June 20, 2024
By Aaron Weaver, Lauren Lamb and Meg Rooney
GREENSBORO, N.C. —“Preach the radical scandalous message of the Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ.”
This was the message of Rev. Eugene Cho to Cooperative Baptists worshipping and celebrating communion together Thursday evening at the 2024 General Assembly in Greensboro, N.C.
Preaching from Philippians, Cho offered four challenges to church leaders, urging attendees to “re-imagine what flourishing could look like.” Cho serves as President/CEO of Bread for the World, a longtime CBF partner and nonpartisan Christian advocacy organization working to help end hunger worldwide.
“Sit at the feet of Christ,” he encouraged. “Our scripture reading says don’t be anxious about anything, but in every situation through prayer, petition and thanksgiving, present your requests to God.”
Silence, prayer and time with God. “How much more do we need this gift, rhythm and discipline in our lives,” he asked. Sitting at the feet of Christ is “good for our soul.”
Secondly, embrace the “whole gospel,” Cho emphasized.
“I pray you as leaders…would never grow weary in proclaiming, preaching and teaching the good news that Jesus says and calls wretched sinners like me and you on,” he said. “But I also want you to know that if the Gospel that we preach is only that in a very hyper-individualistic society, it ends up becoming a me, myself and I theology.”
“My prayer is this conviction of the whole Gospel…that while we can proudly say that Jesus loves you, the world also matters to God. Justice matters to God. Reconciliation matters to God. The poor and the hungry matter to God. Refugees fleeing away from harm matter to God. Black and brown lives and rural lives, migrant lives, children separated from their parents at borders and detention centers matter to God,” Cho said.
Third, “see people and invest in relationships,” he urged. “We know that Jesus performed amazing miracles…and not trying to diminish God’s power but I sometimes think that the most profound thing that Jesus did wasn’t the miracles. It was stopping to see people, to acknowledge people….he always paused and saw people including those that were often not seen.”
Cho concluded with a call to “re-imagine the Lord’s table.”
“One of the things that I always looked forward to as a local church pastor for nearly 30 years was knowing that even if the worship was a little off…even if my sermon didn’t quite land in the way I had hoped it would land, what gave me incredible joy and reassurance was that every single week we were going to faithfully, joyfully, boldly proclaim the Lord’s table and invite people to consider the body broken and blood shed.”
“I pray that during such a polarizing time in our society, we would preach the radical scandalous message of the Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ,” he said. “May the Holy Spirit heal us so that we could be used for the glory of God.”
Worship and communion
General Assembly attendees were welcomed into the worship space Thursday evening with a jazz quartet led by Steve Haines, professor of music at UNC Greensboro. Through centering hymns, including an original piece and this week’s theme song by music coordinator Christian McIvor, “Re:imagine.”
With intentional prayer, an inspiring meditative moment, scripture readings from Jeremiah 29:4-14 and Philippians 4:4-9, sermon and sharing of the Lord’s Supper, all were encouraged to re:imagine ministry, service, worship and ways of living in harmony with the God who makes everything whole.
Worship ended with an invitation to support the CBF Offering for Global Missions as well as an offertory of “If I can dream” by Walter Earl Brown, emboldening all to “dream of a better land” while “walking hand in hand.”
McCall Racial Justice Trailblazer Luncheon
Earlier in the day, more than 500 Cooperative Baptists gathered for the annual Dr. Emmanuel McCall Racial Justice Trailblazer luncheon to honor award recipients and hear keynote speaker Rev. Dr. Jaqueline Thompson.
The luncheon is named in honor of Dr. Emmanuel McCall, a Baptist trailblazer who has spent much of his life working for racial justice—as a student, denominational leader, pastor, author and professor. CBF’s Dr. Emmanuel McCall Racial Justice and Leadership Initiative works to create avenues for God’s imperfect church to move toward meaningful unity between racially diverse communities.
CBF’s Pan African Koinonia honored an institution and individual with the 2024 Dr. Emmanuel McCall Racial Justice Trailblazer award: BSK Theological Seminary and Rev. Dr. Wayne Weathers. The annual award recognized CBF individuals and ministries who charter through unequal and unjust areas of life and initiatives proactive resolutions for communities in the form of policies or practices resulting in greater equity, opportunity, impact and outcomes for all.
BSK Theological Seminary’s work in racial justice began as a partnership with Simmons College, a historically Black college in Louisville, Ky., solidifying its allegiance to institutional and communal change. When BSK formed in 2002, it was a predominantly white seminary. Today, 70 percent of its student body is Black. In 2019, BSK launched the Institute for Black Church Studies, a program providing full tuition to African descendants of slavery as well as racial justice education to white congregations and their leaders.
“This was the Spirit at work, creating opportunities and beckoning us in,” shared BSK President David Cassady. “I want to leave you with a challenge. People often ask me, ‘How can we enter partnerships like we see happening in Kentucky between these groups?’ The answer is, ‘If you’re going to begin a partnership between whites and blacks, it needs to begin with acts of justice, something to repair the damage that has been done over generations. The concrete answer is to connect with Black leaders in your community and follow them.”
Rev. Dr. Wayne Weathers, senior pastor of Vision of Hope Baptist Church in Philadelphia, Penn., was also recognized with the 2024 McCall Racial Justice Trailblazer Award. While a student at Virginia State University and Duke University Divinity School, Weathers participated in and organized peaceful civil rights marches and initiatives against police brutality, for the protection of voting rights, and fought to secure equal funding in underserved school systems. He continues to fight for equality as an adjunct professor at the Center for Urban Theological Studies at Lancaster Bible College and as the Political Action Chair for both the Black Clergy of Philadelphia and Vicinity and the Pennsylvania Baptist Association.
Keynote speaker Rev. Dr. Jacqueline Thompson, senior pastor of the historic Allen Temple Baptist Church in Oakland, Calif., closed the service with an inspiring address. She is currently a professor at Berkley School of Theology teaching preaching and public theology courses. In 2022, Thompson was elected as the 2nd Vice President of the Progressive National Baptist Convention.
She preached from the Gospel of Mark focusing on the passage when Jesus raised synagogue leader Jairus’ daughter from the dead when all hope seemed lost: “Jesus told him, “Don’t be afraid; just believe.” -Mark 5:25
“Belief shapes how you perceive the world,” Thompson reminded the crowd. “It is at the root of every decision you make and influences how you treat other people.”
“We only sit here today because in 1936, a man that was born in Sharon, Pennsylvania decided that he believed all men and women were created equal,” Thompson said about Dr. Emmanuel McCall’s legacy.
“We are only here because Dr. McCall believed that not only were we created equal, but every race, every gender was created in the image and likeness of God.”
The 2024 CBF General Assembly continues Friday morning with a time of business and closes with an afternoon worship service of commissioning and blessing. Watch online at http://www.cbf.net/livestream.