We're turning 200! Come celebrate with us at this year's annual meeting

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August 31, 2023

BGAV Annual Meeting

and 200th Birthday Celebration

November 13-15, 2023

Bon Air Baptist Church, Richmond, VA

To celebrate our 200th anniversary this year, BGAV's annual meeting will take place in Richmond - where it all began in 1823. This year’s meeting will be held at Bon Air Baptist Church on November 13-15, and our theme for this special celebration is “Called to Be.” Make plans to join us for this festive occasion - in person or virtually via our livestream option!

Guest speakers include:

Brooke Blake - Chair, BGAV Executive Board

Fred Anderson - Executive Director Emeritus, Virginia Baptist Historical Society

Robert Smith, Jr. - Baptist Chair of Divinity and Professor, Beeson Divinity School

Wayne Faison - BGAV Executive Director and Pastor, East End Baptist Church, Suffolk, VA

In addition to hearing insightful words from our keynote speakers, we will celebrate our 200th anniversary with special worship and musical guests from around our BGAV family. We will also have a birthday party Tuesday evening after the worship service, sponsored by River City Faith Network.

Registration will open in early September. Churches should receive their packets and an email regarding messengers by mid-September. Note: All voting will happen electronically via an online voting platform accessed by each messenger's smart device - whether attending in person or virtually - so please plan accordingly.

Visit the BGAV Annual Meeting website for the latest information about this year's meeting and to register. We hope you will join us this year as we commemorate 200 years of “being” and look toward our future together!

Coming Soon: BGAV International Missions Offering

Over the past several weeks, we've heard from BGAV-participating churches seeking alternatives for international missions offerings, particularly during the Christmas season. In response, BGAV's Impact Missions team is creating a way to make that happen. More details and promotional materials will be available this fall.

BGAV is already engaged in missions efforts around the world, and many BGAV churches already give designated gifts to these in the areas of poverty, refugee ministry, and church planting--to name a few. Your church can too.

Because this offering is a new alternative, and not a replacement for any other offerings, BGAV will continue to receive Lottie Moon Christmas Offering funds from BGAV churches and forward those funds to the Southern Baptist Convention. This new offering is for churches seeking a different direction. Impact Missions is excited to develop and grow this exciting new pathway for funding international missions both now and in the future.

Details about this new offering will be communicated as they are finalized. Contact Dean Miller, Impact Missions team coordinator, at 800.255.2428, ext. 7264, for more information.

Upcoming Events from BGAV Ministries

Fresh Expressions Offers Fall Workshop Series

The Fall Workshop Series will help you develop new strategies for discipleship, funding and creativity that will fill you with vision and excitement for the year to come.

Three workshop opportunities available:

Cultivating Brilliance: Growing Creativity in Life, Team, and Ministry

Disciple-Centric Church: How to Put Transformation at the Center of Your Ministry

Kingdom Business: How Missional Entrepreneurs Grow Ecosystems that Impact Communities

Learn more.

V3 Praxis Gathering in Chicago, September 28-30

Attendees of this annual conference will plunge into the hands-on-work of being a Church Without Walls in very concrete and practical ways. This year's gathering offers some of the best practitioners, living this work in their local place, to awaken us to the possibilities of being a grassroots movement. Use promo code BGAVDiscount for 20% off registration. Learn more.

Countdown to 200: A Look Back at BGAV's History

The Bedford Plowboys

The very first action of the brand-new BGAV was to appoint two missionaries. Their assignment was to spend two years together on the back roads of Virginia—the first year in the western regions including territory which later became part of West Virginia, and the second in southeastern Virginia. Their task was to ascertain the religious climate across Virginia, to preach wherever they could get people together, and to determine where one day Baptist churches might be planted. They were equipped with horses and saddlebags stuffed with provisions. They were to report back to BGAV’s Board; and for their labors, they were each to be paid $30 a month.

The two men were Jeremiah Bell Jeter and Daniel Witt. Although they were both from Bedford County, they had only met each other in August 1821 on their way to attend a meeting of the Strawberry Baptist Association. They instantly became friends. It was a friendship which would carry them through those two years of a missionary journey, and it lasted a lifetime.

They chose the nickname of “the Bedford Plowboys” because they were farm boys before they became preachers. When they attended the first meeting of the General Association in June 1823, the “preacher boys” found themselves in the company of seasoned preachers and denominational statesmen. In time, Jeter and Witt themselves became notable ministers; but when they began their missionary journey, they had fashioned a meager assortment of stump sermons. If Jeter preached first and used up the supply of sermon material, Witt had nothing he could say—and vice versa.

The Bedford Plowboys sensed their inadequacy for the task of presenting the Gospel to “dying sinners.” Jeter observed that in places they were met with suspicion “as spies sent to search out the resources of the country.” Witt kept a journal of their experiences, and these were not without humor: Jeter tugging on Witt’s coattails to signal the preacher that the other “Plowboy” had already used that sermon illustration, leaving a village quickly when they realized that no one there wanted to hear a Baptist preacher, or enduring the taunts of William and Mary students who “behaved disgracefully” when they preached from the pulpit of Bruton Parish Church. A lasting accomplishment in Williamsburg came from a prayer meeting with Baptist women in the old colonial powder magazine, and out of those meetings, the Williamsburg Baptist Church began.

The Plowboys reported that the fields were ripe unto harvest; and by the mid-19th century, BGAV had hundreds of state missionaries, evangelists, and Bible distributors working across Virginia. BGAV’s mission was firmly set to “advance the Redeemer’s Kingdom.”

Fred Anderson, executive director emeritus of the Virginia Baptist Historical Society, wrote today’s “history tidbit” as part of our ongoing series leading up to BGAV’s 200th anniversary celebration in November.

Photo Credit: "The Bedford Plowboys," from the Virginia Baptist history mural, oil on canvas, Sidney E. King (1990), copyright VBHS.

Proposed Resolutions Due to BGAV Committee on Resolutions by October 15

The Committee on Resolutions of BGAV would like to remind BGAV registered messengers of their opportunity to submit proposed resolutions believed to further the purpose of the BGAV. In accordance with the Constitution/Bylaws of the BGAV, such proposed resolutions must be submitted to the office of the Executive Director no later than October 15 prior to each annual meeting. The proposed resolutions can be emailed directly to Marilee White (please include "resolution" in the subject line).

Submissions will be reviewed by the Committee on Resolutions and processed as deemed appropriate by the committee. Any resolutions submitted for action by the committee will be presented as a regular part of the program at the BGAV Annual Meeting in November.

Darrell Foster

Chair, BGAV Committee on Resolutions

For Your Info

Alma Hunt Offering for Virginia Missions

Week of Emphasis: September 10-17, 2023

The offering provides funding for all Woman’s Missionary Union of Virginia (WMUV) missions and ministries and makes possible other BGAV special ministries, outreach projects, and initiatives not funded through regular streams of giving. Since 1976, this offering has been a joint venture of WMUV and the BGAV.

This year's theme is "Together on Mission" based on Philippians 2:2: "Make my joy complete by being of the same mind, maintaining the same love, united in spirit, intent on one purpose."

Visit the Alma Hunt Offering website for resource downloads, videos, and to request materials for your church.

Bluefield University Announces Retirement and Transition of President David W. Olive

Bluefield University announced August 22 that University President Dr. David W. Olive will retire as of June 2024. Olive is the ninth president of the institution serving since 2007.

In an August 1 letter to Mr. C. Todd Asbury, Chair of the Bluefield University Board of Trustees and President/CEO of New Peoples Bank, he stated he will step down as the University’s president at the conclusion of the academic year on June 30, 2024, after 17 years of service. Thereafter, he has agreed to serve as an advisor to the new president and University as needed.