DALLAS — Jeff Iorg said all during this year’s Southern Baptist Convention Annual Meeting in Dallas, messengers have been doing something similar to what the Israelites did in Joshua 4.
In that chapter, “there’s a story of God instructing His people to gather 12 memorial stones from the Jordan River and to create a memorial to the miracle of God stopping the river so the Israelites could cross on dry ground,” Iorg, president of the SBC Executive Committee, said June 10 during the annual meeting’s afternoon session.
The convention’s celebration of the 100th anniversary of the Cooperative Program — the primary funding mechanism of the SBC’s ministries and missions — is like that, he said.
“Throughout this convention, we are erecting memorial stones of 100 years of cooperation demonstrated through the Cooperative Program,” he said. “We point to missionaries sent, churches started, students educated, institutions built and most of all people saved because Southern Baptists have contributed more than $20 billion through the Cooperative Program in the past 100 years.”
Immeasurable impact
Iorg thanked Southern Baptists for every dollar they’ve given and celebrated the “immeasurable eternal impact” of those gifts.
“We celebrate God’s past acts today but more importantly we build this memorial today so we can point to future generations and say, ‘This is what God can do through a people who cooperate together,’” he said.
During the celebration, state executive directors and leaders of SBC entities and ethnic fellowships gathered around Iorg.
Tony Wolfe, executive director of the South Carolina Baptist Convention, said this was a picture of the diversity represented in the group who gathered May 13 in Memphis on the 100th anniversary of its adoption.
That group of 73 leaders ceremonially signed a declaration of cooperation, he said. “Among them was representation of every SBC entity and every affinity group we could imagine so that every Southern Baptist could see himself or herself in at least one name on this signature sheet.”
Now drawn up as a resolution, convention messengers adopted that declaration June 10, and Wolfe said it would be available online for any and every Southern Baptist to sign as a demonstration of unity.
“There are certain historical markers along the timeline of Southern Baptist history that help anchor our cooperative consciousness in the moral and theological uprightness of our one sacred effort,” Wolfe said. “And these markers drive a stake in the ground for contemporary commitment and future cooperation.”
To mark the occasion, he also co-edited a commissioned book for the CP’s centennial — “A Unity of Purpose” — with Madison Grace, provost and vice president for academic administration, dean of the School of Theology and professor of theology at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Fort Worth, Texas.
“Our prayer is that the book will inspire every Southern Baptist to appreciate what God has done through our cooperative efforts in the past and to lead into what we pray He might accomplish through the same in our future,” Wolfe said.
Heroes of the faith
When the CP was adopted in 1925, one of the members of the Futures Commission who presented it was M.E. Dodd, whose great-great-nephew Dan Spencer is now pastor of First Baptist Church, Sevierville.
“M.E. Dodd, whom my mother called Uncle Elmon, has always been a hero in my family,” Spencer told messengers. “His books were on the shelves of our home growing up.”
One of those books, “Missions our Mission,” said the CP was “not to be looked upon in segments with each worker over in a corner attending to his own little job entirely apart from the others; they are not competitors but cooperators in a common cause.”
Spencer read on, “What helps one helps all. What hurts one hurts all. They must all stand or fall together.”
Taffey Hall, director and archivist of the Southern Baptist Historical Library and Archives, said a century ago, “Southern Baptists faced war, economic challenges and theological divides, and yet they came together.”
The “impulse” of Southern Baptists has always been evangelism and missions, she said. “Southern Baptists thought the gospel was needed by the whole world and that we had a way to do that. That’s what motivated Southern Baptists to say, ‘We can do this together.’”
Iorg said he prays Southern Baptists will continue to work together in this way. During the celebration, he also called on two other leaders to pray for the future cooperative work of the convention — Liz Encinia, executive director of Kentucky Woman’s Missionary Union, and Caleb Turner, senior pastor of Mesquite Friendship Baptist Church in Mesquite, Texas.
Iorg said Southern Baptists “celebrate what God has done and look to the future of what God will do as we celebrate 100 years of the Cooperative Program.” B&R