SBC leaders disagree on whether new GCR vision is really new

NASHVILLE?The first “Component” of the Great Commission Resurgence Task Force’s interim progress report calls Southern Baptists to rally around a missional vision focused on the Great Commission and to “create a new and healthy culture within the Southern Baptist Convention.”

The report, released Feb. 22, proposes a “missional vision” to “present the Gospel of Jesus Christ to every person in the world and to make disciples of all the nations.”

To that end, the report lists eight core values the GCRTF says will help create a changed culture: Christ-likeness, truth, unity, relationships, trust, future, local church and kingdom.

GCR Task Force chairman Ronnie Floyd told the Florida Baptist Witness, “The core values we want our convention to embrace can help us create a new culture in the way we talk to and relate to one another personally and in the way we conduct our business together.” The SBC lacks clarity on this issue and the GCRTF wants “to see this changed radically,” he said.

Floyd said response to Component 1 of the report has been overwhelmingly positive with only one change suggested. The GCRTF is not considering any changes to this component at present, he said.

Ed Stetzer, missiologist and president of the research arm of LifeWay Christian Resources, told the Witness the word “missional” has become a widely accepted term in evangelical circles during the last decade, though it may be unfamiliar to some.

“At its core, ‘missional’ is generally defined as joining God on his mission,” Stetzer said. “In other words, the church and Christians do not exist for themselves, but rather they are here to join Jesus on mission and to live sent for God’s agenda. We reorder our priorities to be focused on what God is doing rather than what we want.”

In order to embrace this vision long-term, Floyd wrote in the progress report of the need to create a new and healthy culture within the SBC. He explained that the eight core values articulate “what we stand for, how we should work together, how we govern our personal relationships, and how we should be guided in making decisions.

The core values are:

? Christ-likeness: We depend on the transforming power of the Holy Spirit and rayer to make us more like Jesus Christ.