HOUSTON (ABP) — Nearly 20 years after its founding as a small breakaway group birthed by controversy in the Southern Baptist Convention, the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship exists today as a work of God’s grace, the group’s top executive said.
CBF Executive Coordinator Daniel Vestal (Photo by J.V. McKinney)
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“Our very existence is a testimony of grace and providence,” Executive Coordinator Daniel Vestal said in his annual report to the CBF General Assembly.
Registration for the annual meeting reached 1,637, well below the 2,250 registered at last year's meeting in Memphis. Organizers anticipated a smaller crowd, because the meeting was held on a different week than usual and wrapped up at the beginning of a holiday weekend.
Vestal, who has directed the organization since 1996, said today’s CBF is held together less by history or structure than by shared values, community and commitment to God’s mission for the world.
Vestal described the CBF as a “Jesus people,” a “Bible people” and a “mission people” with theological grounding including the notion that every church is free to order its own life and choose its own leaders.
“I know there are people who think the Baptist witness is not relevant or important in the 21st century, but the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship disagrees,” Vestal said. “And one reason we disagree is because of our love of freedom.”
People who make up the Fellowship “have a love affair with freedom,” he said.
CBF provides a community both for Baptists and within the larger community of Christians, he added.
“For many of us, CBF has become like an extended family that has shaped our Christian discipleship and formed our Baptist identity. It has become a fellowship in the biblical sense of the word. It has created relationships that have changed our lives,” he said.
Nearly 2,000 churches partner in some way with CBF, Vestal reported. Together, they support 150 field personnel placed strategically around the world, have endorsed nearly 600 chaplains and pastoral counselors and serve churches through staff, partner ministries and state and regional organizations. Tying those groups together, Vestal said, is a growing awareness of “the global mission of God.”