Point of View

If you are a Southern Baptist what do you need to know about the Cooperative Program? Is it merely a way to support the denomination, or is it a relevant, viable process that makes a difference in people’s lives beginning where you live and extending around the world?

The Cooperative Program has the potential, when rightly employed, for moving Southern Baptist missions and ministries from the ordinary, the average, the good – to superlative, outstanding, great fruitfulness for the Kingdom of God.

YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT THE GREAT STRATEGY

Jesus said, “The laborers are few.” Even as He prayed for more laborers, He envisioned a plan for carrying out His mission. In Acts 1:8, as Jesus was approaching his ascension to heaven, He gave the church a battle strategy. The church would move out in concentric circles starting in Jerusalem and then into Judea and Samaria and then to the uttermost parts of the earth. Jesus saw His church as an ever-moving, ever-expanding, relentless, marching army of evangelists intending to reach the ends of the earth. That is how He envisioned His Kingdom’s work.

The Cooperative Program embodies this same strategy. While Baptists are ministering in their local “Jerusalems,” the Cooperative Program allows them to engage the rest of the world, outside Jerusalem, and into Judea and into Samaria and the uttermost parts of the earth. It is the local church’s vehicle for implementing the Great Commission. We have identified four characteristics (the four Cs) that make the Cooperative Program a thoroughly biblical, unusually efficient, and superbly effective plan for reaching the world with the Gospel.

The Cooperative Program is coherent rather than chaotic. There is a plan. The Cooperative Program is intentional and purposeful. It utilizes a thoughtful, prayerful strategy. Have you ever watched five-year-olds play soccer? The action in these games often consists of one player for each team sitting in opposite goals while the other 20 players from both teams move in a little mass of arms and legs wherever the ball is. It isn’t very artful or effective although it is usually quite energetic and cute. As the children grow older, they are taught a more successful strategy for playing soccer, which covers the whole field and involves a thoughtful plan for actually getting the ball in the goal.

Some mission endeavors, while enthusiastic and well-intended, do not have a coherent plan for accomplishing their aims. They may not lack for enthusiasm, but they are not given to strategic planning or reliable reporting. The Cooperative Program undergirds a thoughtful, coherent, intentional strategy for systematically reaching the goal.

Second, the Cooperative Program is constant rather than spasmodic. As mentioned earlier, when the Southern Baptist Convention was founded, the dream was that it would be a way to “elicit and combine and direct the energies” of the Baptist denomination in America to reach the world with the Gospel. The problem is that while it was a great dream, there was no mechanism to make that dream a reality. Every Baptist ministry pursued its own aims and solicited its own support. It was an inefficient system. Those who depend on this “societal” or independent system of support today know it still is inefficient.

The leaders of our SBC mission boards often meet with peers in other evangelical missions groups to pray for one another and share what is going on. Those other groups often bemoan the fact that swings in the economy are causing their missionaries to have to come home because they do not have the stream of support they need. Their missionary forces are shrinking at a time when the population is burgeoning.

Southern Baptists can be thankful to God for the Cooperative Program because it is a constant stream of support. Year in, year out, the missionaries are supported. They don’t have to come home and spend months of their time trying to get commitments. Our seminarians can finish school and begin their ministries without an undue burden of “education” debt because the Cooperative Program has paid a great portion of the cost of seminary preparation. All over the nation church planters, college ministers, church growth strategists, and other denominational workers give their full time and attention to their tasks without having to take time out to solicit financial support.

The Cooperative Program is also comprehensive rather than isolated. The strategy reaches all across the United States and its territories as well as around the globe. Southern Baptist missiologists have the task of strategizing on how to reach into the parts of the world that have not yet been reached. They understand the goal is the “ends of the earth.” They will settle for nothing less.

When a congregation – even the tiniest congregation – gives through the Cooperative Program, it is participating in a comprehensive approach that reaches everywhere, everyday, every year.

Recent decades have seen the growing popularity among Baptists of short-term mission trips. Mission trips are useful ministries for Baptist work. They allow church members to see firsthand the needs of people in different places. They provide opportunities for personal ministry and witness. Participants return home inspired and committed to missions. Many eventually commit their lives to full-time mission service. As useful as short-term mission trips are, a caution is in order. Congregations must remember that the local church partnership mission trip is not a substitute for the Cooperative Program. It’s a supplement to it. If churches are not careful, they will allow their interest in one particular isolated mission field to consume all their time and resources to the neglect of the rest of the world. A comprehensive strategy, made possible by the Cooperative Program, is crucial. It is the foundation that makes mission trips successful.

The Cooperative Program is cooperative rather than competitive. In the early days, the name was spelled and pronounced “Co-operative” Program. It literally means to “work together.” It reminds us that we can do more together than we can do separately. It generates synergy. Synergy means the whole is greater than the sum of the parts. The Cooperative Program allows congregations of all sizes and strengths to make a difference in a common task. It reduces duplication and redundancy in mission endeavors. It maximizes resources, planning, personnel, and results. The Cooperative Program sets us free from the temptation to control, to be concerned about getting credit, and the limitations of personal preferences and interests. It allows for the unleashing of a myriad of contributors marshaled into a mighty force for achieving great results.

This column is the second of four adapted from “One Sacred Effort” by Chad Brand and David Hankins. Copyright 2005. Used with permission. All rights reserved.