The Great Commission Resurgence Task Force (GCRTF) final report, posted May 3 at www.pray4gcr.com, calls for “a new level of sacrificial giving” among Southern Baptists by “celebrating and empowering Great Commission Giving” and affirming the Southern Baptist Convention’s (SBC) Cooperative Program (CP)giving channel “as the most effective means of mobilizing our churches and extending our reach.”
The report also continues its call for phasing out cooperative agreements between the North American Mission Board (NAMB) and state Baptist conventions. It also continues the call for state conventions to “take the lead” in promoting the CP and stewardship.
The report says while “so much good work is being done” by Southern Baptist congregations and entities, the average Southern Baptist gives only 2.5 percent of annual income to the local church and beyond, local churches retain an average of 94 cents of every offering plate dollar and approximately 63 percent of all CP receipts remain in the state conventions — the greatest percentage in states with the largest Southern Baptist populations.
The report calls on Southern Baptists “to celebrate all giving to our common work” by recognizing “the total of all monies channeled through the causes of the Southern Baptist Convention, the state conventions and associations as Great Commission Giving.” It also calls on Southern Baptists “to recommit to the Cooperative Program as the central and preferred conduit of Great Commission funding, without which we would be left with no unified and cooperative strategy and commitment to the Great Commission task.”
The report also gives a significant focus on asking Southern Baptists to evaluate budgets at every level and maximize giving to CP causes. It challenges Southern Baptists to meet challenging goals for the Lottie Moon Christmas Offering for International Missions ($200 million annually) and the Annie Armstrong Easter Offering for North American Missions ($100 million annually) by 2015.
The “progress report” presented to the SBC’s Executive Committee on Feb. 22 reaffirmed the CP “as our central means of supporting Great Commission ministries” and proposed establishing the broader category of “Great Commission Giving” to celebrate all the financial support — CP giving and designated giving — provided by local congregations for Southern Baptist missions.
“We are not recommending any changes to the Cooperative Program,” GCRTF chairman Ronnie Floyd said during his report.
“We also believe our local associations, state conventions and national entities should celebrate whatever amount a church gives through the Cooperative Program. In the spirit of one of our desired core values, which is unity, we need to work together in love for the sake of the gospel.”
The final report also continues its call for NAMB to be “refocused and unleashed for greater effectiveness,” retaining the Feb. 22 report’s emphasis on making a priority of church planting, reaching cities and “underserved regions and people groups” and clarifying NAMB’s role “to conduct and direct a strategy of reaching the United States and Canada with the gospel and planting gospel churches.”
The final report says, “Our hope and vision is to see NAMB reprioritized, decentralized and fully authorized to lead Southern Baptists in this great work. This will mean the phasing out of cooperative agreements, a structure in place since the 1950s, that return a tremendous percentage of CP monies back to the regions where Southern Baptists are most greatly concentrated and often leaves NAMB with insufficient mobility to appoint personnel directly and ensure missional focus.”
The final report calls on NAMB to budget for a national mission strategy and to “establish a new pattern of strategic partnership with the state conventions that will penetrate lostness and ensure greater responsiveness to the Southern Baptist Convention and greater effectiveness for NAMB in the appointment of missionary personnel and church planters.”
“If we are going to reach the 258 million lost people in the United States and Canada, we must address the fact that the vast majority of our Cooperative Program mission funds devoted to North America are expended in the most evangelized regions of our work,” the report says.
The final report also casts a vision of Southern Baptist congregations becoming “church-planting congregations …
[r]egardless of the size or location”; calls for NAMB to “reclaim its mission of assisting churches to make disciples, working with LifeWay Christian Resources and other partners”; and recommends NAMB be charged with the task of leadership development.
The final report continues the call of the Feb. 22 “progress report” for the state Baptist conventions to “take the lead” in promoting the CP giving channel and educating Southern Baptists about stewardship of the resources God has entrusted to them.
The report also acknowledges the national convention also must be involved in promoting both cooperative missions giving and stewardship.
“This means an important and continuing leadership role for the SBC Executive Committee as well,” the report says. “We strongly encourage the Executive Committee of the Southern Baptist Convention to work with the state conventions, charged with the responsibility of Cooperative Program and stewardship education, in developing a strategy for encouraging our churches to greater participation and investment in the Cooperative Program. Our hope is that a unified strategy with clearly established goals will be in place by the meeting of the Southern Baptist Convention in 2013.”
The final report also calls on Southern Baptists to raise the percentage of CP funds received by the International Mission Board to 51 percent “through a reduction in the budget granted to Facilitating Ministries, thus making a statement about our commitment to reduce denominational infrastructure in order to set the pace for growth in commitment to reaching the nations.”
The SBC Executive Committee is responsible for such facilitating ministries as the planning for each year’s SBC annual meeting and the SBC news service, Baptist Press.
The report closes with a long section of challenges addressed to virtually every segment of Southern Baptist life: individual Christians, local churches and pastors, local associations, state conventions, SBC entities and “all Southern Baptist leaders.” (BP)
To read the full GCR Task Force report released May 3, visit www.thealabamabaptist.org.
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