Thirty years ago, a group of North Carolina Baptists gathered to figure out a new way of working together as they were feeling less and less comfortable in their longstanding home, the Baptist State Convention of North Carolina. Their historic state convention, like many others, was falling in line with the new fundamentalist approach of the Southern Baptist Convention.
These North Carolina Baptists felt uncomfortable in both spaces. Many of them had helped launch the national Cooperative Baptist Fellowship three years earlier — a more progressive breakaway group from the SBC. But they didn’t have a way to work together in their state.
The same dilemma faced congregations nationwide that chose to affiliate with the nascent CBF — some to greater and lesser degrees, depending on how hardline their state conventions had become. North Carolina is a state that fell hard into the grasp of fundamentalism, aided by the presence of Paige Patterson at the helm of Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary in Wake Forest, N.C., a post awarded to him after he led the national denomination through its “conservative resurgence.”
With the new national body gaining steam, an array of state and regional CBF networks began to emerge — often with congregations dually aligned with traditional SBC-affiliated state conventions as well as the new bodies.
Volunteers and staff prepare to greet participants at First Baptist Church of Greenbsboro. (CBFNC photo)
From the beginning, no state saw more success in this effort than North Carolina. And today, the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship of North Carolina stands as by far the largest and most well-funded of any state or regional organization in CBF life. It employs 12 staff members and supports a dozen campus ministers across the state, as well as state and international missions projects, camps and retreats.
On March 14 and 15, about 500 people showed up at First Baptist Church of Greensboro, N.C., to celebrate the group’s 30th anniversary. In addition to the normal worship times, educational workshops and exhibit area, this year’s event included an anniversary dinner with entertainment and celebration.
Retired pastor Jack Glasgow reminded the crowd at the opening worship many nonprofits don’t last five years, much less 30. He and others recalled that in those early days, no one could imagine the growth and good that would occur — even as critics predicted those who were leaving the old Baptist bodies wouldn’t last long.
One of the secrets to CBF North Carolina’s success is found in its name, said Executive Coordinator Larry Hovis. That is the word “fellowship.”
“Defying the critics from those early days who predicted we would at best be a one-generation movement, I believe our greatest accomplishment is that we have remained together providing a witness to a particular way of discipleship, characterized by that famous utterance of Randall Lolley, former pastor of this church and several others in our state, when he said, ‘There’s a Christian way to be human, a Baptist way to be Christian, a CBF way to be Baptist and a North Carolina way to be CBF.”
The SBC has been plagued for a century — and especially today — with a struggle between doctrinal conformity versus missional cooperation, Hovis said.
CBF North Carolina has chosen from the beginning to emphasize missional cooperation without forced doctrinal conformity, he explained. “We’ve come together as a fellowship to be more and to do more together than we ever would be able to do alone.”
Larry Hovis
He added later: “We’ve certainly had our challenges along the way, but for much of our history, we’ve been able to overcome those challenges through our strong sense of commitment to one another, our creativity, our innovation, our adaptability, our hard work.”
The challenge of choosing to work together is not yet over, Hovis said. “Our greatest challenge is how we’ll manage divisive political and theological issues. Partisan political divisions are being injected into far too many congregations. Divisive social issues are disrupting our life together. Some in our fellowship are deciding to leave or to disengage because they only want to be with others who only see things exactly as they do.”
Preaching from the second chapter of Acts, he compared the present moment to the early Christians who had to make peace between Jewish believers and Gentile believers in the same church.
“The question before us is this: Will we add requirements to being part of our fellowship other than our core commitment to being in relationship with one another and on mission together? Will we so assert our liberty on issues we believe passionately about, that we might offend the conscience of our brothers and sisters who have a different perspective? The way forward, I believe, is to look back to our founding values, commitments and principles to govern and guide our life together. … They include the lordship of Jesus Christ alone, the centrality and authority of Scripture, but not any particular statement about or interpretation of those Scriptures.”
Hovis concluded: “God’s mission is bigger than any Christian, any church, even our own fellowship, and it requires our very best efforts to cooperate with one another. … We are not independent Baptists. We are cooperative Baptists. These principles, I believe, are the basis on which we were founded 30 years ago, and the only basis upon which we will be able to thrive together for another 30 years and more.”