IMB-NAMB merger not in GCR plan, Floyd says

The much-discussed merger of Southern Baptists’ two mission boards will not be among the recommendations presented to the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) at its June meeting in Orlando, Fla., the chairman of the SBC’s Great Commission Resurgence (GCR) Task Force said Feb. 1 in Jacksonville, Fla.

Ronnie Floyd, pastor of First Baptist Church, Springdale, Ark., made the comment in an afternoon panel discussion about the task force’s work during the annual Pastors’ Conference at First Baptist Church, Jacksonville.

Shortly after the GCR Task Force was formed, speculation at one point ran so high that the group might recommend to dismantle the North American Mission Board (NAMB) or to merge it with the International Mission Board (IMB) that task force member Danny Akin, president of Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary in Wake Forest, N.C., addressed it on the betweenthetimes.com blog site as one of eight “myths” spreading among Southern Baptists.

The idea that the task force was planning “to abolish NAMB or dissolve it into the IMB” was a matter of “intense discussion and interest” among Southern Baptists, Akin acknowledged in that article, but “a myth as it relates to the current work of the GCR [Task Force].”

 SBC President Johnny Hunt, also a task force member, addressed the subject during one of the earliest listening sessions — an Aug. 26 panel discussion at the Church at Pinnacle Hills, Rogers, Ark. Hunt said at the time it was “poor journalism” that suggested the task force would consider disassembling NAMB and added: “There is absolutely no quote whatsoever to go with that. It is ludicrous.”

During the Feb. 1 event in Jacksonville, however, Floyd acknowledged the task force had weighed the option of changing the SBC’s two-board arrangement.

“Our sights are set on having the North American Mission Board, and our sights are set on having an International Mission Board,” Floyd told the group.

“There was great, great, great discussion, study, planning and even to the point of having strategic formation of the possibility of the other. But we just really sensed in our heart that wasn’t right at this time,” he added in response to a question from Jeff Callaway, a church planter from Cleveland.

While the task force’s full report will not be released until May 3, Floyd said his presentation at the Feb. 22–23 SBC Executive Committee meeting in Nashville would “unveil a great part” of the final document.  (BP)