Memphis, Tenn. (ABP)—An update on how the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship is helping achieve the United Nations’ Millennium Development Goals—a commitment the organization’s top decision-making body made last fall—topped the agenda of the CBF’s annual General Assembly in Memphis, Tenn., June 19-20.

During the two-day meeting, nearly 2,000 Baptists also launched a process to discern the CBF’s future direction.

At its General Assembly last year, CBF supporters asked the organization’s Coordinating Council to endorse the Millennium Development Goals. The UN adopted them in 2000 to address extreme poverty worldwide.

“The Coordinating Council and staff have found this call to be the very thing we are eager to do,” said Jack Glasgow of Zebulon, N.C., who chaired a task force to explore ways to help meet the goals.

Those objectives are to eradicate extreme hunger; ensure access to primary schooling for all children; promote gender equality and empower women; reduce child mortality; improve maternal health; combat HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases; ensure environmental sustainability; and create a global partnership for development, involving trade, aid and debt relief.

“This is the right path for missional churches,” said CBF moderator Glasgow, who became the group’s top elected official at the end of the meeting. “Our focus on the MDGs has energized us as we move to the future.”

CBF field personnel around the world are engaged in more than 100 projects that collectively address the eight goals, Glasgow noted. Among those is Water for Hope, a new initiative that “builds on the assets of communities and on partnerships with churches and other groups to overcome the water crisis in places like Ethiopia, Southeast Asia, Thailand and Uganda,” he explained.

In addition, the Coordinating Council has approved a two-year partnership with Micah Challenge USA, which aims to deepen Christian engagement with impoverished and marginalized communities and to influence world leaders to fulfill their promise to achieve the MDGs.

In looking to the future, the CBF is eager to involve all of its constituents, according to Executive Coordinator Daniel Vestal. “Discernment together is more than voting on a strategic plan or projecting goals or trying to reach consensus. It is a spiritual exercise looking at the past, present and future,” he noted.

“Whatever the CBF becomes will be determined by Providence,” Vestal continued. “But my understanding of Providence is that we are asked to make decisions that have real consequences.”

Although the 17-year-old Fellowship, which receives contributions from about 1,800 congregations, is “young in historical perspective and small in global perspective,” Vestal said it is “significant and strategic within the Baptist family and within the body of Christ.”

“The congregations and institutions that partner within this fellowship have great influence and impact in the world,” he emphasized. “And our future is as bright as the promises of God.”

Following his comments, participants met in state and regional groups to pray and discuss a survey of questions related to broadening the CBF community; training and development; resource utilization; missional engagement; honoring race, gender and generational differences; and interacting with the world community. The survey also asked respondents to rank the six categories in order of importance.

“Now we have come to a time in the life of this movement when we are healthy and strong enough to step back and ask: What is God preparing for us now?” said outgoing CBF moderator Harriet Harral of Fort Worth, Texas. “In what new and improved ways are we now being called to step out on faith to follow Christ and serve God better?”

The next day, groups completed the surveys and presented them during a worship session. “These surveys really represent not only your insights and passions and convictions, but also something of an offering to the Lord,” Vestal noted. “We are going to offer our best insights and deepest convictions to God as a sort of prayer.”

Leaders will use the responses as they evaluate the organization’s future direction. Ben McDade, CBF’s advancement coordinator, said he expected the Coordinating Council to have a proposal to consider at its October meeting.

In other business, participants approved a 2008-2009 budget of $16.5 million, a slight increase over the current budget of $16,480,000. More than $13 million of that is allocated for global missions.

Participants also endorsed an unopposed slate of nominees for top offices and for the Coordinating Council. They included a new moderator-elect—Hal Bass, a political science professor at Ouachita Baptist University in Arkadelphia, Ark. Bass will become the moderator at next year’s General Assembly, scheduled for July 2-3 in Houston.

CBF supporters also contributed more than $10,000 to the Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter Offering for Religious Liberty and Human Rights. About one-third of the receipts from the offering will be sent to the Baptist World Alliance’s human-rights and religious-liberty initiatives.