Creed, Confession, and Cooperation
Southwestern Journal of Theology
Volume 67, No. 2 - Spring 2025
Editor: Malcolm B. Yarnell III
On a cold day in the middle of March 2023, a group of Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary students and I sat at the tables in the Send Relief Ministry Center in New York City. A joint ministry of the North American Mission Board (NAMB) and the International Mission Board (IMB), the center is located in Mott Haven, a neighborhood in the New York City borough of The Bronx. Andrew Mann, pastor of Graffiti 2 Ministries, leads the center. Seated among the eight tables in the big multipurpose room at the church was another mission team from a church in Abilene, Texas.
Mann began to pass bags to each table. Each bag contained different items, and once every table had a bag, he told us to take the items inside and “build a church.” Our table opened our bag to find a bunch of dented paper and plastic cups, a few broken paperclips, some masking tape, and used construction paper. For the theological win, I told my table, “The church is made up of people. It isn’t a building! Let’s make people!” Immediately, the dented cups became the base of the people while broken paperclips served as necks, and torn, various colored construction paper transformed into faces.
We did not have the items everyone else had at their tables to build a church building with a steeple, walls, and pews, but we completed making our church within a matter of minutes. Walking among the tables, Mann approached our table, and with a swift sweep of his arm across our table’s surface, he knocked our church to the ground. I gave my friend of more than a decade a dirty look, and we picked up our pitiable paper cup people from the ground—more dented than they began.
After the allotted time, Mann asked each table to explain their church. All the other tables described their buildings, and we described our people and shared how our bag did not have materials for a structure. Once every table finished sharing, Mann asked, “Did any of you think about going to ask other tables to share resources?” Clearly, we had not.
Like most of the people in the room that day, I saw the teaching activity as a competition. I think sometimes we think of our real-life churches in much the same way—a competition between those who are also focusing on sharing the gospel or advancing the kingdom of God without ever recognizing or realizing that as brothers and sisters in Christ we are all on the same team. However, when we see collaboration among a group of believers seeking to advance the kingdom of God in a real-life setting, it is both a striking and pleasing sight to behold and experience.
Some of my favorite people to serve alongside in the entire Southern Baptist Convention are the Metro Boston church planters who have planted churches under NAMB’s Send Network. During a vision trip to this populous New England city in 2012, I learned that many of the church plants rented spaces because previous traditional church buildings, with steeples and pews, had been turned into restaurants and apartments. The focus of the church planters was then and remains to reach the city of Boston with the gospel and advance the kingdom of God rather than the kingdom of self. Because their collective focus is seeing people in their city come to faith in Christ, they work together with a common goal. Over the last decade, as I have led mission teams to work with the church plants, I have witnessed churches collaborating as they have shared resources. This has included but is not limited to church buildings, a portable baptistry, a ministry van, money, and even mission teams. This group of brothers understands a win for the kingdom of God is a win for every believer in the city. The result has been men, women, and families who have come to faith in Christ and who are disciples who are making disciples.
Collaboration Defined
The idea of collaboration for the advancement of the kingdom of God, or even the work of the Lord, is not new. A search of the canon, however, does not yield a Hebrew, Greek, or Aramaic word for “collaborate.” A modern English definition describes the word as “to work in association; to work with, [or] help.”1 While the Scriptures do not include the word collaborate, an understanding of the word’s meaning leads one to reason that collaboration is done by and with co-laborers. Within the context of the NT, the concept of co-laborer is present in the words fellow worker (e.g., Rom 16:9, 21; 2 Cor 8:23; Phil 2:25; 1 Thess 3:2; Phlm 1:1), fellow bond-servant (Col 1:7; 4:7), fellow soldier (Phil 2:25; Phlm 2), or with the phrases “workers with you” (2 Cor 1:24) and “helps in the work and labors” (1 Cor 16:16). The apostle Paul quickly reminded NT believers that they were to labor alongside one another for the cause of Christ. They were not in competition with each other; they were all on the same team. As these words are used in the NT, they refer to believers in the Lord Jesus Christ toiling in union for the cause of Christ.
Old Testament Collaboration
While the NT church rightly receives much attention regarding collaboration, the OT is not without examples of the people of God working together for God’s glory. Two examples, the construction of the tabernacle and the rebuilding of the wall around Jerusalem, showcase men, women, and families enthusiastically working alongside one another for a common purpose focused on the glory of God.
Exodus 35-40 records the account of the Lord’s instruction to Moses and the subsequent building of the tabernacle. The emphasis on the Israelites working together is not lost within these six chapters. Moses told the people, “Whoever is of a willing heart, let him bring it as the Lord’s contribution” (Exod 35:5), before he outlined what was needed to construct the tabernacle. After Moses finished sharing the specifics, “everyone whose heart stirred him and everyone whose spirit moved him came and brought the Lord’s contribution for the work of the tent of meeting and for all its service and for the holy garments” (Exod 35:21). This included the women spinning goat hair in blue, purple, and scarlet material (Exod 35:25-26) and under the leadership of Bezalel and Oholiab every skilled person gifted by God whose heart was moved to participate in the work (Exod 36:1-2). Every morning, Moses received freewill gifts from the people, so many gifts that the skilled workers who were performing the construction of the tabernacle asked Moses to ask the people to stop bringing gifts, “for the material they had was sufficient and more than enough for all the work, to perform it” (Exod 36:3-7).
Once the work on the tabernacle was completed, the glory of the Lord settled on the tent of meeting as the Israelites worshipped the Lord who dwelt among the people. The glory of the Lord settled on the structure in the form of a cloud, which signaled to the people they were to remain where they were. However, when the cloud rose from the structure, the people knew it was time to move, and a pillar of fire over the structure would guide the people by night. Interestingly, among a group of people who complained about food, one another, and a host of other issues, and also built a golden calf to honor a false god, not one instance of squabbling among the Israelites is recorded from Exodus 35 to the end of the book. The emphasis instead is on how the people worked together and were willing to give sacrificially and wholeheartedly to honor the Lord.
The construction of the tabernacle is not the only instance of the Israelites collaborating for the glory of God. When the wall around Jerusalem was “broken down and its gates [were] burned with fire” (Neh 1:3) and the Israelites who survived the captivity were in great distress and reproach, Nehemiah sought the Lord’s direction in how God wanted him to help (Neh 1:8-11; 2:11-18). After receiving permission and provisions from the king for whom he served as cupbearer, Nehemiah led the way to construct and rebuild the wall around Jerusalem. The wall was not only an ongoing reproach to God’s people, but it was also a safety issue as the people were not protected from outside enemies. Nehemiah 3 records the names of the men and women from each family, along with their assigned tasks, who stood side-by-side to work on the wall. This also included the temple servants (Neh 3:26) and the priests (Neh 3:28). Even when Sanballat and Tobiah ridiculed and threatened the Israelites and the people were scared by the enemies (Neh 4:12-14), the people worked together to continue the construction of the wall while simultaneously protecting themselves and each other. Each worker “wore his sword girded at his side as he built” (Neh 4:18), and “those who were rebuilding the wall and those who carried burdens took their load with one hand doing the work and the other holding a weapon” (Neh 4:17). They laid bricks with one hand and were prepared for an attack with the other.
While the construction of the wall took place and involved all the people, this group of Israelites was not without infighting. The wealthier Jews were charging their less wealthy countrymen excessive interest and, with no means to pay their debts, the less well-to-do Jews had to sell their sons and daughters as slaves (Neh 5:1-5). When Nehemiah heard this news, he not only became angry (Neh 5:6), he put a stop to the practice (Neh 5:7-13). Nevertheless, the wall was completed in 52 days, and it was a testimony to the surrounding nations and enemies of Israel that “this work had been accomplished with the help of…God” (Neh 6:15-16). The people worked together for the glory and honor of the Lord, and the result was God was magnified.
New Testament Collaboration
No doubt, the clearest example of collaboration in the NT is the church. The night before his crucifixion, Jesus prayed that his followers would be sanctified in the truth of God’s word and that the relationship among believers would show the unity that is shared between God the Father and his Son (John 17:17, 21-22). Jesus’s high priestly prayer for believers to have unity was so the world would believe that the Father sent the Son and loved people the same way the Father loved the Son (John 17:23). The unity displayed through the church—God’s people—is to be a witness to a lost world. As believers work together in genuine unity grounded in the truth of God’s word to advance the cause of Christ, a watching world sees what it means to be sanctified, or set apart, by God.
When Jesus gave the charge to “make disciples” the world over, he gave his commission to his disciples who would scatter across the known world. There was no possible way the eleven disciples could do this task on their own. By necessity, they had to work with other believers to ensure the gospel was advanced. In so doing, other believers in different regions of the inhabited world were included in the task as indicated in the Book of Acts and the epistles.
One of the strongest examples of believers working with other believers is in Paul’s letter to the church at Philippi. Writing from a prison in Rome, Paul commended the Philippians for their “participation in the gospel from the first day until now” (Phil 1:5). During Paul’s second missionary journey, he encountered the people at Philippi and helped plant a church in that region of Macedonia (see Acts 16). Almost ten years later, the church was thriving as they were making disciples and supporting Paul as he continued to share the gospel in other cities. Paul was grateful for the gifts the Philippians sent so he could plant other churches and see people come to faith in Christ. The Philippians did not view gospel advancement as a competition as Paul commended them for the multiple gifts they shared when he was in Thessalonica (Phil 4:16). The Philippians knew by working with Paul they were helping advance the kingdom of God. They joyfully gave so others could hear the same good news they heard.
Why Collaborate
In a world where independence is heralded and competition creeps into every facet of life, the idea of collaboration is often met with skepticism. Yet, in the Southern Baptist Convention, collaboration and autonomy are two distinguishing factors. L. R. Scarborough, Southwestern Seminary’s second president, wrote that “the whole scheme of putting over the program of Jesus Christ in its theoretical and doctrinal side is dependent upon the doctrine of co-operation,” noting that “man must co-operate with God and man must co-operate with each other if there is to be any progress in the Kingdom of God.”2 Morris H. Chapman identified collaboration as one of six axioms that define a cooperating Southern Baptist, noting that an “understanding of New Testament ecclesiology affirms the slogan ‘we can do more together than separately.’”3
Collaboration and cooperation were how the early church functioned to advance the kingdom of God. Why wouldn’t the church in the twenty-first century want to do the same? The idea of collaboration was not lost on Southern Baptist leaders in the early twentieth century. After decades of colporteurs4 traveling from church to church to ask for funds for the entity they represented, messengers to the 1913 annual meeting of the Southern Baptist Convention voted to form a group, later known as the “Efficiency Committee,” that was tasked with studying how to better fund the convention’s work.5 Riding the waves of a World War I post-war economic boom, in 1919 messengers adopted what became known as the “Seventy-five Million Campaign.” The campaign sought to raise $75 million in five years to fund Southern Baptist missions and ministry work. Built on pledges, Southern Baptists pledged more than $90 million to the campaign. SBC entities, including mission agencies, built their budgets around the pledges, but when the economy fell hard, so did the pledges and budgets as only $58 million was paid out.
Though the five-year effort to raise $75 million by 1924 fell short of financial goals, in 1920, Scarborough, who served as the chairman of the campaign, identified 23 by-products of the campaign. The by-products Scarborough named included denominational strength, a vision for reaching the world with the gospel, unity as evidenced in denominational solidarity, and the strength of Southern Baptist institutional life, including a realization that SBC “educational centers are forces for unmeasured denominational power.”6
While the Seventy-five Million Campaign fell short of its goals, the “adoption of a better system in raising and disbursing finances resulted” as “one out of seven Southern Baptists had become a regular giver” and a quarter of Southern Baptist churches “adopted a well-defined financial system.”7 D. Scott Hildreth noted that it is “no understatement to claim that this failed fundraising effort has shaped Southern Baptist identity even into our day” as the campaign “changed the Southern Baptist Convention financially, structurally, and theologically.”8 Southern Baptists “saw for the first time what could be accomplished by establishing budgets, conducting every-member canvasses, and practicing weekly giving” as the “campaign itself, including its failures, was the most effective training in stewardship most Baptists ever had.”9 As a whole Southern Baptists realized more could be done for the kingdom of God by working together, in many ways reflecting the same synergy Paul used in his epistles when referring to his fellow workers.
When the Cooperative Program was adopted by messengers at the 1925 annual meeting in Memphis, Tennessee, the mechanism was established as a “plan for financing all the activities of the convention through one general budget. This program became (and remains) the primary funding mechanism for all convention activities.”10 Hildreth observed that the significance of the Cooperative Program “should not be reduced to its funding capacity”’ as the program “is responsible for forming and even galvanizing Southern Baptist identity.”11 He added that “for many, cooperation is more than mere allegiance to convention causes” because “to cooperate is to be Southern Baptist.”12 When Southern Baptists are not willing to cooperate it “is not simply denominational treason; it is viewed as a spiritual defect.”13 An article on cooperation was included in the Baptist Faith and Message, which was adopted that same year and has remained in the confessional statement in every subsequent version. For one hundred years, collaboration and cooperation have worked in a symbiotic relationship among Southern Baptists.
Better Together
The results of Southern Baptists working together are innumerable. Since 1925, collectively, Southern Baptists have sent long-term missionaries to the most remote regions of the world to share the gospel. Missionaries have been able to go and make disciples without worrying about fundraising to support their families and ministries. Those same missionaries serve side-by-side with fellow workers who are also Southern Baptists, collaborating for the cause of Christ. In cities across the United States, church planters can hold Sunday morning worship services and train new disciples in the truth of God’s word because Southern Baptists have worked together to advance the kingdom of God. According to historical data, from 1928 to 2020, Southern Baptists gave $5.5 billion to fund missions nationally and internationally.14 Southern Baptist missionaries have not only worked together to share the gospel to the ends of the earth, but Southern Baptists have faithfully and diligently given for the cause of Christ so those who are called can go.
During that same timeframe, Southern Baptists also have given $1.67 billion to fund theological education through the six SBC seminaries and the Baptist Bible Institute.15 Pastors, age-graded ministers, music ministers, church planters, missionaries, counselors, women’s ministry leaders, church administrators, theological educators, and a host of other local church and ministry workers have been taught how to rightly handle the word of God while also learning the lessons of practical ministry. Southern Baptist students are allowed to attend a Southern Baptist seminary at a reduced cost because churches have given.
Within state conventions, local churches are not only assisted in their ministries but also encouraged to work with other churches through local associations to reach their communities with the gospel, disciple believers, and advance the cause of Christ. As churches work together with a focus on Christ and his gospel, disciples are made, the process of sanctification takes place, and God is glorified. In a manner and fashion similar to the NT believers, when Southern Baptists have collaborated for the cause of Christ, more has been accomplished for the kingdom of God than one church could achieve working alone. Though autonomy is a hallmark of Southern Baptist life, the Southern Baptist distinction of cooperation is too.
The effects of Southern Baptist collaboration have been a part of my life since I was a college student. Not having grown up in a Southern Baptist church, I did not know what CP stood for, much less who Lottie Moon and Annie Armstrong were. The SBC ABCs were lost on this college student who had been a believer since she was a pre-teen but was not believer’s baptized until she was a freshman in college. Sensing a call to ministry, my college minister, who had been educated at one of the SBC seminaries, guided me and many others in our college ministry through what it meant to be called. On a small scale within our church, he showed us the ropes of collaboration as he and other leaders equipped us to share the gospel on our campus—one of the most lost in the entire United States. Through Baptist Student Ministries funded by Texas Baptists, we worked with other Baptist students to advance the gospel across our campus. The experience was a microcosm for many of us who were called to ministry and missions as we learned the lessons of seeking the Lord together, focusing on the Kingdom of God rather than our agendas and working together to make disciples on a very lost campus.
When I began as a seminary student in the early 2000s, I was surprised to learn that because I was a Southern Baptist attending a Southern Baptist seminary, I received a discount on tuition because Southern Baptist churches pooled their money to equip their own. Through two seminary degrees, one of which was fully covered by the Southern Baptists of Texas Convention, Southern Baptists gave so I could be equipped to serve the Lord. Though the lessons of collaboration were certainly modeled, it was not until I joined the state convention staff in North Carolina in 2009 that I began to see a fuller picture of collaboration. Through the women’s ministry, where I served for almost 12 years, I saw churches work together to learn how to effectively reach their part of the state with the gospel. I saw women’s ministry leaders from large and small churches representing a very diverse state come together to determine how to equip women with tools to study the Scriptures and disciple women so they could disciple others. I saw women from across the state work alongside IMB and NAMB missionaries in Argentina, Moldova, New York City, and Boston to share the gospel and encourage co-laborers in their ministries. Those are all gospel partnerships that are still active to this day.
As the women’s ministry leader on the state convention staff, I had the opportunity to work alongside other women’s ministry leaders from other state conventions as we collaborated on ministry opportunities to train local church leaders, write curricula, and work together. We found time and time again that when we worked together, the results were better than if we tried things solo. Each of us was able to bring God-given talents, abilities, and skills to projects and the end product always came out better. Working together did not mean we were without conflict among ourselves or that there was no opposition from others. Individually and collectively, we learned lessons of applying the truth of Scripture as we prayed with and for one another, listened to our sister in Christ, and sought the kingdom of God while dying to ourselves. Even in those times of trial, God was ultimately glorified, and the gospel was advanced. Those friendships are still some of my most treasured. Gifts from the Cooperative Program fueled each of the ministries we stewarded, and we were able to collaborate to reach and train more women for the sake of the gospel than we would have independently.
My women’s ministry lens was a small perspective that can be recounted among youth workers, children’s ministry leaders, music ministers, associational leaders, missionaries, and many, many others. The same experience is true of those who work with Southern Baptist Disaster Relief, church planters, and a host of others. More impact for the kingdom tends to take place when we choose to work with other like-minded believers. As we work together for the cause of Christ, the Father is glorified and the world sees a picture of the unity Jesus prayed for in John 17.
Today, as I work with Southwestern Seminary students who represent all parts of the world, I hear their stories of the call the Lord Jesus has placed on their lives to advance the kingdom. As I work with them during mission trips, I have watched them bring their languages, skills, and gifts to be a part of God’s work as they seek to join him in what he is doing to draw people to himself. Though that rainy day in March 2023 seemed like a competition centered around building a church, the reality is that it takes all of us working together in the power of the Holy Spirit to see the kingdom of God advanced.
We really are better together. The last century has shown that. May the next one hundred years do the same to the glory of God.
- Webster’s English Dictionary (New York: Geddes & Grosset, 2003), s.v. “collaborate.” ↩︎
- L.R. Scarborough, The Heresy of Non-Co-Operation, Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, undated. http://cdm16969.contentdm.oclc.org/cdm/ref/collection/p16969coll11/id/1136. ↩︎
- Morris H. Chapman, “Axioms of a Cooperating Southern Baptist,” in Southern Baptist Identity: An Evangelical Denomination Faces the Future, ed. David S. Dockery (Wheaton: Crossway, 2009), 169. Under the umbrella of “axioms of cooperating conservatives,” Chapman identifies collaboration as the ecclesiastical axiom. The remaining five axioms include confession (the theological axiom); courage (the societal axiom); character (the ethics axiom); charity (the attitudinal axiom); and co-belligerency (the political axiom) (166–71). ↩︎
- This form of fundraising was known as the “society method,” and representatives, known as colporteurs, from the Southern Baptist home and foreign mission boards, schools, associations, and state conventions traveled all over the country or respective state to visit churches and encourage financial support for the organization they represented. Though the method was used for many years, it was challenging as like-minded organizations were essentially in competition with one another as they visited the same churches, asking for money for their organization. Church members would make pledges that were due in December of the same year. The organization operated around the amount pledged. However, “if money failed to show up, debt and setbacks resulted,” and national economic woes also complicated giving. Additionally, to cover compensation and travel expenses, colporteurs kept a larger percentage of what they raised than was given to the organization they represented. See W. E. Grindstaff, Our Cooperative Program (Nashville: Convention Press, 1965), 22; and David L. Rowe, “From Colporteurs to Cooperative Program: A Century of Southern Baptist Stewardship and the Rise of the Southern Baptist Convention,” Baptist History and Heritage (Spring 2006): 94. ↩︎
- D. Scott Hildreth, Together on God’s Mission: How Southern Baptists Cooperate to Fulfill the
Great Commission (Nashville: B&H Academic, 2018), 16. ↩︎ - L. R. Scarborough, Marvels of Divine Leadership or The Story of the Southern Baptist 75
Million Campaign (Nashville: Sunday School Board Southern Baptist Convention, 1920),
116–25. ↩︎ - Grindstaff, Our Cooperative Program, 25. ↩︎
- Hildreth, Together on God’s Mission, 18. ↩︎
- Fred Grissom, “Cooperation Through Stewardship,” Baptist History and Heritage (January 1989): 27. ↩︎
- Hildreth, Together on God’s Mission, 19–20. ↩︎
- Hildreth, Together on God’s Mission, 20. ↩︎
- Hildreth, Together on God’s Mission, 20. ↩︎
- Hildreth, Together on God’s Mission, 20. ↩︎
- Information provided by the SBC Executive Committee, 19 August 2024. ↩︎
- Information provided by the SBC Executive Committee, 19 August 2024. ↩︎
