Looking back on 2013 is an exciting exercise! Lots of good things happened at both the individual church level and the state-wide, associational level. As you will see as you read through the church statistics we have a number of churches that are making significant impact - and lots more is being done to connect with communities that can't be qualified in the simple statistics we record here.
One significant story of 2013 that I want you to know about is what God is doing at Mesa Baptist Church. A year ago a team from the SWCC was asked by the church to do a Ministry Mapping for them. Our team got lots of great feedback from the church family and recommended five prescriptions for them to follow, including allowing us to place an intentional interim pastor to lead them through this time of transition. The church humbly agreed to all of the prescriptions and for the past 13 months they have been led by an intentional interim pastor who has been coached by some of our association's most effective and experienced pastors. The church has responded incredibly and has grown from an average attendance in the low 200's to running consistently in the 320-340 range. They have seen over 40 people make professions of faith and are actively working to disciple them and have already had nearly 25 baptisms! They are finishing up the last prescription which is developing and ratifying new Identity Documents (constitution, values, doctrine) and then will be moving towards calling a new, long-term pastor. It is exciting to see what God is doing there.
This last year we moved from having one State Meeting for the entire association to Regional Meetings across the state designed to encourage and equip the people who are doing the ministry in our churches. We had five regional events (Flagstaff, Yuma, Tucson, East Valley and West Valley) and were able to minister to 50% more people than had attended our last state meeting! The feedback we have gotten has been great as people have gotten very useful and helpful tools to grow their ministries in their own local churches.
We also changed up our Pastor's & Wives retreat making it a Leadership Retreat designed for pastors & wives, church staff and board members and moved it to Scottsdale in early August. It was a great time as Hal Seed a CB pastor from CA came and ministered to us. Again, attendance was up 50% from our last retreat.
This past year we were also given Huachuca Oaks Camp in the southern part of our state. We have been working with their camp director to assess the camp's ministry and to see how it can be developed. This is an ongoing work in 2014. Another blessing this past year is we have had a number of our churches either begin to support or increase their monthly financial support to the association! This has been a HUGE blessing to the ministry that we are doing! This allows us to put more resource into the ministry around our region.
Looking ahead to 2014 we are excited to build on these "wins" and see more growth in our churches' outreach and development. We are doing two more Ministry Mappings this month and have another couple scheduled for this Spring. The goal is to help these churches move on to the next level of fruitfulness in their ministry. As you will read in the church planting report we are working with two of our churches in Southeast AZ to help plant a new church in Morenci. We are very excited about that possibility. We are adding some new Pastor Connection groups, and we will have a special, 24 hour Pastors and Wives get together before our Leadership Retreat begins this summer.
Lots of great things are happening at both the state and local level of our network and that is because YOU are doing a great work and have a heart to even be more effective! Thanks for your partnership, prayer and encouragement through 2013. As great of a year of ministry as 2013 was, we anticipate that 2014 is going to be an even greater year for the kingdom of our Savior!
