Dr. Johnny Hunt
SBC President, Senior Pastor of First Baptist Church Woodstock

As President of the Southern Baptist Convention, I must confess I have never been more excited about our future as a family. The needs that we see arising is a constant reminder that none of us can do alone what we are called to do as a community. I believe as each individual state and local association begin to share their personal needs, it will help all of us to realize that we must once again embrace the true meaning of sacrifice. I am only one pastor, but I must not shrink from my personal responsibility to lead the people that I influence to engage in an Acts 1:8 strategy.

Some of our state conventions will seem at an overwhelming loss, especially as it pertains to the cooperative agreements. However, as we address these issues together, especially as it pertains to our pioneer states, I believe the cry will be heard, maybe more clearly and louder than ever, for Southern Baptists to rise and meet the greatest challenges ever. I believe we are positioning the Southern Baptist Convention, as it pertains to funding, in such a way that will create greater generosity.

We have known great days in our Southern Baptist Convention, but it is more than just mere words when I say, “our best is yet to be.” It has been said, “God rarely requires what is easily released.” I feel Southern Baptists have been in somewhat of a comfort zone. Now many are listening and watching to see just how serious we are about the unreached, unengaged, and the under-served of this nation and the nations of the world. I pledge with all of the loyalty of my heart to challenge every pastor that will listen to do their best in supporting our Cooperative Program, believing that it will cause the entire convention to rise, even in this economy, to give their greatest gifts ever. All of us must do more, and as we do, we will have greater resources to pierce the darkness for the express purpose that God may be glorified, His kingdom may be enlarged, and the church will be edified.

God help this to become a reality for it is more than just words. It is a voiced prayer in Jesus name. Please pray with us that God give us wisdom from heaven as we work together as a family to embrace the Great Commission in a way that God will be glorified.

God Bless,
Pastor Johnny

Dr. Daniel L. Akin President, Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary

The interim report of the GCR Task Force has already generated much excitement and many conversations.  This is good and healthy.  The Task Force hoped its report would excite Southern Baptists, and it seems clear it has.  It is also the case that the Task Force wanted to hear from our people and receive their feedback.  That also is taking place and we rejoice in this.  Our prayer all along has been that the work of the Task Force would help cultivate a more healthy culture in SBC life where we talk with and listen to one another.  We are trying our best to model what we hope will become the norm among our people and convention of churches.

It is no surprise that I am enthusiastic about our report delivered by Ronnie Floyd on February 22 in Nashville.  I equally rejoice in the fact that the report was unanimously affirmed by all the members of the Task Force.  I believe that we are going to see the final report adopted overwhelmingly in Orlando when we come together for our annual meeting in June.  Why do I believe this will be the case?  Let me offer several specific reasons.

First, the report contains a strong and visionary missional statement that is Great Commission focused. Matthew 28:18-20 and Acts. 1:8 are the foundation upon which we will move forward together in the 21st century. Furthermore, Southern Baptists have always been a Great Commission people, and this report speaks to the heart of our people.

Second, the core values that provide a preamble to the report will foster a more healthy culture for SBC life in the 21st century and beyond if our Lord tarries His coming.  The core values are biblical, theological, spiritual and practical in their makeup. These are values that Southern Baptists can embrace and rally around.

Third, the report rightly gives priority to the local church as the headquarters of SBC life. Our final report is certain to challenge every local church in the areas of Great Commission priority, faithful biblical preaching, intentional discipleship, stewardship and missional living.  Each of these is already embedded in our initial report to our national agencies.  If they come to fruition in our churches, it will be a new and better day in SBC life!

Fourth, the report unleashes NAMB and IMB for greater strategizing and action in carrying out the Great Commission. The new vision for NAMB will present both new opportunities and challenges for our state conventions and local associations. I believe they will rise to the task and do what is needed to usher in an unprecedented day of massive church planting and gospel penetration to the unreached and underserved areas of North America.  This alone has the potential to revolutionize our convention for the good of our nation and all nations.

Fifth, the report recognizes the strategic importance of our state conventions by returning to them the vital assignments of cooperative program promotion and stewardship instruction. I believe this has real possibilities to bless financially both our state and national entities. Working together and in concert with the Executive Committee this has potential to generate new and fresh momentum for the life blood of the SBC, the Cooperative Program.

Finally, I love the fact that the report acknowledges the Cooperative Program as the central and primary giving channel of Southern Baptists, while at the same time celebrating all giving to Southern Baptist causes through what we are calling “Great Commission Giving” (GCG). To my great delight this idea found its genesis among several of our state executives.  I believe they recognize that 1) giving follows vision and 2) people give to what we celebrate.  There is so much to celebrate in SBC life.  If we communicate that well, I believe our people will give well too.

Continue to pray for the GCR Task Force.  Our work is not yet done.  There still remains more for us to do.  God has been good to us so far.  By His grace, for His glory, and with the good of the nations constantly before us, let us believe that our best days as Southern Baptists are yet to come!

Dr. Daniel Akin
President, Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary

Dr. R. Albert Mohler, Jr. President, Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, Louisville, KY

Reaching the people of North America with the Gospel of Jesus Christ has been a primary purpose of the Southern Baptist Convention since its beginning in 1845. Over the last 150 years and more, Southern Baptists have been working together to evangelize and plant churches throughout this continent.

Of course, reaching  North America is a far larger task in terms of both geography and population than it was in 1845 – and far more complex as well.  Looking to the future, Southern Baptists must make the adjustments that will focus our work in order to make maximum impact on this land.

The Great Commission Resurgence Task Force has this very much in mind as we hope to assist Southern Baptists to be even more faithful in this task. With that in mind, we are recommending changes in the assignment of the North American Mission Board and changes in the way the board works with the state conventions.

Beginning in the 1950s, Southern Baptists began working with the state conventions through what were known as “Cooperative Agreements.” These agreements were undoubtedly a good idea, and they served well for many decades. The idea of the Cooperative Agreements is simple – the North American Mission Board (and originally, the Home Mission Board) established agreements with each state convention in order to avoid overlap, confusion, and duplication of work.

So, why is a change needed now? The answer is really very simple – the Cooperative Agreements are now outdated and confusing to Southern Baptists. When the Great Commission Task Force recommends the phased elimination of these agreements, we are calling for the North American Mission Board to rethink how it should relate to the state conventions so that the mission board retains a more focused ministry of assisting Southern Baptist churches to reach North America.

In the year 2009, about $50-million dollars was routed through these Cooperative Agreements. Many of these dollars were spent on the salaries of workers in the state conventions and associations. The monies are allocated and channeled in ways that are difficult to trace, much less to prioritize.

We are calling on the North American Mission Board to focus its energies on reaching North America, with a strategic concentration on unreached and underserved people groups, the cities, and the planting of healthy, reproducing churches. There is simply no way that Southern Baptists can be more effective and faithful in this task if we retain the funding mechanisms of the Cooperative Agreements.

Much of the impetus for this came from leaders of the North American Mission Board and others who have been hard at work in this task. The purpose is not to weaken relationships with the state conventions, nor to cut funding to effective programs and partnerships. The purpose is simple, and well recognized by anyone who leads an enterprise – NAMB must have the ability to focus its energies and strategic mission funds on efforts that truly match the priorities of the board, as it serves Southern Baptists.

We are calling for the North American Mission Board to concentrate on its task assigned by the Southern Baptist Convention – and to do so through the direct appointment of missionaries and church planters who are accountable to NAMB and deployed according to its national priorities. This echoes the call made by the Convention when it adopted the Covenant for a New Century in 1995. This is the necessary next step.

This does not mean that Southern Baptists will abandon pioneer areas and underserved regions. To the contrary, we are calling for even greater efforts in these areas of our mission and work. But we do not believe that Southern Baptists expect NAMB to be primarily engaged in replicating state convention structures and personnel.

The North American Mission Board will continue to work with state conventions, and to do so in partnership. But now is the time for a new partnership structure – a structure that liberates NAMB to do its work, while respecting the important work of the state conventions.

Will this mean change? Of course it will. But this is the kind of change necessary for Southern Baptists to step boldly into the future, and to reach North America with the Gospel. This is not the 1950s, and the challenges of reaching North America in the 21st century will require far more of us than the current structures will allow.

The North American Mission Board and the state conventions both have essential roles to play in this, and we need a new spirit and structure for the partnerships that will take us into the future. With this step, the North American Mission Board will be ready to make the most of these partnerships, and to move into the future with greater flexibility, strategic focus, and stewardship of mission resources.

In other words, we need something better than the Cooperative Agreements if we are to cooperate to the fullest. We are not living in the 1950s, and North America is waiting to see if Southern Baptists are serious about reaching this continent. I believe we are, and I can’t wait to see how the North American Mission Board will lead us in this great task.

Dr. Ronnie Floyd

In our GCR Progress Report, we reaffirmed the Cooperative Program as our central and preferred means of supporting Great Commission ministries. We reaffirmed the definition of the Cooperative Program as adopted by the messengers of the 2007 Southern Baptist Convention. The Cooperative Program is our ultimate choice; our preferred, our selected, and our priority method of giving to support the Great Commission Ministries of the Southern Baptist Convention. We believe it is vital that we continue to affirm with conviction the Cooperative Program as our primary method of investing in Southern Baptist causes and see it as the glue that holds together so much of our shared work. Within our GCR Task Force or in any report to this convention, there has not been nor will there be any desire or movement to reduce the Cooperative Program and its significance in supporting Great Commission Ministries.

The GCR Progress Report also stated, after reaffirming the Cooperative Program, that there was a need to ask Southern Baptists to celebrate with our churches the Great Commission Giving that is given through the Cooperative Program which is our priority, but also to celebrate with our churches those gifts they felt led to designate to the causes of the Southern Baptist Convention, a state convention, or a local association. When our churches give to offerings like Lottie Moon, Annie Armstrong, and state-related mission offerings, the Gospel is being advanced. Therefore, our convention should celebrate with our churches what God is leading them to do. This does not reduce our shared commitments to the Cooperative Program at all, but gives us an opportunity to reaffirm through each one of these avenues of giving that the Cooperative Program is our preferred and primary plan of giving for the Great Commission.

Our GCR Task Force believes that when we celebrate with our churches what they are doing for the Great Commission, they will be much more likely to support with greater enthusiasm and commitment our priority in all of our giving, which is the Cooperative Program of the Southern Baptist Convention. The Great Commission Resurgence provides a new opportunity for our convention to communicate the stories of changed lives that happen throughout the world because of financial support through the Cooperative Program.

Dr. Ronnie Floyd

I am most thankful for the ever growing number of you who are joining us as GCR Prayer Partners. I do not know of any time in our process where we need prayer any more than for our presentation on Monday night in Nashville, Tennessee. Please encourage others to join us as Prayer Partners at www.pray4gcr.com. Again, we need prayer support. On Monday night, I will be giving a Progress Report to the Executive Committee of the Southern Baptist Convention, as well as to the representative leadership gathered from around the Southern Baptist Convention.

As I deliver this Progress Report, I need your prayers. Many hours of preparation have been spent on writing this report. Preceding this point, our entire GCR Task Force has spent countless hours in meetings, on phone calls, doing research, responding to correspondence, and having personal dialogue with many individuals and groups. The price has been paid to get us to this point of sharing some of our initial vision with you. As we unfold a substantial part of our vision, we ask you to join us with excitement over what God is doing.

We realize that many of you have an interest in hearing the Progress Report. Therefore, if you will visit our website at www.pray4gcr.com on Monday night at approximately 9:30 p.m. CST, we will have the report on video for you. I am going into the studio sometime before Monday so I can share with all Southern Baptists what God has put on our hearts. Once I sit down from making this presentation on Monday night, the video will be online at www.pray4gcr.com. Please share with others that they can view it online.

Finally, more important than anything, let’s pray for God to move mightily on Monday night in Nashville. Gather people to pray for this important night. I humbly appeal to you, please pray for me.

1,000 Thank Yous …

Dr. Ronnie Floyd

Your Great Commission Task Force has listened to Southern Baptists, gathered as much information as possible, asked the tough questions, gone through volumes of information, and has really sought to hear what Southern Baptists desire to do to advance the Great Commission in our generation. Equally, we have been before God to seek His will. Now we enter the season and the crucible of decision-making. The pressure is on and the test is real. For the past three months, these decisions have been in process, and in our next meeting we will finalize and make many difficult decisions. This is why we need you.

On Tuesday through Thursday, January 26-28, our Great Commission Resurgence Task Force will be meeting for our our most significant moment in this journey. As our process goes forward, we will be presenting our report to the upcoming meeting of the Southern Baptist Convention’s Executive Committee on February 22-23. While additions or revisions to this report are probable before the final report is made in June at the Orlando Southern Baptist Convention, the release of it in February will give Southern Baptists four months to gain clarity and have their questions addressed.

Therefore, I am asking you to give some concentrated prayer time for this upcoming meeting. Please ask your prayer ministries to pray for us. Our need for prayer has never been greater. Please consider even praying for us during the various segments of our meeting. Our meeting begins on Tuesday at 3:00 p.m. and concludes on Thursday at 2:00 p.m. We will meet in the mornings, afternoons, and evenings of each day. We would appreciate various groups within your church having continual prayer for our GCR Team during these hours.

How can you pray? We need God’s leadership and will to be manifested. We need the wisdom of God regarding every situation. We need complete clarity on presenting our convention of churches a compelling vision for the future. We need to abound in spiritual unity as we move through this significant meeting. We need courage to make the decisions that will truly advance the Great Commission through the ministries of Southern Baptists. We need God’s protection upon our own lives, our families, and the ministries we are a part of, because dealing with major Great Commission issues brings strong spiritual warfare.

Please continue to enlist people to be a part of our www.pray4gcr.com prayer team. We have just under 6,000 people who are prayer partners with us daily. We would love to see hundreds more join us in this daily commitment to pray for a Great Commission Resurgence to occur in and through the Southern Baptist Convention.

Additionally, please share with your congregation that Dr. Johnny Hunt, the President of our Convention, has issued a “Call to Prayer” for Sunday, January 31. He is appealing to every Southern Baptist Christ-follower and church to pray for the future of our convention of churches on this day.

May God bless you wonderfully for being our parters in prayer.

Seven months into our process, I have discovered this…what I thought I knew I realize I didn’t, and what changes I naively was hoping for probably would not make me a better Pastor or this denomination a more viable force as a change agent for the world.  While there has come to me a realization of what I did not know, I can say in full assurance and confidence there are a few things as a result of this Task Force that I do know.  Let me mention just two.

Southern Baptists have been Enriched with a Spiritual Heritage.  When I think of our history, the hundreds of years in existence, and the men and women who have led our denomination, I am grateful to be one of them.  Men like Adoniram Judson and women like Lottie Moon are people whom Sovereign God used as models for evangelism and missions.  If we see a world today more broken and hopeless, it is only because we are standing on their shoulders and our gaze across the landscape is because of their elevation.

Secondly, we have been Entrusted with a Sacred Honor.  To take the gospel across the street and around the world is both a divine privilege and a biblical command.    You need to know that, as a Task Force, we are firm in our convictions that spirituality overrides structure and God’s agenda and program supersedes our preferences.  It is, has been, and always will be about His Glory and not ours.  We are also solidified in this belief:  God does not need us as a denomination; but conversely it is us that is in need of Him, His touch, wisdom, and direction.

With a fresh knowledge of our spiritual heritage and sacred honor and a recognition that He is worthy of our best, we have for seven months interviewed, talked, prayed, fasted, sought counsel, phone-conferenced, met until the wee hours of the morning, for only one reason.  We want the Glory of God to be revealed and the good of our denomination to be restored as a spiritual force for reaching all the peoples of the world, beginning in our own Jerusalem and extending to the farthest point of lostness.

One last thing I have observed.  To a person on this Task Force, you have appointed men and women who love God and this denomination.  Not one time have I witnessed agendas, preferences, or even myopic thinking.  We have been led with skill and excellence from our Chairman Ronnie Floyd.  We have experienced full cooperation from all denominational entities, and we look forward to a report in June that firmly resolves we see missional churches engaged to make a difference in the lostness of our world.

Thank you for your prayers, and remember, you too are part of this heritage and honor.  It is both spiritual and sacred.

These questions should not be coming from someone who spoke for the motion to appoint a task force, but I would be less than honest if I did not say this was the case.  Allow me to set some background.  I owe all that I am to Southern Baptist churches. My great grandfather helped build Society Hill Baptist Church in the small town of Oakvale, Mississippi.  He helped raise my father, who led our home spiritually and was a deacon in our home church.  My earliest memories of church consist of Vacation Bible Schools, saying the pledge as a Royal Ambassador and spending time at summer camps in Glorieta and Ridgecrest.  I trusted Christ at an associational camp and was called to preach at my home church, Bellaire Baptist, in Bossier City, Louisiana. I trained for ministry at Ouachita Baptist University and received my Masters of Divinity at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary while at the same time working in the intern program at Prestonwood, where I currently serve.  I owe all that I am to Southern Baptist churches.

That’s why the question, “Does it really matter?” has haunted me this fall.  There is little doubt that there are some who feel discouragement and cynicism toward our future as a Convention and they are asking themselves this very question. I know the negativity of past meetings and mounting conflicts from within have taken its toll on many “young pastors”.  My fear is that the prevailing thought for some would be to consider themselves better off without the Convention than fighting for it.

This sentiment has caused me to think much about this Great Commission Resurgence, the role I play in this resurgence and the impending meeting this summer.  I am very expectant of all the task force will ask us as a Convention to consider and here is what I have concluded from searching my heart to the question, “Does it really matter”?

• It matters, if we want to be faithful to God and his scripture.  The essence of the GCR is a call for a renewed emphasis and focus on the Great Commission itself.  This matters!

• It matters, if we want to exhibit to the world our greatest asset as Southern Baptists- cooperation for the gospel’s sake. We can still do more together than we can apart and the GCR can show this to the world.  This matters!

• It matters, if we want to make a lasting difference that continues into the next generation. Because of its leadership, prayerful research, listening sessions and charge by our Convention, the GCR task force must offer some recommendations that will help us be relevant and thrive as a denomination in the future. This matters!

I have great hopes for our Southern Baptist Convention.  I am sure what we will hear from the task force will be both surprising and enlightening and must prepare ourselves to embrace and receive all that they recommend. It matters…it really does matter!

 (4)   This goes much deeper than structure

While the majority of Southern Baptists are wondering what, if any structural recommendations will be made at the convention, the issue of the GCR goes much deeper.  Something I have heard my dad say in this process is, “The SBC needs a new culture.  We often act much more like 1 Corinthians 3 than we do 1 Corinthians 13.”  As a young SBC pastor, I could not agree more.  The majority of my generation longs for a day when we come to a convention and deal with mission rather than fighting.  That is not to say we are not willing to stand and fight when needed.  The young SBC pastors that I know that are involved in the convention are those who are in full support of the Conservative Resurgence and everything it stood for.  We are conservative, Bible-believing, mission-minded, called ministers of God who want to see people come to Christ.  A line my dad uses at our prospective members dinner is, “We don’t fight here.”  Right from the beginning, people know that we are a church set on reaching Northwest Arkansas, America, and the world…and we don’t want to fight.  What if five years from now we were able to say that about the SBC?  That instead of running to a computer to blast a fellow Southern Baptist in the blogosphere, we either confronted them personally or left judgment to God?  That sounds like an SBC I want to be a part of.  We don’t fight, unless there’s Biblical/theological/missional ideals that need to be fought for.  Beyond that, we join together on mission.

 (5)   We can and should all go together

What distinguishes the Great Commission Resurgence from the Conservative Resurgence is that we can all come out of this on the other side together.  The same could not be said decades ago.  Some needed to take their liberal theology and get out of our seminaries and churches.  This is different.  There are no heretics here.  We can, and should, all go together.  In fact, this is something the convention charged the GCR Task Force to do.  The motion asked them, “To bring a report and any recommendations to the Southern Baptist Convention, meeting in Orlando, Florida, June 15-16, 2010, concerning how Southern Baptists can work more faithfully and effectively TOGETHER in serving Christ through the Great Commission.”  So from the eldest suit-wearing pastor of the SBC to the youngest, jean-wearing pastor, from the seminary presidents all the way to the people who clean the bathrooms at Lifeway or the ERLC, from the Executive State Directors of the state conventions to the leaders of our local associations, we can and should all go together.  The task of the Great Commission is worthy of our unity.

 (6)   The time is now

We all need to realize that this could be one of our last chances to put our petty differences aside and unite around the cause of the gospel.  There are unreached peoples in distant lands who have never heard the name of Jesus.  Let it not be on our watch that we chose to remain comfortable rather than change, hold on to rather than sacrifice, sit back instead of press forward.  I want to be a part of a movement rather than a convention.  I want to be a part of a movement of Southern Baptists who have been willing to do whatever it takes to get the gospel to our own nation and the nations of the world.  I want to be a part of a movement that sends out church planters all over the world to build evangelistic churches that reach their communities.  I want to be a part of a movement that comes together under the theological conviction that the Bible is perfect and in it are the very words of God.   I want to be a part of a movement that changes the world.  In other words, I want to be a part of a Great Commission Resurgence.  Do you?

During this time I have enjoyed the privilege of serving my small role in the GCR movement. With a task as big as the GCR, there has been several of our church staff who have helped along the way. I have coordinated task force member blogs, assisted with Powerpoint, helped put together task force notebooks, driven task force members to various locations, and been a prayer partner along with thousands of other Southern Baptists. During these two Christmas weeks, I will be relieving all task force members from blogging responsibilities and give a perspective from someone who is not a member of the Great Commission Resurgence Task Force. As the task force sits at the halfway point to Orlando, here are the thoughts of a 25 year old Southern Baptist, educated in Baptist schools, who just happens to be the son of the GCR Task Force Chairman.

(1)  This task is complicated. If I ever hear someone say, “Just scrap everything and do it this way,” I am likely to sit back and sigh.  As I have learned more and more about the SBC during this season, the more I realize that everything is connected and change does not happen without influencing other areas.   In other words, nothing happens in isolation.  There are people whose lives are touched with any decision in the SBC and these decisions are ones that should be weighed heavily in prayer.

(2)  This task is worthy. Having said above that the task is complicated does not discount that this task is a worthy task.  The time and energy spent by these task force members has been well spent on figuring out how we can do more for the Great Commission as a convention.  It’s a healthy thing for families, churches, businesses, and even conventions to take a hard look at themselves and ask some tough questions.  This task force is doing that very thing.  Praise God I have been raised in and am a part of a denomination that is willing to do this.

(3)  This task force is a group of Godly men and women you can trust. One of my great joys in this GCR process has been getting to meet and to know these different task force members.   These are denominational employees, pastors of small membership churches and large membership churches, pastors’ wives, and a layman.  If I could relate one thing to the people in the SBC it would be this:  God has put together an unbelievable, Godly team who really do want to see our nation and world come to Christ.  You can trust them.

Those are a few thoughts for the day.  I’ll continue with a few more thoughts next week.