By Grace Thornton
The Alabama Baptist
When Mike Snow opened up his early edition of the Oct. 10 issue of The Alabama Baptist he thought the TAB staff might be reading his mail.
“That’s exactly what we’ve been doing here — trying to help our people know what the association is and how it works,” said Snow, director of missions for Bethel Baptist Association.
The article on page 1, called “Common mission,” led with the questions, “What’s the name of your local Baptist association? What’s the name of your associational missions director? What does your association do?”
Snow says they’ve been focusing a lot of attention on getting the word out about those essentials lately.
Bethel Association — a network of 34 churches with an office in Linden — has been going strong for nearly 200 years. And since Snow started in his role with Bethel Association back in January he’s been meeting with local church leaders to hear their hearts, share with them about the association and figure out ways they can partner together even better.
“We’re getting back to the basics of who we are and what we do,” Snow said.
‘Me and My Association’
This year he’s held two pastor roundtable discussions to hear what they need from their association and from Snow. He called those meetings “Me and My Association” so they would feel ownership of what’s going on in Bethel Association as a whole.
“We all have great things going on, we can just become stronger in our local places of service by joining together,” he said.
They’re basing their vision around the theme REAL — a Resource for the church, Education for ministry, Achievement driven and Local missions first. One such local missions effort is Bethel Association’s partnership with Linden Baptist Church to operate a food ministry for the community. Together they’re able to secure funding and have enough space and manpower.
“Everything we’re doing, we’re trying to make that connection as an association,” he said.
He’s not the only one. Around the state dozens of associations are focusing on local cooperative missions this month with their own annual meetings and the observance of the Week of Prayer for Associational Missions set for Oct. 20–26.
It’s a perfect time to get to know your local association or get engaged even more than you already are. To learn more about associational missions or to find your own association visit www.tabonline.org/associations.
Share with others: