ORLANDO, Fla.—Adopting the
report of the Great Commission Resurgence Task Force could have negative
repercussions, Morris Chapman warned Southern Baptist Convention (SBC)
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.
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.”