WASHINGTON, D.C. (ABP)—Leaders of the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship endorsed the New Baptist Covenant, saying the mission of the diverse Covenant coalition is consistent with the Fellowship's core values.
The New Baptist Covenant, launched by former president and Baptist layman Jimmy Carter last April, is a broad-based initiative to improve the image of Baptists in North America and unite the majority of those Baptists across racial lines into a loose-knit network committed to the gospel message of Jesus and to addressing social ills.
The six-paragraph CBF statement was adopted without opposition by the Coordinating Council, the Fellowship's top decision-making body, one day prior to the Fellowship's annual general assembly.
Covenant program chairman Jimmy Allen of Big Canoe, Ga., urged people gathered for the general assembly's opening session to participate in the inaugural Covenant event Jan. 30-Feb. 1, which organizers hope will draw 20,000 people to Atlanta and launch an unprecedented ministry collaboration among the famously independent-minded Baptists.
Allen called the January event “the most significant meeting (Baptists) have had in a hundred years.” Baptists have eschewed such broad-based cooperation since before the Civil War, historians have noted.
The Coordinating Council statement said, “It is hard to imagine any development among Baptists more consistent with the spirit, ideals and core values of the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship than the creation of the New Baptist Covenant.”
So far, 40 Baptist denominations and organizations in the United States and Canada have indicated a willingness to participate in the Covenant. The organizations, which include most of the Baptist denominations in North America except the Southern Baptist Convention, encompass about 20 million Baptists.
That's more than the 16 million members claimed by the SBC, the largest Baptist group in the world. SBC leaders, who have moved sharply to the political and theological right in the last 25 years, have already cut off relations with most of the Covenant organizations and criticized the Carter initiative as a political effort.
Although the January meeting boasts some of the United States' most prominent Baptist politicians as speakers—including Carter and former President Bill Clinton—organizers insist it is a non-partisan and apolitical event to inspire gospel-based ministry.
The Coordinating Council statement was written by Jack Glasgow, pastor of Zebulon Baptist Church in Zebulon, N.C. Glasgow was voted in as Fellowship moderator-elect at the general assembly, which puts him next in line for the Fellowship's top elected office. In that capacity, he will lead both the council and the larger Fellowship body.
Current moderator Emmanuel McCall, a seminary professor and pastor in the Atlanta area, is the first African-American to serve in that role. He is being succeeded this year by Harriet Harral, an organizational consultant from Fort Worth, and then Glasgow.
The council recommended a $16,481,000 budget for 2007-08 that is a 3.3 percent reduction from the current budget of $17,050,000. The general assembly approved the budget, which cut funding for most ministry areas, including global missions.
Only two ministry areas receive increases: “faith formation,” primarily for spiritual and “missional-church” training for congregational leaders, and “building community,” primarily for Hispanic church-planting and networking among Christian educators. Most traditional partner organizations receive cuts in the proposed budget.