By Baptist Message staff
DALLAS (LBM) – South Carolina Baptist Convention Executive Director Tony Wolfe invited messengers to cast bread on the water to remember the generation who drove the growth of the Cooperative Program and to unite as the generation that continues its impact.
“The Cooperative Program is not a foolproof investment,” Wolfe said. “But it is the best strategy we have to turn diverse, disparate tributaries into one roaring river.”
Citing Ecclesiastes 11:1-6, Wolfe, a Louisiana native, shared memories of fishing on the riverbanks on the Comite and Amite Rivers and related them to the challenges Southern Baptists face today while urging them to push ahead with their cooperative global mission.
Wolfe grew up in Baton Rouge, where his dad, Jim, was pastor with Brookstown Baptist Church (today, he is pastor with Ridge Avenue Baptist Church, West Monroe). Tony also served in Louisiana — as music minister with Northside Baptist Church, Denham Springs, from 1999-2003.
Wolfe emphasized that May 13, 1925 was a “watershed moment” for the Convention, when a group of Southern Baptists that included M.E. Dodd (pastor with First Baptist Church, Shreveport, at the time) gathered in Memphis, Tennessee, to found the Cooperative Program.
“The Cooperative program was born that day, and soon to follow, a consensus of our faith in the Baptist Faith and Message,” he said. “That was a pivotal meeting where our forefathers cast their bread upon the water, and the Gospel has streamed magnificently ever since, from the waters to the nations. And here we are today, 15,000 of us from among about 12.5 million across the United States who call themselves Southern Baptists and cooperate on missions. Here we are today, gleaning from the edges of that Great Commission cooperation that has been entrusted to us from a century past.”
Wolfe said despite any challenges Southern Baptists may have, he was enthusiastic about the effort.
“It is my prerogative to stay joyfully, sacrificially and strategically engaged doing everything I can to move us toward greater clarity, greater missional effectiveness. … I’m still casting lines in this flowing river.”
He reminded messengers that the Gospel message is urgent and they should not waste a single day to carry out their mission.
“As a Southern Baptist people, never have we possessed more technology, more intelligence, more global access, more financial resources or more organizational strength than right now,” Wolfe said. “Yet still, the question persists: Will ours be the generation that sees the retrenchment of our global war on lostness? Today, let the Kay Bailey Hutchison Convention Hall in Dallas, Texas, resound with our unified, exclamatory, ‘No.’ — it must not be; it will not be.”
