The task force continued earlier discussions on how to streamline the SBC Executive Committee’s ministry assignments. Much of the discussion involved whether state conventions, instead of the EC, would be more effective handling Cooperative Program promotion — but the EC would still be given the role to “facilitate.”
Jim Richards, task force member and then executive director of the Southern Baptists of Texas Convention, expressed concern about handing that responsibility over to state conventions because of varying interpretations of what CP is and questions about who would have the most influence and sit “in the driver’s seat when it’s all said and done.”
Al Gilbert, task force member and then pastor of Calvary Baptist Church in Winston Salem, North Carolina, agreed and noted that “most Southern Baptists, can’t get their minds around (the Cooperative Program’s) complexity.”
“North Carolina had to vote just a few years ago to not count CBF (Cooperative Baptist Fellowship) money as Cooperative Program. … When a state convention is given the authority to define Cooperative Program, it’s a very tenuous position,” 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.
Bob White, task force member and then executive director of the Georgia Baptist Convention, expressed concerns of working with Executive Committee leadership as a facilitator and suggested it might be best to keep it as is with the EC. He noted state conventions encountered challenges in past attempts to work with EC leadership on CP promotion. “Some of our meetings turned into explosions and a brick wall,” recalled White, who mentioned he had participated in some conversations between the EC and the Cooperative Program task force for a year and a half.
“And it went nowhere. … It didn’t gel, and we didn’t get a good outcome,” White added. “If everyone feels comfortable with it being in the Executive Committee, I’m certainly good with that. I think that is the most logical place for it to be.”
Roger Spradlin, task force member and then pastor of Valley Baptist Church in Bakersfield, California, contended that trimming the EC ministry assignment and giving CP promotion to the states is an obvious spot to eliminate some redundancy.
“If we don’t do this, then we’ve done a lot of talk about getting money to the nations, and if we’re not even willing to deal with something that is this bureaucratic and this redundant … well, right here it is,” Spradlin noted. “There is not a more glaring example in the SBC than the redundancy of the Cooperative Program promotion with the Executive Committee doing it in an ineffective way, and the state convention having to pick up the ball and do it because of the Executive Committee’s failure. If we don’t address this redundancy that is so glaring, I kind of wonder what we’re doing here. … It’s right in our face.”
The word ‘facilitate’
Spradlin noted that the Executive Committee would still be a part of the process if the task force added that the EC would be able to “facilitate” CP promotion and state conventions would be given the task of promoting it. “You still have the EC involved in the process if we use this word ‘facilitate’ … but you don’t have them stacking up videos in the basement.”
Floyd shifted conversation back to their earlier decision on affirming Great Commission giving, and how the SBC should get to a place where the Convention celebrates every level of support to CP.
“We don’t say, ‘Well, you could be doing more or you should be doing this.’ We celebrate what they give,” he said. “If we celebrate what they give, they will be more likely to give more. If we condemn what they give, they will be less likely to give more.”
He added, “So we celebrate if they give $100 to the Cooperative Program. We celebrate it as much as we celebrate the $100,000 or whatever comes.”
Reallocation
The meeting soon moved into looking more closely at how to reallocate CP funds to help get more CP dollars to international missions, specifically the International Mission Board. The task force members went back and forth on percentages and what amounts to take from each entity and shift toward IMB. The more the discussion continued, the more the focus centered on pulling at least 1% from the Executive Committee — and how that would be the easiest place to reduce an allocation percentage.
Gilbert added, “It might be good for this group to know that every year the Executive Committee goes through a drill of having every entity come and report as though we might actually change this with a perfectly good knowledge that nothing will be changed. … There’s a very elaborate presentation and absolutely nothing happens.”
Al Mohler, task force member and president of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, added, “It is an exercise in deliberate dishonesty that amounts to a floor show for demented Southern Baptists.” The room broke into laughter.
Gilbert responded, “That is exactly what I was trying to say.”
More discussion focused on “the vast expansion” of the Executive Committee and ERLC, and the challenge of decreasing the allocation from either entity. Mohler noted that any trimming of the budget would dramatically impact any entity, especially the smaller ones. He specifically noted how “politically protected” the ERLC has become, while also expressing concern for pulling funds from any of the seminaries.
“I mean all Richard (Land, then ERLC president) has to do is go to the microphone on the floor and say, ‘With the Barack Obama administration, do we really want less Southern Baptist presence and influence on these issues?’ I think the air goes out of our tires. … Quite frankly, the economic recession has put the real pressure on the academic institutions. … Anything you change here is just going to mean higher tuition for students, and you’re going to be disincentivizing the very younger generation we’re trying to reach. I just think every part of this gets sticky.”
After more back and forth debate, Gilbert suggested, “Why is this rocket science? Why don’t we just take 1% from the Executive Committee and put it with IMB? I mean … I don’t know messengers that are going to say please give more to the Executive Committee. I don’t know of anybody in the audience that really likes the Executive Committee. (Some laughter breaks out in the room.) I mean let’s call it like it is.”
Mohler at one point cautions, “The weirdest thing we’ve got right here is that if we’re not careful, we’re talking ourselves into the corner, where the only way we actually reach the nations is through the IMB budget.”
He added, “If that’s what we believe, then we shouldn’t fund any theological education or anything else. If theological education is not a way of getting people to the nations, then don’t fund it. I just think once we get into reallocating the SBC budget, unless there is a clear rationale for how, we’re saying to someone, ‘We need you to do less of something.’ And I thought that’s what we were saying to the EC.”
Richards later said, “I think that the Executive Committee ought to be the one that takes the hit. There’s your 1%. I think that is the easiest one to pass.”
Gilbert added, “I think that’s the easiest one that people understand.” He then jokingly asked, “These (GCR Task Force audio file) tapes are sealed for 10 years, right?”
Task force vote
Floyd responded, “Yes, that’s right.” The room breaks into laughter.
“And that was Al Gilbert who made that motion,” Floyd added. “Is there a second?”
Floyd then noted, “Seconded by Ruben Hernandez (then associate Spanish pastor at the Dallas-area Prestonwood Baptist Church in Plano, Texas).”
After the task force voted to add that latest move to their report, they then discussed concerns of getting the EC to pass the report in its upcoming meeting. This prompted discussion of whether the EC actually had the authority to keep the task force from bringing their report to the messengers on the floor of the annual meeting. The task force also was fast approaching a deadline to send a draft of their report to Morris Chapman, then president and CEO of the SBC Executive Committee.
‘Crack the window’
Mohler asked SBC parliamentarian Barry McCarty, who had been invited by the task force into the meeting to answer questions related to SBC polity and procedure, to share his thoughts on the EC’s ability to keep the task force’s report from going to the floor of the SBC annual meeting for a vote.
“I’m of the opinion that it is perfectly within order for the Convention, for the messengers who will receive your report, that they have the right to instruct their own committees, which would include the Executive Committee.”
McCarty then compared it to when his two sons were riding with him in the car, and one had the window seat and the other son sat in the middle between him and his brother — and the son in the middle wanted the window down. While the one with the window seat sat with his hand on the window button, the one in the middle can always appeal to “dad” to have the other brother roll the window down if he refuses.
“Dad can say … ‘Lower the window,’” McCarty said. “The ‘Dad’ in the room are the messengers of the Southern Baptist Convention. (The EC is) going to make the argument that a special committee can’t tell them to do one of these things. Well, the Convention can sure tell them to do it. … The Convention can say, ‘Crack the window.’”
McCarty continued, “I think the messengers said to you, ‘Tell us what you think.’ Now the suits in Nashville aren’t going to like that, and they’re all friends of ours, but you have an ethical obligation. You guys have prayed this thing up and thought this thing through, and you have an ethical obligation to make your best statement here.”
EDITOR’S NOTE — This report was written and compiled by Shawn Hendricks.
