If we were the GCR Task Force, we would wear camel hair suits and eat bugs.  Like John the Baptist, the Task Force is charged with the task of issuing the clarion call to leave that which is and conform to that which is best. That which is no longer the religious routine but that which is the Missio Dei, the very Mission of God:  the redemption of His creation.

We understand that this is the most powerful role that the GCRTF can fulfill.  I say this not because of the prophetic image that John the Baptist casts – and let’s just admit among ourselves that all preachers fancy themselves a modern version of the second Elijah.  At least a little.

No. It is not the simple image of John that creates a powerful role for the GCRTF, but it is because they can fulfill no other role that they must become John.

Tasked with calling the bureaucracy of the SBC to a powerful move to fulfill the Great Commission, the GCRTF is the fruit of that same bureaucracy.  Calling for the various entities to move, restructure and reform is all that the GCRT can do, since the Boards of Trustees run their respective entities and do not have to conform to the reports, resolutions or votes of the convention.

So the prophetic call is what must come from the GCRTF.  There is nothing else.

And it must issue that summons with power and conviction.  It must do so with such force that the SBC heeds the call because to not do so would be tantamount to rejecting the Great Commission itself and no Christian should be able to do as much.

With wild hair and a burly countenance, the GCRTF must look the established processes, organizations and people in the eye and expose the semblance of an organization that claims to be about the business of God for all its many failures to actually be so.

More specifically, the GCRTF has to expose the deficiencies of the Cooperative Program and call the masters of the CP to realign it and the organizations it feeds to weed out redundancy, inefficiency, mismanagement and, sometimes, cronyism mixed with nepotism.

I’ll give you just a couple real life examples.

Take, for instance, this graph of the Cooperative Program Distribution of an Oklahoma Church using the CP to partner together for missions.  (I use OK, because that is where I pastor.)  This graphic was provided to us in our past annual meeting on the book of reports and is available through the BGCO website.

As you can see, for every dollar my church sends to the CP, less than 30 cents makes it to the mission boards.

Assume that half of the IMB’s budget goes to administrative costs, including of all employees’ salaries, benefits, travel expenses and then the exorbitant cost of the Trustee Board meeting 6 times a year.  (You could take that money, buy a new laptop for every member of the Board, staff the IMB with an IT team exclusively dedicated to facilitating communications among board members and still save the IMB a couple million dollars annually, I suspect.)

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We Need More Cowboys!

Sitting on his stallion, he overlooks a range full of cattle about to begin the long drive to market. The cowboy, that quintessential image of the Old West, knows the days will be long, the trail difficult, and the season, though short, will feel like forever. Yet he embraces the challenge that lies before him, for the sake of the herd, his employer, his family, and even himself.

The Old West means many things in American history. It was a period of time encompassing the latter half of the nineteenth century until the beginning of the twentieth. It was also a location, that huge area of land purchased by President Jefferson in what was known as the Louisiana Purchase and is now known as the area West of the Mississippi River. The Old West was a time of great expansion and growth in USAmerica. It was even a time when many thought we had finally fulfilled our “Manifest Destiny” as we extended our country from sea to shining sea.

It was the rugged, creative, and self-reliant nature of those who moved West that allowed the country to extend from the Atlantic to the Pacific. The West was not a place for those seeking an easy life. It was dangerous and difficult. Some flourished. Others could not handle it. It was full of lawlessness, a much different way of living from those in the genteel East.

The West is where people on the fringe live. They go there because they get to be creative without the reach of those trying to control. This is where our country was changed. It is where our own denomination can be changed.

For the purposes of this article, I want to define the West as any area where Southern Baptists have limited influence in United States, primarily in the West, Northeast, and Midwest. Read more…

Something is leaking. According to an article in the USA Today dated August 6 (taken from The Tennessean), someone’s computer sprung a leak. That is, an email was leaked which altered the course of the upcoming NAMB Board of Trustees meeting. Someone left the gate valve open and water sprung from a circuit board inviting unintended readers a look-see into upcoming discussions by the “executive committee” of the NAMB BoT. In an environment of trust in people and process “leaking” would not be necessary.

If we were the GCR Task Force we would avoid “watergate.” You see, we are familiar with “leaking computers.” Well, maybe not leaking computers, but leaking sources. During our time with the now defunct SBCOutpost, read SBC Drudge Report, there were many willing to “blow the whistle” on questionable tactics yet they feared reprisal. Over and again we bantered back and forth about “anonymous sources.” Some pontificated with erudition. In the end the atmosphere was the problem. In an organization, institution, intending to bear the Gospel of Jesus to the world one would assume ethical decisions would run through the ethic of Jesus. In order to move us from the pragmatic and narrow agendas of a few, we would declare an end to secret meetings from the outset.

Rather than offer an expose’ on the countless secret meetings held over the past 30 years, we would schedule all meetings inside a local church building. From the now famous or infamous meeting at the Cafe du Monde to the present hour our history is full of examples of these private meetings. The stakes are too high to undermine the process behind the cloak of secrecy. Sometimes symbolism is as important as substance. We hear much about the Great Commission being given to the local church, then we would plan to meet there. Our history is full of meetings held at airports. Sometimes the outcome of those meetings has been less than profitable.

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Following the “Twelve Axioms of a Great Commission Resurgence” chapel message by SEBTS president, Dr. Danny Akin, a movement was born. In June’s SBC meeting in Louisville, KY, president Johnny Hunt recommended the formation of a GCR Task Force to explore how the convention might respond to the ideas presented (reduced to ten from the original 12). Eighteen people were appointed to the task force initially with 4 others being added later (Hunt himself makes the twenty third). Chairman Ronnie Floyd has announced that the first two meetings, both this month, will be held in Atlanta and Rogers, AR. Great things are expected by some, the same old thing is expected by others.

Out of the 4 million committed members of Southern Baptist churches (not the supposed 16 million on rolls), there are 3,999,977 who have not been asked to be GCR Task Force members. Count us among the masses, as none of the writers on this blog are among the chosen. Just for fun, though, we asked ourselves this question: What if we were the Great Commission Resurgence Task Force? Or, at least, what if we were on it? Rather than waiting for task force decisions to be made and follow them up with critique, we decided to put ourselves in their place and see what ideas might be generated.

Our attempt is to be careful to only address what we feel is within the purview of the task force, rather than what only the convention itself can do. This is also something that the convention peanut gallery might do well to remember. The GCR Task Force can only make recommendations; it cannot implement a single change, be it structural or ideological. It can only study, review and recommend to the gathered convention next June at Disney World Orlando.

First, we would read The Five Dysfunctions of a Team before our initial meeting and take its lessons to heart. Patrick Lencioni’s seminal work on the causes of team malfunctions lays a framework that cannot be overlooked. It will not be enough to pray and ask God for things to go well. This team of eighteen have never worked together; some have (or had) never even met each other, yet the expectation is a report that will be nothing short of revolutionary. Without a specific plan to create teamwork on short notice, a lot of time stands to be wasted and the end product could be in jeopardy before the first gathering in Atlanta.

Lencioni argues that the foundational component of any effective team is trust, ergo its absence is the root cause of dysfunction. When the team members cannot have absolute trust in each other’s abilities, motives and efforts it creates a mental morass where healthy conflict cannot take place. The atmosphere becomes, “Oh, that’s a good idea” or “Yeah…,” followed by awkward silence, rather than, “Uhm, that sounds good, but here’s why I don’t think it will work” or “Now that you have trotted that out, I’m going to shoot the legs off of it.” Lack of healthy conflict further manifests itself in a lack of commitment to the end result (which could result in members resigning or being less than enthusiastic about the outcome), an unwillingness to have true accountability and then carelessness about results. When you are not in for a dime, who cares about the dollar?

Trust can be quickly gained if there is a level playing field where no attention is given to ranks, positions and titles. The freedom for meaningful conflict will come when those with “power” (Floyd, Hunt, Mohler, Akin, et al) make it clear that there is no advantage gained and that all ideas will be judged on merit, not on the prestige of the presenter. It will be crucial that Ronnie Floyd and Johnny Hunt facilitate this and we would insist on it.

Second, we would remember just why those calls for live streaming or open meetings exist. There is a trust factor across the convention that the mere reading of a book cannot fix. For the last 30 years, whether valid or not, there is the perception that too many decisions in SBC life have been made in “smoke-filled” rooms, midnight phone calls, or by improper pressure and influence being placed on convention processes. Already there are whispers in the wind that some decisions are set in stone before the task force has even met. Because of these issues, many people now want the GCR Task Force to have completely open meetings and perhaps even live stream the proceedings.

We would not do this, but would proceed in this fashion: we would schedule three meetings that are completely open to any Southern Baptist who wants to attend. (One meeting of this “town hall” style has already been planned.) At these we would schedule 1- 2 hours of open mic with a two minute limit for any attendee to voice concerns or ideas. The task force will have to determine whether any usable ideas are generated, but at least there is a process in place for input. These three meetings and these three only we would live stream for anyone interested in watching online.

The other meetings would be closed. At the conclusion of each we would issue a press release summarizing the topics discussed, but not solutions to be recommended. This would allow the group to have confidence in their ability to have open, honest discussion without being sniped at for every comment made. It would also keep the convention up to date with the process as it unfolds. The final step we would take to help ensure integrity in the process would be to publish the name of every person who attempted to unduly influence the process and the higher up the denominational ladder the person was that tried, the bigger and bolder the font would be when we published the name.

Third, when encountering #IX of the GCR Declaration (A Commitment to a More Effective Convention Structure) there will be inevitable talk of consolidating or closing seminaries. We would insist that Al Mohler (SBTS) and Danny Akin recuse themselves from those discussions. No matter how diligent an effort is made to avoid undue influence, the issue will not be with the men themselves, but with the impressions given and friendships made among task force members. While in these discussions, it will already be difficult for task force members to avoid thinking, “We need men like this leading our seminaries” and perhaps they will be right in thinking so. That, however, creates an out of balance situation for the other presidents, and thus the other seminaries. Certainly at the drop of a hat a hundred graduates, trustees and supporters could speak as to why the other four presidents are the kind of men to lead those respective seminaries in addition to these the two on the task force. In fairness to the other four and to protect the process, Drs. Mohler and Akin should not be allowed to participate in seminary discussions. Any and all enrollment information, CP support, etc, can easily be gotten from the SBC Executive Committee or the offices of the various seminaries.

Potentially making this matter even more complicated is the Council of Seminary Presidents, the name given when they convene to discuss theological matters concerning the convention. This council has an agreement that when they deal with any matter that requires their involvement, after debate and discussion, they put forth a unified front with whatever decision is made. Our concern would be that the presidents not involved in the discussion might be forced to choke down a cyanide pill under the guise of presenting to the convention a bill of health.

(We do not see as large a concern regarding the IMB and NAMB, since each has a representative on the task force who can provide concurring or contrasting opinions.)

Fourth, we would seek statements from the president of each SBC entity and the chairman of its board of trustees to the effect that, no matter how far reaching any task force recommendation might be, there will be no public criticism or disagreement. This is a matter for the churches of the Southern Baptist Convention to decide, not those who work for us. If this or that entity head or trustee board start making statements or fighting the process, it will create fiefdoms that will make medieval Europe look positively communistic by comparison. The politics of the convention are filled with an inglorious history of manipulation and improper influence; the GCR effort is an opportunity to put all of that aside for the furtherance of the Great Commission.

(Further, we would ask every state convention or state fellowship executive director for a similar statement of agreement.)

Fifth, we would do our best to ensure that these discussions are guided by mission, not by dollars and cents (although sense would be just fine). After all, this is about the Great Commission, is it not? But, because so much talk has been generated about “efficiency” there is a danger that many decisions will fall under the domain of “cost cutting” turning the SBC into the denominational equivalent of Big Lots or Goodwill. What should guide us is the missio dei and all decisions should be subservient to that. The mission of the SBC, whether you call it a “Great Commission Resurgence” or something else, should be seen as within the mission of God, not separate and distinct from it. We would be hesitant to make any recommendations that we could not reconcile with the missio dei.

Finally, because there has been concern about #IX becoming the focus of the entire work of the GCR Task Force, we would make sure that every recommendation concerning restructuring was tied into at least one of the other nine points of the declaration, since, arguably, the other nine stand head and shoulders above it in relation to the gospel.