The Gathering of the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship of North Carolina
Bringing Baptists of North Carolina Together for Christ-Centered Ministry Volume 12, Issue 8
October 2007
Church Freedom by Larry Hovis, Coordinator It was a very full, but fairly typical Sunday in the life of Autonomy Baptist Church in Freedom, North Carolina. School had begun the week earlier and folks were looking forward to returning to a more regular schedule. Being the first Sunday of the new church program year, pupils were not surprised to be greeted with a few changes when they arrived at Sunday School, the biggest one being new literature in several classes. Based on requests from teachers, the Christian education committee, under the leadership of the Sunday School director, had been studying their curriculum for about a year. For decades, they had ordered literature for every class, from preschool through senior adults, from the same denominational publishing house, but many teachers and class members had become dissatisfied. With guidance from the new CBF resource, Destinations, they developed a plan that met their church’s unique needs which utilized literature and resources from a variety of sources.
After Sunday School, church members and guests gathered in the sanctuary for worship. The service featured both traditional and contemporary elements, including hymns from the Baptist Hymnal, a praise chorus downloaded from a nondenominational worship resource website (with appropriate copyright permission), and a litany from the Methodist book of worship. The pastor’s sermon was based on 2 Corinthians 3:17, “Now the Lord is Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is Freedom,” one of the four daily texts of the Revised Common Lectionary, though the pastor did not always choose to follow that particular guide. At the conclusion of the sermon, an invitation to discipleship was extended and the Smith family responded. The Smiths had been visiting Autonomy Baptist for several months and felt led to unite with the congregation. Jane and Jim Smith, the parents, were coming on transfer of their membership from their former church, a Baptist congregation in another state. Their oldest child, elevenyear-old Catherine, was making a public profession of faith in Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord, and was a candidate for
believers’ baptism. Their youngest child, Dylan, a second grader, was not yet ready to take that step but had already become active in the church’s children’s ministry. With a hearty “Amen” the congregation voted to receive Jane, Jim and Catherine into church membership. Following the benediction, the church moderator called the church into a brief business session to consider a recommendation from the Personnel Committee to call Mary Williams as associate pastor. Mary was a recent graduate of a CBF-partner divinity school, and this was her first full-time ministry position. Mary had already been introduced to the congregation in a variety of ways, and the church voted to call Mary with only one dissenting vote (Though Grover Jones liked Mary, he believed that you should never have a unanimous vote on anything!). On Sunday evening, two important meetings took place. In a joint session of the missions, stewardship and denominational relations committees, a presentation was made about the CBFNC Mission Resource Plan (MRP). Continued on page 7.
5th Annual CBFNC Fall Fellowship Gathering
November 13, 2007 First Baptist Church, Greensboro
Seminar - 3:00 - 5:30 p.m. Dinner - 5:30 - 7:00 p.m. Worship - 7:15 - 8:30 p.m.
Attend the ‘Ending the Worship Wars’ Seminar with Kyle Matthews, stay for our annual fellowship dinner and then join us for worship led by Kyle Matthews and Emmanuel McCall, past moderator of CBF. Register online at www.cbfnc.org by November 1. The seminar and worship are free; dinner is $10 per person.
We asked our partner churches where they have been on mission in 2007. Take a peek at their postcards and passport stamps on pages 3-5.