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Archives For November 30, 1999

When leaders gather

nateadamsibsa —  February 2, 2015

Nate_Adams_February2HEARTLAND | Nate Adams

More than 50 years ago, a small group of leaders from six Baptist state conventions here in the Upper Midwest gathered to discuss how they could help churches reach people with the gospel more effectively. They recognized that, even in that day, our Baptist faith and message were counter-cultural, not only to the spiritually lost, but also to those who had been exposed to the religious traditions that dominated the region. Being Southern Baptist in the north was and is not easy. The Midwest is a challenging mission field.

Those leaders returned home, determined to work with local associations to invite 10 leaders per association to the first North Central States Rally. The objective was to encourage stronger evangelism and church planting, and to deliver highly relevant training along with the clear message that Midwest pastors and church leaders were not alone.

I remember the first of these that I attended, back in January 2006. I was serving with the North American Mission Board, and was asked to come and lead a couple of conferences on the Acts 1:8 paradigm for missions strategy in the local church.

Though I had been assured that it happened every three years, I have to admit that I did not expect to find many leaders gathered in snowy Indianapolis in late January. But I was wrong. Almost 900 pastors, church planters, associational leaders, and lay leaders from all over the Midwest came, and eagerly soaked in the training and inspiration provided by Midwest practitioners and state and national SBC leaders.

In the hallways, in small group gatherings, and around the lunch and dinner tables, two central messages were clear. We are all here to advance the gospel in this region, and we are not alone.

That 2006 Rally, and the 2009 and 2012 Rallies that followed it, were all hosted in Indianapolis, which is fairly central to the six state conventions whose leaders gather. But in January 2015, the gathering expanded to include 10 state conventions. It took on a new name, The Midwest Leadership Summit. It attracted more than 1,000 leaders, the largest ever. And we were blessed to host it right here in Springfield, Illinois.

An all too common mindset these days seems to be that it’s too difficult to attract people to meetings. It’s not just that people are busy and travel is expensive. There seems to be a spirit of independence, sometimes even isolationism that can easily creep in to churches and their leaders. It’s easy to convince ourselves that things will be easier, simpler, cheaper, if we just stay home and focus on our own church.

But it is autonomy pulled together into cooperation, not independence pulled apart into isolation, that has produced missions advance by churches over the years. Sure it’s challenging and costly to get together, especially for busy leaders. But when committed, missions-minded leaders gather and ask how they can work together to more effectively advance the gospel, good things are bound to happen.

In the days ahead, we at IBSA will be working more intentionally with associational and church leaders to facilitate key leadership gatherings that are focused on evangelistic, gospel advance. You will see some of those plans elsewhere in this issue.

Some will be fairly local, in the form of leadership cohorts. Some will be “virtual,” facilitated by webinars or other online tools. And yes, some will continue to be statewide, even though that can involve costly time and travel.

We believe the gathering of leaders is worth it. It’s when leaders gather that we can remind one another that the mission of reaching people with the gospel is urgently important, and bigger than any of our individual lives, or churches. We cannot, we must not, allow ourselves to grow isolated or believe that we are meant to do it alone.

Nate Adams is executive director of the Illinois Baptist State Association.

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I want you to know

Meredith Flynn —  November 4, 2013
MI_logo

The IBSA Annual Meeting Nov. 13-14 will explore the theme “Mission Illinois: Churches Together Advancing the Gospel.”

HEARTLAND | Nate Adams

Opportunities for our entire Illinois Baptist family of churches to be together at once are all too rare.  But the IBSA Annual Meeting each November is one of those precious opportunities.  This year the meeting returns to the downtown Springfield Hilton for the first time since our 100th anniversary meeting in 2007. I hope to see you there November 13-14, or perhaps earlier at the Pastors Conference or one of the other related gatherings.

Click here for more on the IBSA Annual Meeting.

But in case you can’t come, let me preview some highlights of the information that I plan to share during that meeting.

I want you to know that Illinois Baptists are going into their Acts 1:8 mission fields in dramatically increased numbers. After several years of our churches reporting around 20,000 missions volunteers, last year churches reported more than 27,000 volunteers, a 34% increase! And there is no indication of that rate slowing down this year.

I want you to know that 28 new churches were planted across our state last year, and through August of this year at least 19 more have been planted. During our Wednesday night worship session at the Annual Meeting we will be hearing from seven of those creative and hard-working planters, and you will be able to meet them and others in person during a dessert reception following the session.

Dr. Gary Frost of the North American Mission Board will bring a challenging message that evening, and you will also meet Dr. Gene Crume, Judson University’s new president, and hear about an exciting new church planting partnership we are working on together in Chicagoland.

I want you to know that our dedicated staff continues to crisscross the state helping churches, and that through September they have already delivered 17,000 trainings in strategic ministry and mission skills to IBSA church leaders and workers.  Baptisms in IBSA churches were up over 2% last year, and the continued momentum of evangelism strategies like “Choose 2” give us hope of another increase when all the 2013 Annual Church Profiles are tabulated.

Finally, in case you can’t come to the annual meeting, I want you to know that the IBSA Board is exploring the option of acquiring a new property in Springfield, a retreat-like facility devoted to leadership development and pastoral renewal. You can read more about that possibility in this issue of the Illinois Baptist, and there will be additional information on http://www.IBSA.org.

Last year when the IBSA Board was exploring this possibility, I invited feedback, both positive and cautionary, from IBSA churches.  The responses were relatively few, but were favorable toward the idea by about a two-to-one margin.

The cautionary and even negative responses were just as helpful as the supportive and enthusiastic ones, however. They helped lead me to recommend to the IBSA Board that we not make an offer on the property unless or until we had the cash in hand to acquire it, even though that probably meant missing the opportunity. And they helped me discover some concerns about developing our camp properties that I felt could be addressed in time.

To my surprise, the potential leadership center property we looked at last year is still available, now at a further reduced price. That doesn’t necessarily mean we should acquire it. In fact, I’ve been praying that someone else would, if it’s not God’s best for IBSA churches. But the IBSA Board and I believe it’s in our best interest to at least explore the option again, because leadership development and renewal among pastors and church leaders is such a strategic need, and we think this property might play a role in meeting that need.

So please let me hear from you again, certainly if you support the idea, because often we leave positive feedback unexpressed. But if you have cautions about the idea, please patiently express them as well. Either way, I want you to know I’m listening.  And I hope to see you soon.

Nate Adams is executive director of the Illinois Baptist State Association.

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Climbing the same mountain again

Meredith Flynn —  September 26, 2013

Nates_column_0930COMMENTARY | Nate Adams

For several years now, my oldest son Caleb has been on a quest to climb the 58 tallest mountains in Colorado. They are known as “14ers,” because the summit of each one is at least 14,000 feet in elevation. I told him I would join him in this quest whenever I could, as long as my middle-aged legs and lungs hold out.

So this past summer, we were climbing again. And though I made it up and down six 14ers in about a week, only two of them were new conquests. Believe it or not, I chose to climb four of the mountains I had already climbed.

I know what you’re probably thinking. Why on earth climb the same mountains twice? The simple answer is that, this time, we wanted to take some new climbers with us. Caleb married Laura last January, and was eager to share his love for mountain climbing with her. And while my wife Beth has been supportive of our climbing efforts over the years, she had never climbed a 14er with us.

So we chose mountains that were familiar, and that we believed our understudies could climb too. On the hike itself, we went slower than we normally would, and stopped to rest more often. Of course it took longer. Yet there was a new kind of joy in the climb, and a new kind of satisfaction at the summit, even though we had been there before.

During that same week, I was finalizing IBSA’s proposed goals for 2014, goals that were to be approved by the IBSA Board at their September meeting. For months already, we had been talking about the vital importance of leadership development, both for pastors and for other church leaders. Instruction and training are valuable, we reasoned, but moving leaders to new levels of effectiveness will require deeper processes of personal growth and development.

As I worked on those goals, I reflected on our experiences climbing mountains. Many times before, Caleb and I had returned from a hike and described to others its unique challenges and what was required to make it to the top and back. Often we had urged others to come with us to those new heights, of course explaining what they would need to endure to get there. But none of that talk “about” hiking could compare with the experience of actually walking together, in relationship, up a mountain some of us had already climbed.

So one evening with tired legs at the bottom of a mountain, I drafted a new 2014 goal for IBSA about Leadership Development. The first part of the goal describes the more than 20,000 trainings IBSA delivers every year, in areas ranging from Sunday School to evangelism to worship leadership and student ministry. But the second half of our new Leadership Development goal says we will “engage at least 200 pastors, staff, church planters or leaders in spiritual, relational leadership development processes, striving for breakthrough growth in leaders that helps transform churches and their effectiveness.”

The IBSA Board unanimously embraced this new goal, along with its implications.  Helping church leaders grow and develop at deeper, more transformational levels will require new processes, new commitments, and perhaps even some new venues and facilities.  For example, we will be exploring the feasibility of how both IBSA camps and a possible new leadership retreat center in Springfield may contribute to the “spiritual, relational leadership development” of our churches’ leaders.

There are many pastors and leaders who have climbed their own mountains in ministry, and who can help other pastors and leaders up those mountains.  We believe enlisting them in a more intentional leadership development process may be just what is needed for the “breakthrough growth” that “helps transform churches and their effectiveness.” After all, as I learned again this summer, helping someone else up a mountain you’ve already climbed can be even more satisfying than simply climbing it yourself.

Nate Adams is executive director of the Illinois Baptist State Association.

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Placing a high value on unity

Meredith Flynn —  September 20, 2012

COMMENTARY | Nate Adams

A couple of days after the recent IBSA Board of Directors meeting, I traveled to Texas for a meeting with other State Executive Directors and leaders from the North American Mission Board. Our special speaker during that meeting was Dr. Jimmy Draper, past president of LifeWay Christian Resources and respected Baptist pastor and statesman for many decades.

Speaking primarily from John 17, Dr. Draper focused our thoughts on Jesus’ prayer for unity, and invited us to consider what might happen if we as Baptist leaders enjoyed the type of unity for which Jesus was praying. To be frank, relationships between many state conventions and NAMB have been strained for the past couple of years, as NAMB’s new strategies have reduced funding through state conventions.

During that same meeting, however, a committee of State Executive Directors that has been studying NAMB’s new direction and its impact on state conventions presented a very encouraging report. The committee and NAMB President Kevin Ezell then presented a new plan for state conventions and NAMB to move forward together that met with unanimous approval.

More important than the consensus being unanimous, however, was the fact that it was unifying. And there is a difference. As Dr. Draper shared with us later that evening, Jesus did not ask that everyone agree on everything (unanimity), or that everyone be the same (uniformity), or that everyone express themselves the same way (unison). In praying for our unity, Jesus was asking that our deep and resilient love for Him and for one another keep us together in spite of our differences, harmoniously moving toward a lost world in His name.

Listening to this teaching on unity, and watching it unfold in our Texas meeting, my mind returned to Illinois, and the IBSA board’s recent consideration of acquiring property for a leadership center in Springfield. You can read about that decision in the September 24 issue of the Illinois Baptist (online here), so I won’t recount the details in this post. But what pleased me most about the board’s action was that it also placed a high value on unity.

It’s challenging to know, sometimes, the common direction in which a thousand diverse Baptist churches from all over the state should go. Though most of the IBSA board and staff felt positively about the value and strategy of a Springfield leadership center, we decided to write a letter outlining the opportunity to all IBSA churches, in addition to the information provided in the Illinois Baptist and the IBSA website.

For the next two weeks, about 50 e-mails, phone calls, and personal conversations helped me “take the pulse” of Illinois Baptists on the subject. A majority of the feedback was positive toward the opportunity, but a significant minority expressed concerns or opposition.

The IBSA Advisory Committee and I, who had been studying the opportunity most closely, then faced a challenge. It appeared that both the decision to move forward with the acquisition and the decision to back away from it would be met with some disappointment. We prayed and discussed, and in the end we proposed an amended motion that we believed was a vote for unity, rather than for or against property.

The amended motion, adopted overwhelmingly by the full IBSA board, backs away from the property at the current price, and backs away from borrowing money. At the same time, it leaves the door slightly open for donors to step up with contributions, or for the seller to step down in price, though both of those scenarios are unlikely.

As I wrote earlier, it’s challenging to know, sometimes, the common direction in which a thousand diverse Baptist churches from all over the state should go. We can’t always count on unanimity, or uniformity, or unison. But we can explore new ideas, listen to one another, and make decisions that place a high value on unity, trusting God to keep moving us forward, together.

Nate Adams is executive director of the Illinois Baptist State Association.

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