By Bob Allen
Parties involved in the nomination of the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship’s next executive coordinator termed the choice of Texas Baptist leader Suzii Paynter an embodiment of core values of inclusiveness that have shaped the moderate Baptist movement since its founding two decades ago.
The Atlanta-based Fellowship formed in 1991 out of a doctrinal dispute within the Southern Baptist Convention. The group’s founding statement included women’s equality in matters of faith as one of a half-dozen different “understandings” than those held by the prevailing powers in the SBC.
The CBF constitution institutes leadership that is intentionally balanced to reflect the diversity of the Fellowship’s 1,800 churches and individual members, taking into account factors including clergy/laity, gender, race/ethnicity, age and geography.
Ten of the 22 persons to serve as moderator, the Fellowship’s top elected post, have been women. About 40 percent of students in CBF-affiliated seminaries, schools and Baptist studies programs are women, but female graduates of those schools increasingly report that many CBF congregations affirm women in principle but don’t think they are “ready” to call a woman as pastor.
Paynter, 62, called her nomination, subject to approval by the CBF Coordinating Council in February, “a milestone for Baptist women in ministry.”
“I believe one of the interesting things about the search committee this time, I don’t think they started out looking for a woman,” she said at a press conference in Atlanta Jan. 17. “They probably were as surprised as I was to end up on the list, and yet the idea of bringing a culmination of gifts together out of the community, I think, is indicative of women’s leadership in our Fellowship.”
George Mason, chair of a 10-member search committee recommending Paynter for the post, said the most important thing to know about the process is that the only agenda was to find the best person for the job.
“There was no pressure from the CBF community that we had to have a person that fit into a particular category,” said Mason, pastor of Wilshire Baptist Church in Dallas. “The most important thing to know is that everyone wanted the right person for the job, whoever that might be.”
“Having said that, it is, I think, a delight to be able to say that our Baptist community has been so generative about inclusion and advocacy for all kinds of people from within our constituency over time that this could happen organically,” Mason said. “This was not about a committee deciding who we wanted to be and therefore imposing that by way of an affirmative action policy or something of that nature.”
Mason said it’s also significant that Paynter, head of the Texas Baptist Christian Life Commission who has worked for many years in CBF leadership – often behind the scenes as a pastor’s wife and volunteer — is not an ordained minister.
“Ask yourself: What religious body do you know that is headed by a layperson?” he said. “This is also a hallmark of CBF’s life over time: that we don’t make such dramatic distinction between clergy and laity; that religious professionalism should extend to the leadership of organizations like this. And though it has been a pattern historically, and not one that we think was bad for the organization, this just happens to be a double blessing, I think, of adding to her qualifications for the job. So we are really thrilled about how all that comes together.”
Paynter said she believes her experience in denominational work in Texas helped prepare her for developing and implementing systems and structures to implement a massive overhaul of how the 22-year-old movement functions, a task approved by the CBF General Assembly last year. She also said much of the CBF global missions commitment to serve among the most neglected intersects with her public policy work in Texas, including advocacy for the poor.
Paynter said she also believes there is a greater role for the Fellowship to play in public witness on social issues than has been emphasized in the past. “What brings national religious bodies together?” she asked. “It’s issues.”
“I have been — as a Texas Baptist — at many tables wishing that CBF were here,” she said.” I was recently at an immigration forum in Washington, D.C. This Sunday I’ll be leaving here and going to an inaugural convocation of religious leaders. I’m being invited because of my Texas work. I hope next year I’ll be invited because of my CBF work.”
Paynter said over the last couple of years she has received calls at least monthly asking if some part of her work at the Texas CLC could be taken nationally.
“I believe this call to advocacy is coming not from me as an individual as an imposed gift on the Fellowship, but it is voices within the Fellowship that are asking for that,” she said. “And it’s just a wonderful gift of God that I have had some experience in that to bring.”
“I hope it’s kind of like: You have a lot of soloists. I just hope to make them a choir, people who feel called to that and have a passion for advocacy around some issue,” she said. “It is the way in which national Christian organizations and interfaith organizations show that they’re doing things together. So I look forward to it.”