We enjoyed a spec­tac­u­lar time of fel­low­ship and wor­ship togeth­er at FBC Lyons dur­ing our annu­al gath­er­ing of the DBA church­es. The Spir­it of Christ was heavy in that place.

We heard tremen­dous­ly encour­ag­ing tes­ti­monies of the excel­lent work that our Lord is accom­plish­ing in and through his saints, and the all asso­ci­a­tion choir was tru­ly pow­er­ful. In fact, the choir was a glo­ri­ous expe­ri­ence of what it means to be part of an asso­ci­a­tion. Our wor­ship in song was rich and Spir­it filled in an excep­tion­al way because the believ­ers and church­es across our area were joined togeth­er in one accord. My under­stand­ing of the val­ue of our asso­ci­a­tion grew as I expe­ri­enced the pow­er of our com­bined church­es. When we come togeth­er in har­mo­ny the pow­er and pres­ence of the Spir­it of Christ is amplified!

If you didn’t make the cel­e­bra­tion, we missed you. Below is a sum­ma­ry of impor­tant actions tak­en at the Exec­u­tive Meeting:

  • We adopt­ed the title of Asso­ci­a­tion­al Mis­sions Strate­gist to replace the title of Asso­ci­a­tion­al Mis­sion­ary, in accor­dance with the rec­om­men­da­tion of The Geor­gia Bap­tist Mis­sion Board.
  • We allo­cat­ed the respon­si­bil­i­ties of the Nom­i­nat­ing Team to the Admin­is­tra­tive Team.
  • We mod­i­fied our pur­pose state­ment for our association.

The pre­vi­ous pur­pose state­ment was, “The pur­pose of the Asso­ci­a­tion is to bring glo­ry to God through coop­er­a­tion among the mem­ber church­es, to equip the church­es to reach our com­mu­ni­ties for Jesus Christ and to dis­ci­ple believers.”

The cur­rent adopt­ed pur­pose state­ment reads, “The Daniell Bap­tist Asso­ci­a­tion exists to bring glo­ry to God through facil­i­tat­ing part­ner­ships between church­es to accom­plish the Great Commission.

Our cur­rent adopt­ed pur­pose state­ment includes every­thing cov­ered in the pre­vi­ous pur­pose state­ment and expands the scope of the pre­vi­ous state­ment to accom­plish more.

We mod­i­fied our pur­pose state­ment for two pri­ma­ry reasons.

1)    The Asso­ci­a­tion is church­es in part­ner­ship. The Asso­ci­a­tion is not a sep­a­rate para-church orga­ni­za­tion that does min­istry apart from the com­mis­sion­ing and par­tic­i­pa­tion of the mem­ber churches.

2)    Our pre­vi­ous pur­pose state­ment refers to our tar­get min­istry as “our communities.” The Great Com­mis­sion includes our com­mu­ni­ties and the entire world, every tribe, tongue and nation. It would not be bib­li­cal for any of our church­es to only be con­cerned about accom­plish­ing inter­na­tion­al mis­sions or for any of our church­es to only be con­cerned about engag­ing in local min­istry in our com­mu­ni­ty. Each bib­li­cal healthy church will be engaged in mis­sions and min­istry at every lev­el, so it would only be nat­ur­al and bib­li­cal that as our church­es part­ner togeth­er, those con­ver­sa­tions and part­ner­ships in mis­sions and min­istry will encom­pass our local com­mu­ni­ties and the entire world.

God is at work and I ful­ly expect great things ahead. I am con­vinced that the more you engage with believ­ers from oth­er church­es and the more your fel­low­ship part­ners with oth­er church­es, the rich­er your Chris­t­ian walk will be and the more impact­ful your king­dom work will be.

 

Bro. Bil­ly

 

Mis­sion­ary Notes