By Marv Knox
Three issues — two on the agenda and one not — will occupy the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship’s attention during its General Assembly in Fort Worth, Texas, June 21-22.
First will be the retirement of CBF’s longtime executive coordinator, Daniel Vestal. He will step down as the organization’s top staff leader June 30. So, he will deliver his final address to CBF and be feted at a farewell reception when the General Assembly draws to a close.
Many Baptists know Vestal as a living legend. Old timers remember “Danny Vestal” as a scintillating youth evangelist who led hundreds, perhaps thousands, of teenagers to faith in Jesus before he was old enough to vote. Later, he was pastor of several leading churches in Texas and Georgia.
Vestal accepted appointment to the Southern Baptist Convention’s Peace Committee in the mid-1980s, when the “holy war” raged. He held a unique position — a neutral participant and possibly a mediator in the movement to mend the convention’s widening rift. But Vestal’s Peace Committee experience obviously opened his eyes to the hardball politics of the convention’s right wing, and he expressed shock and horror. A few years later, he helped so-called moderates launch the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship as a haven for “free and faithful” Baptists. And a few years after that, he became CBF’s second executive coordinator.
Since then, Vestal has held a hard job. Heat generated by the Southern Baptist schism cooled. Many old guard who fought the “holy war” and helped fund the new CBF have headed home to heaven. And many young CBF leaders possess no memory of, much less concern for, the battles that provided early passion for the new organization.
So, CBF has struggled for identity. Consequently, budgets have languished. Staff has been cut. Allocations to ministry partners have been reduced. CBF faces a time of transition that begs for clear vision.
Still, Vestal will be remembered for his multiple passions — loving Jesus, evangelism and missions, Baptist principles and ideals, faith formation, the church. The CBF will celebrate those remarkable qualities and express their gratitude for his leadership.
But they will leave not knowing the identity of his successor. The search committee, led by George Mason, pastor of Wilshire Baptist Church in Dallas, is working deliberately. This gives CBF space to bid Vestal farewell and provides time for the new coordinator to start on her or his own terms.
Vision will be the subject of the second major agenda item at the General Assembly. A task force has spent the past couple of years listening to CBF Baptists and has drafted a report to guide the organization into the future.
Participants are expected to adopt that report. It will define CBF’s mission and vision, reorganize its governance structure and redefine its relationships with state and regional affiliates. This is enormously important for CBF. But it’s also very “inside baseball” — so much so that only CBF geeks can explain it. To other CBF geeks.
The third important CBF issue in Fort Worth is not on the agenda, but you can bet it’s on the mind of practically everyone traveling to Cowtown: What about homosexuals?
For years, CBF’s basic position on homosexuality has been the same as thousands a of Baptist churches’: “Don’t ask; don’t tell.” Ironically — because SBC leaders have hammered CBF as being “pro-gay” — its official policy is quite conservative. It calls for “faithfulness in marriage between a man and a woman and celibacy in singleness” and it prohibits the organization from hiring gays and lesbians.
This winter, outgoing CBF Moderator Colleen Burroughs suggested the organization should drop its gay-hiring ban. Burroughs’ statement, combined with CBF’s decision to co-host a conference on human sexuality this spring, led the organization’s adversaries to claim, “See, I told you so” and frightened many CBFers who worry they’re right.
But the gay-hiring ban and CBF’s stated position advocating only sex within a male-female marriage or celibacy aren’t close to changing. The issue isn’t even on the agenda this year. And the incoming moderator and moderator-elect aren’t likely to place it on the agenda in the next two years.
Despite what CBF’s detractors say, the organization is not monolithic on homosexuality. Some CBFers are welcoming and affirming; others are as conservative on the issue as any Southern Baptist.
Over the past two decades, one of the most compelling aspects of CBF has been its ability — even its eagerness — to provide common ground for Baptists who don’t agree on all issues. Baptists ostracized by the SBC because they did not hold a narrow and conservative view of Scripture launched CBF. They understood the pain of being rejected by their “home” convention because they did not agree 100 percent with its new leaders.
If CBF holds to its noble heritage, it will find a way to cooperate across diversity while pouring energy into shared commitments — lordship of Christ, primacy of missions and evangelism, necessity of serving the poor and disenfranchised, vital importance of theological education, religious liberty and vibrancy of the local church.
And if CBF forsakes that heritage, “moderate” Baptists will wander through the 21st century without a national spiritual home.