A Message from Ray Johnson

January 5, 2022

Fifteen years ago this January 2022, I was called to serve as the Coordinator for Florida’s Cooperative Baptist Fellowship. Without a doubt, this has been the most joyful work of my forty-three years of Christian ministry. With that said and with a grateful heart, I formally submit my notice of intent to retire this year with my last day being June 30, 2022. I hope by giving this much time to allow my successor to be named and to assist that person in a period of transition. I know beyond any doubt that God will guide CBF Florida to find our next coordinator.

Allow me, please, a few moments to recount some of my highlights from these past fifteen years.

Shortly after I arrived at the Lakeland office at Hillcrest Street when the phone rang and Marti Edwards, my assistant at that time, forwarded the call to me. It was Jimmy Allen, a personal hero of mine and a champion of historic Baptist principles. Dr. Allen had called to invite me to attend the meeting of the New Baptist Covenant, a new initiative envisioned by former President Jimmy Carter to bring all Baptists of goodwill together. I went home that day giddy and grateful to be part of such a family of Baptists.

Not long after Dr. Allen’s phone call, in July 2007, I received another call, this one from my wife who was still living in Miami. She called to tell me that my mother had just died. I had seen her a week earlier on a trip that I made to Orange Park to attend a clergy peer learning group. In those bitter days that followed, Cooperative Baptists poured out their support for me and my family. I will not forget that. We truly are a familia, as my friend Rubén Ortiz is so fond of saying.

Florida’s Cooperative Baptists have enabled me to take pastors and church leaders to see and to participate in CBF Global missions in Miami, Romania, Lebanon, Egypt, The Bahamas, Cuba, Haiti, Uganda, Puerto Rico, and the Dominican Republic. I have loved spending time with so many of you and getting to know you in those amazing places. CBF Florida blessed me with a sabbatical in 2014 and enabled me to visit Baptist work in England.

During my tenure, CBF Florida has formally extended its partnerships to eight churches in The Bahamas, one in Puerto Rico, and ten in the Dominican Republic. We have signed covenant agreements with the Eastern Cuba Baptist Convention and with the Fraternity of Baptist Churches in Cuba. In fact, we are now CBF of Florida and the Caribbean Islands.

Building upon the legacy work of Pat and Carolyn Anderson, I am proud that CBF Florida has provided ministry scholarships to more than thirty students over the past fifteen years. These students have gone on to serve as pastors, associate pastors, missionaries, church starters, non-profit directors, chaplains, and even moderators of CBF Florida. To me, this is a remarkable and hopeful investment in the future of Cooperative Baptists.

I am proud of the many things that we have accomplished together with God’s help: the starting of new churches, the support of incredible missionaries, the growth of our mission engagements in The Bahamas and Cuba, the gifting of the ministry centers to Touching Miami with Love, and so much more. What brings me the most joy, however, are not these things but you, the people of CBF Florida. I have loved being with you, sharing meals together, worshiping together, learning together, playing, and praying together.

Thank you, CBF Florida, for fifteen blessed years. This wonderful verse from Luke, where Jesus teaches his disciples about a principle of giving, describes so well what I would say about these fifteen years. Jesus says in Luke 6:38, “Give and it shall be given to you. A good measure – pressed down, shaken together, and running over – shall be poured into your lap.” You, my brothers and sisters, have poured your blessings into my life.

I am so grateful!

Ray Johnson
Coordinator, Cooperative Baptist Fellowship of Florida and the Caribbean Islands