Last December, not long after the Hamas attack on Israel, I wrote in this column about World War I, and how compassion for the physically devastated and spiritually lost people of Europe led Baptist churches to work together like never before to send missionaries and relief to the world.
The 1925 Southern Baptist Convention then focused our dual passion for the Bible and the Great Commission by forming The Baptist Faith and Message doctrinal statement and the Cooperative Program missions system. To this day, The Baptist Faith and Message continues to facilitate multi-church unity around God’s word, and the Cooperative Program continues to facilitate multi-church cooperation in God’s mission.
In May I shared my personal CP story, briefly recounting multiple ways that I now understand how the ministries of the Cooperative Program deeply blessed my life and empowered me for ministry. I believe many Illinois Baptists have a personal CP story, and I continue to encourage you to share yours.
Now, six months before the Cooperative Program’s centennial year begins, I would like to appeal to each pastor, each missions leader, each devoted church member, to consider our rich missions heritage, and our still desperately lost state and world, and to lead our churches to a bold new commitment to Cooperative Program missions, starting afresh in 2025.
Between now and the end of the year, most churches will be forming annual budgets that will include their commitments to missions. Whatever your church may be doing directly in missions, I urge you to prioritize the Cooperative Program as the most significant, foundational way that your church reaches the world. It’s arguably the most important line in each church’s annual budget.
You see, whatever is happening in your personal spiritual life, and however things are going in the life of your church, you can always be confident that, 24/7, the Cooperative Program is sending missionaries, starting churches, preparing ministers, meeting human needs, speaking biblical truth to society and the culture, and advancing the gospel around the world.
So, without apology, I appeal to all of us on behalf of a century of sacrificial missions giving by previous generations. Together, let’s budget to reach the world with a new urgency in 2025.
What might that look like? Some churches have been giving a nominal amount, perhaps more akin to membership dues than sacrificial missions giving. Why not start 2025 with a tithe-like spiritual commitment to missions that is proportionate to your church’s undesignated offerings? Perhaps start by giving one or two percent to the worldwide mission of God?
If your church is already giving a percentage of its undesignated gifts through the CP, why not increase that percentage by one percentage point for 2025, the CP centennial year? For some churches, stretching up to ten percent would not be out of reach.
Moving to percentage giving or increased percentage giving through the Cooperative Program may be a step of faith and sacrifice for some churches. Pastors and leaders will want to make the case for high impact missions giving as 2025 budgets are prepared. And our IBSA staff and I are prepared to help. We would love to come and speak to your church, whether on a Sunday morning, or perhaps during a committee or business meeting. We will help you cast vision for the foundational, missional impact of cooperative missions giving.
Let’s plan now to make 2025 not just a centennial celebration, but our generation’s bold new step in reaching the world, together. Let’s not just talk about it. Let’s put our treasure where our hearts are, and budget to do it.
Nate Adams is executive director of the Illinois Baptist State Association. Respond at IllinoisBaptist@IBSA.org.