It has been a long time since an annual meeting of Alabama Baptists devoted as much time to celebrating the missions and ministries made possible by tithes and offerings channeled through the Cooperative Program (CP) as the 2013 meeting. As a result of the nonstop emphasis, messengers and guests attending the 191st annual meeting of the Alabama Baptist State Convention left more encouraged about Baptist efforts in Alabama than in a number of years.
Most often, missions is thought of in terms of distant places. International missionaries are the heroes along with church planters in the megacities of this nation. During the Nov. 12–13 meeting at Whitesburg Baptist Church, Huntsville, attention was primarily focused on lost people in Alabama and ministry opportunities in the Heart of Dixie.
Instead of talking about how CP dollars were spent this past year, what programs were provided or how many people attended, speakers shared how their ministries changed lives.
The stories varied. One told how artifacts held by the Alabama Baptist Historical Commission nurtured a missions consciousness in visitors. Another told of financial support provided for a grieving widow by protection benefits funded by CP and offered to all ministers who choose to participate. Another told of a young child who found loving parents through foster care and how loving parents led that child to a loving heavenly Father.
Speakers told of college students coming to Christ through campus religious programs and how those changed lives are now changing lives of others.
The stories were about the young and old, about those in the cities of our state and in its rural communities. Messengers left uplifted, knowing that the CP is not some meaningless denominational program. It is a lifeline for all Baptists do together, and it is changing lives in Alabama as well as in distant lands.
So important did the CP emphasis become that the nominating speech to re-elect Maytown Baptist pastor John Killian as president included the fact that Killian led his church to give 10 percent to missions through the CP and that the church had accepted the 1% CP Challenge — increasing CP giving by 1 percent over four years. That information has been missing from many recent nominating speeches.
Messengers even adopted a resolution noting Alabama is the pacesetter among all Southern Baptists in CP giving and calling for all Alabama Baptist churches to “give sacrificially through the Cooperative Program.”
Ministry evangelism was a second theme prevalent in this annual meeting that has been downplayed in some recent conventions. Speakers told of Christian friends walking through crisis with others, of people going out of their way to love and care for the needs of others.
Preachers stressed the importance of relationships in sharing the gospel. An adopted resolution challenged Alabama Baptist churches to hold a day or season of service for ministry evangelism.
At a related meeting, Jay Wolf, pastor of First Baptist Church, Montgomery, called for discipleship based on obedience rather than a discipleship based on knowledge. Too often, he pointed out, discipleship based on knowledge is self-serving when Jesus called His disciples to serve others.
“You go to a Bible study,” he said. “So what? What have you done?”
CP giving and ministry evangelism may not seem related at first glance, but both call us outside ourselves. CP giving calls us to join hands with other Baptists to share the gospel around the world. Ministry evangelism calls us to join the lost and hurting people around us and walk with them toward wholeness — physical wholeness and spiritual wholeness.
The resolutions process seemed as routine as ever. All 13 resolutions presented by the committee were unanimously adopted with only one generating any discussion at all. Still it may be time to consider amending the resolution process. As committee chairman Craig Carlisle observed, cultural changes may make it necessary for the convention to regularly focus the teachings of the Bible on social and moral issues.
At the same time, resolutions can be introduced within hours of the final report coming to the floor. Is it appropriate to require that resolutions be presented early enough to give the committee sufficient time to research an issue and offer a studied reply for messenger consideration?
Because Alabama Baptists are the largest religious body in the state with more than 1 million members, what Alabama Baptists say about social and moral issues is important. Resolutions not only speak to our own constituency, many see them as the reasoned judgment of the denomination speaking to society as a whole.
If an issue is important enough for Alabama Baptists to address and if we know enough about the issue to speak, then it is incumbent that our positions be based on carefully considered study and preparation.
The 2013 resolution on the contraceptive services mandate of the Affordable Care Act provides a good example of what could become a model. The wording was prepared by the Alabama Baptist Christian Life Commission after a year of wrestling with the topic.
Resolutions were not the only thing adopted without discussion. Alabama Baptists unanimously embraced a new method of budgeting. For the first time, the annual budget includes a category titled Shared Ministries — ministries that benefit both the state convention and the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC). Monies in this category are to be divided equally when calculating the percentage of funds going beyond Alabama to SBC causes.
This new approach means Alabama Baptists now give 48.4 percent of all CP funds to causes beyond the state. That approach was a giant step toward the 50–50 division of CP funds called for by the Great Commission Resurgence plan adopted by the SBC in 2010.
Participation in the 2013 annual meeting remained low with 825 registered messengers. That was only slightly below 837 registered messengers in 2012 when the convention met in Montgomery. But since participation is always lower when the convention is held at the edges of the state (Huntsville and Mobile) as opposed to meetings in the middle of the state (Birmingham and Montgomery), many called the 825 total an improvement.
Messengers came from 371 churches representing 72 associations compared to 373 churches from 69 associations in 2012.
But it is not the attendance or the resolutions or even the budget that messengers are most likely to remember about the 191st annual session. The most memorable thing will likely be the emphasis on lives changed in Alabama through the missions and ministries made possible by CP giving and that is worth celebrating.
Share with others: