RICHMOND, Va. — A proposed task force report to be considered by the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship this summer will clarify the group’s identity and more effectively mobilize grassroots involvement, agree CBF leaders in the Mid-Atlantic, who said the changes will significantly expand support for the 20-year-old network of churches.
Recommendations from the 14-member task force — appointed two years ago to in an effort to revitalize the CBF for the next 20 years — were considered by the organization’s Coordinating Council Feb. 23-24. The council largely affirmed the proposal, though some adjustments will be made before presenting a final product at the CBF’s general assembly June 20-23 in Fort Worth, Texas.
Carrell |
Cook
|
Fox
|
Hovis
|
Jones
|
Key parts of the task force’s report — based on more than 100 listening sessions around the country — would replace the CBF’s 64-member Coordinating Council with three smaller councils; offer more funding flexibility to both churches and the CBF’s state and regional affiliates; and, for the first time, provide a process for congregations to intentionally identify with the CBF.
“This proposal answers the question, ‘How can churches embrace their identity as CBF?’ ” said Larry Hovis, executive coordinator of the CBF of North Carolina and a member of the task force. “What I discovered in the listening sessions was that people love CBF. People describe CBF as a family to which they belong, which helps make them who they are. The issues of identity are very pronounced.”
Rob Fox, field coordinator for the CBF of Virginia, said the recommendations “will allow churches and partners to both clarify their identity with CBF and fund mission and ministry opportunities that offer them value locally and globally.”
“Collaboration within community is the theme of their [the task force’s] work and that theme will shape the next chapter of CBF,” Fox added.
Kasey Jones, moderator of the Mid-Atlantic CBF, which includes churches in Maryland, the District of Columbia, Delaware and West Virginia, called the report’s section on identity “one of the most significant parts.”
“This section give the CBF community common language to claim who we are and it is based on what the task force heard during our listening sessions,” said Kasey, also a task force member.
Hovis added a clarified identity won’t place limits on participating churches. “We’ve not tried in any way to prescribe some particular expression of identity but to capture what people say about our identity,” he said. “This is descriptive, not prescriptive. We want to do this not as a way of binding individuals or churches, but as a way to embrace and include them.”
That goal will be undergirded by the proposed shift in the CBF’s governing structure, the Mid-Atlantic leaders agreed.
Under the plan, the 64-member Coordinating Council would be replaced with a smaller Governing Council of 16 members which would focus narrowly on governance and work closely with the CBF national staff.
Two new councils would focus attention on missions and ministries. The largest, named Ministries Council, would include one representative from each CBF state or region. Non-voting ex-officio members would include coordinators of each state and region, a representative of each partner included in the CBF funding plan and a representative of the CBF consortium of theological schools.
“A smaller governing body along with two new councils allows more involvement from the grassroots level,” said Jones, who is pastor of National Baptist Memorial Baptist Church in Washington. “The new structure would increase the organization’s effectiveness because people will give leadership in their areas of passion and giftedness.”
Fox, who also is pastor of Mount Hermon Baptist Church in Milford, Va., agreed the governing changes “speak to a greater grassroots collaboration that is already taking place within the CBF community.”
Bill Carrell, pastor of University Baptist Church in Baltimore and a member of the Mid-Atlantic CBF’s Coordinating Council, said the proposed changes will provide greater focus on ministry.
“We need a leadership team that can focus on the identity, image, marketing and funding of the CBF as a whole and not one that gets too overwhelmed by all the diverse ministries,” he said. “So it makes sense to me to have a three-fold structure.”
That change in “clarity and focus should lead to identity and ultimately to support and funding,” Carrell said.
The mission and ministries councils are “critical to our restructuring because these are the ones whose areas of focus really get at the heart of what Fellowship Baptists care about most,” said Stephen Cook, a member of the task force and pastor of Second Baptist Church in Memphis, Tenn.
Cook, a former pastor of First Baptist Church in Danville, Va., and former moderator-elect of the CBF of Virginia, said the two councils will be where the CBF’s “best and brightest mission and ministry-minded folks come together to cast vision, set strategic priorities and point us all to the places in CBF’s life where we can see our life together flourish.”
At its February meeting, the Coordinating Council raised several questions about proposed changes in the way the CBF collects money from churches. Currently national CBF and state regional organizations make funding decisions independently. Under the new plan, division of funds would be made at the state level or by the local church.
The plan would allow state and regional CBF organizations to determine percentages of funds to be divided among national and state missions and ministries and various partners. Individual churches could support the plan adopted by their state CBF or adjust their giving to better reflect individual spending priorities. Those funding agreements would be shared in the Ministries Council and then passed on to the Governing Council to be used in developing a CBF budget.
“We tried to craft a recommendation that allows for higher levels of engagement among congregations, states/regions, and partners that is customizable and specific to the individual churches,” said Cook. “We recognize that there is some risk associated with this and that it has the potential for messiness. But what else are Baptists by our very nature but risk-takers who recognize that faithfulness to the mission of God in the world is sometimes messy business?”
The funding recommendation is consistent with the CBF’s continuing shift from an all-encompassing provider of resources to a “network of networks,” said Hovis.
“We realized that CBF national doesn’t have the capacity to meet the needs of every church and every partner entity,” he said. “But we have tremendous assets that reside not only in Atlanta but in state and regional organizations and especially in both ministry partners and congregations. What we envision is trying to discover the assets and strengths and gifts that exist in the CBF community, and develop the networks to assist one another.”
Robert Dilday ([email protected]) is managing editor of the Religious Herald. Contributing to this story was Bob Allen ([email protected]) managing editor of Associated Baptist Press.
Related:
Task force proposes new CBF funding plan