By Aaron Weaver
JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — “The church has to be bold. We have a kingdom agenda. We’ve got to be bold,” Rev. Dr. Prince Raney Rivers told Cooperative Baptists during Late Night Worship Wednesday at the 2026 CBF General Assembly in Jacksonville.
Preaching from Psalm 27, Rivers said fear can serve a purpose, but “when fear is not protecting us, fear is probably hindering us.”
“It’s holding us back,” he said. “Fear keeps us from being bold.”
“If we don’t break through fear, we won’t see what faith can do.”
Rivers serves as senior pastor of Union Baptist Church in Durham, N.C., and director of the Doctor of Ministry program at Duke Divinity School. Before coming to Union Baptist, he served 12 years as pastor of United Metropolitan Missionary Baptist Church in Winston-Salem, N.C. He also serves as second vice president of the General Baptist State Convention of North Carolina.
Rivers’ charge came during the fifth annual Late Night Worship service hosted by CBF’s Pan African Koinonia. The Late Night tradition stems from Watch Night worship on Dec. 31, 1862, when enslaved people gathered late in the evening, watching and waiting for the freedom promised by the Emancipation Proclamation.
Rivers said fear can keep Christians and churches from acting when faith calls them to move.
“If we don’t break through the barrier of fear, we will move when we should stand still,” he said. “If we don’t break through the barrier of fear, we will stand still when we ought to move. We won’t speak truth to power. Those on the margins will have nobody to stand beside them because we will be hiding in a cave somewhere.”
Rivers offered three movements for breaking through fear. The first was to tell the truth about God.
“The first move is that you have to tell yourself the truth,” he said. “That’s what you’ve got to do, church. You’ve got to tell yourself the truth.”
Fear can turn attention toward adversaries, crises and uncertainty, Rivers said, but the truth David rehearsed in Psalm 27 centered on who God is.
“What truth are you telling yourself these days?” Rivers asked. “Because fear will mess with our minds to the point that if we are not careful, we will forget the truth and the very truth that can break us out of fear.”
The second movement was to question what causes fear.
“We’ll never eliminate every ounce of fear in our lifetime, but we can break through the barrier if we learn how to interrogate the fears with the truth of our faith,” Rivers said. “We’ve got to cross-examine our worry with the good news of God.”
He asked worshipers to examine what keeps them from being bold, including criticism, resistance to leadership and the uncertainty of beginning something new.
The third movement was to “linger with God.”
“You got to linger with God,” Rivers said. David did not ask God to remove every threatening circumstance, Rivers said. Instead, he trusted God to work within him so he could face what was happening around him.
“We cannot forget that activism and mysticism go together, that courage and contemplation are complementary, not contradictory,” Rivers said. “To be bold in our faith without burning out, we’ve got to be committed to community with the Lord.”
“I’m not going to bury my head in the sand,” he said. “I’m not going to ignore social and political reality, but I’m going to put my spirituality into practice and linger with my God.”
Rivers encouraged worshipers to set aside time to be still through a walk, music, a closed office door or a few minutes away from phones and computers.
“When we linger in the presence of God, the Spirit will remind us of who God is to us,” he said.
Rivers closed with a direct charge.
“Women and men of God, now is not the time to be afraid,” he said. “God is keeping you.”
Lynn Brinkley invited worshipers to support CBF’s Emmanuel McCall Racial Justice and Leadership Initiative, including the McCall Lenten Devotional, the Narratives of America Project and the Pan African Koinonia Racial Justice and Reconciliation Cohort.
“But the work of justice is not finished,” Brinkley said. “There is still healing to be done, bridges to be built, and communities to be strengthened.”
Learn more and support CBF’s McCall racial justice work.
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Led by the love of Christ, the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship invites churches and individuals to partner in transforming God’s world, working together as a global community to spread good news, justice and hope through impactful ministries, missions and resources.