The theme of this year’s South Carolina Baptist Convention annual meeting Nov. 10-11 in Columbia is “Building Healthy Families/ Growing Strong Churches.”
Rudy GrayIt is my sincere prayer that our entire meeting will honor the Lord Jesus Christ as we focus on the family as we worship together and conduct necessary business.
These are transitional if not perilous times for our denomination and our churches. Many have voiced their concerns that our system of cooperating together may be splintering. We have more different types of churches today than ever in our history.
Our interests, methodologies, styles of worship, and ways of simply doing church are diverse. We have churches made up of people mostly over 50 and we have churches made up of people mostly under 40.
I believe the one constant in our lives as God’s people is family. I have preached for many years that a strong family is the key to a strong, growing church. By the same token, I believe the church can and should help families grow in their understanding of God’s word and commitment to him. Family is multigenerational.
The power of the family is not limited to one particular age group but finds its resiliency in all the different stages of life. It is good to see a senior adult and a teenager talking, praying, or even doing a mission project together.
The church can help our families become healthier, and healthy families can help our churches grow in number and in grace.
The family has faced many challenges in our culture. Still, this group of people remains the single most important people group for building stable and good churches. Some voices today bemoan the demise of the family and even predict the traditional family (mom, dad and children) is all but gone. While that sentiment may recognize the reality of family difficulties, it does not eliminate the need for godly functioning families in our society.
We need senior adults, young couples, singles, teenagers, children, preschoolers, young adults, middle-age adults, and any other slice of family that exists. We may group ourselves into age or interest-related groups within the church in order to learn and serve more effectively, but we must also spend some time together across generational lines.
It is my hope and prayer that we will see more young people than ever at this year’s annual meeting. Important and practical devotional times that can encourage and help families will be given. The music will draw our attention to our family of faith and our families. You will hear stories of families helped through our disaster relief workers, insights for Christian working moms, and a testimony on the sanctity of human life.
We will do some of the things we always do at our annual meeting, but we will be doing some things differently. We will be doing some new things as well. The convention hall will look different. The display areas have been enlarged. On Tuesday evening, we will hear from virtually every age group represented in our denomination. At the end of the session on Tuesday, I have arranged for people to have a free copy of my book “Marriage That Works Is Work.”
I hope you will come to this year’s annual meeting, and I pray that our gathering will be a blessing to you and encourage you in the essential work of building healthy families and growing strong churches.