The Cooperative General Association, organized in 1916, soon came to include in its membership associations from West Virginia, Ohio, Kentucky, Illinois, Missouri, Kansas, Nebraska, Oklahoma, and Texas. The General Conference, organized in 1921, likewise came to include associations from North and South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, Tennessee, and Texas. Within a decade, the idea of merging these two organizations into one national body of Free Will Baptists became part of the agenda of them both. And so the Rev. E.C. Morris from Georgia, who was pastor in Bryan, Texas, invited the General Conference to meet there in 1932 and extended an invitation to representatives of the Cooperative General Association to attend. During the 1932 meeting of the General Conference in Bryan, Texas, then, a committee was appointed to confer with a similar committee of the Cooperative General Association about the possibilities of uniting the two bodies. By the 1933 meeting the committees were recommending the union. By 1934 both organizations approved the terms defined by the joint committee and named representatives to meet in Nashville, Tennessee, in 1935 to bring this work to fruition. In fact, then, the National Association of Free Will Baptists was organized at Cofer’s Chapel … Continue reading Minutes of the National Association (1935-Present)