With the substance of changes varying for each respective component of its February progress report, the Great Commission Resurgence Task Force (GCRTF) issued a final report containing seven recommendations it plans to present to messengers at the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) annual meeting in Orlando, Fla., June 15–16.
Missional vision, values
• Stating that “our churches need a new missional vision,” the task force calls for the SBC “to present the gospel of Jesus Christ to every person in the world and to make disciples of all the nations,” identical to its progress report.
Likewise, the GCRTF outlined the same values from before (Christlikeness, truth, unity, relationships, trust, future, local church and kingdom). However, they developed them as a separate component instead of an element of the vision.
Both the mission and values are presented as separate recommendations (#1 and #2).
Great Commission Giving
• The GCRTF final report also calls for “a new level of sacrificial giving” among Southern Baptists” and to “celebrate all giving to our common work” by calling “all monies channeled through the causes of the Southern Baptist Convention, the state conventions, and associations as Great Commission Giving.”
This recommendation repeats the emphasis of the task force’s progress report of Feb. 22 to create new nomenclature that would apply equally to contributions whether given through the Cooperative Program (CP) for the whole of SBC work or by designated donations to individual ministries.
A new element to “Great Commission Giving” is that the task force asks Southern Baptists to “adopt goals of giving no less than $200 million annually through the Lottie Moon Christmas Offering for International Missions and $100 million annually through the Annie Armstrong Easter Offering for North American Missions by 2015.”
The latest reports available for both mission boards showed: the International Mission Board (IMB) received $141 million of a stated 2008 goal of $170 million. the North American Mission Board (NAMB) received $56.5 million of a stated 2009 goal of $65 million.
The task force’s recommendation “3” asks for “the adoption of the language and structure of Great Commission Giving” and that trustees of the respective mission boards adopt offering goals “outlined in this report.”
NAMB changes
• The task force repeats a call for phasing out cooperative agreements between NAMB and state Baptist conventions. However, the GCRTF extends its recommended timeline for making the change from four years to seven years.
NAMB has stated the agreements would affect directly $51 million, but about $62 million total in all that NAMB contributes to state work, and that more than three-fourths of all the money involved (about $48 million) would be taken from Canada and 36 “pioneer states” — some have large populations and even contain several top 10 global urban centers, but all are referred to as “pioneer” because of the relatively few SBC churches in each.
The GCRTF expressed an expectation that NAMB more directly control this retained money for “reaching the United States and Canada with the gospel and planting gospel churches.”
The report calls for “liberating” and “reinvention” of NAMB but does not repeat an earlier recommendation that NAMB create seven regional centers “responsible for the three main emphases of the board” (which in effect would have displaced operations at Alpharetta). However, recommendation “4” requests the “Executive Committee of the Southern Baptist Convention” to consider “any revision” to NAMB’s ministry assignment “that may be necessary in order to accomplish the redirection of NAMB” and that NAMB’s trustees consider the report in “all matters under their purview.”
Remove IMB’s geographic limits
• Stating that the U.S. has as many as “586 unreached and underserved people groups,” the task force generally followed its earlier view that the IMB should be unleashed “upon American soil” to reach these non-English speaking people. The GCRTF affirmed that NAMB “retains the leadership mission of reaching North America with the gospel” but asks in recommendation “5” for the removal of “any geographical limitation” on the IMB’s mission “to reach unreached and underserved people groups wherever they are found.”
CP promotion passed to states
• The task force asks in recommendation “6” that the SBC’s Executive Committee “consider working with the leadership of the state conventions in developing a comprehensive program of Cooperative Program promotion and stewardship education” — an assignment the SBC Executive Committee already performs. The Executive Committee received the assignment for CP promotion in 1995 and in 2006 messengers transferred stewardship education from LifeWay to the SBC Executive Committee.
The recommendation includes the wording that the move is to happen “in alignment with this report” which apparently points back to a statement in the report that “state conventions must take the lead in both CP promotion and stewardship education.”
Raise IMB’s CP percentage
• Recommendation “7” does not mention CP promotion or stewardship education, but asks messengers to the 2010 annual meeting to request the Executive Committee to “increase the percentage allocated to the International Mission Board to 51 percent by decreasing the Executive Committee’s percentage of the SBC Allocation Budget by 1 percent” — meaning 1 percentage point of the 3.4 percentage points allocated to the SBC Operating Budget/Facilitating Ministries. This move essentially removes funding for the Executive Committee to complete the assignment stated in recommendation “6.”
This recommendation is framed around the idea of breaking what has been described as a 50 percent barrier for CP giving to the IMB. Currently IMB receives half of all CP receipts for national causes. (BP)
Share with others: