RICHMOND, Va. — A document to be considered at next month’s annual meeting of the Baptist General Association of Virginia could provide a guide for Virginia Baptists’ future, if adopted by messengers.
A proposal from an affinity study committee, appointed last year by the Virginia Baptist Mission Board, encourages Virginia Baptists to expand the state association’s partnerships on the basis of “missions and freedom.”
“We believe the BGAV’s future ministries will grow from expanded affinity relationships focused on missions and freedom …,” the proposal says. “These two deeply-held religious impulses — missions and freedom — are our DNA, our passion and our compassion.”
The committee, chaired by retired Virginia Baptist Mission Board staffer Bob Dale, was appointed to study the BGAV’s response to the growing number of congregations from outside Virginia joining the state association. Many are drawn by Virginia Baptists’ more moderate and flexible approach to missions and ministry in a process often described as affiliation by affinity, rather than by geography.
The affinity committee proposal recommends an expansion of that process beginning next year by:
• Expanding “our missions and freedom ministries deliberately and immediately, obediently and humbly. We will look for affinity partners at every crossroads of divine calling.”
• By more intentionally seeking other “missions and freedom” partners. “The BGAV will proactively seek out and invite our faith kin with shared missions and freedom callings to join us in affinity relationships.”
• Cultivating “perceptive voices” to expand missions and freedom, hoping to “identify our most creative affinities and embrace God’s suprises.”
The committee also recommends after 2013 exploring ways to design a more missions-oriented and flexible annual budget, develop affinity-based structure for the Virginia Baptist Mission Board, and encourage more agile and entrepreneurial leaders for the BGAV.
The Mission Board approved the proposal and will recommend it to messengers at the BGAV.
Dale, who presented the proposal to Virginia Baptist Mission Board members Oct. 12, said the proposal is not recommending a new denomination.
“In a post-denominational world, that would be a tough act to pull off,” he said.
The proposal also doesn’t recommend leaving an existing denominational relationship and joining another.
“We expect the future will involve more relationships, not fewer,” said Dale.
Dale added that, if the BGAV adopts the proposal, it will be necessary over the next few years to create committees and task forces to flesh it out.
Robert Dilday is managing editor of the Religious Herald.
The full text of the affinity committee’s proposal follows:
Affinity Relationships for Virginia Baptists: Next Steps for a Missions-and-Freedom Family
From our founding in 1823, the Baptist General Association of Virginia has included member congregations from the Commonwealth’s neighboring states. Then, a decade or so ago, new churches began joining us from more distant states. Joining “by affinity,” these fellow believers found kinship in the Spirit with us and a faith home among us. To our committee, “affinity relationships” simply mean:
• We share a common calling from God.
• We have chosen each other because of common beliefs and practices.
Affinities are kinships of the heart. They spotlight what matters most to partners.
In March of 2009, the BGAV President named an Affinity Study Committee with a challenging mandate — “to explore the issues related to affinity relationships.” How will the BGAV cultivate affinities in the future?
One of the Affinity Study Committee’s early discoveries was that many of our beyond-Virginia members of the General Association aligned with us because of the quality and flexibility of our mission ministries. This and other discoveries clarified our Virginia Baptist identity for us and led us to a basic recommendation.
Our Basic Proposal for the Future
We believe the BGAV’s future ministries will grow from expanded affinity relationships focused on missions-and-freedom. This compass will guide us.
Affinities — those ties of kinship and calling — sustain and strengthen faith families. Partners who value missions-and-freedom will share our future. Our destiny lies in living distinctively for God — as a family of families formed by common calling.
Previewing Our Proposal
To advance toward our future, we will later recommend six focusing actions. But first, here’s a preview of our findings with more explanation to follow.
Practically, Virginia Baptists have ministered in relationships with affinity partners for decades. We propose focusing on and multiplying those relationships more deliberately and aggressively.
Historically, Virginia Baptists love missions-and-freedom. In the future, we will be truest to our root identity when we boldly serve Christ as missionaries and champions of freedom. We will team up with co-laborers with the same callings in Virginia and beyond.
Strategically, new ministry networks are spanning our world. Virginia Baptists are part of that emerging web of believers. We propose to multiply our partners by welcoming others with callings in missions-and-freedom to join us; we urge collaboration with others who invite us to unite in common calling.
What We Aren’t Recommending
We are not beginning another denomination. To respond to God in the early twenty-first century, we will need more agility and more grassroots energy than is characteristic of most contemporary denominations.
We are not leaving or joining other denominational groups. We have had and will continue to treasure diverse ties with ministry partners and denominations. But, our missions-and-freedom calling is more targeted and more customized than most denominations are able to provide.
We are not suggesting change for the sake of change. Our guide is the kingdom of God, not the latest fad. We’re advocating nothing less than claiming our most basic Christian identity. We urge Virginia Baptists to live out our calling in partnership with others.
Our Heritage, Our Heart: Missions-and-Freedom
The Virginia Baptist family has excelled in missions-and-freedom ministries for almost two hundred years. The wedding of missions-and-freedom forms the heart of the Virginia Baptist story — yesterday, today, and, with God’s blessing, tomorrow.
Do you know what you’d see if you held a mirror in front of the soul of a true Virginia Baptist? You’d see two reflections — a missionary and a champion of freedom. That’s who we are. That’s what we believe and do. These two deeply-held religious impulses — missions-and-freedom — are our DNA, our passion and our compassion.
The BGAV: Missionaries at Heart
The missionary part of our exciting story reads like a Who’s Who of Baptist missions. Rejoice in this short list of Virginia heroines and heroes of faith:
Luther Rice — Founder of the Baptist Mission Society of Virginia (1813), the first general missions organization for missions, a guest at the organizing meeting of the BGAV at Second Baptist Church, Richmond (1823).
Lott Carey — First Baptist missionary to Africa (1821), helped establish the nation of Liberia, a slave who bought his own freedom, a member of First Baptist Church, Richmond.
The Bedford Plowboys — Jeremiah Bell Jeter and Daniel Witt from Bedford County, appointed the first state missionaries at the organizing meeting of the Baptist General Association of Virginia (1823), paid $30 per month.
Lewis and Henrietta Hall Shuck — Pioneering missionary couple to China (1836), Baptist pacestters in publishing and in establishing a school for children, Lewis later planted a Chinese-speaking church in California.
Lottie Moon — Legendary missionary teacher to northern China, born in Albemarle County, went to the mission field in 1873 and served sacrificially until her death at age 72.
Blanche Sydnor White — World-expander for girls, boys, and women as leader of the Woman’s Missionary Union of Virginia (1925-1950).
Ted Adams — World citizen and pastor of First Baptist Church, Richmond, the first Virginia Baptist to serve as president of the Baptist World Alliance (1955-1960), Baptist Hour preacher.
Alma Hunt — National executive director of Woman’s Missionary Union (1948-1974), helped establish the women’s department of the Baptist World Alliance, served as a volunteer in missions in retirement until she died at 98 in 2008, namesake of Virginia Baptist’s state missions offering.
Is it any surprise that Baptists established the Foreign Mission Board in Richmond or that the Baptist World Alliance has its global offices in Virginia or that mission partnerships got an early start here? It’s natural. Our soil grows missionaries.
The BGAV: Champions of Freedom
Virginia Baptists are freedom-lovers by nature as well. Baptists who sailed toward new and freer lives in the Virginia colony got on the boats preaching and kept preaching on the docks of the New World. The established state church did not welcome our zeal, however. Being independent souls and passionate about our faith, we persisted. Clashes between Baptists and elected officials became commonplace.
We stood faithfully. We upheld believer’s baptism. We evangelized fervently. And, we paid the price of forty imprisonments and persecutions. Our laity faced social exclusion and other hardships. Heroes named Weatherford, Webber, Ireland, and Saunders took great risks. To this day, we have the lock from the Culpeper jail to remind us that our preachers spent time in jail for the “crime” of holding unauthorized religious meetings. In this cauldron, we consistently called for freedom, for fairness.
In the end, we won the first battle of the freedom war. When our nation was ratifying the new federal constitution, Baptists were concerned about the lack of a specific guarantee of religious liberty. The Virginia Baptist heartland of Goochland, Spotsylvania, Orange, and Culpeper counties produced two strong leaders — Baptist parson John Leland and Anglican assemblyman James Madison — and, from them, one pivotal agreement on freedom. The fertile minds of Leland and Madison framed the Bill of Rights — a historic assurance that Americans would have freedom of, freedom for, and freedom from religion.
We have lived out freedom in faith in a variety of actions: support of the separation of church and state from the beginning of our nation, a standing committee of the BGAV on Religious Liberty since the 1950s, a memorial appeal to the Southern Baptist Convention (1988), flexible budget options (1993), membership in the Baptist World Alliance (2004), and the pioneering membership of First Baptist Church, Rome, Georgia (2005) in the BGAV. Deep down, Virginia Baptists are free people who support freedom of service for all.
The BGAV’s Next Steps in Ministry
Missions-and-freedom are both our legacy and our future. As in our past, we will co-labor with other believers who treasure missions-and-freedom. With our future partners, we will create affinities of calling and choice for advancing the Redeemer’s kingdom. We will minister with others by:
• Identifying and sharing common callings,
• Multiplying complementary strengths, and
• Working together with acceptance, trust, forgiveness, and hope.
Virginia Baptists have practiced ministry by affinity across our history, especially since our Tanzania Partnership and since congregations far beyond Virginia began joining the BGAV. High-quality missions’ experiences with customized flexibility are magnetic. That is the powerful witness of the Georgia churches and others who have chosen to join the General Association.
The BGAV has already established targeted affinities.
We have used an affinity pattern for missions-and-freedom ministries more than other Baptists in America.
We have expanded our affinity practice in recent years as partners from beyond the Commonwealth have joined us in practicing missions-and-freedom.
Such affinities are as old as the Bible’s redemption story.
Living into Our Faith Future
The book of Acts tells the New Testament’s premier missions-and-freedom story of affinities. Spanning only thirty years or so, this missions-and-freedom era revolutionized the world. Paul, Barnabas, Silas, and Mark, missionary partners, shared a calling and leadership. But, in practice, the spreading flame of Christianity was a Spirit-led lay movement. God propelled the Early Church by affinity relationships into a faith movement. It’s no surprise, then, that Romans’ final chapter is a thank-you note from Paul to three dozen individuals and groups who led global outreach (Romans 16:1-23). Those same affinities now draw us magnetically toward our own missions-and-freedom future.
A Charge to All BGAV Members
Now, squarely facing future directions, the Virginia Baptist family’s destiny rests on our convictions and calling. We pledge to God that we will:
• Remain strongly committed to our deepest values of missions-and-freedom and lead from those enduring strengths,
• Minister with a single-minded, specific focus on missions-and-freedom,
• Live in the world boldly as missions-and-freedom leaders, and
• Invite others with missions-and-freedom callings to join us in affinities.
Missions-and-freedom affinities are every Virginia Baptist’s opportunity and responsibility. We challenge all of us to seek out missions-and-freedom opportunities. We charge each of us with enlisting partners for missions-and-freedom affinities. All of us have unique ministries to do in God’s future.
Recommendations: Affinities and Actions
The Affinity Study Committee formally recommends that the BGAV authorize its officers, staff, and the elected Mission Board to take six actions, three actions to implement now and three in the near-term future.
1. In 2011 and beyond, the BGAV will focus on our missions-and-freedom ministries wherever God may lead.
We will spotlight and expand our missions-and-freedom ministries deliberately and immediately, obediently and humbly. We will look for affinity partners at every crossroads of divine calling. We will channel our efforts specifically on missions and evangelism, church planting and congregational growth, disaster recovery and compassion ministries, and leadership development for God’s new world.
2. In 2011 and beyond, the BGAV will proactively seek out and invite our faith kin with shared missions-and-freedom callings to join us in affinity relationships.
We will walk and work with others who are on the same mission from God. We will ask God to ready us to exercise faith on “the verge of next.” We admit that, because we are sinners, all partnerships have potential liabilities. But, when callings converge, we can only follow God’s leadership with our ministry partners, our institutions, our shared ministries, other faith groups, human service groups, and non-governmental organizations, as we have long done in disaster response.
3. In 2011 and beyond, the BGAV will cultivate our spiritual pioneers’ insights on emerging missions-and-freedom opportunities.
We will cultivate perceptive voices to help us with R&D (“research and discernment”), expand our missions-and-freedom research, identify our most creative affinities, and embrace God’s surprises. With the Holy Spirit’s leading, we will gladly welcome and obey God’s direction as He reveals and empowers our future for His honor and glory.
Finally, looking to 2013 and beyond, the BGAV, with our leaders as pacesetters, will take three longer-term actions. We are already moving in these directions at local, state, and global levels, and we will continue to intensify these missions-and-freedom actions and affinities.
4. We will continue to develop even more agile and entrepreneurial leaders for our emerging challenges.
5. We will continue to design an even more missions-oriented and flexible budget with quick access to funds for unanticipated missions-and-freedom opportunities.
6. We will continue to explore an even more affinity-based and future-focused structure for the elected Mission Board.
Blessing Our Next Steps in Faithfulness
May God bless all ministry affinities that advance missions-and-freedom today and tomorrow. May God keep the BGAV on the frontiers of His unfolding world.
Ann Brown
Bert Browning
Dan Carlton
Phil Faig
Joe Lewis
Jamie Osborne
Bob Dale, Chair
John Upton, Staff