The Great Commission Resurgence Evaluation Task Force is currently studying the effectiveness of the resurgence. One lens they must use is the perspective of Baptist associations.
They should look at one strategic factor, one spiritual factor and one learning factor.
The strategic factor is collaboration. The work of the Holy Spirit is the spiritual factor. Capacity building is a learning process.
Collaboration outshines cooperation
Baptists talk about cooperation, especially when giving money through the denomination to national and world missions. The Cooperative Program continues as the primary missions-giving vehicle through which we support the Great Commission.
This funding stream’s title and other historic uses of the word “cooperation” imply that everyone is cooperating with everyone else. When this is the case, the use of this word is helpful and reassuring.
Yet the word “cooperation” sounds different when uttered by some regional and national leaders. Do they mean for everyone to cooperate with them?
Implied is that associations should cooperate with regional and national initiatives rather than every dimension mutually cooperating with one another.
If this is true, we need a fresh word to talk about our mutual Kingdom strategy. I offer the word “collaboration.”
In our denomination we must use all resources to catalyze a radical spiritual difference in the lives of people, using every church and all three dimensions of our denominational system to make this possible.
This means associations, state and regional conventions and the national and international agencies would be in full collaboration. They would be equal partners empowering God’s mission through churches.
Clearly hearing the voice of the Holy Spirit
Where is the voice of the Holy Spirit clearest?
I believe the voice of the Holy Spirit is clearest in the local context where people live out God’s mission daily. The voice of the Holy Spirit is locally contextual and personal as well as global and inspiring for all believers.
While the voice of the Holy Spirit is also heard regionally, nationally and internationally, it may not be fully understood outside of a deep and daily compassion for the local context.
It is difficult for regional and national leaders to understand how missional engagement will work in each context. Therefore, their strategies must be frameworks within which local contextual strategies are developed and empowered.
It is not possible for a regional, national or international denominational program to work in every context. The spiritual passion of churches in association must be part of the customization and resourcing of missional engagement.
It is true that local leaders can become myopic and stale about the urgency of the good news in their context. Thus, local missional engagements need all dimensions of the denomination as they together discern the movement of the Holy Spirit.
Capacity building keeps the movement going
Short-term, measurable progress can be made in an associational context by regional or national entities. They can and do engage in direct rather than collaborative strategic efforts in a local context.
Too often this is short term and shortsighted.
The challenge is not about producing quick outputs and impacts. It is about learning how to engage in capacity building and sustainability so that Kingdom progress is continual and happens year after year.
What is often missed is capacity building of both existing and new churches in the local context. National or regional strategies cycle in and out. The churches in association are around long term. They must be empowered for sustainable ministry.
Where churches in association can best contribute to capacity building is in the planting of new churches.
Missional strategist Ed Stetzer declared in recent years a challenge for church planting. In the mid-1990s many denominations benched the local church as the primary sponsor or partner for planting new churches.
Denominations adopted a parachurch model of church planters starting churches rather than churches starting churches. Church planting was driven directly by the national denominational dimension once the resurgence was implemented.
Stetzer went on to say we need to “unbench” the local church as the primary planter of new churches. Rebuild the capacity of churches in association to plant churches.
National strategies using a parachurch model of planters launching churches will never reach and sustain the needed capacity of starting enough new churches.
