“Contemporary Southern Baptists have inherited an impressive missionary legacy in the Cooperative Program. CP, along with our common conviction, remains one of the most compelling reasons to serve God with Southern Baptists everywhere. I have personally experienced the help of CP as I pursued training for ministry at New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary. (For this help, I will be forever grateful.) But I witnessed the greatest of CP’s benefits as I worked with our missionary partners in northern Thailand and throughout southeast Asia. CP has changed lives, and it has changed the world. I am very grateful for this particular instrument of God.”
Russell Mord
Associational Mission Strategist
Golden Triangle Baptist Association
“I have often heard that if you get ten Southern Baptists in the same room you will end up having at least thirteen different opinions on any range of topics. While that may be accurate, I know of one thing that all Southern Baptist can and should agree on: the Cooperative Program. This method of pooling our resources is the model of doing all things well together. Larger churches can be just as involved in missions and education endeavors just like a smaller church. A pastor of a fifty member congregation has the same influence for the gospel as the pastor of a multi-site mega-church.
Personally I have reaped many benefits from the Cooperative Program. I could write a book of my educational opportunities from my days at MC or the years I spent studying at Southern Seminary. Only heaven will reveal what mark my BSU experience had on myself and classmates as we were sent far and wide through the summer missions program. The memories I have of the summers of my teen years being spent on Henderson Point on the gulf coast will never leave me. It was at Youth Weeks Camp at Gulf Shores Baptist Assembly that God solidified my call to His service. I even returned there after college and served as a counselor, coming full circle as a satisfied customer of Bible camp.
Mississippi Baptists, through the Cooperative Program, invested in my up bringing and the sharpening of the vision that God has given me for serving the Kingdom. That investment has paid dividends that I could never have predicted. I have watched my local association take on tasks ranging food distribution to international church planting to picking up trash in Central Park to supplying chainsaw workers through disaster relief. I often wonder what other denominations do when they realize that they are to not able to do what all that see Southern Baptists doing.
That is not meant to sound prideful on my part. No, the pride in my heart comes from watching my two sons participate in Mississippi Baptist Bible Drills. Then to also sit back and watch them participate in mission trips from Hawaii to Central America to London to New York City to Portugal. More fatherly pride sets in as I have moved them both into a dorm at MC over the years and watched them experience all that I was able to during my college years. Doing such would remain a pipe dream without the giving of Southern Baptists to the Cooperative Program.
Looking back it would seem that I have a really good Cooperative Program resume. It has been such a major part of my church life that I cannot fathom where I would be without it supporting me and my work. Indeed, I am a proud cheerleader for the Cooperative Program because it has been such a blessing to my life.”
Clay Anthony
Former Associational Mission Strategist
Collaborative Missionary Network
“I am thankful that the Cooperative Program enables churches to reach together, to reach stronger and to reach further with the gospel!”
Warren Jones
Associational Mission Strategist
Alcorn Baptist Association
For more information on the Mississippi Cooperative Program and to download promotional resources, visit https://www.mbcb.org/what-is-cp/cp-resources/. E-mail: lleavell@mbcb.org. Telephone: (601) 292-3347.
