Baptist Church Cooperation

Baptists in America trace their movement directly to the first Baptist churches that emerged from English separatism during the middle third of the seventeenth century. From the very early years, they have wrestled with the problem of finding an organizational pattern that would allow them to work together in cooperative enterprises. Three particular needs have made this problem acute.

First, we have felt the need for interchurch fellowship, encouragement, and accountability. This need arises because our churches must answer several very practical questions. Where will a church get its next pastor (and how will a minister find his next church)? Whose ordination should be recognized as acceptable in the process of pastoral change? From what churches should we accept members, and to what churches should we dismiss them? Whose discipline should we recognize, and to what extent should the discipline of other churches be respected? To whom should our churches turn for help and counsel? From whom should we expect it?

Second, we share a responsibility to train the next generation of pastors for our churches. How can we produce pastors who combine a profound grasp of Scripture and doctrine with a mastery of the necessary skills for effective ministry? We might glibly suggest that every church ought to prepare its own pastors, but most churches are not equipped to teach Greek, Hebrew, exegetical skills, systematic and historical theology, and ministry technique. These deficiencies create a problem for Baptist churches to solve together.

Third, Baptist churches often find themselves faced with undertakings that are too large or complicated for most individual congregations. Some of these activities (such as Christian camps) are not biblically mandated. Some, however, are essential to the functioning of a New Testament congregation. For example, we cannot claim to follow the pattern of the New Testament if we are not engaged in the work of worldwide missions. Yet most churches by themselves are not able to send a trained church planter with a family (much less a team of church planters with families) to an unfamiliar country halfway around the world. Sending foreign missionaries is a huge undertaking, well beyond the capabilities of most individual congregations.

Baptist churches have always tried to respond to these challenges cooperatively. Tasks that are beyond the ability of the single congregation have been accomplished by churches or individuals working together. Not just any form of extra-congregational organization is acceptable, however. In structuring their cooperative endeavors, Baptists have historically looked to three New Testament principles.

The first principle is the autonomy of the individual congregation. Baptists believe that each congregation is self-determining under Christ. They have consistently rejected all schemes that would subject local churches either to external hierarchies or to internal monarchies and oligarchies. Among Baptists, the church means the members, not the officers or the structure. It is the church itself, the organized members, that possesses decision-making authority under Christ.

In the New Testament, the individual congregation possesses authority to choose its own servants and to call them into account (Acts 6:1-6; 2 Cor. 8:16-21; Acts 11:2, 18, 22; 13:2-3; 14:25-27). Never does the New Testament depict any individual imposing officers upon a church without the congregation’s consent. Granted, there are instances in which Paul and Barnabas (Acts 14:23) or Titus, acting under Paul’s authority (Titus 1:5), ordained elders. Even in these instances, however, the congregation almost certainly participated in the decision. To put it bluntly, in the New Testament, pastors never choose pastors or deacons. Only congregations make those choices.

In the New Testament, congregations also possess authority to receive, exclude, and restore their own members. This authority is glimpsed with special clarity in 1 Corinthians 5, where Paul addresses the problem of scandalous conduct among church members. As Paul writes, the church is actually dealing with a specific instance of such conduct: a man who is cohabiting with his father’s wife. The striking thing about 1 Corinthians 5 is that, while Paul instructs the congregation in their duty to break fellowship with the erring brother (1 Cor. 5:2-5, 7, 11-13), he himself does not remove the person from the congregation. Similarly, Paul does not simply declare a repentant member to be restored to the congregation, but he instructs the congregation in their duty to receive the person (2 Cor. 2:4-11). The New Testament contains no examples of pastors receiving or dismissing members on their own initiative. Much less does it show outside officials interfering in matters of local church membership. This authority belongs to the congregation.

Choosing leaders and disciplining members are the most important decisions that a church can make. If the congregation is qualified to make these decisions, then it is qualified to make any decision. Alternatively, if no other authority has the right to impose these decisions upon a church, then it cannot rightfully impose any decision upon a church. The autonomy of the individual congregation needs to be a non-negotiable in any form of Baptist cooperation.

A second principle also guides Baptists in mutual efforts. It is the New Testament pattern of autonomous congregations cooperating with each other. For example, the book of Acts narrates an ongoing exchange between Jerusalem and Antioch, in which the so-called Jerusalem Council (really a local church’s business meeting, Acts 15) is only one episode. The churches of Macedonia and Achaia clearly cooperated in a voluntary endeavor to raise funds for the poor saints at Jerusalem (2 Cor. 8-9). Members from a variety of local churches cooperated together on Paul’s missionary teams (Barnabas, Silas, John Mark, Timothy, Demas, Secundus, Titus, Gaius, and Aristarchus, among others). Voluntary cooperation between churches of like faith and order, or between members of those churches, has good precedent in the New Testament. Baptists have sought to follow that pattern.

The third principle to which Baptists have looked is the centrality of the local church in God’s plan for this age. The apostle Paul declares the local church to be the “pillar and ground of the truth” (1 Tim. 3:15). God has not ordained any other institution for the completion of His plan during the present dispensation. Sooner or later, the responsibility for the advancement of the Lord’s work must be shouldered by local churches. They must take leadership, and their prerogatives must be respected in any form of interchurch cooperation.

These are the three principles to which Baptists have appealed historically. To these, I believe we must add a fourth. It is one that Baptists believe, but that they have too often neglected to reckon upon. This principle is the enduring presence of original sin.

Different schools of theology describe this indwelling sin differently: the sin nature, the flesh, the old man, idolatrous habits, etc. While we differ over nomenclature, we all recognize that each of us is engaged in an ongoing warfare against a persistent tendency to exalt self at the expense of Christ and to gratify temporal appetites at the expense of eternal priorities. Original sin is certain to manifest itself in all human endeavors of every kind. Christian endeavors are not exempt from this rule. Even in Christian organizations we should not be surprised to discover the centralization and abuse of power, the advancement of personal agendas through political machinations, and the attempt to control or manipulate others through the use of a variety of indecorous means. In fact, we should be constantly on guard against the temptation to resort to these sins ourselves.

For Baptists, some form of mutual endeavor seems to be unavoidable. Endeavor without organization is impossible. The question is what form that organization ought to take. Beginning with the next essay, I wish to draw attention to some of the forms that Baptist organization actually has taken.

The White Island: or Place of the Blest

Robert Herrick (1591-1674)

In this world (the Isle of Dreams)
While we sit by sorrowes streames,
Teares and terrors are our theames,
Reciting:

But when once from hence we fly,
More and more approaching nigh
Unto young eternity,
Uniting:

In that whiter Island, where
Things are evermore sincere;
Candour here, and lustre there
Delighting:

There no monstrous fancies shall
Out of hell an horrour call,
To create (or cause at all)
Affrighting.

There in calm and cooling sleep,
We our eyes shall never steep;
But eternall watch shall keep,
Attending

Pleasures such as shall pursue
Me immortaliz’d, and you;
And fresh joyes, as never too
Have ending.

This essay is by Dr. Kevin T. Bauder, president of Central Baptist Theological Seminary (Plymouth, MN). Not every professor, student, or alumnus of Central Seminary necessarily agrees with every opinion that it expresses.