The GCRTF 'progress' report

Oh, where to begin?

The Southern Baptist Convention's "Great Commission Resurgence Task Force" delivered a "progress report" to the denomination's Executive Committee on Monday evening. Chairman Ronnie Floyd, who is pastor of a mega-church in Arkansas, spoke for the task force, which was commissioned last summer with finding ways for the denomination's churches to be more effective in accomplishing the "Great Commission," which is Jesus' command to "make disciples of all nations" (Mt. 29:19-20).

The GCR committee was created, ostensibly, to rescue the denomination from what some predict will be a slow, painful death. Membership growth is not what it ought to be and baptisms are not happening in the kind of numbers you would like to see in a healthy church family. Committee member Danny Akin, president of a SBC seminary in North Carolina, said a new generation of pastors would not support the SBC unless it decided to no longer be a bloated, inefficient bureaucracy.

Delegates to the denomination's meetings this past summer voted overwhelmingly to create the committee (Southern Baptists love to create committees!) and a young pastor at an early GCR listening session urged task force members to "bring the crisis to the table next year [in Orlando] and absolutely blow it up."

I am pretty sure this "progress report" does not constitute "blowing it up." One wonders what that young pastor, Patrick Payton, senior pastor of Stonegate Fellowship in Midland, Texas, thinks about the report and whether it even constitutes progress.

There are so many questions swirling in my head, I hardly know where to start.

I will not rehearse the content of the report. Baptist Press posted a perfectly adequate article about the report and the press conference that followed. There is also a good article about comments made before the presentation by Executive Committee head Morris Chapman.

But like I said, I can think of so many questions this report raises, and I know practically nothing about how the Southern Baptist Convention works. I have got to believe the very intelligent members of the committee asked lots of very good questions during their deliberations. Yet they still bring forward a report like this?

First, let me say a couple of things positive.

One, Ronnie Floyd opened his presentation by talking about the lostness of the world and the selfishness of local churches and their members. There is no need to argue about the world being massively lost, but Floyd quoted research that indicates the average church member gives only 2.56% of her income to the church. Churches are famous for keeping 94% of their receipts for themselves. And only a tiny fraction of church members engage in any kind of ministry, much less evangelism. Complacency and selfishness stifle passion for the Great Commission, both at the individual and church levels.

Two, the vision and values proposed by the task force are wonderful. The Baptist Press article reports: The "missional vision" is "as a convention of churches, ... to present the Gospel of Jesus Christ to every person in the world and to make disciples of all the nations." The eight core values are Christ-likeness, Truth, Unity, Relationships, Trust, Future, Local Church and Kingdom. What a great list! Who could take issue with any of them?

But it also raises the first of my many questions. How many Southern Baptists would say those values already guide their mission? How many would think task force leaders did not do such a great job of modeling values like Unity, Relationships, and Trust when they harshly criticized denominational leaders? Floyd declared, "The disunity in our churches and in our denomination is so wrong and sinful. ... With rhetoric we bemoan our dismal baptism numbers, our declining and plateaued churches, and our economic selfishness. The casting of criticism has resulted in a caustic cynicism that just adds to our rhetoric and writings. ... The rhetoric needs to cease and the repentance personally and corporately must begin. We need to repent of our sins and return to God." Do the Reverends Floyd, Hunt, and Akin plan to set an example by confessing the disunity they have caused with their rhetoric and criticism? How great it would be for the pot to practice what it is preaching to the kettle! (Yes, I love mixing metaphors.)

A few of the other questions that occur to me:

How does carving the North American Mission Board into seven regional operations constitute a move toward streamlining and efficiency? How would that not result in multiplying professional and support staff? Why does a national agency need to be "closer to the churches"? Is that not why Southern Baptists have local associations and state conventions? Do state conventions not have staff that focus on the same issues the NAMB focuses on?

The task force proposes a 1% increase in funding for the SBC's International Mission Board, calling it a "symbolic and substantial" step toward penetrating the massive lostness of people groups that have yet to hear the Gospel. That amounts to about $2 million, which is a drop in the bucket for an organization with an annual budget in excess of $200 million. "Symbolic," no doubt, but "substantial"? Hardly.

The report also proposes moving responsibility for promoting the Cooperative Program and educating people about biblical stewardship away from the national Executive Committee to the individual state conventions. The money that has gone for those ministries would go toward the extra money for international missions. That means the state conventions, whose budgets are already seriously strained, would not be getting any funding to help create those offices. Where will those state offices get the money? Perhaps by sending even less money on to the national convention? Would that not mean the IMB is getting 1% more of a pie that could be 10% smaller?

The task force also is suggesting that, over the course of four years, the NAMB be "released" from "cooperative agreements" with the state conventions to give the agency more money to focus on a truly national evangelism and church planting strategy. I am pretty clueless about those agreements. Apparently it involves a state sending church donations to the NAMB and then getting part of it back to help with evangelism and church planting strategies in the state. By reducing the amount sent back by 25% each year, the NAMB has more money to use for its own national strategies. But what keeps the state convention from simply keeping that portion of money in the first place? Do they not decide how much money will be sent on and how much will be kept in the state for their own mission needs? This move, plus giving them the responsibility for "CP" and stewardship, almost guarantees they will see a need to keep a larger percentage in the state. Why does the IMB's slice of the pie not get smaller still?

Denominations are living organisms, not machines. Like humans, denominations start out young and simple and get more complex as they grow older. Sometimes they get frail and have a hard time remembering why they are here. But fixing a denomination is not as simple as disassembling a machine and putting it back together.

What the GCR Task Force is attempting is not rearranging the parts of denominational machinery. It is more like strapping a mega-church pastor to a gurney with the intention of rearranging his parts. Perhaps he suffers from Cranial-Rectal Inversion Disorder and the intention is to put his head back in the proper alignment. Or perhaps the noble desire is to accomplish greater efficiency and effectiveness in an organism that is not functioning as well as it used to.

The danger, of course, is that mucking around with the internal organs of a living organism might result in a successful surgery ... and a dead patient.

New names for old games?

In the Southern Baptist Convention, is "Great Commission" the new "Inerrancy"?

Didn't "Resurgence" once mean "Takeover"?

GCR leaders and the 'Cooperative Program'

From a friend of a friend of a friend, one more thought about the "Great Commission Resurgence Task Force" committee:

The chairman of the committee, Ronnie Floyd (pastor of a megachurch in Springdale, Ark.), has already been rejected by Southern Baptists for his pitiful, disgraceful Cooperative Program giving. I use the strong word 'disgraceful' because he attempted to become our president while giving 1/3 of 1 percent to our cooperative work. Why do we keep putting these guys in such key leadership positions!?

The Cooperative Program is the unified approach Southern Baptist churches take to jointly fund large-scale projects (like missions and seminaries) that they could not accomplish separately. I seem to recall reading that megachurch pastors like Rev. Floyd and Rev. Johnny Hunt chafe at observations like the one above because their churches - virtual denominations unto themselves - invest large sums of money into direct missions while sending small percentages to the "CP." I seem to recall that some megachurch pastors, in fact, have complained that their missions spending "outside the structure" of the Cooperative Program is not given enough weight in evaluating their commitment to the Southern Baptist cause.

I can understand that concern. Any pastor who is leading a congregation to invest in missions activity what for them is a large sum of money ought to get credit for such visionary leadership.

My friends who are Southern Baptists, however, tell me that it was the creation of the Cooperative Program that freed individual congregations from a constant barrage of fund-raising requests brought by visiting representatives of missionary societies. The more persuasive fund-raisers raked in the dough for their causes; the less glamorous causes struggled. Small congregations were torn, unable to respond meaningfully to all the pleas for money. The decision to pool resources for missions causes - and ignore pleas from societies - set loose one of the greatest engines for Christian missions the non-Catholic world has ever seen. Most Southern Baptist churches measure their commitment to cooperative missions by the percentage of their budget they donate to the CP.

No doubt the proponents of the "Great Commission Resurgence Task Force" committee want to see renewed passion for the missions mandate among Southern Baptists. Any believer with a heartbeat wants to see that.

Given the track record of some of the GCR leaders, however, a person couldn't be blamed for wondering whether they aren't actually hostile to the Cooperative Program approach to doing missions.

And if you aren't a Cooperative Program Southern Baptist, what makes you a Southern Baptist at all - as opposed, say, to an Independent Fundamental Baptist? Could this committee be used to dismantle the Cooperative Program framework or at least do serious damage to it?

Just asking. What does an outsider like me know anyway?

Oh, good! A committee!

The boys in the new club - the Southern Baptist "Great Commission Resurgence" Club - are so excited that delegates (sorry. "messengers") to the annual meeting voted for their committee. Everyone knows that the best way to spark renewed passion for the Great Commission is to appoint a committee to study the situation and bring back recommendations.

What a bunch of Baptists.

If you want to see real change in Southern Baptist churches, you can start with about two-thirds of their members getting saved.

Then you need to talk to the backsliders about lordship.

Then you should to talk to the superficial Christians about discipleship.

Then you ought to get everybody on their knees at the altar, confessing their sins and righting wrong relationships. (The Calvinists should set the example for the "weaker brothers" and be the first to apologize - for being arrogant know-it-alls.)

Then you should get each member to pick five unsaved people with whom to develop Kingdom relationships and pick five new believers to disciple.

Then you should all get on the church van and head over across the tracks and see how things are going in the real world.

Then some of you get on a bus and head cross country to help start a new church. And some others get on a plane and fly overseas to sit with people dying of AIDS.

Then everyone meet back here one year from today and we'll talk about all the great things God did while the GCR Committee was spending buckets of money, deliberating how to keep God's Southern Baptist Kingdom out of the crapper. (Mark Driscoll told me it was "missional" to use that word in this context.)

These boys make all kinds of noise about passion for the Great Commission. Then they form a committee to talk about reorganizing the denomination.

Oh, yes, that ought to work. I mean, it worked for Jesus, right?

Southern Baptists and their GCRD

It has been almost a year since I posted but there just hasn’t been anything that piqued my interest. Until now, anyway.

I have been reading about the Southern Baptists’ Great Commission Resurgence Declaration (GCRD) in Baptist Press and on the blogs. While I agree wholeheartedly about the need for Southern Baptists to rediscover a passion for Christ’s mission in the world, there were some things about the GCRD conversation that struck me as being a little off.

So some friends and I have been talking and we have come up with a few questions that we would like to have answers to, if we were going to be delegates to the upcoming Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) meeting in Louisville, Kentucky (which we are not).

The GCRD asserts the SBC has a problem with growing bureaucracy. Just saying so, however, does not make it so. What is the evidence for the assertion? Can anyone provide numbers that demonstrate inappropriate growth in Southern Baptist agency staffing?

And if it turns out there has been significant growth in staffing, how does a person tell the difference between bureaucratic enlargement and growth necessitated by ministry advancement? Is all growth in staffing by definition an enlargement of bureaucracy?

As long as we are at it, let’s also talk about church staffs. When would the growth of a church's staff count as bureaucratic enlargement? Are the issues of misplaced mission priorities illustrated at least as well by how churches spend money on themselves? What does a church that keeps 98% of its dollars at home have to say to a state denominational office that keeps 55%?

Which is the bigger problem for the enlargement of Christ’s Kingdom: the percentage of dollars kept by the local church and not sent on to mission causes, or the percentage kept by a state denominational office for state missions?

Among the leaders at the local church level who are calling for the denomination to make better use of the people's offerings, do we have examples of pastors with misplaced priorities? Are large building and salary budgets a good mission use of money given by the congregation?

GCRD leaders have complained that critics have zeroed in on their Point #9 (which criticizes the growth of denominational bureaucracy and calls for reorganization at all levels to “streamline”), but other than #9, which elements of the GCRD would anyone actually disagree with? Is it irrelevant that the GCRD's most practical call for specific change is focused on denominational structures, not the local church?

If the GCRD really is directed at the churches, not the denomination, what exactly is the challenge it poses to the churches? In what way do they need to change?

Is there any point in the GCRD that a church member would say does not already characterize their church?

If we believe these points already describe our church, how does affirming them ignite a “Great Commission Resurgence” (GCR)? Did the “Conservative Resurgence” happen because everyone in the SBC affirmed a high view of Scripture? Did the Protestant Reformation happen because Martin Luther posted 95 Points of Agreement on the church door?

When a church readily affirms the elements of the GCRD but does not live them out in practice, what do you do next to spark a GCR?

We also were put off by the original tone of the GCRD as put out first by Dr. Danny Akin and then by Rev. Johnny Hunt. The language was sharply critical of denominational agencies without offering any documentation for the assertion about bureaucracy. We have addressed that above.

We were even more concerned, however, by the tone Rev. Hunt struck in his subsequent media interviews. It seemed to us that it was arrogant for him to lecture denominational leaders about speaking down to pastors and churches. He declared that “the church is king” and said that when churches speak to the denomination, they speak as kings to princes. The point is that denominational leaders should listen and cooperate, not presume to give directions.

That is all well and good. In Southern Baptist polity, churches are indeed king. But someone may need to point out to Rev. Hunt that the SBC therefore has more than 40,000 kings, not one, two, or twenty. It also ought to be noted that it is therefore the churches that are king, not the pastors. A pastor may not appreciate a denominational leader speaking down to him, and that's understandable. But does the fact that the church is king justify a pastor speaking down to a denominational leader?

Some of the SBC’s leaders have asserted that if a GCR is going to happen, it will require the partnership of all people at all levels of the denomination. How can a spirit of partnership prevail if a pastor speaks to convention leaders the way a king would speak to princes?

We also are curious about another polity issue. Southern Baptists say they are not connectional. That means no level of denominational organization has authority over any church or over other levels of organization. The churches directly control each of the levels of organization with which they choose to relate.

That being said, on what basis would a national SBC task force presume even to discuss -- much less make recommendations about -- Southern Baptist reorganization at state and local levels? If the churches are king, would not they take up those discussions themselves in the appropriate venues? Is it not a little ironic that a local church leader who diminishes the role of national agencies would then call for a national task force to tell state and local leaders how to reorganize their affairs?

I doubt any of the big shots who run the big churches and big agencies of the Southern Baptist Convention have any interest in what nobodies have to say. But it seems to us nobodies that a group of people who claim they want to spark renewed passion for the Great Commission are going about it more like a bunch of religious bureaucrats than a band of passionate followers of Jesus Christ.