Baptist Spirituality

Steven Porter

By Aaron Weaver

ATLANTA —  “Yesterday’s trusted models of witness no longer produce the results they once confidently promised, which raises important questions about the models themselves,” said Cooperative Baptist Fellowship’s new Global Missions Coordinator Steven Porter Wednesday night at the banquet and commissioning service that kicked off the 2014 CBF General Assembly.

Noting repeatedly that “these are interesting days for the Fellowship,” Porter said “we are entering an era of the global church in which faithfulness to God’s mission requires us to narrow our focus, deepen our capacity and stretch our faith in new ways we haven’t imagined yet to do a few things well in Jesus’ name and trust the other work to other capable hands.”

Porter noted the centrality of cooperation to Baptist approaches to mission and emphasized the continued importance of this aspect of the Fellowship’s identity.

“Our field personnel are best understood as…