In a six-week period between Aug. 11 and Sept. 22 the three highest profile executive leadership roles in the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) were vacated by resignation or announced retirements.

The SBC is being remade from the top.

While your prayers always are appropriate, decisions to be made regarding leadership of the SBC Executive Committee, International Mission Board (IMB) and North American Mission Board (NAMB) demand them now — maybe as well as your recommendation of a potential leader God lays on your heart.

Geoff Hammond resigned as president of NAMB 29 months after his election.

Jerry Rankin is retiring as president of the IMB after 17 years in its top seat, 40 with the Board.

After 18 years in the seat Morris Chapman, president of the SBC Executive Committee, will retire following the SBC annual meeting next year.

These vacancies come just as the Great Commission Resurgence Task Force, appointed by SBC President Johnny Hunt in June, is beginning its work.

It will meet for the third time Oct. 27 in Dallas.

Three North Carolinians are on the task force: Al Gilbert, Winston-Salem; J.D. Greear, Durham; and Danny Akin, Wake Forest.

Can you imagine the pieces falling into place any more dramatically for a remaking of the SBC than to have these positions all vacate at once, just weeks after the task force was named?

While the task force is to examine every aspect of the way Southern Baptists conduct and support their ministries, and to identify possible new efficiencies, most of the conversation surrounding their purpose centers on finding a way to funnel more Cooperative Program (CP) dollars to international missions.

The first way to do that, of course, is for Southern Baptists in the pews to give more to church, and for our churches to dedicate more of those gifts to missions through CP.

The percentage of undesignated gifts forwarded to missions through CP in the past 20 years has dipped by one-fourth, from about 8 percent to about 6 percent.

All things being equal, if the percentage had stayed the same, the SBC would have realized $50 million more last year, of which the IMB receives half, or $25 million.

The second thing is to rearrange the deck chairs. But that will only work temporarily if total giving continues to decline.

Effectiveness and efficiency will come not from slicing a pie differently, but from rediscovering the compelling vision for mission that united Southern Baptists for decades.

Third, the men eventually recommended to lead the three entities must bring a demonstrated commitment to the Cooperative Program as Southern Baptists’ missions funding channel.

The Executive Committee’s own CP Study Committee concluded that a significant element of decline has been the election to national leadership of men with no demonstrated commitment to the funding channel for the entities that churches of the Convention created.

JC Bradley says in this issue  that theology, not geography is the issue in missions.

If we define missions only as something you do “on the other side of salt water” then most of what Southern Baptists do at all levels should be shut down today to pour money into the IMB.

But Bradley affirms an important point that God is bringing the world to us, in another Pentecost.
That requires a global vision in each church and a strong missions force at the associational and state convention levels.

Rankin said when announcing his retirement that the IMB stands on the verge of unprecedented opportunities to engage every nation, people and language with the gospel.

It is an exciting, God sized challenge.

To lead Southern Baptists to meet that challenge at home and abroad we will need men who have demonstrated both their commitment to the vision and commitment to the financial structure of the denomination they will be asked to lead.