I have to say that I was pretty impressed with the tone and the content of the Plenary Session. The focus was on Christ and on our work together. I learned more from this meeting in hearing the entity heads speak this way than I have from the conventions that I have been to. I left edified and encouraged about the direction of the SBC and the work of the entities. Below is my best representation of what was reported. I do not give commentary here, but try to reproduce the words of the speakers. Lots of good information here, in my opinion.
After introduction of new trustees and recognition of guests, which included entity heads, state convention presidents, Baptist State Paper editors (there were none here), and a recognition of SBC evangelists, we moved to Dr. Frank Page’s report.
The Hispanic Advisory Council Report has just been given to Dr. Page. It is an exhaustive report. Dr. Page has worked with this council for 3 years and here are the highlights of the report.
- Knowing Hispanics
- Evangelizing Hispanics
- Congregationalizing Hispanics
- Training Hispanics
- Mobilizing Hispanics
Of our 46,125 churches, almost 3,000 are Hispanic.
The African-American Advisory Council Report was also given to Dr. Page. Of 46,125 churches, almost 4,000 churches are African-American – the largest ethnic group within our convention. Dr. Page is excited about the growing involvement and participation of African Americans at every level. Highlights:
- Sharing Christ
- Starting Churches
- Strengthening Leaders
- Strategically Impacting Convention and Culture
- Sending Volunteer Mission Teams
- Surrending as Vocational Missionaries
Asian-American Advisory Council – comprised of Korean and also Chinese and other Asian-American groups. Between 2-3,000 churches are Asian American. Dr. Paul Kim is the leader of the
28 other ethnic groups. We have a Multi-Ethnic Advisory Council. The chairman of that group is Native American and includes Deaf, Messianic, Slavic, Haitian, and other groups.
Southern Baptists are by far the most ethnically diverse congregation in North America.
The largest sub-group in the SBC involves small church and bivocational pastors. There is an advisory group that is also meeting and are seeking to deepen SBC engagement with this group as well.
Dr. Page has participated in approximately 800 listening sessions with SBC pastors and leaders across America.
State of the Cooperative Program
We know that the CP has lost some of its luster over the years. In times past, the average CP giving for SBC churches was around 11% of undesignated receipts for churches. It dropped to a little over 5% a few years ago, but it is back up to 5.5%. Dr. Page believes that giving is going up.
Our fervent adherence to autonomy often works against loyalty to the CP. SBC missions and ministries are competing for Southern Baptist allegiance and dollars against a very broad array of compelling and necessary missions and non-profit work.
Dr. Page believes that we need to do a better job of evaluating common understandings and misunderstandings of the CP. He is hearing people say that there might be a better way, but he asks people what that might be?
Any model of funding we consider must be evaluated through the disciplines of:
- Long term sustainability
- Eliminating competition
- A level playing field
- Alingment with Southern Baptist’s long-held guiding principle. We can do more together than we can alone.
- Appreciation of involvement of the small membership church and our ethnic churches.
Direct funding of missionaries by churches is a direct affront to smaller churches and ethnic churches. If we move to each church supporting their own missionaries, then we leave small and ethnic churches behind. How do we mobilize African American and Latino missionaries when White household wealth is 18-20 times higher than African American and Latino households. If we leave the Cooperative Program behind, then we pass by the smaller and ethnic churches.
Entity Reports came next and they were rapid fire.
NAMB: Kevin Ezell gave a brief overview of the work of NAMB in helping to mobilize churches to be on mission and to raise up missionaries. There is a Send North America Tour that is going across the country and Dr. David Platt is the primary speaker. There will also be a 2015 Send North America Conference in Nashville on August 3-4. They opened up registration 10 days ago and have already had over 5,000 people register. It will be at the Bridgestone Arena and could be a joint conference with the IMB. It might be the largest missions conference in the history of North America.
There is a new emphasis on revitilization and on encouraging of pastors. Many pastors are very discouraged across the country. NAMB has entered into a partnership with Focus on the Family to develop a Pastoral Care Line starting October 1st. The number is 1-844-Pastor1 and will be 100% confidential.
Guidestone: O.S. Hawkins gave a report on how Guidestone is managing the retirement and insurance funds of Southern Baptists. They are moving toward the completion of their longrange plan and Dr. Hawkins is preparing to hand the entity off to new leadership in a few years. Guidestone has had very high ranking investment funds over the past few years and has been awarded many accolades and #1 rankings by different organizations.
Insurance Plans are up 9% this past year and the renewal rate is at 97-98%, so as people are shopping around, they are returning back to the Guidestone plans in high numbers. Guidestone has filed suit against the Federal Government over ObamaCare and there is an injunction on the lawsuit involving abortificiants. There is a hearing coming up in December on this. Guidestone does not provide abortificiants and refuse to submit on that issue.
Guidestone started in 1918 as a relief organization to take care of old pastors who have worked hard for the gospel and in are in need in their older years. That work continues. Guidestone has stopped taking CP money for mission dignity for older pastors. The neediest of the pastors and their widows get over $600 a month from the “mission dignity” program. The financial base for this work has come from over 6,000 donors who give each year and monthly. Guidestone is trying to build a broad base to care for these old pastors and their widows.
Lifeway: Thom Rainer said that the gospel of Jesus Christ is at the base and is present in all of Lifeway’s Bible Study materials. As Southern Baptists, we sometimes focus on the bad news and what is going wrong in our society. Dr. Rainer shared his personal testimony about how he came to Christ when he was 12 years old and was led to the Lord by his football coach who he has just reconnected with. There is good news for us to share about Jesus and His salvation.
For the first time in the history of Lifeway, over 150,000 students went to one of the Lifeway student camps. They all heard the gospel and we believe that there was a record number of students who came to Christ this summer. Lifeway takes no CP money, but through their work they are able to get the gospel to students who also heard about a passion for missions. Students gave money to missions at the camps this summer as well. Lifeway is giving $300,000 to both NAMB and the IMB collected from students at the Lifeway camps.
IMB: Gordon Fort, Senior VP of the IMB spoke in place of David Platt, who is in Thailand. We live in the day of the greatest advance of the gospel in history. As funding in the U.S. has dropped, the IMB has had to decrease the number of missionaries to 5,000. With open doors everywhere around the world, this is not the time to drawn down on missionary involvement and appointment. Dr. Fort went around the world to talk with national and indigenous leaders around the world to work on mobilization because the work must be done. He told stories about what is happening around the world with committed indigenous and national leaders that Southern Baptists partner with. From these meetings, Dr. Fort began to work with indigenous leaders on a strategy regarding what the IMB could do to help believers all over the world in their work.
All over the world, indigenous and national leaders are starting their own missions boards and movements. In Brazil, they are offering to pay missionaries on their own. In China, there are 3 conventions of Baptists larger than the SBC. They are wanting to send 100,000 missionaries around the world. They do not have the finances that we have, but they can do something that we cannot do. They know how to suffer. They are asking for training materials and are ready to go. From the Ukraine to Siberia to Brazil and Uraguay to China and Thailand, believers around the world are rising up and are taking the gospel further than we ever could. We are now moving into a partnering role with them. The Gospel is bearing fruit and is reproducing all over the world. Again and again. In Nigeria, 118,000 believers gathered for the 100th anniversary of the beginning of the Nigerian Baptist Convention representing 2 million believers. They have sent out 500 missionaries around the world. Southern Baptists started that convention in the late 1800s and are now seeing fruit. The SBC was formed to take the gospel to the nations. That is what we must do.
SBC President’s Report: Dr. Ronnie Floyd.
Dr. Floyd used the example of Gus Malzahn coming into his office in the mid 90’s with the idea of the HUNH offense (Hurry Up No Huddle) and how Shiloh Christian went 29-1 over the next two years after they implemented. That concept has spread all over football now. It is based on a sense of urgency and fast-paced movement so that more plays could be run so that there are more opportunities to score.
In our churches, we need to recapture a “strong sense of urgency.” We need to move and we need to move fast. Lostness is growing. Our world is becoming more dangerous. Desperation is rising. There is a deep, growing sense of conviction that is growing that if God does not reign down His mercy upon us, we are headed for destruction. But, at the same time, there is a recognition growing that admits that we cannot fix ourselves. We do not have the capacity to fix our situation.
What time is it in the Southern Baptist Convention? Romans 13:11 says, “Besides this, knowing the time, it is already the hour for you to wake up fro sleep, for now our salvation is nearer than when we first believed.” This is not about “chronos,” just the regular passing of time. This is about kairos – a decisive moment of time. It is a time of urgency. The Lord is coming again and we must wake up from our slothfulness and apathetic spiritual condition. God is at work and we should all want to be a part of what He is doing. God has chosen you to do what you are doing and to be where you are. How are you living out this kairos moment of God?
1 Chronicles 12:32 – who understood the times and knew what Israel should do. That is who we are to be. We must spend our days doing what really matters and what requires faith and to believe God for the impossible and to change as much as is needed to reach the nations with the gospel. We must die to ourselves and our preferences and disagreements and biases and prejudices and ways, practices, and actions that might prohibit God’s power from coming upon us as His people.
We are not the same convention when we began in 1845 or in 1925 when we began the Cooperative Program. Nor are we the same convention of 1979 with the Conservative Resurgence or 1995 when it was realized finally or 2010 when we adopted the Great Commission Resurgence. In 1845, we started a plan to mobilize the entire denomination in “one sacred effort, for the propagation of the gospel.” We must return to that one sacred effort for the task of takin the gospel to the nations.
7 Things Needed in the SBC Right Now:
- We need to believe God for the next Great Awakening. We must realize that we cannot fix ourselves. We need a mighty move of God. We need personal spiritual revival and a corporate move of God. We need God to move regionally and nationally in ways that we cannot orchestrate. Internationally, we must take the gospel to every person in the world before they die. All of this goes together. He then brought Jonathan Edwards into the discussion and his call to churches during the Great Awakening.
- We need to come together in Unity. We must value one another and respect and love another unconditionally. God will not bless division, envy, rivalry, or jealousy. We should not be filled with strife that results in camps and division. None of this honors God. It is how unbelievers act. We must cease rallying around human personalities. We must be Jesus people and focused on Christ.
- We need to recapture what it means to cooperate together. Read the Baptist Faith & Message 2000 on cooperation. We should work together in spiritual harmony and cooperation. We need to trade in independence for cooperation.
- We need to elevate the Cooperative Program, both its need and value. We can do more together than we can do by ourselves. We must work together and give together. We are in a funding crisis in the SBC. A divide is growing over this issue. All of our problems are not going away by telling people to give more money. We do not need to shame churches into giving more. Loyalty to a brand is no longer automatic. It is earned continually. We have a funding crisis not only in dollars, but also in philosophy. We must find a way to work together. We cannot be divided over the CP. We are committed to the Great Commission, but we must find ways to do that together.
- We need to recommit ourselves to personal and church evangelism. Each of us must take part in sharing the gospel with others and working to reach people with the gospel. We must make this a top priority. We baptized as many people last year as we did over 60 years ago when there were 160 million less Americans and thousands fewer SBC churches and millions fewer Southern Baptists. We must work together in this. October 14 is a day that Dr. Floyd is calling upon all Southern Baptists and churches to come together and share the gospel with someone that day. What can we do to lead our churches in this on that particular day? Students across Baptist Campus Ministries are working that day to share the gospel.
- We need to come to Columbus, Ohio, June 16-17, 2015. We have a cross-generational disengagement regarding what we are doing on an annual basis. The Annual Meeting must be a yearly celebration of what God is doing in the world. We need to get people to the Convention and get them excited about what the SBC is doing so they will go back to their churches and promote involvement in the SBC. Southern Baptists need to go to “exciting” Columbus, Ohio next year so that we can celebrate what God is doing and get motivated to share that. We will have 1,000 college students involved in Crossover Columbus and they will be staying over for our meeting at the SBC. Dr. Paul Kim and his wife Rebecca, from Boston, are going to mobilize 500 Asian American college students to participate in the Convention in Columbus. The IMB and NAMB will do a joint commissioning service at the Convention and the goal is to commission 100 new missionaries. We are asking all Southern Baptists to come to Columbus and celebrate God’s work and pray like never before for God to work and move in our churches and in America.
- We need to elevate before our churches the international crisis in Iraq and Syria. Like the Holocaust in Germany, there is devastation going on now. How could such obvious evil be ignored? We are witnessing a once in a thousand year destruction of the Christian church in Iraq and Syria. The situation is worse than we can imagine. Christians are being beheaded and cut in half and women are being raped and trafficked by the thousands. This evil of ISIS has gone from one Christian place to another and has killed or forced converted those who could not leave. This is genocide. This is happening in our world and on our watch. As leaders, we all some level of influence and we all must stand and be courageous. We should not sing louder in our churches while our Christian brothers and sisters are dying in the desert. 1. We must pray for them every day that God might deliver them from wicked and evil men. Pray in our worship services. When churches are placing more emphasis on announcements than on prayer, we are in trouble. 2. Pastors and Christian leaders must educate ourselves on what is going on so we can help others understand. 3. Provide generously to Baptist Global Response and Hunger Relief so that they can help those in need. When one member of the body suffers, then everyone suffers. We must speak for these people like we would hope that they would speak for us. Among them, it is a matter of life and death.
What time is it in the Southern Baptist Convention? It is time for us to rise up and to stop making excuses about why we don’t. We must come together and go forward. These are critical days and urgent moments. We have a wonderful opportunity as a convention of churches to do more than we have before. Why? Because we must take the gospel to the ends of the earth.
I appreciate your effort in this.
Re: CP
Page said we must do a better job communicating. I’ve paid fairly close attention to what our leaders have been saying over the past decade or so and this is a standard. The response to better CP education seems to be, in part, that churches are disappointed in allocations. Absent from the EC meeting reports were state conventions who consume most of every CP dollar.
Re: direct funding of missions personnel
IMB just voted to require this for some programs though Platt requested it be put on hold. Also, IMB works cooperatively with some large churches who directly fund personnel. These two policies undermine the statements about direct funding being undesirable.
Thanks for the report. It is interesting to contemplate what this meeting is like, in emphasis, in shared theology, in vision. Contrast that with what so many large denominations talk about when they meet together. We are fortunate to be as unified as we are and to have what I believe to be the main things at the center of our discussions and emphasis.
I will say that the Guidestone report contains a lot of inflated chest thumping, and that most people in the SBC (understandably) do not understand the strengths and weaknesses of Guidestone. A couple of years ago Guidestone expanded its ministry philosophy. It will be interesting to see what comes out of that.
The ethnic analysis is really interesting. That has great potential for the SBC’s future.
“It is interesting to contemplate what this meeting is like, in emphasis, in shared theology, in vision. Contrast that with what so many large denominations talk about when they meet together. We are fortunate to be as unified as we are and to have what I believe to be the main things at the center of our discussions and emphasis.”
Amen!
Alan,
I was wondering about this line:
“In China, there are 3 conventions of Baptists larger than the SBC.”
What is meant here? I read this to mean that there are three separate Baptist conventions in China with more than 16 million members each? I recall a Pew Forum study a few years back citing that there were 58 million “Protestants” – divided mostly between members of state-approved Protestant churches and independent “house” churches. Not sure what “conventions” are being referred to here?
The rumors are true. There has been a sighting of the elusive Weaver-squatch at SBC Voices.
Yanks can’t lose another game this year!
That is what I heard Gordon Fort say. He might have been including all of East Asia in that. He did not site any sources and it is possible that I misheard. I was typing fast and that is what I heard.
Did he mean that there are groups of Baptists in China who have more Chinese members than does the SBC in China?
Certainly, knowing what we do about Southern Baptists, “larger” can only mean “more populous.”
🙂
Yep.
Floyds comment number one is the far and away the need of the hour. It is my opinion without personal revival etc. all of our efforts are without life. Ron Dunn years ago in preaching on the Amos (I think, I am too tired to go check) passage of the lost axe head said he hears the sound of an abundance of work but little sound of falling trees. I too have heard the sound of much work, but only revival will bring the sound of falling trees.
I would encourage all of us to join Dr. Floyd in seeking personal renewal and revival.
Opps sorry 11Kings 6 not Amos
“All over the world, indigenous and national leaders are starting their own missions boards and movements. In Brazil, they are offering to pay missionaries on their own. ”
Why do we not combine with these other boards and conventions to enlarge the SBC from just an American thing to a worldwide convention? When our missionaries plant churches in other countries why do those churches not get to consider themselves a part of the SBC? It seems to me that we all to be bringing all of these churches around the world into our convention and make it international in scope. This would certainly eliminate in problem we have of ethnicity.
Joseph,
Not that the idea of bringing in churches from around the world is bad, its not, but I think the idea is that our churches here in the USA have more representation in our leadership.
There are those men who could be dynamic leaders left out of consideration because they are not part of certain networks.
-mike
Are you talking about making an alternative to the Baptist World Alliance? I suppose this would be good. If I remember correctly the SBC ditched the BWA due to liberalism. Connecting with conservative Baptists worldwide could be beneficial.
My understanding for what it’s worth is that it not our purpose to become an international denomination. The purpose we formed for as the SBC is to create a body for effective cooperation of Baptist churches to take the Gospel to the world. Becoming international in scope as idealistic as it is would actually hinder that goal for three reasons:
1) It hinders indigenization. Our goal should be exactly what is happening. Churches in each area taking ownership of their work and forming their own church bodies and associations whereby they can work together to win the world to Christ.
2) Effective representation. As difficult as it is to have an SBC annual meeting that is functional for the thousands of Baptist churches in the U.S. and having trustee led entities that work to reaching the world for Christ, imagine the difficulty in having SBC meetings in a way that messengers from Brazil, Nigeria, and Russia could be apart of. Just the logistics of travel would be prohibitive, much less language barriers. Then we have to reconfigure the trustee nature of our entities to account for these new regions. In the end would not help us in our purpose.
3) Finances. We exist as a means of supporting two mission boards, six seminaries, a publishing house, and a commission on ethics and religious liberty. Once we expand internationally then we run into the problem of converting money from foreign into dollars and transferring money from one country to the U.S. and for IMB work then transferring it back to the country the workers are in. It is far more effective for these churches to form their own associations whereby they are able to finance missions in their own way without the problem of currency rates and transfers.
In the end, our purpose of reaching the world for Christ is most effectively accomplished by churches voluntarily associating together in ways that are most conducive to fulfilling that purpose. Nothing prohibits us from partnering with local indigenous churches and/or associations/conventions if forming such partnerships helps in fulfilling our purpose.
I agree a worldwide convention is not a good move, especially with the SBC’s focus on local churches. But what about formal networking with foreign conventions, with this being initially built at the national level? I’m sure many local churches would love to partner with foreign conventions and mission boards, alongside their CP giving, but wouldn’t know where to begin. My thought is more having loose fraternal ties, rather than bringing the whole world into a single convention. It could be mutually beneficial.
As has been mentioned, Joseph’s idea is actually a violation of SBC polity and policy. It has been said that there are NO SBC churches overseas. They have their own conventions and associations. We are supposed to support them, not control them.
On the other hand, a BWA-type organization that has better doctrinal moorings might be a good thing, if one does not already exist.