A few days ago I celebrated an anniversary with some friends of mine – over 200 of them. It was the CBF of Missouri General Assembly, where we also celebrated the organization’s 20th anniversary. Some fun memories from the weekend:

After celebrating the opening of Central Baptist Theological Seminary’s new chapel, a group of ministers shared lunch and discussion with students from the seminary, led by Dr. Heather Entrekin. The topic: “Metrics for Faithfulness: How Do We Measure a Church’s Faithfulness Without Using Numbers?”

Our annual missional banquet featured a live video chat with Shane and Dianne McNary, CBF field personnel working with Roma people in Slovakia. We also heard from the St. Louis Area Pastor’s Conference, which recently became a member of CBF of Missouri; the Bosnian Ministry in St. Louis with Sasha and Mira Zivanov, soon to be commissioned as CBF field personnel; and the Big Muddy/Clean Water initiative, which also won the first-ever $5000 CBFMO Giving Circle grant. Daniel Vestal, our special guest for the weekend, also spoke about the Fellowship’s work in Haiti.

When I first came to CBF of Missouri, its General Assembly was built around a Saturday of breakout sessions in the host church building. This past weekend marked the third consecutive year our annual meeting has featured hands-on service projects on Saturday morning. Thirteen different service projects were available for attendees to choose from, many of them in the neighborhoods surrounding the host church. Nearly 150 men, women, youth and children joined in.

Twenty years together is worth celebrating. If this past weekend is a sign of the future, the next 20 years are going to be even better.