Partners in the Mission: We Are Family! 05/13/2008 a message from Dr. Bill Mackey, executive director I recently read an article by Steve Davis in the Indiana Baptist Monthly with the title “We Are Family!” This month and next we celebrate family with Mother’s Day and Father’s Day and Davis’s analogy about earthly family and the family of God captured me. Davis, who serves as executive director of the State Convention of Baptists in Indiana, said that not only is the church a family but that associations, state conventions and even the Southern Baptist Convention are also families. They are not just organizations and buildings but a family of churches choosing to cooperate with each other for the sake of sharing Jesus, strengthening churches, planting churches, sending missionaries and developing leaders. “What does it mean to be family?” Davis asked and then answered it with the words “togetherness, “ “encouragement,” and “love”. Families get together on special occasions. My family loves to be on vacation together and to gather at Thanksgiving and Christmas. It seems to me that should be the same for churches, associations, state conventions, and the SBC. We are not just fraternal organizations or political parties; we are the family of God joined together by our relationship to Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord. We have opportunities to come together each Sunday morning and during associational, state, and SBC meetings. These times together provide opportunities to renew acquaintances, make new friends, share ideas and learn about missions and ministries. The SBC Annual Meeting in Indianapolis, June 10-11, will provide a wonderful opportunity for the family of churches to be together. I hope that Kentucky Baptists will have the largest representation! The second characteristic of family mentioned by Davis is that family time is a time of encouragement, fun and refreshment. People are having a tough time in the world so they need churches, associations and conventions to be families of encouragement, joy, refreshment and challenge. Let us learn to evaluate without being critical, to share opinions without being opinionated and to disagree without being disagreeable. The world does not need another excuse to resist Jesus. The third characteristic of family is forgiveness and love. There is a lot of unconditional love and forgiveness in the human family. And the same should be true in churches, associations and conventions. The world should be able to observe how much we love one another as experienced by the early church at Antioch (Acts 11:26). Love doesn’t mean that we ignore sin, social evils or injustice, but it does mean that the lost can discover God’s love through us. The most important reason to come together as families of God is that God, our Father, will be there. We are the family of God! Dr. Mackey's column appears weekly in the Western Recorder. To subscribe to the Western Recorder, call (502) 489-3535.