Speakers
The five days of meetings began on July 28 with BWA President David Coffey speaking to the congress
theme, “Hear the Spirit.” Coffey reminded the more than 4,000 Baptists from almost 100 countries that human
effort and creative strategies lead to futility apart from an anointing by God’s Holy Spirit. “We can be a purposedriven
church. We can be a seeker-sensitive church. We can be an emergent and creative church. We can be
a justice and peace church. We can be a conservative Calvinist church. But if we fail to hear the Holy Spirit of
the living God, then all our serving will be futile and fruitless,” Coffey said.
Coffey, who ended his five-year term of service at the conclusion of the congress, declared that “the Holy
Spirit is integral to the birth, the identity and the mission ministry of Jesus. So, why is it we so often choose to
go it alone?” It is futile and risky, he said, to have “the appointing without the anointing.”
Other speakers throughout the week challenged Baptists to be both missional and prophetic in their
commitment to Christ and his church. “As Baptists, we need to realize the proclamation of the good news is the
central task of the church,” declared Pablo Deiros, president of the International Baptist Theological Seminary
in Buenos Aires, Argentina. “There is no church without this proclamation. And there is no other mission for the
church than to proclaim Jesus as Lord in the power of the Holy Spirit.”
Karl Johnson, general secretary of the Jamaica Baptist Union, dismissed notions of race, class, gender
and politics as legitimate bases on which to judge status or place within the church. “No one has a superior
message” based on any of these factors, Johnson said. “God calls us and it is God by his Spirit who
authenticates.” He appealed to Christians, and in particular, proclaimers of God’s word, stating, “We need
preachers who will not consider their bank balance or examine their own welfare before determining what
to preach, . . . who will not stop to assess their future with congregations and organizations before deciding
whether they should obey God in what they say.” Johnson called for preachers “who will challenge people in
their comfort zones, in their shortcomings . . . calling them to right relationships, to right living, calling them
back to God.”
Janet Clarke, dean of Tyndale Seminary in Toronto, Canada, admonished Baptists to recognize “that the
‘good news’ for the poor is not only verbal proclamation. It is accompanied by action – release to the captives,
recovery of sight to the blind, letting the oppressed go free. Jesus’ mission is both proclamation and liberation,”
she said. “Good news and good deeds go hand-in-hand. The ministry of Jesus is holistic. The rest of the
gospel is an extended account of how Jesus goes about accomplishing this integral mission….His mission was
scripturally promised, Spirit-anointed, holistically demonstrated and fully integrated.”
God’s justice and righteousness are on the side of “the poor, the slave, the exploited and downtrodden,”
said Alongla Aier, cofounder and associate professor of English and communication at the Oriental Theological
Seminary in Nagaland in Northeast India. “God in Jesus is always moved by the cries of the oppressed, the
voiceless and the powerless,” she said. God cares for hungry children, women who are trafficked as sex slaves
and people displaced by war. In the light of human suffering on a global
PHOTOS: Pablo Deiros; Karl Johnson; Janet Clarke


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