“In 2009, Baptists will celebrate a huge 400th birthday party. Born in 1609, they began, as all infants, struggling to survive. Today, however, Baptists number 43 million people in over 200 countries in every continent of the world. Hassled, heckled, and persecuted both in England and America in the seventeenth century, Baptists of the twenty-first century have become the largest Protestant denominational family in North America. Baptists have come a very long way!”[1]
Many Baptist denominations still exist today. The Cooperative Baptist Fellowship is continuing to grow and thrive. The Fellowship is determining where the future is going to lead and how the Fellowship as Baptist leaders will lead into the future.
In 2008, Jimmy Carter sponsored the meeting of the New Baptist Covenant Celebration. With an estimated 12,000 to 15,000 participants, this meeting was historic. It was historic in the sense that it was the first time that African American and White Baptists had come together for worship and for planning for the future. While the details of what will come out of this meeting are still being determined, it was interesting to be a part of something so new and so fresh.
At a recent meeting with a CBF administrator, we asked what was the future of CBF? Her answer was, “What do you want it to be?” So as a challenge, let us think about what we want Baptists to be. Baptists will continue to grow and thrive and to follow the scripture and to live for religious freedoms. Baptists will always have unity and diversity because we have the freedom to choose and believe as we wish to. So the question remains, as a Baptist, what do you believe and where do you want Baptists to be in the next generation?
[1] Baptist History and Heritage Society, Turning Points in Baptist History by Walter Shurden, 2001. Available from http://www.centerforbaptiststudies.org/pamphlets/style/turningpoints.htm Internet: Accessed 6 April 2008.
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