Voices: Why my church gave up on Annie’s offering

Annie Armstrong, a historical figure in Southern Baptist life largely responsible for the creation of the Woman’s Missionary Union and known for cooperative missions, has an offering named after her that supports the work of the North American Mission Board.

She is credited with blazing a path for women to serve in the Southern Baptist Convention when our society did not allow women to vote, and notably gained support for two of the first Black female missionaries.

For this reason, I took notice when news was shared that NAMB will continue to be exclusive in its distribution of its offering funds in Texas, only allowing them to be utilized by churches willing to plant other churches that affirm the Baptist Faith & Message 2000.

Exclusivity in sharing the gospel is not part of Annie’s legacy, and I find it difficult to imagine her being pleased with this situation.

NAMB’s theological position notwithstanding, you can be sure many gave what once was considered sound biblical and theological reasoning to oppose Annie’s work to include women as both missionaries and organizers of mission work.

Over time, however, these secondary theological issues took a backseat to the primacy of gospel cooperation in a previous era of SBC history.

Today, I serve a conservative, cooperative, autonomous Texas Baptist church that recently voted to cease giving to the Annie Armstrong Easter Offering due to NAMB’s continued insistence my church’s values be excluded in its church-planting partnerships.

On being conservative

While many associate conservatism with numerous ideas and movements, when used in a positive sense in Baptist life, it typically is associated with theological orthodoxy and a prioritizing of the Bible.

Before I was called to my current church, they went through a two-year, intentional-interim period in which they identified “Bible-teaching, preaching, and practicing” as one of their core values. From this value comes a self-identified mission “to serve, evangelize, and disciple individuals while loving God, and loving others.”

For us, a large part of being conservative is to prioritize the Great Commission and the Great Commandment.

When being interviewed by the search committee, I was “grilled” by the oldest member of the group, a matriarch of the church, about which version of the BFM I affirmed.

I told her I affirmed the 1963 BFM for three reasons:

1. Unlike the 2000 BFM, the 1963 BFM does not purport itself to be an instrument of doctrinal accountability.

2. The 1963 BFM favors a Christocentric view of Scripture, which more naturally lends itself to a prioritizing of the Great Commission and Great Commandment.

3. And the 1963 BFM does not seek to tell churches who they can or cannot call as pastors in fulfilling the Great Commission.

She responded, “That’s what I needed to hear.”

On being cooperative

Does this mean our church is ready to hire a female as its next pastor, since the 1963 BFM does not prohibit doing so? Likely, not. We do not even have female deacons at this point.

We reflect the typical, traditional values you would expect in a small-town, county-seat community.

We do not largely think of ourselves as “progressive,” nor do we strive to “rock-the-boat” on most theological or political issues.

That being said, when push comes to shove, we value and protect the importance of cooperation due to our history and how we have seen God use this value in our midst.

We have had members serve and support Texans on Mission—formerly Texas Baptists Men—short-term mission teams across denominational lines, and individual missionaries and organizations without worrying about whether we were in full agreement on secondary issues, because we were confident in our unity in the gospel.

Perhaps, we understand this most intimately and regularly on a local level, where we get the privilege of being a “community church” that not only connects with numerous kids and youth from non-churched backgrounds during our mid-week programming, but also utilizes and welcomes volunteers from other gospel-oriented churches in sharing Jesus with them.

In an effort to celebrate this cooperation, I have “pulpit-swapped” with the pastor of our local Methodist church and even allowed him to baptize—by immersion, in the Llano River—a child whose family attends our church, since she received Christ at camp with him.

On being autonomous

Autonomy is a buzz word in Baptist life, but the profile that described my church to me as a potential applicant demonstrated it was much more to our people. While the profile recognized the spiritual leadership and call of the pastor, it also affirmed the role of committees and other groups and individuals in bringing decisions before the church during conference.

As if this did not make it clear enough, the profile summarized and clarified their intent by affirming: “We are committed to congregational church governance.”

For reasons outside the purview of this article, autonomy can be overlooked and compromised in Baptist churches. Whether in an effort to “kowtow” to the charismatic personality or authoritarian demands of a dynamic pastor, or in the name of efficiency and relevancy, processes and systems that promote autonomy under the lordship of Christ sometimes are done away with in an effort to “get things done.”

If my congregation is not willing to sacrifice the value of autonomy in its ordinary operations, it most certainly will not stand for it from a denominational entity.

My conservative, cooperative, autonomous church gave up on Annie’s offering because NAMB gave up on the spirit of Annie’s legacy.

Matt Richard is pastor of First Baptist Church in Llano.