Venture Church Network (Conservative Baptist Association)
Venture Church Network (Conservative Baptist Association) belongs to the Baptist family of churches.
Governance: congregational.
Venture Church Network (Conservative Baptist Association) reports 748 congregations in the United States (RCMS 2020 (ARDA national table), 2020).
RCMS lists it under the former name Conservative Baptist Association of America (CBAmerica). "Venture Church Network" does not appear in RCMS.
The Conservative Baptists of 1947 under a new flag — churches that fought the modernist battle in the North, built their own mission societies, and renamed themselves for the next chapter.
Heritage
Organized in 1947 as the Conservative Baptist Association of America, by churches within the Northern Baptist Convention that had contested theological liberalism for a generation and finally built parallel institutions — the Conservative Baptist Foreign Mission Society (1943, now WorldVenture) preceding the association itself. Unlike the GARBC's clean 1932 exit, the Conservative Baptists organized as a movement of societies and only gradually separated. The association renamed itself Venture Church Network in 2019 to describe its present work: strengthening and multiplying churches. RCMS 2020 counts 748 congregations, listed under the former CBAmerica name.
Theological family
Conservative evangelical Baptist: biblical inerrancy, believers' baptism by immersion, a regenerate membership, and the historic evangelical convictions of the mid-century movement, held today with a church-health rather than battle-line temperament.
Who decides what
Congregational: autonomous churches in voluntary regional and national association; the network coaches, credentials, and connects rather than governs, and the historic mission societies remain independent partners.
What a first-time visitor would find
A visitor will find mainstream conservative evangelical worship — contemporary or blended music, expository preaching, believers' baptism — with little that advertises the denomination; many member churches carry community names.
What it has always cared about
World missions through its society heritage; the mid-century fight for orthodoxy in the North remembered as formation rather than identity; and in its present form, church revitalization — the unglamorous work of helping plateaued congregations live again.
Its gift to the wider church
The Conservative Baptist movement modeled a third way through the fundamentalist-modernist wreckage: neither capitulation nor pure separatism, but building sound institutions and letting churches migrate to them.
Commonly confused with
With the GARBC, the earlier and more separatist departure from the same Northern Baptist struggles; and with generic nondenominational churches, since Venture congregations often show no Baptist label. RCMS's use of the former CBAmerica name confuses directories, including ours.
Range of views inside it
Churches range from traditional Baptist congregations to contemporary community churches; regional networks differ in culture, and the rebrand itself reflects a range of postures toward denominational identity.
A note from the mapmakers: Our count follows the RCMS listing under the former name; the network's present self-description may differ. Nothing here may be asserted of a specific congregation. Sentences drawn from this record hedge as "Venture churches typically…" and yield to the congregation's own materials.
Sources: Venture Church Network — our story (Venture Church Network) · Handbook of Denominations in the United States (Abingdon Press) · 2020 U.S. Religion Census (ASARB)
Where Venture Church Network (Conservative Baptist Association) churches are on the map
11 Venture Church Network (Conservative Baptist Association) congregations appear on The Church Map, across 9 states.
- California — 2
- New York — 2
- Illinois — 1
- Arizona — 1
- Hawaii — 1
- Michigan — 1
- Oregon — 1
- Pennsylvania — 1
- Washington — 1