Any surging going on with the Great Commission Resurgence?

Any surging going on with the Great Commission Resurgence?

Well, I don’t know that there is, but there is some activity:

The Baptist State Convention of North Carolina has established an office of “Great Commission Partnerships.” Sounds good, but SBCers already know that we can have great sounding titles and, when I read the Biblical Recorder’s article
on it, there were way too many buzzwords used to describe the thing. Deck chair rearrangement? Can’t say. At least one BSCNCer is wary.

The Kentucky Baptist Convention has a proposal to move towards a 50/50 split with their Cooperative Program funds. Good for them. Plodder wryly notes that one initial budget move towards this is the elimination of the KBC’s annuity contribution to pastors and staff in the state. ‘Boom! Take that, pastors.’ The move towards that 50/50 split also calls for churches to increase their CP giving, a tall order seeing that the trend in the KBC is sharply downward (10% to 6.8%).

Bryant Wright, our SBC president, calls for churches to increase their goal this year for the Lottie Moon Christmas Offering for International Missions. One notes that in the BSCNC and the KBC, getting more money to missions is bureaucratically complicated, politically treacherous, and highly inefficient. Giving more to Lottie Moon, as Wright proposes, is simple, direct, and efficient. Get another dollar for missions. Another dollar goes straight to the IMB.

Which of these proposals actually has a chance of leading to a Great Commission resurgence? While I give credit to the state conventions, particularly Bill Mackey and the KBC, for doing something, it seems to me that Wright's appeal to the churches has the best chance.