Mission
Vision
Our mission is oriented toward a future where Baptists lead American evangelicals back to a confident, convictional, and hopeful Christian vision for the future, both in America and worldwide. Given the SBC’s prominent role in American religious life, restoring its mission fidelity and reinvigorating its institutions will play a key role in realizing this vision.
Assuming this mantle of leadership requires: (1) Honest realism about immediate challenges, both inside the Convention and without, which include new forms of theological liberalism and the pressures of an emerging post-Christian society; (2) An uncompromising commitment to Scripture and our shared confessions; and (3) A creative spirit for building and restoring institutions that help local churches thrive during a period of escalating social hostility.
We earnestly hope that God would be pleased to use a reinvigorated Baptist presence in American religious, cultural, and public life to advance the Great Commission in the coming decades. We pray that God would use a renewed and revitalized SBC to secure a new era of church planting, missions, increased civic virtue, just laws, and human flourishing in our nation, as ordered and informed by Scriptural standards, for our good and His glory.
Work
We will advance our mission and vision by working with Baptists across the entire SBC, including pastors, lay members, and institutional leaders. We aim to serve Baptists by producing quality scholarship and media, providing leadership training, and offering other resources to equip churches, pastors, and leaders to tackle issues of pressing concern in SBC life, theology, and polity; advancing Baptists’ interests in the public square; equipping the next generation of Baptists to defend our historic theological commitments; and transforming SBC institutions through the advancement of effective and resilient leadership that withstands the cultural pressures of our present moment.
Team
Our employees will affirm, at a minimum, the Baptist Faith & Message 2000 and the Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy. Our employees must also hold settled convictions on human sexuality and biblical gender roles that are at least as rigorous as those set forth in the Nashville Statement on Human Sexuality and the Danvers Statement on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood.
The CBL enthusiastically partners with both non-Calvinist and Calvinist Baptist leaders and scholars. We do not require a specific confessional subscription for our advisory board, contributing scholars, or other authors. Most individuals associated with CBL will hold beliefs largely aligned with the BF&M 2000 or other historic Baptist confessions, such as the New Hampshire Confession of Faith (1833/1853) or the Second London Baptist Confession of Faith (1677/1689). In a spirit of appropriately grounded ecumenicism, we reserve the right to publish and platform leaders from other denominations who have important theological, cultural, or institutional insights that are relevant to Baptists.
