RICHMOND, Va. — The Cooperative Baptist Fellowship must increase its ability to fulfill its calling as a “spiritually-healthy, missionally-faithful expression of the family of God,” a North Carolina CBF leader told members of Virginia’s state affiliate Nov. 8.
“Baptists believe in the power of one,” said Larry Hovis, for the past seven years executive coordinator of the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship of North Carolina. “But as powerful a concept as that is, it is only half the equation. Baptists also believe in the power of ‘we.’ ”
Larry Hovis (center) and Ron Crawford (right) listen to a participant at the CBFVA/BTSR luncheon.
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Hovis spoke at a luncheon hosted by the CBF of Virginia and Baptist Theological Seminary at Richmond, in conjunction with the annual meeting of the Baptist General Association of Virginia in Richmond, Nov. 8-9.
“What will it take to get the CBF family — churches, state organizations, seminaries — to live out our calling together as a spiritually-healthy, missionally-faithful expression of the family of God?” he asked. “How can the CBF family best exercise the family of ‘we’?”
Hovis suggested three “learning pathways” as a way to move forward.
• “Cooperative Baptists must learn to trust again,” he said.
The years of theological conflict within the Southern Baptist Convention, which resulted in the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship movement, has left its mark on CBF adherents, Hovis said.
CBFVA field coordinator Rob Fox (right) chats with Jim Somerville, pastor of First Baptist Church in Richmond.
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“We came out of a pattern in the SBC that theoretically was not connectional but in reality was one of the most connectional in the United States,” he said. “Churches gave up much of their autonomy to make it work. Moderates’ trust was abused and we entered our new family determined never to have that happen again.”
The upshot, he said, was that the CBF has not “gained the traction we envisioned for it 20 years ago.”
“While we should never forget our history, it is time to move on,” Hovis said.
“Trust lies at the heart of a functioning, cohesive team,” he said. “I dream of the day when trust is more capitalized in the CBF family, that we assume the best of one another. Then we can leverage those assets in pursuit of a common mission.”
• “Cooperative Baptists must learn to value leadership,” he said.
Hovis said his involvement on the CBF’s 2012 task force — a strategy committee looking at the future of the organization — has taken him all over the country where he has listened to a variety of CBF groups.
“There is among us an ambivalence about leadership,” he noted. “We want more innovation, but we don’t want anything to change. We want leadership to offer compelling visions and motivated dreams, but we want them to be cheap and easy.
“Our history in the CBF has a default anxiety about leadership,” he added.
Yet leaders such as Rob Fox, field coordinator of CBFVA, and Ron Crawford, president of Baptist Theological Seminary at Richmond, are “outstanding,” Hovis said.
“The time is right for the CBF family to learn to evaluate leadership again, to move to the future.”
• “Cooperative Baptists must learn to practice missional collaboration,” said Hovis.
“Our next challenge as a fellowship is to practice true missional collaboration — to trust one another and to trust leadership.”
Instead of individuals, churches, seminaries and other ministry partners, as well as state, regional and national CBF organizations, functioning independently, “we must leverage our assets to resource one another in following God’s call,” he said. “We must join together to do far more than we can do alone. Then we can be a truly healthy family to be the presence of Christ in the world.”
Cooperative Baptists in Virginia and North Carolina could be a model for that kind of collaboration, Hovis suggested.
“There’s a lot of migration between Virginia and North Carolina,” he said. “And we [the two state organizations] make up between 35 and 40 percent of the CBF family.
“Of whom much is given, much is required. Could it be that God is calling Virginia and North Carolina as strong mature members of the family to lead the way?”
The CBF is at its best when its adherents are on a missional journey together, Hovis said, and that is the direction Cooperative Baptists must go to be effective.
“May Cooperative Baptists in the Old Dominion and the Old North State lead the way,” he said.
In other action at the luncheon, the CBFVA’s Fox said the group’s current emphasis on “familia” — family in Spanish — is having an impact. As part of that initiative, which was begun last year and developed at the group’s fall assembly last September, the CBFVA in collaboration with the Virginia Baptist Mission Board distributed to participants at the luncheon free DVDs of “Gospel Without Borders,” a documentary film on immigration issues produced by the Baptist Center for Ethics.
BTSR’s Crawford — whose seminary hosts the luncheon with the CBFVA each year at the BGAV meeting — told the gathering the school has moved past the halfway point in a $500,000 challenge fundraising grant.
Jennifer Clore
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The luncheon was the first statewide CBFVA event since staffer Jennifer Clore was named associate coordinator of missions and administration this fall. Clore spent the last two years on the CBFV staff, serving CBF churches in Virginia by planning and coordinating mission events and local and international mission projects, and managing the CBFVA’s office activities. She has seven years experience working in administration with small businesses.
Clore holds a bachelor of business administration degree from Averett University. A native of Fredericksburg, Va., she and her husband, Ryan, live in Richmond.
Robert Dilday ([email protected]) is managing editor of the Religious Herald.