With the BMA of Arkansas annual meeting now just around the corner on November 6, I’ve been thinking about why these gatherings matter. It’s not just business and fellowship, but opportunities to discover who we are and why we exist together that matter most to me. These annual meetings provide an opportunity for our churches to come together in mission for Christ.
You’ve probably heard people discuss church life cycles. They say that churches incline, then recline and then decline. I’ve read the literature and appreciated the revitalization resources I’ve gleaned. However, I can’t help but think that focusing solely on churches misses the point. Churches don’t drift from vitality to apathy; people do.
Outside of church conversations, historians describe a similar pattern: good times produce weak men, weak men make hard times, hard times create strong men, and strong men make good times. In both cases, what’s being described is the cycle of human faithfulness.
When a generation fights to rediscover Truth, families break free from sin’s cycles and find their way to the gospel. People who see great distances crossed by restoration become diligent disciples. They pore over their Bibles. They pray earnestly. They pursue Truth. Their children, who witness all that was gained, work hard to preserve it. But their children’s children often only see the form without the fire. They inherit the structures of faith without the struggle that gave birth to them.
What we’re fighting against in declining churches and declining associations isn’t the church lifecycle as much as it is the lifecycle of human faithfulness. We fight for Truth, and the church grows. We preserve Truth, and the church reclines. We forget Truth, and the church declines.
Ministry is about people. When we have problems, it’s always a people problem.
What makes the Baptist Missionary Association unique isn’t our programs or institutions, it’s our conviction. We believe that the local church is the called-out body of believers, visibly gathered together to preach the Word, observe the ordinances, and carry the gospel to the ends of the earth. That means the authority to do Jesus’ work rests in the local church itself.
In the wisdom of God, we believe that our churches are better together. That’s what it means to be an association. It’s the beautiful tension of autonomy and cooperation. We don’t surrender the authority of the local church. We multiply its reach by locking arms with others who share the same convictions and the same mission.
A generation in the 1950s rediscovered these truths. A faithful generation has preserved them since then. Will our generation forget them? Will we allow our children to grow up seeing only the machinery of cooperation without the zeal behind it? Will we let them inherit associational life without the conviction? I pray not.
Knowing our why guides us into faithfulness. We exist to equip believers and establish churches. On November 6, the churches of the BMA of Arkansas will gather because we are better together.
