Words of Thanks for a Positive Transition

The move to Prattville is now complete. As such, words of thanks are in order:

Thanks, first and foremost, to our Lord Who has given all Christians a mandate to serve Him through Great Commission Ministries. Your State Board of Missions staff is grateful for the opportunity to do so through serving God by serving Alabama Baptists. We will continue to do so from our new resource center in Prattville.

Thanks to those who came before us in Alabama Baptist life through support of the Cooperative Program, which provided the former State Board facility in Montgomery where your state missionaries were based since 1963. Without the equity and existing ministry infrastructure of the previous facility, this move would not have been possible in a debt-free fashion. The former facility was built with gifts through the Cooperative Program, which made our “key swap” possible with Baptist Health.

Thanks to the State Board of Missions, Executive Committee, and subcommittees that helped develop and affirm the plan and details to achieve the key swap with Baptist Health. Thanks, too of course, to messengers to the 2016 meeting of the Alabama Baptist State Convention who voted to approve this proposal for our relocation to a more energy-efficient, size-appropriate facility more centrally located in our state along the I-65 corridor.

Thanks to Baptist Health of Montgomery for their willingness and agreement to embrace and implement this innovative paradigm that is resulting in laudable ministry benefits for their organization and, of course, for your State Board of Missions.

Thanks to the State Board of Missions staff — your state missionaries and ministry support personnel — for a Herculean effort and assistance in accomplishing an on-time, successful move to the Prattville facility. We’re likewise grateful for our ministry partners of Alabama Woman’s Missionary Union and Alabama Baptist Retirement Centers who will continue to share a facility with us in Prattville as in Montgomery.

A special word of thanks is due to my associate executive director, Bobby DuBois, who has run point in so many ways in the negotiations with Baptist Health leading to the historic agreement for a key swap. Bobby handled countless logistics and oversaw efforts and coordination of the transition from Montgomery to Prattville. I am grateful for his ongoing shouldering of so many responsibilities in his role as a state missionary and, notably now, for his tireless hands-on leadership related to the relocation.

Thanks to the many of you, Alabama Baptists, who have prayed for us and sent messages of encouragement regarding the relocation process, especially during the past several months. Your prayer support, I believe, has been answered affirmatively by our Lord in granting us a relatively smooth-moving process. One of the many graces we have appreciated in terms of answered prayer during moving week is that the rain was consistently far less than was forecasted by meteorologists, and the weather was temperate for almost all of the crucial days of the move.

Thank you, Alabama Baptists, for your ongoing support of missions through the Cooperative Program. The CP is the lifeblood for the missional circulatory system of Southern Baptists. It enables any local church to meet the Acts 1:8 mandate to go into all the world, all the time, at the same time. Indeed, the Acts 1:8 command of our Lord is simultaneous, not sequential.

As your state missionaries look forward to God’s future for Alabama Baptists, Southern Baptists and especially for state missions ministry efforts, we ask for your continued prayer support.

We look forward to announcing soon events that will be held here at the new facility, including open houses and scheduled tours. Please watch the pages of this “FOCUS on One Mission” publication each month along with other communications from your State Board, including social media and direct mail.

In the meantime, if your state missionaries may assist your Alabama Baptist church or association, please contact us. All email addresses and phone numbers remain the same.