Messengers overwhelmingly passed a motion Tuesday evening authorizing the Southern Baptist Convention president to appoint a Great Commission Task Force to bring a report to the annual meeting in 2010 “concerning how Southern Baptists can work more faithfully and effectively together in serving Christ through the Great Commission.”
By a show of ballots, the motion passed with approximately 90 percent of messengers supporting it. An attempt to pass a substitute motion asking IMB and NAMB to study the issue and deliver the report failed by a similar margin. Debate lasted just over 20 minutes.
R. Albert Mohler Jr., a messenger from Highview Baptist Church in Louisville, Ky., and president of The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, made the original motion and spoke for it during discussion.
“I believe it is right and fitting,” he said, for Southern Baptists “to ask the hard questions,” such as, “Is there more we can do?”
“This is not an effort to reinvent the Southern Baptist Convention,” Mohler added.
Frank Page, a messenger from and pastor of First Baptist Church in Taylors, S.C., also spoke for the motion. Page and Mohler both spoke from the floor.