In a move that belies both the spirit and words of its own recommendations for “making our values transparent” the Great Commission Resurgence Task Force has announced it will lock up the record of its deliberations for 15 years.

The task force announced its intention one week before its recommendations were to be considered by messengers at the Southern Baptist Convention annual meeting in Orlando. It came as word was leaking out just how nebulous the task force’s “unanimous” agreement on their recommendations was. It came as we further learned of the need for task force members to be educated about the autonomous nature of Baptist state conventions before they realized their recommendations could be only that – recommendations and not mandates.

And, it came without reference to the fact that SBC President Johnny Hunt originally promised that all meetings of the task force would be open to at least one representative of Southern Baptists’ press, such as a newspaper editor or someone from Baptist Press. Instead, all meetings were closed.

To their credit, at various task force meetings a Baptist Press representative and reporters from Georgia, Alabama or Arkansas Baptist newspapers sat patiently in the hall, waiting to be thrown a bone, or at least get some quotes for a story about what happened during the meeting.

Instead, you were treated to a “press release” usually from Task Force Chairman Ronnie Floyd, who informed us that everyone was working hard, making progress, learning to appreciate each other and praying together a lot.

Now, we will not have access to their deliberations for 15 years. Will there be anyone left to care?

In secreting away their records, Floyd told Baptist Press his group is following the pattern set by the Southern Baptist Convention’s Peace Committee, whose report the Convention adopted in 1987. But members of the Peace Committee, operating during the most contentious period in Southern Baptist life in this generation, were debating enormous issues.

Arguing theological and political issues frankly and transparently in a contentious, suspicious environment could have been deleterious to professional life for the pastors and professors on the committee, were their comments made public.

The Great Commission Resurgence Task Force operates in an environment entirely unlike that of the Peace Committee era.

There are no “compromise” members appointed to the task force to meet quotas. They were all named by Hunt. They’re on the same team. At least one member was once on the staff of another member. Their goal was simple.

“The GCRTF voted to follow the precedent set by the SBC Peace Committee and have the sessions recorded,” Floyd said in an e-mail to Baptist Press Executive Editor Will Hall. “As with the Peace Committee, the recordings will be deposited at the SBC Historical Library and Archives, where they will be maintained until opened to researchers. The GCRTF will determine those number of years just as the Peace Committee did.” Are the references of precedent by the Peace Committee valid? Has the task force operated like the Peace Committee?

Dan Martin, who was news editor for Baptist Press during that period, attended and recorded every meeting of the Peace Committee. He wrote a legitimate news story for distribution to Southern Baptists after every meeting. And he participated as the scribe for the final report.

Martin said the effect of sealing deliberations for 10 years meant by the time the records were available for reflection, research and report no one cared. Is that the goal of the Great Commission Resurgence Task Force in this action?

Their second of seven recommendations is to make our values transparent. One of the values it lists is trust: “We tell each other the truth in love and do what we say we will do.”

Even before the committee presents its report, it demonstrates lack of trust in those it is asking to embrace it. Martin said there are only two reasons to seal records from more immediate availability: 1. “You’re ashamed of what you said,” or 2. “You don’t want to have to live by what you said.”

Task Force members say they are following the lead of the 1987 Peace Committee. The task force hasn’t followed the lead of the Peace Committee since it held its first closed meeting.

The task force is making harder its job of selling Southern Baptists on its vision by having operated behind the curtain and then emerging with a document they are to embrace, or risk being labeled as “against the Great Commission.”

The greatest merit of the task force report is that it signals recognition of a decelerating Convention and offers a “ready, shoot, aim” attempt to turn the tide.

But there is natural resistance to embrace a vision constructed behind closed doors — even if it is the best thing since sliced manna.

The task force has worked hard and their work has changed the conversation in Southern Baptist life. It has elevated the Great Commission and educated Southern Baptists about aspects of their common work that were not familiar. Whether their recommendations are received well by messengers to the SBC is unknown at the time of this writing.

If the task force had not released a preliminary report it never would have been able to listen, respond and change in ways that make the final report more palatable to some who resisted the earlier version.

But this action to seal the records of their labors so contradicts the spirit they’ve espoused that it endangers the ultimate acceptability of the entire report.