Imagine the Improbable Becoming the Reality Through Baptist Associations
A perspective for local denominational organizations/judicatories on how they best empower their churches to serve from the base of their local context.
Rundown: Articles on Baptist associations are often applicable to the local denominational organizations/judicatories of various denominations. They may be called associations, districts, classis, synods, and by other names. They are typically organisms more than organizations. Relational more than functional. Regional and national expressions of denominations are more organizational and functional.
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Imagine the Improbable Becoming the Reality Through Baptist Associations
"This is the first of a series of columns that will explain various strategies that could be used to experience the next wave of Kingdom progress." —George Bullard
Imagine it’s 2033 and Baptist associations are celebrated for achieving the lead role within Baptist life for the fulfillment of the Great Commission.
This happened because they focused eight years earlier on discerning anew what it means to be a family of congregations on mission both globally and locally (sometimes referred to as “glocally”) from the base of their associational fellowship context.
RELATED: To read more articles on Baptist associations and ministry, click here.
Using the pattern of Leviticus 25:1–13, they spent 2025 engaging in a spiritual, family-oriented process to prepare to celebrate a year of Jubilee in 2026.
Then in 2027 they embarked on a seven-year sabbatical cycle following the Leviticus pattern. They spent six years engaged in bold spiritual and strategic planting, cultivating, growing, harvesting and sharing their abundance glocally.
In 2032 they took a year to rest, to discern what the next seven-year sabbatical cycle might look like.
They looked at how the phenomenal effort of the previous seven years catapulted them into the lead role for Kingdom progress throughout what I call the Southern Baptist movement.
Why Did They Do This?
Associational leaders realized the movement waned as compared to population increases and diversification during the previous decades. The movement experienced a net decline in membership and participation.
Baptists were no longer realizing their Kingdom potential, but the loss of potential was difficult to see because many of the routine denominational reports made it seem like things were going well.
In certain ways things were going well. Many programs, ministries and activities of the movement through associations, state or regional conventions, national entities and institutions were high in quality.
Yet the success that was experienced paled in comparison to what a sacrificial, full-surrender approach might yield. The potential of the movement was so much greater, and the distance between current effectiveness and the potential was increasingly growing wider.
Nondenominational church networks soared but did not have the missions potential of the movement. They focused more on church growth than Kingdom growth. Many congregations chose a homogeneous approach of skimming the surface of the population demographics around them.
This left multiple pockets of unmet needs among people groups. Few congregations were spiritually and strategically focused to share the good news of Jesus with these unreached and underreached people groups in an effective manner.
(Continue reading HERE.)
Let me hear from you if you want to talk about this.