First Baptist Life: Rport from our SUNL Meetinge

On Sunday afternoon I traveled down to the Old Mystic Baptist Church for the SUNL Association Annual Meeting. The guest speaker was Rev. Glynis LaBarre from National Ministries of ABCUSA. She spoke about the future hope of the world. She talked about today's missional minded church.

Several of us have heard Glynis speak before and she was here to talk to the wider body. As Cynthia Strouse mentioned in our morning worship service, there are over 80 American Baptist Churches across the nation participating in the "official" missional church project. They are reaching out to their communities in new ways. We are one of them. Missional is a mind set that says that the mission field is changing and it is right outside our front door. In order to reach it we must get outside the church, bringing our authentic faith into the world.

I think Jesus was the first to suggest this when he told us to be like salt in the world. Somewhere along the way we started thinking that people needed to come to us. The missional church is turning this around and sending us back out in to the world.

So on Sunday afternoon Glynis came to speak to representatives of the 26 churches in our association. The SUNL (Stonington Union - New London) Association is a merger of the tow associations that were founded nearly two hundred years ago. We were a charter member of one of them. Over the years the churches met for fellowship, mission, and various other reasons. Whenever a new minister was installed or a man or women ordained into the ministry, the churches would gather to do the job. They also assisted each other when difficult times came. Sometimes they hosted revival meetings. Even as recently as twenty years ago large crowds would come together for at least one inspirational meeting each year.

On Sunday 12 churches were represented and they passed a budget of $21,000.Most of the money comes from voluntary contributions from the churches and is spent to assist churches and provide programs. At the meeting yesterday they also voted $1000 to help defray costs of bringing in Paul Young to speak at the Quaker Hill Baptist Church. He is the author of the current best seller, "The Shack." So you see, the Association is still doing great work.

Here are a few photos from yesterday.

Rev. Horation DeValle, pastor of Old Mystic Baptist Church, offered prayer as the program began.

Rev. Greg Hamby, the moderator of the SUNL Association, welcomed everyone and introduced our speaker.

Rev. Glynis Labarre speaks to the group.

Rev. Hopeton Scott, our representative to the General Board of the ABCUSA, came to speak with us about the changes that will be voted on at the Biennial Meeting of the denomination in Pasadena, CA in June.