The Cooperative Baptist Fellowship’s annual General Assembly has come and gone. Georgia was honored to host again, welcoming multitudes of friends and Baptist family from across our Fellowship to our great state.
Inspiring sermons, inviting worship music (provided by CBFGA partner church, FBC Gainesville!), engaging breakouts and workshops, an exhilarating opening celebration party, and plenty of promotional swag from ministry partners, along with beautiful art and gifts from field personnel and mission partners around the world — all of these marked our time in Atlanta. The best part of our time together, however, was our time together.
When asked about our work, I often use our name to tell our story. We cooperate because we believe in the increasingly novel idea that together we can do more than we can separately. We are Baptist in tradition, roots, and practice, but we also are committed to working alongside and learning from sisters and brothers from other denominations and even religions. And finally, we’re a fellowship, trying to live out the Greek New Testament word koinonia, sharing ministry, life, and love in common with each other.
For many, at least two of these words have lost their meaning and relevance. In a polarized world, with polarized churches that increasingly silo groups of people, the idea of cooperation can seem like a relic of a bygone era. And do not get me started on the word Baptist, whether you use it as a noun or an adjective. Fellowship, though, conjures up a coming together, a being together, to bring life and light to our individual worlds and, in turn, our broader communities. Fellowship is refreshing water to our dry, weary souls, and connective tissue to our fractured and fragmented world.
I am always grateful when we Cooperative Baptists get together to fellowship. In our churches, nothing says summer more than church picnics, pool parties for children and youth, watermelon or ice cream fellowships, and any number of other occasions to gather. In these gatherings, for a moment, we have an opportunity to set aside our labels, our differences, our points of contention, and just be together for our common good. For a world that hungers for connection and meaning, perhaps that is the best place to start being the people of the Way, as the early Christians were called. Getting together for fellowship pushes back our tendencies to dissolve into our own echo chambers, social media feeds, and singularly-minded tribes. Gathering with friends, neighbors, or even strangers is a powerful witness to God’s intention for humanity: that we are not designed to live alone (Genesis 2:18).
In this issue of Visions, we share updates from our state Field Personnel partners, announce scholarship winners and summer student interns sponsored by CBF, reflect on past events, and peek at coming opportunities in hopes of bringing you and our partner congregations into closer, deeper fellowship with each other and with God. We hope you will join us in the broader Fellowship, because the Good Lord knows we need each other in this life and work.
Jody Long, Executive Coordinator CBFGA, jlong@cbfga.org