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Plan to Reduce Mission Board Size Advances
10/30/2009
LOUISVILLE—The administrative committee of the Kentucky Baptist Convention approved a plan to reduce the membership of the state Mission Board and appointed a new campus minister during its Oct. 13 meeting in Louisville.
Adam Greenway, chairman of the Mission Board Size Study Committee, presented a recommendation to shift the number of representatives for each of the state convention’s 70 associations from being based on the total membership of its churches to being determined by their resident membership.
Currently each association receives one representative on the KBC Mission Board for every 5,000 church members, “or major fraction thereof.” However, the proposed constitution and bylaw revision also would strike that allowance, meaning that an additional representative would be awarded only in increments of every 5,000 resident church members.
The Mission Board now is comprised of 155 members who represent 70 Baptist associations, eight at-large members and eight ex-officio members, for a total membership of 171 persons. If the proposed changes are approved by the state convention, associational membership on the board would drop from 155 to 102, reducing the board’s size by nearly a third, Greenway said.
The KBC’s Mission Board is the largest of any state convention, and reducing its size not only would curb related expenses, but also would allow for more efficient and meaningful service, noted KBC Assistant Executive Director Steve Thompson.
Greenway, assistant professor of evangelism and applied apologetics at Southern Seminary’s Billy Graham School of Missions and Evangelism, pointed out that most state convention mission boards have between 90 and 99 members. Even after the change, “that still puts us in the top two or three largest mission boards,” he observed.
The board’s “right-sizing” plan—as Greenwood called it—would be phased in over the next three to five years. He emphasized that “no current board members would have their term lengths truncated.”
The committee’s recommendation, which follows a study conducted by a 12-member committee appointed by convention President John Mark Toby, now advances to the KBC Constitution and Bylaws Committee. A first reading of the proposed bylaw change to Article VII would then be presented to messengers attending this year’s annual meeting at Severns Valley Baptist Church in Elizabethtown Nov. 10.
The last time the state Mission Board revised the method for determining its membership was in 1929.
New campus minister
The administrative committee also named Gene Bracken, pastor of First Baptist Church of McDowell, to a part-time campus minister position in Prestonsburg. Bracken will be working with students at Big Sandy Community and Technical College.
A graduate of Cumberland College (now University of the Cumberlands), Bracken has been pastor at First Baptist, McDowell, since 2003, He previously was pastor of Hiseville Baptist church and has been a counselor at Bellewood Children’s Home in Anchorage.
In other business, the administrative committee elected Bill Henard, pastor of Immanuel Baptist Church in Lexington, as vice chairman, filling a position vacated by Will Langford, who moved out of state.
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.
