In Lake Wobegon all the children are above average and crushed is the parent who is told otherwise.

Southern Baptists are adjusting their psyche to accommodate the knowledge that their president doesn’t think they are above average. In fact, Johnny Hunt’s plea for Southern Baptists to make 10 personal commitments toward a “Great Commission Resurgence” applied a “shock to the system.” His call comes an entire generation after this convention of churches became so preoccupied over the nature and authority of the Bible that we forgot actually to live the Bible’s Great Commission. Southern Baptists are finally — finally — waking to the fact that all the arguing over the Bible has not moved the Convention an inch toward living the biblical mandates.

Such a shock could only be administered from inside the movement that made biblical inerrancy the issue around which to gather support for electing SBC presidents since 1979.

Now Hunt and Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary President Danny Akin are voicing the concern as insiders that outsiders have been pointing out for 15 years or more: the “conservative resurgence” in the Convention has not resulted in the surge of Great Commission commitment, and growth in measurable standards of effectiveness that Baptists were led to believe would result from a new commitment to biblical authority.

Where a previous generation heard the slowdown of growth since the halcyon days in the ’50s and ’60s was due to lukewarm belief in the Bible and “liberal” seminaries, today the villain may be dubbed “bloated bureaucracies” and redundant denominational services that keep precious Cooperative Program dollars from theological education and foreign fields.

“Bloated bureaucracies” is the term Akin originally used in a chapel address that received loud affirmation from students, and it is what put state Baptist convention executives’ teeth on edge.

Akin and Hunt have backed away from that term because they don’t want negative reaction to it to stand in the way of a serious, non-threatening, transparent look at how Southern Baptists do their business at all levels, to make sure that every dollar is maximized in efforts to win the lost, to plant churches and to offer effective mercy ministries.

The Hunt and Akin document is a heart cry to Southern Baptists to make personal commitments to the Bible, to church, to family and to a self-examination of Baptist business processes. It is general, willing to wait on specifics to arise from a task force Hunt intends to name following the June annual meeting in Louisville.

Boomer Baptists will remember an effort launched in 1976 called Bold Mission Thrust that was very specific.

While several layers of goals emerged in its early years, ultimately — if all too briefly — Southern Baptists as a people and our boards, commissions and institutions were united around the common goal “that every person in the world shall have the opportunity to hear the gospel of Christ in the next 25 years — and can understand the claim Jesus Christ has on their lives.”

It was not just a squishy goal. Each Baptist organization saw itself as a Great Commission entity and created a plan of action to be a part of that overall vision.

Broad goals were “kingdom sized” such as a 10 percent increase per year in baptisms, 5,800 new churches, a net gain of 1,000 career missionaries and doubling Cooperative Program giving.

Not all goals were met, certainly not the overall goal.

But in this game, a brightly drawn goal line gave the people running the ball a reason to draw up some plays; a strategy to coach; and it put some fans in the stands.

The number of career missionaries increased 85.5 percent; the number of nations in which those missionaries served almost doubled, from 82 to 153, surpassing the goal of 125.

The number of overseas churches relating to Baptist work grew 704 percent to 60,988, short of the 75,840 goal but a great increase.

Maybe most significantly the number of volunteers at home and abroad increased 2,430 percent, a hands-on legacy of Bold Mission Thrust that glows stronger every year. U.S. President and Southern Baptist Jimmy Carter is the one who proposed at the 1977 SBC meeting in Kansas City that Southern Baptists open “non-traditional” avenues to get witnesses to the field.

The International Mission Board keeps great statistics and gives good reports. Similar statistics gleaned from reports written in 2000 are not available from other agencies.

But several shortfalls bear mention.

Instead of significant increases, baptisms in the last quarter of the 20th century fell from the 421,809 in 1975 to 414,657 in 2000. New congregations gained 34 percent but fell well short of the goal of 50,000. Bible study enrollment grew 12.4 percent to 8.2 million but was far short of the 13 million goal.

Why did a very promising, focused, unified denominational Great Commission effort fall off the rails in the mid-80s?

“Bold Mission Thrust got pushed to the side, unfortunately,” Akin said during an interview in his office. “But probably it was unavoidable. It’s hard to engage on multiple fronts when you have large scale battles going on.”
Akin said Southern Baptists “were engaged in a large scale battle denominationally. To maintain focus on Bold Mission Thrust was difficult, and it probably did get lost. What we’re arguing here is the natural outgrowth of the ‘conservative resurgence’ ought to be a passion for the Great Commission.”

“Recovery of the authority of the Bible was not an end in itself,” Akin said, “but was always for the propagation of the gospel to the nations.”

He and Hunt obviously are pained that Baptists have not been inspired to greater missional effort from the doctrinal clarity achieved by their leaders.

Keith Parks led the International Mission Board (it was then called the Foreign Mission Board) 1980-1992 at the height of the Bold Mission Thrust effort. Parks, 81, talked recently from his retirement home in Texas about Bold Mission Thrust, its momentum and how it was lost in the turmoil of denominational politics.

“Adrian Rogers (SBC president in 1979, 1987, 1988) and I argued publicly that once a denomination moved away from being bound by mission outreach and came together instead around doctrine the move would be divisive and disruptive,” Parks said.

“Denominations that depend on doctrine to hold them together divide and re-divide again. Once a denomination makes that shift, it basically changes its nature.”

“There was no confidence in the old guard,” Parks said. “Bold Mission Thrust transitioned to arguments about doctrine, the Bible and inerrancy and Bold Mission Thrust just got lost.”

Now new faces are the “old guard.” These faces rose with the “conservative resurgence” tide, and now they fear their boat will be swamped by a proposal to examine processes and spending because after 30 years the pudding is without proof.

The call for Southern Baptists individually and in their churches to make a personal commitment to the Great Commission is timely and welcome. But for us to rally around a task with commitment more than skin deep requires kingdom sized, unified goals pumping from the hearts of Southern Baptists into the veins of our institutions or the effect will be of little more value than a child’s “God bless everyone” prayer.

Christians can no longer be guilted or cajoled into meeting artificial goals established by someone else. If we don’t own the goals, if they didn’t bubble up from the people who are expected to work to meet them, they’re just another denominational program.

When he was SBC president Bobby Welch devoted fulltime to urging Southern Baptists to reach and baptize more people. He crisscrossed the nation, preaching at every bus stop, big top and parking lot that he could schedule. He had slogans, passion, a right cause and inspirational words and still baptisms decreased the following year because for some reason Southern Baptists never caught the fire.

Former Biblical Recorder editor Marse Grant foresaw that possibility when he wrote in a June 2, 1979, editorial before the SBC annual meeting in which Adrian Rogers was elected for the first time, “Right now our denomination is in the midst of an ambitious Bold Missions Thrust, an effort that could be tragically side-tracked by a doctrinal squabble. Nothing would kill it quicker. Its death would greatly reduce the impact of Southern Baptists on this nation and the world.”

Southern Baptist churches sent 15,947 messengers to that convention. Bold Mission Thrust had been in the vocabulary since 1976 but it launched big time that week when 48,000 flooded the Astrodome and sang, cried and prayed as 1,100 mission volunteers knelt on the playing field below, gathered in the shape of a cross, for a service of dedication and commitment.

Two events launched that week in Houston: Bold Mission Thrust to win the world, and a “battle for the Bible” to win the Convention.

There is no energy or interest here to argue the eternal effects of that dichotomy. But now, a generation later, with their bold declaration, perhaps Danny Akin and Johnny Hunt have launched a move that will thrust Southern Baptists back toward a mission commitment that will yet shake the stagnation off this international giant.

As Akin says in a separate interview, a broad commitment to the first declaration — the lordship of Christ — will make the others moot. It will take such a commitment to wade through the sensitive discussions sure to take place in the coming months.