The Southern Baptist Convention’s most recent past president, Bobby Welch, has been relentless in his passion to get all of us to become personal soul winners. He preaches and promotes his “Everyone Can!” “I’m It!” campaign with the fervor of a general attempting to rally his troops for a critical battle or with the zeal of a football coach seeking to inspire his team to win a national championship.

Every Southern Baptist should praise God for the focus of President Welch’s life and his indomitable spirit. Southern Baptists are far better because of his powerful leadership, exemplary life and gracious spirit. Every session of the Greensboro convention was inspiring, challenging and blessed of God. May Bobby Welch’s compelling message forever resonant in our hearts and keep us motivated to reach a lost world for Jesus Christ.

While the president’s intended theme was forever on the increase during the convention, there was an underlying theme that kept surfacing with incredible import. The Cooperative Program was that underlying theme.

When United States Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice addressed the convention on Wednesday morning, June 14, she spoke of Southern Baptists’ assistance to the people in Africa plagued by the rampaging AIDS epidemic. She hailed Southern Baptists for the immediate and extensive response provided in the aftermath of the Asian tsunami of 2004. She also applauded Southern Baptists for the powerful presence of the disaster relief teams on the Gulf Coast following the devastation wrought by Hurricane Katrina. She then stated, “No man, no woman, no child is beyond the reach of your compassion.”

Without knowing it Secretary Rice gave her blessings to the Cooperative Program, which positively and redemptively touches lives daily throughout the world. However, the secretary of state was only reinforcing and reiterating what so many others had affirmed throughout the course of the convention.

The convention chose not to adopt the original recommendation of the Cooperative Program ad hoc committee that encouraged the election of state and national convention officers whose churches give at least 10 percent of their undesignated receipts through the Cooperative Program. However, there seemed to be a grassroots effort to validate, elevate and perpetuate the Cooperative Program.

Georgia Baptist Executive Director J. Robert White, who served on the CP ad hoc committee along with Georgia pastor Frank Cox of Lawrenceville’s North Metro First Baptist Church, was asked to address the SBC Executive Committee on Monday prior to the first session of the convention.

White stated, “Twenty-five years ago our churches were giving an average of over 10 percent to the Cooperative Program. That percentage dropped to nine percent, then to eight percent, then seven percent and now it is below seven percent. If it continues in this direction, what shall become of us? We must reverse the decline. We have to support our missionaries and all of our educational and church planting endeavors.”

In the Tuesday morning session of the convention the CP was an important part of the discussion and seemed to set the stage for the election of officers. In fact, the election of the convention president had far more to do with CP support than with personalities or theology. In nominating Frank Page, Forrest Pollock concluded his remarks by borrowing a phrase from Mike Stone, pastor of Emmanuel Baptist Church in Blackshear, who said, “You can’t spell ‘SBC president’ without a ‘C’ and a ‘P.’”

Over and over again the messengers to the convention were reminded of the many things accomplished by virtue of the Cooperative Program. In his presidential address, Welch, speaking of the CP, stated, “Your dollar works seven days a week, 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, all around the world, non-stop; even when you’re snoring and asleep, it’s still working.”

The young and the old, the bloggers and those who claim computer illiteracy, the Calvinists and the Armenians, the ethnics and the Anglos, the emerging leaders and the aging leaders, the folks bent on classic worship services and those who prefer an avant-garde approach to worship, seemed to have a common bond – the Cooperative Program.

Despite our diversity, the CP has kept Southern Baptists as the premiere Christian mission-sending force in the world for the past 81 years. Its future looks exceedingly bright.