Manatee, Southwest, Suncoast, Tampa Bay Associations

Oct 28, 2008
CAROLYN NICHOLS
Newswriter

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Baptist associations in the United States celebrated their 300th anniversary in 2007. The Florida Baptist Witness is honoring Florida’s 49 associations in a series of articles that will showcase each association and its ministries. This is the ninth installment.

MANATEE SOUTHERN BAPTIST ASSOCIATION

Until 10 years ago, Palmetto and the city’s surrounding area was mainly farmland with a few residential neighborhoods. With the new millennium came an influx of new residents into massive residential developments. The population growth and the present economic downturn are challenging the area’s Baptist churches, according to Manatee Southern Baptist Association Director of Missions Tom Bennett.

Manatee Southern Baptist Association: Ike-Galveston

“In these economic stressful times, it’s hard to keep churches and their properties healthy while at the same time expanding to meet the needs of the population,” he told Florida Baptist Witness.

Church plants in the greater Parrish area and in CrossPointe East are recent additions to the 32 churches and missions of the association. Most are small congregations, according to Bennett, with only seven churches numbering more than 200. The 31-year-old association was originally part of the Tampa Bay Baptist Association, then part of the South Florida association until 1977, Bennett said.

Bennett has served the Manatee Southern association five years. The Georgia native served as pastor of churches in Florida since 1960 and maintains a “home place” that Bennett’s father built on five acres near The Villages in Belleview. He retired as pastor of First Baptist Church in Bradenton in 1995, and waited five years for a liver transplant that was performed on Good Friday 2000. Although he says his health was “compromised” during those five years, his returning health and energy enable him to work part-time for the association.

Manatee Southern Baptist Association: Katrina flood level

“I am in good health for a 77-year-old man, thank the Lord,” he said.

Bennett’s experience in the pastorate enables him to encourage the pastors of Manatee Southern association. He preaches in their churches and leads deacon’s conferences. Although he said the churches in his association experience little turnover of pastors, any new pastor is treated to breakfast by Bennett. Fellowship breakfasts for all the pastors of the association keep the church leaders in touch with one another.

“No matter what may change in associational work, the need for fellowship among the pastors is constant. That will not change,” he said.

Scores of volunteers from the association maintain several long-standing ministries.

The North River Care Pregnancy Center, housed at Palm View Baptist Church, recently celebrated its 10th anniversary. The association provides the salary of center’s director, Teri Giles, who directs volunteers in counseling those affected by a crisis pregnancy, in teaching English and Spanish classes and Bible studies. The center is open four days weekly.

“This is a very outstanding ministry,” Bennett said. “Lives have been saved and lives have been changed.”

Manatee Southern Baptist Association: Loading

At the time Bennett was interviewed Sept. 22, Disaster Relief crews from Manatee Southern Association were ministering to residents of Houma, La., who suffered losses in Hurricane Ike. The association has three 10-foot trailers that carry equipment for recovery and rebuilding crews, and 500 gallons of fuel. Braden River Baptist Church Associate Pastor Ed Moss heads up the association’s DR response volunteers.

Churches of the association collect new and used quarterlies, Bibles and hymnals for the association’s ministry in cooperation with Edwin Hodges Ministry of Decatur, Ala. Volunteers load Christian literature into a semi-trailer at Ellenton First Baptist Church in Palmetto, where Manatee Southern association maintains offices. Representative of the Alabama ministry pick up the collected items twice yearly to distribute world-wide.

Manatee Southern churches also provide free lunches on Mondays for students at Manatee Community College. The responsibility for planning and cooking the meals rotates among the churches, and volunteers visit with the students as the meals are served.

“We hear of some of them leading people to the Lord on a regular basis,” Bennett said.

SOUTHWEST FLORIDA BAPTIST ASSOCIATION

The 21 churches and missions of Southwest Florida Baptist Association are challenged by the task of ministering to the more than 360,000 Floridians living in Sarasota County, and Director of Missions David Montalbano told Florida Baptist Witness more churches are needed to work in this growing area of the state.

“We need four times the churches we have now,” he said. ““It is my prayer to fill in the holes in the map of the county.”

Southwest Baptist Association: Disaster Relief workers

In targeting new ministry points in retirement communities and mobile home parks, some churches, he said, suffer “turfism.” They want more churches—”just not in my backyard.”

“There is enough real estate for everybody,” he said.

Southwest Baptist Association split amiably from Manatee Southern association 85 years ago, and both associations remain small, Montalbano said.

“Evangelism and church planting would be easier to do with more churches on board,” he said.

Montalbano, serving as DOM two years, said the association works to support what churches are doing, instead of trying to maintain social programs through the association. The association is, however, providing ministries to church members and their communities. The association executive board recently approved providing office space for a counseling center. The Sarasota location of the Tampa Bay Baptist Association’s Counseling Center will share space with the association in the facilities of Southside Baptist Church.

Disaster relief is done in Southwest association by two churches, First Baptist, Venice, and Sarasota Baptist. Along with being called out for recent storms, crews are still working in New Orleans to repair damage done by Hurricane Katrina in 2005.

To help local ministers, the association is working to begin a theological education certification program through the Leavell College of New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary.

Southwest Baptist Association: New Orleans

“We want to train pastors and church leaders here,” Montalbano said. “When we send them away, sometimes they don’t come back.”

The Southwest Florida director of missions served as pastor of churches in Georgia and Arkansas before serving Concord Baptist Church in Tampa. He also served as a director of missions in eastern Connecticut and Rhode Island. Montalbano values the ministers of his association as “a great bunch of pastors with vision.” He also said he relies on “good pastors who have been around a long time.”

Three times a year, Southwest Florida association churches come together for times of worship: for an evangelism rally, a Sunday School training event and the annual meeting. This year’s annual meeting was at Bee Ridge Baptist Church Oct. 14.

“It’s going to be a big time of inspiration and worship,” Montalbano said in advance. “Our churches always turn out pretty well for this.”

SUNCOAST BAPTIST ASSOCIATION

Suncoast Baptist Association Director of Missions Ervin McWilson, on the job since June 30, has tagged the association “a mission field where visions become real.” He would like Pinellas County to be known not only as a “place to retire,” but also as a “place to come to fulfill visions.”

McWilson is the first African-American director of missions to serve in Florida. To read more about this, plan to read the Nov. 13 issue of the Florida Baptist Witness.

Suncoast Baptist Association: Singles picnic

McWilson accepted the leadership position of Suncoast association after serving five years as director of evangelism of the Baptist Convention of Pennsylvania and South Jersey, and he would like pastors and lay people of the 84 churches and missions in the association to share his passion for evangelism.

“I am on a path to win souls in Pinellas County. That is my passion” McWilson told Florida Baptist Witness. “I want others to find their passion—what really excites them in ministry—and to get involved there.”

McWilson wants pastors and lay people of the association to think of their area as a “Jerusalem mission field.”

“This is an exciting time to focus on our Jerusalem because the world is coming to us,” he said. “I hope people will use their passion, their skills and their giftedness in ministry in our Jerusalem.”

McWilson also has dreams and prayers for his new mission field that include 100% participation in prayer initiatives, in completing the Annual Church Profile, and in financially supporting the work of the association. He would like Pinellas County Baptists to “collectively cooperate” in evangelism, discipleship and church starting, and he envisions association churches commissioning members for short-term missions within the Suncoast “Jerusalem.”

Suncoast Baptist Association: Mt. Carmel

“I believe this kind of strategy would keep us in constant motion and allow every member of our churches to find value in participating in local ministry,” he wrote in a recent newsletter to Suncoast churches.

Presently, McWilson is continuing long-standing ministries in the association, including the St. Petersburg and Bay Area Pregnancy centers that the association supports in finances and promotion. McWilson is working to become better acquainted with the association he now serves. He recently met with his office staff to go over the 2008 budget line by line “to get to know what is going on,” he said. He also is on a quest to visit every church in the association, to make the association more visible as “ministry-based” rather than administrative, he said.

Pastors of the association are featured in each monthly newsletter produced by the association, and McWilson maintains a prayer calendar and prayer hotline to further fellowship.

“I want us to be able to feel each other’s heartbeat,” he said. “I want to see and share the struggles of pastors and let that massage my heart.”

TAMPA BAY BAPTIST ASSOCIATION

With 170 churches and missions, Tampa Bay Baptist Association is one of the largest Baptist associations in Florida. The association of more than 65,000 Baptists, under the leadership of Director of Missions Tom Biles, offers a vast array of ministries to the four million residents of the region.

Even with the downturn in the economy and housing markets, analysts are confident that Tampa Bay’s population growth will remain “in the double digits,” Biles told Florida Baptist Witness. For this reason, he said the association is “aggressive to the maximum degree” in helping church plants. In the last 15 years, 165 church starts have been made, although some church starts have not survived, and a few existing churches have failed and other congregations have merged.

Tampa Bay Baptist Association: Kids praying

To help struggling Tampa Bay churches, the association began the Jerusalem Project in 1999. The three-fold goal of the effort remains to encourage area congregations to pray for one another, to partner with one another for ministries and to contribute to the Project Jerusalem offering. In nine years, dozens of churches, large and small, have formed partnerships to help one another. The offering has raised $147,692 that has been distributed in grants to 95 different ministries. Grants of $1,000-$2,000 are awarded at every October annual meeting, including the Oct. 13 mission rally with speaker Jerry Rankin of the International Mission Board.

“We didn’t know what would happen when we started this, but it has been a real difference-maker,” Biles said. “It has been great because people see 100 percent of what they have given going back to community.”

The Tampa Bay Baptist Foundation also seeks to undergird the churches financially. Eighteen board members work to acquire funds to help local churches—especially new churches—buy land and buildings.

Area churches are making use of one of the association’s most popular resources—the 75-acre Tampa Bay Baptist Conference Center in north Tampa. The self-supporting facility includes a gymnasium, pool, ball fields, lake, dormitories and dining hall. Three couples maintain the center along with volunteers, some of whom stay in campers for “months at a time,” Biles said. More than 75,000 people use the facility each year, and this summer eight church groups—”mostly, but not all, Baptist”—rented the facility for week-long camps, he said.

“The beauty of this is that it is in Tampa, but it feels like you are a long way from a metropolitan area,” he said.

In an effort to help communities and pastors, the Tampa Bay Baptist Counseling Center works “under the umbrella of the association” in five locations throughout the area. Twenty association-approved Christian counselors meet with clients in the association’s office building and in four churches: Myrtle Lake Baptist, First Baptist in Brandon, Fish Hawk Baptist and First Baptist in Riverview. The counselors, most of whom work one or two days a week at the centers, are paid by their clients.

Tampa Bay Baptist Association: Kids

“This is of huge value to our churches,” Biles said. “There are so many needs, and most pastors do not have the time to deal with these issues. Here, they know there are counselors they can trust.”

Biles began his work in Tampa 15 years ago after serving as state missions director of the Minnesota/Wisconsin Baptist Convention. The Texas native was recommended to the Tampa Bay association by a contact at the North American Mission Board, and Biles gladly left behind northern winters.

“Tampa is home now, and I am thankful to the Lord for bringing us here,” he said.

Biles served as president of the Florida Directors of Missions in 2006, and of president of the 2007 Southern Baptist Conference Associational Directors of Missions when the association celebrated its 300th anniversary. He hopes that Southern Baptists are not losing sight of the value of the local association as the “closest denominational unit to the church.”

Among the many changes Biles has witnessed in 15 years are more demands on individual’s time. Packed individual and church schedules have resulted in changes in how an association works, Biles said.

“Years ago, when everybody’s schedules were different, you could schedule a meeting and a crowd would come. Now it’s is more of a one-on-one relational ministry to the churches and pastors,” he said.

Today, instead of large meetings, Biles will meet a pastor for lunch, and ask, “How can we help you?”

Fortunately, Biles has help in meeting the needs of the churches in the association. Nine ministers and assistants are employed by the association to help manage the port ministries, disaster relief, mission trips and other responsibilities of Tampa Bay association.

“With this many churches, the work keeps a lot of us very busy,” he said.

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