The following is republished by permission of the author, Steve Dunn, associational missionary for Bethlehem Baptist Association, a family of churches in the area of Monroe County, Alabama.
| BETHLEHEM BAPTIST ASSOCIATION Cooperating To Fulfill The Great Commission |
| We Have One Mission: THE GREAT COMMISSION We Have Two Commitments: THEOLOGICAL UNITY and AUTONOMOUS COOPERATION We Have Many: MISSION PARTNERSHIPS |
The Southern Baptist Cooperative Spiral depicts an individual Christian cooperating as a member of a local church who, in turn, cooperates with its neighboring associational churches, who also cooperate with the state, national and international mission organizations, as well as other mission entities, to fulfill the Great Commission. The SBC is organized in a unique way so that at any point on The Southern Baptist Cooperative Spiral, an individual, church, association, convention or entity can cooperate.
Cooperation in the SBC is both actual and financial. It is actual because in some mission partnerships, there is personal contact and communication. Actual cooperation is limited by time and distance. Financial cooperation has little personal contact or communication, but empowers other trusted partners to be our hands and feet where we cannot go and speak. The Great Commission takes both actual and financial cooperation.
Cooperation all starts as an individual Christian becomes a member of a local church and begins cooperating in their local church to fulfill the Great Commission.
That church then models for its members Great Commission actual and financial cooperation with other churches in its neighboring church area.
Those neighboring area churches cooperate actually and financially across the association to continue fulfilling the Great Commission in all of Monroe County.
Our association cooperates with 71 other Baptist associations across the state of Alabama, who in turn cooperate with the Alabama Baptist State Board of Missions to provide Great Commission partnerships throughout Alabama and beyond.
By cooperating with the Alabama Baptist State Board of Missions, our association partners with 40 other SBC state conventions to support the North American Mission Board, dedicated to fulfilling the Great Commission across the United States and Canada.
By cooperating with the International Mission Board and the SBC Executive Committee entities, our association extends our cooperation to the ends of the earth.
The SBC is organized in a unique way so that at any point on The Southern Baptist Cooperative Spiral an individual, church, association, convention or entity can cooperate actually and/or financially as a crucial part of fulfilling the Great Commission.
Today, a commitment to cooperate in the SBC is greatly needed. The world has surpassed 8 billion souls. The majority of them are not Christians. They are facing eternity with no hope of eternal life in heaven. Morris Chapman, former President and CEO of the SBC, said:
I am convinced our Lord providentially gave the plan called “Co-Operative Program” to our Southern Baptist leaders in the 1920s. The mark of God’s Spirit has been upon it. It has been used to propel Southern Baptists, by God’s grace, into great kingdom advance. I am also convinced the Cooperative Program remains the most effective vehicle for carrying out our work.
Southern Baptists must be prepared to wage battles on new battlefields. Will we who have recaptured theological soundness also recapture the spirit of cooperation? Are we not compelled to ask the question, “Shall we devote ourselves to cooperation as did our forefathers?” Conservative theology has triumphed in our day in our return to the biblical faith of our fathers. Shall we hold just as fiercely to the cooperative methodology instituted by those upon whose shoulders we stand? God has poured out his greatest blessings upon the Southern Baptist convention when the churches, large and small, have cooperated for the sake of world missions and God’s glory. ¹
¹ Brand, Chad and Hankins, David, One Sacred Effort, Broadman & Holman, Nashville