What is a Southern Baptist Association?

From your Executive Director of Missions

Dr. Tom Cheyney

tcheyney@goba.org

407-293-0450 office

A Baptist Association is a self-governing Fellowship of autonomous churches sharing a common faith and active on mission in their local setting.

The churches that compromise an Association are free, independent, self-governing, autonomous churches that decide to associate themselves together to do certain things jointly that they could not do themselves.

The fellowship of churches involves oneness, shared life, mutuality and koinonia. It is a “family” of churches in a network in which churches give and receive assistance. The Association as a fellowship emphasizes the relationship existing among the churches.

Sharing a common faith. The fellowship of an Association is grounded in harmony in faith and practice. Associations differ in regard to their particular doctrinal issues that are important to their fellowship in regard to the amount of diversity encouraged or tolerated on those issues. Nevertheless, the Association, unlike State Conventions is a doctrinally based Fellowship.

Active on mission reflects to God's mission for the churches individually and the churches together in Association. The first responsibility of each church is to deal with that same question - What is God's mission for us together?

In their setting deals with everything anyone means when he says of his Association, “But I am in a peculiar situation." Every Association is pecular, that is, it is unique; and it is in the uniqueness of that situation that an Association has a very special responsibility to be on mission.

Associations differ from one another in such ways as size; territory geography, population, cultural, ethnic, religious, socio-economic and demographic characteristics of the area; number of churches; strength of churches, types of churches, history, relationship to the State Convention, and stage of development.

Self-governing. An Association is created by the churches and is accountable to those churches through the messengers. An Association like other general bodies of Southern Baptists such as State Conventions, Southern Baptist Convention are self-governing.

Your local Southern Baptist Association is what your local church and other churches decide to make it. The Messengers and Executive Board members selected by the churches make those basic decisions. The churches decide again what their Association will become when they decide what percentage of their church budget will go to Associational Missions. In some areas churches give 5% and in other areas churches give to the local Southern Baptist Association 3%. In other areas churches give 2%. As a church planter I was always encourage by my church to give 3.5% to the local Association.

Southern Baptists are committed to missions in various ways. May I challenge you and remind you that your church can be part of what is happening in a specific way through involvement. In the mission activities that are designed to strengthen all of our churches within the Greater Orlando Baptist Association. Individuals within our churches can commit to give of their time to help strengthen local churches in many ways through working together.

A few of the ways that I would like to remind you today would be:
· the revitalizing and strengthening of existing churches,
· the planting of new church starts, and
· the development of leaders from within the churches that become an army of committed servants around the Greater Orlando Baptist Association.