Baptist Church Cooperation, Part 5

Read Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, and Part 4.

The Preachers’ Fellowship

The approval system of the GARBC was one attempt to avoid the alternatives of pure associationalism versus pure service organization. It was not the only such attempt. Another model of cooperation that has been widely employed among independent Baptists is the so-called “preachers’ fellowship.”

The notion of a preachers’ fellowship traces to a spat between J. Frank Norris and the GARBC. Norris had been one of the most public leaders in the old Baptist Bible Union, which was the parent organization of the GARBC. After the BBU was reorganized in 1932, Norris saw an opportunity to perpetuate his influence. For several years he attempted to insinuate himself into the leadership of the newly reorganized association.

Norris was not used to asking permission, and it seems to have escaped his notice that an association is a fellowship of churches. Aligning with an association requires church action, not merely a pastoral decision. Norris, however, showed up for the GARBC annual meeting with forged messenger credentials from Temple Baptist Church in Detroit. He had simply filled out the credentials on his own initiative, never asking the church for authorization. When the fraud was exposed, Norris found himself discredited within the GARBC.

Norris’s reaction was to found a new organization, the World Fundamental Baptist Missionary Fellowship. The name was later shortened to the World Baptist Fellowship, and it differed from the GARBC in its form of organization. While the GARBC was a fellowship of churches, the World Baptist Fellowship (WBF) aimed to be a fellowship of pastors.

Eventually three great preachers’ fellowships were formed. A 1950 split in the WBF resulted in the formation of the Baptist Bible Fellowship (BBF), headquartered in Springfield, Missouri. Shortly thereafter, the Southwide Baptist Fellowship was called into being. The various preachers’ fellowships operate much like each other. Their voting membership consists of the pastors of churches that support the fellowship’s missions and schools. Each church gets one vote at the fellowship meeting, and that vote is to be cast by the pastor or his appointee.

The WBF and the BBF both operate as their own mission agencies—indeed, the mission structure is hardly distinguishable from the structure of the fellowship itself. Preachers’ fellowships may also own and operate their own schools. For example, Baptist Bible College in Springfield, Missouri, is owned and operated by the Baptist Bible Fellowship, as is Boston Baptist College in Boston, Massachusetts. The fellowship may also approve independent schools, much like the GARBC used to do. At any rate, each preachers’ fellowship strongly identifies with specific educational institutions. For the BBF, the leading institution is Baptist Bible College in Springfield. Arlington Baptist College in Arlington, Texas, is the flagship school for the WBF. The Southwide Baptist Fellowship has historically looked to Tennessee Temple University as its most important training center, though other big churches have launched competing schools over the years.

In short, the preachers’ fellowship effectively reduplicates the associational model with one important change. The churches do not make decisions. Only the pastors do. This change is in keeping with the philosophy of leadership that dominates those fellowships.

The preachers’ fellowship offers certain advantages over the other models of organization. It offers an effective and streamlined way of getting support from churches into the hands of missionaries and institutions. Because control is maintained by the pastors, decisions can usually be made relatively quickly. Since the few who control the organization are its most highly focused and committed constituents, the organization’s distinctives are not as likely to become diluted over time.

Advocates of preachers’ fellowships have typically argued that this structure best respects the autonomy and centrality of the local church. They believe that independent service organizations sacrifice the church’s centrality, while associations can usurp the autonomy of the church.

Does the preachers’ fellowship do any better job of safeguarding these concerns? A college that is owned by the fellowship is still not under the control of the churches, even if it is under the control of the pastors. Furthermore, as the career of Norris himself illustrates, an unscrupulous pastor can find plenty of ways to coerce unwilling churches and preachers.

In fact, the preachers’ fellowships have fostered the “big man” mentality. Important exceptions do exist, but the tendency among the fellowship pastors is to see themselves as “the Lord’s anointed” with special powers to govern the churches. These preachers often develop a contemptuous attitude toward average church members, toward missionaries, toward teachers in colleges and seminaries, and even toward other pastors who are less visibly successful. A few years ago the Baptist Bible Fellowship was considering a revision that would have allowed missionaries to vote in the fellowship meetings. One of the “big men” snorted, “Next thing, they’ll want the janitor to have a vote!” And the president of a church-based southern college used to open faculty meetings by reminding his professors, “Teachers are a dime a dozen.”

The preachers’ fellowships also tend to fall prey to doctrinal and methodological instability. This is especially a problem when limited pastoral accountability is coupled with mediocre theological proficiency. Quirks that capture the imaginations of the preachers will quickly become the status quo of the organization—and may result in a purge of the college(s) to rid them of disagreement.

Do these problems result necessarily from the structure of the preachers’ fellowship, or are they the consequence of other attitudes that fellowship pastors happen to hold? This is not an easy question to answer, but I suspect that both the structure and the problems stem from the same source—an incorrect view of pastoral authority. At any rate, few problems, if any, are unique to this form of organization. Ultimately, whatever drawbacks are to be found in the preachers’ fellowship are much the same as those of the other organizational models.

The fact is that the same liabilities seem to crop up in all of the previously mentioned forms of organization. This fact has led some Baptists to insist that no permanent structures should be established for ongoing cooperation between churches and believers. Instead, they have suggested two other patterns of organization. In the next essay, we shall examine the ecclesiastical empire as a form of Baptist organization.

Good Friday

Christina Rossetti (1830-1894)

Am I a stone, and not a sheep,
That I can stand, O Christ, beneath Thy cross,
To number drop by drop Thy blood’s slow loss,
And yet not weep?

Not so those women loved
Who with exceeding grief lamented Thee;
Not so fallen Peter weeping bitterly;
Not so the thief was moved;

Not so the Sun and Moon
Which hid their faces in a starless sky,
A horror of great darkness at broad noon—
I, only I.

Yet give not o’er,
But seek Thy sheep, true Shepherd of the flock;
Greater than Moses, turn and look once more
And smite a rock.

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.