Every facet of MBC to be examined by select panel
By Allen Palmeri
Associate Editor
JEFFERSON CITY—Missouri Baptist Convention (MBC) Executive Director David Tolliver released the names of his 12-member Organizational Study Group Dec. 14 to the MBC Administrative Committee and indicated to the full board that the group will be doing a lot of research.
The board voted unanimously Dec. 15 to affirm its formation. Tolliver said the group will begin with a time of fact gathering and an eventual reporting of findings that will likely take all of 2010 and perhaps some of 2011. Board members also affirmed Tolliver as the group’s facilitator and did not object to him including his two associate executive directors on the panel.
“The Organizational Study Group is there to do research and then report back findings,” Tolliver said. “Those findings then will become recommendations if this group (the MBC Administrative Committee) determines that they will be recommendations, and then they will go on to the full board and some of them, in the event of a major restructure, would go to the convention.”
It is a diverse dozen, with three women, one African-American, one Hispanic, two young pastors, and one former member of the Southern Baptist Convention Executive Committee. There are also two directors of missions and two MBC Executive Board members.
Its members in alphabetical order are: Jerry Field, MBC associate executive director; Judith Gonzales, member, Iglesia Cristiana Casa de Oracion, Springfield; Josh Hall, pastor, Selmore Baptist Church, Ozark; Rodney Hammer, director of missions, Blue River-Kansas City Baptist Association; Jay Hughes, MBC associate executive director; Matt Marrs, pastor, Northland Baptist Church, Kansas City; Kim Petty, member, Grace Community Church, Smithville; Cindy Province, member, Dardenne Baptist Church, O’Fallon; T.D. Stubblefield, pastor, First Baptist Church, Chesterfield; Tolliver; William Vail, pastor, First Baptist Church, Poplar Bluff; and Jim Wells, director of missions, Tri-County Baptist Association.
Tolliver acknowledged that much of their work in the first half of 2010 could be shaped by what the Great Commission Resurgence (GCR) Task Force of the Southern Baptist Convention does.
Tolliver said he plans for the Organizational Study Group to examine various structures such as similar state conventions in an effort to spark “a Show Me Great Commission Resurgence.” One of the primary lines of questioning concerning each department will be, “What works? What does not work?”
The MBC at present has 73 employees, Field said.
Another guide for the group, Tolliver said, will be his vision statement. The executive director sees Missouri Baptists as a people who are spiritually healthy Christians, coming together in healthy churches, going to an unhealthy world with the healing Gospel of Jesus Christ. The question facing the group in all of its research, according to Tolliver, is, “How can we best implement the vision statement?”