Last week, brother Don Mauldin and I represented our church at the annual meeting of the Southern Baptists of Texas Convention (SBTC) in Lubbock. When I sat down to write this article, I intended to provide a report on the meeting, but it strikes me that you might not even know what that is.

In fact, I’d bet that most of our church family doesn’t know how our church cooperates with other Baptist churches at the local, state, and national levels. So instead of reporting on a meeting that was really a mix of edifying worship and preaching on the one hand, and arcane (but important!) parliamentary wrangling on the other hand, I figured it might be helpful to take a few weeks to write about the topic of Baptist cooperation. Why and how do Baptist churches cooperate with one another?

Many Christians think that denominations like the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) or the Presbyterian Church in America or the Global Methodist Church are driven by a desire to separate or divide from other Christians. Not so! What drives these denominations is not primarily separation, but cooperation. Speaking for Baptists, the primary purpose of the SBC, or the SBTC, or our local association, is fellowship. Cooperation. Collaboration.

Think about it from an historical perspective. When Baptists first came on the scene in the early 1600s, most Christians belonged to a state-sponsored church with a hierarchical structure of authority. Local churches were tied together organizationally, so they were already in cooperation by default.

But Baptists think differently about the local church. One of the earliest and most important tenets of Baptist identity is the autonomy of each local church. To put it another way, Baptists have always believed that each local congregation derives its authority directly from Jesus Himself and is accountable directly to Him, not to an hierarchical church government.

Well, that left an open question: If each church operates autonomously under the authority of Christ, how should one congregation relate to other congregations, if at all?

From the earliest days, Baptist churches have prioritized cooperation with other likeminded congregations. Initially, formal cooperation looked very similar to what we would call a Baptist “Association,” like the Palo Pinto Baptist Association here in our county, or the Parker Baptist Association in and around Weatherford.

Early Baptist Associations like the Philadelphia Baptist Association (In Pennsylvania and New Jersey) and the Sandy Creek Association (in North Carolina), played a major role in shaping Baptist identity and planting Baptist churches, many of which continue to thrive today.

The meeting minutes of these Associations show that Baptists cooperated to shepherd the sheep (especially when one church member decided to move to a different congregation), settle doctrinal questions, and fulfill the Great Commission. The fellowship between pastors and elders in multiple congregations must have been a blessing as well.

Associations used to be the main form of Baptist cooperation in America. But among Southern Baptist Churches today, Associations have often languished. There are several reasons why: First, technology (cars, highways, the internet, etc.) have made it much easier to cooperate with churches across much larger regions, so the need for local cooperation isn’t as desperate. Technology has also made us a more mobile society, so we’re less likely to put down roots and invest in relationships with folks nearby than we are to stay connected with friends around the country.

Second, Associations are rarely the driving force behind kingdom growth in America today. If a church wants to plant another church, they tend to involve experienced experts and tap into national or state-level funding sources.

Third, it seems to me that the level of diversity among Southern Baptist Churches is felt most strongly at the associational level.

Here’s what I mean: a generation ago, if you walked into any Southern Baptist church in Texas, Mississippi, or Missouri, you’d have a similar experience and encounter similar theology. Not so much today. No two SBC churches seem to be alike anymore (a complicated topic in its own right).

Indian Creek participates in the Palo Pinto Baptist Association (PPBA). The PPBA is going through a transition right now, as a handful of us pastors have been assigned the task of charting a course for cooperation for the foreseeable future. We’re spending time every week in prayer for God’s direction and meeting once a month to compare notes. I’d urge you to pray for the PPBA: Pray that we can get aligned with a biblical identity and a mission worthy of the gospel. And pray that God grows our Baptist churches in Palo Pinto County both in health and in numbers!