INTRODUCTION
The first church I pastored called me while I was a student at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary. Hilltop Baptist Church in Fort Worth voted me in 7-0, a church many would consider insignificant due to its size. Yet, because the members of that church gave faithfully to the Cooperative Program, it played a role alongside thousands of Southern Baptist churches across the nation in getting the gospel to the nations.
Colorado Baptists serve, in terms of Southern Baptist ministry, in what has been referred to as a frontier arena. Just like the rest of the SBC, though, Colorado has churches in major urban centers as well as in rural towns. No matter where your congregation gathers and no matter whether you’re running seven or 700, the CP connects you to the broader efforts of Southern Baptists to be about the Great Commission.
Every dollar that comes through the CP is given out of the tithes and offerings of millions of church members. The amount a single church collects may seem small, but as part of CP it is combined with hundreds, then thousands, then millions of other dollars given through Southern Baptist churches across the United States.
This movement we call the CP has lasted a century now and played a significant role in make the Southern Baptist Convention the largest Protestant family of churches in the United States.
Millions have been baptized and discipled in our churches and on the mission field through the years, embracing the call of the Great Commission to go and make disciples of all nations.
Just since 2010, Southern Baptists have planted more than 11,000 churches through the collective efforts of our churches, state conventions, associations, and the North American Mission Board (NAMB). The International Mission Board supports thousands of missionaries around the world and is currently raising up thousands more.
All of this missionary effort takes place because of Southern Baptists’ faithfulness to give to the CP as churches like yours in Colorado commit to support our collective ministry and missionary work in North American and around the world.
The U.S. and the SBC have both seen some difficult days in the last few years, with economic and cultural turmoil erupting all around us. During such seasons, it’s tempting to want to go it alone and forsake the biblical view of churches cooperating for the sake of the gospel (cf. 1 Cor 16:1–4; 2 Cor 8:1–9:15; Rom 15:14–32).
Yet, our nation, as well as our convention of churches, have faced challenging days through our history. Now is not the time to shrink back. As we celebrate 100 years of the Cooperative Program, might I encourage you to lean in.
A Brief History
The SBC was formed in 1845, and one of the churches first actions was to form the two mission boards that became NAMB and the IMB. While Baptists in the South parted ways their Northern counterparts over issues related to slavery, they came together to form the SBC for the sake of proclaiming the gospel to the nations.
When they agreed to form a Domestic Mission Board, they did not adopt a plan to fund its work. The representatives and the missionaries had to invest time and energy going state to state and church to church to secure funding for their work.
Every Baptist entity in the South had to contend with one another for support from local churches, which often meant their cooperation was contentious and fragile. It was actually I.T. Tichenor, one of the most significant leaders in NAMB’s history, who laid the groundwork for a funding mechanism like the Cooperative Program.
As a pastor and leader in Alabama, he helped Southern Baptists in the state create a systematized version of giving that removed the sense of competition among their agencies. Near the end of his tenure at the Board in the late 1800s, he began arguing for Southern Baptists to create a similar system at the national SBC leader. One historian described Tichenor as the “grandfather of the Cooperative Program.”
Once Southern Baptists established the CP in 1925, the SBC witnessed significant numerical growth throughout the remainder of the century. This was a result, not only of the efficient funding mechanism the CP generated, but also the enhanced cooperative spirit the CP fostered among Southern Baptists.
Even in the face of challenges, Southern Baptists refused to yield and committed to support their entities through economic downturn and even scandal within our denomination.
Southern Baptists continued to see ourselves as a force for the Great Commission and persisted in our devotion to reach the lost through the CP.
A Roadmap for the Future
As we celebrate the CP’s centennial this year, we find ourselves in facing obstacles. There are pressures coming against us from within and from without for our family of churches. We have seen steady decline for the last twenty years, both in terms of our membership and our commitment to financially supporting the CP.
While the 20th century witnessed a time of great increase, the rise of secularism has been a key factor to our decline in the 21st century. The estimated number of lost people in North America has hit new highs – 281 million people. The easy thing to do would be to shrink back into our “holy huddle” and refuse to engage our culture and communities with the gospel.
At NAMB, though, we’ve refused to take that posture.
With our church planting arm, Send Network, we have been committed to helping Southern Baptist churches plant new churches in cities and neighborhoods throughout the continent. Through Send Relief, we’ve established compassion ministry outposts with a focus on meeting needs in Jesus’ name to see lives changed by the power of the gospel. We train and support churches in evangelism through our team which is committed to creatng some of the best resources designed to equip people with the tools they need to share the gospel.
By God’s grace, we’ve seen steady growth in our church planting efforts, and following the sharp downturn of the 2020 pandemic, Southern Baptists have been rebounding in their efforts to evangelize and baptize new believers.
If we keep our hand to the plow, faithfully doing what God has called us to do through His Word – proclaim the gospel, make disciples, and work together through cooperation – we may start to see a fresh harvest of souls enter the kingdom of God.
Conclusion
In recent months, I’ve been reminded of Paul’s words to the Corinthian church when he was describing his ministry: “for a wide door for effective work has opened to me, and there are many adversaries” (1 Cor. 16:9, ESV).
There is a great opportunity to reach the lost because they are all around us, but as we seek to do so, we will find “many adversaries” who are opposed to the work. Sure, there will be people outside the church who seek to undermine our shared mission, but we must also consider those within our own ranks who would seek to see us shrink back for one reason or another.
We can never let our guard down and allow ourselves to get distracted by things that would steal our focus, and we shouldn’t let difficulty keep us from leaning into the efforts our fathers and mothers in the SBC fought to create and safeguard.
This year, I’ve been focused on a quote from Annie Armstrong, who was one of the SBC’s early leaders who shaped our commitment to missions, especially in North America. The annual offering that supports NAMB is named for her. She said:
“The future lies all before us. Shall it only be a slight advance upon what we usually do? Ought it not to be a bound, a leap forward, to altitudes of endeavor and success undreamed of before?”
I would urge us all, as Southern Baptists, to embrace the challenge she gave to her contemporaries and take a leap forward in our commitment to one another and to the Great Commission.
Let’s lean into our cooperation and steward this work for another 100 years and beyond.
Kevin Ezell serves as president of the North American Mission Board (NAMB) where he gives leadership to providing partnership and resources that assist Southern Baptist churches in the areas of evangelism, church planting and compassion ministry.
