With Important Business, Inspiring Worship, Challenging Sermons, and Practical Workshops, BCNE’s Annual Meeting Offers Something for Everyone

When New England Baptists gather November 3-4 at ONE Church in Manchester, NH, for the 2023 Baptist Churches of New England Annual Meeting, they will consider a challenging biblical question: “Who Is Your Neighbor?”

Participants, including representatives sent by many of the 370 BCNE churches, will be asked to seek deeper understanding of the command Jesus gave a teacher (Mark 12:28-32, NIV) to “Love your neighbor as yourself.” In the same passage, he directed the teacher to love God “with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength. ” Speaking to his first-century interlocutor—and also to his 21st century followers in New England—Jesus added, “There is no commandment greater than these.”

Four church leaders will amplify the meeting’s multidimensional and multicultural theme.

Lierte Soares, the newly appointed director of the BCNE Multiplication Center, will preach the annual sermon Friday night. The Center, which will be launched in January at the BCNE offices in Northborough, MA, will offer an array of practical resources and training sessions in person and online “to equip those who want to be on mission in New England,” said Sandy Coelho, BCNE’s Leadership Development Coordinator since 1988. A Brazilian who moved to New England in 2014, Soares is also pastor of New Life Community Church, Georgetown, MA, and Framingham Baptist Church, Framingham, MA.

H. B. Charles Jr., the pastor-teacher at the Shiloh Metropolitan Baptist Church, Jacksonville and Orange Park, FL, will magnify the theme with a sermon Saturday morning. A popular conference and convention preacher, he led the Mt. Sinai Missionary Baptist Church in Los Angeles for almost eighteen years before moving to Florida. Charles is the host an “On Preaching” podcast and author of On Preaching: Personal & Pastoral Insights for the Preparation & Practice of Preaching (2014) and other titles.

Jeff Christopherson, the North American Mission Board’s Vice President for the Send City Network and Regional Vice President for Canada, will return for a second consecutive year, as a Saturday morning plenary presenter. A columnist for Christianity Today, he is author of Kingdom Matrix: Designing a Church for the Kingdom of God (expanded ed., 2016) and other titles. Christopherson is a Past President and current Executive Director of the Canadian National Baptist Convention’s Administration.

Saturday’s afternoon session will commence after a Cooperative Program lunch with a sermon by Neil Cole, who believes “that church should happen wherever life happens.” He is the founder of the Awakening Chapels network and Church Multiplication Associates. A native of Los Angeles, Cole is a leader in the house church movement, but he dislikes the “house church” label because many of the churches in the movement he leads meet in parking lots and bars. He is the author of Organic Church: Growing Faith Where Life Happens (2005) and other titles.

The Friday sessions will feature worship, an address by Stephen Woodward, the BCNE president, who has been pastor since 2016 of the Nashua Baptist Church, Nashua, NH; the election of BCNE officers; as well as the annual report by Terry Dorsett, the BCNE Executive Director, and a business session at which church representatives will be asked to approve a financial report and adopt a 2024 budget. They will hear updates from an array of committees and ministry teams—everything from a “Next Generation” report to a “Remembering Our Past” reflection. A panel discussion on Friday afternoon will be led by the regional and ethnic ministry coordinators, and the annual Robert Brindle Church Planting and Ray Allen Evangelism awards will be presented.

Fifteen inspiring and informative breakout sessions will highlight the Saturday agenda for those who want to sharpen their understanding of and participation in a particular ministry. New England Baptists are invited to come on Saturday even if they cannot attend on Friday. Soares will co-lead a workshop on “Developing Missional Leaders” at which participants will “discover a new pathway to develop leaders in your church through the BCNE Multiplication Center.” Charles will lead a session on the “Principles for Powerful Preaching” for those who want to learn some “tried and true principles in preaching powerful biblical messages that will reach your neighbors for Christ.” Representatives who choose to attend the session that Cole will co-lead, “When the Kingdom of God Shows up in a Town,” will “be inspired by the story of how a small band of Christ-followers was able to completely change the city of Globe, AZ, for Jesus.”

Sam Taylor, appointed recently as the BCNE’s Global Missions Mobilizer, will facilitate a breakout session entitled “Called to Be On Mission,” which promises to explain “how you can intentionally live on mission where God has placed you,” [which] “might include serving as a missionary overseas.” He also will lead a session entitled “How Can My Church Be Engaged in Missions?” At both mission workshops International Mission Board cross-cultural representatives with New England ties will be asked to “talk about meaningful ways your church can engage missions and support missionaries.”

Tim Vamosi, pastor Cider Mill Christian Fellowship (formerly First Baptist) of Tolland, CT, will lead a Saturday session entitled “Getting Unstuck: Transitioning From an Inward Focus to an Outward Focus,” which will explain some principles about how a plateaued congregation might refocus its missions and ministries and prepare for growth and improved community outreach.

Joe Souza, the longtime church strategist and leader of ethnic ministries, who was named recently as the BCNE’s Boston Area Regional Coordinator, will co-lead a workshop on “Reaching Your Second-Gen. Neighbors,” which promises to encourage “Next Gen. leaders [to] become a major mission force in New England.” Brazilians Souza and Soares will be joined by other leaders for a two-hour session in Portuguese entitled “How Ethnic Churches Can Reach Their Neighbors.” The same session will be co-led by others in Spanish, Creole, French, and the Central African language of Lingala.

With important business sessions, inspiring worship gatherings, challenging sermons, and practical workshops annual meeting participants will be prepared for a year of meaningful ministry. It seems there will be something for everyone.

Plan to attend. For more on the annual meeting, visit bcne.net/meeting.

A Massachusetts native and a New England Baptist since 1970, Dan Nicholas is the BCNE managing editor.