Annual Meeting of Southern Baptist Convention (SBC)

Today through Wednesday night is the annual gathering of reps from the 45,000 local churches in our network. While we maintain local autonomy in our churches--which means there is no national hierarchy--we voluntarily cooperate together for missions (IMB, NAMB) and to train pastors and missionaries (we own six seminaries). The logic is that together we can do more than any of us have the resources to do alone.

So, the 45,000 churches voluntarily pool 10% of our budget receipts in a fund called the Cooperative Program with which we pay for our two missions agencies and six seminaries. Hundreds of millions of dollars through the Cooperative Program is the reason we have over 8,000 missionaries and 15,000 students in our seminaries. More than 1/4 people being trained in seminary in America today are in one of our Southern Baptist seminaries. Incredible.

The annual meeting of the SBC is when the people who handle the Cooperative Program and who run our missions agencies and seminaries tell us what they are doing with our money, what they have accomplished in the last year, and what their future plans are. It is a necessary part of a pastor's job to attend this gathering. Seeing pastor friends is the good part. Enduring the giant business meeting with tons of motions, voting, and Roberts Rules of Order is another story.

This year, the annual meeting is in Phoenix. I'm en route today.
Sent via BlackBerry by AT&T