On Saturday, October 20th the CBC Executive Board and the Covenant Circle representative board met at the CBC office in Fairmont to take care of the church’s business. Decisions were made to approve two new congregations that have applied to join the Covenant Brethren. The first church was Faith Covenant Brethren Church in Salix, PA. The second was the Rocky Mount Church in Rocky Mount, VA. These two churches bring our total church count to 152 congregations and with the addition of the approval of additional ordinations CBC was brought to 191 credentialed individuals.
The Executive Board went on to listen to committee reports and approve the plans that have been made so far concerning the 2025 Annual Meeting and Worship Conference. They also heard the importance of finding a way to have churches submit news about successful and interesting events in their churches so those ideas can be shared with the whole body. We are working on ways to gather that information but we hope that some churches will just take the initiative to contact Craig Howard with that information so he can pass it along in future articles.
It was discussed that ministers needed to be reminded that most of their credentials will expire in 2025, and they need to have their CEUs done, and their ethics training done before that time to make their renewal possible. The board went through a review of the Covenant Brethren Church statement of faith to re-examine what those articles mean and to keep them fresh in their minds.
Brother Scott Kinnick shared about all that is going on in the mission churches. There are now fifty new church plants there! CBC is seeing churches now in Rwanda, Burundi, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Tanzania, and Uganda. To God Be the Glory! The board approved financial assistance to help these new churches achieve official recognition by their nation’s government.
They heard a wonderful report about how God has been using Covenant Brethren Churches to minister to people in East Tennessee and North Carolina after the Hurricane Helene disaster. They are working at distributing resources that have been sent down and sharing the gospel in the process. Many people have come to Christ through ministering to them in this time of need and they are seeing how God has pulled the churches in other regions together to send support and supplies to the Southern region for distribution.
One of the most blessed times of the meeting was saying thank you to Fred Shank for his years of volunteer service as treasurer. Fred is retiring from this job and passing it on to Carl Brubaker who is slated to take over the job on January 1. They are working together now but the transfer will be complete by the end of this year. Fred has been serving CBC since before it was officially formed and has served faithfully and with integrity throughout that time of service. He deserves all the recognition that the board and the denomination can give for his years of dedicated service. The board presented him with a certificate of appreciation and, as our founding treasurer, his service will always be special to the Covenant Brethren Church as we navigated these early years of development.
Submitted by Craig Howard – Publications Committee
