ATLANTA (ABP) — In a quiet meeting Feb. 16-17, the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship's Coordinating Council approved a slight budget increase for 2006-2007, approved a new oversight structure for the committee that plans the Fellowship's annual meeting and continued the group's emphases on poverty and diversity.
CBF Coordinator Daniel Vestal told council members that he was reminded during the recent funeral of Phil Strickland, longtime head of the Texas Baptist Christian Life Commission, about how the moderate group started. “I was reminded again that this fellowship movement was a work of grace, of providence,” Vestal said.
Quoting from the hymn “Amazing Grace,” he continued: “Through many dangers toils and snares we have already come — 'twas grace has brought us safe this far, and grace will lead us home.'”
Vestal said he believed the Fellowship was increasingly a unique home for Baptists — including young people who are looking for a new way of being part of the best parts of the Baptist tradition. “What was impressive to me is that, for these younger Baptists, CBF was an important part of their Baptist identity,” he said. “They have, so to speak, cast their lot with us…. One of the reasons they have been able to stay Baptist is because of CBF.”
Vestal noted some of the ways in which the organization, over the last year, has raised its profile in the wider Baptist world — such as by diving head-first into coordinating disaster response on a large scale and by partnering with other Baptist groups on projects.
“What has happened in the last 12 months with respect to disaster response…is that there have been these Baptist folk from around the country who have said, 'we want to respond to this crisis through, and with, Cooperative Baptist Fellowship,'” he noted.
Vestal also pointed to statistics showing the organization's growth — more than 500 chaplains and pastoral counselors who have now sought endorsement through CBF, and 75 CBF church starts in the past five years.
“We are what I would call a leaven-like catalyst within the Baptist family,” he said.
The council, which conducts the Fellowship's business between annual general assembly meetings, approved a $17.05 million budget without opposition. The total reflects a 3.52 percent increase over the 2005-2006 budget of $16.47 million. It still must be given final approval by CBF supporters at the general assembly meeting, which will take place in Atlanta in June.
The council also approved an alteration to CBF's fiscal year. Previously, the year ran from July 1 to June 30. The new year will run from Oct. 1 to Sept. 30, beginning in 2007, with an interim period continuing spending at 2006-2007 budget levels from July 1 to Sept. 30, 2007.
Henry Tyson, a Coordinating Council member from Fitzgerald, Ga., who presented the proposal, said it has two main purposes — to give CBF staff more time between final approval of the budget at the June assembly and the beginning of the fiscal year, and placing the group's highest-revenue months (December-February) earlier in the fiscal year. That gives staff “more time to react” if unexpected budget developments necessitate fiscal belt-tightening, Tyson said.
The council also adopted a motion to give the CBF's Advisory Council more oversight over the planning of the annual CBF general assembly. The assembly has been planned by a committee appointed by the moderator, but the new proposal gives the Advisory Council — which functions something like an executive committee of the Coordinating Council — authority to make earlier decisions.
“To get major-league speakers, you need to start two or three years out,” said Bob Setzer, pastor of First Baptist Church in Macon, Ga., and CBF's immediate past moderator, who brought the motion. It passed without opposition.
The council also heard from two representatives of Bread for the World, the Christian anti-hunger group that has partnered with CBF for several years. Kathleen O'Toole, Bread for the World's national church-outreach coordinator, asked CBF supporters to encourage their churches to become more involved in fighting hunger through the group.
“I figure the reason that we're here to day is to recognize a partnership that already exists, that we are grateful for and that we are excited about,” she said. “You have the stories that can help us…. We tell the stories of what churches' intervention can do.”
In other business, the council:
— Heard a nominating committee report, which did not include a nominee for CBF's moderator-elect. Setzer, on behalf of the committee, noted that the committee had strong candidates for that position and the position of recorder, but the committee was “not prepared to announce those at this time.” However, he did announce that CBF's first nominee to represent the group on the Baptist World Alliance's General Council would be Chris Caldwell, pastor of Broadway Baptist Church in Louisville, Ky.
— Heard a report from the search committee for a new global missions coordinator. Harriet Harral, a council member from Fort Worth, Texas, who chairs the council's personnel committee and serves on the search committee, said she was hopeful for a nominee to be announced by the time of the general assembly.
— Heard a report from Bo Prosser, CBF's coordinator for congregational life, about the 2006 general assembly. It will begin with a summit on HIV/AIDS, featuring keynote speaker David Beckmann, president of Bread for the World. Other featured speakers for the assembly include Trevor Hudson, a South African Christian leader, who will deliver the June 22 evening sermon; and a morning address by current CBF Moderator Joy Yee, pastor of Nineteenth Avenue Baptist Church in San Francisco.
— Honored recently retired CBF Networking Coordinator Bill Bruster with a banquet. “I'm going to miss Bill, personally, because in many ways, Bill has been my pastor,” Vestal said. “In some ways, he is a pastor's pastor. Baptists don't have bishops, but he's about the closest thing to a bishop we've got.”
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