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GCR recordings to be closed 15 years


UPDATED June 10 with new information from GCRTF chairman Ronnie Floyd. The task force has decided the recordings of the proceedings will be kept closed for 15 years instead of 10.

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (BP)–Audio recordings of Great Commission Resurgence Task Force proceedings will be placed in the Southern Baptist Historical Library and Archives in Nashville and kept closed for 15 years.

GCR task force chairman Ronnie Floyd told Baptist Press the group is following the pattern set by the Southern Baptist Convention’s Peace Committee.

“The GCRTF voted to follow the precedent set by the SBC Peace Committee and have the sessions recorded. As with the Peace Committee, the recordings will be deposited at the SBC Historical Library and Archives, where they will be maintained until opened to researchers,” Floyd said in an e-mail to Baptist Press executive editor Will Hall. “The GCRTF will determine those number of years just as the Peace Committee did.”

Audio recordings of Peace Committee proceedings, which consisted of “about 135 cassette audio tapes,” were held by the Historical Library and Archives from 1987 to 1997, the library’s director, Bill Sumners, said.

The 22-member special committee, labeled early by media as the Peace Committee, was established by the SBC annual meeting in Dallas in 1985 to study the sources of the controversies that began in the SBC in 1979 and bring findings and recommendations that would help Southern Baptists effect reconciliation. The committee deliberated for two years and presented its report, which was adopted at the annual meeting of the SBC in St. Louis in June 1987.

The Peace Committee collection also included minutes of committee meetings, reports, attachments and 366 letters from Southern Baptists, Sumners said.
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Compiled by Baptist Press assistant editor Mark Kelly.

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