ORLANDO, Fla.—In a surprise move, Southern Baptists said no to two well-known presidential candidates and elected a church planter from Marietta, Ga., to lead them in the coming year.

Bryant Wright, senior pastor of Johnson Ferry Baptist Church in Marietta, Ga., beat Ted Traylor, pastor of Olive Baptist Church in Pensacola, Fla., in a run-off ballot 4,225 to 3,371.

Bryant’s votes represented 55.11 percent of the 7,667 votes casts, while Traylor’s represented 43.97 percent. Seventy-one votes, or .93 percent, were disallowed.

Bryant Wright, senior pastor of the 7,600 member Johnson Ferry Baptist Church in Marietta, Ga., won the run-off election for president of the Southern Baptist Convention with 55 percent of the vote. More than 7,660 messengers voted during the June 15 election at the 153rd annual meeting of the SBC at the Orange Country Convention Center in Orlando, Fla. (SBC Photo by Bill Bangham)

Traylor and Jimmy Jackson, senior pastor, Whitesburg Baptist Church, Huntsville, Ala., entered the race as the frontrunners, particularly in what many labeled a pro/con Great Commission Resurgence report presidential race. Traylor served on the task force. Jackson was outspoken against the task force’s report that was approved by convention messengers just minutes before the presidential election results were announced.

Wright and Traylor garnered a combined 66.02 percent of the original vote against Jackson and Leo Endel, executive director, Minnesota-Wisconsin Baptist Convention.

In the original vote, Wright received 3,433 votes, or 36.84 percent of the vote, while Traylor received 2,719 votes, or 29.18 percent of the vote. Jackson received 2,482 votes, or 26.64 percent of the vote, and Endel received 589 votes, or 6.23 percent of the vote.

Of the registered 10,873 messengers at the time of the vote, 9,318 messengers cast ballots. Of those, 95 ballots, or 1.2 percent, were disallowed.

In the first vice president’s race, Ron Herrod, president of the Conference of Southern Baptist Evangelists, was elected 1,653 to 1,117 over Jim Drake, pastor of Brush Fork Baptist Church in Blue Field, W. Va.

ORLANDO, Fla.—The Southern Baptist Convention embraced a future uncertain but focused on the Great Commission when a solid majority of messengers adopted the report of the Great Commission Resurgence Task Force June 15.

“We are a Great Commission people,” Task Force Chairman Ronnie Floyd thundered when the final hand vote showed a 75 to 80 percent majority favoring the seven recommendations of the report, which messengers considered as a whole.

A year after SBC President Johnny Hunt appointed the task force to bring recommendations about how Southern Baptists could work together more efficiently, nearly 11,000 messengers ended months of debate with two and a quarter hours of discussion that remained cordial throughout.

Just as in the months of debate earlier, deliberation focused mostly over the recommendation that would change giving terminology to make the Cooperative Program the primary element of a new category of “Great Commission Giving,” rather than be the sole recognized avenue of general mission support.

In the only amendment of several to pass muster, messengers affirmed a motion by Jim Waters of First Baptist Church in Statesboro, Ga., to add language that says Southern Baptists will “continue to honor and affirm the Cooperative Program as the most effective means of mobilizing our churches and extending our outreach. We 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.”

Later task force member Al Mohler said the amended language was a welcome addition that expressed the task force’s heart.

Reaction to a preliminary report the task force released in February was so vociferous members made themselves available across the nation to speak to groups, answer questions and listen. Input from various groups of Baptist state convention employees, missionaries, associational leaders and pastors found its way into the final report.

Task force Chairman Ronnie Floyd, pastor of First Baptist Church in Springdale, Ark., and of The Church at Pinnacle Hills in Rogers, said he was surprised by the diversity of task force members in their first meeting and wondered how it would be possible to unify the group.

“We needed to understand lostness,” he eventually concluded. “If lostness cannot bring us together, my soul, we are dead, dead, dead.”
Consequently, the overriding theme of the report became “Penetrating the Lostness,” and its final six recommendations sprang from the first—establish a missional vision “to present the gospel of Jesus Christ to every person in the world and to make disciples of all nations.”

The other recommendations approved by messengers include:

• Core values of Christ-likeness, truth, unity, relationships, trust, future, local church and kingdom;

• Great Commission Giving, which includes gifts to SBC-related entities to “count” along with Cooperative Program giving as support for Southern Baptist causes;

• “Reinvent” and “unleash” the North American Mission Board to implement a missional strategy to reach high population centers in the United States and Canada. This will involve ending the cooperative agreements that have governed NAMB’s work with states over the next seven years, and possibly decentralizing NAMB’s strategic personnel;

• Remove geographic limitations from International Mission Board personnel to enable missionaries to serve in the United States pockets of the people group they serve overseas;

• Give primary responsibility for Cooperative Program and stewardship promotion to the state conventions, and;

• Move 1 percent of the national Cooperative Program allocation from the SBC Executive Committee to the International Mission Board. This one percent represents about $2 million, one-third of the Executive Committee’s budget.

The Great Commission Resurgence Task Force report was approved despite significant opposition by SBC Executive Committee President Morris Chapman, who said only moments before debate began over the report began that, “Under God, I do not want to go in the wrong direction, on the wrong road in the wrong time in our history.”

The task force countered, without reference to Chapman, with a detailed presentation focused on “penetrating lostness” and “pushing back darkness.”
Task force member Ken Whitten of Lutz, Fla., pointed out that 10 years earlier, also in Orlando, messengers adopted the doctrinal statement of a revised Baptist Faith & Message. This vote was about “not what we believe, but how we behave,” he said.

Task force members continually emphasized only a change of heart will bring about the changes envisioned by their recommendations.
Before debate began on the recommendations Floyd reminded messengers the task force responsibility was to establish a vision, but, “It is the responsibility of various boards and trustees to implement these recommendations.”

Ultimately, the five substantive recommendations all are directed to the Executive Committee to consider. If considered positively, the recommendations will be passed to the boards of the affected entities to consider implementation.

In a press conference following the vote, Mohler said “It is the incumbent duty of the various boards” to respond to the Convention’s expressed will.

Messengers rejected a move by Bill Sutton of First Baptist Church in McAllen, Texas, to postpone the report indefinitely because it has been “divisive.”

They similarly turned back a motion by David Tolliver, executive director for the Missouri Baptist Convention, that messengers simply receive the report as information to give affected entities a chance to evaluate its potential impact. “It’s not a bad report, just premature,” Tolliver said.

“Jesus urged us to count the cost” before undertaking a journey, said Tolliver, who said Baptists don’t know the costs of implementing the GCR report.

After a show of hands vote, Floyd urged messengers to remember that every person in the room supports the Great Commission. He urged that the differences between those who support the task force report and those who do not “should not be exaggerated.”

“We are still brothers and sisters in Christ,” he said, who “differ on no article of faith,” and are guided by commitment to the gospel.

 “The Southern Baptist Convention is a convention of churches that is committed to a missional vision of presenting the gospel of Jesus Christ to all the world.

“We are a Great Commission people.”

ORLANDO, Fla.—The Southern Baptist Convention overwhelmingly reaffirmed its intention to spread the gospel throughout the nation and around the world, members of the SBC’s Great Commission Resurgence task force told reporters.

At least 75 percent to 80 percent of messengers to the SBC annual meeting ratified the task force’s seven-part set of recommendations, Chairman Ronnie Floyd told reporters moments after the vote.

 The committee drafted the recommendations to turn the convention’s focus toward “penetrating the lostness” of the world. They received stiff opposition from Morris Chapman, retiring president of the SBC Executive Committee, as well as leaders of some Baptist state conventions and others who fear the changes will erode financial support for the convention.

"We thank all Southern Baptist for believing in the Great Commission,” Christ’s mandate to spread the gospel across the globe, Floyd said, flanked by five other members of the task force.

“The convention vote was very clear,” stressed Floyd, pastor of First Baptist Church in Springdale, Ark.

“As a convention, we have made some basic statements,” added Al Mohler, president of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Ky.

One of those clear statements is the convention’s priority for telling people the world over about Jesus Christ, insisted Roger Spradlin, pastor of Valley Baptist Church in Bakersfield, Calif., and new chairman of the Executive Committee.

Spradlin noted the convention voted to move 1 percent of the Cooperative Program, the SBC’s unified budget, from the Executive Committee to the International Mission Board. One percent of the IMB budget translates into 46 missionaries, who will present the gospel to people all around the world who never have heard of Jesus, he said.

“That represents more than dollars on a spreadsheet,” he added. “It represents the heart” of Southern Baptists’ passion for the gospel.

Danny Akin, president of Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary in Wake Forest, N.C., has experienced that passion through two sons who have served as missionaries among Muslims.

“I saw the lostness of the world. I wanted us—brothers and sisters—to catch a vision for what matters to God,” he said of his motivation for the recommendations.

The past year, every member of the Great Commission task force has been changed by his or her experience, reported Ken Whitten, pastor of Idlewild Baptist Church in Lutz, Fla.

“We have taken a look, through the Lord’s eyes, to the lostness of the world,” he said. “Lostness has broken our hearts.”

That brokenness and concern extends to the great cities of America, Spradlin said, pointing out his state, California, is home to 30 million people who do not follow Christ. “You can’t think about lostness without it impacting your heart,” he noted.

Passage of the Great Commission Resurgence report was “another step in the right direction” toward energizing the younger generation of Southern Baptists, Akin said.

“I think today will go down as a very decisive moment in the Southern Baptist Convention’s history,” Mohler added, acknowledging the SBC’s history is sprinkled with numerous decisive moments. “This morning, … I prayed the denomination would head toward hope, and I believe that’s what happened today.”

Even though the recommendations encountered spirited opposition, Floyd predicted Southern Baptists would rally behind their decision and move forward together.

“When Baptists have spoken, Baptists get their hearts in line,” he said. “We are optimistic the convention has spoken.”

ORLANDO, Fla.—Adopting the report of the Great Commission Resurgence Task Force could have negative repercussions, Morris Chapman warned Southern Baptist Convention messengers during their annual meeting June 15.

In his final report as president and chief executive officer of the SBC Executive Committee, Chapman extolled the virtues of the Cooperative Program, Southern Baptists’ unified giving plan.

Morris Chapman

While acknowledging the Cooperative Program has never given every entity all it wanted or needed, he insisted it has given every entity some funds to do the work God called them to do.

“The Cooperative Program has survived many years of tough times. It has brought us through every time,” said Chapman, who will retire from his position Sept. 30. If the report of the Great Commission Resurgence Task Force is approved, he warned, the Cooperative Program will not retain the unique place it has held. “It will be one of several offerings, not one of a kind.”

Chapman, who served as president of the convention two years before being elected president of the Executive Committee in 1992, recalled the “conservative resurgence” of the 1970s and 1980s as a “return to Southern Baptists’ roots theologically.”

Chapman said that he fears that the Great Commission Resurgence task force report, if approved, would lead Southern Baptists’ from its funding methodology.

“If we abandon our methodology of cooperation, we will become independent Baptists, not autonomous, cooperating Baptists,” he warned. “If you want to be independent tomorrow, you can declare it so. … You can walk away as an independent Baptist body of people.”

“Failure to fulfill the Great Commission is not a structural problem and that it cannot be accomplished with a structural solution,” he stressed. Failure to fulfill the Great Commission is a “heart problem, a spiritual problem, a stewardship problem,” Chapman said.

He also told messengers: “We can’t manufacture a resurgence of God’s power because someone declares it to be so.”

In referencing the task force report, Chapman spoke specifically against the last five recommendations of the report:

• Request the Executive Committee of the SBC to consider recommending to the SBC the adoption of the language and structure of Great Commission Giving as described in this report in order to enhance and celebrate the Cooperative Program and the generous support of Southern Baptists channeled through their churches …

• Request the Executive Committee to consider any revision to the ministry of the North American Mission Board that may be necessary in order to accomplish the redirection of NAMB as outlined in this report …

• Request that the Executive Committee and the International Mission Board of the SBC consider a revised ministry assignment for the IMB that would remove any geographical  limitation on its mission to reach unreached and underserved people groups wherever they are found.

• Request the Executive Committee to consider working with the leadership of state conventions in developing a comprehensive program of Cooperative Program promotion and stewardship education in alignment with this report.

• Request the Executive Committee to consider recommending an SBC Cooperative Program Allocation Budget that will increase the percentage allocated to the IMB to 51 percent by decreasing the Executive Committee’s percentage of the SBC Allocation Budget by 1 percent.

“The last five recommendations will never bring resurgence to the Southern Baptist Convention,” Chapman told messengers. Instead, he continued, those recommendations “will bring more confusion and chaos” to the convention. They need more thought, study and prayer, he asserted.

However, he did not dismiss the entire report. There is great truth in the “urgency” pointed out by the task force, Chapman said. “We must be urgent in penetrating the darkness.”

Chapman also called for the adoption of the challenges listed at the end of the task force report.

“The challenges will inspire us to a higher calling, a greater vision,” he said. “These two sections can form the foundation of where God wants us to go together.”

ORLANDO, Fla.—Supporters of the Great Commission Resurgence task force took a final opportunity to garner votes for their report when they encouraged 1,300 primarily younger pastors attending the B21 conference Tuesday to leave the luncheon and become fixtures in the meeting hall.

“Please get into that hall, sit in a chair and do not leave until somebody prays and we go eat,” said Southern Baptist Theological Seminary President Al Mohler.

Mohler was one of eight panelists who answered questions presented them by Jon Akin and Jed Coppenger, two leaders of B21, a movement intended to help participants discern what it is to be Baptist in the 21st century.

The Great Commission Resurgence task force report was the primary topic of conversation, along with frank discussions about reasons to continue being involved with the Southern Baptist Convention or to support its Cooperative Program missions channel.

Because changes suggested in the task force report would require painful adjustments in some entities’ budgets where priorities would change, David Platt was asked to explain how he made such changes in his church, Brook Hills Baptist Church in Birmingham, Ala.

Platt’s church determined to shift $1.5 million from its budget that was spent on comfort and convenience for members “to go to urgent spiritual and physical needs.”

“In the end, it’s not really a sacrifice,” Platt said. “We still have much more than our brothers and sisters around the world. … The reality of what we do as a convention is a product of what we do in our churches. When we do that as churches, it informs what we need to do as a convention of churches.”

Mohler called the decades of the 1950s through the 1980s “fat” years in Southern Baptist life when they could put money into good ideas.
Today, “everything’s got to be provisional” and open for reconsideration in the light of gospel scrutiny, Mohler said, because “I don’t think we’re ever going to be there again.”

SBC President Johnny Hunt said the urgency voiced by young pastors has inspired him and his wife to examine how they will commit more of their personal resources to missions. To all preachers, Hunt said, “There’s got to be more emulation to go with our exhortation.”

He is encouraged that no matter the result of the task force vote, “The greatest change that will probably happen has already come and that is that God will change our heart.”

Jimmy Scoggins, pastor of First Baptist Church in West Palm Beach, Fla., said he resents that “to be considered a good soldier” in Baptist ranks, he has to “cooperate in too many things I don’t believe in” and support departments in his state convention he sees no reason to have, “money spent on good things by good people that should be given to the inner city.”

“Our convention agencies are going to have to compete for mission dollars,” Scroggins said. People seeking missions funds come to his office weekly.

“It is a competitive environment,” he said and he is going to lead his church to give to “networks that are doing the best job.” He said the task force report gives him hope that such a network “will be the Cooperative Program.”

Matt Chandler, who affiliates with the SBC and serves on the Acts 29 network board, said the SBC will not be fixed overnight, but the key to his continued support is to discern that it is “headed in a direction.”

By the same token, Chandler said of Acts 29, “Anybody who thinks that’s a pretty house just hasn’t been inside the house.”

Ed Stetzer, president of LifeWay research said, “Southern Baptists are not now evidencing a serious commitment to planting churches.”

Southern Baptists plant a lot of churches only because they have a lot of churches already, he said. But per capita, Southern Baptists are low.

Mohler called the Cooperative Program a “great economizer” and “great exercise in stewardship,” when it was created in 1925.

But it is “toxic for a denomination” to “focus on the vehicle rather than on the trip.”

He said Baptists have made the Cooperative Program “worse than a golden calf”—not because they worship the unified budget, but “we simply think we have to defend it.”

"Who wants to sell a product you can only sell if there’s no other option?” he said.

“The CP is worthy of support, but only as a means to get somewhere we need to go,” he said.

Mohler reminded the audience: “We are not in that room as people who love the Great Commission and people who don’t love the Great Commission. … Let’s pray this becomes a model for how Southern Baptists can reason together, and do the right thing and go home and lead our churches to reason together.”

ORLANDO, Fla.—The Great Commission Resurgence is a “natural and spiritual outgrowth of the conservative resurgence,” seminary president Danny Akin told participants in the Southern Baptist Pastors’ Conference, July 13-14.

Akin, a member of the Great Commission Resurgence task force and president of Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary, Wake Forest, N.C., was one of several speakers who either explicitly endorsed the recommendations of the task force or more subtly underscored its importance.

Pastors Conference President Kevin Ezell introduced members of the task force, and its chairman, Ronnie Floyd, pleaded with pastors to support its recommendations. While this was the most overt promotion for the proposals, each session featured a “GCR Challenge” brought by a task force member.

“The conservative resurgence was never just about affirming an inerrant Bible. It was also about getting an inerrant gospel to the nations so that they might be saved,” Akin said.

Preaching from Hebrews 12, he outlined the elements needed and those that need to be discarded to run the Christian race well, whether as individuals, churches or denominations.

“We must guide our people to run in faith unhindered the race God has been put before us,” he said. To run with endurance means staying focused on Jesus, Akin said. Staying focused only on the essentials means “getting rid of any excess baggage, any thing that can weigh you down, even in the denomination.”

“Pride can become a weight about what we’ve done in the past and who we think we are today,” Akin said. “Territorialism can be a weight. God forgive us if we are territorial … if we don’t see the whole world as our missions field.”

While weights can be sinful things, they can also be good things that become bad, Akins told pastors.

Floyd echoed Akins in linking the Great Commission Resurgence to the so-called conservative resurgence, a movement he said was bolstered by the pastors’ conference.

“Historically, the pastors’ conference has played a major directional role in SBC life,” he said. “In recent days, I’ve developed an overwhelming appreciation for the men that have fought for the infallibility of Scripture.

“Where are the leaders for the GCR? It appears we are more into playing it safe than risking it all (and) more committed to keeping our reputations than shouting that we are willing” to proclaim the gospel to the nations.

“We have won the battle over liberalism, but we are losing the fight over lostness.”

In a reference to the Great Commission Resurgence presentation, Floyd said: “Tomorrow is an urgent hour, people are lost and dying, and their eternal destiny is hell. And tomorrow is a day about change.

“Will you rise up and will we be the generation that will do all we can will all we have to extend gospel of Jesus Christ to the ends of the earth and present the gospel and make disciples of all nations?”

While the conference’s headline preacher, David Platt, pastor of The Church at Brook Hills in Birmingham, Ala., didn’t mention the Great Commission Resurgence or the task force report, he referenced aspects of the debate that has surrounded them.

“We stand at a crossroads, and our participation in the global mission of God hangs in the balance,” he said. “We have a holy obligation to take the gospel to people who have never heard it before.

“The Word of God is calling us to sacrifice. God help us if we cannot sacrifice percentages and programs when he has asked us to sacrifice our lives.”

David Uth, pastor of First Baptist Church in Orlando, described the convention as facing a defining moment that will determine its legacy.

“We must hand to the next generation a convention that is fully committed to the Great Commission, fully committed to go to the ends of the earth for our Lord,” he said.

“When we hear 4.5 billion do not know Christ … does that bother you?” he asked, noting now is the time for action. “All the pretending and imagining and wishing and wanting doesn’t get you there.”

Andy Stanley, pastor of NorthPoint Community Church, Alpharetta, Ga., said many Southern Baptists merely are flirting with the Great Commission.

“Some of you are married to SBC life, and you flirt with the Great Commission,” he said. “Are you going to continue to be in love with a model of ministry and simply flirt with the Great Commission, or are you willing to fall in love with the Great Commission and let go of the ministries that aren’t making a difference?”

Steve Gaines, senior pastor of Bellevue Baptist Church in Cordova, Tenn., said he is for the Great Commission Resurgence, but what really is needed is “a red hot, Holy Ghost revival from God.”

The church is not excited about its ministry like it once was, and members “dabble instead of do,” he noted. It is time for churches and the Southern Baptist Convention to wake up, Gaines said. It’s not about living off the momentum of the past, he said, noting what once had life is now lethargic and what once was real is now deceptive.

“The passion we once had has been turned into a program.”

Matt Chandler, pastor of The Village Church in Flower Mound, Texas, challenged pastors to make sure the essence of the gospel is saturating everything they do and say and to preach sanctification along with justification.

“If all you are selling is the law, all you are going to get is a group of young men and women who try to obey the law, fail because they can’t do it and bail,” Chandler said.

Tony Evans, senior pastor of Oak Cliff Bible Fellowship in Dallas, challenged the church to remember that it is “a little bit of heaven a long way from home.”
Preaching from Matthew 16:18–19, Evans said the church of Jesus Christ has been operating on the defense when it should be thinking offensively. Jesus is saying that he is building his church, and hell is trying to stop him, Evans noted.

“The way you know that your church is not his church is that you are trying to stop hell, and hell is prevailing,” he said.

Vance Pitman, pastor of Hope Baptist Church in Las Vegas, was elected president of the SBC Pastors’ Conference over Troy Gramling, pastor of Flamingo Road Church in Fort Lauderdale, Fla. Dean Fulks, pastor of Lifepoint Church in Columbus, Ohio, was elected vice president and Michael Holcomb, senior pastor of Iron City Baptist Church in Anniston, Ala., was elected treasurer. Neither was opposed.

ORLANDO, Fla.—Participants at the 122nd annual meeting of national Woman’s Missionary Union elected a new president, listened to Sudan’s ambassador, honored Kaye Miller’s five years as WMU president, and heard missions challenges June 13-14 in Orlando.

Debby Akerman of Ocean View Baptist Church of Myrtle Beach, S.C., unanimously was elected WMU president to succeed Miller. A native of Massachusetts, she has led Girls in Action organizations in her church since 1982 and served as WMU director many years.

Debby Akerman, left, of Oceanview Baptist Church of Myrtle Beach, S.C., was elected as the new president of the Woman’s Missionary Union, and Rosalie Hunt of First Baptist Church of Guntersville, Ala., was re-elected as recording secretary for the WMU during the 2010 National WMU Missions Celebration and Annual Meeting. (SBC Photo by Cat McDonald)

Akerman served as WMU president for the Baptist Convention of New England from 1993-97. In 2007, she received the Dellanna West O’Brien Award for Women’s Leadership Development.

Akerman, a nurse for 30 years, and her husband, Brad, share a ministry leading Bible studies at Street Reach, a mission in Myrtle Beach that ministers to the homeless and people struggling with drug and alcohol addiction.

Civil war in Sudan

Akec Khoc, Sudan’s ambassador to the United States, requested prayer for an African nation torn apart by civil war.

“Those in the north and south are trying to bring results through the barrel of a gun,” Khoc said. “But healing can come only through prayer to God. … We are appealing to you to pray to our Heavenly Father for the people of Sudan. Only through him can we find peace. … Pray that north and south can agree on peace and unity and partnership.”

Ken Welborn, North American Mission Board missionary to the United Nations, noted Sudan’s civil war has resulted in genocide. The fight is over oil, he said, but Christians in Sudan are fighting for their homeland. A fragile peace accord had been reached, but current tensions threaten to break it, he reported. Welborn urged the women to join Sudanese Christians in 40 days of prayer, Dec. 1-Jan. 9, for peace in Sudan.

WMU president offers reflections

In her last address as WMU president, Miller followed the program theme, “Unhindered,” based on Hebrews 12:1, speaking of facing challenges in God’s strength despite hindrances.

Miller, a member of Immanuel Baptist Church of Little Rock, Ark., said while growing up as a missionary kid in Thailand, she learned many things try to hinder the work of missionaries on the field.

She recalled how her childhood Thai friend, Sombon, suddenly quit attending school. “She just vanished,” Miller said. Years later, Miller saw her in Bangkok.

“Because there was no money in her family, she had been sold into prostitution … Her father, an opiate addict, sold her services from the time she was about 11 years old,” Miller explained. “My heart broke, partly because I felt guilty for not being able to find her earlier, and for all that she had been through. She looked old and used. She was just a shell of who she used to be. … I never saw her again.”

In November, Miller received a letter from Sombon.

“After I saw her, something had stirred in her soul and she knew she had to get out of the life she was living. A Southern Baptist missionary woman who felt called to minister to these trapped women often came by her club to talk with her, … to share about Jesus,” Miller said, noting that missionary felt called to missions as a GA.

“Sombon escaped from the life of prostitution to a life in Jesus Christ and was able to make a life for herself and her family. She was redeemed in Christ. … Sombon is now teaching young girls that they too can be all they can be through Jesus Christ.”

Human exploitation “is not just happening on the other side of the world,” Miller said. “Right where you live, young girls are being trafficked for prostitution or some form of exploitation.”

She encouraged the WMU annual meeting participants to open their eyes and hearts, learn about the issues and seek out ways to help.

Reflecting on her term as WMU president, Miller said: “These have been five incredible years of serving the Lord through Woman’s Missionary Union. There have been many hindrances along the way, but the Lord continues to have his hand upon WMU and continues to guide and greatly bless us as we continue to be radically involved in his mission to reach the world.

“I pray the fire for missions never goes out, never dims as you serve our risen Lord.”

Noting Wanda Lee has completed 10 years as WMU executive director, Miller told the assembly WMU is renaming its Joy Fund—which meets pressing current needs and secures the organization’s financial future through the WMU Foundation—as the Wanda Lee Joy Fund.

New Executive Committee chief speaks

In his first public address after being elected president of the Southern Baptist Executive Committee, Frank Page challenged participants at the WMU annual meeting to guard against complacency. Citing Luke 13:1-9, he shared the parable of the fig tree and said the sin of uselessness is paralyzing Southern Baptist churches.

While God has a plan, Satan also has a plan—to move Christians from their initial excitement over salvation to becoming useless, like the fig tree that did not bear fruit, to being a negative influence in the church, he said.

“It is a satanic strategy to destroy the Great Commission work in the church,” Page asserted. “But the reality of grace is that Jesus is interceding on our behalf  … to give us another chance, another opportunity to do what he called us to do in the first place.”

Chaplain describes challenges

Major General Doug Carver, Army chief of chaplains, addressed how he remains unhindered as he carries the Great Commission “in a somewhat restricted environment.”

Carver said he feels total freedom in Christ, “unhindered, uninhibited and unrestrained.”

Noting 300,000 soldiers are deployed, many in harms way, he said everywhere troops are “there are chaplains bringing the presence of God.” Soldiers “are stretched and stressed” in a “destructive environment” that sometimes results in suicide, divorce, and alcohol and drug abuse, he said.

Chaplains play a unique pastoral position, Carver said, supporting the U.S. Constitution with “close attention” to the First Amendment, allowing exercise of total freedom of worship for all religions, while they “look for ways to share the hope we have in Christ.”

Missionaries, author address theme

A missionary couple who serves in South Asia and cannot be identified for security reasons, told of the billion and a half spiritually lost people in South Asia. They shared stories of movements of God among Hindu and Muslim people groups, and they asked WMU to pray that Muslims “will have a holy curiosity about the Bible and about Jesus.”

Author Jennifer Kennedy Dean challenged her audience to put aside any hindrances to Christian service, just like elite athletes do what is necessary to give themselves an advantage in a race.

“They shave themselves from head to foot and diet so they don’t have any lumps causing drag, and they will wear clothing that pokes in anything that might stick out and create wind resistance. That’s how it is with us,” she said. “Let us do the same thing they do. Lay aside anything that hinders.”

Monica Allen, a missionary in Swaziland, described her call and of the needs of that African nation. “Over 40 percent of our adult population has AIDS,” she said. “We may become the first nation to wipe itself out through the AIDS epidemic.”

Sharon Fields-McCormick, a NAMB missionary, addressed the commercial sexual exploitation of children in the United States. Painting descriptive word pictures of the tragedies each girl endures, she challenged WMU to do more to bring justice to these children.

Texas Baptist from Amarillo honored

Mary Lou Serratt of Amarillo received the 2010 Dellanna West O’Brien Award for Women’s Leadership Development. Serratt has served in church, associational and state WMU leadership, including serving as vice president of Texas WMU and a volunteer multiethnic consultant.

She has been involved with Laotian, Vietnamese, Cambodian, Sudanese, Burundian, Iranian, Iraqi, Korean, Liberian, Burmese Chin and Karen people through First Baptist Church in Amarillo.

Other business

Joy Cranford, a member of First Baptist Church of Fort Mill, S.C., received the Martha Myers GA Alumna of Distinction Award, given annually to recognize a GA alumna who influences the lives of others for Christ and serves as a positive role model for girls.

Cranford has served as GA leader and director in her church, GA director for the York Baptist Association and GA consultant for South Carolina WMU. She served on the first advisory council for the Christian Women’s Job Corps of York County, S.C., during the pilot year and was one of the first to serve as a mentor. She remained an active volunteer in the CWJC ministry all 13 years of its existence in the association.

Angela Kim of Houston and Lee reported growth in missions education among Korean Baptist churches in the United States. In 2007, national WMU and Texas WMU partnered for a special, three-year project to provide Korean-English bilingual missions curriculum for preschoolers and children. With these materials, the Korean leadership team, comprised of Korean pastors’ wives across the United States and led by Kim, began missions education in more than 10 percent of Korean churches in the first year of publishing.

“WMU has long embraced the importance of equipping and involving every church of every language and ethnic group in the Great Commission,” Lee said.

ORLANDO, Fla. (ABP) – The Executive Committee of the Southern Baptist Convention voted in executive session June 14 to elect former SBC President Frank Page as the organization’s next president and CEO, replacing Morris Chapman, who retires Sept. 30 after 18 years.

Page, 57, becomes president/CEO-elect July 1 and takes office Oct. 1. He currently serves as vice president of evangelization for the SBC North American Mission Board, a post he took in October 2009 after serving as a local-church pastor for more than 30 years.

Frank Page

Randall James, chairman of the Executive Committee, requested deliberation about Page’s election be discussed in executive session as a “personnel matter.” He said  several members of the committee expressed a desire to close the session. One member, Stephen Wilson of Kentucky, objected that the Executive Committee should conduct its business in the open, but a large majority supported the recommendation to ask non-members, including media, to leave.

Executive Committee members questioned Page, who as SBC president in 2006-2007 and 2007-2008 was an ex-officio member of the committee, in private for more than an hour before dismissing him for prayer and the vote.

Reportedly, some Executive Committee members objected to the process used to select Chapman’s replacement and questioned Page’s involvement as a member of a Great Commission Task Force bringing recommendations that include reducing the Executive Committee’s budget by nearly a third.

Page told reporters outside the meeting room that various members of the Executive Committee saw his involvement on the task force as both a positive and a negative. “Some said I wasn’t supportive enough of the GCR,” he said. “Others said ‘I can’t believe you support any of it.’”

Page also said he believes both his brief tenure at NAMB, after eight years as pastor of Taylor’s First Baptist Church in Taylors, S.C., and appointment to the Great Commission Task Force were providential.

“I think God gave me that time to see the inside of a denomination better than I would have as a pastor,” he said. “I think he let me go to NAMB to see some of the inside. I like some of it. Some of it I don’t, as I’ve looked on the inside of the denomination.

“Secondly, I think being part of the GCR at the same time helped me to provide a perspective to say NAMB has a unique missiological need. I think that was an encouragement to some on the committee to see that NAMB does have a place separately than the International Mission Board.”

Page said he believes the  biggest reason God brought him to NAMB was to draw attention to a 10-year effort nicknamed GPS, short for “God’s Plan for Sharing” the gospel message.

“God brought that to my heart when I was president of the SBC in 2006,” Page said.” So I was just delighted that I got to kick it off, because in 2010 is when the kickoff occurred, and we saw over 15,000 Southern Baptist churches involved in soul winning. We saw between 37 and 38 million people touched with the gospel through GPS. As some have said, my coming there helped in some small way to motivate and encourage and legitimize the GPS process. Even though I may not be there to see it come to fruition as long term, if I were at the Executive Committee, I would be one of the greatest supporters of GPS you could ever see.”

A native of Robbins, N.C., Page is a 1973 graduate of Gardner-Webb University in Boiling Springs, N.C. He earned the M.Div. in 1976 and Ph.D. in 1980 from Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Fort Worth.

His previous pastorates include Warren Baptist Church in Augusta, Ga., 1991-2001;  Gambrell Street Baptist Church in Fort Worth, 1987-1991;  LaFayette Baptist Church in Fayetteville, N.C., 1981-1987; and Live Oak Baptist Church in Gatesville, 1979-1981.

He is the author of books including The Nehemiah Factor and The Incredible Shrinking Church published in 2008 and Trouble With Tulip, a critique  of Calvinism published in 2000 and reprinted in 2006.

–Bob Allen is senior writer for Associated Baptist Press.

ATLANTA (ABP) — The presidents of five historically African-American Baptist denominations have presented a check for $500,000 to Habitat for Humanity International to help rebuild homes destroyed in Haiti by January's earthquake.

The contribution, the largest single donation given by a faith community to Habitat's earthquake relief efforts, is part of an ongoing commitment by the African-American Baptist Mission Collaboration, a four-month-old partnership representing 40,000 church congregations and 10 million Christians nationwide.

Presidents from Lott Carey Baptist Foreign Mission Convention; National Baptist Convention, USA; National Baptist Convention of America; National Missionary Baptist Convention of America; and the Progressive National Baptist Convention were on hand for the presentation June 8.

"We are inspired to invest in this ministry for housing solutions, because we are following the teachings of Jesus who said that when we feed the hungry, clothe the naked, and give shelter to those without shelter that we do this for him," said Stephen Thurston, president of the National Baptist Convention of America. "We do this for Jesus, and we do this for those who suffer in Haiti." 

Mike Carscaddon, executive vice president of Habitat for Humanity International, said the gift would build 630 homes in the town of Cabaret, where Habitat hopes to build a total of 3,000 homes.

"Our overall goal is to serve approximately 50,000 families in Haiti," Carscaddon said. "This significant gift from the AABMC will be used for our work in Cabaret to help 630 families have shelter."

Announced Feb. 8, the coalition linking resources for relief and recovery in Haiti is the largest joint effort of its kind for five distinct groups that evolved around various organizational and philosophical differences that divided African-American Baptists during the 20th century.

David Emmanuel Goatley, executive secretary-treasurer of the Lott Carey Foreign Mission Convention, called five groups making such a large gift in such a short time "a sign of the movement of the Holy Spirit."

"Our harmonious work is a testimony that, as Jesus prayed, we are one," Goatley said.

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Bob Allen is senior writer for Associated Baptist Press.

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African-American Baptists collaborate to help Haiti

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (ABP) — A top official in the Southern Baptist Convention used the denomination's news service to urge defeat of recommendations of a panel on denominational effectiveness to be presented to messengers at the convention's upcoming annual meeting.

Morris Chapman, president and CEO of the SBC Executive Committee, wrote lengthy articles critical of the final report of a Great Commission Task Force, established by convention action last year in Louisville, Ky., and appointed by SBC President Johnny Hunt, that appeared in Baptist Press June 2 and June 3.

Morris Chapman

On Friday, June 4, the news service carried Chapman's "open letter" to Southern Baptists urging messengers at the upcoming convention June 15-16 in Orlando, Fla., to reject the measure and a substitute list of his own recommendations titled "A Better Way Ahead." Chapman's alternative is not a formal report, but he suggested that individual messengers who agree offer them as substitute motions at microphones on the convention floor.

"I am concerned that if the convention approves the task force recommendations, it will be embarking upon a harmful course," Chapman wrote.

Chapman said he has nothing personal to gain by speaking out publicly, because he is retiring from his post Sept. 30, but because of his "advantage of close appraisal," he has a greater understanding of the importance of the Executive Committee than the person in the pew.

Chapman said one particular recommendation, to take 1 percent of the SBC's unified budget away from the Executive Committee and reallocate it to the International Mission Board, would "gut" the agency's ability to function.

Chapman said increasing the IMB's budget by $2 million would have only "token" effect on the work of a mission board that already receives 50 percent of money allocated nationally through the Cooperative Program unified budget. Chapman said the Executive Committee, on the other hand, would "be profoundly affected negatively" by having its budget reduced by 30 percent.

"With all due respect to those (past, present, and future) leaders who have endorsed the recommendations, they do not sit where I sit and they apparently are unable to see the dangers of these recommendations from the vantage point of my position," Chapman said. "My responsibility is to alert, even warn Southern Baptists of the impending dangers I see if the last five recommendations are embraced by the SBC."

Chapman said those recommendations, including one that introduces a new giving category to encourage churches to designate gifts to particular causes, would
demote, devalue, and potentially destroy the cooperative spirit, the Cooperative Program, and for certain, the Cooperative Agreements between the NAMB and the state conventions."

Chapman said the "concentration of the entire report is focused upon the GCTF leaders' affinity for the International Mission Board and their interest in making 'Great Commission Giving' the new metric for recognizing churches whose pastors lead them to give more to designated giving and less through the Cooperative Program."

Chapman said he would like to see the IMB receive more funding, but he wondered why the Executive Committee was singled out among all convention entities to sacrifice. He said committee members never consulted him before making the recommendation, and he wondered aloud if one or more of the task force members "may have had an anti-Executive Committee disposition."

He also wondered if the task force questioned the IMB about philosophy and strategy including, "Are our alliances in church planting producing churches that reflect Southern Baptist beliefs or those of other faith traditions strategies?" That was an apparent reference to questions raised by some in recent years about whether the IMB's strategy of cooperating with indigenous church-planting movements overseas result in congregations that are not doctrinally sound.

Chapman also found it curious that the task force report introduced a "missional" vision for the convention, a description Chapman described as a "modern buzz word" that "has only recently appeared on the scene in Southern Baptist life."

Among groups fond of the term, Chapman singled out the Acts 29 Network, a church-planting group he said views "the historical emphasis on separation from worldly pleasures and pursuits by many Southern Baptist congregations as outdated and outmoded in the modern context of planting new churches among younger generations of Americans."

At last year's convention, five motions from the floor related directly or indirectly to influence by Mark Driscoll, senior pastor of Mars Hill Church in Seattle and founder of the Acts 29 Network, in Southern Baptist life.

The impending Great Commission Task Force vote has dominated Baptist blogs and media in the weeks leading up to this year's SBC annual meeting. Several high-profile leaders have endorsed the report. Others argue it will harm the convention rather than help it.

Johnny Hunt, pastor of First Baptist Church in Woodstock, Ga. — who along with Southeastern Seminary President Danny Akin launched last year's "Great Commission Resurgence" movement that led to the task force — completes a second one-year term as SBC president and is ineligible for re-election.

Four candidates have announced their intentions to be nominated to replace him. Two candidates support the task force recommendations, one opposes them and the fourth has expressed concerns it might weaken the Cooperative Program.

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Bob Allen is senior writer for Associated Baptist Press.

CBF moderator-elect nominated. Colleen Burroughs, vice president of the Passport youth-camping ministry, will be nominated as moderator-elect of the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship. If elected, she would lead the organization in 2011-2012, succeeding Christy McMillin-Goodwin, minister of education and missions at Oakland Baptist Church in Rock Hill, S.C. As current moderator-elect, McMillin-Goodwin automatically takes over as moderator at the close of this year’s CBF general assembly June 23-26 in Charlotte, N.C. Born in Africa to missionary parents, Burroughs grew up in Kenya, Malawi, Zimbabwe and Bophuthatswanan—now a part of South Africa. She and her husband, David, started Passport, a nonprofit ministry based in Birmingham, Ala., in 1993 while both were students at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary.

Mercer taps former Southwestern music professor. David Keith, a professor of church music at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary 27 years before retiring in 2006, has been named director of the Townsend-McAfee Institute for Graduate Studies in Church Music at Mercer University in Macon, Ga. Keith begins his new job Aug. 1. Keith holds both a master of music and doctor of musical arts degree from Southwestern Seminary. He has taught as an adjunct professor at Belmont University and worked as chorus director for the Fort Worth Symphony Orchestra. He began his teaching career at Howard Payne University in Brownwood.

Ethicist says spill caused by three deadly sins. A Baptist ethicist insists the catastrophic oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico is a moral issue. Robert Parham, executive director of the Baptist Center for Ethics, wrote a June 1 commentary at the Washington Post’s On Faith blog saying the ecological disaster contains elements of three of the seven objectionable vices described since early Christian times as the Seven Deadly Sins. “Traditional Christianity identifies greed, sloth and pride as three deadly sins—sins that manifest themselves in BP’s disaster,” Parham said. The oil company is “driven by corporate greed” and was prideful about its “technological infallibility,” and Americans in general are “driven by sloth or moral indifference,” he asserted.

WMU plans missions celebration. Woman’s Missionary Union will launch its 2010–2012 emphasis, “Unhindered,” during the national WMU missions celebration and annual meeting, June 13–14, at the Orange County Convention Center in Orlando, Fla. Guest speakers include several International Mission Board field representatives; Jennifer Kennedy Dean, author of this year’s WMU emphasis book, Life Unhindered: Five Keys to Walking in Freedom; Douglas Carver, chief of chaplains for the U.S. Army; and Frank Page, vice president for evangelism at the North American Mission Board and nominee for president of the SBC Executive Committee. Additional features include dialogue with missionaries, an interactive resource area and on-site bookstore, the launch of human exploitation as the focus of WMU’s Project HELP for 2010–2012 and opportunities to connect and network with missional leaders from around the country.

DULUTH, Ga. (ABP) — Jonathan Merritt says he was both disappointed and pleasantly surprised by the response he received after organizing several hundred Southern Baptists in 2008 to issue a statement identifying the environment and climate change as moral issues.

"I was disappointed at how those who claim to represent us on political issues resorted to tactics that resembled Washington far more than Nashville," said the 27-year-old national spokesman for the Southern Baptist Environment and Climate Initiative. "Few things are more unchristian than threats and bribes."

"On the other hand, I was pleasantly surprised at the positive reaction I received from so many average, everyday Christians who are grateful that someone is breaking the wall of silence on this issue," he said.

The faith-and-culture writer who has been featured in national publications including USA Today and the Atlanta Journal-Constitution added that he hopes his first book will be an encouragement to the latter group.

Green Like God tells the story of Merritt's green awakening in an unlikely setting — a theology class at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary in Wake Forest, N.C., a Southern Baptist Convention seminary known for theological and social conservatism instead of issues like environmentalism typically associated with the political left. 

Merritt, son of former SBC President James Merritt who also works on the staff of his father's suburban Atlanta mega-church, said it saddens him that the issue of stewardship of God's creation has become so partisan and divisive for people of faith. "Quite frankly, one of the reasons that liberals have claimed the moral high ground on this issue is because conservative Christians abandoned it long ago in their exclusive pursuit of other issues," he said.

Merritt said that is beginning to change, as Christians across generations wake up to the responsibility to be instruments of God's grace on a variety of issues. Christians in rising generations, he said, are particular energized by interaction of the Bible's message with what is going on in the daily news.

In the book, Merritt argues that caring for creation is not a right-left issue but rather a moral issue that God's people have been called to address. "If we remain true to God's Word, Christians must with equanimity redeem the cause and make it our own," he writes. "To leave these issues to secular environmentalists is to abandon our God-given responsibility to care for His planet."

Jonathan Merritt

Merritt writes that forcing environmentalism into a left-right dichotomy harms both sides. "If you consider yourself a conservative, you can remain a solid supporter of biblical values like the sanctity of life, but you should expand your political interests to include historically progressive issues like global poverty, human rights and aggressive care for God's creation," he counsels. "If you consider yourself more progressive, you can continue to support the political goals you find important while working with conservatives of mutual goodwill on issues like this one."

He also challenges an objection sometimes voiced by Christians that devoting energy to "secondary" issues like the environment detract from the church's main task of saving souls. "We aren't forced to choose between sharing the gospel and creation care," he writes. "It is a false dichotomy. Both are possible."

"The very fact that the Bible tells us to do both indicates that evangelism and creation care can simultaneously be done well," he writes. "A vital part of the Great Commission reaches beyond making converts to making disciples teaching them to observe all God commands, including the very first commands to steward the earth."

Merritt said in an e-mail interview that Christians who claim fidelity to the Bible do not have the luxury of picking and choosing which parts of obey. "I am shocked that so many people who claim to 'preach the whole Bible' have sheepishly avoided the many passages that address creation," he said. "It's shocking really. You have people who would die on the sword of biblical literalism but refuse to acknowledge the clear stewardship mandates given by God in the Bible."

Merritt acknowledges that the Bible doesn't offer a "Good Housekeeping"-style list of everything a good Christian should do to protect the environment — recycle, drive a hybrid vehicle, support a specific piece of legislation and so forth — but he argues that every Christian should be on a journey toward a greener lifestyle. In an appendix, he offers several specific tips for energy reduction, simpler living, consumption, transportation and advocacy.

Merritt says one surprise he received after releasing the statement on creation care is that he started hearing from missionaries who said it helped them in parts of the world where they begin evangelistic conversations not with Jesus, whom the people there know little about, but with the creation and its Creator, which everyone understands.

"Creation care speaks to people in developing nations where people have a greater connection to nature in everyday life," he writes. "Creation care is a bridge to the gospel in these places."

Merritt says Christian lifestyles related to the Earth also affect an evangelical witness to the secular world.

"When the world sees the Christian community perpetuating systems of wealth and waste, it damages our witness," he writes. "When they see us living compassionate, sustainable lives, our witness becomes authentic and convincing."

–Bob Allen is senior writer for Associated Baptist Press.