This past April the Executive Committee of the Covenant Brethren Church met in Fairmont, West Virginia, to look toward the future of CBC and to allow the various subcommittees to report on the planning they had been working on.
Much of the meeting focused on the upcoming Annual Meeting to be held in Fairmont on September 10-11, 2021 at Fairmont State University. The theme for the meeting will be, “For Such A Time As This,” from Esther 4:14. There was a good deal of discussion on who should be selected as the keynote speaker for the event and several names were mentioned. Some felt we should look outside the denomination for a well known speaker. Others thought it might be a good idea to allow the delegates to get to know members of the leadership team. To that end George Bowers was selected as the keynote speaker. There was a lot of information given about the facilities at FSU and it was deemed to be a very desirable location for the meeting both from a financial, food and facilities standpoint. The cost of this exciting and historical meeting will only be $35 for adults and $20 for youth and that includes all the food you can eat.
This year there is a plan at the annual meeting to begin an Annual Youth Meeting to run at the same location but with it’s own agenda and program. FSU has adjacent facilities that will accommodate the youth program. This will be for youth between the 7th and 12th grades. Worship will be shared with the adults but there will be separate information and discussion groups designed to allow the youth of our new denomination to understand this new endeavor and to have a part in shaping the national youth ministry. They will have an opportunity to elect their own national officers and share fellowship in community service ministries. For this reason we are encouraging churches to send their youth to help begin a new and exciting national youth ministry within the CBC. Youth should bring swimsuits as the FSU pool will be available.
Letters and emails will be going out soon with registration information, and churches are encouraged to begin selecting their delegates. Two delegates are allowed for the first 100 members and one delegate for each 100 members after that.
All of the committees began to give their reports and all confessed they have a lot of work ahead of them. The ministerial committee has been tasked with the development of a ministerial training program and a continuing educational program for existing ministers. An outline for course study has been developed and resources are being drawn together to offer both our new and existing ministers the training and mentoring they need.
The missions and outreach committee is excited about the possibilities they see opening up to them. They are already being contacted by groups outside of the United States wanting to work with CBC because of the strong biblical stand we take. Mission opportunities in Guatemala, Africa and other places are presenting themselves as well as opportunities for new church plants. This group is highly motivated to see CBC reaching out in a variety of ways to carry the gospel message to those who need to hear it.
To that end we have now firmly recognized our first region of churches, the Southern Region with many of the churches that used to make up the old Southeast District. We are coming very close to having our second region forming in the area of West Virginia and MD. There are sufficient churches in this area to form a region and we look forward to that happening very soon.
While this is not an exhaustive report on everything that took place at that meeting, it does allow you to realize that the leadership of the Covenant Brethren Church is working very hard to serve the many new churches and ministers of the CBC as God would direct and for His Glory.
