Barnabas File

Former TCBF Coordinators Ircel Harrison and Terry Maples  with  present Coordinator Rick Bennett (right) If you are like me, most days you receive one or more appeals to fund some organization. Usually we know little or nothing about those organizations.   Let me share a request today for one that is important to me personally, one you probably know something about and whose mission may impact you and your church. Recent actions of the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship Governing Board related to hiring have been disappointing to many of us.  The Hiring Policy itself is a very positive step, but the implementation plan adopted is discriminatory.  This has harmed the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship movement in many ways.  Some conservative churches and organizations who reject the openness of the Hiring Policy will no longer support the Fellowship, while progressive Baptists and churches who love and embrace all people feel that their...

The messengers from First Baptist Church, Jefferson City, Tennessee, will not be seated at the annual meeting of the Tennessee Baptist Convention because they have called a woman as “senior pastor.”   According to the organization’s constitution and by-laws, this means that First Baptist is no longer a “cooperating church” although they still send funds to the state convention.   Of course, the church’s members also have the option of supporting other Baptist organizations as well.   This process is an expression of the Baptist principle of congregational autonomy. After 140 years of relationship, the convention is leaving the church.  Some have responded to the church’s desire to continue to cooperate with other Tennessee Baptist churches through the TBC as “ridiculous” and “co-dependent.”  They fail to understand several things about Baptist churches in Tennessee. First, believe it or not, members of a congregation have different opinion...