Just as messengers at the national convention did in Dallas, Illinois Baptist messengers at the Annual Meeting in Springfield expressed support for the century-old pillars of Southern Baptist work — the Baptist Faith and Message and Cooperative Program — uniting factors in our shared ministry. Several speakers held them up as key to the effective gospel advance by a network of 47,000 disparate churches.
Executive Director Nate Adams pointed to the rise of liberalism in the culture in the early 1900s, and the reclamation needed at that time, that made 1925 “a year to remember.” Southern Baptists responded with their first statement of faith, and with creating a system for funding missions that was unified and reliable.
With $20 billion given to missions since then, CP has proven effective in placing and keeping missionaries on the field. But it was adoption of the first BF&M that proved more controversial at the time—and again in 2000.
Kelley on cooperation
Chuck Kelley
In 1925, some who felt strongly that Baptists are not a creedal people questioned adopting a possible creed. But the new statement based largely on the New Hampshire Confession of Faith generally held Baptist theology steady through the Depression and War years.
By the middle of the century, however, cultural forces were pushing Christian theology leftward. Under the direction of respected pastor, theologian, and Sunday School curriculum writer Hershel Hobbs, the document was rewritten in 1963. But a drift had already begun. By 1979, some leaders recognized the turn and full-fledged movement began to reclaim traditional Baptist views.
Into the 1990s, much of the debate was over the language of inerrancy of Scripture.
“It had never happened before, but a convention that had moved to the theological left, moved back to its conservative roots,” said Chuck Kelley, president emeritus of New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary.
Kelley was on the blue-ribbon committee of 15 people, led by Memphis pastor Adrian Rogers, that revised the Baptist Faith and Message (2000). Kelley was one of three lead writers, along with Southern Seminary President Al Mohler and Paige Patterson, at the time President of Southeastern Seminary and later President of Southwestern Seminary.
Kelley told a dramatic story about the adoption of the 2000 version in which SBC messengers debated one sentence for an hour. While the new document did not use the word inerrancy, that sentence in question was about the nature of the Bible. As time elapsed, one last messenger was recognized at random at a floor microphone. He said of the debate over the Bible, “After all, it’s just a book.”
“Have you ever heard 12,000 people inhale all at once?!” Kelley said of the messengers’ response. After that, the statement about the Bible including the enduring description “truth without mixture of error” was overwhelmingly adopted.
That moment marked the conservative reclamation of the SBC.
“Southern Baptists have one foundation—God’s holy Word,” Kelley said in his Illinois appearance. The statement of faith serves as a roadmap to that Word, not a replacement.
“Illinois Baptists, don’t ever stop reading this book. Don’t just read it, learn it. You will never stop learning from it,” Kelley said. The statesman who punctuates sermons with “that ancient Hebrew word ‘Wow!’” shared his personal faith journey since losing his wife to cancer in 2024. “God will take things from it and teach you things he doesn’t teach anyone else. You may read a verse you’ve read a thousand times and he will teach you something new.”
Kelley leaned forward. “Illinois Baptists stand on this book and take what you learn from it.” Wow.
Dew on unity
From generation to generation some things don’t seem to change. Jamie Dew, Kelley’s successor as president of New Orleans Seminary, told messengers. “Our students that come to us are still poor.”
And he explained, “It costs us as an institution, and our budget is about half of what some of the other seminaries are, $68,000 a day to run our school.”
Students with little funds to pay for tuition, coupled with the skyrocketing costs of higher education, Dew asked, “How in the world do we pull that off? Because we get about $6.2 million a year from you, from the churches of the Southern Baptist Convention.
“Quite frankly, it’s so much more than that. It’s an investment in the Kingdom of God itself.” That’s the power of the Cooperative Program.
“It’s deeply, deeply encouraging to come up north and see believers strong and well, (to see) churches strong and well, being faithful.”
Dew challenged Illinois Baptists to continue be the best version of themselves—the version that is united and cooperates in the mission—rather than their worst version. Dew told about his own journey from failure to success to pride—and finally to seeing Jesus as his example for humility He drew from Paul’s Christological Hymn in Philippians 2, which describes Jesus as fully God and yet poured out for the sake of his mission.
Paul’s call for believers to be like-minded in Phil. 2:5 is hard. “Paul, I love ya buddy, but it just doesn’t seem possible,” Dew said. But God makes it possible.
Dew said as a younger man selfish ambition led him to dream of gaining status and recognition. Years after achieving his dreams, he came across an old journal from his first year as a Christian. As he read his 18-year-old self’s prayers—simple, passionate, and full of love for Jesus—he realized how far he’d drifted from that early devotion.
“I hadn’t known that love for the Lord in a very long time,” he admitted. “The last fourteen years, I’ve been trying to get back to that kid—the one who had nothing but Jesus and wanted nothing but Jesus.”
Dew praised earlier generations of Southern Baptists who gave, served, and sacrificed without seeking applause. “They didn’t do it to be known,” he said. “They did it because they just wanted to follow Jesus Christ.”
He warned of the temptation to build personal platforms and brands has replaced selflessness. The best version of Southern Baptists, he argued, are those who are humble, united, and devoted to the mission — not those seeking power or status.
“Don’t forget your first love,” he urged. “Walk in unity, serve selflessly, and carry the baton for Christ.”