It has been almost 200 years since Baptists organized their first national body in the United States, and still we are trying to figure out how to work together in the cause of Christ.
On May 18, 1814, 33 Baptist representatives from various local and regional missionary societies met in Philadelphia to form the General Missionary Convention of the Baptist Denomination in the United States of America for Foreign Missions. It was more commonly called the Triennial Convention because it met every three years.
Foreign missions was the catalyst for the organization as Baptists rallied to support the work of the Judsons in Burma. But three years later, at the urging of its president, Richard Furman of South Carolina, the body expanded its concerns to include home missions and education. Two missionaries were appointed to the Missouri Territory. In 1821, Columbian College in the District of Columbia opened under Baptist sponsorship.
The convention approach — multiple benevolent ministries related to one body — was new to Baptists. More common was the societal approach in which autonomous organizations formed around one cause and those who contributed to that cause provided the governance.
It would not take long for this traditional method of cooperation to challenge the convention model.
In 1826, Francis Wayland, who became president of Baptist-affiliated Brown University in Providence, R.I., in 1827, led the charge to scrap the new convention approach of cooperation and return to a societal approach for each type of work — foreign missions, home missions, education, Sunday School and Christian literature.
At the core of Wayland’s concern was local church autonomy. Wayland so feared that a convention might overshadow a local church that he later argued that state conventions should be abolished in favor of missions societies.
Interestingly Boston Baptists reclaimed control of the foreign missions society and moved its headquarters from Washington back to Boston, where the first Baptist foreign missions society in the nation had been formed. Also, without convention financial support, Columbian College was eventually lost to Baptists. It is known today as George Washington University.
Nearly 20 years later, with the formation of the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) in 1845, Baptists in the South returned to a convention approach of cooperation. Again it was a South Carolinian, William B. Johnson, who led the way. A week before delegates gathered in Augusta, Ga., to form the SBC, Johnson called South Carolina Baptists together and won their approval for a convention plan of organization for the new body. Johnson proposed, “one Convention, embodying the whole Denomination, together with separate and distinct Boards, for each object of benevolent enterprise, located at different places, and all amenable to the Convention.”
Of this approach to organization, Johnson said, “The whole Denomination will be united in one body for the purpose of well-doing.” He added that delegates “may share in the deliberations and control of all the objects promoted by the Convention” (see “The Southern Baptist Convention and Its People” by Robert Baker).
A week later, delegates in Augusta adopted Johnson’s approach. The purpose of the new body would be “carrying into effect the benevolent intention of our constituents by organizing a plan for eliciting, combining, and directing the energies of the denomination, for the propagation of the gospel.” These words can still be found in the SBC constitution. Interestingly Johnson served as chairman of the committee that drafted the constitution of the new body.
With that decision, Baptists in the South rejected Wayland’s concerns and concluded that voluntary cooperation was not a threat to local church autonomy.
But the journey was not over. It was not until 1925 that this group of Baptists found a way to fund their various ministries through a unified offering called the Cooperative Program (CP).
The cooperation part of the CP was a key. Just as Baptists would cooperate through a convention approach of multiple ministries related to one body, churches, state conventions and the national convention would cooperate to fund the various ministries.
Autonomy for each partner was a second key. Local church autonomy was assured by each church choosing what portion of its offerings would be contributed to missions work beyond its local community through the CP. State convention autonomy was protected, as each state convention would determine what portion of funds received from the churches would be used for state missions and what portion would be forwarded for national and international missions. SBC autonomy was protected because only messengers to the national meetings could determine how the SBC portion of CP monies would be spent.
The program part of the CP was also important. Neither state nor national funds could be spent at the whim of any single person or group of people. The program — the ministries of the state and national conventions — had to be approved by convention messengers. Thus only agreed upon ministries became part of the Baptist “program” receiving financial support.
But still the battle continued.
Shortly after the CP was implemented, some Baptists rebelled. They felt local church autonomy was diminished by cooperating with various mission boards. “Are you a board Baptist?” became a derogatory question, as some championed funding missions only through the local church.
The issue was so sensitive that in the late 1940s, some Baptist leaders reportedly voted against expanding SBC territory outside the South. These leaders feared new members would not be committed to the convention pattern of Baptist cooperation but would advocate the church-sending model.
In 1984, when then-Foreign Mission Board (now the International Mission Board) President Keith Parks spoke against the election of Charles Stanley as SBC president, he spoke specifically to this issue. He said Stanley provided extensive support for missionaries appointed by the church he served while providing minimal support to missions through the CP.
In the past 25 years, the pattern of missionaries sent by local churches has grown among Southern Baptists. And as more and more churches send out their own missionaries, do their own church starts, conduct their own ministerial training programs and more, support for a convention form of Baptist cooperation has waned. CP giving is only one example. Nationally average CP giving has dropped from more than 10 percent of undesignated offerings to 6 percent.
Other results include a breakdown in cooperation as more and more Baptists “do their own thing.” The Baptist “program” suffers, as some insist that things be done their way or else. Concern for local church autonomy grows to the point that like Wayland, Baptists decline to work together.
October is CP Month. It is a good time to reflect on how Southern Baptists have chosen to work together because the principles of the CP illustrate the convention approach of Baptist cooperation.
How Baptists will work together in the years ahead is a much-debated issue. For this writer, the preference is the answer Baptists from the South have given for nearly 200 years — cooperation based on the principles of convention organization as illustrated by the CP.
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