Dear SCBaptist,

South Carolina Baptists are a mission-funding, mission-sending, mission-going people. While our organization is autonomous from the Southern Baptist Convention, we joyfully acknowledge it as our most strategic partner in Great Commission advance nationally and internationally. Through this national network of entities, South Carolina Baptists are able to efficiently train 20,000 seminary students, fund 3,500 international missionaries, plant 750 churches, advocate for biblical values in the public square, send relief to local and global communities in crisis and disaster, and much more year after year. At the Southern Baptist Convention’s annual meeting in New Orleans this year, South Carolina Baptists took part in highlighting and celebrating all of those cooperative advancements. I trust our South Carolina Baptist pastors and church leaders who attended and participated in the annual meeting will be able to tell you their experiences and offer their assessments. 

524 South Carolinian messengers were registered at the SBC annual meeting in New Orleans, putting South Carolina in the top ten messenger-sending states! Over 350 South Carolinians gathered in an upstairs room Monday evening to fellowship, connect, laugh, and dream together. At our SCBaptist fellowship in New Orleans that night, the air was rich with joyful expectation and cooperative spirit. This tells me South Carolina Baptists have a vested interest in the long-term organizational health and Great Commission success of our national partnerships. And if there is one thing South Carolina Baptists have learned in our 202 years of Great Commission cooperation in the Palmetto State, it’s that cooperation is often messy but always worth it. 

Joyful. Devoted. Strategic. Sacrificial. Respectful. Patient. Loving. Hopeful in all things. I love the South Carolina kind of Great Commission cooperation, and I long to see it catch wind between the states again. 

524 messengers at the SBC23 in New Orleans was a huge win. At the SBC24, let’s double it. If your SCBaptist church is at all vested in the long-term organizational health and Great Commission success of our national partnerships, consider this a personal invitation from me to the next SBC Annual Meeting June 11-12, 2024 in Indianapolis. Send a full slate of messengers (and a load of guests, too!), and be sure to join us at our SCBaptist reception Monday evening June 10 before the opening gavel of the Convention Tuesday morning. 

FYI: The way SBC messenger allocation works (different from SCBaptist messenger allocation), is as follows (see SBC Constitution Article III):

• Every SBC church in friendly cooperation is allowed two messengers
• One additional messenger is allowed for every $6,000 or 1% of undesignated receipts given through either the Cooperative Program or in Great Commission giving (financial giving to SBC causes) during the previous fiscal year
• A maximum messenger allocation of 12 messengers per church. 

So, if you plan to seat messengers at the SBC annual meeting in Indianapolis June 11-12, 2024, be sure your church’s Cooperative Program giving or Great Commission giving is what you need it to be by September 30, 2023. 

In the meantime, bring a full slate of messengers and a load of guests to our SCBaptist Annual Meeting on November 13-14, 2023 at Shandon Baptist Church in Columbia. There, let’s show our people and the rest of our larger Baptist family what the South Carolina kind of Baptist cooperation looks and feels like. I’ll see you there. 

For the Churches,
Tony Wolfe
Executive Director-Treasurer, South Carolina Baptists