100 Years of the SBC Cooperative Program

Today, we’re looking back on a century of the Southern Baptist Convention’s Cooperative Program. Welcome to The ERLC Podcast where our goal is to help you think biblically about today’s cultural issues.

In the early days of the Southern Baptist Convention, when the costs of ministry opportunities were beginning to expand, convention leaders proposed the 75 Million Campaign, a five-year pledge campaign with the purpose of funding missions. This campaign planted the seed for what would grow to be the Cooperative Program in 1925. 

Now, 100 years later, the Cooperative Program continues to use every dollar given by faithful Southern Baptists to further the Great Commission. 

On today’s episode, we’ll talk to Tony Wolfe, executive director of the South Carolina Baptist Convention; and Madison Grace, provost and vice president for academic administration at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary. Tony and Madison will talk through the history, purpose, and impact of the Cooperative Program throughout the decades. They’ll also share more about their new book,  A Unity of Purpose: 100 Years of the SBC Cooperative Program.

Episode Transcript: 100 Years of the SBC Cooperative Program

Narration:

Welcome to the ERLC podcast, where our goal is to help you think biblically about today’s cultural issues. I’m Lindsay Nicolet, and today we’re looking back on a century of the Southern Baptist Convention’s Cooperative Program.

Narration:

In the early days of the Southern Baptist Convention, when the cost of ministry opportunities were beginning to expand, convention leaders proposed the “75 Million Campaign,” a five year pledge campaign with the purpose of funding missions. This campaign planted the seed for what would grow to be the Cooperative Program in 1925. Now, 100 years later, the Cooperative Program continues to use every dollar given by faithful Southern Baptists to further the Great Commission. On today’s episode, we’ll talk to Tony Wolfe, executive director of the South Carolina Baptist Convention; and Madison Grace Provost and Vice President for Academic Administration at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary. Tony and Madison will talk through the history, purpose, and impact of the Cooperative Program throughout the decades. They’ll also share more about their new book, A Unity of Purpose: 100 Years of the SBC Cooperative Program. Now, let’s turn to ERLC president Brett Leatherwood’s conversation with Tony Wolfe and Madison Grace.

Brent Leatherwood:

So today, we are having a conversation with two personal friends of mine: Tony Wolfe from South Carolina, and Madison Grace from Texas. Let me just say, these are two gentlemen who are doing incredible work in their respective ministries. And part of their friendship, part of their cooperative partnership, has actually led them to create this really handsome volume here, A Unity of Purpose, a book about the 100 year anniversary of the SBC’s Cooperative Program. And so, Tony, Madison, thanks for taking a few minutes to be with me today.

Tony Wolfe:

Thanks for having us, Brent.

Madison Grace:

Glad to be here.

Brent Leatherwood:

Well, so let me start off with a question for both of y’all. How exactly did this book project come about? Like, what initiated this for y’all? So, Tony, we’ll start with you. 

Tony Wolfe:

So, a couple of years ago, the executive committee of the SBC put together a bit of a team – ad hoc team – from some people from across the states who were CP advocates and educators and resourcers. And that team started thinking through how to celebrate the Cooperative Program’s centennial anniversary. And part of that discussion included a centennial history of the Cooperative Program and someone suggested that we should publish a book on the centennial anniversary of the Cooperative Program. And someone else looked at that someone and said, “Great! You do it.” And so here I am. And not too long after that, Madison joined me as co-editor and that’s how the book came about. It was actually commissioned by the executive committee’s kind of “ad hoc team” in celebration of the centennial.

Brent Leatherwood:

And Madison, were you just kind of “voluntold” or, or what? 

Madison Grace:

<laugh> I always tell people this is Tony’s book that I got to be a part of, and it’s been a joy to be part of that. I came on, early on, with some thoughts there and later on in the process I just offered some help to help bring the book to completion. And he said, “Please join.” So I said, yes, but it’s Tony’s project. He’s had such a passion for the Cooperative Program in this whole project that it’s just been a good journey for me to join him on.

Brent Leatherwood:

Sure. Well actually that leads to my next question, Madison. So let’s start there. Let’s define our terms. A lot of our listeners, they’re probably very familiar with the Cooperative Program, but I wanna assume that everybody that hears this is. So what is the Cooperative Program? Why is it such an ingenious model for the Southern Baptist Convention?

Madison Grace:

That is really the question. When I teach our Baptist classes here at Southwestern, I want to make sure our students understand this, and they have confusion about what the Cooperative Program is. Sometimes our churches do a great job of talking about it, sometimes we just use the language “Cooperative Program.” And part of the confusion comes that we have defined it differently throughout the years. In one of Tony’s chapters, he kind of walks through the different books that give different language for what the Cooperative Program is. It’s been called a budget plan at times, a unified appeal, a unified budget, a funding mechanism, a giving plan, a process, and it really is all those things and more. In some ways, it is just that: a finance plan of how we think about the multiple things that we want to do as Southern Baptists. But it also is a way for us to understand those missional things that we are and finding a way to bring them together to make sure that we’re engaging the Great Commission in the right way. So I like how Tony has given a larger definition in the book. He calls it this, that this Cooperative Program is “a missions funding mechanism involving the deliberate and voluntary cooperation of local Baptist churches, state regional Baptist Conventions, and the Southern Baptist Convention through which every contributing Baptist maximizes the Great Commission impact of every dollar given.” So I think that’s a great way to talk about what the cooperative program is.

Brent Leatherwood:

And Tony, you know, you looked at the history of the CP and I’m curious, you know, back in 1925, when this was created, how were our fellow Baptists talking about this idea back then? What were they thinking about it?

Tony Wolfe:

So in the second and third decades of the 20th century, the Cooperative Program was a very new concept. In fact, budgeting in general was a new concept. Businesses and churches did not budget at all as we would think of the word, until the early 20th century. And so we had societal giving where each entity would come and appeal. I mean since 1845, all these various entities would come to the churches and associations and conventions and directly appeal for funding. That was ineffective for a lot of reasons. I mean, one: churches were just bombarded and overwhelmed with direct appeals for giving all the time. Every Sunday they were taking up collection for one thing or another. There was no unified strategy. And then in the second decade of the 20th century, the “75 Million Campaign” was launched, which is a unified budgeting strategy, but with a short term – only a five year term.

Tony Wolfe:

And while it failed to collect on the funds, it was successful in I think uniting and igniting a heart for strategic cooperation, a more unified funding strategy for all of our enterprises as Southern Baptists. And then, we started thinking, “Well, how can we do this in a parental fashion? How can we do this ongoingly with the best business practices of the day, and as far as financial efficiency are concerned?” And we had a model in Kentucky, believe it or not, Kentucky Baptists in 1915 had come up with a unified budgeting strategy for their state convention’s work. And so, we looked to the Kentucky model and then to the “75 Million Campaign” model and came up with the Cooperative Program. I mean, the quotes abound for what Southern Baptists were saying. And there’s some really, really good important history that can just be dug out of SBC annuals.

Tony Wolfe:

I’ll list a couple of my favorites. When you think through what people were saying, Emmy Dodd was the chairman of the Future Program commission that brought the Cooperative Program to the messengers of the 1925 annual meeting. And there’s so many great quotes from him, but one that I love is, he gets up and says, “May God help our people to see it. May God help our people to see it.” And then he goes on toward the end of that paragraph, he says, “Your commission believes that the very time has come when this entire convention should commit itself with a unity of purpose and consecration never known before to the common task of enlistment of our people and the working out of this plan.” And then he says, “We need to see that any other course means only chaos in ruin.” And so, they had seen the chaos in the ruin of a nonunified funding strategy that included direct appeals from the agencies.

Tony Wolfe:

And so, the Cooperative Program was the solution to that. I have to mention one more ’cause Charles Berts was on the commission on the Cooperative Program in 1925. He was actually the South Carolina Baptist Executive Director Treasurer. He held my position in the 1920s. And at the end of his report, he said, “The difficulties that we face are more than matched by the ability of our people to meet them if we approach them in faith, in prayer, courage, and sacrifice the successes of the future.” He said, “Depend upon the heroic spirit shown by our people at this time,” and with unanimous support, 4,001 messengers adopted the Cooperative Program in 1925.

Brent Leatherwood:

That’s so good. Well, being a history nerd, I like the fact that it sounds to me like the title of the book came from that Dodd quote. So both of y’all speak to that a little bit. Obviously you settled on that as the title. What does that communicate to fellow Southern Baptists today?

Madison Grace:

Yeah, I think that it helps us understand the Cooperative Program as being more than just this kind of funding mechanism. I think it reminds us that we are unified as Southern Baptists on the mission that we’ve been given to help engage in the Great Commission throughout this world. And so, we as Southern Baptists give through the Cooperative Program to help the Southern Baptist Convention accomplish its goals. And so, when we decide on a budget, we are deciding to be unified, voluntarily unified, for the endeavors that we’re gonna seek, to take the gospel to the uttermost around the globe, to plant churches here in North America, to engage in theological education and to help our communities just flourish, and the other ways that we work together as Southern Baptists. So that unity of purpose really defines the cooperative element of it. That it’s not just a means of doing a budget, but it’s a method to making sure that the main thing that Southern Baptists want to do is the main thing.

Tony Wolfe:

The unity that we share. If you ask what makes us Christian, obviously it’s our repentance from sin and faith in Jesus Christ. What makes us orthodox Christians – there are those cradle statements that we can point to from history. What makes us Baptists? There’s a certain core of Baptist beliefs that for a little over 400 years have defined our movement. If you ask what makes us Southern Baptist, now we’re getting down to what makes a Southern Baptist. We share, since 1845, a unity of purpose. This is an 1845 constitution, which was copied from the 1814 Triennial Convention’s constitution in the first paragraph that said that ours is “one sacred effort for the propagation of the gospel among the nations.” So we are Southern Baptist, at least for, I might get in trouble with this statement, but at least for most of our history, not Baptist but Southern Baptist, because of this missional mechanism that we’ve shared with this one singular purpose. And it is a unity of purpose toward worldwide gospel proclamation that draws us and keeps us together in every generation.

Brent Leatherwood:

Yeah, I think both of the comments that y’all just made are really helpful for explaining the wonderful purpose that drives the CP and really all of our cooperative efforts. So I’m curious, as y’all have looked back over this century of incredible work that has powered the ministry of our Southern Baptist Convention, what kind of stands out to you in terms of the ways that the CP has really impacted the world?

Tony Wolfe:

What sticks out to me – and I don’t intend or pretend to summarize the entirety of the book: reading the book, and personally I’m overwhelmed, especially that middle section of a report – 100 years of cooperative program engagement is just overwhelming. When you think through the numbers, you know, big numbers. I know we’re not a people of numbers, but we record numbers because numbers represent people and dollars that are given in sacrifice. But the extent, the vastness, of the Southern Baptist reach over the course of these 100 years of Cooperative Program giving, there’s no way any number of volumes of books could contain it. So the vastness, it strikes me, the vastness of our gospel reach. You even think currently right now, you know, as far as we know, there are about 3000 unengaged people groups, ethnolinguistic groups across the world. We don’t know if they’re reached or not because they’re unengaged.

Tony Wolfe:

And right now, our International Mission Board has a plan called “Project 3000” through missionary explorers to find them and engage with them with the gospel. And I don’t know what that number would’ve been out of 12,500 or so ethnolinguistic groups across the people. I don’t know what that number would’ve been a hundred years ago, but it would’ve been a lot more than 3000, and so Southern Baptista for a hundred years – and for 180 years, but for a hundred years – through the Cooperative Program, have strategically in a unified funding strategy, literally taken the gospel of Jesus Christ to every corner of the globe and are still doing so and will do so I think until Christ returns. And that to me is impactful.

Brent Leatherwood:

That’s awesome. Well, since you talked about, you know, reading the book, let’s talk a little bit about what’s in the book. So Madison, as the different folks, the different voices that y’all have brought together to contribute to this, what stood out for you in those submissions? Like what jumped out in terms of what you collected?

Madison Grace:

Yeah, as you look at the book, there’s a historical part and there’s more kind of an assessment of where we’re at today throughout the book. And I think in terms of history and theology, so I really appreciated that first part: digging into our Baptist history again, seeing who we are, and just seeing the difficulties we went through to establish the work that we’re doing. And then leading up to the Cooperative Program, just knowing that we were coming to a point where people were getting tired of giving money to different appeals week in and week out. I think even at one point a quote is that “We have so many appeals, we don’t know that we actually can appreciate our pastor because we don’t really get to hear him as much.” I know that there’s all kinds of other evangelicals and Baptists that are raising support for funds, and I’ve participated with my friends in those churches, but just seeing the difficulty of these missionaries that are on deputation trying to raise funds week in and week out, and knowing that we have a program that can, for instance, students of Southwestern can graduate and then find a pipeline to be on the mission field and do the work God’s called ’em to do quickly, is just so encouraging to me. 

Madison Grace:

I think when you read the history of a “75 Million Campaign” going into the creation of the Cooperative Program, it was so encouraging to me to see that when people are incited to give towards missions, you find that they don’t just pull out their pocketbooks. Christians remember that they are called to be part of the Great Commission as well. And so, with the pledges that were given to the “75 Million Campaign,” we also saw this increase in evangelism, this increase in people that wanted to go into missions, this increase in church engagement because of the reminder of the greater call that we’re all part of the Great Commission.

Madison Grace:

I mean this goes back to the modern missions movement: Andrew Fuller, William Carey, someone goes on the field, another pastor stays to help raise funds for that. But we’re all part of this work together and I think we get to show that in the book, the sacrificial giving of Southern Baptists, but also the work towards the mission at home. Second, this book was rewarding to me just to see the different aspects of the convention. In my world, I can really focus in on theological education. The Lord has brought so many great students here to Southwestern as I know our other seminaries they do as well. And I focus in on that area and I get to rejoice in that and know what we’re doing as Southern Baptists through theological education. But then to be able to read in all the different areas across the convention of what God’s doing because of the Cooperative Program was just a good reminder.

Madison Grace:

And maybe just be proud of being a Southern Baptist for it. Those good things. We focus on the negative so often when we come together that it’s a good time to be reminded of what God is doing through us and what we’re doing for the Lord. I think finally, as you read the book, you’ll find that each author got to have a personal part of saying what the CP meant to them and what it means to be Southern Baptist. And every one of those, I just read very carefully and got to know the authors a little bit more through that. And just to be reminded of the various ways that historically the Southern Baptist Convention has engaged our communities with the gospel, not just in the big pictures, but in the persons that have written chapters in this book that are impacted by historic Cooperative Program giving. So as anyone reads this book, I hope you get to see those different levels of interaction of Great Commission impact because of the Cooperative Program.

Brent Leatherwood:

That’s so good. I’m just reminded in the way that you’re talking in your area of focus, that the Lord is doing really good things at Southwestern Seminary through you, Madison, under leadership of Dr. Dockery. So we’re really appreciative of that. Another place where ministry happens is in South Carolina. Tony, so I’m gonna call out one particular portion of the book because I’m pretty proud of what this South Carolinian has written and it’s about the ethics of kingdom cooperation. It comes from Dr. RaShan Frost who pastors down in the Charleston area, and he also happens to be our director of research at the ERLC. So talk a little bit about that. What are the ethics of kingdom cooperation?

Tony Wolfe:

So thankful RaShan jumped in and contributed this chapter. Without that chapter, we would’ve felt it, we would’ve felt a hole in this book. And he stepped right in and filled a very important need, thankful for him, and RaShan, he brings a lot of personal experience, you know, as a church planter in Charleston, also active part of the Charleston Baptist Association, which is the second oldest Baptist Association, the first Baptist Association in the south. Just a fantastic pastor and friend, researcher, brilliant scholar. And so, when he was thinking through the ethics of cooperation, you know, I was thinking personally when I talked to him about the chapter, I was thinking, “Okay, what is it like for us to actually work together in a healthy way,” you know, with communication, social media on my mind. And he hit some of that, but he took it in a direction that I didn’t anticipate and I’m so glad he did.

Tony Wolfe:

He focuses on Gen Z, you know, every generation we should be about the work of instilling an appreciation for and handing over control or involvement in the things that we love and cherish and we think should perpetuate. So, he talks about Gen Z in particular and what matters to them and what they need to see in the Cooperative Program in order to value it in the future. So when he talks about the ethics of kingdom cooperation, what he’s talking about is celebrating, storying, highlighting the missional movement of Southern Baptists that involves clear, compelling gospel proclamation along with actual social involvement. And he doesn’t elevate social involvement above clear compelling gospel proclamation. But he says, you know, secondarily, we need this. And he says, “Gen Z is ready to give their lives for something.” They will jump in when they see movement. And the Baptist story is a story of movement. It’s a Baptist movement, 400 something years old, and here we are in this generation. This is a way of saying here we are in this generation, it’s been entrusted to us and the Cooperative Program is more than dollars. It’s movement and it’s something worth giving your life to. And it affects not just the way you give, but the way you live and interact with other people every day of their life. That’s the nutshell of RaShan’s chapter, and I’m so glad he went that direction because we were missing it until he contributed.

Brent Leatherwood:

I think that’s so helpful. It gives us a really good practical application for this right now. And so, we’ve talked a little bit about the history that’s contained in the book and through I think just reflections like that that RaShan is giving you. It’s given you a present application ways that you should be thinking about this. I’m curious, actually, I wanna hear from both of you because you have unique roles that you are serving within the broader convention, but Madison, we’ll we’ll start with you. Look to the future, and what do you see as some of the challenges ahead for the CP and how can we overcome those challenges or work through them?

Madison Grace:

Yeah, part of the challenges of the Cooperative Program are the challenges for Southern Baptists. As we are trying to remember who we are and why we do what we do. We live in a world that is becoming more interdenominational. Just think about the number of churches that are wanting to remove the name “Baptist” from their name to be able to engage the mission better. We think about the students that come to our colleges and our seminaries that have that kind of mindset. And as I even teach our Baptist history classes, constantly on the first day classes, students think “Like, I really don’t wanna take this, I don’t know the value of what it means to be Baptist, the value of what it means to be Southern Baptist.” That just seems like when we get together, it’s just tension that we have together. And I have the opportunity in those classes to try and remind them like, well this is really what we do to say that Cooperative Program is really about, it’s the missions that we want to be engaged in.

Madison Grace:

It’s the type of engagement with the communities around us for the Gospel that helps us do more than we could do if we were just individual churches. And so, the biggest challenge I think is just education and for this next generation, letting them remember this is the “why” of why Southern Baptists for the past few generations have said, “We want to continue connecting together voluntarily and giving of our funds so that we can do this great work.” I don’t think the challenge is trying to convince ’em that missions is important. We have all kinds of people that want to be engaged there. They want to go, they want to plant churches, they want to change the world for Christ. The challenge is seeing that there is a value in doing this together in our shared resources, in our shared vision. And so, kind of communicating that to the next generation I think is important in a world where you can be just overcome by new stories and tensions and negative elements. And we’ve had plenty of those as a people and it’s harder to just kind of tell the good stories that are going on. So I think those are challenges that we have to work through.

Tony Wolfe:

Okay, so think about this: only a few years removed from a global pandemic, institutional distrust, a general lack of appreciation for the work, doctrinal division, world war looming and communication crises – that year is 1924. So, the reason I say that is because I don’t want to downgrade the fact that we have some unique important challenges to the Cooperative Program today. But as the wise man once said, “There’s nothing new under the sun.” Every challenge that Southern Baptists face to our Cooperative Program is perennial and generational. It may have a contemporary expression, but it is as old as fallen human nature. We do not live in a perfect world. And every person who contributes through the Cooperative Program and works within its facilitation is a real person with real problems. And so I don’t, again, I don’t want to diminish the fact that we do have some challenges, but what I do wanna say is that Southern Baptists have a record of overcoming challenges and frustrations. And if the question for the future is, “Can the Cooperative Program revitalize for the future?” If that’s the question, the only answer is as it always has been: “If we will, we can.”

Brent Leatherwood:

Let me ask you, Tony, along those lines, Madison said maybe part of the challenge out there for the future of the CP is actually basic education about it. What do you think are maybe some misconceptions about the Cooperative Program?

Tony Wolfe:

They are many. So I’ll just say, first of all, that there is a vast misunderstanding of what the Cooperative Program is. I work in a state convention office, and at least once a month we’ll get a call from a church ministry assistant or even pastor sometimes and just say, “Hey, I see this line item in our budget says ‘Cooperative Program.’ Why are we paying fees to the Cooperative Program? What is that?” And <laugh>, I say, “Well, let me sit down and take you to lunch and have a talk about what the Cooperative Program is.” So there is a general lack of education and understanding among our people. I would say an entire generation, maybe two or three generations now who’ve not grown up in a Southern Baptist culture where we have intentionally and systematically educated the next generations on the Cooperative Program. So I definitely think that’s a thing.

Tony Wolfe:

But as far as misconception, I also think because, was it Carl Truman who coined this term, that we’re in the age of expressive individualism? We can major on the individualism all day, but we definitely focus on the expressivism of our day now with the immediacy of information and the proliferation of opinion, and every person can be an expert in every field, every time, in any way they’d like. And so there’s a general disdain for and a lack of appetite for nuance and for context, because we are so focused on sound bites. I heard somebody on a podcast the other day describe our generation as a “post-literate generation.” It’s not that we can’t read, it’s that we don’t read. And so we look at headlines and we look at the tweets that capture our emotions. Sometimes those emotions are good, sometimes they’re bad, or the little sound bites and we just believe those things.

Tony Wolfe:

They feed what we already feel instead of actually learning and digging in. So when it comes to Cooperative Program education, we have to get beyond, or I’d say through, the post literacy factor of our generation and actually talk about what the Cooperative Program does. I’ll give you one more: a common misconception for Cooperative Program is that we can redirect some of our funding and just not give this entity and not give to that entity and we’ll be fine. But the truth is the Cooperative Program exists on the same principle boundaries as the unity of purpose between the churches that give to it. For example, there’s an interconnectivity and interdependence between the churches that share this missional effort. That same interconnectedness and interdependence is true of entities. Here’s an example: the International Mission Board doesn’t just need missionaries, it needs missionaries who were trained in state convention and associational discipleship programs who went to Baptist colleges and then graduated from a Baptist seminary and went on short term mission trips through GenSend with the North American Mission Board and learned about, you know, Lottie Moon and Annie Armstrong through the WMU and to have a solid affection for and understanding of the entirety of our Baptist work.

Tony Wolfe:

Those are the missionaries that give their lives on the field. And that’s just one example. We need the whole system to work for any one of its pieces to thrive. And even those entities like LifeWay and Guidestone that don’t receive Cooperative Program funds directly, they still need the Cooperative Program because it passes through the EC. The EC’s only budget comes from the Cooperative Program and the EC is charged with the task of the administrative duties by which Southern Baptists perpetuate and populate their boards that govern those entities and keep them beholden to the Southern Baptist Convention. The ERLC, I mean, in South Carolina we have benefited greatly from the ERLC and your help with us even this past week on the gambling issue, which has come into our state by force. We’ve used ERLC people and ERLC resources for that purpose to help us in our advocacy in our state. And the ERLC is a hundred percent funded by the Cooperative Program. So for any one of these entities to work, all of them have to work together. I think it’s a common misconception that we could just kind of defund one and everything will be fine when the truth is, if any of it’s gonna work, it all has to work together. And that’s what the Cooperative Program does other than prayer. It’s the only thing we do that fuels and facilitates everything we do.

Brent Leatherwood:

Well said. That’s really good. Alright, final question for both of y’all, and it’s one that you gave to us and you referenced earlier, Madison. It’s one you gave to us as folks who are submitting portions of this: how have you benefited personally from the Cooperative Program? What has it done in your life spiritually, personally? Tell our audience the ways it has affected you.

Madison Grace:

You can read the longer version in the book when you get it for my personal testimony, but I was born, my mother was directing the Eastern cantata at our church, who was a music minister there. So I was born on Easter Sunday, almost literally, into a Southern Baptist church. So I’ve been Southern Baptist from the very first day, even to the point where the first time they brought me to church, they left me there. So there’s an element of just being Southern Baptist that’s part of me. Like I said, my mom’s been in ministry in a variety of ways. My father was a deacon always in the church growing up. I got saved in a Southern Baptist church that was participating in the Cooperative Program, baptized there, went through discipleship training, RAs, went through camps like Centrifuge and Mission Fuge, and then ended up going to Mississippi Baptist, and then came out to do my graduate work at Southwestern Seminary.

Madison Grace:

And all along those processes, there are people that discipled me that were trained at Southwestern. My long-term pastor was a Southwestern himself that was trained at other schools that were part of the Cooperative Program. And just many of these places that Southern Baptist literature through LifeWay and B&H and others that have just helped them. So, the whole package, even for some of our entities that don’t receive funds directly from the Cooperative Program but are completely Southern Baptist, have been a part of my life. I am a product of the people and the places I’ve been part of, some of them funded by the Cooperative Program directly and some of them formed by the Cooperative Program indirectly. So I praise the Lord for those types of influences on my life and I want to spend my time giving back to our students, letting them know about the great work that we get to do as Southern Baptists and encourage them to participate as well. 

Brent Leatherwood:

That’s great. Tony, what about you? How has the CP affected you, my friend?

Tony Wolfe:

Very similarly. My father was, and still is actually, a Southern Baptist pastor. And the first exposure I had to missions, either North American or overseas, was my dad talking about the Cooperative Program and special offerings and how our home and foreign mission boards, how they affected national and international lostness, you know, through then even Associational ministries and in state commission ministries and RAs and then discipleship camps and student camps. And I just grew up to appreciate it because I was a product of, in real time, Southern Baptist ministry that was financially fueled through the Cooperative Program. And then as a pastor myself for many years, I remember receiving benefits, you know, admission exposure, state convention training for my lay leaders and for my Sunday school teachers, even myself going to Pastor Networks. I remember the Young Pastors Network with the Southern Baptist Texas Convention that got me connected to a group of men that I still, although I’m literally 1500 miles away from them, I still count them, my friends and partners in ministry and they still encourage me every single week.

Tony Wolfe:

I mean, that was just a lifeline for me and still is. And I went to four institutions of higher education, but I can tell you the two Southern Baptist institutions I went to – Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary and the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary – the education that I got there, I wouldn’t trade for the world, either one of those. They sharpened me and challenged me and stretched me and made me not just a better academic and not just a better theologian or a better pastor, but a better man. I thank God for Southern Baptists and even now in South Carolina and in Texas before this, I’ve been in denominational leadership, servant leadership roles for eight years. And so now for the last eight years, every piece of clothing I put on my back, every morsel of food I put in my mouth or my family’s mouth, even my children’s education that I’ve paid for, all of those things have come because faithful, sacrificial, Southern Baptists have given through the Cooperative Program so that they can entrust to me by their own will and their own grace, the ability to facilitate their Great Commission cooperation now in South Carolina.

Tony Wolfe:

And it’s my honor and joy to do so. So I thank God for the Cooperative Program, not just for its history, but right now because it literally is my own lifeline.

Brent Leatherwood:

That’s so good. Look, as the person who is privileged at in this season to lead one of our entities that is powered by the sacrificial giving of our fellow Southern Baptists, I too join y’all in my thanks and appreciation for the Cooperative Program and every dollar that goes through the CP to power the ministries of the SBC. We all should be thankful for it. I’m also thankful for the two of you for putting together this book and to read through and just see the rich history of the CP and the ways that it is affecting lives even now, a hundred years after it was created. So thank you two brothers for your time today, for your incredible intellect that the Lord has granted y’all, and just the fact you’re able to put together this book, it is certainly an appropriate celebration of something that is central in SBC life.

Narration:

Without the Cooperative Program and the funding of gracious Southern Baptists across the nation, it’s safe to say that our convention would look very different than it does today. And that’s why your faithful giving to this program is more than just money: it’s part of the Great Commission. As we give, we can trust God to continue the good work he started as we use the Cooperative Program to help bring the Gospel to every nation. Thanks for listening to this episode of the ERLC podcast. Join us next time as we talk about a crucial Supreme Court case involving protecting children from harmful gender transition procedures.