Moving in the Right Direction? Encouraging Trends in the SBC
On June 15th, 2010, the messengers of the Southern Baptist Convention voted to pass the recommendations put forth by the Great Commission Resurgence Task Force. Following this meeting, it was unclear how soon the passing of these recommendations would begin to trickle through our convention. Within these last four months several decisions have been made that I believe are indications that something is going on among our convention of churches much earlier than many anticipated.
Following the appointing of the GCR Task Force in June of 2009, several Southern Baptist State Conventions formed task forces to study how each state could better allocate their monies in order to be used for the advancement of the gospel to the nations. Three State Convention Task Forces have given strategic recommendations that will help to streamline our convention structures and see more money going to advance the gospel to underserved areas of our country and to the nations. In addition, other State Conventions are in process of making changes to the way they operate in order to streamline and send more money on to the SBC. This is an exciting time in our convention. Here are five encouraging items to pay close attention to and pray for:
The Kentucky Baptist Convention. On August 23rd, 2010, Dr. Hershael York, Chairman of the Kentucky Baptist Convention’s Great Commission Task Force, said, “Kentucky Baptists will move to an even distribution of Cooperative Program receipts and set an ambitious goal of increasing missions giving.” The move to changing the Cooperative Program allocations between KBC and Southern Baptist Convention causes to an even 50 percent-50 percent split is set to take place over the next seven years with the bulk of the shift occurring in 2011. Currently, only 38% is forwarded to the SBC headquarters.
These recommendations have not been approved yet, but will be presented to messengers on November 16th at the Kentucky Baptist Convention Meeting in Lexington. Part of what Baptist21 anticipates, as an outgrowth of the GCR, is that those who supported it will need to go to their state conventions and continue to be a part of the process of changing convention structures and allocations.
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