We’ve had several articles here about the happenings at the SBC Executive Committee Meeting last week. On Monday night, Ronnie Floyd presented his new plan called Vision 2025 to the Executive Committee. William published an article on the plan here at SBC Voices. But Vision 2025 was quickly overshadowed by the actions the Executive Committee took the following day. It’s one of my frustrations with the EC right now. We should be focusing on Vision 2025. Instead, it was almost forgotten just as quickly as it was presented.
But today in Baptist Press, Dr. Floyd published an article with further details about his plan. There are still not a lot of details about ways our entities will help our churches accomplish the vision, but this article does provide a better understanding of the rationale behind it. The plan is built on 5 strategic actions.
Strategic Action 1: Increase our total number of full-time, fully-funded missionaries by a net gain of 500, giving us 4,200 full-time, fully-funded missionaries through the International Mission Board.
Strategic Action 2: Add 6,000 new churches to our Southern Baptist family, giving us more than 50,000 churches.
Strategic Action 3: Increase our total number of workers in the field through a new emphasis on “calling out the called,” and then preparing those who are called out by the Lord.
Strategic Action 4: Turn around our ongoing decline in reaching, baptizing, and discipling 12- to 17-year-olds in the prime of their teenage years.
Strategic Action 5: Increase our annual giving in successive years to reach and surpass $500 million given through the Cooperative Program to achieve these Great Commission goals.
The goal is that each of these would be accomplished by 2025. But here’s the thing. Nashville is powerless to see this vision come to fruition. I applaud Dr. Floyd for laying it out there. As he says, it’s “specific, measurable, realistic, attainable and timely.” But if his vision is to become a reality for the SBC, it will take ordinary pastors like you and me taking hold of it and making it our own.
We are not a top-down denomination. No edict from Nashville will turn around the decline in the SBC. I’m thankful that Dr. Floyd plans to bring this to the messengers in Orlando. Not because he needs the messengers’ approval to say, “This is the vision for the SBC for the next 5 years.” But because without the buy-in of the Southern Baptists in the pews and pulpits of our churches, this vision will never become a reality.
So, what are your thoughts? Are you on board? How do you plan to do your part in seeing Dr. Floyd’s vision become a reality?
