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Messengers overwhelmingly adopt GCR motion
Baptist Press
June 24, 2009
2 MIN READ TIME

Messengers overwhelmingly adopt GCR motion

Messengers overwhelmingly adopt GCR motion
Baptist Press
June 24, 2009

Messengers overwhelmingly passed a motion June 23 authorizing the Southern Baptist Convention

(SBC) president to appoint a Great Commission Task Force to bring a report to

the annual meeting in 2010 “concerning how Southern Baptists can work

more faithfully and effectively together in serving Christ through the

Great Commission.”

By a show of ballots, the motion passed with

approximately 90 percent of messengers supporting it. An attempt to

pass a substitute motion asking the International Mission Board and North American Mission Board to study the issue and

deliver the report failed by a similar margin. Debate lasted just over

20 minutes.

R. Albert Mohler Jr., a messenger

from Highview Baptist Church in Louisville, Ky., and president of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, made the original

motion and spoke for it during discussion.

“I believe it is right and fitting,”

he said, for Southern Baptists “to ask the hard questions,” such as,

“Is there more we can do?”

“This is not an effort to reinvent the Southern Baptist Convention,” Mohler added.
Frank Page, a messenger from and

pastor of First Baptist Church in Taylors, S.C., and a former president of the SBC, also spoke for the

motion. Page and Mohler both spoke from the floor.

James Rodgers, pastor of Poplar Spring Baptist Church, Iva. S.C., spoke against it.
“We have the tool for the Great

Commission,” he said. “It’s called the Bible. Get our people out of the

pew. Messengers, pastors, that’s what we’re called to do. I don’t think

we need any help from a task force.”

Earlier in the day, Morris H. Chapman, president of the SBC’s Executive Committee, raised questions about the Great Commission Resurgence (GCR) effort in his report to the Convention.

Complete coverage of the 2009 SBC meeting