The viability of the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) as a dynamic, growing, focused and effective convention of churches has been a matter of wide and constant debate since this spring; ever since Southeastern Baptist Seminary President Danny Akin floated 12 axioms for a Great Commission Resurgence that became the framework around which SBC President Johnny Hunt named a Great Commission Resurgence Task Force.

That task force, appointed in June, is charged to “bring a report and any recommendations” to the Orlando SBC meeting June 15-16, 2010, “concerning how Southern Baptists can work more faithfully and effectively together in serving Christ through the Great Commission.” That is the wording.

Through the words of advocates and some outspoken task force members, the task force responsibility is being defined practically as to study all aspects of SBC structure and find efficiencies to free more dollars for priority mission, primarily overseas and in America’s major urban centers.

The empowering motion made in June is being defined by the task force.

Are we dying? Statistics would say we are in decline, as are other denominations in this “post denominational” age. This is true despite SBC apologists who cite statistical growth since 1979 and say our numbers are “not as bad” as mainline denominations. When we start to compare our own puny statistics to other’s pitiful numbers to say we are doing well, we should know we are in trouble.

As often happens when people begin to feel discomfort with the way things are, we want to go back to the way things were. We want churches to be the center of community and family life again and for them to give 10 percent of receipts to missions through the Cooperative Program. We want Training Union back and a vibrant Sunday night service. Some want the Convention to return to what they say is the Calvinism of its founders.

The danger in this conversation is to define the Convention’s founding purpose in 1845 by what you want that purpose to be today so you can argue that purpose is what we need to “get back to.”

The most common redefinition trailing in the wake of the Great Commission Resurgence Task Force moving through the water is that the Convention was started to plant churches and to fund international missions. I am in favor of planting churches everywhere we can, especially in America’s urban centers; and carrying the gospel to the nations is a compelling, valid, inspirational Kingdom purpose. Southern Baptists should be and increasingly are all over those goals.

But, according to the SBC Constitution, church planting at home and abroad is not the only or even pre-eminent reason the Convention was formed.

In fact, the SBC Constitution says the Convention was formed to “effect the benevolent intention of our constituents by organizing a plan for eliciting, combining, and directing the energies of the denomination for the propagation of the gospel.”

It is clear from the above statement in our Constitution’s prologue that “missionary societies, churches and other religious bodies of the Baptist denomination” formed the Southern Baptist Convention “for the propagation of the gospel.” What form did they decide those efforts should take?

Article II, revised in 1946 to clarify some arcane language, sets the parameters for the mutual work. It says the Convention is “to provide a general organization for Baptists in the United States and its territories for the promotion of Christian missions at home and abroad and any other objects such as Christian education, benevolent enterprises, and social services which it may deem proper and advisable for the furtherance of the Kingdom of God.”

Motivated by the gospel and based on this founding statement, Baptists have built a tremendous system of missionary, benevolent and educational institutions, each to serve a Kingdom purpose deemed by founders to be vitally important. When North Carolina Baptists formed our convention of churches in 1830 – 15 years before the SBC was formed – we had two purposes: to create a school at which to educate ministers and to evangelize the Indians in the western part of the state. We eventually created two schools and rescued and developed five others. We built one of the finest hospitals in the Southeast; a retirement homes and a statewide system of homes for children.

Compelled by expressed needs of churches, North Carolina Baptists fund a ministry team of consultants to train and lead people to serve in Jesus’ name and to further the Kingdom of God.

There is no question that during our history, “promotion of Christian missions at home and abroad” has pulled the train of Southern Baptist support for all “benevolent enterprises.” Now rhetorical momentum is building that would define “Christian missions at home and abroad” as church planting and international missions alone, implying that a dollar spent for any other purpose is a dollar denied to Kingdom purposes.

An ugly ancillary to such opinion is that denominational ministers and other staff somehow are leeches sucking the missions blood from the cooperative effort of our churches. Or, that state conventions are a millstone around the neck of missions, hoarding the oxygen “real missions” so desperately needs.

It is valid, vital and timely for the Convention to review its priorities. Any ocean liner crossing the seas conducting its business picks up barnacles that slow it down.

If barnacles cling to the Southern Baptist ship, we should willingly scrape them off to increase our speed.

But it is unfair to imply that anything we currently do that is not church planting or international missions is a barnacle. And don’t try to say the Convention was formed exclusively or primarily to plant churches.

There is not enough money funding missions overseas. There never has been enough money going overseas. The Foreign Mission Board reports of 1927-28-29 etc. read as if current International Mission Board President Jerry Rankin wrote them for the upcoming meeting in Orlando.

Missionaries identified, vetted and ready to go, and not enough money to send them. I’m not referring to that historical consistency to say, “Don’t worry about it. It’s always been that way.”

But when a problem is "newly discovered" by the next generation, with no reference to the past, successful solutions developed in the past might be ignored. The Cooperative Program is a solution to a vexing problem of societal giving that almost drove the SBC to bankruptcy on more than one occasion. The Cooperative Program is not a problem; it is a solution.

To imply that it is broken is to say your car is broken when it coasts to the side of the road and quits. You used to put 10 gallons of fuel into the car for your trip to the beach.

But you needed some gas for the lawnmower, and edger, and to burn the brush pile. And you used some gas money for a sandwich, so you just put six gallons into the car and now you wonder why it won’t carry you to the beach and back.

Denominational leadership cannot harangue individuals to give more or churches to contribute more of the gifts to missions.

Those are heart issues that if resolved would put everything right.

Akin listed as his first axiom toward a Great Commission resurgence that “We must commit ourselves to the total and absolute Lordship of Jesus Christ in every area of our lives. (Col. 3:16-17, 23-24) If we do not do that, there is no call compelling enough to pull Southern Baptists as a convention of churches toward a Great Commission resurgence.