LEXINGTON—The Kentucky Baptist Convention Mission Board has approved a plan to reorganize the Mission Board staff to help churches achieve the baptism, membership, leadership development and other objectives of a recent Mission Study Committee report.
Meeting at Immanuel Baptist Church here Tuesday afternoon just ahead of the annual Kentucky Baptist Convention slated for Nov. 11-12, the Mission Board approved a recommendation from its Administrative Committee to reduce the number of staff teams from six to five and place four regionally based church development strategists in the field to serve churches.
KBC Executive Director Bill Mackey said the purpose of reorganizing is to assist Kentucky Baptist churches in achieving the goals and objectives set forth in the Mission Study Committee report adopted in May. Among other goals, the plan calls for Kentucky Baptists to increase the number of church members by 250,000 by the start of 2010.
Mackey said he believes streamlining the organization will encourage a focus on “people and not programs.” The reorganized KBC staff will focus on developing and connecting networks of leaders across the state who can share knowledge and resources with other church leaders.
He said the new organizational structure is designed to support the mission of the Kentucky Baptist Convention, which is to “assist Kentucky Baptist Convention churches and ministries and associations in connecting all people to Jesus Christ.”
“In the future, when you think about the acronym ‘KBC,’ I hope you will think not of conferences or meetings, but of Kentucky Baptists connecting people to Jesus,” said Mackey.
The Mission Board also voted to allow the current membership of the Administrative Committee to continue to function until the new Administrative Committee is selected and in place in December.
Mission Board committees typically do not function between the close of the annual meeting in mid November and the first meeting of the newly-elected Mission Board in early December. The move will allow Mackey and the committee to continue to interview and select candidates to fill new and vacant staff positions, keeping the reorganization on track to go into effect Jan. 1, 2004.
The board also authorized the Administrative Committee to study the possibility of allowing all future Mission Board committees to continue in office until new committees are elected.
The Mission Board also approved a number of other measures, including:
- New guidelines for budgeting for employee medical insurance and a policy to encourage employees to embrace healthy lifestyles.
- A new group insurance policy for retirees that phases out 100 percent payment of life, dental and medical insurance coverage for employees who retire before the age of 65. The board also approved a recommendation to establish a trust for the Retired Group Insurance Program, protecting the funds that pay for retirees’ insurance benefits from being reallocated for other purposes.
- A recommendation from the Business and Finance Committee to decrease in the 2004-2005 Cooperative Program operating budget goal by 3 percent to $22,504,000. The move was made to keep the budget in line with anticipated giving from the churches.
- A policy for maintaining meeting minutes of the Mission Board and its committees.
The Mission Board will meet again Dec. 8–9 at the Kentucky Baptist Building in Louisivlle.
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Release prepared by Brenda Rick Smith, KBC news/web specialist |