I am continuing to learn …

This past week I attended the annual meeting of the Baptist State Convention Executive Directors’ Association. I will not bore you with the business details of our meeting, but I do want to share with you one great lesson I picked up on.

We had the opportunity to hear a pastor from a church in Idaho who is having remarkable results. The pastor’s name is Jim Putman, and he leads a congregation of thousands in Post Falls.

Here is what I learned from him: it is never enough for a leader to cast a single vision for the church he leads. While the vision is great, especially when it is clear, concise and compelling, it is never enough.

Jim teaches that each church needs not only a single, compelling vision, but it also needs a single “engine” that drives the vision. God’s church that is a part of Jim’s influence is not only focused in its vision, but it is also focused on the engine.

And what is the engine? It is a small group disciplemaking strategy that takes a person from conversion to full-blown mission.

This church family honestly believes that every believer is to be a witness and every convert begins a journey toward the end of mission/ministry. No exceptions! This church has an incredible disciplemaking ministry of one-on-one discipleship and small group strategies. You can read about this church in Jim Putman’s book entitled Church Is a Team Sport.

As I heard his story, I walked away confessing that many of our Southern Baptist churches left Sunday School years ago as the single-driving engine of our churches. But now the question comes back around anew: When you dropped Sunday School as your engine, what did you replace it with? Anything?

Please remember, you will not help your church family if you drop one engine and do not replace it. Or worse yet, if you drop one engine and replace it with five engines.

I thank God that even though I am getting older in my walk with the Lord, I can still stop long enough to learn from a younger generation of leaders. And the lesson I learned last week is: Single Vision/ Single Engine.

It is not a new lesson really. It is simply a new pastor teaching an older student that not all we learned years ago is bad.

What an incredible way to end the year! As almost all of you are aware, 2009 has been a rather tough year financially. It has been tough for our people. It has been tough for our churches, and as a result, it has been tough for those of us who depend on giving from our churches. It was a year of sacrifice all the way around.

But are you ready for some good news? As a result of the slow giving for the first quarter in 2009, we were forced to slash some $600,000 for our annual budget. We went from 3.5 million to 2.9 million in almost one day. We then settled in for a tough year like so many of our people and churches. But here is the end. …We just closed the books and our annual receipts came in at 3.1 million! While this did not hit our original number of 3.5 million, it did surpass our adjusted budget of 2.9 million by $264,014.24.

And do you want to hear some more great news? Since our International Mission Board has been experiencing some difficult financial realities as well, we made a strong plea with our people about sacrificial giving to the Lottie Moon Christmas Offering for International Missions. And in Arizona, our people have responded. I am pleased to report that Arizona Southern Baptists gave a total of $794,708.52. And the even greater news is some churches have yet to report their offering numbers. This amount exceeds last year’s offering by $52,788.72.

The bottom line is simple: Was it a tough year? … of course. But did our people rise to the challenge? … Absolutely!

To the God of glory and the great people of Tucson, I am grateful for our annual meeting. I want to express our appreciation to pastor Louis Heard, Karen Moss and the leadership team at Emmanual Baptist Church. Not only was the church facility in great shape, but the servant heart and willing hands were a great help.

I am also thankful for John Guillott and the Catalina Baptist Association, who supported our meeting in Tucson with a great attendance. It was fantastic to re-connect with our Tucson family.

And I am especially thankful for those of you who drove extra miles to attend our annual meeting in southern Arizona. I know it is an extra sacrifice on your part and your attendance was greatly appreciated.

I do want to take a few lines to thank our ASBC staff for the excellent job in setting up, managing the details and packing up our equipment for the return trip. I want to especially thank our collegiate campus ministers for their superb job of making our meeting work. The truth is, without our collegiate staff team, most of our work would have taken many more hours. Their energy to get things done is overwhelming.

Once again … thank you Arizona Southern Baptists for a wonderful annual meeting.