We find one of the earliest expressions of cooperative giving in the early church. As the apostle Paul advances his missionary journeys, he encourages churches to give for the relief of the church in Jerusalem, which was experiencing material poverty and suffering (2 Corinthians 9).
Paul expresses gratitude because of the sacrificial giving of churches in various regions, for the way in which God was glorified through this sharing of financial resources to meet the needs of others, and the thanksgiving that resulted from both giving and receiving churches.
More together
Once, when I was a young pastor, I was in the presence of several other pastors. One of them asked, “Why should my church give through the Cooperative Program?” In posing his question, it was evident what he was really asking was, “What does my church get in return?”
Another more seasoned pastor replied: “I’ll tell you what my church gets out of giving through the Cooperative Program. We get the best bang for our missions buck.”
For him, the benefit of giving was knowing his church’s cooperative missions dollars would go far. It was about doing together what we cannot do alone. I resonated with that sentiment then and now.
The role of the state convention in facilitating the work of churches joining their finances, prayers, and effort together continues to be relevant today. How else can a church of any size participate in Baptist Student Ministries on 137 college campuses engaging over 17,000 students? How else can we support the work of over 600 Texas Baptists-endorsed chaplains around the world?
I think of the dozens of church plants in Texas, North America, and the rest of the world. I think of the work of 16 River Ministry missionaries along both sides of the border from Brownsville to El Paso, where 24,067 people have been served this year and more than 3,100 professions of faith have been made.
We celebrate the 2,000 students preparing for ministry at Texas Baptists universities and seminaries. And the list goes on.
Shift in need and expectation
Yet, we recognize, while this cooperative work is important and necessary, what churches need and expect from a state convention has shifted. If we were to oversimplify this, we could say it is a shift from outsourcing to resourcing.
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Many churches today do not only look to the convention to do kingdom work on their behalf as they send their prayers, dollars, and other support. Churches also expect the state convention to provide them with resources to carry out their mission. This is not necessarily new, but there is a new level of need and expectation.
The reasons for this shift are many and varied. In the past, for most churches, “missions” meant praying, learning about missionaries, and sending money to the association and the convention.
Today, many churches are directly engaged in missions both locally and globally. This includes short-term mission trips, direct support to missionaries and agencies, and more. This is a good thing.
Additionally, an overwhelming majority of churches are experiencing some form of decline in attendance, membership, baptisms, and financial contributions. The reasons for this are many and beyond the scope of my purpose here.
Yet, the reality is, while our state population grows at a fast rate, most of our churches are not growing and some are even closing their doors. Texas is becoming more lost every day.
Change in cooperative relationships
There was a day when Baptists effectively and efficiently organized their work beyond the local church into associations, state conventions, and the national convention. The local association was the closest ally to the local church, providing resources, connections, encouragement, and accountability.
State conventions were perceived as helping to coordinate the work with institutions and ministries, providing events and resources at a statewide level that would inform, inspire, and equip leaders and members in the work of evangelism, discipleship, and missions.
The national convention served churches by training, sending, and sustaining missionaries in North America and around the world, supporting theological education through its seminaries, and producing programs and resources that provided Southern Baptist churches general similarity in the way they did worship, Sunday School, age-group ministry, and missions education.
To be sure, many associations, state conventions, and the national convention still do these things, and, for the most part, they should. What is different is not all churches relate to them in the same way. In fact, not all churches relate to all of these groupings.
Furthermore, the general similarity of Baptist churches is less so. Baptist churches have customized their worship and ministries around perceived needs and available resources within or outside the denomination. Churches have unique contexts and are at different stages in their life cycle.
Renewed focus
The bottom line is Texas Baptists needs a renewed focus on the local church. Not that Texas Baptists has not served the local church before, but we need to do it in a new way. Churches can benefit from a customized and contextualized approach to help them live out God’s mission.
The metrics for success in church ministry have traditionally been the three B’s: bodies, budgets, and buildings. In other words, church attendance, money in the offering plate, and the size of the church campus or its capital campaigns. These could be vital signs of a church’s health.
Yet, when we look at the Great Commandment and the Great Commission, we discern God’s metrics of success are loving God with all we have, loving our neighbor well, and making disciples of all nations. While these are difficult to measure, they are what matters most to the Lord. When we focus on these, it will become evident in other more visible ways.
GC2 Strong strategy
Our GC2 Strong strategy assumes what will turn the tide regarding the decline in church growth, baptisms, church starting, and cooperative giving is an awakening among our churches, empowered by the Holy Spirit. It starts and ends with prayer.
The strategy also recognizes the best way to face the lostness in our state, country, and world is not for the state convention to do Great Commandment and Great Commission work on behalf of the church, but for the state convention to walk alongside the church as it lives out the Great Commandment and the Great Commission.
That is why our focus is strengthening churches, strengthening ministers, and strengthening missions engagement. As we do this, we desire to collaborate with local associations, too.
Decentralized staff
Recently there has been dialogue about the organizational model of Texas Baptists being either centralized (in Dallas) or decentralized around geographical regions of the state. To be sure, the BGCT operates in a kind of hybrid model.
Over half of the Texas Baptists ministry staff maintains an office beyond the two floors of the Rambler Park office building in Dallas. In addition to regional GC2 navigators and church planting mobilizers, all Baptist Student Ministry workers live close to their campuses around the state.
The River Ministry coordinator lives in El Paso. The director of bivocational ministry lives in Houston. The director of public policy lives near Austin. The director of Intercultural Ministry lives in Houston.
The director of Chaplaincy Relations shares his time between Texas and Virginia. The Historical Collection staff live in Waco. Three of the four Texas Baptist Missions Foundation staff live in Houston, Waco, and Plainview.
The Pave en Español specialist lives in the Rio Grande Valley. The director of the ISAAC immigration ministry lives in El Paso. This is your Texas Baptists staff.
Texas Baptists staff live and work where they can be most effective in serving the church and the ministries assigned to them. While they have specific assignments, all of them are encouraged to engage with local churches. The Rambler Park offices are not the headquarters but a support center, facilitating ministry around the state and beyond.
If the question is about centralization or decentralization, the answer should not be about where Texas Baptists staff offices are located, but about the centrality of the local church. The local church is our headquarters. That’s where GC2 Strong aims to be and serve.
Would you pray for a supernatural movement of God? Would you join him where he is working?
Julio Guarneri is the executive director of the Baptist General Convention of Texas. This opinion article is adapted from his September 9 weekly update.
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