GCR Progress Report Presented
It was a privilege for Kay and me to be in Nashville last week for the Great Commission Resurgence Task Force’s progress report to the Southern Baptist Convention’s Executive Committee.Dr. Ronnie Floyd, chairman of the task force, passionately presented the report and gave an extensive Biblical foundation based on the second chapter of Joel. The final version of the report is expected to be ready in early May and will then be presented to messengers attending the SBC’s annual meeting in Orlando in June.
The six recommendations of the report deal with vision and values, reaching North America with the Gospel and funding related to the Cooperative Program and stewardship development.
The vision is, “… to present the Gospel of Jesus Christ to every person in the world and to make disciples of all the nations.” The eight values are: Christ-likeness, truth, unity, relationships, trust, future, local church and Kingdom.
The major part of the recommendations deal with reaching North America primarily through church planting in metro and under-served areas, as well as evangelism, missional leadership development, Christian ministries, discipleship, missions education, mobilizing volunteers and endorsing chaplains.
The International Mission Board would be released from geographic restrictions to reach unreached and under-served people groups in North America. If the report is approved, this will require considerable coordination and flexibility since the North American Mission Board has been given the primary role in developing the strategy for reaching North America, and I would assume that means unreached people groups. State conventions, associations and churches are also currently involved in reaching unreached people groups.
In order to provide more accountability for NAMB missionaries, and to free up funding for the church planting initiatives, the cooperative agreements between NAMB and state conventions would be phased out over four years. This means the Kentucky Baptist Convention would need to absorb about $550,000 over the next four years, starting with the 2011-12 budget year. The loss of funding by new work state conventions which rely especially heavily on the cooperative agreement funds will need to be addressed by the task force.
Funding is the focus of the third area of recommendations. One recommendation is to reassign Cooperative Program promotion and stewardship development from the SBC’s Executive Committee to state conventions. The Cooperative Program was affirmed as the central means of supporting Great Commission ministries but designated gifts for missions would also be recognized as “Great Commission Giving.”
Cooperative Program funding for the IMB would be increased by 1 percent to 51 percent of all CP receipts to SBC causes.
If approved in June, the successful implementation of this vision, and these recommendations, will require faithful and relational leaders who can inspire trust and cooperation at the highest level, empowered by the Holy Spirit.
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posted by: Bill Mackey on March 2nd, 2010