Dr. A.T. Jamison
In looking at the current Great Commission Resurgence conversation and the original discussions surrounding the formation and implementation of the Cooperative Program, I’ve been amazed at the similarity of the rhetoric. As I said in Part 2, Baptists seemed to be pretty on board with the general concept of the Cooperative Program in 1925. The idea of pooling resources to meet the needs of a wide variety of Baptist causes rather than taking up a special offering for each really seemed to make sense. After the Southern Baptist Convention approved the Cooperative Program, messengers to most state conventions quickly followed suit.
However, it didn’t take long for differing ideas about the way to view CP to surface. One of the very first concerns expressed was that the Cooperative Program was moving Southern Baptists toward “centralization” and away from a model that truly valued the autonomy of the local church. In 1926, the president of the South Carolina Baptist Convention, Dr. A.T. Jamison, denounced “denominational machinery” in lamenting that that “the cause is always weakened when local people look to some general central agency and pass up responsibility to them.” The same week that sermon was reported on, Kentucky’s Western Recorder newspaper also decried that “the accepted voices of religious faith have seemed to speak in terms of expediency and ‘efficiency’ oftener than in those of spiritual power and devotion.”
The sentiment seems remarkably similar to some of those being expressed today. Whether in discussing the size, structure or relative power of various state and national denominational bodies or in defending the primacy of the local church, some Baptists are saying that too much energy is being put into the machinery that drives our mission and not enough into fulfilling the mission itself. This is certainly a valid concern to a point. It’s kind of like saying that we don’t want to spend so much effort doing maintenance on the car that we never take the trip to our destination. It’s also valid to say, though, that without putting in gas and oil and regularly maintaining the engine, we’re unlikely to get very far no matter how strong our focus is on the destination.
One of the things that is really interesting about this, both then and now, is that we as Baptists tend to couch our concerns in very nuanced language. For instance, even as Dr. Jamison lamented “denominational machinery,” he also said he wasn’t looking to make changes.
“Nor shall I even assert that certain changes should be made to our present plans,” he said. “My effort to is to call attention to certain principles.”
Likewise, the Western Recorder was very much a pro-CP newspaper that said “we have no quarrel to make on any organizational machinery now operative. We have no plan to propose to gear it differently.”
Again, this seems quite similar to much of what is being said today. On one hand, we see Baptists affirm current denominational structures even as they call for change. It’s not exactly a paradox but it does make me think of us as being people who want to eat our cake and have it too. We want to be autonomous at the same time we want to act as a cohesive unit for fulfilling the Great Commission. We want to call for change but we want those parts that we like, as individuals, to stay the same.
Maybe we should call that healthy tension because I’m not sure that it’s a bad thing. We all have our views but at the same time recognize that we may not have all the answers. We want to be heard but we also want to stay in the Lord’s will and are sensitive to how He may be speaking through other Christians.
The truth of this may be seen in what happened in 1927 when Baptists ended up expanding the powers of the Executive Committee in a move that was seen as both a way to streamline the Convention and decentralize power by creating a more efficient organizational structure that was more representative of Southern Baptists. The 1927 Convention was held, interestingly enough, in Louisville and this plan was seen as “not more plan but power; not more machinery but more steam.”
The discussion about big denominational structures isn’t the only rhetorical comparison to make between the mid-20s and today. The biggie — the conversation about missions and getting enough money to the international mission field — was as much a part of the discussion then as it is now. I’ll hit that topic in the next post and I think you’ll be amazed at how similar the rhetoric then and now really is.
My first and longest conversation about the Cooperative Program was in 1964 as we sailed on a freighter to Liberia to begin our career as foreign misssionaries. The few passengers included a couple returning to Mali, having served there at least 30 years already. They asked about our deputation and money-raising experiences. We told about the Cooperative Program and how it relieved us from raising money for ourselves and our work or writing sob-story letters to continue getting support.
When we were in port in Louisiana and visited a church, the couple was surprised at the welcome we received. We told them it was because all Southern Baptists considered all missionaries their missionaries because of the Cooperative Program. Conversations and explanations continued all the way across the Atlantic and down the coast of West Africa.
During a Liberia Baptist/State Convention Partnership two persons helped a missionary in the interior. As they were being driven back to the capital to return home, they asked what would happen to that area’s work when all the volunteers from their state left. The driver had hours of travel to explain the Cooperative Program and the Lottie Moon Christmas Offering.
We were welcomed in any SBC church as its missionaries because they gave to our support and prayed for our ministries.
The Cooperative Program made it possible for us to write truthful prayer requests without making them sound good so money would be given to our personal ministries. The CP was a brilliant concept.