At the close of Tuesday’s Great Commission Resurgence (GCR) conversation at White Oak Conference, a sample of the more than 500 South Carolina Baptist pastors and leaders were asked to give impressions of the day.

• Curt Bradford, pastor, Riverbluff Church, Charleston: “I loved what Ed Stetzer said about challenging us to reach 18-35 year olds. Partnerships with other entities that aren’t churches jazzes (sic) me up. The challenge for us, as a church, is to utilize opportunities like this to give strategic structural input to denominational leaders. I heard, today, a lot of “ought to,” and I think that’s a challenge – to get down to actually doing what we ought to do. We need to define the role of the denomination and state convention. Funding issues will be a challenge.”

• Travis Biller, pastor, Kilbourne Park Church, Columbia: “I think we have been strangled by cultural institutions. I am excited because we are now going through an identity crisis. We are forced to ask ourselves who we are and give self-evaluation. I think it’s profoundly important. Our church culture has been divorced from popular culture and we need to get back to it. We have nailed down what we believe; now, it’s time to translate what that means in a daily context. How do we make the rubber hit the road? How do we get individual church members to catch the vision? It’s easy to go to a conference and get excited, but what do we do that impacts the church member in his context?”

• Alex Sands, pastor, Kingdom Life Christian Center, Columbia: “I am excited about this start – about our confessional consensus and missional collaboration. It will take a number of different churches working together, and then how do we get that collaboration home to our people and in their homes?”

• Gail Hodson, president, SC Woman’s Missionary Union: “I’ve heard heartbeats today. I think that’s an exciting thing. We’ve opened up to hear one another and learn from one another. I worry about missions personnel who may not be able to go to the field to share the gospel because of funding. My small church (Mid Valley Church, Graniteville) can’t support a missionary by itself; we need the Cooperative Program to do it.”

• Jay Hardwick, Awaken Church, Columbia: “I’ve enjoyed today’s conversation. I am a Southern Baptist Convention church planter, and I am one because I look at the SBC as the greatest mission supporting and sending agency on earth. I want to see a renewed focus on church planting and see the SCBC get serious about (church planting) with serious money allocations. I want to see directors of mission champion all churches, and especially church plants, and raise an emphasis on church planting. (I believe) there is 75 percent lostness in our state – how are we impacting that with church planting?”

• Joe Martinez, pastor, Greer Iglesia Bautista Hispana, Greer: “I am beginning to feel the sweetness of planting churches. I’ve heard the heartbeat of Southern Baptists to plant churches. We need to connect our churches, put aside our jealousies, and work together. Pastors need to connect with other pastors asking, ‘How can I pray for you?’ Churches need to pray for other churches.”

• Ryan Goodroe, pastor, First Church Hartsville: “What I heard of value is also hard to hear. A lot of this is very difficult work. Jesus says, ‘Come to me’ and we’ve told the world it must ‘come to us.’ We have misappropriated Scripture. Jesus says ‘I will give you rest,’ but then He says ‘take my yoke,’ which means we are supposed to work hard. Sometimes we go home from something like this and we get discouraged because the work is hard. We, as pastors, have to be willing to stay at places long enough to be able to lead people. We don’t do humility very well in local churches. We have a lot of spending problems that don’t demonstrate humility.”

• David Gallamore, pastor, Rock Springs Church, Easley: “It’s late in God’s time, and men are dying and going to hell. We have to get together and do something. Everyone realizes that something needs to change and happen. We have to have the unction to give in to the Holy Spirit. We have to have an understanding of what we are talking about. I’m concerned about how we are going to implement (GCR), divvy spending, and its impact on our institutions and colleges. We have to make sure nothing happens to our young men and women in (Baptist) colleges. There must be an undertaking – we have to do it. We are doing far less than we can do. We need to get a burden and vision for a lost South Carolina and world.”