Cooperating for the Gospel

DALLAS (BP) – In 1925, Southern Baptists faced a “percolating maelstrom of denominational uncertainty,” Executive Committee President Jeff Iorg said in his EC report to messengers to the 2025 SBC Annual Meeting June 10. And in a time when solutions were needed, “courageous leaders redefined cooperation.”

One of the most important new sentences in the proposed revised Business and Financial Plan is in the first section – The Cooperative Program. Under the heading Priority, the Plan declares, “The financial health of the Convention is predicated on generous giving by churches through the Cooperative Program, and the Convention appeals to churches to prioritize giving through the Cooperative Program.”

Cooperation as a convictional, operational mindset is the foundation of the movement known as Southern Baptists. Many Southern Baptists equate cooperation with the Cooperative Program, our common funding mechanism, but it is much more than that. Cooperation is the theological and theoretical foundation upon which our movement rests.

DAVEO CITY, Philippines – Chris Cook, pastor of Parkade Baptist in Columbia, Mo., didn’t know what to think when Pastor Mayinto Ganzon reached out to him on Facebook in November of 2023.

Members of the 1936 U.S. Olympic Rowing team depicted in the movie “The Boys in the Boat” were able to accomplish far more than anyone expected because they discovered what can happen when you work together in perfect unity. There is something that happens when rowers are in perfect rhythm and sync with one another. It is called “swing.”

AUSTIN, Texas -- More than three dozen people from Acts Fellowship Church in Austin have gone to seminary, including 20 who have trained at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary—a testament to the vitality of a Cooperative Program partnership.

DANVILLE, Ky. (BP) — Signs emerge when a church is in trouble. Memberships and baptisms dip. The sounds of youth and children barely, if ever, echo through the halls. Building maintenance is deferred for longer periods of time.

KIBERA, Kenya (BP) – Matt Beasley, lead pastor of Severns Valley Baptist Church in Elizabethtown, Ky., conducted global missions the two years he and his wife Valerie were International Mission Board church planters in Prague.

This fall I was able to travel to several state convention annual meetings. I was continually moved by the sacrificial generosity that was shared and celebrated on many fronts.

RUSSELL SPRINGS, Ky. — When Christian Naylor told his church that he was prepared to lead a class to train men about preaching, little did he realize how soon that class would pay kingdom dividends.