CBF partners with Latin American Baptists, foundation_50205

Posted: 4/29/05

CBF partners with Latin
American Baptists, foundation

By Lance Wallace

Cooperative Baptist Fellowship

ATLANTA–Cooperative Baptist Fellowship Global Missions has signed a two-year partnership agreement with the Piper Foundation and United Baptists of Latin America to start churches in Central and South America.

For each of the next two years, the Fellowship will provide funding for conferences in Latin America that will focus on preaching, church planting and missions opportunities.

The agreement calls for directing volunteers from CBF-affiliated churches in North America to work alongside United Baptist of Latin America church plant-ers as they launch churches. The plan also includes inviting Central and South American churches to participate in service opportunities with CBF Global Missions around the world.

“We are committed to the partnership model as we work among the most neglected,” said CBF Global Missions Coor-dinator Barbara Baldridge. “The partnership with the Piper Institute gives us a strategic way to work with Christians in Central and South America who seek to be the presence of Christ in their context. We look forward to working alongside Piper in this initiative.”

A key component of the new relationship will be developing partnerships between Piper and Fellowship state and regional organizations. Through partnerships between local CBF churches and the 21 UBLA national Baptist conventions on church planting, Piper expects to reach its commitment of starting 50,000 new churches in the next 15 years.

“We plan to see each CBF state organization partner with one national Baptist convention in UBLA,” said Bill Nichols, chairman of Piper's board of directors. “This type of church planting and training partnership plan is unprecedented.”

Founded in 2004, the Piper Institute of Church Planting is led by Executive Director Merlin Merritt and President Otto Arango of McAllen and is headquartered in San Antonio. It is named for Katy Piper and her late husband, Paul, who founded the Christ is Our Salvation Foundation, which helped fund the institute.

“The Piper Institute strategy focuses on one simple truth: Laypeople sensing the call of Christ can be trained to start churches and become effective lay ministers,” Merritt said. “Their educational levels, social status or backgrounds do not prohibit them from serving Christ. We've already seen hundreds of lay men and women who have had no opportunity to go to college or seminary become effective church plant-ers.”

Arango's training and education model for church planters are the chief ways the strategy is implemented, according to Merritt. Arango is president of UBLA and has made strides in starting churches in Mexico in the past year.

“Brother Arango has gone into Mexico and South America and has talked to the national convention leaders and won them over to embrace the Piper Institute strategy,” Merritt said. “He's a real motivator and is able to get people on board.”

For more information on Piper, visit www.piperinstitute.com and for more on CBF Global Missions, visit www.thefellowship.info/Global Missions/.