DECATUR, Ga. (ABP) — The Baptist “family” is undergoing “something of a reconstruction” these days, according to Daniel Vestal, executive coordinator of the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship.
After decades of infighting within and isolation between various Baptist denominations, an unprecedented opportunity has emerged for Baptists to work together and learn from each other, said Vestal, a leader among moderate Baptists nationwide.
“God is at work in this family creating new [patterns of] cooperation,” Vestal told members of the CBF Coordinating Council, the Atlanta-based group's administrative board, Oct. 11.
“There is a desire among Baptists, north and south, … to collaborate in mission, and that is a gift of God,” Vestal said.
Vestal and other Baptist leaders are organizing the Celebration of a New Baptist Covenant, a three-day confab of like-minded Baptists scheduled for late January in Atlanta. Organizers say it is an opportunity for Baptist conventions and organizations to unite around an agenda of meeting social needs rather than theological conformity or political activism.
Notably absent from the January meeting will be the Southern Baptist Convention, the largest of the nation's Baptist bodies with 16 million members, which was invited to participate but not to help organize the meeting. The organizers represent 40-plus U.S. Baptist organizations affiliated with the Baptist World Alliance, an umbrella group composed of most of the world's Baptist denominations. The SBC withdrew from the BWA in 2004 amid charges of liberalism.
“When the elephant left the room — when the SBC left the Baptist World Alliance — the other Baptist groups discovered we had a lot to learn from each other,” said Vestal, whose own organization split from the SBC in 1991.
Many of the Baptist bodies involved in the New Baptist Covenant emerged during the last 150 years out of internecine divisions with other Baptist groups that are now working together to create the coalition. That new cooperative spirit is “reconstructing” Baptist life in the United States, Vestal suggested.
“We have an opportunity for learning that we desperately need, and that is a gift from God,” he said.
“Most of us lived through the dissolution of a culture and an ethos, not to mention institutions,” Vestal said, recalling more than two decades of conservative-moderate battles for control of the SBC. During the same period, he noted, “deconstruction” was taking place among other Baptist groups.
Vestal said he spent a “blessed day” Oct. 10 in conversation with Roy Medley, general secretary of the American Baptist Churches USA, the group that emerged from the slavery-fueled split with the Southern Baptist Convention in 1845, and Tyrone Pitts, general secretary of the predominantly black Progressive National Baptist Convention, which emerged from a 1961 split from the National Baptist Convention USA Inc. over desegregation policy.
Last June the three groups — CBF, ABC-USA and PNBC — held a joint worship service which leaders said demonstrated the new spirit of collaboration.
Such collaboration does not require participants to abandon their distinctives or history, Vestal said.
“The best way to build Christian community is for each [organization] to live within its own skin,” Vestal said. “…Then we can be more effective in reaching out to others in the group. When community is based on a generic kind of Christianity, the conversation is very bland and little in the way of Christian community develops.”
Vestal said the various Baptist bodies are best understood as a “family,” a term he prefers to “denomination.” “The word 'denomination' draws reactions ranging from nostalgia to revulsion,” he said.
The name “Baptist” has its greatest value “in familial terms,” not abstract ideas, Vestal said. He declined to call CBF a denomination, saying he prefers to think of CBF as occupying a small room in the larger house of Christianity.
“The Baptist family is not about to go away,” he predicted. “People are asking, 'Are Christian denominations here to stay or are they a thing of the past?'” he said. “Baptists are not only relevant for today but they are undergoing a renewal for tomorrow.”
Vestal said his reasons for hopefulness — in an era when others are predicting the demise of denominations — are threefold: the Baptist denomination represents a great tradition; it allows churches to build connection in “concrete, practical, incarnational ways;” and it provides a way for congregations to collaborate for missions and “extend the mission of the local church.”
After his report, Vestal asked the Coordinating Council to discuss why CBF has not been more successful in attracting congregations to the organization. “We have a compelling vision,” he said, “but there are a lot of other competing visions.”
The Fellowship's mission is “serving Christians and churches as they discover and fulfill their God-given mission.” Yet the organization's growth has leveled off in recent years, with contributions coming from approximately 1,900 churches.
Jack Mercer, pastor of Harrisburg (Va.) Baptist Church, agreed the vision is compelling but said several factors are “holding us back,” including the “denominational issue” — CBF has resisted declaring itself a convention or denominational body. “We are neither fish nor fowl,” Mercer said.
And, he suggested, CBF and its churches have focused more on meeting social needs and not enough on how they present themselves to outsiders. “We need to be missional but we also need to be attractional,” he said.
Vestal suggested CBF is up against a lot of similar organizations competing for congregational loyalty. But he added: “The accusation of not being attractional, that stings a little bit. I think we ought to look at that.”
Keith Herron, pastor of Holmeswood Baptist Church in Kansas City, Mo., said CBF “makes it hard for people to jump on board with us” because it is not willing to offer platitudes and simple answers. “We're not big on certitude.”
Others said CBF does not celebrate the victories it does experience.
Chester Thompson, pastor of Mt. Zion Baptist Church in Camden, Ark., said CBF's social ministries attracted his African-American congregation to the Fellowship. “I read the [CBF] newsletter and said, 'This is something I want to be a part of.'”
Harriett Harral of Fort Worth, Texas, CBF's national moderator, affirmed the Coordinating Council for the honesty expressed in the discussion. “This is what governing bodies need to talk about.”
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