The apostle Paul made an impact on an escaped criminal’s life by the name of Onesimus.  Paul then urged Philemon to accept Onesimus as a Brother in Christ and to come alongside him upon his return home.  The apostle wrote:

“I appeal to you for my son Onesimus, who became my son while I was in chains.  Formerly he was useless to you, but now he has become useful both to you and me.”   (Philemon 1:10-11 )

Satan continues to shackle untold multitudes.  Consider these facts:

• In the United States, approximately 1600 people will leave state and federal prisons each day according to correctional data.
• Nearly two out of three will return to the greater Louisville area in Kentucky.
• More than four out of ten of these released will be back in the prison system within three years.
• Less than one out of five of these being released will have participated in any kind of pre-release program that prepares them to re-enter society.
• Almost all prisoners eventually get out.
• Children of prisoners are seven times more likely to end up in a state correctional institution.
• Children of prisoners are nine times more likely to drop out of school and ten times more likely to abuse chemical substances.

Tragically, this vicious cycle repeats itself day after day all across Kentucky. It touches the families and neighbors of Kentucky Baptist churches from Ashland to Paducah as the Enemy continues to destroy lives. 

But, there is good news; God is stirring a life-changing ministry inside the fences of correctional institutions in Kentucky and opening doors in other correctional facilities through the Malachi Dad and Rubies For Life Programs.  These relational Discipleship/Mentoring programs are transforming the lives of prisoners and their families by helping them to enter a relationship with Jesus Christ. The ultimate goal of the programs is  to enable men and women to live transformed lives.  Through the Kentucky Baptist R-6 Mentoring program this life transformation continues upon release from prison.

Listen to one testimony from a graduate of the Rubies For Life Program:

“I have struggled a lot with guilt – guilt over crime…guilt over not being a mother to my son…guilt for breaking my parent’s heart.  How could a perfect and judgemental God love me? I can’t forgive myself… All my life I knew about God…but I didn’t know God. Through Rubies I have come to know who God really is-He’s my loving father and I am important to Him.  He does forgive me and remembers my sin no more….I am a better Mom, a better daughter..I see things now.  I’m a Ruby!”

God is changing lives, but the workers are few.  There is a great need for volunteers or churches that would be willing to break the cycle by serving as a leader, team member, or mentor in the Malachi Dads, Rubies For Life, or R-6 Mentoring Program.  Is God calling you?  Would you make a difference for Christ’s sake for a forgotten Onesimus today?

Contact the R-6 Mentoring Program at the Baptist Men on Mission Department  at (502) 489-3527 or randy.foster@kybaptist.org, and allow God to use you to become a Paul to a forgotten Onesimus. 

The R-6 Mentoring Program is a work of the Kentucky Baptist Convention and supported by gifts to the Cooperative Program and the Eliza Broadus Offering for State Missions.

A Haitian brother and sister ministered to by a Kentucky Baptist medical missions team after the quake.

Thursday, January 12 marks the second anniversary of the earthquake that rocked the tiny island home of Haiti. The 7.0 magnitude earthquake left over a million people homeless and 230,000 dead as the violent vibrations crumbled a nation. Southern Baptist volunteers rushed to Haiti to provide medical care, clean water, food, and spiritual hope. Homes were assessed and Chaplains shared the love of Christ. Demolition teams cleared away rubble and construction volunteers began building homes that continues even today.

Kentucky Baptists were a significant part of this response to the people of Haiti. Kentucky Baptists gave over $641,000 for relief aid, almost 10,000 Buckets of Hope filled with much needed food, and sent over 28 disaster relief, medical, and rebuild teams as we rushed to the aid of a hurting people. The lasting legacy of this effort is that 2800 new homes were built by Baptists and Haitians through the “Rebuild Haiti” project, an orphanage is being constructed, over 150, 000 professions of faith were recorded by Haitian pastors and disaster relief volunteers, over 71 new churches were planted in areas where Kentucky Baptists served, and the light of Christ was ignited in a land that had long been covered in darkness.

This effort would not have been possible without Kentucky Baptists commitment to the Great Commission that is demonstrated through their gifts to the Cooperative Program and our special mission offerings. This commitment that supports ministries like Disaster Relief through our Kentucky Baptist Convention was the springboard for this Kingdom effort and enables us to be ready to respond when disasters strike.

There is approaching a day when we will stand before our Lord and we as Kentucky Baptists will give an account of what we did in Haiti. On that great day, I believe we will hear:

“Then the righteous will answer Him, ‘Lord, when did we see You hungry and feed You, or thirsty and give You something to drink? When did we see You a stranger and take You in, or without clothes and clothe You? When did we see You sick, or in prison, and visit You?’

“And the King will answer them, ‘I assure you: Whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of Mine, you did for Me.” (Matthew 25:37-40)

Kentucky Baptists answering the call to “Go” for His sake.

One way Kentucky Baptists are reaching out to the world right here in Kentucky is through the Engage conference which will be held this weekend in Cave City. Put together by the Kentucky Baptist Convention’s Baptist Campus Ministries and Kentucky Woman’s Missionary Union, Engage reaches out to students from around the world who are studying here at Kentucky colleges and universities.

Funded by the Cooperative Program and the Eliza Broadus Offering for State Missions, Engage is another great example of how Kentucky Baptists are seeking to fulfill the Great Commission.

Here’s the KBC news release about this weekend’s event:

International Students ‘Engage’ in Spiritual, Cultural Event

CAVE CITY – Hundreds of college students will converge on cave country this weekend for a time of sharing and encouragement that also will provide many international students an opportunity to hear about the love of Christ, perhaps for the first time.

Last year more than 300 students representing 43 countries attended the Engage conference, hosted by Kentucky Baptist Convention Collegiate Ministry and Kentucky Woman’s Missionary Union.

Cindy Pelphrey, campus minister for several Owensboro-area colleges, is coordinating this year’s event. The theme is “Very Important Piece…Place…Person!”

A highlight of the event is Saturday evening’s banquet which includes a “parade of nations” and a cultural fashion show. Pelphrey said the activities allow students to educate their peers about different cultures and to demonstrate pride in their homelands.

“On Sunday morning, students will be invited to attend a Christian worship service where some will share Scripture in their language and others will give testimonies,” Pelphrey said. “An international choir will sing and the message will focus on the ‘Very Important Person,’ Jesus Christ.”

Sports, games and a talent show are among other activities. Tamara Koch, a counselor from Rockford, Ill., is the guest speaker. A former resident of Germany and graduate of European Nazarene College and Wheaton College, Koch helps missionaries and health-care professionals stay mentally and emotionally healthy so they can minister to others.

Pelphrey noted that today’s colleges and universities are more culturally diverse than ever, and that Baptist Collegiate Ministry is a way for Kentucky Baptists to engage in international missions without leaving home.

“It is a joy to discover the world in Kentucky during this special weekend where smiles, laughter and pride in family and culture meet,” she said. “The greatest joy is sharing the love of Christ and His desire to call each of us His child.”

The Kentucky Baptist Convention has recently released a video about the ministry of missionaries Greg and Alice Whitetree at the Freeda Harris Baptist Center in Easter Kentucky. I had the opportunity to visit the center earlier this summer. Greg and Alice are truly examples of people who are giving more for Christ. Although they were initially trained in and called to children’s ministry in urban areas, they have given the past 28 years of their lives now to ministering in Kentucky’s coal country.

Life can be hard in this area of the state as high rates of unemployment, poverty and drug abuse are prevalent. Greg and Alice live humbly and minister generously to share the love of Christ and meet the needs of the people. They are the Great Commission in action!

Click here to download this video. It’s a great piece to help your church understand how Cooperative Program, Eliza Broadus Offering for State Missions and Annie Armstrong Easter Offering gifts are being used to minister in Kentucky.

Baptists don’t always understand the value and importance of the Cooperative Program in enabling a wide host of missions endeavors across the nation and around the world. The video embedded here seeks to demonstrate what would be missing in Kingdom work without this powerful missions-funding tool.

The video is also available for download from the KBC website if you want to you it in your church. Click here to go to the download page.

Dr. Paul Chitwood

Kentucky pastor and former International Misson Board Trustees Chairman Paul Chitwood has been nominated to become executive director-treasurer of the Kentucky Baptist Convention to succeed Bill Mackey who is retiring at the end of May. A special meeting of the Mission Board has been called for June 2 in Louisville to consider the recommendation from the Search Committee.

Here’s the release about the nomination from the KBC:

Chitwood Recommended To Lead Kentucky Baptists

LOUISVILLE – Dr. Paul Chitwood, pastor of the First Baptist Church of Mount Washington, is being recommended to serve as the next executive director-treasurer of the Kentucky Baptist Convention.

Chitwood will be presented to the Kentucky Baptist Mission Board for approval at a special called meeting at the Kentucky Baptist Building here on June 2. A 15-member search committee that has been working since October following Dr. Bill Mackey’s announcement that he will retire on May 31 will make the recommendation.

If approved, Chitwood will start effective July 1.

Chitwood, 41, has served the Mt. Washington church since November 2003 having previously served pastorates at the First Baptist Church of Somerset (1999-2003), the First Baptist Church of Owenton (1995-99) and South Fork Baptist Church in Owenton (1993-95).

The First Baptist Church of Mount Washington reported on the 2010 Annual Church Profile that is has 1,890 resident members with an average weekly primary worship attendance of 852. The church received $1,307,928 in undesignated gifts and gave $107,029 (8.18 percent) to support missions through the Cooperative Program for that reporting year.

Chitwood served as KBC president in 2005-06 after having served as first vice president in 2003-04. He served as president of the Kentucky Baptist Convention Pastors’ Conference in 2002.

Chitwood was also a member of the special study committee that led to the development of the KBC’s Kentucky Baptist Connect goals in 2002-03 and then served on the Mission Advisory Committee related to those goals from 2004-09.

He was chairman of the board for the International Mission Board of the Southern Baptist Convention from 2008-10 as the IMB launched a major global reorganization.

He currently serves as a trustee and adjunct professor of missions and evangelism at the University of the Cumberlands, a Kentucky Baptist university in Williamsburg where he received a Bachelor of Science degree. Chitwood also serves as assistant professor of evangelism and church growth at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville from which he holds a Master of Divinity and Ph.D. degrees.

He and his wife Michelle are natives of Tennessee, and have three children, Daniel, Anna and Cai.

Paul Badgett, pastor of First Baptist Church of Pikeville, chairs the search committee. Also, on the committee are: Charles Barnes, a member of Hurstbourne Baptist Church in Louisville; Debbie Cook, children’s associate at Central Baptist Church in Corbin; Alan Dodson, pastor of Cornerstone Baptist Church in Lexington; and Richard Gaines, pastor of Consolidated Baptist Church in Lexington.

Also serving are: Linda Polley, administrator at Severns Valley Baptist Church in Elizabethtown; Ronny Raines, pastor of First Baptist Church of Cold Springs; Pat Reaves, a member of Bethlehem Baptist Church in Louisville; Steve Rice, pastor of First Baptist Church of Shelbyville; Nick Sandefur, pastor of Edgewood Baptist Church in Hopkinsville; Ben Stratton, pastor of Farmington Baptist Church; Jerry Tooley, director of missions for Daviess-McLean Baptist Association and member of First Baptist Church of Owensboro; and Ray Woodie, pastor of Coral Hill Baptist Church in Glasgow.

Also serving are Don Mathis, a member at Eastwood Baptist Church in Bowling Green and president of the KBC when the committee was appointed and current KBC President Floyd Paris, pastor of the Unity Baptist Church in Ashland.

Chitwood himself was also a member of the search committee.

The Kentucky Baptist Convention is a cooperative missions and ministry organization made up of nearly 2.400 autonomous Baptist churches in Kentucky. A variety of state and worldwide ministries are coordinated through its administrative offices in Louisville, including: missions work, disaster relief, ministry training and support, church development, evangelism and more.

For more information, visit the KBC website at www.kybaptist.org, find “Kentucky Baptist Convention” on Facebook or follow “kentuckybaptist” on Twitter.

Check out this Kentucky Baptist Convention podcast featuring Ian Sterling, a disaster relief volunteer, who came to Christ through the ministry of a KBC disaster relief team seven years ago. Sterling, of Las Vegas, Nev., was working with the American Red Cross during its response to Hurricane Ivan in Bay Minette, Ala., when he came into contact with the Kentucky team. He said he knew these folks were not just providing a “response” but a “ministry.” He realized that the volunteers had something he was missing and his conversations with these Christians led to his own decision to accept Christ as his Savior.

Ever since then, he has served as a Kentucky Baptist Disaster Relief volunteer himself. It’s a great example of how God multiplies our gifts. Kentucky Baptists gave through the Cooperative Program to make possible the disaster relief ministry. Ian was reached with the gospel and now reaches others through his own testimony, his home church’s ministry and through disaster relief ministry.

What goes around really does come around!

–Robert Reeves

The Kentucky Baptist Convention announced position cuts among its Mission Board staff today as it shifts funds to national and international missions as part of the Great Commission Task Force plan approved by messengers to the annual meeting in November.

Here’s the Convention’s official release:

KBC Announces Staff Reductions for FY 11-12

LOUISVILLE – The Kentucky Baptist Convention Mission Board will eliminate five full-time and 19 part-time positions in its next budget in order to send a larger percentage of church gifts to Southern Baptist Convention causes throughout the nation and around the world.

The reductions are being made in response to a Great Commission Task Force report approved by KBC messengers at the 2010 annual meeting in November. The report recommended changing the formula for allocating Cooperative Program gifts to an even 50 percent-50 percent split between the state convention and SBC over 10 years with the bulk of that shift occurring in the 2011-12 fiscal year.

Three of the five full-time positions being eliminated are already currently unfilled while the other two positions will become vacant due to retirements on Aug. 31. The 19 part-time positions are a mix of filled and unfilled contract positions. Seven other part-time contract positions will be reduced.

The staffing adjustments go into effect with the start of the new fiscal year on Sept. 1.

KBC Executive Director Bill Mackey told the Mission Board’s Administrative Committee Thursday that the part-time position reductions will come largely from two areas – the elimination of seven part-time campus ministry positions and the elimination of funding for the part-time consultant positions from the Worship and Music Department.

Mackey said ministry in these areas would continue.

“We regret having to give up these positions and the ministry that takes place through them,” Mackey said. “But we will do our best to meet these ministry needs through effective and faithful volunteers and assignments to current personnel.”

Evangelism Growth Team Leader Ross Bauscher said that in the case of several of the seven campus ministry position reductions, the persons currently serving will continue their work as volunteers. The college campuses affected are Ashland Community College, Berea College, Centre College, Elizabethtown Community College, Hopkinsville Community College, Mid-Continent University and the University of Kentucky.

The UK position eliminated is a vacant intern position. That school will continue to have a full-time campus minister. Ministry at Berea College will continue through the work of a ministry intern based at Eastern Kentucky University, Bauscher said.

In regard to the Worship and Music Department positions, Mackey said that the five consultant positions being affected will actually continue at least temporarily into the new fiscal year. The department director position is currently unfilled but will remain in the inventory to give the KBC’s next executive director flexibility in making decisions about the department. In the mean time, the funds from that unfilled position will be used to support the consultants’ work.

Mackey is retiring in May and a search committee is currently seeking his replacement.

Employees who will be retiring at the end of the fiscal year are Baptist Men on Mission Department Director Randy Foster and Missions Growth Team Ministry Assistant Linda George. Disaster Relief Associate Coy Webb will be recommended to the full Mission Board to fill the department director position while his associate’s position will be eliminated.

Following retirement, Foster is expected to continue serving in a part-time contract position to support the department’s R6 mentoring ministry for ex-offenders, and Kentucky Changers, a popular ministry that engages high school students in repairing homes during the summer.

The department will lose Greta Wilson, part-time children’s missions consultant, and Gary King, a missions consultant who works with the R6 ministry. The Missions Growth Team previously eliminated its Mississippi River Ministry and cooperative ministries consultants.

Mackey said the staffing adjustments will result in a net savings of approximately $486,000. There will be a total of 90 full and part-time positions in the Mission Board’s job inventory at the start of the 2011-12 fiscal year.

Lowell Ashby, the KBC’s Business Services Team leader, said salaries of current staff will also be frozen for the new fiscal year at 2010-11 levels.

The CP allocation change is one of several funding challenges facing the Mission Board.

Additionally, the nation’s recession is now taking a toll on church giving. Ashby reported that CP giving for the current year is running just over 9 percent behind pace for reaching this year’s $23.5 million CP budget.

The convention is also absorbing a shift in the funding received for missions and ministries through the North American Mission Board of the SBC. Cooperative agreements with state conventions are currently used to share costs for some positions but NAMB has announced plans to end those agreements over the next seven years.

The Cooperative Program is the unified giving plan used by Southern Baptists to support its missions and ministries. Gifts through individual churches are sent to state conventions and then allocated to various state and national ministries according to an agreed-upon formula.

Currently, 38 percent of CP gifts are sent to the SBC while 62 percent are used for missions and ministries in Kentucky (36.4 percent by the Kentucky Baptist Mission Board and 25.6 percent by KBC agencies and institutions).

The Kentucky Baptist Convention is a cooperative missions and ministry organization made up of nearly 2.400 autonomous Baptist churches in Kentucky. A variety of state and worldwide ministries are coordinated through its administrative offices in Louisville, including: missions work, disaster relief, ministry training and support, church development, evangelism and more. For more, find us on Facebook or follow us on Twitter.

Click this link to read coverage of the reductions in the Louisville Courier-Journal.

–Robert Reeves

KBC President Floyd Paris

New Kentucky Baptist Convention President Floyd Paris, in speaking to the Kentucky Baptist Mission Board last week, encouraged Kentucky Baptists to embrace the “More for Christ” campaign laid out by the Great Commission Task Force report approved by messengers to the Nov. 16 annual meeting.

The task force plan calls for the state convention to move to an equal distribution of Cooperative Program dollars between Kentucky Baptist ministries and Southern Baptist causes, including international and North American missions over the next 10 years. The largest single step up in the plan occurs next year.

In addition to the funding shift, however, the task force report also calls for Baptists to give more for Christ in terms of their own personal commitment of time, talents and financial resources. Paris said he wants to help Kentucky Baptists do that by providing practical opportunities to give more for Christ.

He outlined three giving emphases that will enable the local church to help all members become engaged in supporting missions at home, throughout the nation and around the world through the Cooperative Program.

“Three More for Christ” is “pew” for increased missions giving through the local church and the Cooperative Program, he said.  If 100,000 Kentucky Baptists were “to give three dollars more per week to their local offering … it will result in an additional $1.05 million to missions through the Cooperative Program,” he said.

The second proposal affirmed by mission board members is “Million More 4 Missions,” which is geared toward youth. Paris said church youth groups would be encouraged to set aside 15 weeks to raise funds for missions through the Cooperative Program. If youth groups in half of Kentucky Baptists’ 2,400 congregations participated and raised an average of $833 each, the effort would produce nearly $1 million, he said.

Through “Children Changing the World,” boys and girls would be encouraged to start collecting change each week, beginning April 10, 2011, which is Cooperative Program Sunday in Southern Baptist life, and conclude the collection at the close of vacation Bible school during the summer.

“We need a goal to teach children (about the) Cooperative Program,” Paris said, noting that the effort would help boys and girls connect their own actions to someone in another part of the world having the opportunity to learn about Jesus.

You can listen to Dr. Floyd’s presentation in its entirety using the player below:

–Robert Reeves

Probably the most common questions I get asked these days as a Kentucky Baptist Mission Board staff member are something along the lines of “What is the Great Commission Resurgence?” and “What does it mean financially for Kentucky?” Although GCR has been discussed at great length in the blogosphere, written about extensively in the Baptist media and voted on at the Southern Baptist Convention, I have found that large numbers of Kentucky Baptists, including some pastors, are just now starting to become cognizant of this major movement in the SBC.

Unfortunately, I don’t have any quick answers as I am still struggling with that “elevator speech” that can somehow crystallize all that’s been going on over the past couple of years. That said, however, let me try to use the slightly more forgiving format of this blog to take a stab at providing at least a partial response to these questions.

In a nutshell, the Great Commission Resurgence is a movement with the best of motives — that of seeing Southern Baptists become more effective in taking the Gospel to the ends of the earth. Proponents look at the vast lostness of our planet and want to find better ways to reach people. While recognizing the spiritual nature of this problem, they partially correlate this with funding in that they look at places like the southern United States where the concentration of Southern Baptist churches is the greatest and suggest that we should be spending less of our missions dollars at home and more in sending missionaries to unreached parts of the world. With this in mind, GCR supporters have therefore pushed hard for a drastic redirection of Baptist funding away from state convention causes to Southern Baptist Convention causes in the belief that this will result in more people hearing the Gospel.

Of course, shifting more resources to one area means taking them from other areas, which gets to the heart of the question about the financial impact on Kentucky. The short answer is that unless Kentucky churches step up both to increase their own local efforts to reach their communities for Christ and give substantially more to support missions through the Cooperative Program and Eliza Broadus Offering for State Missions, GCR will mean a lot less money will be spent in Kentucky on helping existing churches, starting new churches and reaching the lost.

I share this not to dispute the merits of GCR but simply to share the financial reality. From a financial standpoint, the Kentucky Baptist Convention is facing three major hits — two of them related to GCR and one unrelated. Here they are:

• Struggling economy – The first thing that’s impacting the state convention is the same thing that’s impacting most churches and most families. Times are just tough. The state convention budget for missions and ministries in Kentucky is shrinking through declining giving. Here in the first quarter of the 2010-11 fiscal year, we are already discussing budget cuts for state convention programs because CP giving is off to a slow start. This is also impacting KBC agencies and institutions (Campbellsville University, Clear Creek Baptist Bible College, Crossings Ministries, Kentucky Baptist Foundation, Kentucky Woman’s Missionary Union, Oneida Baptist Institute, Sunrise Children’s Services, the University of the Cumberlands and the Western Recorder) because not only is the amount being sent to them from the CP allocation less but endowments and other investments are not providing income at very high levels these days.
• Loss of NAMB cooperative agreement – One of the results of the approval of the SBC’s Great Commission Resurgence Task Force report at the SBC meeting in Orlando this summer is that the cooperative agreements that the North American Mission Board has had with state conventions are going to be phased out over the next seven years. In the past, the logic was that since NAMB’s mandate is to reach North America and the states are part of North America, it makes sense to combine some of the efforts of the state conventions and NAMB. This meant NAMB would spend some of the money it received through the Cooperative Program and Annie Armstrong Easter Offering on church planting, ministry and evangelization in Kentucky. The cooperative agreement spelled out how this would work. For instance, under the cooperative agreement, the KBC might pay 60 percent of a salary for a staff member or missionary while NAMB would supplement 40 percent. The new logic is that there are enough churches in Kentucky to reach Kentucky so it’s better to shift the funds that were being spent here to church planting and evangelistic efforts in other areas of North America. The practical impact of this will be the eventual loss of more than $1 million for joint mission work funded by NAMB. These funds are currently used to partially fund more than 30 ministry and missionary positions at the state and association levels and to provide resources for a variety of church planting, evangelism and ministry projects. The exact schedule for this phase-out of the cooperative agreement is not yet known.
• Kentucky Great Commission Task Force report – Assuming that the Kentucky Great Commission Task Force report is approved by messengers at the annual meeting next week, the third hit will occur next September in the implementation of the first budget where funds are allocated on the basis of the new plan. The Kentucky report calls for moving our state to a 50/50 split of CP funds with the SBC within seven years. The bulk of the shift will be made in the very first year as the SBC percentage increases to 44.85 percent and the percentage for the KBC Mission Board and the Kentucky agencies and institutions listed above shrinks to 51.15 percent (plus 4 percent in shared costs between SBC and KBC).  Getting to this amount will require the elimination of KBC contributions to the annuity benefits for Kentucky pastors and church staff members, a 12 percent reduction in Mission Board personnel (expected through attrition and the elimination of some part-time positions) and sizable reductions in the allocations to Kentucky agencies and institutions. (All KBC agencies and intitutions will have allocations reduced by 6 percent with the colleges taking an extra 7 percent on top of that. Kentucky WMU will also take an additional 3.85 percent cut so that they will match the 9.85 percent reduction being taken by the Kentucky Baptist Mission Board.) The plan relies on an ambitious 3 percent yearly increase in total CP giving to get us the rest of the way to 50/50. More than 91 percent of all giving increases over the next seven years will go to SBC causes (International Mission Board, NAMB, SBC Executive Committee, six seminaries, the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission and the SBC Historical Library and Archives). The total dollar impact on the KBC Mission Board budget will be over a million dollars shifted and trimmed from an annual budget of less than $9 million in the first year.

I share this simply as information without making a judgment on whether one direction is better to go than another. It is up to Kentucky Baptists to decide how the Lord is calling them to best use the resources He has provided. The decision ultimately comes down to individual beliefs and preferences about the right balance for funding between state, national and international causes.

The decision is certainly an important one, however. In fact, it is probably the single biggest decision made at a Kentucky Baptist Convention annual meeting in the lifetimes of almost all Kentucky Baptists. Every church should strive to have its full complement of messengers in attendance at the upcoming annual meeting on Nov. 16 at Immanuel Baptist Church in Lexington in order to ensure that whatever decision is made, it is one that truly represents the desires of the majority of Kentucky Baptists.

–Robert Reeves