The 16th Annual Cooperative Baptist Fellowship General Assembly, held June 21-24 at the Georgia World Congress Center in Atlanta, was expected to engage the global HIV/AIDS pandemic, receive a challenging message of social justice from a South African minister, engage in a combination of lively global and traditionally reverent worship and vote on a new budget, bylaws preamble and slate of officers, including the first-ever African-American moderator.
Event planners anticipatedd a crowd of more than 4,000 Fellowship Baptists from around the country. The General Assembly was last held in Atlanta in 2001.
To raise awareness and develop a response to the growing global HIV/
AIDS crisis, the Fellowship was to sponsor a summit June 21-22 in Atlanta prior to the assembly. Titled “Breaking the Silence: Compassion for an HIV Positive World,” the summit offered plenary and breakout sessions as well as an opportunity to formulate a personal, church and Fellowship-wide response to this global health crisis.
David Beckmann, president of CBF partner organization Bread for the World, was to speak during the plenary session of the HIV/AIDS summit beginning at 1 p.m., June 21. The session presented a global look at HIV and its relation to poverty, as well as testimony from a person living with HIV. A free concert to raise awareness was held at 8 p.m., June 21, in the Sidney Marcus Auditorium at the World Congress Center, featuring the Austin, Texas,-based Latino Christian band, Salvador.
The final plenary session was to focus on developing a response. Assembly participants unable to attend the summit's Wednesday activities were able to participate in a portion of the summit's final session, which corresponded with a workshop time.
Trevor Hudson of South Africa was to be the keynote speaker during the Assembly's evening session June 22. Hudson, a member of the pastoral team at Northfield Methodist Church in Benoni in northeast South Africa, has spent most of his more than 30 years in Methodist ministry in South Africa. One of the seven books Hudson has authored, “Journey of the Spirit,” was named South Africa's best Christian book in 2003.
CBF Moderator Joy Yee, pastor of 19th Avenue Baptist Church in San Francisco, was to deliver the keynote address for the morning general session on June 22, CBF national coordinator Daniel Vestal was to be the keynote speaker for the morning general session on June 23 and the evening closing service on June 23 was to feature the commissioning of new field personnel and communion.
During the business session the morning of June 23, the Assembly will vote on a $17 million operating budget and a slate of officers that includes Yee as immediate past moderator; Emmanuel McCall, pastor of Baptist Fellowship Group in Atlanta, as moderator; Harriet Harral, an organizational and leadership consultant from Fort Worth, Texas, as moderator-elect; and Hal Bass, political science professor at Ouachita Baptist University in Arkadelphia, Ark., as recorder.
McCall, who takes office at the conclusion of the Assembly on June 23, will be the Fellowship's first African-American moderator. The Fellowship has always emphasized diversity in its elected leadership with constitutional mandates for alternating between male-female and clergy-laity officers. Current moderator Yee, a Chinese-American, is the first female senior pastor to serve as moderator.
The assembly also was to vote on a proposed preamble to the Fellowship's constitution and bylaws. The full text of the new preamble reads: “As a fellowship of Baptist Christians and churches, we celebrate our faith in the One Triune God. We gladly declare our allegiance to Jesus Christ as Lord and to his gospel as we seek to be the continuing presence of Christ in this world. Our passion is to obey the Great Commandment (Matthew 22:34-40) and the Great Commission (Matthew 28:19-20) of our Lord in the power of the Holy Spirit, and to uphold Baptist principles of faith and practice as we partner with one another and other Christians.”