Bold Mission Thrust was born. Bold Mission Thrust fired the imaginations of many Southern Baptists, at least until a more immediate and compelling campaign to make the SBC safe for orthodoxy took its place. There is no way to estimate what good Southern Baptists could have accomplished for the kingdom of God if we had done more rabbit-chasing and less ear chewing in the final quarter of the 20th century. To my knowledge no one has completed a definitive evaluation of the results. Some doctoral student in Baptist history could make a contribution to our denomination's self understanding if she or he devoted a dissertation to the topic.
Anecdotal evidence allows people to argue either way.
Exhibit A in the case against Bold Mission Thrust is that not everyone heard the gospel of Jesus Christ by Jan. 1, 2001. Even the most optimistic missiologists do not suggest that Christians, let alone Southern Baptists, managed to get the good news to everyone. Nor did Southern Baptists achieve other recommendations in the 1976 report. It suggested goals, for example, that churches give half of their receipts to the Cooperative Program and that state conventions send 50 percent of their receipts to the national denomination. Only a few bought in to this division of their financial receipts.