By Aaron Weaver
June 30, 2023
ATLANTA — CBF Executive Coordinator Paul Baxley challenged Cooperative Baptists to be defined by God’s holy ambition and say yes being “ambitious Baptists” during the Friday morning business session of the 2023 General Assembly.
“I’ve come to you today to report that the God we meet most clearly in Jesus Christ is unmistakably, relentlessly, absolutely ambitious,” Baxley told the room of Cooperative Baptists.
“How else would you describe what happened early in the morning on the first day of the week while it was filled dark, with the angel from heaven, descended from heaven, rolled back the stone, sat upon it, and then sent out the very first Christian preachers who, by the way, were women,” Baxley said. “The God we meet most clearly in Jesus Christ is remarkably, resiliently, resurrectingly, reliably ambitious.”
Baxley said when he thinks of holy ambition, he doesn’t have a denominational improvement plan in mind. Instead, he is thinking of the “dying and rising work of Jesus in our lives, so that is no longer our ambition at work, but His ambitions alive in us.”
“What would be different in our hearts, in our ministries, in our leadership, if our lives and faith and hearts and minds were run through with nothing less than the ambition that lives in the heart of God?”
Baxley noted that we live in a world where understandably ambition has taken on a bad name. Referencing Paul’s instructions to the Philippians to lay down selfish ambition, he said this rejection “makes way for the truth that there is an ambition that is not selfish—there is an ambition that is not destructive.”
“There is an ambition that is purer than that,” Baxley continued. “There is an ambition that is holier than that, and that is the ambition that comes in our lives when we are being remade in the image of God through Jesus Christ, our Lord. I invite you to imagine, what would it be like if we were overcome, mesmerized, defined by God’s holy ambition? What would it be like if one day people used the word for us as ambitious instead of the word moderate. What would it be like if we were remade by God’s ambition?”
God’s ambition is seen in the expansive nature of God’s mission, he reminded.
“It’s a mission that invites people to join with God in a mission of justice and righteousness and healing and expanse of love,” Baxley said. “It is a mission that is both about inviting people to follow Jesus and joining Jesus in the transformation of the world.”
Baxley said that he believes that God’s ambition for the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship reflects the cooperation that lives in the heart of God.
“God is Trinity. God, in all of God’s work, is cooperating between the persons of the Trinity to do everything God does in the world,” Baxley said. “And that cooperating impulse, that cooperating identity becomes mission because the cooperating love at the heart of God cannot be contained in God, but instead overflows into the world when God sends Jesus into the world and when God sends the church.”
“I’m not saying that we Baptists, in our own strength, can copy the cooperation of the heart of God, but I do believe if we open ourselves to God’s cooperating character and ambition enough and we come together as Baptists of different generations and different races and different geographical locations and different theological convictions, and allow the Holy Spirit to keep bringing us together and cooperating among us in ways that none of us could imagine on our own, we will become a reflection of the love at the heart of God and a reflection of a more excellent way of responding to difference that we see in the world around us,” Baxley said.
Baxley emphasized the diverse perspectives of Baptists which have been present for more than 400 years and encouraged listeners not to be afraid of difference.
“We’ve been dealing with difference from our beginnings,” Baxley said. “I don’t understand why we’re so afraid of hearing someone articulate something different from us.”
Humility is what allows us to ‘hang in there’ and continue to learn,” he added.
“We’re also going to have to give one another the gift of freedom, and humility is actually what makes that possible,” Baxley said. “A cooperation that embodies the cooperation of God is not a southern quiet go-along-and-get-along. It’s a space that’s bold and ambitious and courageous enough that you speak your deepest conviction and I speak mine, and God holds us together even when they are not the same.”
“I have this hunch that if we give one another the gift of freedom of testimony wrapped in the gift of humility, the Holy Spirit will do a cooperating work in us that some one day will call beautifully Baptist,” Baxley said.
“God has an ambition for our Fellowship, God has an ambition for your congregation. God has an ambition for the world. The only question is, when will we lay aside everything that holds us back and say ‘Yes’ we will be ambitious Baptists.”
Watch Baxley’s Executive Coordinator Report below:
Mission Excellence Awards
Three churches were honored with the Mission Excellence Award for exceptional ministry in their communities and around the world. Recipients have shown outstanding service, creativity, deep partnerships and commitment to CBF. The 2023 award recipients are Trinity Baptist Church, Seneca, S.C,; First Baptist Church, Abilene, Texas; and First Baptist Church, Mount Olive, N.C.
Watch the videos below to learn more about these congregations:
Business and Moderator Reflections
Cooperative Baptists voted to approve the 2023-2024 mission and ministry budget during the Friday morning business session. Find budget details here. Additionally, Cooperative Baptists voted to approve nominees to serve on CBF’s governance bodies, including selecting Virginia pastor Juan Garcia as CBF Moderator-Elect for 2023-2024.
Outgoing CBF Moderator Debbie McDaniel shared her reflections from the past year serving the Fellowship.
“You are a wonderful group of Christ followers,” McDaniel said. “You laugh, you engage with your whole self, you welcome the stranger, you dream bold dreams, and you model Christ’s command to love one another. You are not content with the status quo. Your churches are seeking ways to be an authentic witness to Christ. You are the kind of Baptist I want to hang around.”
McDaniel expressed her appreciation for the impactful work of CBF staff over the past year.
“What a year it has been for CBF! God is working in our world and CBF is right here,” she shared. “Our new Coordinator of Global Missions, Laura Ayala, hit the ground running meeting with our field personnel all around the world. CBF Chaplaincy and Pastoral Counseling celebrates 25 years of endorsement, and the number of Encourager Churches who support our field personnel in unique ways continues to grow. Our communications team helps us hear stories of God working in our churches and on the field. And that’s not all. Our congregational ministries team has been busy across the Fellowship serving congregations large and small through their ministerial transitions and sharing resources developed for young Baptists.”
“Friends, if you think our Fellowship is based in a building, you are mistaken,” McDaniel continued. “We are in our churches, our communities and our world equipping congregations to partner with the work of God.”
The Friday morning business session concluded as incoming CBF Moderator David Hull shared his hopes and dreams with attendees for the coming year. Hull highlighted three words—Community, Faith, Adventure—which he said captured his hopes and dreams.
“Community does not always happen easily and automatically,” Hull said. “You must work at it. It can be a long and difficult journey. I hope that you will invest the time and energy to engage fully in the life of CBF. We need what you have to offer—you need the community of CBF that can enrich your life….Transformational life-giving community is my dream for CBF.”
The last three years have taught us that we can no longer “plan the work and work the plan,” Hull said.
“But we can still trust the One who simply said, ‘Follow me’ and ‘Come and see.’ That is my dream for CBF. I hope that we will always be a community of Jesus followers who walk together in community looking for the arrows pointing us forward, trusting in the One who said, ‘I am the way, the truth and the life.’ My dream for CBF is that we will see some of those directional arrows this year and follow them with faith.”
Reflecting on the word adventure, Hull emphasized the challenges of denominational work as we live in what sociologists of religion often refer to as a “post-denominational age.”
“Church is hard enough these days but getting people to pull together from all over the country, from different kinds of churches, with different passions and points of view, is very challenging work,” Hull stressed. “Welcome to the adventure of CBF! Welcome to the journey of a lifetime. What we do here is not easy, it is not for the faint of heart, but that is what makes our holy work together a true adventure.”
“Community, faith and adventure. Those are my dreams for CBF. I look forward to making this pilgrimage together with you,” Hull said.
The 2023 General Assembly concludes Friday with a late afternoon worship and commissioning service of new field personnel, chaplains and pastoral counselors.
Find news, photos and videos from the 2023 CBF General Assembly at http://www.cbf.net/assembly2023–30–