By Matt Tullos
Stewardship Development Specialist, TBMB
The Evangels were a football team with a legendary record of wins. They had a storied history of some of the best players in the country who went on to win championships and drape banners and retired jerseys all over their stadium. It was the golden age of football for the Evangels.
Everything was going great until they had an idea to recruit the best quarterbacks available — ALL OF THEM. We’ll trade our best cornerbacks, linemen, running backs and kickers. We just want the best quarterbacks period.
Sure enough, scouts worked impossible deals with greedy sports agents and soon they were paying top dollar to get 11 of the best up-and-coming quarterbacks on the planet. The problem they soon discovered was simple. An all-quarterback team is the worst possible team you could have. In one season, they went from heroes to zeroes.
It’s a silly story for anybody who has seen at least a couple of minutes of football. The key to any offense or defense is to have different players of all shapes, skills and sizes. No matter how talented a quarterback may be, you wouldn’t want 22 of him. You’ll never see a placekicker on any team become an all-star nose-tackle. That would be just plain weird and illogical.
The church survives on balance as well. There’s no one church that can do it all, no matter how big, talented, or innovative they are. Once a church tries to go it alone and focus only on their abilities to win the world for Jesus, they immediately become irrelevant. This is the reason we have so many churches of different styles, sizes, and locations.
No one church can win Tennessee. It takes every church working together. You might think that your church is the best church is the world. I hope you do! But no church is relevant alone.
Sure, it might be able to afford to fund one or two missionaries and create 20 ministries in your community. Again, I hope you do! But how about this: Work with thousands of other churches to utilize millions of believers with countless gifts, resources and ideas. This is called “cooperation.”
Cooperation is in the bones of our Southern Baptist churches. No other denomination comes close to the resources we have to obediently tell the world about Jesus. We call it the Cooperative Program.
It’s our playbook. The playbook is packed with lots of routes, blitzes and game plans that have defeated, confused and demoralized our opponent for years. The highlight reel is endless!
We’ve seen the gospel shared with countless unreached people groups. We’ve seen women rescued from the cycle of prostitution. We have seen churches started, victims of disaster receive the ultimate relief of salvation, hungry children fed, lives changed and churches equipped and battle ready.
October is Cooperative Program Month. Let’s celebrate the greatest Great Commission strategy on the planet.
- Go to CooperativeProgram.TV to download our new CP videos.
- Review your church’s Cooperative Program giving. We are praying that every church will give 10 percent through the Cooperative Program.
- Pray for our missionaries in Tennessee, North America and around the world.
- Celebrate what God is doing as churches work together.
- Share the CP ad in this B&R on social media or in your church builletin
- Contact me for assistance with any church need, question, or issue. If I can’t help, I’m sure I can find someone who can: Mtullos@tnbaptist.org. Mobile Phone: 615-370-4809
Join the SBC Dream Team of the Cooperative Program. Let’s make cooperative giving historic so we can see more people saved in Tennessee and around the world.
