Colorado Baptist Convention...

The annual meeting of the Colorado Baptist General Convention will be held in the early part of next week in Steamboat Springs. Our meetings will be held at the Steamboat Grand Resort Hotel pictured here. My church has graciously provided lodging for myself and the youth pastor at the hotel. I have subsequently invited the assistant BSU Director at Colorado State University to share my room with me so that he doesn't have to sleep outside. One of the really special things about our state convention is the sense of family that we feel here. The SBC church in Steamboat has even opened up homes to host anyone coming to the convention who needs a place to stay (don't tell my church). Keep in mind that half of our pastors in Colorado are bivocational. I will be traveling together with the Director of Missions for the association that our church belongs to. I'm hoping to get a free meal out of deal. We will travel into the mountains on Sunday afternoon and arrive in Steamboat sometime Sunday evening. First thing, Monday morning, we have a golf tournament and then the pastor's conference begins on Monday afternoon. My team always gets destroyed in the tournament but it's great fun and fellowship. My team this year includes my DOM, my youth pastor, and a counselor friend. All three are much better golfers than myself--I'm pretty much just along for the ride.

One of the key items to be discussed is the restructuring of our Executive Board. I have chaired a task force that has been working for almost two years to study a new and more effective approach to conducting the business of our convention in between annual meetings. I will be presenting a recommendation from the Executive Board to the convention that our EB be downsized from 40-something members to exactly eighteen. The CBGC Executive Board will be made up of the three convention officers, the Executive Director, one member from each of the eleven associations and 3 members-at-large. The smaller size will allow the board to more effectively discuss and provide oversight of the convention. One of the positives to the new structure is that our elected convention officers will now have genuine influence in the direction of the convention.