RICHMOND — The Richmond Baptist Association will consult with a Winston-Salem-based conflict resolution organization in an attempt to ease tensions among its more than 60 churches spawned by disagreements over homosexuality.
The RBA executive committee voted May 16 to retain the Center for Congregational Health to “act as an impartial, third-party mediator to engage the association in a process to enhance our ability to work together collaboratively and to minimize the impact of our current circumstances in order to more effectively accomplish our calling to missions and ministry going forward.”
The Richmond Baptist Association has agreed to a process of mediation to resolve tensions among its churches.
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In March, by a razor-thin margin, the association voted to retain the affiliation of Ginter Park Baptist Church, which had ordained an openly gay man to the ministry. Since then, at least five congregations have withdrawn from the RBA and another 11 are reconsidering their affiliation, according to Mike Robinson, the association’s chief administrative officer. Those 16 churches provide more than 38 percent of the RBA’s funding and represent nearly 25 percent of its individual church members, he said.
“We are a fractured family whose faithfulness to her calling is threatened,” Robinson wrote in the association’s newsletter May 28. “Like any family in crisis, we need help to resolve the dilemma in which we find ourselves and to restore our family’s health.”
The 21-year-old Center for Congregational Health — a department of the Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center — provides training and consultation to faith communities across the United States, including mediation in church conflict.
Robinson estimated the center’s consultation will cost anywhere from $8,000 to $15,000, to be paid for out of the RBA’s reserve funds.
To help defray those costs, Ginter Park pastor Mandy England Cole encouraged her church to collect a special offering, which so far has raised about $1,000.
“We collected the offering in hopes of communicating our support of the RBA in addition to our commitment to ongoing conversation and collaborative discernment about the RBA’s future,” Cole said.
Robinson said the financial investment is one the association “cannot afford not to make.”
“The center is well respected throughout Baptist circles and beyond,” Robinson wrote in the associational newsletter. “They have done excellent work in opening doors of hope and wholeness with faith communities since 1992. A number of our churches have been served or are currently involved with center staff.
“As we take this opportunity to invest in our family in a meaningful way, we will be modeling for our churches and their families healthy steps in repairing brokenness in their own families,” he added. “This approach is an investment in a better outcome and a brighter future for the mission and ministries of our association than we might otherwise expect to experience without help.”
Robert Dilday (rdilday@religiousherald.org) is managing editor of the Religious Herald.