Adopting the report of the Great Commission Resurgence (GCR) Task Force could have negative repercussions, Morris Chapman warned Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) messengers during their annual meeting June 15.
In his final report as president and chief executive officer of the SBC Executive Committee, Chapman extolled the virtues of the Cooperative Program (CP), Southern Baptists’ unified giving plan.
While acknowledging the CP has never given every entity all it wanted or needed, he insisted it has given every entity some funds to do the work God called them to do.
“The Cooperative Program has survived many years of tough times. It has brought us through every time,” said Chapman, who will retire from his position Sept. 30. If the report of the GCR Task Force is approved, he warned, the CP will not retain the unique place it has held. “It will be one of several offerings, not one of a kind.”
Chapman, who served as president of the convention two years before being elected president of the Executive Committee in 1992, recalled the “conservative resurgence” of the 1970s and 1980s as a “return to Southern Baptists’ roots theologically.”
Chapman said he fears that the GCR Task Force report, if approved, would lead Southern Baptists from its funding methodology.
“If we abandon our methodology of cooperation, we will become independent Baptists, not autonomous, cooperating Baptists,” he warned. “If you want to be independent tomorrow, you can declare it so. … You can walk away as an independent Baptist body of people.”
“Failure to fulfill the Great Commission is not a structural problem and it cannot be accomplished with a structural solution,” he stressed. Failure to fulfill the Great Commission is a “heart problem, a spiritual problem, a stewardship problem,” Chapman said. “We can’t manufacture a resurgence of God’s power because someone declares it to be so.”
In referencing the task force report, Chapman spoke specifically against the last five recommendations of the report (see ‘GCR’ story above or visit www.pray4gcr.com for an outline of recommendations).
“The last five recommendations will never bring resurgence to the Southern Baptist Convention,” Chapman told messengers. Instead, he continued, those recommendations “will bring more confusion and chaos” to the convention. They need more thought, study and prayer, he asserted.
However, he did not dismiss the entire report. There is great truth in the “urgency” pointed out by the task force, Chapman said. “We must be urgent in penetrating the darkness.”
He also called for the adoption of the challenges listed at the end of the task force report.
“The challenges will inspire us to a higher calling, a greater vision,” he said. “These two sectionscan form the foundation of where God wants us to go together.” (Editor’s Network)
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