It is very expensive for North Carolina Baptists to hold a statewide annual meeting. Costs easily exceed $1 million for the Baptist State Convention to lease the space, provide rooms and meals for the staff necessary to attend, pay for programming and establish the exhibit area and for 2,000 messengers to drive to the venue, eat and stay over for a night or two.

For years the meeting started Monday evening with some preliminary singing and preaching and introductions; followed by Tuesday morning business and elections; a few hours off in the afternoon, business and presentations Tuesday evening and a half day of business on Wednesday. 

Tuesday morning was prime time for presentations. Wednesday was a grave yard. Tuesday afternoons became a time for breakout sessions to squeeze in some learning opportunities. A few years ago business crept into Tuesday afternoons because constitutional wording was ambiguous about when issues had to be introduced for them to be acted upon in the following business meeting.

Budget approval was held for Wednesday mornings in part to try to hold a crowd over for business that day, and in part to hold that discussion when the few remaining people were anxious to leave.

This year the Committee on Annual Meetings will bring a motion recommending that the annual meeting be condensed to two days. A two-day meeting would save time and money but would likely diminish the meeting’s imprint on Convention life. Would people who skip Wednesday morning sessions duck out early on Tuesday to get home? If not, they’re not actually saving another night’s lodging expense.

Brian Davis, BSC executive leader for administration and convention relations, said, “Messengers are speaking with their feet,” by leaving early, indicating their preference is for a two-day meeting. There are no contractual obligations with the Koury Convention Center that would preclude a two-day meeting as early as 2011.

A two-day meeting was tried on a Friday-Saturday in 1994 in an effort to involve more laypersons. Attendance dropped by 787 to 4,363 and the experiment ended. Attendance rose to 5,475 the next year.

The motion does not suggest a projected starting time for the meeting. An obvious issue to work around is potential conflict with the annual Pastors’ Conference, which usually runs through Monday afternoon. A two-day BSC annual meeting might require a start time before the usual Monday evening.

Although attendance is declining, more North Carolina Baptists attend their annual meeting than do Baptists in any other state convention.

Given the dreadful attendance on Wednesdays, and the potential savings in food and lodging it may be time for a two-day meeting. 

Some things seem to come around all the time. When you shave in the morning doesn’t it seem you just did that? Didn’t you clean the leaves from your gutters just last week? Do you blow out birthday candles every month?

Now in just a couple weeks North Carolina Baptists conduct our annual business meeting, just like it seems we did a couple weeks ago. The meeting is Nov. 8-10 at the Koury Convention Center in Greensboro and those who prepare all the materials for messengers attending the annual session are putting together 3,000 packets – just in case. It would not due to have an unexpectedly large turnout and not have materials for everyone.

You should come.

Baptist world is changing faster than leaf color in the mountains and is far less predictable. If you care about the cooperative work of North Carolina Baptists in the state, nation and world you should come hear reports of what we are doing together.

Tension always exists among annual session planners between the need to conduct the business of the Baptist State Convention and the desire to make the annual meeting inspirational.  There is always a strong element of presentation: those who are involved in missions present their efforts to you to report how funds are invested, how lives are changed and to encourage your participation in the future. It is a great place to learn about the partnerships, projects and peoples you are involved with — or can be involved with — through ministries of the Convention and its Baptist Men’s auxiliary.

Attendance has dwindled since the time when intense controversy drew those of opposing opinions to the meeting to argue for their perspective. With a clear direction settled for the BSC annual meetings have been relatively harmonious, if still unpredictable. Leaders make frequent reference to the surprise action by messengers in 2008 to disregard the recommendations of its Giving Plans Study Committee that would have included a check box for contributions to the national Cooperative Baptist Fellowship.

That option’s death killed the last reason some churches cooperated with the BSC and likely contributed to some of the Cooperative Program woes of today. Still, the action clearly demonstrated that messengers have both an intense interest in what they are considering and the ability to effect or alter business. It also showed that in a small crowd the opinion of a few adamant people can prevail. That, of course, is true at every level.

Passion counts and it moves people.

Messengers in the room during those three days of meeting are the Baptist State Convention of North Carolina. So if you are passionate about the good things North Carolina Baptists are doing together, you need to come.

If you want a voice in potential changes, you need to come. If you want to hear some good preaching, praying and singing, you need to come.

You will hear about the next phase of the evangelistic emphasis Find It Here; about the Baptist State Convention’s new partnership with Moldova and updates on other partnerships where volunteers experience the joy of sharing Christ alongside other Baptists in their context as they help us in ours. Ed Yount, pastor of Woodlawn Baptist Church in Conover, will be leading his first annual session as president. We’ll be considering a budget that is six percent smaller than in 2010 which was 12.3 percent smaller than in 2009, and sends a larger portion to ministries of the Southern Baptist Convention.

Messengers also will consider changing the annual meeting from a three-day format to two days. Cited are costs, lagging attendance and declining interest generally in attending conferences and meetings.

The emotional highlight promises to be the presentation by Baptist Children’s Homes, which corresponds with its 125th anniversary observance. Children and staff always knock it out of the park when they thank North Carolina Baptists for their support.

Those of you who read the Biblical Recorder regularly already know about all these things. Do your friends a favor and spread the word.

Are we North Carolina Baptists who gladly, freely and generously affiliate with the Southern Baptist Convention, or are we Southern Baptists who happen to live in North Carolina?

At least an ancillary result of the work of the vision fulfillment committee the Baptist State Convention of North Carolina board of directors authorized Sept. 29 will be to answer that question in its effort to find a North Carolina way through the din of competing voices. 

While Kentucky, Florida and Nevada messengers face votes this fall that will drive the Southern Baptist Convention “Great Commission resurgence” agenda, approval of dramatic shifts in Cooperative Program allocations between the state conventions and the SBC will have immediate negative effect on the work of the state conventions in question. Of course, the expected and preferred result for those who favor the GCR goals is more dollars taking flight from those state conventions to land in the seminaries and mission boards with their ultimate destination being American metro populations and unreached people groups overseas.

That will happen, at least for awhile. If state conventions are weakened the increased flow of funds to the SBC is unlikely to last. State conventions are the greatest supporters, publicists, encouragers and enablers of Southern Baptist ministries that SBC entities have.

The three state conventions that will consider local GCR task force decisions in November all have genetic national GCR ties. In Kentucky, a Southern Baptist Theological Seminary faculty member led the committee that is going to recommend the Kentucky convention increase its SBC giving by almost nine percentage points in one year. Southern’s president is Al Mohler, who drafted the GCR document.

Florida dominated the GCR Task Force numerically with five members. The Florida task force was chaired by Danny DeArmas, executive pastor of First Baptist Church, Orlando, where the pastor is David Uth. Uth nominated Georgia pastor Bryant Wright for the SBC presidency at the annual meeting in Orlando.

The Nevada task force was led by Vance Pittman, pastor of Hope Baptist Church in Las Vegas, a church planted by First Baptist Woodstock, Ga., where Johnny Hunt is pastor. Hunt, immediate past president of the SBC, initiated the GCR and named the members of the task force. Pittman is president of the SBC Pastors’ Conference for 2011.

The Kentucky convention already has calculated the losses to staff, programs, educational support and social services ministries should the task force recommendations be approved. Florida likely has done the same. The 179-church Nevada convention already depends on North American Mission Board support to operate.

In the “opportunity cost” reality of economics, a dollar invested in one area is a dollar unavailable in another.

The Great Commission resurgence recommendations adopted by SBC messengers in June, say a dollar’s greatest value in Kingdom work is when it is invested in nations, among people who have never heard the gospel of Jesus Christ.

A dollar invested there, by definition, is unavailable for investment in the lives of people elsewhere — whether those people are students, homeless, lost people in our towns, abused children, or churches that need someone to come alongside them to help through a difficult time or to educate and encourage them toward growth.

But North Carolina is certainly not an “unreached” nation. GCR advocates maintain that 4,200 North Carolina Baptist churches as well as many other evangelical churches and groups in North Carolina provide a strong base from which to evangelize the rest of the state.

Proponents of a strong state Convention maintain that most BSC churches are small and need the encouragement and programmatic help their Convention provides. Additionally, the nations are coming to North Carolina with dozens of languages spoken in schools and some of our strongest church planting efforts finding receptive soil in ethnic fields.

The vision fulfillment task force will listen to these competing voices and find a North Carolina way. As Aaron Wallace, pastor of Hephzibah Baptist Church in Wendell said at the board meeting, North Carolina Baptists do not want to be pushed into acting a certain way because of something another convention is or is not doing.

Board President Bobby Blanton very significantly said the vision fulfillment task force is not a GCR task force — it will not be tasked with making recommendations to match those of the Southern Baptist Convention’s GCR task force or that will necessarily align Baptist State Convention budget and program with GCR goals.

Certainly it will consider voices that would push for that result, but it is not charged to accommodate them.

Instead, this task force’s charge is to evaluate how effectively the Baptist State Convention is fulfilling its vision — the vision very clearly enunciated by Executive Director-treasurer Milton A. Hollifield Jr. as the seven pillars for ministry intended to grow North Carolina Baptists into “the strongest force in the history of this Convention for reaching people with the message of the gospel.” That vision is the “overarching and undergirding philosophy” of the BSC, he said at the board meeting.

Fortunately, the task force’s job will not be to satisfy everyone, for that is impossible.

But if any shred of cooperative spirit lingers in Baptist bowels, let it rise here.

M.O. Owens not only has been through the Baptist wars, he might have fired the first shot. Without referring to the vision fulfillment committee, he illuminated the difficulty of its task when he said it is hard to make progress as a group if individual actions declare: “If I don’t get anything out of it, I don’t care whether anyone else gets anything out of it.” 

As important as is the work of this task force, it is the level of cooperative spirit that reacts to its recommendations — no matter what they are — that will determine at this time next year not only if there is a North Carolina way forward; but if there is any way forward.

Morris Chapman may be the most important Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) denominational executive you don’t know. As president of the SBC Executive Committee for 18 years he led the annual budget efforts that allocated funds to the various national agencies.

He was a leader by example in support of the Cooperative Program during his pastorates, raising the CP giving percentage of his last pastorate from 11.5 percent to 15.5 percent during his 13-year tenure. He was elected president of the Southern Baptist Convention in 1990 while pastor of that church, First Baptist Church of Wichita Falls, Texas. His election as SBC president signaled that the annual moderate/conservative contest for the SBC presidency was over and decided in favor of conservatives.

At Chapman’s retirement dinner Sept. 20 Jerry Vines, himself a significant figure in the “conservative resurgence” declared that Chapman’s election “resolved the issue” and “from that point on it was very, very clear that conservatives had won the battle and the Southern Baptist Convention was turning back to its conservative roots.”

With a profile heightened by the presidency, Chapman was elected to the Executive Committee post in February 1992 and took office Oct. 1.

For 18 years Chapman has unfailingly advocated for the Southern Baptist Convention, for its churches and agencies of the churches and for how its churches fund the mission of their agencies. He is among the few of the past three decades whose conduct confirms the conviction of his words when it comes to support for the SBC and the Cooperative Program. September 30 was his last day in office. His retirement became inevitable following his passionate Southern Baptist Convention address in 2009 that put him at odds with the rising leadership of the “Great Commission resurgence.” Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary President Danny Akin called the remarks “shameful.” 

In a thinly veiled reference to Calvinism, Chapman said man often is tempted to design a theory about a biblical concept to clarify what God is trying to say, but man’s system always will be inferior to God’s system.

“If there is any doctrine of grace that drives men to argue and to debate more than it drives them to pursue lost souls and persuade all men to be reconciled to God, then it is not a doctrine that will form a foundation for a fervent fulfillment of the Great Commission,” he said.

But Chapman turns 70 in November so his retirement is hardly “early.” It comes at a time when both mission board top posts also were vacant, so it set the stage for significant transformation in SBC leadership chairs. Two of those three spots have been filled with capable men. The International Mission Board search committee labors on, apparently stalled by indecision over whether or not missionary service is an essential in the new president’s background.

Chapman led the first international missions trip former SBC President Johnny Hunt ever went on and he called Chapman a personal counselor when Chapman announced his retirement just three months after the fateful SBC address.

Early in his tenure Chapman noted the massive numbers of people and money that flow into which ever city hosts the Southern Baptist Convention annual meeting and he initiated what has become the annual Crossover event.

Volunteers from across the nation come early to help local churches engage their communities in witness. Thousands of persons have come to Christ through Crossover.

“If you don’t know him, no words are adequate,” said Steve Davis, executive director for Indiana Baptists. “If you do know him, no words are necessary.”

“Retirement is either the best word or the worst word in the English language,” Chapman said at the dinner in his honor.

He hopes to make “some contribution to Christian education” during his retirement.

“I retire knowing God’s hand is upon Southern Baptists and I pray for a great spiritual awakening and I pray for it to come in my lifetime,” he said.

Chapman retires with Executive Committee members wrestling over their response to the Great Commission Resurgence Task Force recommendations. Members are not of one mind and the February meeting will be a watershed as the Executive Committee submits its 2012 budget recommendations.

Chapman, however, is single minded as he moves to the next phase of ministry.

“As long as the Lord gives me breath, my heart’s desire is to do nothing more or nothing less than I have done to this very point,” he said. Chapman’s tenure bridges two significant SBC movements. He swept into office on the tide of the “conservative resurgence.”

The new wave of “Great Commission resurgence” is carrying him out.

Through all the tossing Chapman kept his head above water and his eyes on Jesus. The Southern Baptist Convention needs all the advocates like him it can muster.