GCR Task Force Report Dominates SBC Business
July 2010
ORLANDO, Fla. (BP)—After months of debate, Southern Baptist Convention messengers meeting June 15-16 easily adopted an amended version of the Great Commission Resurgence Task Force report and also elected a new president, Bryant Wright.
It was the first time Southern Baptists had gathered in Orlando since 2000, the same year they debated and passed another significant document, the 2000 Baptist Faith & Message.
The 23-member GCR Task Force, formed during the 2009 meeting by then-SBC President Johnny Hunt, released a preliminary report in February and a lengthy final report in May. Discussion on the report in newspapers, Internet blogs and social media led to the largest messenger total at an annual meeting—just over 11,000—since 2006.
In other top annual meeting news:
—messengers passed a resolution calling divorce a “scandal that has become all too commonplace in our own churches” and an oil spill resolution asserting that “our God-given dominion over the creation is not unlimited, as though we were gods and not creatures.”
—the convention voted in its first presidential runoff since 1982.
—the Executive Committee elected Frank Page its next president.
But the GCR report dominated messengers’ attention. It had seven components, none of which drew more floor discussion during the Tuesday afternoon session than the third component’s call for a new category, “Great Commission Giving,” that would encompass not only Cooperative Program giving but also designated giving to all SBC causes.
Critics argued the new category would de-emphasize CP giving, and when messenger John Waters (Ga.) offered an amendment striking the new category from the report, a vote via a show of ballots appeared too close to call. Rather than putting the amendment to a ballot vote that possibly would push discussion of the report into the evening, task force members offered two compromise amendments that strengthened the report’s CP language. Both were amendments to Component No. 3 and both passed overwhelmingly.
The first amendment said Southern Baptists “continue to honor and affirm the Cooperative Program as the most effective means of mobilizing our churches and extending our outreach.” The second amendment—which was written during a discussion on stage between task force members and Waters—said Southern Baptists affirm “that designated giving to special causes is to be given as a supplement to the Cooperative Program and not as a substitute for Cooperative Program giving.”
Waters, pastor of First Baptist Church in Statesboro, Ga., spoke from the podium and said the compromise amendment was offered by him and task force members “in the spirit of unity and togetherness” so as “to find some common ground on which we can stand for the sake of” the Great Commission.
Subscribe to Updates