With a call to minister to “a world in need,” the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship’s (CBF) June 22–23 annual meeting in Atlanta was quiet, even by fellowship standards, with little official business and no controversy.
Almost unnoticed was a constitutional amendment that restored a mention of Jesus and the Great Commission to CBF’s governing documents.
Last year, adoption of constitutional changes that omitted that language stirred heated debate at the General Assembly and sparked months of criticism within CBF’s 1,850 affiliated churches and beyond.
The amendment — a constitutional preamble in which fellowship members “gladly declare our allegiance to Jesus Christ as Lord and to His gospel” — was adopted June 23 without opposition or discussion by the 3,005 registered participants. It already had been approved by CBF’s Coordinating Council last October. Also absent this year was any debate about the fellowship’s past — as disenfranchised moderate Southern Baptists — which several participants said is a sign of CBF’s “maturity” as an organization.
Instead the CBF annual meeting — and the related gatherings of dozens of “partner” organizations — focused on the future, as fellowship-type Baptists seek a positive role to play in a less-denominational, more-ecumenical setting.
Daniel Vestal, CBF’s national coordinator, told assembly participants the fellowship stands for “inclusiveness and freedom, openness and partnering.”
A special human-rights offering was received at both evening sessions and honors former President Jimmy Carter and his wife, Rosalynn. The $32,801 collected will be used for religious-liberty and human-rights ministries of the CBF and the Baptist World Alliance.
Nineteen missions personnel were commissioned during the closing session, including six short-term missionaries (one-to-three years) and 13 self-supporting workers who will serve under the auspices of CBF’s AsYouGo Affiliate program. None of the appointees are fully funded career missionaries.
The fellowship also installed new officers, including incoming moderator Emmanuel McCall, pastor of Baptist Fellowship Group in East Point, Ga., and retired pastor of Christian Fellowship Baptist Church in College Park, Ga.
He is the first African-American to serve as moderator. He succeeds Joy Yee, pastor of 19th Avenue Baptist Church, San Francisco, who presided this year as the first Asian-American and first female senior pastor to serve as moderator.
Fellowship members elected Harriet Harral, an organizational and leadership consultant from Fort Worth, Texas, as moderator-elect and Hal Bass, political science professor at Ouachita Baptist University in Arkadelphia, Ark., as recorder. (ABP)
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