The final report of the Great Commission Resurgence Task Force (GCRTF) will highlight the Southern Baptist Convention’s (SBC) 153rd annual meeting when the two-day event convenes June 15 at the Orange County Convention Center in Orlando, Fla.
The report, unveiled May 3 at www.pray4gcr.com, has been the centerpiece of discussion in Southern Baptist circles since messengers at the 2009 meeting in Louisville, Ky., authorized the SBC president to appoint a task force. The public conversation intensified when the GCRTF released a preliminary version of its report Feb. 22, with some hailing it as innovative and others expressing concerns that it would negatively impact cooperation with state conventions and hurt giving through the SBC’s Cooperative Program.
While the task force expects to present its report June 15, they have not announced whether its recommendations will be offered as a single motion or several.
As the theme for this year’s sessions, SBC President Johnny Hunt has selected “LoveLoud Through the Great Commission” (1 John 3:18).
“We’ve got to ‘Love Loud,’” said Hunt, pastor of First Baptist Church, Woodstock, Ga. “Loud love moves beyond the four walls of the church. I hope to encourage our folks to roll up their sleeves and get after it.
“Our theme verse is clear,” Hunt said of 1 John 3:18 — “My little children, let us not love in word or in tongue, but in deed and in truth.”
“It is not simply enough to say; we must do,” Hunt added. “We have embraced what we believe. It is now or never to engage this generation with what we believe — the gospel. Our nation is lost. We have the answer. Let’s do it.”
Among the highlights planned for this year’s program:
• Musical features throughout the meeting presented by the worship choir and orchestra of First, Woodstock, and a 1,000-voice combined choir and 200-piece combined orchestra.
• Opening session reports by Morris H. Chapman, retiring president of the SBC Executive Committee, and the presidential message by Hunt.
• The election of officers set to begin at 2:20 p.m. June 15. Candidates for president, as of press time, were Jimmy Jackson, senior pastor of Whitesburg Baptist Church, Huntsville, and president of the Alabama Baptist State Convention; Ted Traylor, pastor of Olive Baptist Church, Pensacola, Fla., and a GCRTF member; and Bryant Wright, senior pastor of Johnson Ferry Baptist Church, Marietta, Ga.
• The convention message by Mac Brunson, senior pastor of First Baptist Church, Jacksonville, Fla., on Wednesday morning, and that evening at 8:40, a closing sermon by Southern Baptist evangelist Tony Nolan, of Woodstock, Ga.
Other highlights include:
• Crossover Orlando 2010 will extend evangelistic block parties door to door and street witness June 12, across the city and three-county Orange, Seminole and Osceola region. In conjunction with Crossover, a Hispanic family festival will be held at the Central Florida Fairgrounds.
• The 2010 SBC Pastors Conference, which opens at 5:30 p.m. June 13 with a concert by popular Christian musician Travis Cottrell, features a wide range of speakers from diverse backgrounds, including David Platt, pastor of The Church at Brook Hills, Birmingham; Tony Evans, senior pastor of Oak Cliff Bible Fellowship, Dallas, and president of The Urban Alternative; C.J. Mahaney, pastor of Covenant Life Church, Gaithersburg, Md., and president of Sovereign Grace Ministries; apologetics speaker and author Ravi Zacharias; and Francis Chan, teaching pastor of Cornerstone Church, Simi, Calif. The program also will feature the launch of a national campaign to help pastors adopt children.
• Gatherings for pastors’ wives that feature a June 14 conference and June 15 luncheon, as well as a Women’s Expo to build community, share resources and exchange ideas.
• The June 13–14 Woman’s Missionary Union (WMU) Missions Celebration and Annual Meeting, gathering under the theme “Unhindered!” The program emphasis includes ways to address human exploitation, which is the focus of WMU’s Project HELP for 2010–12. The missions celebration will be held in the Orange County Convention Center’s Chapin Theater (West Concourse, Level 3), beginning at 6:30 p.m. June 13. Among the speakers at the missions celebration: Jennifer Kennedy Dean, author of this year’s WMU emphasis book, “Life Unhindered: Five Keys to Walking in Freedom,” and Gen. Douglas Carver, chief of chaplains for the U.S. Army.
• The Conference of Southern Baptist Evangelists annual worship service will be held June 16 instead of prior to the convention, as in recent years. The change is intended to increase participation of pastors who don’t arrive at the convention until after Sunday morning. The service will be held from 2–5 p.m. in a theater just up the escalators from the meeting hall at the Orange County Convention Center. The timing is intended to allow messengers to attend seminary luncheons, make it back for the worship service and then attend the closing session of the SBC annual meeting. The program includes music by Greater Vision, a southern gospel trio; a message from Evangelist Tim Lee, a former Marine who lost his legs in Vietnam; and a videotaped message from Evangelist Billy Graham.
• Associational directors of missions (DOMs) will convene for their 50th meeting June 12–14 with the theme “Celebrating 50 Years of Partnership in Kingdom Work.” Speakers for the event, which will begin at 2:30 p.m. June 12 at the Rosen Plaza Hotel, will include Frank Page, Ed Stetzer, O.S. Hawkins and Jerry Rankin. DOMs also will have a chance to dialogue with a representative from North American Mission Board regarding the report from the GCRTF.
For more information about this year’s highlights, visit www.sbcannualmeeting.net. (BP)
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