The Cooperative Baptist Fellowship of Virginia has approved an annual statewide offering to help fund Hispanic ministries and new church starts in Virginia.
The Shared Visions Missions Offering, to be promoted each year in April, was authorized at the CBFV's annual general assembly March 18-19 at Huguenot Road Baptist Church in Richmond.
About 270 people attended the assembly, which also approved a year-long “revisioning” process to help clarify the organization's identity and purpose.
Rick Clore, coordinator of CBFV, said promotion for the Shared Visions Missions Offering will begin this April. Funds collected will help support Hispanic ministry in Virginia, including the CBFV's employed missionary couple, Greg and Sue Smith. The CBFV already partners with the Baptist General Association of Virginia and three other entities in ministry to Hispanics. The offering also will help start new congregations in Virginia in partnership with the BGAV, Clore said.
Clore said the offering would not compete with the Alma Hunt Offering for Virginia Missions, which is promoted by the BGAV each fall.
“The CBFV and the BGAV are siblings,” said Clore. “We have the same heavenly parent. We like each other; we have an affection for each other. To use the language of competition is inconsistent with who we are and what our values are. We don't think this offering competes at all, especially since it will be promoted in the spring and the Alma Hunt offering is promoted in the fall. We intentionally chose that time to avoid anything that looks like direct competition. We want to be full partnership with the BGAV.”
The “revisioning process” will be facilitated by the Center for Congregational Health, based in Winston-Salem, N.C. It will focus on six issues-identity, leadership, stewardship, missions/ministry, communications and relationships-around which task forces will be created.
A steering committee will compile the task forces' recommendations and present a proposal to the CBFV's coordinating council in January 2006. The coordinating council will present its recommendation to the general assembly in March 2006.
Jim Heath, a member of First Baptist Church in Winchester, assumed the position of moderator at the CBFV meeting. Other officers elected were Timothy Madison, pastor of Madison Heights Baptist Church in Madison Heights, as moderator-elect; Bland Campbell, associate pastor at Charles Town Baptist Church in Charles Town, W. Va., as secretary; and Sarah Fain of Starling Avenue Baptist Church in Martinsville and Brian Harfst, pastor of Antioch Baptist Church in Unionville, as nominees to represent Virginia on the national CBF coordinating council.
Staff report