Joel Rainey is the Director of Missions at Mid-Maryland Baptist Association, an adjunct professor at Capital Bible Seminary and blogs at Themelios. This post, the beginning of a series, was originally published at his site.
Over the next few weeks, I want to narrow my focus here a bit. Though I try to contribute to ministry and mission discussions that transcend my own denominational tribe, I’d like to speak specifically to what I believe to be the potential future of local entities within the Southern Baptist Convention; most notably the Baptist Association. Full disclosure: my mortgage is currently paid by a salary I receive as the Director of one of these roughly 1000 Associations scattered across North America, so that you know I have an obvious bias.