Getting Better Acquainted with our Missional Partners
Introduction:
1. I want to challenge you to get better acquainted with our First Baptist missional partners.
2. In order to better understand why we have multiple mission partners, you need to appreciate the emerging history of Baptist and missions.
3. Baptists have had a pulse and passion for missions since their inception as an identifiable Christian movement in 1609.
4. Baptists origins in the
5. Southern Baptists began at First Baptist Church of Augusta, Georgia in 1845.
6.
7. Tonight I wish to walk you through a brief historical timeline which could help you understand the emergence of our support for multiple mission partners, as well as encouraging you to think, pray, and dialogue about future scenarios of missional support.
I. Past trends
- Cooperative Program: Baptists longed to find more efficient ways to cooperate in maximizing their mission efforts and dollars. The first Cooperative Program budget was adopted in 1925 as a commonly agreed upon portfolio of mission support.
- Multiple Options: Beginning in the early 1980’s, as new leaders were elected to leadership in the Southern Baptist Convention, leaders who had previously been more identified with independent Baptist causes, or leaders who did not have a history of strong support for the Cooperative Program, a gradual revision of the Cooperative Program began. Many entities once considered a vital part of the Cooperative Missions effort were replaced with entities more aligned with the theological persuasion of the new leadership. Many Baptists who longed to continue to support traditional Baptist causes created auxiliary agencies designed to serve as networks of support and conduits for missions. One such entity was the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship, organized in the 1980’s.
2. Current partnerships: For the past few years, First Baptist Church of Pensacola is one of almost 2000 Baptist churches to offer multiple mission giving options. Here are our current primary partners:
- Baptist World Alliance: The Baptist World Alliance is a global movement of Baptists sharing a common confession of faith in Jesus Christ, bonded together by God’s love to support, encourage and strengthen one another, while proclaiming and living the Gospel of Jesus Christ in the power of the Holy Spirit to a lost world. The Baptist World
- Cooperative Baptist Fellowship: The CBF is a resource and networking group, not a convention or denomination, designed to assist Baptist churches in supporting local and global missions. The identity of CBF can summarized as a fellowship of Baptist Christians and churches who share a passion for the Great Commission of Jesus Christ and a commitment to Baptist principles of faith and practice.
- Southern Baptist Convention: The Southern Baptist Convention began as a loose affiliation of missionary Baptist churches who shared a similar, but not uniform, faith. Their beliefs were confessional and not creedal, and are documented in the Historic Baptist Distinctives and The Baptist Faith and Message. The
- Locally directed Missions:
3. Future possibilities:
- Continued Multiple Choice Options: We may continue to offer multiple options, occasionally revised and upgraded, to allow FBCP members to individually choose their preferred missional partner(s).
- Alignment with a Single Partner: Our church could choose to align with one missional partner to the exclusive of others. While this scenario does not seem likely, considering the diversity of our church and the plurality of Baptist agencies, it could be likely that one or more of our mission partners could exclude us. You should be aware that some state conventions and the
- Customized Church Missions Portfolio: Some churches are moving away from an envelope selection methodology and creating a Church Missions Portfolio that includes multiple mission agencies such as the partners we currently support through designation and through budget. Such a Church Missions Portfolio is reviewed, revised, and upgraded annually so that the church is supporting the mission partners who are most efficient, most accountable, and most cooperative with the local church.
Conclusion:
1. Baptist life can get a little messy at times because, compared to other faith traditions, we allow extraordinary freedom of expression. I tend to avoid controversial political statements or entanglements. However, when it comes to missions, it is worth having a few tense and honest conversations to be sure that we are networking with partners we can trust and respect, and partners who will respect and trust us.
2. Through seasons of war and peace, schism and unification, prosperity and adversity, Baptists have always found and will continue to find a way to partner for the purposes of doing ministry and missions.
Postscript:
Often I am asked about the best way to get information on Baptist History and the best sources for accurate information on Baptist life. As a pastor, and as one who served for eight years as an officer of a Baptist state paper, here are my recommendations for dependable sources:
www.centerforbaptiststudies.org
