Suzii Paynter, the first woman to lead the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship, took a tour of Arkansas this week to connect with churches that partner with the progressive group.
Paynter, a San Antonio native, was elected executive coordinator of the fellowship in February. She’s only the third leader in the group’s 25-year history. Not a stranger to Arkansas, where she worked on literacy projects as part of the national program Reading Recovery, it was her first trip to the state as executive coordinator. Her travels with Ray Higgins, coordinator of the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship of Arkansas, took her to Fort Smith and Van Buren, north to Fayetteville, east to Jonesboro and south to Helena. She also visited churches in El Dorado, Camden and Arkadelphia.
Paynter will be at Second Baptist Church, 222 E. Eighth St., in downtown Little Rock today for a meet and greet from 10 a.m. to noon.
She’llalso preach at 9 a.m. Sunday at New Millennium Church, the latest congregation in Arkansas to join the fellowship. The congregation meets at 21 Lakeshore Drive near the University of Arkansas at Little Rock.
The Cooperative Baptist Fellowship, with headquarters in Atlanta, is distinctive among Baptist groups because men and women can serve in all aspects of leadership, including as pastor. In the Southern Baptist Convention, for example, only men serve as pastors. The fellowship includes about 1,800 congregations and regional groups, and also includes individuals as members.
“It’s unusual to have individual members,” Paynter said. “We’re saying that it’s not just the institutions that matter.”
Arkansas is home to 23 partner churches, and has about 1,000 individuals in fellowship with the group, as well.
“Cooperative Baptists are a more progressive, ecumenical and interfaith kind of group and there are Baptists in the state who want to experience faith in those ways, too,” Higgins said.
Churches in the fellowship are often affiliated with other Baptist groups, too, but they join the Cooperative Baptists to partner in missions and ministry, Paynter said.
“There’s no compulsion where a church has to be a member,” she said. “People in the fellowship want to be there so there’s really a cooperative spirit.”
Paynter said the fellowship is in partnership with more than a dozen theological schools and that seminary students often join the fellowship as individual members as they complete their education.
“We have all these young people that want to be in our churches and ministries around the world,” she said. “It’s really energizing me.”
Paynter said the fellowship recently adopted a new constitution and bylaws to streamline the way they do ministry together. Rather than a monolithic structure, she said the fellowship is “looking for more organic growth.”
“We’ve moved from a cruise ship that was hard to steer to a flotilla of smaller ships,” she said.
As the fellowship adopts a new way of doing business, Paynter said it is focusing on identity, missions and ministry.
“We are asking what does it mean to be connected,” she said. “What does it mean to be missional Christians and how to be relevant in the community and be Christ followers.”
The key, she said, is to engage communities in mission by meeting their needs instead of imposing a preset agenda.
“One of our major emphases is missions and our commitment to working with the most marginalized people in the world,” Paynter said. “We try to make missions about the needs of the community. You don’t go in as the leader. You go in as the servant. That’s what transforms lives and brings you closer to Christ yourself.”
One of the fellowship’s main missions sites is in Helena-West Helena. The ministry is known as Together for Hope and the goal of the rural poverty initiative is to work with people in 20 of the nation’s poorest counties. The fellowship has a 20-year commitment to these communities, Paynter said.
“It’s a good example of our commitment to missions and why we do what we do,” Paynter said. “We really do believe in communities.”
In Helena-West Helena, the fellowship has helped by rebuilding the community center, establishing a community garden, building a community swimming pool, offering summer programs for children and more. The ministry also focuses on literacy for children and life skills for teens. The fellowship’s Stories on Wheels bus, for example, is a mobile library that takes books to children in the county’s rural areas.
“We’re empowering the next generation,” Higgins said.
Religion, Pages 12 on 07/20/2013