Furthering the Great Commission through the Cooperative Program

David Haun
Elder, Leonardtown Baptist Church

There is no shortage of asking for donations these days. Going into the grocery store, checking out, opening your mailbox when you get home – there is no shortage of causes, services, and organizations asking for your support and donations. Is it reasonable to ask then where that money goes? Does rounding up my grocery bill really make a dent in local hunger? What about the offering plate at church?

Churches across Maryland and Delaware set aside budget lines and take offerings to support the Cooperative Program. Part of this goes for ministry in Maryland and Delaware. The rest is sent to the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC). About half of every dollar sent to the SBC is then given to the International Mission Board for reaching the nations for Christ. This money in combination with gifts through the Lottie Moon Christmas Offering supports missionaries all around the globe.

How do you account for the giving received across our many SBC churches? Is it simply with transparency and good bookkeeping? Or perhaps a reductive formula of dollars per baptism?

The scope and quality of the support of our International Mission Board missionaries is unparalleled. Housing, medical coverage, and supplies are all provided in addition to a modest salary. But beyond those basic elements, the IMB headquarters in Richmond is full of support teams navigating the complexities of supporting over 3,500 missionaries around the world. Missionaries have access to care consultants, educational and logistical support, tax preparation, and many other support services all working together for one purpose: fulfilling the great commission to go and make disciples of all nations.

As an MK (Missionary Kid) in Côte d’Ivoire from 1986-2004, the snapshots of my life were filled with tangible examples of Cooperative Program funds at work. In the late 80s, your offerings took the form of a blue Peugeot station wagon and years later a silver Toyota Corolla where I spent many long hours riding along dusty washboard roads to river baptisms and church plants. The faithful giving of SBC churches became the books, paper, and pen supplies needed for the prison ministry in Bouake, Cote d’Ivoire, and paid for our housing. In the 90s, Cooperative Program funding helped provide for the many healthcare needs of my special needs brother, allowing my parents to stay on the mission field instead of worrying that he would have appropriate care.

Cooperative Program giving is an exercise in faith. We are called to give of our first fruits, not because God needs it, but because it strengthens our trust in God’s provision and opens our eyes to his faithfulness.  I think of the young man with his two fish and five loaves of bread in John 6.

What we have may seem little compared to the needs that are out there. What we do may seem insufficient, but every donation, no matter how big or small, in the hands of a sovereign God is multiplied for His purpose. Like the loaves and fishes, it is not the amount that matters. Ten loaves and twenty fish would not have made God’s provision any less miraculous. When we trust God with our gifts and work for His Kingdom, he multiplies them. The young man donated what he had but God fed the 5000. What a blessing it must have been to witness it that day.

I believe that there is a better way to account for what the money from the Cooperative Program goes toward on the mission field and its impact. It involves measuring not in dollars, but in the work God does with them. Ultimately, it is not the money that we give but the work that He does that causes multiplication.  

If you looked through a photo album of my early days, you would see many pictures of me sitting on the porch playing. The porch you can see in my baby pictures, paid for by a housing budget, is where I took my first steps and was the early meeting place of a home church. Each week new believers took their first steps in picking up their crosses and following Christ. That church would grow and a young man from it would be raised up as its pastor and eventually become a leader in the Pastors’ Union helping lead and raise new leaders in new churches.

A careful eye will notice the Peugeot and Corolla from my youth in the background of many home videos of church baptisms with believers rising out of the water to a choir of voices singing, “I have decided to follow Jesus, no turning back, no turning back!” 

When the civil war in the Ivory Coast broke out in 2002, rebel soldiers released the prisoners from the local penitentiary rather than try to feed them. One man, a graduate of that prison literacy ministry whose heart had been transformed by the gospel returned to his village and started a church.

When my parents left the field in 2004 to work at the IMB headquarters, many of the local churches sought to honor their ministry with receptions or similar events. Many kind words and remembrances were said, but one stood out to me above all. One believer was recounting his journey to faith and recalled that what really convinced him was that this missionary man who came and preached and worked with pastors, brought with him his child with disabilities to church every Sunday.  It was a culture where children with disabilities can often be a source of shame and are often kept out of sight at home. But if this missionary believed enough to bring his son to church every week, this must be a message worth hearing. No sermon, Jesus film, or baptism had as much impact on this man as my younger brother singing and clapping in the pew with his family. 

There was never a question for my parents of whether or not my younger brother was a full member of our family and would participate in everything we did. But there was a question at one point of whether we could stay on the mission field because of his many health needs. Thanks to the Cooperative Program, that wasn’t an issue, and the heavenly host is larger for it.

Today’s missionaries and churches still need transportation, supplies, healthcare, and housing. The generous giving of SBC churches ensures that those whom God has called to missions can be at work in the harvest fields. Our giving to the Cooperative Program not only sustains the work of God’s laborers but it connects us all together as we faithfully bring our loaves and fishes and are able to see the miracles Christ will do with them. The truth is that we can never know the full account of our giving until we reach eternity, but when we do, how great a reward it will be to see the multitudes from all the nations who were touched by the fruits of faithful generosity.

David Haun is an elder at Leonardtown Baptist Church. He teaches and coaches at one of the local southern Maryland high schools, and he faithfully serves his church family in many ways.

The Power of the Cooperative Program

Richard Pope
Pastor, Canvas Church

In a day when we can access everything through a device in our hand, many things vie for our attention, pulling at our heartstrings and encouraging us to invest our time, our energy, and our resources. There are millions of good causes. Things like animal shelters, neighborhood restoration, and youth sports programming are all good things. Besides those few examples, are a nearly infinite number of other things that you could include. While giving to these causes is good, and worthy of our attention, as Southern Baptists we have an opportunity to give to something greater – the Gospel.

Yes, the above causes matter, but no cause is greater than the cause of the mission of Christ. Giving to the cooperative program allows us to fund the Gospel work on a scale larger than we could ever imagine in North America and beyond. The church I pastor, Canvas Church in Salisbury, Maryland, is one of many ministries that has been blessed by the generosity of Southern Baptists all over the country.

In 2018, I felt the call to plant a church in Salisbury, Maryland. God gave my wife (girlfriend at the time) and me a burden for two of the major people groups of Salisbury – the down and out and the young professionals. We started meeting monthly with a group of six.  Soon, that became 12 and then 20 and then 30. And then it died. By July of 2019, we had seen seven people come to Christ, and four were baptized. While the Lord moved in that early iteration of what eventually became Canvas – we lacked the funding, training, and networking that would be necessary to actually start a church in a sustainable way.

Enter Keith Myer. Keith was the Associational Missionary of the Eastern Baptist Association. We started meeting and he encouraged us to get connected with the North American Mission Board, as well as the Baptist Convention of Maryland/Delaware.

In September of 2019, I met a representative of Send Network, but because Payton (my wife) and I were engaged, and because I was so young, it was decided that it would be best to pump the brakes and wait until after our upcoming wedding for me to go to the Church Planters Assessment. I thought this would be the end of the relationship, but representatives from both the BCM/D and Send Network continued to encourage us, invite us to events and trainings, and prep us for the rigors of eventually planting a church.

March of 2020 came, and Payton and I were married. A week later COVID-19 brought the world to a screeching halt. At that moment, I thought our church planting journey was over, until Jamie Caldwell, a Church Planting Catalyst with the Send Network, reached out, met with me, and invited Payton and I to attend a virtual assessment in November of 2020. We were given the green light to plant and went through Send Network training, where we were taught through a cohort and one on one coaching. This all culminated in Canvas Church launching on Easter Sunday, April 4^th, 2021.

Since launching a little over two years ago, we have seen over one hundred and sixty people put their faith in Jesus. We have been able to train three other elders to come alongside me in the duties of pastoring the church. We have been able to train four deacons, to serve the church. We currently have two more pastoral interns we are training, and three future deacons. We have been able to put over 12,000 hours of service into our community which has led to our launch team of 10 from December of 2020 growing into a church with 76 Members and an average Sunday attendance of around 150.

All those metrics are exciting, but what I think has far more value are the stories of individual life change that we have seen because of the kindness of God and generosity of Southern Baptists through the cooperative program. These stories include that of people like Rob, who put his faith in Christ in our church, was baptized in our church, and has since led friends to follow Jesus and is now studying to be a pastor and eventually a church planter. Another story would be that of Alex Cisar, a student getting her Doctorate in Physical Therapy at the University of Maryland Eastern Shore. She was baptized in our church and fell in love with the Bible in our church. Now she is actively inviting friends to come to hear about Jesus and working to grow stronger in her faith. These stories are just the tip of an iceberg of fruit that we have seen in the last two years.

Not only has the support of the NAMB, powered by the cooperative program, helped us to see fruit in Salisbury, but also we have been able to see a generational effect as we begin to work to plant other churches! Currently, we are training Andrew Cooper who we will be sending out with a team of 20+ in the fall of 2023 to plant Garden Church in Cambridge, Maryland. Andrew has also passed the church planter assessment and is a funded and trained planter with Send Network. We are currently training two other men who are aiming to plant in Millsboro, Delaware in 2024 and Laurel, Delaware in 2025. Because of the generous support of Southern Baptists, we have been able to see a riptide of multiplication through what started as six people around a table in my crammed apartment. This would not have been possible without the churches in Texas or Iowa or Florida or New York or Maryland who faithfully support the Cooperative Program.

I think my favorite thing about the Cooperative Program is that it allows our church (and yours) to reach places we could never actually go. I have had the honor of serving as an assessor for the New York City assessment where I have been able to interview potential church planters with callings to a place very different than mine. While you and I may not have a call to reach New York (or Africa for that matter), others do, and when we give to the Cooperative Program, we are able to fund the mission and missionaries called to unique places. Our giving allows us to reach places we could never reach on our own and helps us fulfill the calling Christ left His people with – to go and make disciples of all nations! (Matt 28:19)

Richard Pope is a Church planter and serves as pastor of Canvas Church in Salisbury, Maryland.  From a group of 6 people around a table to launch Sunday on Easter Sunday of 2021, to a current church averaging 150 people per week, the Canvas story is a testimony to the power of the Cooperative Program at work.

The Cooperative Program Enables Affordable Education at SBC Seminaries

Ron Blankenship
DOM, Montgomery Baptist Association

I attended The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, KY from Fall 1979 to Spring 1987. During that period, I earned three degrees: Master of Divinity (1982), Master of Arts in Christian Education (1984), and Doctor of Ministry (1987). I owe a great deal to my seminary professors and the experiences I had during my seminary days. The preparation was invaluable to lay the theological, biblical, and practical ministry foundation for what is now forty-three years of ministry. I served twenty years as a senior pastor in three states and the past twenty-three years as director of missions at Montgomery Baptist Association in Maryland (near DC). I have also served ten times as an interim pastor and have served numerous denominational offices. Seminary taught me how to think biblically and apply this to real-life needs in the local church and denomination.

The cooperative program of the Southern Baptist Convention is a compilation of thousands of churches giving to cooperative missions to support missionaries, seminary education, and other cooperative efforts. Many students would either not be able to afford a seminary education, or would have a great deal of debt, if they had to attend classical, for-profit seminaries.  I am grateful that the cooperative program covered most of the cost of my seminary education.

It was during seminary that I met my wonderful wife Evelyn, who also earned a Master of Divinity in Christian Education. Her training supported our ministry together in churches and associations over the years. I never would have met Evelyn and had our three awesome children (Nathan, Melanie, and Angela) had God not led us both to seminary.

The cooperative program has benefited my ministry over the years as I have worked with church planters and other pastors and directors of missions whose lives have been impacted by the cooperative program. The cooperative program helps fund the work of the six Southern Baptist Seminaries in the United States. Thousands of pastors, church staff, teachers, counselors, missionaries and other roles in ministry have been birthed from the seminary educational experience. God is using the SBC seminaries to spread the gospel in a variety of ministries. Southern Baptist seminaries are among the largest and most effective schools to train future ministers to spread the gospel of Jesus Christ.

Seminary helped develop my calling in ministry as well as my worldview for Christian ministry. In addition to serving as a senior pastor and director of missions, I also have been privileged to serve as a professor of biblical and ministry studies at Washington University of Virginia since 2008 as well as for Ivy Christian College for several years. I even served a year as a hospice chaplain and a church planting catalyst.

I have met many friends and professors who have been a part of my life ever since. We have enriched each other over the years in more ways than I can mention. We are all products of local churches and the cooperative program. I thank God for Southern Baptist seminaries and the cooperative program. They are both proof that we can do more together.

Dr. Ron Blankenship serves as Director of Missions for Montgomery Baptist Association in MD & Adjunct Professor at Washington University of Virginia. There are six Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) seminaries:

Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Lousiville, KY
Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary in Wake Forest, NC
Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Fort Worth, TX
New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary in New Orleans, LA
Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Kansas City, MO
Gateway Baptist Theological Seminary in Ontario, CA

With over six thousand full-time enrolled students, these six SBC seminaries train men and women for Christian ministry.  Affordable education at an SBC seminary is made possible by SBC churches contributing to the cooperative program.  This cooperative partnership enables the seminaries to train pastors, missionaries, church staff, and those who go on to serve as denominational servants. 

Seminary Extension: An Overlooked Component of Cooperative Program Funding

Tim Bonner
Associate Pastor, FBC Rockville

Every pastor and layperson may not be able to obtain a seminary degree, but all members of local Southern Baptist churches in Maryland and Delaware can take advantage of and benefit from Seminary Extension. This Cooperative Program-funded ministry began in 1951, but it is new to the Montgomery Baptist Association (MBA), which gained certification as a Seminary Extension Center in 2021. It currently has one site at First Baptist Church Rockville, MD. The MBA operates the only Extension Center in the Baptist Convention of Maryland/Delaware (BCM/D). The Center serves students throughout the BCM/D, not just those associated with the MBA.

Seminary Extension’s website describes its mission as a place that can “provide theological education and ministry training of excellent quality to church leaders and members where they live.” It meets a need by allowing pastors, church staff, and laypeople who either cannot obtain a seminary degree or simply want additional training to take courses toward a diploma or certificate. The catalog lists more than fifty courses. They are college-level classes ideally suited for persons who have completed high school or their GED. Courses can be taken either via independent study or in a classroom setting with a certified instructor.

Certificates require taking eight classes and are offered in Bivocational Ministry Studies, Lay Ministry Training, and Women’s Ministry. Diplomas involve greater commitment, with a sixteen-course requirement. There are four concentrations available to students: Biblical Studies, Educational Ministries, Ministries/Pastoral Education, and Theological Foundation.

The MBA Seminary Extension Center has offered three classes since beginning this new ministry. So far, students have included a retiree who wants to increase his biblical knowledge, two teachers in Christian schools interested in interpreting Scripture more accurately, and two laypersons who sought a greater understanding of what it means to be a disciple of Jesus Christ. Future course offerings will depend on the needs and interests of students.

Dr. Randal Williams, the Southern Baptist Convention’s Seminary Extension Director, describes both the purpose of Seminary Extension and the niche in theological education it is trying to fill: “In 2 Timothy 2:15, Paul reminded Timothy and, by implication, believers of all ages that we are to study God’s word so that it may be rightly applied to our lives. Study and application of this kind mean that believers must do more than simply read God’s word. They must drink deeply from it for life, refreshment, and service. Commitment to the in-depth study of God’s word is strengthened when men and women are encouraged and guided by gifted mentors. If the Church today is going to effectively refute the world’s answers to life’s deepest questions, then the Church had better know what God says.”

“With these truths in mind, Seminary Extension provides an opportunity for biblically accurate theological education and ministry training to every interested believer. We do not seek to replace a seminary education but instead focus on those who cannot attend a seminary. Our courses are biblical and they reflect the values and theology of the Southern Baptist Convention, as they are stated in the 2000 Baptist Faith and Message.”

Seminary Extension cannot continue its ministry without the support of the Cooperative Program (CP). Each dollar that a church contributes to the CP allows Seminary Extension to provide quality, low-cost training to members of local congregations, so those persons can give back through serving more effectively in ministry to the church that helped make their training available and affordable. Seminary Extension is currently an under-utilized ministry. The goal is to offer more courses and add more sites so that its instructional opportunities will be both ongoing and accessible to members of BCM/D churches.

The Cooperative Program supports many things, even things of which we are unaware.  One of those often unaware areas is Seminary Extension.  The BCM/D has access to a seminary extension program through the Montgomery Baptist Association, all made possible by the Cooperative Program giving of the churches. Tim Bonner, Associate Pastor of FBC Rockville and the MBA Seminary Extension Director, leads this effort. For more information, contact Tim at [email protected] or his office number 301-825-9231.