ATLANTA (ABP) — A repeat of the 2008 Celebration of a New Baptist Covenant meeting in Atlanta could be in the offing as early as next year, according participants in a recent meeting of North American Baptist leaders called together by former President Jimmy Carter.
Several of those present at the Oct. 12 meeting at the Carter Center in Atlanta — including Cooperative Baptist Fellowship Executive Coordinator Daniel Vestal, Baptist General Convention of Missouri Executive Director Jim Hill and Baptist Center for Ethics Executive Director Robert Parham — have written, spoken publicly or posted Twitter messages about the meeting in the week since it took place.
Jimmy Carter
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Former Southern Baptist Convention president Jimmy Allen, who has served as the New Baptist Covenant movement’s unofficial coordinator, did not respond to requests for comment Oct. 18-20, and a spokesperson for Carter said Oct. 18 that he was traveling all week and unavailable for comment. But North American Baptist Fellowship General Secretary George Bullard said Oct. 20 that participants had discussed the possibility of gathering tens of thousands of Baptists from across racial, denominational, theological and ideological lines to talk about common themes of loving God and neighbor.
“A tentative proposal was offered by President Carter for discussion that would involve an anchor event in a major city, and then simultaneous regional events to whom the main event would be simulcast,” Bullard said. “This method could allow tens of thousands of people to be involved, grassroots interaction among Baptists from various conventions and conferences and synergistic impact of missional efforts. Whether or not this will be the final model is yet to be determined.”
Participants in the meeting represented CBF, the American Baptist Churches USA, the National Baptist Convention of America, the Seventh Day Baptist General Conference and the Progressive National Baptist Convention.
Bullard said participants at the Oct. 12 meeting represented several major Baptist groups present at the 2008 event, which drew approximately 15,000 participants. While they offered praise for the previous event, Bullard said, “At the same time candid critique was offered about this earlier gathering, focused on ways to improve its effectiveness. A common theme was that the earlier gathering had indeed been a meeting and fell short of becoming a movement.”
Bullard said smaller regional “efforts to extend the spirit of the New Baptist Covenant gathering” that have been held since — in Alabama, Missouri, North Carolina and Oklahoma — “have been successful at bringing together Baptists from various traditions to worship, fellowship, and engage in some missional activities.”
But, Bullard said, for any future national gathering to be successful, from his perspective, “We believe strongly that it needs to move from being meetings to being a movement. And that movement needs to be missional in nature, in that the churches and conventions involved need to join in mission together.
“We also believe that the future is with the conventions and conferences and their affiliated congregations,” he added. “It is not really an institutional or parachurch movement; it is a movement intended to undergird denominations.”
While no date for a future national gathering has been held, Bullard said, Carter expressed a strong opinion that it should be held in 2011, while other participants seemed more comfortable with piggybacking it on a January 2012 meeting of several African-American Baptist denominations.
Carter and other organizers of the original 2008 national gathering discussed the possibility of reviving it every three years in the spirit of the first regular national Baptist gathering of the United States, known as the Triennial Convention. It split in 1845 into the Southern Baptist Convention and the Northern Baptist Convention, the forerunner of today’s American Baptist Churches USA.
Rob Marus is managing editor and Washington bureau chief for Associated Baptist Press.