by Sandy » Mon Mar 11, 2013 2:51 pm
There was a time, shortly after I joined a CBF church for the first time, when I thought that merging into ABC-USA by CBF churches would have been a very practical and logical step. The churches are independent and autonomous, and the added membership and revenue would have been a nice boost to existing mission sending agencies, colleges and theological schools in ABC. In fact, on some message board at the time, might have even been this one, it was discussed. Several people saw a lot of difficulty, and expressed a fear that so many former SBC congregations coming into the denomination might upset some kind of delicate balance that existed, straining and stressing existing entities, based on the way ABC-USA is formed and structured. Realigning the schools and other entities wouldn't be an insurmountable difficulty, nor would absorbing the CBF executive office. The number of added churches would create the need for the increase in executive staff. And some of the CBF-related schools that are small, and scraping by to survive independently might benefit from the association with, or even merger into, existing ABC colleges and universities.
The only difficulty I see is what you would do with the CBF congregations who still support the Cooperative Program?