July 10, 2000
Fellowship seeks BWA affiliation
___By Kenny Byrd
___Associated Baptist Press
___ORLANDO, Fla. (ABP)--Seeking to enhance its status among the world's Baptists, the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship has voted to seek membership in the 95-year-old Baptist World Alliance.
___Participants at the Fellowship's 10th annual general assembly voted without opposition
___While the 1,800-church Fellowship, a group for moderates in the Southern Baptist Convention, is not technically a denomination, leaders believe it meets membership requirements for the BWA, which the Atlanta-based Fellowship has long supported financially.
___A thornier question might be how the application will be received by the Southern Baptist Convention, which provides about one-fourth of the BWA's $1.7 million annual budget and views the Fellowship as a competitor.
___Randy Hyde, a member of the Fellowship Coordinating Council who led presentation of the recommendation at the general assembly, said the application "does possibly place the BWA membership committee in a difficult position."
___Hyde, pastor of Pulaski Heights Baptist Church in Little Rock, Ark., called the BWA membership application vote "one of the most important commitments" the Fellowship has ever made. He urged the crowd to pray for BWA leaders, in order that "they might do the right and Baptist thing."
___During a breakout session to discuss the proposal, participants raised questions about whether the lack of denominational status hurts the Fellowship's chances to gain membership and the SBC's influence in the BWA organization. Some were concerned about how SBC representatives to the BWA, including Jerry Falwell's son Jonathan, conservative leader Paul Pressler and other SBC officials, would react.
___One participant in the discussion asked, "How many votes does it take to get us in, and how many votes does it take to get us out?"
___But Coordinating Council members said it is unlikely the SBC could carry a majority influence in light of the BWA's organizational structure. Though not a denomination, officials said the Fellowship meets criteria in BWA bylaws requiring a member "have an identity of its own and shall not exist as an integral part of some other union or convention."
___Hyde said the BWA reference to "integral" implied a group would have to at least be valuable to another organization. "I don't think the Southern Baptist Convention thinks we are valuable," he said.
___The recommendation to apply for membership states, "As an organized and distinct Baptist body, pursuant to our commitment to participate in the worldwide Baptist community, the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship applies for membership in the Baptist World Alliance."
___A BWA official present at the Fellowship gathering said it is unlikely the BWA membership committee could consider the application before next year. This year's meeting of the group, in Cuba, followed the Fellowship meeting by one week.
___The Fellowship reduced the $100,000 it had been contributing to the BWA to about $20,000 in recent years because of budget constraints, said Beth Fogg, a Fellowship Coordinating Council member from Richmond, Va.
___Still, the $20,000 contribution makes the organization one of the top five givers to the BWA, behind the SBC and American Baptist Churches in the U.S.A.
___Fogg said Fellowship officials "deliberately" de-linked an earlier proposal that this year's contribution be contingent on the BWA accepting the Fellowship's membership application. She said Fellowship officials felt to do otherwise would be "un-Christian."
___Philip Wise of First Baptist Church in Dothan, Ala., said BWA membership would provide the Fellowship with "opportunities to do some things we want to do that at present we can't do effectively," including hunger relief activities and aid to impoverished areas.
___ He said it would make the Fellowship "a recognized player among Baptists in the world. We're not just some splinter group."
___Wise said the membership would formalize what Fellowship participants are already doing--working with the BWA.
___Fogg said many Fellowship missionaries are asked abroad why the organization is not a member of the BWA.
___"It will assist our missionaries on the ground," she said.
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