TAMPA, Fla.– The Cooperative Baptist Fellowship looked back in laughter and forward in hope at a celebration banquet marking its 20th anniversary June 22.
So-called moderates who lost a bitter 12-year battle for control of the Southern Baptist Convention founded the Fellowship in 1990-91. They assembled in Tampa, Fla., this summer to mark two decades of progress.
Celebration emcees Clarissa Strickland, a CBF staff member, and Brett Younger, a professor at Mercer University’s McAfee School of Theology, acknowledged the “Baptist battles” produced many tearful moments. Those tears spilled over into the early years of the Fellowship’s existence, when their beloved SBC institutions fell into the hands of their adversaries, they noted.
But despite the memory of tears, they kept the anniversary crowd laughing. They chuckled at the names SBC leaders called them, such as “skunks” and “liberals.” They hooted at the idiosyncracies of their movement and the organizations it has produced. They cackled at comparisons between their own leaders and some of the SBC firebrands who ousted them.
Part of their humor pointed to the transition between past and present. Throughout their remarks, video slides popped up on large screens, “explaining” their jokes to the young adults in the crowd who are not old enough to remember the days of conflict and controversy.
One of those on the cusp of the generational divide is Christy McMillin-Goodwin, the Fellowship’s moderator — its top elected officer — for 2010-11. She was a college student when the organization formed.
She used the story of Dorothy from The Wizard of Oz as a metaphor for her own journey to the Fellowship. She grew up in “Kansas,” a church that affirmed not only boys and men, but also girls and women as equal in God’s sight and capable to pray, read Scripture and preach in the congregation’s worship, she said. Later, she encountered churches and college classmates who treated her as a foreigner because of her inclusive beliefs.
Eventually, she felt at home in a church that embraced her calling and gifts.
And then McMillin-Goodwin also felt right at home when she joined others at the organizational meeting of the Fellowship, 20 years ago.
“God created this new Kansas called CBF,” she said. “The next 20 years have the opportunity to be even more transformational if we are faithful.”
Singer Ken Medema pointed to that promise in a song he composed for the celebration.
God’s “kingdom is our hearts’ desire. We are bound for greater things,” he sang. “We are bound to walk that higher road. … We will run that race before us. … And we will taste the grace of God.”