I am looking forward to our annual meeting this year at Northern Heights Baptist Church on September 12th. The theme for this year is “Healthy Churches-Transforming Communities”. I am excited about some proposals that will be coming from our HBA Strategy team. I believe these proposals will help us to be a stronger association in the present and in the future. Our Worship is going to be inspirational as we have Jeff Cleghorn leading us this year in our praise and worship. I also grateful that Mark Marshall (Assistant Executive Director, GBMB) will be bringing the message. I am praying that our churches will be praying for this meeting and will make plans to attend. For our business session we only ask that the Pastors and the approved messengers from the church vote on the items of business. The business session will be at the beginning of our meeting, and we hope will not take long so we can move into our worship and hearing from God’s word. The meeting will begin at 5:00 p.m. with a pre-service concert by Jeff Cleghorn. We will have a finger food fellowship following our meeting.
Below is the report I gave at our Executive Committee meeting last week which has the information regarding the proposals from our Strategy Team:
I’m praising God for the great things He has been doing in our Association. I hear reports of how many of our churches are gaining new members and having baptisms! Several of our churches have had Revival Services and I am grateful for how God moved in those services. I am praying that God will continue to move even as we continue to navigate with the COVID-19 virus.
I also praise God for the great summer we had at Camp Houston. We resumed all our children’s camps and God moved once again in a mighty way. I can report to you that we had 19 at our girl’s camp, 13 at our boy’s camp, and 27 at our Discovery (ages 5-7) camp. We had a total of 12 salvations!
The Pittsburgh Mission team once again served along side Faith Community Church in McKees Rocks. We spent three days going out into the community and invited people to the Evangelistic Block Party. We were able to get to over 300 homes. The block party was a huge success. We witnessed 6 baptisms.
I have been meeting with our HBA Strategy team which comprises all the ministry teams. We have been making strategic plans for our association that will help encourage each church to become healthier and for our churches to work more closely together to reach the lostness in our communities. We believe that the association is still vital in being able to reach people with the Gospel. We will be proposing a new mission and vision statement at the Annual meeting that we hope will be adopted.
Vision Statement
To see more churches become healthier and intentionally making disciples that will revolutionize our communities through the power of Christ!
Mission Statement
To equip and encourage our local churches in the pursuit of health and encouragement of the community with the Gospel.
The strategy team will also present a name change for our association that will better describe who we are in the context of our geographical location. There has been much confusion over the past years about where our association is located. The new name will better identify and open more opportunities for churches in surrounding counties to consider coming into our association. The new name that will be proposed will be: “South Central Baptist Network”. We believe that this will make us more relevant to those we are trying to reach with the Gospel and make us stronger as an association moving into the future.
My prayer is that God will continue to unite us in such a way that the churches will be excited about how we network and work together to impact the lostness in our communities.
Bro. Gary
