Three task force reports, revision of Articles and Bylaws, officer elections and an International Mission Board commissioning service highlight the 178th annual meeting of the Baptist State Convention (BSC) of North Carolina Nov. 10-12.

Even with these important decisions to make, economic malaise, fading interest in Convention “business” and a recent history of declining participation will likely keep the number of messengers below 2,800 at the Special Events Center of the Greensboro Coliseum.

Last year in the same venue 2,549 messengers registered, the fewest since 1972.

Commissioning Service
Monday night, Nov. 10, will feature missions, including a commissioning service for persons preparing for service with the International Mission Board. Missionaries and the churches from which they come will gather with messengers for worship, prayer and preaching in preparation for deployment.  

President Rick Speas will be nominated for a second one-year term.

The first and second vice presidents have declined to run for a second term. Ed Yount, pastor of Woodlawn Baptist Church in Conover, and Mark Harris, pastor of First Baptist Church, Charlotte, will be nominated to run for first and second vice president, respectively. Other nominations may yet arise.

Tuesday will come the second of two votes on the decision of North Carolina Baptist colleges to forego Cooperative Program funding in exchange for being able to elect their own trustees.

By virtue of BSC Board of Directors action Oct. 1, messengers will be asked to initiate an official severance of the BSC relationship with Baptist Retirement Homes. If passed, a study committee would recommend a new relationship between the two entities for consideration in 2009.

Messengers in 2007 asked that BRH initiate a severance process before it receives any further funds from BSC. Through October 2008, BRH had initiated no actions to clarify or alter its relationship with the BSC.

Messengers will also be asked to affirm the report of the Committee on Nominations.
 
Task force reports
Task forces will be bringing reports recommending a single giving plan, Baptist Aging Ministries and Embrace women’s ministry. The Articles and Bylaws Committee will be recommending changes. Only the giving plans report and Articles and Bylaws changes require messenger approval.

Of the task forces, the report of the Giving Plans Study Committee has been the most anticipated.

Yount said his committee provided “a simple plan, with options.”

The plan approved by the board allows up to three negative designations, allows churches to check a box to contribute 10 percent of their gift to the national Cooperative Baptist Fellowship and provides check boxes for additional support to Adopt-an-Annuitant and theological education at Campbell and Gardner-Webb University divinity schools.

North Carolina Baptist Aging Ministry (NCBAM) would establish a non-residential ministry helping North Carolina Baptist churches and associations create a variety of services to meet the needs of aging adults. Baptist Children’s Homes of North Carolina led in creation of NCBAM and has tapped retiring Catawba County Department of Social Services Director Bobby Boyd to develop it.
 
Embrace
Just as NCBAM was developed to guarantee a ministry to aging closely associated with BSC after Baptist Retirement Homes sought to sever its relationship with BSC, Embrace was developed as a women’s ministry following the resignation from BSC of Woman’s Missionary Union staff.

Phyllis Foy, who headed the task force to fashion a women’s ministry, said the task of her group was to form a comprehensive women’s ministry, including evangelism, discipleship, missions education, prayer support and promotion for missions offerings for ministries of the BSC.

Work of the Articles and Bylaws Committee, chaired by Shannon Scott, pastor of Mount Vernon Baptist Church in Raleigh, has been voluminous but it primarily results in sorting, condensing and arranging wording from the original constitution which was melded with little adjustment into articles and bylaws after the BSC incorporated in 2004. Similar work next year will address the second half of the documents.

Substantive changes include:

Reducing the role of the WMU representative on the BSC Executive Committee to a non-voting, ex officio spot on the Board of Directors. Embrace will be a ministry of the Convention like any other and will not have a position on the board or Executive Committee.

Establishing the ongoing terminology for the colleges, which no longer will be ministries of the BSC. They will be referred to as “affiliated educational institutions.” The BSC will administer scholarships for Baptist students attending those schools.

Councils will become committees but their role and authority will not change. Under the revisions, Baptist Retirement Homes will no long be a part of the Council on Christian Social Services.