Perhaps you heard the story of a new member of an Alabama Baptist church who was attending his first church finance committee meeting. To be polite, before the start of the meeting, the young man asked one of the older men, Mr. Smith, what he had done that day. The answer left the young Baptist speechless.
The older man reported that he spent part of the morning at the International Seafarer’s Center in Mobile helping a young Asian man contact family members at home because of a family emergency. In the course of the morning, the older man said he had been able to share Christ with the seaman. Though the seaman did not make a decision for Christ, he listened attentively and accepted a pamphlet that outlined how to be saved. Before parting ways, the two had prayed together, he said.
The new Baptist Christian thought the story strange since the church to which both men belonged was nowhere near Mobile. But what the older man said next was even harder to fathom.
Part of the morning, the older man continued, he was in Miami working with Haitian-speaking Christians. These immigrants need job skills and family support, he related. But most of all, they need Christ. Today he was able to teach construction skills in a Christian Men’s Job Corps site and to share his testimony with all in the class.
In the afternoon, the older gentleman said he worked along the Amazon River, helping Indians learn how to get more yield from their gardens. Before leaving, he led a Bible study in the village, something he does at least once every month.
Right before coming to the finance committee meeting, the older man said he stopped by a Maasai village in Africa. Until a few years ago, the Maasai were an unreached people group, he explained in unbroken cadence. Now God is doing a wonderful work among the tribe. New churches demand new leaders, and today he did some one-on-one teaching with a new Maasai pastor.
The young man did not want to be rude or unkind, especially since he was a relatively new Christian and just starting out as a Baptist. Still he was sure his fellow committee member could win a tall tales contest with what he had just heard.
Other committee members had entered the room during the exchange. They heard part of the conversation and saw the expressions on the faces of both men. The face of the older man glowed with satisfaction as he related the various episodes. The expression on the face of the younger man changed from confusion to amusement as he concluded he had been fooled by his new friend.
That conclusion left him unprepared for what happened next.
"Mr. Smith really was in all those places today," the committee chairman said to the young man. "In fact, he was in a lot more places than that." And then followed an explanation about the Cooperative Program (CP).
"The Cooperative Program is one way this church fulfills the command of Christ to be witnesses for Him in Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria and to the ends of the earth," the chairman said. "When this church gives through the Cooperative Program, we are not giving to fund a denomination. We are giving to reach the world for Christ."
"And since the church gifts come from individuals, every time an offering is given through the church, the giver is everywhere Baptists go sharing the gospel and ministering to human need," the chairman added.
The CP was a new concept for the young man. He knew enough about Baptists to know about the Alabama Baptist State Convention and the Southern Baptist Convention. He understood Baptists were evangelistic and missions-minded and had representatives in most every part of the world. How this was financed, he did not know. Perhaps it was some kind of financial assessment like many denominations use.
Now he was hearing that the CP is not about funding a denomination. The CP is about reaching the world for Christ.
Now it was the older gentleman who spoke. He explained that he brought his tithes and offerings to the church in obedience to God’s command. Then the church partnered with other churches to minister and witness at home and around the world. This partnership was through the CP.
"The Cooperative Program is cooperation to fulfill the Great Commission (Matt. 28:19–20)," Smith said, with a smile on his face. "It is churches working together with state and national partners to reach our community, our state, our nation and our world for Christ."
The word "Program" represents what churches agreed to do together, he continued. It includes everything from helping sister churches to ministering to hurting people to training Christian workers to providing resources to Baptist representatives around the globe.
As the young man listened, he began to understand that no church could do all of this alone, not a megachurch and certainly not the 332 people who worshiped in his church on an average Sunday morning.
He began to realize the genius of the CP was that everywhere Baptists worked together to minister in Jesus’ name, every cooperating church and every church member played a part in accomplishing the great things God was doing in the world through Baptists.
At last, the new Alabama Baptist understood that what he judged to be a tall tale was just the simple truth. That was when he understood the smile of satisfaction on Mr. Smith’s face and when he understood why his church contributed part of every week’s offerings through the CP.
While the exact details of this story cannot be documented, incidents like this happen every week as Baptists learn more and more about the benefits of working together through the CP to fulfill the Great Commission of our Lord.
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