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Messengers to Vote on Cooperating Church Definition
10/22/2009
ELIZABETHTOWN—When messengers convene at next month’s Kentucky Baptist Convention annual meeting, they will be asked to define a “cooperating” Kentucky Baptist church.
In its 172-year history, the state convention has “never really defined—beyond just a very minimal definition—what a cooperating church is,” noted Stephen Wilson, chair of the KBC’s Committee on Constitution and Bylaws.
The committee presented its first reading of a constitutional amendment at last year’s annual meeting in Lexington. This year, messengers will be asked to vote on the proposal to change the wording of Article III of the constitution.
The article refers to the membership of the KBC’s annual meeting—specifically, its messengers and how many qualify from each church.
The constitution’s current language reads:
“Two messengers from each church having one hundred members or less, which is in friendly cooperation with this convention; is sympathetic with its purposes and work; and has during the fiscal year preceding been a bona fide contributor to the convention’s work.”
In summary, each KBC-affiliated church is allowed two messengers—at minimum—at each annual meeting if they have contributed financially to the convention during the previous year.
According to KBC Assistant Executive Director Steve Thompson, that means if a church has given only $1 to any KBC cause, whether its Cooperative Program, the Eliza Broadus offering or a KBC agency or institution, two of its members are eligible for messenger status.
Beyond that, Article III’s second section states that churches are allowed one additional messenger for every 250 members or $250 given to CP, with a limit of 10 messengers.
Thompson said eligibility is determined by the KBC’s Committee on Credentials using data submitted by Kentucky Baptist churches for the Annual Church Profile. He explained that the churches are solely responsible for reporting their numbers yearly.
With about an 85 percent reporting rate each year, Kentucky Baptist churches are better than most state conventions at reporting their ACP numbers, Thompson said. In 2008, 2,136 of the KBC’s nearly 2,400 congregations reported to the ACP—around 90 percent.
Even so, Thompson said the motivation behind the proposed constitutional revision is to further increase church reporting.
Wilson said the Committee on Constitution and Bylaws chose to take the opportunity to include wording that would conclusively define a cooperating KBC church.
The proposed re-wording of Article III’s first section reads:
“A cooperating Baptist church is in friendly cooperation with this convention; is sympathetic with its purposes and work; has during the fiscal year preceding been a bona fide contributor to the convention’s work; and is understood to be a congregation of baptized believers in general agreement with any of the historic Baptist confessions of faith and willing to voluntarily to report its activities to the offices of the Kentucky Baptist Convention on a regular (usually annual) basis.”
“It really does put some language in there that says churches are expected to report annually through the ACP process,” Thompson said. “We’re just trying to bolster that to give churches that little extra incentive that to be eligible to register messengers, you’re expected to report.”
There is some largely unspoken concern about the meaning of such a definition. Could it be used to potentially exclude churches from the annual meeting or even the convention as a whole?
“Any time the constitution is tweaked, I know with the kind of convention temperament we’ve had in the last 30 years, I always think, ‘Is somebody trying to do something here?’” noted Ken Holden, director of Georgetown College’s Marshall Center for Christian Ministry who sat on the Committee on Constitution and Bylaws when the new language was formulated. “But in this case, I really think it’s more trying to just push churches to do what (KBC leaders) … need them to do to keep good records.”
Wilson said the Committee on Constitution and Bylaws kept the language defining a cooperating church—especially related to the historic Baptist faith confessions—deliberately broad.
“There is no intention of this committee to be exclusive; the intent of this wording is meant to be inclusive,” noted Wilson, who is vice president of academic affairs at Mid-Continent University in Mayfield.
Wilson said the committee took its cue from the KBC’s Baptist Faith & Message Study Committee which in its 2001 report—approved by messengers to that year’s annual meeting—adopted the Bible “as the basis of all our faith and practice,” and affirmed several historic Baptist confessions of faith. These include the Philadelphia Confession of Faith (1742), the New Hampshire Confession of Faith (1833) and the Baptist Faith & Message statement of 1925 and its revisions from 1963, 1998 and 2000.
“This is not a back-door attempt to say that it will be one confession over the other,” Wilson insisted.
The proposed amendment is expected to be presented and voted on during the morning session of the Nov. 10 KBC annual meeting at Severns Valley Baptist Church in Elizabethtown. Because it represents a change to the KBC constitution, the motion requires a two-thirds majority vote to pass.
The Kentucky Baptist Convention is a cooperative missions and ministry organization made up of nearly 2.400 autonomous Baptist churches in Kentucky. A variety of state and worldwide ministries are coordinated through its administrative offices in Louisville, including: missions work, disaster relief, ministry training and support, church development, evangelism and more. For more, find us on Facebook or follow us on Twitter.
