By Bob Allen
The Cooperative Baptist Fellowship has received a $250,000 grant for church resources including a follow-up to the popular It’s Time study course that challenged churches and individuals to move from a program-driven model toward a “missional” focus of purpose, passion and meeting needs in their communities.
Dawnings: Welcoming a New Day in Your Church’s Missional Journey will be made possible by a grant from The Christ Is Our Salvation Foundation, the same philanthropic organization that in 2006 funded ministry grants for churches completing It’s Time: A Journey Towards Missional Faithfulness, an eight-week study to introduce the missional model. The new program will add focus on congregational formation and church health through visioning retreats, leadership development and congregational study and prayer.
“Congregations will experience a depth of vision and a richness in mission that will in turn draw them closer to God’s spirit and one another,” said Bo Prosser, missional-congregations coordinator for the Atlanta-based CBF.
Prosser said many Fellowship churches that have embarked on the missional journey are now looking for ways to deepen and enrich the experience.
“Dawnings seeks to answer that by engaging the congregation in a series of spiritual conversations and prayer so that they are led to their own contextual direction in their unique communities,” Prosser said.
The Christ Is Our Salvation Foundation was founded in 1952 by philanthropist, entrepreneur and businessman Paul Piper and his wife, Katy, to benefit Christian causes. Over the years it has supported numerous ministries, mission projects and schools, and partnered with Baptist state conventions to start hundreds of churches.
The foundation also sponsored the CBF’s You’ve Got The Time, a 40-day exercise in listening to audio of the New Testament in 2010.
Along with Dawnings, Prosser said the new grant will also help support CBF’s continuing college ministry, which has placed almost 200 students in local congregations in the past two years through Collegiate College Internships, as well as other resources.