There's Gonna Be A Meetin'

I'm already getting excited about the PBA Annual Meeting for this year.

It's set for October 20-21 at First Baptist, Newport News.

It'll be a 2-day gathering this time around because there's so much to be accomplished. We'll mix inspiration with information, devotional periods with significant decisionmaking, and hopefully you'll leave refreshed and renewed and ready to go back to your church motivated to work even harder in Kingdom business.

It looks like we've got a terrific thematic speaker coming. There should be a good amount of great music and abundant opportunity for worshipping the Lord. Encouraging reports from our various teams and work groups will be presented that will remind us all again that we are an association on mission.

Expect some crucial recommendations to be offered. We've been in an interim, transition stage this year and a lot of our folks have done some hard work in studying and coming up with options for some of the critical issues we face as a united collection of churches. The Admin Team and the Eastover Retreat Board and the Mission Center group have all labored intensely over many months to come up with ideas of solutions for some of our most pressing concerns so that we can soon move forward with new zest and zeal. Eddie Heath, Billy Hutchinson, Mark Reon, Dick Bailey, and Bill Cashman have been among those providing extraordinarily wise counsel and extremely helpful stability alongside these committees and our staff this year. Prepare to hear and act on some positive, future-oriented concepts on such things as the ultimate location for our PBA office and what path to take in our relationship to the Seaman's ministry and how best to position and utilize our staff in line with our stated mission statement and a possible track for our Eastover ministry. Get your full count of messengers to attend these sessions so that our understanding of these exciting proposals might be complete and so that we might progress in unity. Your interim leadership team was tasked with the responsibility of assisting in the formation of a dynamic, creative vision for the changing, challenging years ahead and we've earnestly tried to fulfil that assignment. We're not done yet, but hope by the Annual Meeting to have at least tentative recommendations for you to consider.

A word about Eastover: this may end up being one of our very best years over there. We could significantly enhance our effectiveness in that ministry, though, if we could quickly complete work on the new Activity Building. That facility would actually become the gateway and perhaps even the heart of the camp. We really need lots of volunteer labor to accomplish this task. We need people to do flooring work and painting and installation of restroom fixtures and siding and lighting and cabinets and shelves and some to help with landscaping. Aren't there some folks in your congregation who could step forward, give a little time and sweat, and knock out some of these jobs? Call George Arthur(294-3636) and set up a time for your work team to drive over and help.