Karen L. Willoughby: Cooperative Program gives small church global impact

In selecting articles for Anglicans Ablaze, I often ask the following questions, "What can Anglicans Ablaze readers learn from this article? How else might this article benefit them? 

Two things can be learned from this particular article--the usefulness of a program like the Southern Baptist Convention's Cooperative Program in pooling and mobilizing the resources of the churches in a denomination for mission and how Southern Baptist churches work together to help each other. 

When I was in the Episcopal Church, I saw nothing like this level of cooperation. Parishes and missions paid their annual assessment to the diocese and the diocese doled out money as it saw fit. Episcopal churches did not not send teams of volunteers to help each other. Each church was left to struggle on its own.

First Baptist Church of Clearwater only draws about 40 worshippers Sunday mornings, but makes a global missions impact through the Cooperative Program.

Bill Horn, bivocational pastor of the Idaho church, extols the Cooperative Program as unique.

"There's nothing out there like it. The Cooperative Program takes a rural church like us that doesn't have a large budget or mission teams we can send, but we can send our money and see evangelism done around the world through us," Horn said. "That makes us missionaries too. Whether we're giving our money or helping people in the community, when we realize we're missionaries, we are more serious about being one." Keep reading