By Bob Allen
Implementation of a new chapter in the life of the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship moves forward this week with leadership meetings at, and next door to, recently occupied new offices in Decatur, Ga.
The meetings set for Sept. 9-10 are formative for both a new Missions Council and Ministries Council, centerpieces of a new strategy for allocation of CBF resources adopted with passage of the 2012 Task Force led by Alabama pastor David Hull. Later in the week, Sept. 12-13, is the first formal gathering of a new 12-member Governing Board.
The groups, along with a free-standing Nominating Committee, replace the former 69-member Coordinating Council that gave day-to-day oversight of all areas of the work of the 1,900-church Fellowship founded in 1991.
The Ministries Council recognizes that the CBF staff is too small to offer all the services of a large denomination and relies on networking and partnerships with churches, individuals and ministry partners. The Missions Council, meanwhile, deals with a rapidly changing world in which career missionaries fully funded by a national sending agency isn’t always the operating norm.
Jim Smith, interim global missions coordinator, said 72 of the current 130 CBF field personnel are fully funded. The remainder are self-funded, either by churches, groups or individuals that designate their support for CBF-employed personnel or those who rely on funding channels that do not come through the CBF budget.
Smith, a veteran missionary both for the CBF and before that the Foreign Mission Board of the Southern Baptist Convention, said he believes in the next five years that the majority of CBF field personnel will be in one of the self-funded categories.
“We have to come to grips with that as a movement,” he told the Missions Council. “This has to be blessed.”
Smith said one factor in the equation is the age of fully funded personnel who are approaching retirement age. “Who would have thought that the upstart CBF would have people thinking about retirement?” he observed.
Michael Cheuk, head of a new CBF Ministries Council, called for a “culture shift” in thinking about how CBF staff, churches, partners and individuals think about identifying and sharing church resources. In the past, CBF identified partners largely by funding them. While funding will be part of the future picture, he said, the time has come to “think about partnership in the broadest sense of the word.”
“Partnership isn’t just limited to financial resources from one body to another but a transition of our hearts and minds and our spirits that reflects a willingness to engage with one another,” said Cheuk, senior minister at University Baptist Church in Charlottesville, Va.
“We are at a new and crucial time in the life of the Fellowship,” Cheuk said, “new leadership, new offices. This also is the time where we have the opportunity to move forward to minister, to partner with one another in a new day, in a new age, in a new way.”
The CBF staff relocated from the old Resource Center on Mercer University’s Atlanta campus to newly renovated office space on the fifth-floor of a bank building in downtown Decatur, Ga. The new location is not only closer to mass transit, but is across the street from First Baptist Church in Decatur, where CBF Coordinating Council meetings were held for the past several years.
Suzii Paynter, who began work as CBF Executive Coordinator in March, discussed reasons for the move in a recent column.
“First, we had a purpose to comply with our 2012 Task Force Report’s priority of identity,” she said. “Like all homes, CBF needs to reflect the identity of our family, the Fellowship, in a convenient, well-equipped place. Our new location is an extension of the value of hospitality lived out by the Fellowship.”
A second reason was to minimize distractions and allow the Fellowship to focus energies on equipping churches and fulfilling its mission.
“Bringing the CBF office together, literally, in one space with a large gathering area for sharing, working in teams and cultivating conversations will help us keep the focus on the important staff role to support the greater Fellowship in its pilgrimage to the future,” she wrote.