Our favorite 5-year-old recently had a rare few minutes alone with his grandparents. He suddenly got very serious and shared that he was having difficulty learning the alphabet. He said that during the school day he goes to a special teacher for help on his letters, and the little fellow admitted, “Letters and numbers are hard.” We feel for him, especially because we realize that what he is trying to grasp is fundamental to all the learning which must follow.
Fred Anderson
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There are some fundamental ABCs about Virginia Baptists, and many Baptists, if not most, are as inadequate in their knowledge as our 5-year-old is about his ABCs. Who are Virginia Baptists? How are they organized? We use the identifier “Virginia Baptists” as if one group had ownership of the term. There are several streams, including Independents, Primitives, African American groups, several ethnically-identified groups and a variety of national affiliations, including Southern, American and National. The Cooperative Baptists and the Alliance Baptists have followings. Any attempt to identify Baptists in Virginia falls short.
Most of the Virginia readership of the Religious Herald identifies with the Baptist General Association of Virginia. It would be enough for this column to offer a primer on these “General Association” Baptists.
There is nothing “Johnny-come-lately” about the Baptist General Association of Virginia. While it dates to 1823, there were predecessor organizations in the late 1700s and their main purposes were to help secure religious liberty and to provide a forum for the scattered Baptist churches. Once these purposes were accomplished, Virginia Baptists considered a binding and continuing purpose around missions and evangelism. Education soon became another passion.
The ABCs of the BGAV are foundational. “B” stood for the distinctive people known as Baptist, who held enough recognizable principles and values in common to be considered a distinct people group.
The “G” word was “General,” which implied that there are others. Truly there were and remain numerous other smaller and localized associations which we used to call “district associations.” From its beginning the “General” association had wider scope, encompassing the entire Commonwealth of Virginia and ultimately even beyond.
The name “Association” is a time-honored term first used by the English Baptists. At the time of the first organizing into larger cooperative bodies, there was a natural suspicion among Baptists that their churches might be expected to surrender their autonomy. The word “association” implied that the affiliation was a freely chosen connecting. Some Baptist bodies were beginning to use the word “convention” but the Virginians responded more favorably to the implications of “association.” The original constitution of the BGAV spelled it out: “[The Association] shall in no case interfere with the internal regulations of the churches or [district] Associations.” Today’s wording in the constitution states: “There shall be full recognition of the autonomy of the local churches.”
The Baptist General Association of Virginia is a denominational body composed of elected officers and messengers from member churches. It holds an annual meeting, although there can be called meetings. The duly-elected persons who attend the meetings are known by the term of “messengers.” They are not called “delegates” as once was the term in vogue because they are not “delegated” to present a pre-determined decision from their churches but are free to communicate the opinions of their churches as well as their own decisions.
The purpose of the BGAV is succinctly stated in its Constitution, as follows: “The object … shall be to furnish the Baptist churches of Virginia a means of cooperation for the propagation of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, and for the advancement of the Redeemer’s Kingdom by all methods in accord with the Word of God. There shall be full recognition of the autonomy of the local churches.”
The General Association is a denominational body and it is huge. Currently, there are 1,419 churches affiliated. While most are in Virginia, there are some member churches in other states; and there are even churches in other countries which are related in some way to the BGAV. If every church brought their maximum number of messengers to an annual meeting, there would be almost 70,000 people in attendance. Last November the annual meeting was attended by about 1,100 messengers and visitors.
At the annual meetings four officers are elected: president, first and second vice presidents, and a clerk. By tradition, the presidency alternates between clergy and laity. At the meeting reports are presented and budgets are adopted. There are opportunities for resolutions to be presented on topics of concern and the body acts on the resolutions. Even in the resolutions, the General Association does not speak for all “General Association” Baptists. No one should attempt such folly. The resolutions are merely the commonly resolved opinion of a group assembled at a given time in its history.
The General Association is a large umbrella which includes numerous agencies and institutions which are sometimes called “ministry partners.” These include schools and colleges, seminaries, a free press, retirement communities, a family services agency and prison chaplains. It includes a missions organization for women and Baptist history and heritage agencies.
The General Association also includes its own Mission Board which the BGAV elects. The Virginia Baptist Mission Board (VBMB — more ABCs) conducts the business of the BGAV between sessions. The bylaws state: “The Virginia Baptist Mission Board shall act in the interim … and shall report” at the next BGAV meeting. The VBMB sets policies, approves expenditures and holds title to property. The board has a staff to conduct the day-to-day operations and to perform various ministries and functions. The composition of the board is clearly defined in its bylaws and most of the board members come from various district associations across Virginia.
The board meets three times a year and much of its work is done by standing committees. The staff is also aligned with the board committees: courageous churches, empowering leaders, emerging leaders, glocal missions and evangelism and support ministries. Each of these committees has responsibilities and elects officers. Each reports to the full board.
The board also has an executive committee which conducts business “in the interim for the VBMB” between board meetings and reports to the board. There are specific duties for the executive committee as set in the bylaws, and these include acting as a finance committee for the VBMB, consulting on personnel matters, approving VBMB budgets before they are submitted to the BGAV budget committee and studying proposals for new agencies or work.
These ABCs are a carefully crafted instrument which has served Virginia Baptists well for a time longer than any living person. Some of the names and the organizational plan have changed through the long years and the work has enlarged but the essential framework remains very much what was created in the beginning. Clip this primer on ABCs and use it to help teach the fundamental information about one stream of Virginia Baptists.
Fred Anderson ([email protected]) is executive director of the Virginia Baptist Historical Society and the Center for Baptist Heritage and Studies.