Great Commission Task Force: My Advice

I believe we as a Convention are on a decline and the warning sirens should be sounding off. We need a Great Commission Resurgence in our Convention. This past year our Convention has selected a Great Commission Task Force to help us over come this decline and soar to new heights. I appreciate the work they have done, but I think there is a better way. We need a culture change in our churches. The components the GCR Task Force has submitted to the Executive Committee are not addressing the issue of our decline. We need to raise the expectations and establish new standards in our Convention. South Carolina led the way Empowering Kingdom Growth and we need to lead again. Will you join me and others as we lead our churches on the Great Commission? These components are not solely my idea, but come from across SBC life. I am open to ideas.

Thank you for taking the time to read my thoughts.

Under His Grace,
David Bagwell
Pastor of Bethel Baptist
Oakway, SC

1. We believe in order for us to work together more faithfully and effectively towards the fulfillment of the Great Commission, we will challenge every Southern Baptist student to go the front lines of missions soon after high school for a few months to a year. To make this challenge part of the DNA of our denomination, we challenge parents, pastors, and age-group ministers (both local-church and denominational) to plant this call in the hearts of preschoolers, children, youth, and collegians. In addition, we call on parents to open saving accounts, upon the birth of a child, that later will completely fund that individual's extended mission experience after high school.

2. We believe in order to reach North America and the world it will be through using established churches planting new churches. We expect every Southern Baptist Church to support or plant one Southern Baptist Church every year.

3. Expect every Southern Baptist to take one mission trip every year. As we continue to give the majority of our time to making disciples in our home towns, we will commit, as individuals and families, to give 2% (one week) of our time in Gospel ministry outside of our home town for the sake of God’s glory in all the world. Everything we do as Southern Baptists, we do ultimately for the sake of God’s glory in all nations. Through short-term missions, we can encourage one another to give 2% of our time each year in contexts around the world in a way that transforms the other 98% of our time here in the process. We can invest in national disciple-makers and churches in other contexts and equip them to go into the world with us. We can join hands with faith families all around the world and together, through short-term missions, we can impact the world. The Win is World-Impacting Disciple-Makers: We win when men and women are multiplying the Gospel by making disciples of all nations with their lives. We can be a faith family full of world-impacting disciples who really believe that as a church we can shake the nations for His glory!

4. Expect every State Convention to do a 50/50 split in 10 years. We need to get more funds to IMB and NAMB in order to reach more people for Jesus Christ, but we also need to reach our individual states for Jesus Christ. People from all over the world and the country are coming here to live. These are people who have never heard the gospel and who come from different faiths and ethnic backgrounds. We have a need to educate the next generation pastors, evangelists, and missionaries, so we must continue to support our state Baptist universities. We have a need to continue to reach out to the orphans and widows in our state as mandated by scripture. There is a need to refocus, retune, and reorganize our state conventions.

5. Expect every Southern Baptist Church to pursue a standard of giving of 10% of the tithes to the Cooperative Program. A standard, a goal, and an expectation need to be set for our churches and although we cannot mandate this we can make it an expectation. This should be an expectation for any church or church leader who wants to serve in a leadership position in our state convention.

6. Empower the International Mission Board to pursue its mission to reach unreached people groups wherever they are found in cooperation with the North American Mission Board.