While they may not visit weight rooms and doctors, messengers to the Nov. 18–19 Alabama Baptist State Convention at Cottage Hill Baptist Church, Mobile, will learn about creating healthy churches by having healthy leaders.
Dale Huff, director of the office of leadercare/church administration for the Alabama Baptist State Board of Missions (SBOM), said the theme of the annual meeting, “Healthy Leaders, Healthy Churches,” reflects some current issues faced by churches today.
“Church health is really being talked about now, and our team is the leadership ministry team, so we felt we needed to do something with leadership,” he said. “Our goal, not only as a team but as a state board of missions, is to have healthy churches, and we feel healthy leaders are a key part of that.”
Explaining that “leaders” includes both clergy and lay leaders — from the ministers of the church to Sunday School teachers — Huff said a church’s growth and health is closely tied to its leadership.
Rick Lance, executive director of the SBOM, said, “If church leaders are healthy, then congregations are more likely to be healthy as well — and vice versa. The idea of ‘health’ in this case encompasses a variety of aspects, including moral health, physical health and health in our relationships to God, family, church family and others.”
In a SBOM brochure explaining the theme, leaders are encouraged to develop in the areas of spiritual, mental, physical and relational health.
It also defines a healthy church as “a biblically functioning community of believers committed to Jesus Christ.”
To that end, churches are encouraged to focus on four concerns: spiritual growth, ministry involvement, missions advancement and outreach effectiveness.
Lance said, “We should realize that being healthy is not synonymous with perfection. Rather, being healthy is having the capacity to handle our unhealthiness in healthy ways.”
Huff said messengers to the annual meeting will hear testimony from pastors and associational leaders about the importance of leader health.
Travis Coleman, pastor of First Baptist Church, Prattville; Morgan Bailey, pastor of Santuck Baptist Church, Wetumpka; and Etowah Association Director of Missions Bob Thornton will share their reasons for participating in the emphasis.
After the theme presentation Tuesday evening, Johnny Hunt, pastor of First Baptist Church, Woodstock, Ga., and a speaker at the 2003 Pastors Conference, will preach. The Alabama Singing Men and Alabama Singing Women will present the special music.
Joe Godfrey, who is finishing his first term as convention president, will deliver the presidential address Tuesday morning. Godfrey is pastor of First Baptist Church, Pleasant Grove, in Birmingham Association.
The convention sermon will be given by Jay Wolf, pastor of First Baptist Church, Montgomery, during the Wednesday morning service.
Convention officials said that business items for the annual meeting will include:
1. Election of new officers,
2. Adoption of the 2002 SBOM audit and
3.Adoption of the 2004 budget. The proposed $40 million budget is the same as the 2003 budget.
During the board’s July 25 meeting, Lance said this budget was adopted because CP receipts indicate that Alabama Baptists will miss the CP goal for the first time in 10 years.
“It is possible,” he said, “that Alabama Baptists may give more in the second half of the year than they have in the first half, but we cannot budget on that possibility.”
Also to be voted on at the annual meeting is the proposal for a new campus ministries student center at the University of Alabama at Birmingham.
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