GREENSBORO, NC – Transformation, engagement, and community are the operative words in a new vision plan adopted by the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship of North Carolina (CBFNC), which celebrated its 20-year history by looking forward.
“We want to be agents of God’s transformation of the world,” said executive coordinator Larry Hovis. “We do that by engaging others with the good news, which occurs in community: transformation is relational.”
Larry Hovis
More than 900 participants gathered at Greensboro’s First Baptist Church March 28-29 to experience worship and fellowship, to explore some of the 80 workshops offered, and to conduct business.
The Vision Team Report, developed through listening sessions and regular meetings over several years, calls for four areas of focus: showing mercy and seeking justice, nurturing healthy congregations, empowering laity for ministry, and clarifying identity and covenant.
Ray Ammons of Gastonia, moderator for 2013-15, said the team saw no need to expand CBFNC’s current identity statement or to change its mission statement, “Bringing Baptists of North Carolina together for Christ-centered ministry.”
Hovis said the document is not a statement of faith or a set of guidelines, but “a navigational tool to help us discern the vision” and set the course to the future.
Annual assemblies and remaining connected remain essential as CBFNC goes forward, Hovis said. “We believe in autonomy, but we are not independent. We are cooperative: we need each other.”
Participants approved a $1.48 million operating budget, down slightly (2.74 percent) from the previous year. Estimated income and expenditures for 2014-15, including the Mission Resource Plan that forwards church and individual gifts to CBFNC ministries and ministry partners, is $3.74 million.
Professor of Old Testament at Campbell University Divinity School in Buies Creek, North Carolina, and the Contributing Editor and Curriculum Writer at Good Faith Media.
