wfn.org | ABCUSA: CHURCH PLANTING AGREEMENT SIGNED

[RICH.SCHRAMM@ecunet.org]

AMERICAN BAPTIST NEWS SERVICE 
Office of Communication  
American Baptist Churches USA 
P.O. Box 851, Valley Forge, PA 19482-0851 
Phone: (610)768-2077 / Fax: (610)768-2320 
Web: www.abc-usa.org
Richard W. Schramm, Director 
 E-mail: richard.schramm@abc-usa.org

CHURCH PLANTING AGREEMENT SIGNED 
BY AMERICAN BAPTISTS AND COOPERATIVE BAPTISTS
by Fran Homer, National Ministries, American Baptist Churches 
USA
 In a covenantal agreement the American Baptist 
New Church Planting Vision Community and the 
Cooperative Baptist Fellowship have adopted guidelines for 
starting new churches cooperatively when a local faith 
community chooses to be related to both mission 
organizations.
 "New church planting is a mandate from God and 
bigger than any fellowship or denomination," said Ken 
Giacoletto, chair of the New Church Planting Vision 
Community. "This covenant with our brothers and sisters 
in the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship recognizes our 
common goal that individual lives will be touched and 
changed as a result of these new communities of Christ."
 Gary Baldridge, who is co-cordinator with his wife, 
Barbara, of Global Missions for the Cooperative Baptist 
Fellowship, said he is looking forward to what can be 
accomplished through the church planting partnership. 
"We find that we have much in common," he noted.  "In 
those areas of the country where American Baptist and 
Cooperative Baptist efforts overlap we will be able to work 
together in aggressively pursuing church planting."
 Under the covenant the two organizations will 
collaborate with region staff to support a planter and 
members of the new church plant as they move from the 
beginning stages to an established congregation. 
Throughout this process the new church plant will be a 
cooperating member of both the Cooperative Baptist 
Fellowship and American Baptist Churches USA, sharing 
mission giving to both.
 "This is ecumenical cooperation at its best," said 
Phil Hester, CBF associate coordinator for church starts.  
The common denominator of American Baptists and the 
Fellowship is sharing the gospel, he emphasized, and "our 
common heritage, love and commitment to Christ and to 
reaching the unchurched in this country, the third largest 
mission field on earth." 
 The Rev. Michael Cox, National Ministries' director 
of New Church Planting, credits Giacoletto's leadership 
with helping to transform the former American Baptist 
New Church Planting Council from a regulating body into a 
vision community, looking to bring about new life in the 
denomination and country. Working toward the American 
Baptist NEW LIFE 2010 goal of planting 1,010 new 
churches, Giacoletto said, the Vision Community realized 
that church planting methods of the past are not going to 
work in the 21st century. 
 Cox strongly agrees: "As we look at the future of 
church planting and the whole future of the church we 
need to recognize that the post-modern world is not 
divided into neat little compartments.  We need to face 
this new world with new partners, new shared resources, 
new learnings and new responses to the need in the 
United States and Puerto Rico."

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